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Northern Ireland25671 Posts
On December 03 2012 17:39 aZealot wrote:
I think you miss his point Wombat. You may believe your voice is easily differentiated from the mass of other voices on TL (and elsewhere). I'm not really sure how you can come to that point regardless, a good forum profile means shit. How is Blizzard supposed to consistently pick out the occasional pearl (if that is indeed what it is) from the mass of swine swill that is the usual balance/design offering on TL? They'd have to be masochists to do so, and those dedicated couple of personnel (poor sods) trawling through TL and other community sites would be reaching for sharp blades and rolling up their sleeves real quick.
So much of community "input" is little more than whine of the week, or moan of the month - forever changing contemptible crap. There may be, and I'm not sure about this, something for the Blizzard development team to take on board among all of that. Something they must be told for the good of the game (etc). But I find it difficult to blame them if they don't or won't.
Not at all correct man to say that. I have actually said exactly what you are talking about, in a different way. I mean bar my phraseology being different to yours, I could have made that post. I acknowledge the problem exists, and how the problem impacts us. I.e, that good posts get buried etc.
I just consider it a false dichotomy, it doesn't have to be 'Blizzard can do it themselves' vs 'We know better' at all. Blizzard, merely by consulting pros shows that, unless it's purely to placate the community, that they welcome input! However I'd imagine they find sifting through it hard (because of all the reasons you outlined).
The solution is 100% there, at least theoretically if you think a little laterally. Hire a person to sift through that. They wouldn't even have to know much about Starcraft, just bring ideas to Blizzard that aren't necessarily good, or necessarily bad, but something that they haven't considered. Yeah it might suck, hell, it's a job right? I wouldn't expect them to do it for free, it would be hell.
If anybody can tell me that that wouldn't at least bridge the gap between the good ideas of the 'silent minority' being transmitted, and them being received, to at least some degree I would be mightily impressed as to them finding a reason why.
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On December 03 2012 17:17 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2012 17:05 rd wrote:On December 03 2012 16:47 Wombat_NI wrote:On December 03 2012 16:25 the_business_og wrote:
tbh its just (fucking) lazy on blizzards part, for the last maybe 4 months-6 moths? they have been saying they are waiting for the meta game to change and adapt to infestors, and when they finally can no longer deny the clamor for balance change, they come out with minimal changes which do not only not fix inherent game design problems of the infestor, but also they give changes that serve nothing more than to band aid the problem till HOTS. the problem is the wound is still bleeding,HSM is a good change, but the egg chance literally changes nothing. they make claims like global statistics are balanced but they show us no proof, they expect us to take their word for it Let me see the statistics and link a source... its common procedure.
As i see it, they are three major problems with the WOL:
1. Infestor is too powerful, and all-purpose unit
2. Late Game PvZ is a based on one or two key spells in an engagement, made worse by a well timed Neural Parasite which gives zerg ability to hold both keys to win
3. Siege Tanks don't control space well enough, and thus Late game T suffers
Not only is this lazy of blizzard, worse, its greedy. They know people LOVE sc2, and will spring for HOTS regardless of badly they fucked up the game design of WOL. They've left it for dead and are focusing their attention on HOTS, but its so wrong and fucked up to dedicated WOL players. Blizzard shouldnt be able to fuck up so badly and then make shit tons of money of the expansion... you cant have you cake and eat it too. All Blizzard would have to do is hire a couple of people to do community research as a full time job, literally all they're paid to do. Their task is not to find out what people's problems are with the game, in a 'Z OP' way, but to find interesting/constructive posts regarding stuff Blizzard hadn't considered. Their sole role: Find things that Blizz hadn't previously considered in their thinking, no matter the source. Relay/discuss this issue directly to the design team so the design team can at least try to implement certain things It's almost as if you assume the community more often than not has any worthwhile suggestions that aren't emotion fueled, that these ideas would be superior enough to merit the money being spent to find them, that their team is incapable/they're incapable of hiring a team to come up with them, that they probably wouldn't disagree with the vast majority of suggestions either way, that they don't look at the community and are apparently missing the "gems" spawned from the community. I could go on. Blizzard apologists never get old. Wait, no, they do. And yes, there are many good ideas floating around the forums that I'd say are much better than the ones Blizzard has come up with. It's pretty plain to see they live in Fairy Tale Land with little to no connection to actual reality. And even if they didn't, outside input is damn helpful - precisely because even a small group of smart people can scarcely come up with a lot of differing points of view. You need widespread exchange of ideas for that to happen.
There is no reason in labeling any criticism of an ideal to be that of an apologist. If you'd pull your head out of your ass, you'd realize how ridiculously presumptuous and arrogant such an idea is that would imply Blizzard doesn't read any community feedback -- to the extent that any proposed suggestions YOU would happen to agree with are so correct in their merit that the only possible reason they aren't immediately embraced by Blizzard is simply because they're incapable of finding them.
On December 03 2012 17:31 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2012 17:05 rd wrote:On December 03 2012 16:47 Wombat_NI wrote:On December 03 2012 16:25 the_business_og wrote:
tbh its just (fucking) lazy on blizzards part, for the last maybe 4 months-6 moths? they have been saying they are waiting for the meta game to change and adapt to infestors, and when they finally can no longer deny the clamor for balance change, they come out with minimal changes which do not only not fix inherent game design problems of the infestor, but also they give changes that serve nothing more than to band aid the problem till HOTS. the problem is the wound is still bleeding,HSM is a good change, but the egg chance literally changes nothing. they make claims like global statistics are balanced but they show us no proof, they expect us to take their word for it Let me see the statistics and link a source... its common procedure.
As i see it, they are three major problems with the WOL:
1. Infestor is too powerful, and all-purpose unit
2. Late Game PvZ is a based on one or two key spells in an engagement, made worse by a well timed Neural Parasite which gives zerg ability to hold both keys to win
3. Siege Tanks don't control space well enough, and thus Late game T suffers
Not only is this lazy of blizzard, worse, its greedy. They know people LOVE sc2, and will spring for HOTS regardless of badly they fucked up the game design of WOL. They've left it for dead and are focusing their attention on HOTS, but its so wrong and fucked up to dedicated WOL players. Blizzard shouldnt be able to fuck up so badly and then make shit tons of money of the expansion... you cant have you cake and eat it too. All Blizzard would have to do is hire a couple of people to do community research as a full time job, literally all they're paid to do. Their task is not to find out what people's problems are with the game, in a 'Z OP' way, but to find interesting/constructive posts regarding stuff Blizzard hadn't considered. Their sole role: Find things that Blizz hadn't previously considered in their thinking, no matter the source. Relay/discuss this issue directly to the design team so the design team can at least try to implement certain things It's almost as if you assume the community more often than not has any worthwhile suggestions that aren't emotion fueled, that these ideas would be superior enough to merit the money being spent to find them, that their team is incapable/they're incapable of hiring a team to come up with them, that they probably wouldn't disagree with the vast majority of suggestions either way, that they don't look at the community and are apparently missing the "gems" spawned within. I could go on. Dude, read my posts, especially in the strategy forums, or my [D]Threads. Please try and tell me I am biased, or emotion-fuelled based on that. A lot of people probably wouldn't know what race I even played if I didn't outright tell them. Now explain to me why somebody, not necessarily me but somebody with my approach would necessarily be bad at producing ideas or thoughts on the game. Consider who Blizzard ARE influenced by, people like Idra who though an intelligent player has been proven time and time again to not only be biased, but also wrong on certain issues. He was 100% wrong on stubbornly sticking to Roach/Hydra/Corruptor, but equally he did identify that GhostMech comps in TvZ were potentially an issue, if Terrans started using them. Lo and behold MVP started using them and they got nerfed, so in those two examples, Idra is 50/50, but his general understanding of the game is probably a good deal higher than a value like that. You can divorce the message from the messenger. The problem is that Blizzard are not necessarily AWARE of some of these messages, because it's hard to get their attention, and indeed feedback Indeed, part of this is the lack of transparency. Read this thread, there are a ton of differing viewpoints relating to, not just the changes, but the process by which Blizzard are trying to fix things. Everything from Blizzard isn't going to change anything, to Blizzard are going to change a lot, potentially. If Blizzard cleared this up better, it'd be fine in this case. We're all, when talking about what is Blizzard in terms of their plans and intentions, generally relying on conjecture. If Blizz say, came in and said 'look, chill out guys we're going to nerf the infestor, we're just testing different ideas and numbers' I guarantee you 100% that at least some of the guys bashing them, wouldn't be. Equally, we have a vague idea of the kind of stuff on the pro corner of the HoTS forum, which is closed to non-pros. However, we have no idea beyond specific anecdotes on stuff like State of the Game as to ANY of the interactions between Blizzard and the pros.
Your strategy forum posts give you no credence, have nothing to do with anything, nor would I care to evaluate their bias in light of your post. They are wholly irrelevant. I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make, as I mentioned nothing in the wall of text you address me with, yet you still wrap it up upon the same conclusion that assumes Blizzard is incapable of finding these ideas that would solve everything. Why on Earth should Blizzard pay people to address each and every irrelevant suggestion that comes their way for the sake of transparency? Why are you even using this thread as evidence to support such a proposition?
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Infested Terrans are very easy to spam as well, compared to Auto Turrets for instance
An Auto turret requires a full hex of clear space or it cannot be deployed, whereas Infested Terrans you can just spam out be there space or not, the spell will just automaticly spawn the IT in the closest possible position to where you click
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CsZ4D.jpg)
I dunno, it's just one more thing that makes the Raven feel much more clonky compared to the much easier to use Infestor
Although I would prefer it how the Ravens work, so that at least you have to at least show a little speed and precision to deploy free units fast
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This is reallya ZvT thing, right? I'm only a gold protoss player, but after watching most of the tournies since the last MLG, it would appear fungal is too strong against marines.
If you look at the GM ladder, there are more Zerg players than any other race. I agree with the guy that says fungal should half the speed of units, so chain fungals aren't a gg to marines. You could split your units and save some/ most of them, then let some other units clean it up.
It makes ZvT boring, it's just waiting for the T player to say gg, or waiting for the zerg to make several large mistakes.
Would anyone else agree with half speed from fungal growth?
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fhRDc.jpg)
Pretty bad "split", but got catched off guard really hard. This shouldn't be allowed to happen nonetheless.
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dukem, why not? you done goofed.
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Because vikings clump up when you move them around, and is a key unit you need to deal with lategame Zerg tier 3 with.
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On December 03 2012 19:10 kmh wrote:
dukem, why not? you done goofed.
Probably because it's terrible game design for your opponent to be able to click F once and then snare down all of your units repeatedly without any chance for micro to decide the outcome. In above screenshot the game is basically insta-gg.
Now imagine if the spell worked something like the SC1 queen's ensnare, and only slowed the units down.
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On December 03 2012 19:16 avilo wrote:Probably because it's terrible game design for your opponent to be able to click F once and then snare down all of your units repeatedly without any chance for micro to decide the outcome. In above screenshot the game is basically insta-gg. Now imagine if the spell worked something like the SC1 queen's ensnare, and only slowed the units down.
Now now Avilo ... dont start suggesting such heresy of replacing the shit of SC2 with the working stuff of BW. You might get burned alive by braindead "everything new MUST BE BETTER" new-tech-worshippers and "I believe in Blizzard" fanboys. After sooo many flames you probably have developed quite an immunity to fire though.
I wonder when Blizzard will finally understand that there are only so many ways to add spells to the game and that they cant put in "nifty new stuff" without making that ridiculous, useless or totally overpowered. They CANT invent the "wheel 2.0", because the wheel is already perfect. It only goes downhill from there and thats what we got: Innovation in placed where we didnt need it. Going back to things that work is a sensible thing, but Blizzard is either too proud or too dumb to recognize that the one thing mech needs is called Goliath and it could easily replace the stupid immobile Thor.
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Northern Ireland25671 Posts
On December 03 2012 19:23 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2012 19:16 avilo wrote:On December 03 2012 19:10 kmh wrote:
dukem, why not? you done goofed. Probably because it's terrible game design for your opponent to be able to click F once and then snare down all of your units repeatedly without any chance for micro to decide the outcome. In above screenshot the game is basically insta-gg. Now imagine if the spell worked something like the SC1 queen's ensnare, and only slowed the units down. Now now Avilo ... dont start suggesting such heresy of replacing the shit of SC2 with the working stuff of BW. You might get burned alive by braindead "everything new MUST BE BETTER" new-tech-worshippers and "I believe in Blizzard" fanboys. After sooo many flames you probably have developed quite an immunity to fire though. I wonder when Blizzard will finally understand that there are only so many ways to add spells to the game and that they cant put in "nifty new stuff" without making that ridiculous, useless or totally overpowered. They CANT invent the "wheel 2.0", because the wheel is already perfect. It only goes downhill from there and thats what we got: Innovation in placed where we didnt need it. Going back to things that work is a sensible thing, but Blizzard is either too proud or too dumb to recognize that the one thing mech needs is called Goliath and it could easily replace the stupid immobile Thor.
It's not even a BW issue. It's a simple design issue, you don't have to reference BW at all to understand WHY fungal has flawed aspects in terms of design.
It's why it's so annoying when I get called a Brood War nostalgist/fanboy, considering I only really played BGH and didn't even know Team Liquid existed, or that a pro scene existed.
I think Brood War is great, but kind of like an inverse Hitler. I fall foul of Godwin's Law because nearly every other internet fallacy has been displayed in this thread, so I may as well complete the full set.
Hitler, a theory has it, is somebody who displayed generally negative character traits by social norms, but ascended to power due, not to the character traits alone, but the interaction between them and the atypical political climate that existed at the time.
Brood War is a great great game and displays good design. However, it being great was also in relation to certain technical limitations of the time, and how that interacted with the good design. It's not because EVERYTHING the developers did was, at the base level indicative design philosophy.
You can apply that logic, in reverse to SC2 to fix many of the issues without copying some of the archaic design.
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On December 03 2012 19:23 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2012 19:16 avilo wrote:On December 03 2012 19:10 kmh wrote:
dukem, why not? you done goofed. Probably because it's terrible game design for your opponent to be able to click F once and then snare down all of your units repeatedly without any chance for micro to decide the outcome. In above screenshot the game is basically insta-gg. Now imagine if the spell worked something like the SC1 queen's ensnare, and only slowed the units down. Now now Avilo ... dont start suggesting such heresy of replacing the shit of SC2 with the working stuff of BW. You might get burned alive by braindead "everything new MUST BE BETTER" new-tech-worshippers and "I believe in Blizzard" fanboys. After sooo many flames you probably have developed quite an immunity to fire though. I wonder when Blizzard will finally understand that there are only so many ways to add spells to the game and that they cant put in "nifty new stuff" without making that ridiculous, useless or totally overpowered. They CANT invent the "wheel 2.0", because the wheel is already perfect. It only goes downhill from there and thats what we got: Innovation in placed where we didnt need it. Going back to things that work is a sensible thing, but Blizzard is either too proud or too dumb to recognize that the one thing mech needs is called Goliath and it could easily replace the stupid immobile Thor.
It seems to me that it's pretty much a community consensus by now that making fungal a slow would be a good remedy of the current situation. No need to resort to name-calling because some people hold the view that Brood War isn't exactly the wheel. That doesn't make any sense anyway. If Brood War as a whole is the wheel, it was already a mistake to even develop SC2. And single units can't be the wheel becausey the need to work in a totally different environment. I highly doubt people would be happy if they replaced fungal with BW plague.
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On November 30 2012 13:12 BeyondCtrL wrote:
I was really expecting a lot more than this. I agree that the fungal change was too drastic, but these latest changes are not inspiring in the slightest.
At this rate the XvZ MU is going to continue to stagnate. Even if Blizzard does not see a balance issue there is a very clear displeasure from the community on how it molds the MU, regardless of balance. Balance discussions aside I feel it's something that is really killing the enthusiasm of spectators - especially when spectators feel that something is completely unfair. If there was a way to express how a lot of people feel about fungal it would be: pissed off!
If I go on a small related tangent and compare fungal to another Blizzard title, WoW, and its PvP component, parallels can be drawn between fungal and classes that have an absurd amount of CC (Rogues, Mages). Obviously the state of balance isn't really comparable but the reaction of players and spectators is, i.e., people always felt frustrated when they lost control of their characters many times over. This enforces a feeling of unfairness and garners negative emotions. Fungal is in many ways like that since it really removes control and brings forth that feeling of unfairness.
Even if fungal does not show any quantitative imbalance or confer some crazy advantage, it does, however, piss people off. People aren't interested in watching games over and over again when they feel players lose to unfair conditions. Indeed that is true to some extent; prior engaging a BL/Infestor army it takes a lot of skill to position yourself correctly and choose your moment, but once the engagement happens fungals and broodlings completely remove all control and power. It reduces the ability of the player to use their battle micro skills, and frankly it's just a pain to watch an entire army die without doing anything.
Spectators and low level players are never going to understand the minutia of balance, especially subtle ones like this. The balance of this game won't matter if it slowly stagnates. If SCII is going to compete with other games (something which did not exist when SC2 was released) for the main stage it has to have much more dramatic and impressive battles. The current state of the Zerg meta-game offers none of that. FIX. IT.
Couldn't agree more with this. I for one have stopped watching any XvZ matches, since more often than not I eventually feel that the Z won from impossible circumstances not due to skill, but due to the strength of fungal+broodlings. It's totally unfair.
Some say terran allins and protoss deathballs from the past were equally unfair. At least those took skill to use. It's more entertaining to watch, thanks to a simple thing: you can fight back against these things. You don't get rooted to the floor thanks to a single missclick and proceed to lose the entire army. It's ridiculous and bullshit.
Fully supporting nerfing infestors to the ground.
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On December 03 2012 16:50 USvBleakill wrote:
There is just no way of fixing the Zerg vs X problem just by nerving the infestor alone. It´s not the fault of the zergs to being abusive and massing infestors it´s just their only option mid/lategame.
This is completely/utterly false, and is a myth perpetrated out of either sheer ignorance or people trying to avoid nerfs.
Some games at IPL5 already blatantly disprove it.
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So they went from nerfing fungal against things that have only have an impact in the midgame but didn't address the broodlord infestor problem, potentially screwing up the ZvP midgame, to a change that does nothing.
Great.
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On December 03 2012 20:01 DemigodcelpH wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2012 16:50 USvBleakill wrote:
There is just no way of fixing the Zerg vs X problem just by nerving the infestor alone. It´s not the fault of the zergs to being abusive and massing infestors it´s just their only option mid/lategame. This is completely/utterly false, and is a myth perpetrated out of either sheer ignorance or people trying to avoid nerfs. Some games at IPL5 already blatantly disprove it.
I play Terran  . What i mean is that it´s not the unit itself that makes the problems, it´s the fact that zergs can blindly build infestors and never be totally wrong with it.
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On December 03 2012 20:01 DemigodcelpH wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2012 16:50 USvBleakill wrote:
There is just no way of fixing the Zerg vs X problem just by nerving the infestor alone. It´s not the fault of the zergs to being abusive and massing infestors it´s just their only option mid/lategame. This is completely/utterly false, and is a myth perpetrated out of either sheer ignorance or people trying to avoid nerfs. Some games at IPL5 already blatantly disprove it.
Agreed. It's not their "only" option. Why can't they play mutalingbling in TvZ which requires just about as much skill as marine tank or MMM? Mutalingbling vs Marine-Tank midgames made for the best games to play and watch late last year.
The infestor isn't their only option, it's the easy way out. Why not use a unit which answers every single problem? I mean it generates a heckton of free units that scale well into the late game, has an aoe-stun which happens to completely decimate any kind of unit ball and also punish even the slightest of mistakes from the opponent?
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On December 03 2012 19:04 dukem wrote:Pretty bad "split", but got catched off guard really hard. This shouldn't be allowed to happen nonetheless.
Kinda like how sometimes people accidentally right click and lose all their mutas to thors. Yes, it was the right clicker's fault but its the exact same thing, "you messed up, now pay the iron price"
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On December 03 2012 20:09 phodacbiet wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2012 19:04 dukem wrote:Pretty bad "split", but got catched off guard really hard. This shouldn't be allowed to happen nonetheless. Kinda like how sometimes people accidentally right click and lose all their mutas to thors. Yes, it was the right clicker's fault but its the exact same thing, "you messed up, now pay the iron price"
You don't instantly lose all your mutas to a single thor volley do you? Mutas also move MUCH faster than vikings right? There is nothing as disproportionately punishing in the game as a single missclick when facing infestors.
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On December 03 2012 20:11 xAdra wrote:There is nothing as disproportionately punishing in the game as a single missclick when facing infestors.
Misclicks can end the game in a variety of ways, from misplaced forcefields to flying over marines to not being sieged.
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On December 03 2012 20:11 xAdra wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2012 20:09 phodacbiet wrote:On December 03 2012 19:04 dukem wrote:Pretty bad "split", but got catched off guard really hard. This shouldn't be allowed to happen nonetheless. Kinda like how sometimes people accidentally right click and lose all their mutas to thors. Yes, it was the right clicker's fault but its the exact same thing, "you messed up, now pay the iron price" You don't instantly lose all your mutas to a single thor volley do you? Mutas also move MUCH faster than vikings right? There is nothing as disproportionately punishing in the game as a single missclick when facing infestors.
You might lose it to a pair or trio of thors all firing at once. But in that situation, well there's a few factors
1) The zerg should know if you're playing mech or not and if you have thors or not. If no thors no reason to play around it
2) zerg have a simple method to get around thor splash which is to Magic Box them. Terran don't get to do that.
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EPT
