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Make Voidrays 3 supply again and remove the Prismatic Alignment abilíty, if it's still to strong 4 supply again.
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My problem with reducing the splash on the widow mine is it's reducing the only reason it should be made. If a widow mine ever hits a single target, it's really not being cost effective in terms of dps (125/40) = 3.125. Even against protoss it's still only 4. That is a pathetic amount of dps. Reducing it's range to 4.5 to help stalkers deal with them easier is a much better solution.
And ultra charge better not happen, ultras are already borderline too good (unless they nerfed the damage again + charge).
Everything else seems reasonable.
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On March 15 2013 16:24 ALPINA wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 13:37 avilo wrote:
If widow mine is "too powerful" i'm assuming that he understand the current blinding cloud radius is "too powerful" as well correct?
Tested it in the unit tester today after some "strange" games, 4 vipers using 6 blinding clouds shut down roughly15+ siege tanks that were pre-spread in a 99% optimal fashion.
Something is wrong here.
A balance designer cannot only look at one race...the widow mine is one of the few balancing factors right now against the insane blinding cloud radius vs mech.
We all can only assume that if they are "looking at the widow mine" then they will not let their own bias disallow them from also "looking at the blinding cloud radius" as well...correct?
We would hope so.
Ultras also currently seem to be "overperforming."
In the original post of this thread, why is there no mention/analysis of any Zerg units "being too powerful" whatsoever? I am confused. Should there not be "looking at" all 3 of the races? It seems one has been mysteriously left out of the equation here.
Hmm.
Just food for thought. Right now in the community, the largest majority of whining is coming from prominent Zerg streamers. It is not unjustified, but I am going to point out here that what these Zerg players are complaining about is not an actual balance issue with the game, but a learning curve related to a new game in relation to Zerg being the most reactive race.
When Zerg players right now are complaining about being underpowered, they are not understanding the game and the basis of their own complaint - what they are really complaining about is that at the start of this new game it is difficult to read and react to the new variety of things that Protoss and Terran can do to them due to the differences in worker production and the larva mechanic.
This is a learning curve issue - NOT A BALANCE ISSUE. Get it straight everyone in this thread and community. We do not want a repeat of wings where one race is overbuffed.
Zerg is the most reactive race. Everyone knows this. If you do not know the perfect amount of drones to make, or what you can get away with you will die to new things. This is the root of what Zerg players REALLY MEAN when they complain that they are currently "underpowered." The truth is they are not.
As the game is more figured out, and Zergs realize what to do with their larva better vs certain openings and situations...Zerg is just as powerful as the other two races.
I write this because right now it's a "Zerg QQ fest" and the developers seem to be being influenced by it quite a bit to the point, i'll say it again, they completely leave out any criticism balance wise of the viper in the OP of this post or anything of Zerg's possibly being "too strong."
Sorry for the long post. Just had to clarify because Zerg right now is in fact no where near underpowered, and Zerg players do not seem to understand that they are not complaining about balance, but about Zerg being the most reactive race and in fact as the game is figured out more they will be perfectly fine, and more.
Zerg is reactive race yes, but widow mines are not the units to which you can react. They are universally good vs. everything, and you don't have real counter to them. Not to mention probably most cost efficient unit in the game as it stands now.
The major drawback of the Widow Mine is that it's a non-fighter unit that is stationary, therefore it has to be "cost effective" or it would not be worth it. The Widow Mine being cost effective is the equivalent of a full-time fighting unit being even, because you're paying the hidden tax of 2 supply per mine being taken away from army potential when the shot is down along with the requirement of being immobile while firing.
This is why, to the untrained thinker, you might see a Window Mine kill two stalkers and conclude that it was "cost effective", but the threshold of efficiency for a unit with situational fighting opportunities but a constant supply cost is higher than simply surpassing resource cost on paper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
Consider thinking more critically when you make comments about unit balance.
On March 15 2013 16:31 BakedButters wrote:
Lol Akusta is so retarted, "a congress of professional players to balance the game".
That would be worse than the typical liberals vs. conservatives that can't get anything done in Congress.
Pros are all biased towards their own race, since it's their pay/livelihood on the line. When u see streams of pros and someone discusses balance, they rarely if ever will talk bad about their own race. Ex: Grubby today disagreed that Protoss air is op. Demsulim didn't agree that med boost was op.
If they had a vote on let's say a buff to a zerg unit, the representatives from the other two races would veto that buff. On the other hand, if their was a vote for a neft on void rays, the reps from the other races would vote yes. Nothing would get accomplished.
You need someone that is neutral to all parties, and that doesn't have their way of living depend on the balance of their own race
This is also false. First of all "pros are biased toward their own face" is a blanket statement that is false, as being a pro does not limit objective thinking nor does single incidents constitute the whole, and secondly if a professional gamer is hired into a position of game design then incentive to not be objective (if a particular pro was in fact biased) is gone by incentive to not lose his new job.
That's like telling a person with social anxiety issues to avoid going to therapy because he might get scared.
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On March 15 2013 15:01 ZenithM wrote:
I think Blizzard current approach to balance is fine:
1) They have an initial game version.
2) They look at what is being done in all leagues, and especially at the pro level, for some months. How are the winrates? How is the gameplay (too stale, too rushy, too volatile etc..)? Are some units too glaringly strong? Does a race have to do the same exact build every time in order to stay alive or kill another race before the late game is reached? Is there a build that is unstoppable? How are the maps factoring in all this? Etc etc, I'm sure I'm missing elements. But note that Blizzard has talked frequently about these, however critical we want to be.
3) With their intuition, skill and experience as game designers, and some pro feedback, they propose some changes.
4) Test them, internally, on PTR servers, etc...
5) Put out a patch, and go to 1) to close the cycle.
I don't see how that would not eventually work if they're doing their job, and it doesn't require that they are all GM gosus.
The reason why this does NOT WORK is because they are not looking at the "issues without stats" and let them remain unchanged forever. Thus the problems of the game will never ever go away ... until someone else is doing the balance.
"issues without stats" basically describes problems which arise from general game mechanics which are not listed in the usual unit stats. Since Blizzard is only focusing on the UNITS and not these general game mechanics they fail completely.
Example:
A Marine and a Stalker have roughly the same dps and can be balanced against each other by changing cost and hit points and such. That is easy. But what happens when you have more than one? How about 10 Stalkers vs 30 Marines? Even without stimpack the Marines should have a rather easy win simply because they are packed much tighter than the Stalkers are and thus get roughly (this is an estimate since there is no "dps per area" stat) three times the dps per area compared to the Stalkers. Whoever concentrates more firepower in a smaller area will win ... that is the core concept of the deathball. Thus we have an issue of the tight unit movement, the unlimited unit selection and the massive economy / production speed boosts affecting the balance without people noticing it in their unit stat sheets. Blizzard doesnt see this "shift in balance with increasing numbers" and thus they dont fix it. This shift in balance is one of the reasons why Stalkers NEED BLINK and why Protoss in general NEED FORCEFIELD. Since these are spells to be used you have a skill requirement for the race which the other two races dont have and thus you screw up the racial balance for different leagues. Bad design!
BW had not so much different stats for Dragoon and Marine, BUT you could only select up to 12 units, you generally had far fewer units on the battlefield and the unit movement was not tightly clumped ... so BW didnt have this balance shifting problem. Better design because it is EASIER TO BALANCE.
Bottom line: You simply can NOT balance SC2 by just looking at the units ...
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On March 15 2013 16:21 DemigodcelpH wrote:
If the game is not balanced around the top level of play then it's not balanced. Your defeatist attitude is extremely entitled, and very harmful to the health of the game.
Actually, it's hardcore players with the false sense of entitlement, with an elitist attitude that hinders the growth of the game, the community and acts against their own interest.
Pro's complaining about how the game should be balanced around them also smacks of contradiction.
The truth is if the community wanted a truly balanced, complex game that rewards players with the best micro and macro, every tournament would probably be a ZvZ or TvT, and every game would be played on the same map.
Balancing the game for top players would actually be tremendously easy — just remove things that are too powerful or too easy to use, and reduce the amount of diversity between races. Turn it into Chess, but with a fog of war.
Of course if that happened, no one would probably watch or play SC2. Flat-out ignoring the enjoyment of low-level players and spectators — that is the lazy, 'entitled' way out.
The problem Blizzard has with designing Starcraft 2 is that they're trying to make a game that is actually marketable and fun, but constantly have to limit themselves creatively due to the demands of hardcore e-sports fans. As a result, they're spending tens of millions of dollars on a game that caters to a shrinking player pool.
Blizzard has two conflicting agendas. Making a game that's fun versus making a game that is balanced with a ultra-high skill ceiling.
People that complain that the game should be balanced for top players are the one's being myopic and defeatist. It needs to be fun and balanced at all skill levels if it's ever going to be bigger, or match even the minor success of Broodwar.*
*minor, compared to the widespread appeal of poker, billiards, racketball, ping pong, curling, darts or any other 'fringe' sport.'
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On March 15 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:24 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 13:37 avilo wrote:
If widow mine is "too powerful" i'm assuming that he understand the current blinding cloud radius is "too powerful" as well correct?
Tested it in the unit tester today after some "strange" games, 4 vipers using 6 blinding clouds shut down roughly15+ siege tanks that were pre-spread in a 99% optimal fashion.
Something is wrong here.
A balance designer cannot only look at one race...the widow mine is one of the few balancing factors right now against the insane blinding cloud radius vs mech.
We all can only assume that if they are "looking at the widow mine" then they will not let their own bias disallow them from also "looking at the blinding cloud radius" as well...correct?
We would hope so.
Ultras also currently seem to be "overperforming."
In the original post of this thread, why is there no mention/analysis of any Zerg units "being too powerful" whatsoever? I am confused. Should there not be "looking at" all 3 of the races? It seems one has been mysteriously left out of the equation here.
Hmm.
Just food for thought. Right now in the community, the largest majority of whining is coming from prominent Zerg streamers. It is not unjustified, but I am going to point out here that what these Zerg players are complaining about is not an actual balance issue with the game, but a learning curve related to a new game in relation to Zerg being the most reactive race.
When Zerg players right now are complaining about being underpowered, they are not understanding the game and the basis of their own complaint - what they are really complaining about is that at the start of this new game it is difficult to read and react to the new variety of things that Protoss and Terran can do to them due to the differences in worker production and the larva mechanic.
This is a learning curve issue - NOT A BALANCE ISSUE. Get it straight everyone in this thread and community. We do not want a repeat of wings where one race is overbuffed.
Zerg is the most reactive race. Everyone knows this. If you do not know the perfect amount of drones to make, or what you can get away with you will die to new things. This is the root of what Zerg players REALLY MEAN when they complain that they are currently "underpowered." The truth is they are not.
As the game is more figured out, and Zergs realize what to do with their larva better vs certain openings and situations...Zerg is just as powerful as the other two races.
I write this because right now it's a "Zerg QQ fest" and the developers seem to be being influenced by it quite a bit to the point, i'll say it again, they completely leave out any criticism balance wise of the viper in the OP of this post or anything of Zerg's possibly being "too strong."
Sorry for the long post. Just had to clarify because Zerg right now is in fact no where near underpowered, and Zerg players do not seem to understand that they are not complaining about balance, but about Zerg being the most reactive race and in fact as the game is figured out more they will be perfectly fine, and more.
Zerg is reactive race yes, but widow mines are not the units to which you can react. They are universally good vs. everything, and you don't have real counter to them. Not to mention probably most cost efficient unit in the game as it stands now. The major drawback of the Widow Mine is that it's a non-fighter unit that is stationary, therefore it has to be "cost effective" or it would not be worth it. The Widow Mine being cost effective is the equivalent of a full-time fighting unit being even, because you're paying the hidden tax of 2 supply per mine being taken away from army potential when the shot is down along with the requirement of being immobile while firing. This is why, to the untrained thinker, you might see a Window Mine kill two stalkers and conclude that it was "cost effective", but the threshold of efficiency for a unit with situational fighting opportunities but a constant supply cost is higher than simply surpassing resource cost on paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_costConsider thinking more critically when you make comments about unit balance.
I am not saying it should be useless, just not THAT cost efficient. If you run 20 zerglings through the widow mine, they all gonna die. I don't think that is how it's supposed to be.
There are different levels of "cost efficiency". If you siege an army with tanks/marines and put several mines in front, they are so incredibly cost efficient and impossible to deal with.
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On March 15 2013 16:51 ALPINA wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote:On March 15 2013 16:24 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 13:37 avilo wrote:
If widow mine is "too powerful" i'm assuming that he understand the current blinding cloud radius is "too powerful" as well correct?
Tested it in the unit tester today after some "strange" games, 4 vipers using 6 blinding clouds shut down roughly15+ siege tanks that were pre-spread in a 99% optimal fashion.
Something is wrong here.
A balance designer cannot only look at one race...the widow mine is one of the few balancing factors right now against the insane blinding cloud radius vs mech.
We all can only assume that if they are "looking at the widow mine" then they will not let their own bias disallow them from also "looking at the blinding cloud radius" as well...correct?
We would hope so.
Ultras also currently seem to be "overperforming."
In the original post of this thread, why is there no mention/analysis of any Zerg units "being too powerful" whatsoever? I am confused. Should there not be "looking at" all 3 of the races? It seems one has been mysteriously left out of the equation here.
Hmm.
Just food for thought. Right now in the community, the largest majority of whining is coming from prominent Zerg streamers. It is not unjustified, but I am going to point out here that what these Zerg players are complaining about is not an actual balance issue with the game, but a learning curve related to a new game in relation to Zerg being the most reactive race.
When Zerg players right now are complaining about being underpowered, they are not understanding the game and the basis of their own complaint - what they are really complaining about is that at the start of this new game it is difficult to read and react to the new variety of things that Protoss and Terran can do to them due to the differences in worker production and the larva mechanic.
This is a learning curve issue - NOT A BALANCE ISSUE. Get it straight everyone in this thread and community. We do not want a repeat of wings where one race is overbuffed.
Zerg is the most reactive race. Everyone knows this. If you do not know the perfect amount of drones to make, or what you can get away with you will die to new things. This is the root of what Zerg players REALLY MEAN when they complain that they are currently "underpowered." The truth is they are not.
As the game is more figured out, and Zergs realize what to do with their larva better vs certain openings and situations...Zerg is just as powerful as the other two races.
I write this because right now it's a "Zerg QQ fest" and the developers seem to be being influenced by it quite a bit to the point, i'll say it again, they completely leave out any criticism balance wise of the viper in the OP of this post or anything of Zerg's possibly being "too strong."
Sorry for the long post. Just had to clarify because Zerg right now is in fact no where near underpowered, and Zerg players do not seem to understand that they are not complaining about balance, but about Zerg being the most reactive race and in fact as the game is figured out more they will be perfectly fine, and more.
Zerg is reactive race yes, but widow mines are not the units to which you can react. They are universally good vs. everything, and you don't have real counter to them. Not to mention probably most cost efficient unit in the game as it stands now. The major drawback of the Widow Mine is that it's a non-fighter unit that is stationary, therefore it has to be "cost effective" or it would not be worth it. The Widow Mine being cost effective is the equivalent of a full-time fighting unit being even, because you're paying the hidden tax of 2 supply per mine being taken away from army potential when the shot is down along with the requirement of being immobile while firing. This is why, to the untrained thinker, you might see a Window Mine kill two stalkers and conclude that it was "cost effective", but the threshold of efficiency for a unit with situational fighting opportunities but a constant supply cost is higher than simply surpassing resource cost on paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_costConsider thinking more critically when you make comments about unit balance. I am not saying it should be useless, just not THAT cost efficient. If you run 20 zerglings through the widow mine, they all gonna die. I don't think that is how it's supposed to be. There are different levels of "cost efficiency". If you siege an army with tanks/marines and put several mines in front, they are so incredibly cost efficient and impossible to deal with.
Smartly placed widow mines basically make ling runby's obsolete mid to late game. Totally re-evaluating how I'm playing Zerg because of it, but it would be great if they could reduce splash.
Same thing with mutalisks - two volleys wreck a pack of mutas. I don't think thors even do that much damage.
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On March 15 2013 16:44 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:21 DemigodcelpH wrote:
If the game is not balanced around the top level of play then it's not balanced. Your defeatist attitude is extremely entitled, and very harmful to the health of the game. Actually, it's hardcore players with the false sense of entitlement, with an elitist attitude that hinders the growth of the game, the community and acts against their own interest. Pro's complaining about how the game should be balanced around them also smacks of contradiction. The truth is if the community wanted a truly balanced, complex game that rewards players with the best micro and macro, every tournament would probably be a ZvZ or TvT, and every game would be played on the same map. Balancing the game for top players would actually be tremendously easy — just remove things that are too powerful or too easy to use, and reduce the amount of diversity between races. Turn it into Chess, but with a fog of war. Of course if that happened, no one would probably watch or play SC2. Flat-out ignoring the enjoyment of low-level players and spectators — that is the lazy, 'entitled' way out. The problem Blizzard has with designing Starcraft 2 is that they're trying to make a game that is actually marketable and fun, but constantly have to limit themselves creatively due to the demands of hardcore e-sports fans. As a result, they're spending tens of millions of dollars on a game that caters to a shrinking player pool. Blizzard has two conflicting agendas. Making a game that's fun versus making a game that is balanced with a ultra-high skill ceiling. People that complain that the game should be balanced for top players are the one's being myopic and defeatist. It needs to be fun and balanced at all skill levels if it's ever going to be bigger, or match even the minor success of Broodwar.* *minor, compared to the widespread appeal of poker, billiards, racketball, ping pong, curling, darts or any other 'fringe' sport.'
balancing at low level is stupid because you can always defeat dumb shit by just getting better
you balance at high level because they can't just "get better" in order to beat an op strategy
the only way you could balance at low level is to do what physical sports do and make them play different games with different stats, like how certain things are banned or have different rules in little league or high school but not at pro. do you want to play a game where each time you move up in ranking you have to learn a new game? maybe T micro at low level is too hard so they get +2 attack damage but when you move up to diamond suddenly your marines do -2 damage compared to before or else they're too strong at diamond skill
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On March 15 2013 16:42 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 15:01 ZenithM wrote:
I think Blizzard current approach to balance is fine:
1) They have an initial game version.
2) They look at what is being done in all leagues, and especially at the pro level, for some months. How are the winrates? How is the gameplay (too stale, too rushy, too volatile etc..)? Are some units too glaringly strong? Does a race have to do the same exact build every time in order to stay alive or kill another race before the late game is reached? Is there a build that is unstoppable? How are the maps factoring in all this? Etc etc, I'm sure I'm missing elements. But note that Blizzard has talked frequently about these, however critical we want to be.
3) With their intuition, skill and experience as game designers, and some pro feedback, they propose some changes.
4) Test them, internally, on PTR servers, etc...
5) Put out a patch, and go to 1) to close the cycle.
I don't see how that would not eventually work if they're doing their job, and it doesn't require that they are all GM gosus. The reason why this does NOT WORK is because they are not looking at the "issues without stats" and let them remain unchanged forever. Thus the problems of the game will never ever go away ... until someone else is doing the balance. "issues without stats" basically describes problems which arise from general game mechanics which are not listed in the usual unit stats. Since Blizzard is only focusing on the UNITS and not these general game mechanics they fail completely. Example:A Marine and a Stalker have roughly the same dps and can be balanced against each other by changing cost and hit points and such. That is easy. But what happens when you have more than one? How about 10 Stalkers vs 30 Marines? Even without stimpack the Marines should have a rather easy win simply because they are packed much tighter than the Stalkers are and thus get roughly (this is an estimate since there is no "dps per area" stat) three times the dps per area compared to the Stalkers. Whoever concentrates more firepower in a smaller area will win ... that is the core concept of the deathball. Thus we have an issue of the tight unit movement, the unlimited unit selection and the massive economy / production speed boosts affecting the balance without people noticing it in their unit stat sheets. Blizzard doesnt see this "shift in balance with increasing numbers" and thus they dont fix it. This shift in balance is one of the reasons why Stalkers NEED BLINK and why Protoss in general NEED FORCEFIELD. Since these are spells to be used you have a skill requirement for the race which the other two races dont have and thus you screw up the racial balance for different leagues. Bad design! BW had not so much different stats for Dragoon and Marine, BUT you could only select up to 12 units, you generally had far fewer units on the battlefield and the unit movement was not tightly clumped ... so BW didnt have this balance shifting problem. Better design. Bottom line: You simply can NOT balance SC2 by just looking at the units ...
Well, I was talking more about small changes, not like huge design changes, which we know Blizzard is not fond of, as they have their own little idea of where they want to go (warpgate is cool, colossus is cool, etc..)
And personally I don't think much is wrong with the Terran and Zerg design. Like, look at Flash vs Life, seems perfectly fine to me.
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On March 15 2013 16:55 shindigs wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:51 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote:On March 15 2013 16:24 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 13:37 avilo wrote:
If widow mine is "too powerful" i'm assuming that he understand the current blinding cloud radius is "too powerful" as well correct?
Tested it in the unit tester today after some "strange" games, 4 vipers using 6 blinding clouds shut down roughly15+ siege tanks that were pre-spread in a 99% optimal fashion.
Something is wrong here.
A balance designer cannot only look at one race...the widow mine is one of the few balancing factors right now against the insane blinding cloud radius vs mech.
We all can only assume that if they are "looking at the widow mine" then they will not let their own bias disallow them from also "looking at the blinding cloud radius" as well...correct?
We would hope so.
Ultras also currently seem to be "overperforming."
In the original post of this thread, why is there no mention/analysis of any Zerg units "being too powerful" whatsoever? I am confused. Should there not be "looking at" all 3 of the races? It seems one has been mysteriously left out of the equation here.
Hmm.
Just food for thought. Right now in the community, the largest majority of whining is coming from prominent Zerg streamers. It is not unjustified, but I am going to point out here that what these Zerg players are complaining about is not an actual balance issue with the game, but a learning curve related to a new game in relation to Zerg being the most reactive race.
When Zerg players right now are complaining about being underpowered, they are not understanding the game and the basis of their own complaint - what they are really complaining about is that at the start of this new game it is difficult to read and react to the new variety of things that Protoss and Terran can do to them due to the differences in worker production and the larva mechanic.
This is a learning curve issue - NOT A BALANCE ISSUE. Get it straight everyone in this thread and community. We do not want a repeat of wings where one race is overbuffed.
Zerg is the most reactive race. Everyone knows this. If you do not know the perfect amount of drones to make, or what you can get away with you will die to new things. This is the root of what Zerg players REALLY MEAN when they complain that they are currently "underpowered." The truth is they are not.
As the game is more figured out, and Zergs realize what to do with their larva better vs certain openings and situations...Zerg is just as powerful as the other two races.
I write this because right now it's a "Zerg QQ fest" and the developers seem to be being influenced by it quite a bit to the point, i'll say it again, they completely leave out any criticism balance wise of the viper in the OP of this post or anything of Zerg's possibly being "too strong."
Sorry for the long post. Just had to clarify because Zerg right now is in fact no where near underpowered, and Zerg players do not seem to understand that they are not complaining about balance, but about Zerg being the most reactive race and in fact as the game is figured out more they will be perfectly fine, and more.
Zerg is reactive race yes, but widow mines are not the units to which you can react. They are universally good vs. everything, and you don't have real counter to them. Not to mention probably most cost efficient unit in the game as it stands now. The major drawback of the Widow Mine is that it's a non-fighter unit that is stationary, therefore it has to be "cost effective" or it would not be worth it. The Widow Mine being cost effective is the equivalent of a full-time fighting unit being even, because you're paying the hidden tax of 2 supply per mine being taken away from army potential when the shot is down along with the requirement of being immobile while firing. This is why, to the untrained thinker, you might see a Window Mine kill two stalkers and conclude that it was "cost effective", but the threshold of efficiency for a unit with situational fighting opportunities but a constant supply cost is higher than simply surpassing resource cost on paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_costConsider thinking more critically when you make comments about unit balance. I am not saying it should be useless, just not THAT cost efficient. If you run 20 zerglings through the widow mine, they all gonna die. I don't think that is how it's supposed to be. There are different levels of "cost efficiency". If you siege an army with tanks/marines and put several mines in front, they are so incredibly cost efficient and impossible to deal with. Smartly placed widow mines basically make ling runby's obsolete mid to late game. Totally re-evaluating how I'm playing Zerg because of it, but it would be great if they could reduce splash. Same thing with mutalisks - two volleys wreck a pack of mutas. I don't think thors even do that much damage.
Oh come on ... the Thor was designed to be the Mutalisk counter ... until people started magic boxing which made the Thor rather useless at that job. Now Terran has a unit again which can punish tight clumps and Zerg whine again?
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On March 15 2013 16:55 shindigs wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:51 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote:On March 15 2013 16:24 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 13:37 avilo wrote:
If widow mine is "too powerful" i'm assuming that he understand the current blinding cloud radius is "too powerful" as well correct?
Tested it in the unit tester today after some "strange" games, 4 vipers using 6 blinding clouds shut down roughly15+ siege tanks that were pre-spread in a 99% optimal fashion.
Something is wrong here.
A balance designer cannot only look at one race...the widow mine is one of the few balancing factors right now against the insane blinding cloud radius vs mech.
We all can only assume that if they are "looking at the widow mine" then they will not let their own bias disallow them from also "looking at the blinding cloud radius" as well...correct?
We would hope so.
Ultras also currently seem to be "overperforming."
In the original post of this thread, why is there no mention/analysis of any Zerg units "being too powerful" whatsoever? I am confused. Should there not be "looking at" all 3 of the races? It seems one has been mysteriously left out of the equation here.
Hmm.
Just food for thought. Right now in the community, the largest majority of whining is coming from prominent Zerg streamers. It is not unjustified, but I am going to point out here that what these Zerg players are complaining about is not an actual balance issue with the game, but a learning curve related to a new game in relation to Zerg being the most reactive race.
When Zerg players right now are complaining about being underpowered, they are not understanding the game and the basis of their own complaint - what they are really complaining about is that at the start of this new game it is difficult to read and react to the new variety of things that Protoss and Terran can do to them due to the differences in worker production and the larva mechanic.
This is a learning curve issue - NOT A BALANCE ISSUE. Get it straight everyone in this thread and community. We do not want a repeat of wings where one race is overbuffed.
Zerg is the most reactive race. Everyone knows this. If you do not know the perfect amount of drones to make, or what you can get away with you will die to new things. This is the root of what Zerg players REALLY MEAN when they complain that they are currently "underpowered." The truth is they are not.
As the game is more figured out, and Zergs realize what to do with their larva better vs certain openings and situations...Zerg is just as powerful as the other two races.
I write this because right now it's a "Zerg QQ fest" and the developers seem to be being influenced by it quite a bit to the point, i'll say it again, they completely leave out any criticism balance wise of the viper in the OP of this post or anything of Zerg's possibly being "too strong."
Sorry for the long post. Just had to clarify because Zerg right now is in fact no where near underpowered, and Zerg players do not seem to understand that they are not complaining about balance, but about Zerg being the most reactive race and in fact as the game is figured out more they will be perfectly fine, and more.
Zerg is reactive race yes, but widow mines are not the units to which you can react. They are universally good vs. everything, and you don't have real counter to them. Not to mention probably most cost efficient unit in the game as it stands now. The major drawback of the Widow Mine is that it's a non-fighter unit that is stationary, therefore it has to be "cost effective" or it would not be worth it. The Widow Mine being cost effective is the equivalent of a full-time fighting unit being even, because you're paying the hidden tax of 2 supply per mine being taken away from army potential when the shot is down along with the requirement of being immobile while firing. This is why, to the untrained thinker, you might see a Window Mine kill two stalkers and conclude that it was "cost effective", but the threshold of efficiency for a unit with situational fighting opportunities but a constant supply cost is higher than simply surpassing resource cost on paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_costConsider thinking more critically when you make comments about unit balance. I am not saying it should be useless, just not THAT cost efficient. If you run 20 zerglings through the widow mine, they all gonna die. I don't think that is how it's supposed to be. There are different levels of "cost efficiency". If you siege an army with tanks/marines and put several mines in front, they are so incredibly cost efficient and impossible to deal with. Smartly placed widow mines basically make ling runby's obsolete mid to late game. Totally re-evaluating how I'm playing Zerg because of it, but it would be great if they could reduce splash. Same thing with mutalisks - two volleys wreck a pack of mutas. I don't think thors even do that much damage.
I think the problem with widow mines has less to do with balance and more to do with shutting down strategies and tactics that were actually fun to play and watch ...
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On March 15 2013 16:44 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:21 DemigodcelpH wrote:
If the game is not balanced around the top level of play then it's not balanced. Your defeatist attitude is extremely entitled, and very harmful to the health of the game. Actually, it's hardcore players with the false sense of entitlement, with an elitist attitude that hinders the growth of the game, the community and acts against their own interest. Pro's complaining about how the game should be balanced around them also smacks of contradiction. The truth is if the community wanted a truly balanced, complex game that rewards players with the best micro and macro, every tournament would probably be a ZvZ or TvT, and every game would be played on the same map. Balancing the game for top players would actually be tremendously easy — just remove things that are too powerful or too easy to use, and reduce the amount of diversity between races. Turn it into Chess, but with a fog of war. Of course if that happened, no one would probably watch or play SC2. Flat-out ignoring the enjoyment of low-level players and spectators — that is the lazy, 'entitled' way out. The problem Blizzard has with designing Starcraft 2 is that they're trying to make a game that is actually marketable and fun, but constantly have to limit themselves creatively due to the demands of hardcore e-sports fans. As a result, they're spending tens of millions of dollars on a game that caters to a shrinking player pool. Blizzard has two conflicting agendas. Making a game that's fun versus making a game that is balanced with a ultra-high skill ceiling. People that complain that the game should be balanced for top players are the one's being myopic and defeatist. It needs to be fun and balanced at all skill levels if it's ever going to be bigger, or match even the minor success of Broodwar.* *minor, compared to the widespread appeal of poker, billiards, racketball, ping pong, curling, darts or any other 'fringe' sport.'
Balance has nothing to do with ease of use; this alone invalidates most of what you said, and the rest are assumptions with no supporting evidence. Your post is a big non-sequitur where some paragraphs do not logically follow the prior, and with the whole only being indirectly related to what you're quoting.
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On March 15 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:24 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 13:37 avilo wrote:
If widow mine is "too powerful" i'm assuming that he understand the current blinding cloud radius is "too powerful" as well correct?
Tested it in the unit tester today after some "strange" games, 4 vipers using 6 blinding clouds shut down roughly15+ siege tanks that were pre-spread in a 99% optimal fashion.
Something is wrong here.
A balance designer cannot only look at one race...the widow mine is one of the few balancing factors right now against the insane blinding cloud radius vs mech.
We all can only assume that if they are "looking at the widow mine" then they will not let their own bias disallow them from also "looking at the blinding cloud radius" as well...correct?
We would hope so.
Ultras also currently seem to be "overperforming."
In the original post of this thread, why is there no mention/analysis of any Zerg units "being too powerful" whatsoever? I am confused. Should there not be "looking at" all 3 of the races? It seems one has been mysteriously left out of the equation here.
Hmm.
Just food for thought. Right now in the community, the largest majority of whining is coming from prominent Zerg streamers. It is not unjustified, but I am going to point out here that what these Zerg players are complaining about is not an actual balance issue with the game, but a learning curve related to a new game in relation to Zerg being the most reactive race.
When Zerg players right now are complaining about being underpowered, they are not understanding the game and the basis of their own complaint - what they are really complaining about is that at the start of this new game it is difficult to read and react to the new variety of things that Protoss and Terran can do to them due to the differences in worker production and the larva mechanic.
This is a learning curve issue - NOT A BALANCE ISSUE. Get it straight everyone in this thread and community. We do not want a repeat of wings where one race is overbuffed.
Zerg is the most reactive race. Everyone knows this. If you do not know the perfect amount of drones to make, or what you can get away with you will die to new things. This is the root of what Zerg players REALLY MEAN when they complain that they are currently "underpowered." The truth is they are not.
As the game is more figured out, and Zergs realize what to do with their larva better vs certain openings and situations...Zerg is just as powerful as the other two races.
I write this because right now it's a "Zerg QQ fest" and the developers seem to be being influenced by it quite a bit to the point, i'll say it again, they completely leave out any criticism balance wise of the viper in the OP of this post or anything of Zerg's possibly being "too strong."
Sorry for the long post. Just had to clarify because Zerg right now is in fact no where near underpowered, and Zerg players do not seem to understand that they are not complaining about balance, but about Zerg being the most reactive race and in fact as the game is figured out more they will be perfectly fine, and more.
Zerg is reactive race yes, but widow mines are not the units to which you can react. They are universally good vs. everything, and you don't have real counter to them. Not to mention probably most cost efficient unit in the game as it stands now. The major drawback of the Widow Mine is that it's a non-fighter unit that is stationary, therefore it has to be "cost effective" or it would not be worth it. The Widow Mine being cost effective is the equivalent of a full-time fighting unit being even, because you're paying the hidden tax of 2 supply per mine being taken away from army potential when the shot is down along with the requirement of being immobile while firing. This is why, to the untrained thinker, you might see a Window Mine kill two stalkers and conclude that it was "cost effective", but the threshold of efficiency for a unit with situational fighting opportunities but a constant supply cost is higher than simply surpassing resource cost on paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_costConsider thinking more critically when you make comments about unit balance.
This is one constructive post in a sea of disappointing whiners. I can't believe that a few days after the game is out people are already crying about random shit like whether David Kim is GM or not. HotS is a great game and some appreciation for the hard work that went into it might be, i don't know, polite.
Anyway on topic, the widow mine's cost effectiveness comes from not necessarily the damage it does but the damage it might do. Your opponent must adjust his strategy if widow mines are out. Want to do a ling runby? Better hope there's no widow mines on the path to that base, at best you have to send in a few lings at a time to see if it's safe (losing time) and at worst you lose 20 lings. Want to muta harrass? Better bring overlords with that, slowing down the muta+overlord group considerably. Anyway you get the idea - the potential damage of the widow forces a reaction, and that is where it becomes cost-effective.
Personally i don't think it needs a nerf really, having potential for huge damage makes the game more interesting and tense. No-one complains about reaver drops in bw do they? The only nerf that seems fitting would be a gas cost increase to offset the loss of economy if players are consistently finding it hard to defend against at high a level.
The argument over whether balancing for pro's or casuals is better is solved by buffing, not nerfing. If bad players (like me lol) lose to widow mine drops, just give Z and P something that allows us to win against bad players as much as we lose. This wouldnt affect pro-level balance (or more importantly excitment/watchability) nearly so much.
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On March 15 2013 17:01 DemigodcelpH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:44 Defacer wrote:On March 15 2013 16:21 DemigodcelpH wrote:
If the game is not balanced around the top level of play then it's not balanced. Your defeatist attitude is extremely entitled, and very harmful to the health of the game. Actually, it's hardcore players with the false sense of entitlement, with an elitist attitude that hinders the growth of the game, the community and acts against their own interest. Pro's complaining about how the game should be balanced around them also smacks of contradiction. The truth is if the community wanted a truly balanced, complex game that rewards players with the best micro and macro, every tournament would probably be a ZvZ or TvT, and every game would be played on the same map. Balancing the game for top players would actually be tremendously easy — just remove things that are too powerful or too easy to use, and reduce the amount of diversity between races. Turn it into Chess, but with a fog of war. Of course if that happened, no one would probably watch or play SC2. Flat-out ignoring the enjoyment of low-level players and spectators — that is the lazy, 'entitled' way out. The problem Blizzard has with designing Starcraft 2 is that they're trying to make a game that is actually marketable and fun, but constantly have to limit themselves creatively due to the demands of hardcore e-sports fans. As a result, they're spending tens of millions of dollars on a game that caters to a shrinking player pool. Blizzard has two conflicting agendas. Making a game that's fun versus making a game that is balanced with a ultra-high skill ceiling. People that complain that the game should be balanced for top players are the one's being myopic and defeatist. It needs to be fun and balanced at all skill levels if it's ever going to be bigger, or match even the minor success of Broodwar.* *minor, compared to the widespread appeal of poker, billiards, racketball, ping pong, curling, darts or any other 'fringe' sport.' Balance has nothing to do with ease of use; this alone invalidates most of what you said, and the rest are assumptions with no supporting evidence. Your post is a big non-sequitur where some paragraphs do not logically follow the prior, and with the whole only being indirectly related to what you're quoting.
You're right, balance has nothing to do with ease of use. But where did I even write that?
I'm just pointing out that balancing Starcraft is extremely challenging because they are trying to make the game appealing to people of all skill levels, and people that ONLY care about balancing the game for the best players are being small-minded and a little pretentious.
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On March 15 2013 16:59 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 16:55 shindigs wrote:On March 15 2013 16:51 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote:On March 15 2013 16:24 ALPINA wrote:On March 15 2013 13:37 avilo wrote:
If widow mine is "too powerful" i'm assuming that he understand the current blinding cloud radius is "too powerful" as well correct?
Tested it in the unit tester today after some "strange" games, 4 vipers using 6 blinding clouds shut down roughly15+ siege tanks that were pre-spread in a 99% optimal fashion.
Something is wrong here.
A balance designer cannot only look at one race...the widow mine is one of the few balancing factors right now against the insane blinding cloud radius vs mech.
We all can only assume that if they are "looking at the widow mine" then they will not let their own bias disallow them from also "looking at the blinding cloud radius" as well...correct?
We would hope so.
Ultras also currently seem to be "overperforming."
In the original post of this thread, why is there no mention/analysis of any Zerg units "being too powerful" whatsoever? I am confused. Should there not be "looking at" all 3 of the races? It seems one has been mysteriously left out of the equation here.
Hmm.
Just food for thought. Right now in the community, the largest majority of whining is coming from prominent Zerg streamers. It is not unjustified, but I am going to point out here that what these Zerg players are complaining about is not an actual balance issue with the game, but a learning curve related to a new game in relation to Zerg being the most reactive race.
When Zerg players right now are complaining about being underpowered, they are not understanding the game and the basis of their own complaint - what they are really complaining about is that at the start of this new game it is difficult to read and react to the new variety of things that Protoss and Terran can do to them due to the differences in worker production and the larva mechanic.
This is a learning curve issue - NOT A BALANCE ISSUE. Get it straight everyone in this thread and community. We do not want a repeat of wings where one race is overbuffed.
Zerg is the most reactive race. Everyone knows this. If you do not know the perfect amount of drones to make, or what you can get away with you will die to new things. This is the root of what Zerg players REALLY MEAN when they complain that they are currently "underpowered." The truth is they are not.
As the game is more figured out, and Zergs realize what to do with their larva better vs certain openings and situations...Zerg is just as powerful as the other two races.
I write this because right now it's a "Zerg QQ fest" and the developers seem to be being influenced by it quite a bit to the point, i'll say it again, they completely leave out any criticism balance wise of the viper in the OP of this post or anything of Zerg's possibly being "too strong."
Sorry for the long post. Just had to clarify because Zerg right now is in fact no where near underpowered, and Zerg players do not seem to understand that they are not complaining about balance, but about Zerg being the most reactive race and in fact as the game is figured out more they will be perfectly fine, and more.
Zerg is reactive race yes, but widow mines are not the units to which you can react. They are universally good vs. everything, and you don't have real counter to them. Not to mention probably most cost efficient unit in the game as it stands now. The major drawback of the Widow Mine is that it's a non-fighter unit that is stationary, therefore it has to be "cost effective" or it would not be worth it. The Widow Mine being cost effective is the equivalent of a full-time fighting unit being even, because you're paying the hidden tax of 2 supply per mine being taken away from army potential when the shot is down along with the requirement of being immobile while firing. This is why, to the untrained thinker, you might see a Window Mine kill two stalkers and conclude that it was "cost effective", but the threshold of efficiency for a unit with situational fighting opportunities but a constant supply cost is higher than simply surpassing resource cost on paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_costConsider thinking more critically when you make comments about unit balance. I am not saying it should be useless, just not THAT cost efficient. If you run 20 zerglings through the widow mine, they all gonna die. I don't think that is how it's supposed to be. There are different levels of "cost efficiency". If you siege an army with tanks/marines and put several mines in front, they are so incredibly cost efficient and impossible to deal with. Smartly placed widow mines basically make ling runby's obsolete mid to late game. Totally re-evaluating how I'm playing Zerg because of it, but it would be great if they could reduce splash. Same thing with mutalisks - two volleys wreck a pack of mutas. I don't think thors even do that much damage. Oh come on ... the Thor was designed to be the Mutalisk counter ... until people started magic boxing which made the Thor rather useless at that job. Now Terran has a unit again which can punish tight clumps and Zerg whine again?
Thor never was useless vs. mutas. It's amazing vs. mutas to this day, and prevents mutas from clumping. Unless you expect thors to be ultimate hard counter to mutas, then you are going to be disappointed.
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The widow mine explosion is already really small, how can you reduce it without making it single target?
If I needed to nerf the mine, I would just reduce the splash damage to 35. This way mine drops become much less effective and a good mine hit in your workers doesn't spell instant GG. It would still be really effective against lings, but terrans also have hellbats which are ridiculously strong against lings. Either way the meta should be moving away from heavily ling-based armies.
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Just make Void Rays unmovable when they use Prismatic alignment so you can more easily run away when their charge is up.
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On March 15 2013 16:31 CruelZeratul wrote:
Make Voidrays 3 supply again and remove the Prismatic Alignment abilíty, if it's still to strong 4 supply again.
Just reduce the time prismatic aligment is active so it can more easily be mocroed against (disengage until it wears of engage again). This gameplay (that they seemingly want to see) could also be better supported if th voidrays speed was nerved slightly. THis would be more interesting.
Zerg could move in and if protoss uses prismatic aligment zerg just pulls back and attacks again, so the protoss has to balance how many voidrays he wants to activate and how many activations he saves for the future, etc....
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On March 15 2013 17:22 Eury wrote:
Just make Void Rays unmovable when they use Prismatic alignment so you can more easily run away when their charge is up.
Didn't think of that, I like that.
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EPT
