Thud: Stuck in the train coming back from the Cebit in Hannover, I had the opportunity to speak about balance for 2 hours with David Kim, AKA the big boss of Starcraft 2. Yes sir, he is the one in charge of game balancing, with his team, at Blizzard. Note that David Kim, using the name NoobExplosion (in Korean), is Grand Master in all three races. At the bottom of the league, sure, but still, respect! Grubby was participating in the discussion. I insist that this interview does NOT commit Blizzard Entertainment to anything. Amen.
Translator note: The original interview does not specify which server David Kim is GM on.
The game globally balanced, I repeat, the game is globally balanced. The modifications discussed here are minor and will only impact extremely high level of play. The team considers that the game balancing should be rated as a good 9/10.
Widow Mines: The next nerf The entire development team agrees to say that the Widow Mines are currently too strong. Even Martians were aware of this anyway. Where doubts lingers though, is the the nature of the nerf. David thinks that the players have not yet learned to react efficiently against strategies based around Widow Mines, and does not want to make the unit useless. He is not shocked that a single mine can one shot a Stalker, since the stalker has more range. This is his opinion. The nerf that would make the most sense to him would be to reduce the size of the explosion, without hurting its damage, in order to limit its use against the mineral line or a pack of Zerglings.
Orcales: The eternal dilemma of Grand Masters vs Bronzes To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
Void Ray: The dark side of the force The team believe that Void Rays are currently slightly too strong. In PvP, all the variations based on VR (sometimes Immortals) have the advantage over compositions based on Colossus. In PvZ, the Void Rays make late game compositions very hard to handle for Zergs, and the VR / HT mixes make minced meat out of Corruptors. But the development team prefers to wait before modifying this unit.
Hellbat: Everything is OK, thank you In the last patch, the team was not sure of the nerf done to the Battle Hellions (now called Hellbats). Every one agreed to say that the Hellbat drops in early games were too strong. But how to nerf the efficiency of the unit without destroying it? Not wanting to weaken the Bioball + Hellbat compositions, the team decided to keep the Medivac's heal but the increase the size they would have inside them. In the end, the unit seems well balanced.
Ultralisks: The return of the charge? The removal of the Ultralisk's charge was really a change that brought debates within David's team. Opinions were divided. The problem was the following: seeing the rising of the Terran Mec, there was a need to either, give the ability to Ultralisks to reach the desired targets within the Terran army (Thors, Tanks), or to increase slightly the damage they did to Battle Hellions they met on the way. Unfortunately, the bump made by the charge created mini-bugs, caused by things such as doing a charge while going downhill on a ramp. Also, according to David, the ability was judged too similar to the Stalkers' Blink. These two reasons made Blizzard lean towards the removal of the Charge. But it is still being discussed today.
At the end of the day, David Kim wish to have more transparency regarding the role of the team. All around him is a team of specialists that analyse every tournament and discuss modifications to apply. Each decision is thoroughly made and is never done by one man only.
What a wonderful interview. The incredible amount of Blizzard content around launch time (interviews, trailers, community participation) has been awesome and I hope that this increase in engagement isn't completely temporary. Sounds like balancing the oracle presents a big dilemma.
I'm not so sure Bronze players should be considered with balance for unit nerfing or buffing, such as the Oracle. With Bronze league, I feel the bigger problem is macroing properly and knowing what the general builds are.
I have a friend playing HOTS and he goes like 1 base 6 rax. Ya it gets the job done, but it's not viable in the long term if your opponent can muster a sufficient defense.
GM times three on kr ladder is seriously impressive. I'd love to see him in a tournament as a random player :D I want a rando hero! I'm sure blizz doesn't allow it though due to conflicts of interest and whatnot.
Interview sounded very reasonable. +5 respect stat to Mr.Kim in my mind. Looking forward to seeing what the team does in the future. The whole "more transparency" thing sounds superb as well.
Maybe i am not following the Hots scene close enough but in all the really high level tvz games i have watched, terran went mmm with mines/hellions. I don't see pure mech games at all. Viper does a really good job against tanks and thors by pulling them and blinding cloud already. Do they really need ultra charge or am i missing something?
On March 15 2013 06:13 geokilla wrote: I'm not so sure Bronze players should be considered with balance for unit nerfing or buffing, such as the Oracle. With Bronze league, I feel the bigger problem is macroing properly and knowing what the general builds are.
I have a friend playing HOTS and he goes like 1 base 6 rax. Ya it gets the job done, but it's not viable in the long term if your opponent can muster a sufficient defense.
The problem is will a protoss ever switch into a macro game, when his proxy oracle is so much more effective? Will he invest all the time to reach a similar level when the same performance can be reached so easily? As I heard Bronze is cheese vs cheese all day anyway. And you can go to Master with cheese only (even grandmaster, but then you need to be a really good cheeser I assume). Macro games will be more fun to the players, but nobody likes getting crushed by players he could easily beat before and cheese gets boring faster as all games are the same.
On March 15 2013 06:15 MuteZephyr wrote: GM times three on kr ladder is seriously impressive. I'd love to see him in a tournament as a random player :D I want a rando hero! I'm sure blizz doesn't allow it though due to conflicts of interest and whatnot.
Interview sounded very reasonable. +5 respect stat to Mr.Kim in my mind. Looking forward to seeing what the team does in the future. The whole "more transparency" thing sounds superb as well.
From Liquipedia: He has not played in any tournaments, except in house (Blizzard only) ones, as he is a Blizzard employee. However, Dustin Browder at Blizzcon 2010 stated that David Kim has placed either first or second in every single one.
Does this mean there is a second person working for Blizzard that can beat a korean grandmaster? Also when they buffed infestor projectile speed they said something like our grandmaster players (plural) were unable to hit mutas.
Well this makes me have a bit more faith in Blizzard and the balance team. Not because X is going to get nerfed or Y is fine and Z is getting buffed, but because they analyse major tournaments and have a KR 3x GM on the team.
I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
On March 15 2013 06:15 MuteZephyr wrote: GM times three on kr ladder is seriously impressive. I'd love to see him in a tournament as a random player :D I want a rando hero! I'm sure blizz doesn't allow it though due to conflicts of interest and whatnot.
Interview sounded very reasonable. +5 respect stat to Mr.Kim in my mind. Looking forward to seeing what the team does in the future. The whole "more transparency" thing sounds superb as well.
From Liquipedia: He has not played in any tournaments, except in house (Blizzard only) ones, as he is a Blizzard employee. However, Dustin Browder at Blizzcon 2010 stated that David Kim has placed either first or second in every single one.
Does this mean there is a second person working for Blizzard that can beat a korean grandmaster? Also when they buffed infestor projectile speed they said something like our grandmaster players (plural) were unable to hit mutas.
I wouldn`t be surprised if more than just DK was GM. Realistically they need to have a couple players playing at(or at least understanding) the highest level just for analytical purposes. It comes down to learning what part of a X is broken, and what way will fix it without destroying the feel.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
agreed, I'd call a proof check if i was in the position to.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
Well since they just gave his nickname away you can check it yourself i guess.
Buff the Ultra? Are they crazy? That thing is monstrous right now. I always hated the idea of the burrow charge in the first place anyway. Zergs were forever complaining in WoL about Ultralisks getting stuck behind their other units so the solution is to essentially give it a teleport because god forbid Zerg players have to learn some basic army management?
On March 15 2013 06:34 Exarl25 wrote: Buff the Ultra? Are they crazy? That thing is monstrous right now. I always hated the idea of the burrow charge in the first place anyway. Zergs were forever complaining in WoL about Ultralisks getting stuck behind their other units so the solution is to essentially give it a teleport because god forbid Zerg players have to learn some basic army management?
tbh, the ultra gets pushed away by zerglings all the time
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
Well since they just gave his nickname away you can check it yourself i guess.
And how do you translate his nickname in korean? :D.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
Well since they just gave his nickname away you can check it yourself i guess.
And how do you translate his nickname in korean? :D.
On March 15 2013 06:36 Glurkenspurk wrote: There is no possible way David Kim is gm in korea. None. Either he's lying or had the account leveled by someone.
Agreed. If this was a long time ago, it would maybe be believable. Today? I can't believe it without him actually playing games in a live setting to prove it.
Giving an account name isn't proof, and Glurkenspurk has given one reason why it isn't.
On March 15 2013 06:15 MuteZephyr wrote: GM times three on kr ladder is seriously impressive. I'd love to see him in a tournament as a random player :D I want a rando hero! I'm sure blizz doesn't allow it though due to conflicts of interest and whatnot.
Interview sounded very reasonable. +5 respect stat to Mr.Kim in my mind. Looking forward to seeing what the team does in the future. The whole "more transparency" thing sounds superb as well.
From Liquipedia: He has not played in any tournaments, except in house (Blizzard only) ones, as he is a Blizzard employee. However, Dustin Browder at Blizzcon 2010 stated that David Kim has placed either first or second in every single one.
Does this mean there is a second person working for Blizzard that can beat a korean grandmaster? Also when they buffed infestor projectile speed they said something like our grandmaster players (plural) were unable to hit mutas.
dunno who their other good player is, but i had heard a while back that anyone who beat D. Kim in an inhouse tourney gets a trip to S. Korea.
also, all blizzard employees are not allowed to participate in any public tournaments, even if their position obviously has no possibility of influencing balance..the rule is still there.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
Well since they just gave his nickname away you can check it yourself i guess.
Well, theoretically they can put anyone in GM they want ;-) . But yeah, checking the match history you will quickly see which pro players loose to him. I want to see these games casted. I hope some pros will share replays.
On March 15 2013 06:36 Glurkenspurk wrote: There is no possible way David Kim is gm in korea. None. Either he's lying or had the account leveled by someone.
No possible way? Or maybe he's just better than you think he is.
On March 15 2013 06:36 Glurkenspurk wrote: There is no possible way David Kim is gm in korea. None. Either he's lying or had the account leveled by someone.
Agreed. If this was a long time ago, it would maybe be believable. Today? I can't believe it without him actually playing games in a live setting to prove it.
Giving an account name isn't proof, and Glurkenspurk has given one reason why it isn't.
I think it's entirely plausable. You forget, that he literally lives and breathes the game. He more than likely plays it a hell of a lot more than Thorzain/Sase whoever else they mentioned. He has to be good at the game as he's the balance designer, could you imagine how bad the game would be if they let a bronze player think up the balance changes?
He may drop off when the game comes out (like already), but during the beta and Alpha, it's probably when he understands the game more than any of the pros do (early beta at least) as he helped design the thing.
I would like them to nerf HTs. or to give zerg a counter to HTs, cause they are the biggest problem, not Voids. Not only they storm but they hardcounter main zerg late game unit - viper.
I think it's entirely plausable. You forget, that he literally lives and breathes the game. He more than likely plays it a hell of a lot more than Thorzain/Sase whoever else they mentioned. He has to be good at the game as he's the balance designer, could you imagine how bad the game would be if they let a bronze player think up the balance changes?
As anyone who has matched him can tell you, the idea of him being GM on KR with one race, let alone 3, is a joke.
On March 15 2013 06:39 Exarl25 wrote: I don't think the article says he is GM in KR. I think it means his name is NoobExplosion, written in Korean. He probably plays on NA
I think so too. There is no mention of which ladder it is in the original article either so I didn't put any in the translation...
On March 15 2013 06:39 Exarl25 wrote: I don't think the article says he is GM in KR. I think it means his name is NoobExplosion, written in Korean. He probably plays on NA
Agreed - I think most people are just misreading it and then reading comments and going off that. I don't speak French so maybe the original does say on Korean realm, but as it's translated right now I don't read it the way most people seem to be. e: well, while I was writing that the translator chimed in, so nevermind about the original
On March 15 2013 06:39 Exarl25 wrote: I don't think the article says he is GM in KR. I think it means his name is NoobExplosion, written in Korean. He probably plays on NA
Agreed - I think most people are just misreading it and then reading comments and going off that. I don't speak French so maybe the original does say on Korean realm, but as it's translated right now I don't read it the way most people seem to be.
"son pseudo NoobExplosion écrit en coréen" = his ID NoobExplosion written in korean"
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
On March 15 2013 06:54 larse wrote: The buff to oracle is definitely needed. Oracle now is such a peripheral unit. You don't even need to use them at all.
Yeah, instead of one beam that kills light units, there are now 3, range increased to 7, base attack doesn't require any energy anymore. Good start, no?
More seriously, I Honestly feel it's harrasement's potential need to be expanded slighty, otherwise I feel like people haven't figured the oracle out properly as a support tool. I haven't seen it a lot.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
On March 15 2013 06:54 larse wrote: The buff to oracle is definitely needed. Oracle now is such a peripheral unit. You don't even need to use them at all.
I agree with the assessment of the Oracle's state in the game. Currently, it seems as if it's really not a necessary unit, or even very good at high levels.
But I don't think that buffing it is the correct course of action. I think the issues arise from the fact that the unit needs a redesign to feel less gimmicky and bring more to a balanced composition. Unfortunately, the odds of that happening are virtually zero since we're out of beta. I'm worried it'll go the way of the reaper in WoL. Or get too strong from a buff and then get re-nerfed and still go the way of the reaper in WoL.
Translator note: The original interview does not specify which server David Kim is GM on.
Did everyone fucking missed that in the text ? Kim is good enough for GM with 3 races on NA. Korea is doubtfull, but he could really weel be GM with his best race.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
On March 15 2013 06:54 larse wrote: The buff to oracle is definitely needed. Oracle now is such a peripheral unit. You don't even need to use them at all.
Yeah, instead of one beam that kills light units, there are now 3, range increased to 7, base attack doesn't require any energy anymore. Good start, no?
More seriously, I Honestly feel it's harrasement's potential need to be expanded slighty, otherwise I feel like people haven't figured the oracle out properly as a support tool. I haven't seen it a lot.
If they want to buff it then buffing it's support utility would be the smart way to go about it. I can see why it would wreak havoc when harassing in the lower leagues and further buffs there would be problematic but at pro level it's really hit or miss and I think it will only become less effective as time goes on, at least as an opening. When it gets shut down it gets shut down hard. Almost feels like a coin flip a lot of the time.
On March 15 2013 06:54 larse wrote: The buff to oracle is definitely needed. Oracle now is such a peripheral unit. You don't even need to use them at all.
I agree with the assessment of the Oracle's state in the game. Currently, it seems as if it's really not a necessary unit, or even very good at high levels.
But I don't think that buffing it is the correct course of action. I think the issues arise from the fact that the unit needs a redesign to feel less gimmicky and bring more to a balanced composition. Unfortunately, the odds of that happening are virtually zero since we're out of beta. I'm worried it'll go the way of the reaper in WoL. Or get too strong from a buff and then get re-nerfed and still go the way of the reaper in WoL.
But, we'll see, I'm hoping it doesn't!
You don't need a total redesign to make the unit feel good in design (sound weird, right).
You can increase its speed. Its current speed is not competitive compare to pheonix and the build time is too long, cost is too much.
And the attack range is too short while the damage is too large.
Change some of these aspects will change how the unit work. They may look better, in both harassment and expanding to other roles.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
Like how Lucy Bradshaw would never lie about SimCity 5, I mean it makes no sense!
On March 15 2013 07:05 SuperHarryoBro wrote: Why not make the widow mine bomb killable so stalkers can lead and kill it like dragoons and spider mines.
Because unlike spider mines, widow mines aren't free.
On March 15 2013 07:05 SuperHarryoBro wrote: Why not make the widow mine bomb killable so stalkers can lead and kill it like dragoons and spider mines.
Because unlike spider mines, widow mines aren't free.
the biggest mistake blizzard could make to sc2 is to think the right answer to everything is to nerf. thats the approach they took with WOL and it became stagnant as fuk as more and more strategyies got eliminated thanks to each nerf.
-Queen buffed as a way to nerf hellion run bys? all early game terran aggression dead. -Infestor buff in wol to do more damage+ faster rate of damage fungal from 8 to 4 seconds resulted in chain fungals being so strong, eliminating void ray usage. -ghost snipe nerfed to 1 use , when the approach could have been different. Such as 45 damage to everything, - 15 to massive. -Blue flame nerf killed MECH TvP according to goody. -Thorzains thor abuse resulted in thors recieving back thier energy bar as a nerf to thors which removed them from the TvP matchup.
The list goes on and on
If you people keep asking for nerfs, you gonna destroy this game. Becareful what you wish for.
Widow mine nerfed? guess what, All you gonna see is WOL style terran, no new units Medicvac speed nerf? Ask anybody if they can tell the difference between WOL and HOTS if that was to happen
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
Like how Lucy Bradshaw would never lie about SimCity 5, I mean it makes no sense!
As funny/ironic as that statement is, I have faith in blizz. A lot of people get angry at them, but I have faith that they know what they are doing, especially now with HotS a lot of SC2 is looking on the upslope. It seems that blizz got a kick in the pants with other competing E-Sports since SC2 was really the most dominant until recently, and now they realize they have to step up their game hardcore.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
Like how Lucy Bradshaw would never lie about SimCity 5, I mean it makes no sense!
Thats EA and they do some pretty dumb stuff. Even I was slightly surprised by how stupid that was.
Seriously, he is not going to say he is GM with three races if he can't back it up. I don't think he is going to be taking down Life or Flash any time soon, he does work in the office where it is all SC2 all the time. I think people on TL are just having a hard time believe that Blizzard has anyone on their staff that good at the game, let alone DK.
On March 15 2013 06:34 Exarl25 wrote: Buff the Ultra? Are they crazy? That thing is monstrous right now. I always hated the idea of the burrow charge in the first place anyway. Zergs were forever complaining in WoL about Ultralisks getting stuck behind their other units so the solution is to essentially give it a teleport because god forbid Zerg players have to learn some basic army management?
tbh, the ultra gets pushed away by zerglings all the time
Yeah, dude, it's not about army management; it's the fact that ultra compositions are going to be mostly -or entirely- melee combat units. It's a simple matter of, when you close on a ball of enemy units, there isn't enough space for even a majority of your shit to attack. it's a bit better on creep, but fucking forget it otherwise.
that being said, the burrow charge kinda seems it would be too powerful without some sort of upgrade or skill shot--or some other mechanic that didn't just flat out improve an a-walking zerg. i mean, the idea of "Burrow charge" on a unit of that size is kind of stupid anyway. even an armor-activatable ability or something for a short duration would make more sense.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
Like how Lucy Bradshaw would never lie about SimCity 5, I mean it makes no sense!
Thats EA and they do some pretty dumb stuff. Even I was slightly surprised by how stupid that was.
Seriously, he is not going to say he is GM with three races if he can't back it up. I don't think he is going to be taking down Life or Flash any time soon, he does work in the office where it is all SC2 all the time. I think people on TL are just having a hard time believe that Blizzard has anyone on their staff that good at the game, let alone DK.
You can have all the blind faith that you want, but blizzard's borderline random changes at times don't support the idea of it being a staff that is in touch.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
Like how Lucy Bradshaw would never lie about SimCity 5, I mean it makes no sense!
Thats EA and they do some pretty dumb stuff. Even I was slightly surprised by how stupid that was.
Seriously, he is not going to say he is GM with three races if he can't back it up. I don't think he is going to be taking down Life or Flash any time soon, he does work in the office where it is all SC2 all the time. I think people on TL are just having a hard time believe that Blizzard has anyone on their staff that good at the game, let alone DK.
You can have all the blind faith that you want, but blizzard's borderline random changes at times don't support the idea of it being a staff that is in touch.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
Not that impossible considering he's working on and playing the game easily as much, if not more than a progamer. It's literally his job to be good at this game, especially if he's the head of the balancing team.
If you people keep asking for nerfs, you gonna destroy this game. Becareful what you wish for.
Widow mine nerfed? guess what, All you gonna see is WOL style terran, no new units Medicvac speed nerf? Ask anybody if they can tell the difference between WOL and HOTS if that was to happen
People will keep asking for terran nerfs, until terrans are where they were in WOL: the race they had 80% winrate against (seriously, how many people I heard talking about their huge winrate vs terran, it made me puke).
Ah, I said from the start that the mine should do more individual damage, but less splash (and maybe be cheaper in supply). After going in the opposite direction, I'm glad they're doing that.
Proxy oracle? I've never even heard of that, nor do I see the point. I think the oracle is the worst design unit out of all the new ones. Since it's expensive and doesn't do anything special... let's just make it do damage really fast.
Void Rays might be a bit too strong, I hope they don't over-nerf them. I agree that the hellbat is in a good place now. I was never a big fan of Ultra charge and hope they'll leave the Ultra as it is.
Overall I agree that the game seems really balanced. My biggest concern being that in early game ZvT there is really nothing to keep the Terran honest. They're leagues ahead of any race defensively in the early game, and I think that people will eventually find ways to abuse that.
On March 15 2013 07:33 achan1058 wrote: I am surprised at the lack of mention of medivac speed. Even a "they are working as intended" would be an answer.
If I understand well it's not really an interview but a random discussion in a train, so there's nothing to be surprised about.
the problem with his skills is, he isnt allowed to play in tournaments because its "his" game so ^_^ no one knows his true skill he should make a few showmatchs after all haha
well the ultralisk is super strong perhaps even to strong now and give him now charge ... uhhh
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
you talking shit man and i hope you know it, being GM on LOWER level they said so its like 150-200 ranked GM to be true such GM's can be even beaten by top masters and for someone playing it so much its understandable to be GM ... i would wonder if he wasnt i mean he was high master in the beginning and master with all 3 races can be done in less then 500 sc2 games ! (i did so i know) and if he plays the 100 * of that he is GM no matter what, gm not means pro by far
On March 15 2013 07:05 SuperHarryoBro wrote: Why not make the widow mine bomb killable so stalkers can lead and kill it like dragoons and spider mines.
Because unlike spider mines, widow mines aren't free.
Is any reason to not use a mechanic? Vultures arent free either
On March 15 2013 07:32 MilesTeg wrote: Proxy oracle? I've never even heard of that
? :D
It was as metagame defining as 4gate in WoL beta. I honestly don't see why they'd want to buff ti, considering even at the highest level Stargate-pressure into expands/all-ins is still extremely viable.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
Like how Lucy Bradshaw would never lie about SimCity 5, I mean it makes no sense!
Thats EA and they do some pretty dumb stuff. Even I was slightly surprised by how stupid that was.
Seriously, he is not going to say he is GM with three races if he can't back it up. I don't think he is going to be taking down Life or Flash any time soon, he does work in the office where it is all SC2 all the time. I think people on TL are just having a hard time believe that Blizzard has anyone on their staff that good at the game, let alone DK.
KRGM does mean that, once in a while, you should be taking down Flash and Life or players of similar caliber. I doubt his statement only because many times, in his 'situation reports' and general thoughts about the game he says things that feel completely out of touch with what's happening in the actual game.
On March 15 2013 07:32 MilesTeg wrote: Proxy oracle? I've never even heard of that
? :D
It was as metagame defining as 4gate in WoL beta. I honestly don't see why they'd want to buff ti, considering even at the highest level Stargate-pressure into expands/all-ins is still extremely viable.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
Like how Lucy Bradshaw would never lie about SimCity 5, I mean it makes no sense!
Thats EA and they do some pretty dumb stuff. Even I was slightly surprised by how stupid that was.
Seriously, he is not going to say he is GM with three races if he can't back it up. I don't think he is going to be taking down Life or Flash any time soon, he does work in the office where it is all SC2 all the time. I think people on TL are just having a hard time believe that Blizzard has anyone on their staff that good at the game, let alone DK.
KRGM does mean that, once in a while, you should be taking down Flash and Life or players of similar caliber. I doubt his statement only because many times, in his 'situation reports' and general thoughts about the game he says things that feel completely out of touch with what's happening in the actual game.
HELL NO why KRGM means you can beat flash ? are you crazy man ? does mean you being 200th GM on europe you can beat socke or ret ? NO you lose 0-100 to them by far far far .... and its even huger in korea most pros play intern and not ladder so if its on kr and not us server DAMN no does it mean anything
with less then 500 games i was master in korea and if he is playing alot then why not GM ? low gm means NOTHING (good players are master because kicked out not play few days etc)
so again to make sure, being GM not means your pro and it can still mean you lose 0-100 to EVERY to pro not only flash or life even 0-100 vs gumiho your argument is so ... AH DAMNIT
I feel it is way, way, way too early to be talking about buffs and nerfs. I'm sorry but IEM is not enough data to show anything. If we are being honest, there were too many lower level players there (as proven by LG-IM rising to top four - very embarrassing for foreigners).
We will need to see top level players against top level players, I'm talking Code S level. I think the fact that the Life vs. Flash showmatch turned out to be so epic was not a coincidence and I have not seen ANY player that compares to either of those players yet. I think there are enough top level players coming up in MLG where we might get a better idea of where HOTS is at.
I really like the part about it being globally balanced in contrast with the teamliquid poll. Not to even mention my own zerg experience currently on high masters.. t.t
On March 15 2013 07:46 Grumbels wrote: I think it was Day[9] that showed an in-house Blizzard tournament starring David Kim and his play certainly wasn't good enough for Korean GM.
Translator note: The original interview does not specify which server David Kim is GM on.
also dont give a shit about inhouse things ^^
it depends on the level on your enemy, if me as master play games with my paltin/gold friends i can even lose sometimes cause i play fun things etc ... hard to see skill if skillgap is to high
On March 15 2013 07:41 CoR wrote: btw i more think he is GM us server ? and then its pretty easy to accept that he is GM with all 3 races, on KR ... i doubt
On March 15 2013 07:32 MilesTeg wrote: Proxy oracle? I've never even heard of that
? :D
It was as metagame defining as 4gate in WoL beta. I honestly don't see why they'd want to buff ti, considering even at the highest level Stargate-pressure into expands/all-ins is still extremely viable.
On March 15 2013 07:15 Plansix wrote:
On March 15 2013 07:11 Serpico wrote:
On March 15 2013 07:10 Plansix wrote:
On March 15 2013 06:59 Glurkenspurk wrote:
On March 15 2013 06:52 larse wrote:
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
Blizzard has lied to us many times before though.
Remember how they said they had a team that kept in touch with the mapping community? lol.
It is so unlikely that they are lying. That is like asking to be called out. You don't lie about something that involves playing against the community you are lying to.
GM with all three races is very good and I am not surprised at all. I find it sort of amusing that he likely plays against the pros that keep calling him a stupid.
Like how Lucy Bradshaw would never lie about SimCity 5, I mean it makes no sense!
Thats EA and they do some pretty dumb stuff. Even I was slightly surprised by how stupid that was.
Seriously, he is not going to say he is GM with three races if he can't back it up. I don't think he is going to be taking down Life or Flash any time soon, he does work in the office where it is all SC2 all the time. I think people on TL are just having a hard time believe that Blizzard has anyone on their staff that good at the game, let alone DK.
KRGM does mean that, once in a while, you should be taking down Flash and Life or players of similar caliber. I doubt his statement only because many times, in his 'situation reports' and general thoughts about the game he says things that feel completely out of touch with what's happening in the actual game.
HELL NO why KRGM means you can beat flash ? are you crazy man ? does mean you being 200th GM on europe you can beat socke or ret ? NO you lose 0-100 to them by far far far .... and its even huger in korea most pros play intern and not ladder so if its on kr and not us server DAMN no does it mean anything
with less then 500 games i was master in korea and if he is playing alot then why not GM ? low gm means NOTHING (good players are master because kicked out not play few days etc)
so again to make sure, being GM not means your pro and it can still mean you lose 0-100 to EVERY to pro not only flash or life even 0-100 vs gumiho your argument is so ... AH DAMNIT
Dude, yes, if you are EU.GM you're absolutely winning some of your games against Ret & Socke. It's, at the same time, a prerequisite for being GM.
The fact that Flash&Life may not play ladder I have no idea about, they were just names that were thrown by the person I quoted. You can insert any top10 KRGM names, it's the same.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
theres like over 6 interviews were dustin himself says he's masters, even going as far as to say he can take on a pro in the early game. For all ignorant ragers sharpening the pitchforks i am not defending dustin just calling this out. As someone said before me, probabbly most of the balance team is masters. Does that mean absolutely anything? NO
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
theres like over 6 interviews were dustin himself says he's masters, even going as far as to say he can take on a pro in the early game. For all ignorant ragers sharpening the pitchforks i am not defending dustin just calling this out. As someone said before me, probabbly most of the balance team is masters. Does that mean absolutely anything? NO
yeesh why are people making a big deal about this "3 races" thing
you don't get kicked out of gm in the season right? He obviously doesn't play 3 races equally, but he can squeeze his best race into GM, then play the other races whenever he wants because you don't get kicked out.
For the borderline accounts (like last 20% of GM) I always thought the issue was who played their games when GM opened up for the ladder season, which hint hint david kim may know the exact time that blizzard opens up GM
plus there is probably some bias for GM for accounts that were in GM the previous season, so it helps that he probably got GM accounts the very first time GM existed and has since continued.
On March 15 2013 06:45 archflames wrote: He's almost obligated to say he's GM with all 3 races otherwise people would scream imbalance towards the race that David Kim is better/worse at.
There is no reason to lie. Anyone found out, the payback is too great to take. Remember Jay Wilson?
Dustin Browder is also in charge of balance but he admits he is Gold.
theres like over 6 interviews were dustin himself says he's masters, even going as far as to say he can take on a pro in the early game. For all ignorant ragers sharpening the pitchforks i am not defending dustin just calling this out. As someone said before me, probabbly most of the balance team is masters. Does that mean absolutely anything? NO
DB has said several times he shifts between gold and platinum. Also did not say he could take on a pro in the early game. He said he could mirror a build a well as a pro in the early game. When asked about the comment later on, he clarified that was only if he was left alone(IE, no pressure).
I love the selective memories of the community. "DB said this thing once that was dumb and kinda unclear. He later corrected himself and said he misspoke, but I'm gunna ignore that second part"
On March 15 2013 07:44 densha wrote: I feel it is way, way, way too early to be talking about buffs and nerfs. I'm sorry but IEM is not enough data to show anything. If we are being honest, there were too many lower level players there (as proven by LG-IM rising to top four - very embarrassing for foreigners).
We will need to see top level players against top level players,I'm talking Code S level. I think the fact that the Life vs. Flash showmatch turned out to be so epic was not a coincidence and I have not seen ANY player that compares to either of those players yet. I think there are enough top level players coming up in MLG where we might get a better idea of where HOTS is at.
Code S finalists or code S ro16 also which player vs which on? Which day they played, was it rainy? Which food they had, did they feel good and didn´t they eat too much? Wasn´t the studio just to cold? And then is the player base now in code s really that good and wasn´t the performance of players of last code s not just better?
Serious data if people want to find one person that is allowed to talk about balance.
I think the weakness they see for the Oracle in the early game, at the highest pro level, could be made up for with Revelation (the one that gives vision of units, not the detection one ofc). Keeping track of army movement is much more important in a pro game and, personally, I think it's a much more interesting spell than what is basically a very strong attack out of Pulsar Beam. And they could potentially buff it if they wanted to, this would solve the problem of making the unit too strong in non-pro level games.
Someone posted this earlier and I'll repost it "David Kim, using the name NoobExplosion (in Korean), is Grand Master in all three races. " This quote is the line in the article.
It doesn't say anywhere GM in Korea, as far as my knowledge goes he lives in the US, so he's probably GM in the US. Not to mention it may be GM in HOTS were he DESIGNS the game for a living. He's bound to know a few things that people don't.
On March 15 2013 07:05 SuperHarryoBro wrote: Why not make the widow mine bomb killable so stalkers can lead and kill it like dragoons and spider mines.
Because unlike spider mines, widow mines aren't free.
Is any reason to not use a mechanic? Vultures arent free either
if you research blink you can dodge the mine bombs
On March 15 2013 06:00 Tpyro wrote: The game globally balanced, I repeat, the game is globally balanced.
The entire development team agrees to say that the Widow Mines are currently too strong.
The team believe that Void Rays are currently slightly too strong.
But the development team prefers to wait before modifying this unit.
Only Blizzard logic...
Nonono, you missunderstand.
What they're doing now is good for the game.
WoL came out and the nerfed everything so quickly that units like the Reaper and Voidray became so awful nobody used them anymore. Do you really want that to happen again? It made the game stale as anything.
Why can't Blizzard employees and David partake in some tournaments or prove their GM status in some showmatches. Then David's credibility would rise substantially instead of being mocked at and the fanbase would rest about Blizzard trying to balance SC2
Rats, made a long post then accidentally shut down my browser.
Anyway, since it's page 6 and not many people will be reading this anyway: My vision to fix the Ultralisk problem (burrow charge unoriginal and buggy) is to change the way from which the problem (versus mech) is approached.
Cushion Slime: Reduces the damage the Ultralisk takes by 15 from attacks that deal more than 25 damage for 4 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
This will solve the approach problem to thors and tanks without ruining mech, because 6 seconds is a short timing window that needs to be applied tactically to work. Walling with Hellbats will still buy good players the time they need to cut through Ultralisks, forcing the Zerg player to go for a well planned multi-angled attack to make it work.
No mention of the medivac maybe he does actually play random, wow! (thus, would know, medivac is far from the main thing terran needs changed right now, mine is the only problem.)
On March 15 2013 07:14 johnny123 wrote: the biggest mistake blizzard could make to sc2 is to think the right answer to everything is to nerf. thats the approach they took with WOL and it became stagnant as fuk as more and more strategyies got eliminated thanks to each nerf.
-Queen buffed as a way to nerf hellion run bys? all early game terran aggression dead. -Infestor buff in wol to do more damage+ faster rate of damage fungal from 8 to 4 seconds resulted in chain fungals being so strong, eliminating void ray usage. -ghost snipe nerfed to 1 use , when the approach could have been different. Such as 45 damage to everything, - 15 to massive. -Blue flame nerf killed MECH TvP according to goody. -Thorzains thor abuse resulted in thors recieving back thier energy bar as a nerf to thors which removed them from the TvP matchup.
The list goes on and on
If you people keep asking for nerfs, you gonna destroy this game. Becareful what you wish for.
Widow mine nerfed? guess what, All you gonna see is WOL style terran, no new units Medicvac speed nerf? Ask anybody if they can tell the difference between WOL and HOTS if that was to happen
I dont disagree with you totally but its pretty obvious you play terran
I think WoL was terribly broken but that doesnt mean the widow mine and medivac arent too strong right now.... from zerg perspective its terribly hard to play against terran right now
On March 15 2013 08:43 BabyMozart wrote: I want to see a david kim vs idra showmatch :D
Wow, this is a great fucking idea.. A showmatch with David Kim with a random pro player. This would be something I would pay to watch for. David plays each race versus different players. Lets get this shit hyped up!
buff oracle, but also buff hydra either +1 range or more HP like +10 and combine it with grooved spines and make the upgrade 200/200 or something.
if they would buff ultra, don't add charge, just give it more HP like +50 so it has more time to close the distance, combine the HP with armor upgrade.
I think it would be cool if mines were cheaper and costed 1 supply but only had 2 range, making them only effective if you step directly over them, but I'm not DK, GM with all 3 races to know what the best course of action is, but definitely don't nerf stuff.
So many people bad at reading and then accuse him of lying. They never said he was GM in Korea and it's entirely believable that he could be low GM in NA. Not every player in NA GM is pro.
On March 15 2013 08:53 Callynn wrote: Rats, made a long post then accidentally shut down my browser.
Anyway, since it's page 6 and not many people will be reading this anyway: My vision to fix the Ultralisk problem (burrow charge unoriginal and buggy) is to change the way from which the problem (versus mech) is approached.
Cushion Slime: Reduces the damage the Ultralisk takes by 15 from attacks that deal more than 25 damage for 4 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
This will solve the approach problem to thors and tanks without ruining mech, because 6 seconds is a short timing window that needs to be applied tactically to work. Walling with Hellbats will still buy good players the time they need to cut through Ultralisks, forcing the Zerg player to go for a well planned multi-angled attack to make it work.
Meh ... I'm always wary of this kind of stat-fucking to balance a game, where something deals/receives more/less damage from one type of thing versus another. It makes the design of game overall less intuitive, and hurts the game's legibility.
At the very least, the effect or characteristic should be easy to represent visually or through FX.
Spore crawler randomly doing extra damage to bio? < lazy design. Spore crawler spitting acid, which has a more dramatic, obvious burning or singe effect on bio units? < better design.
On March 15 2013 08:27 Godwrath wrote: And low GM is really really far away from top GM's. The gap in MMR is close to silver to masters from a top GM and a bottom GM
On March 15 2013 08:43 BabyMozart wrote: I want to see a david kim vs idra showmatch :D
Wow, this is a great fucking idea.. A showmatch with David Kim with a random pro player. This would be something I would pay to watch for. David plays each race versus different players. Lets get this shit hyped up!
Balance right?
This ^. I highly doubt David Kim is a GM in any race let alone all three now days. There is no proof of it being so.
On March 15 2013 07:46 Grumbels wrote: I think it was Day[9] that showed an in-house Blizzard tournament starring David Kim and his play certainly wasn't good enough for Korean GM.
It was Day[9].
If I'd played like Dayvie in those games I'd be mighty embarrassed. He was outclassed in at least one game by a Diamond scrub.
That said, he was GM at that time (under the name Dayvie) with random so I think he might have been mucking about. When I play with my buddies I certainly don't showcase my best play, I just want to have fun and try out some cool builds (which means my builds won't be polished and will require more attention, meaning worse multitasking and micro).
In my oppinion Void Ray and Medivac brakes the fucking game. I don´t have any chance on winning vs dropping terran or Airtoss......
And again I feel fucking angry about my money spend into a beta. Not to talk about the story mode 30€ =5h Damn rip off piece of shit company Blizzard is, no joke
^ Althaz also has the point that the skill levels during different times effect who has the grand master positions. As more players join the ladder, there is more competition. And now that we have real professionals such as the KeSPA teams joining... As well as the strategies of the game being mapped out... The positions of the rankings will shuffle around dramatically. A show match between any professional and David Kim would very much likely shatter this illusion of "balance". But of course, there's nothing we can do. And neither will the people in power ever demonstrate their lack of competence due to the fact that the pacification of illusion will be shattered. It's not in their best interest. It's only up to the players to band together DEMAND such displays. Otherwise we will forever be stuck in such a dilemma. Trust without logical justification is just speculation, as Warren Buffett would say.
On March 15 2013 11:20 Suikakuju wrote: In my oppinion Void Ray and Medivac brakes the fucking game. I don´t have any chance on winning vs dropping terran or Airtoss......
And again I feel fucking angry about my money spend into a beta. Not to talk about the story mode 30€ =5h Damn rip off piece of shit company Blizzard is, no joke
calm down, man. they will fix it soon.
Remember how broken WoL was upon release? HotS is tons better.
The truth is our balance relies on one person, where nobody can watch him play in streams every day like our real professional players, where there is no account profile available for proof of competence. Our balance in the past has also been determined by over simplified statistics of win rates which are used as a proxy for the fairness of balance. But that would be like saying, "because statistics show that 80% of alcohol consumption does not kill people... Alcohol therefore does not kill people..." It's black and white thinking and a very simple logical fallacy. Statistics do not determine truth if they are taken from an overly simplistic perspective.
Where is the proof of David Kim's competence? Who is he to say: "The game globally balanced, I repeat, the game is globally balanced."?
On March 15 2013 11:20 Suikakuju wrote: In my oppinion Void Ray and Medivac brakes the fucking game. I don´t have any chance on winning vs dropping terran or Airtoss......
And again I feel fucking angry about my money spend into a beta. Not to talk about the story mode 30€ =5h Damn rip off piece of shit company Blizzard is, no joke
calm down, man. they will fix it soon.
Remember how broken WoL was upon release? HotS is tons better.
yeah I mean sure...they fix that and this soon. But I am fucking pissed, which is my right after buying there games. Which just sold because of there name^^ Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2
On March 15 2013 11:28 Akusta wrote: The truth is our balance relies on one person, where nobody can watch him play in streams every day like our real professional players, where there is no account profile available for proof of competence. Our balance in the past has also been determined by over simplified statistics of win rates which are used as a proxy for the fairness of balance. But that would be like saying, "because statistics show that 80% of alcohol consumption does not kill people... Alcohol therefore does not kill people..." It's black and white thinking and a very simple logical fallacy. Statistics do not determine truth if they are taken from an overly simplistic perspective.
Where is the proof of David Kim's competence? Who is he to say: "The game globally balanced, I repeat, the game is globally balanced."?
He is like a politician say people want they want to hear...
I don't think widowmine is the obvious next nerf. Heck, I think defending against void ray is far more figured out then defending widow mine but void ray is still more "broken". Still, I think they should wait with nerfs.
On March 15 2013 11:39 Rioo wrote: I don't think widowmine is the obvious next nerf. Heck, I think defending against void ray is far more figured out then defending widow mine but void ray is still more "broken". Still, I think they should wait with nerfs.
Rather than nerving voidrays I ould prefer if they changed the corruptor to a less one dimensional role that is able to deal with voidrays. But it might be to late for such changes.
People talking about DK showmatch, that can't ever happen. Imagine the shitstorm if he got supply blocked? Floating a bit of minerals? God forbid lost a game? :O Insane amounts of people would discredit all of blizzard's balancing if they saw the lead balance guy didn't play perfect and know everything about the game!
Finding it hard to believe without proper proof tho..
Anyway.. I like his thinking, i do agree on widow mine getting blast radius reduce, that's the most annoying thing.. Either that or lowering the damage so it doesn't one-shot workers, oh nevermind they'd be terrible then.. They could increase cost, but his suggestion seems way better. Oracle doesn't need a nerf, it is strong vs terran, but really not vs other races. In pvp there are so many counters to it early on, being a huge risk to invest in it. Also you costing 150/150 for a visible detector is costly coming from protoss.
Vr issue, i guess we don't know yet, but i do think they are too strong in pvz at first glance.. But then again, zergs are going roach/hydra like it was wol release, and we all know how easy that was to counter.. Nothing really changed and i still think hydra is a bad unit for it's cost, should really just decrease it slightly. Also vr's in pvp is a must have for mid-late game, it's abit silly.
On March 15 2013 11:45 Mellon wrote: People talking about DK showmatch, that can't ever happen. Imagine the shitstorm if he got supply blocked? Floating a bit of minerals? God forbid lost a game? :O Insane amounts of people would discredit all of blizzard's balancing if they saw the lead balance guy didn't play perfect and know everything about the game!
Finding it hard to believe without proper proof tho..
Anyway.. I like his thinking, i do agree on widow mine getting blast radius reduce, that's the most annoying thing.. Either that or lowering the damage so it doesn't one-shot workers, oh nevermind they'd be terrible then.. They could increase cost, but his suggestion seems way better. Oracle doesn't need a nerf, it is strong vs terran, but really not vs other races. In pvp there are so many counters to it early on, being a huge risk to invest in it. Also you costing 150/150 for a visible detector is costly coming from protoss.
Vr issue, i guess we don't know yet, but i do think they are too strong in pvz at first glance.. But then again, zergs are going roach/hydra like it was wol release, and we all know how easy that was to counter.. Nothing really changed and i still think hydra is a bad unit for it's cost, should really just decrease it slightly. Also vr's in pvp is a must have for mid-late game, it's abit silly.
If he is GM, there should be replays from the ladder.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
LOL no. It's probably NA server (read the OP, interview doesn't specify which server, it just says David Kim has a korean ID), which is much easier.
Edit: And I think D.Kim is doing a good job balancing the game. Only move I absolutely cannot condone is the +2 range queen, which single handedly could have put SC2 to rest if it wasn't for HotS.
David kim should stream. I'd love to see how he handles the things ppl are complaining about and hear his narration of the games.
I'm glad they are not jumping the gun on changes, the game is so fun right now. The only thing I can say seems a little silly is the void rays. The mines are good, but I've seen ppl shut them down, and I've seen ppl lose because they handled them poorly.
I really feel like the skill ceiling has gotten infinity higher with this expansion, only the best will prosper!
They'll probably wait for MLG Dallas to finish before making balance changes. A Terran should have won this tournament even in WoL (one might say they qualified because hellbats were too strong or something, but it's like the 10 best Terrans in the world), so it's not unfair if a Terran wins even if Terran turns out to be OP as fuck. :D
On March 15 2013 06:05 Seiniyta wrote: Grandmaster with all 3 races? Pretty awesome.
Yep + He was GM on the NA ladder before.
dayvie#947 is his NA account (which got to GM at least once on NA) but I guess he moved to KR server now (though I wonder if he plays with a lot of lag considering doesn't he stay at CA to work with Blizzard's Irvine HQ)?
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
See above.
Also David Kim was a former pro player AFAIK. He isn't just some random guy. Plus, David Kim is Korean.
I think it's entirely plausable. You forget, that he literally lives and breathes the game. He more than likely plays it a hell of a lot more than Thorzain/Sase whoever else they mentioned. He has to be good at the game as he's the balance designer, could you imagine how bad the game would be if they let a bronze player think up the balance changes?
As anyone who has matched him can tell you, the idea of him being GM on KR with one race, let alone 3, is a joke.
MVP is GM Terran (of course) and he used to off race frequently on Zerg and still own up on the GM ladder.
David Kim can do the same easily. Remember he was a former pro player plus "dayvie#947" his NA account used to frequently play and he got matched with top players all the time (you can add his account and check). Of course he no longer uses dayvie#947 (probably because everyone found out and kept spamming him with invites or something... this was before they added the ability to block invites and messages from non-friend listed players to battle.net).
I definitely think David Kim should stream to prove haters wrong.
Not sure about now but his dayvie#947 account was clearly GM level. In the beta, David Kim was almost untouchable for a decent amount too (he had like a 90%+ win rate on the beta) and he played Random there too (so it wasn't like he abused 1 supply 2 armor Roaches all beta or 11/11 every game, he played all 3 races with 90% win rate in the beta).
dayvie#947 is his NA account (which got to GM at least once on NA) but I guess he moved to KR server now (though I wonder if he plays with a lot of lag considering doesn't he stay at CA to work with Blizzard's Irvine HQ)?
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
See above.
Also David Kim was a former pro player AFAIK. He isn't just some random guy. Plus, David Kim is Korean.
Your ethnicity does not determine your skill... Beta GM doesn't qualify or provide proof of competence in an ever changing meta game.. he was GM 3 years ago, and this argument is brought up in my previous post. There's no proof that he even plays now days. And I wonder where this "Korean ID" is? If anyone should be balancing, it should be professionals from all races put together. Which would somewhat fight against self interest by having opinions from ALL races from players with proven competence .
What about instead of a burrow charge, a strait up, charge. It would displace enemy units that are in the way, so splitting or or having a think line of battle hellions wouldn't stop an ultralisk from reaching tanks. Probibally just as glitchy. It may have to walk over units then, doing trample damage.
dayvie#947 is his NA account (which got to GM at least once on NA) but I guess he moved to KR server now (though I wonder if he plays with a lot of lag considering doesn't he stay at CA to work with Blizzard's Irvine HQ)?
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
See above.
Also David Kim was a former pro player AFAIK. He isn't just some random guy. Plus, David Kim is Korean.
Your ethnicity does not determine your skill... Beta GM doesn't qualify or provide proof of competence in an ever changing meta game.. and there's no proof that he even plays now days. And I wonder where this "Korean ID" is? If anyone should be balancing, it should be professionals from all races put together. But then comes in the flaw in mankind. Self interest that causes conflict. Maybe I should just give up and become a politician lol.
Please don't.
On topic, being a good player doesn't make you qualified as a balance designer. Leave that to competent people and let IdrA whine all he wants on the ladder.
I personally think widow mine is ok, the splash damage cam be lowered but the aoe is fine imo Oracle should get a buff in its sustainability and lowers its dps. Ultra without charge is fine. If charge is back, then some nerf will be needed. It's very strong right now but charge would make it more specular to watch and play.
On topic, being a good player doesn't make you qualified as a balance designer. Leave that to competent people and let IdrA whine all he wants on the ladder.
Professional players understand the game in their respective races more than ANYONE, which is why I said professionals from all races put together. A congress of races, which would offset self interest to a degree. But professionals are the most credible in terms of their own races as they understand the learning processes and strategies required to reach the top level, regardless of how much they whine. This is a logical argument due to the fact that Idra would most likely mop the floor with most of us regardless of his attitude. Not to mention that Idra is not the only professional... Because Idra is a professional and whines, doesn't mean that ALL professionals are "whiners". That would be a silly assumption. Regardless, his competence in the game largely surpasses someone who doesn't play at all. And there is no proof that David Kim actually plays daily..
Not sure if charge is needed. Ultras do very well with the buffed damage. Blinding cloud just adds to that effectiveness. To have all three makes ultras a clear choice in every match up and will most likely need to be balanced again. Also, DK mentions his 'team of specialists'. Does it incorporate a balanced perspective of Pros from all three races? The evidence of some of the patches suggest otherwise.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
I just read through eight pages, waiting to get to the post made by the person who knows what 'noobexplosion' looks like in Korean, who actually looked up the list of GM players for each region and found David Kim's account. So disappoint.
Quite honestly, we all wanted charge back because it looked/felt cool and not much else. Blinding cloud provides the same service without all the headaches that come with it.
Are you seriously suggesting that David Kims job would be on the line had it become known that he was a master player? Besides, if you think about it, telling lies to the public will get you in more trouble than not being GM, even as a game balancer.
Yes because grand masters will 99% of the time beat regular masters unless they are roughly on the GM border. As a mid master I can tell you this from experience as I have a hard time achieving a 50% win rate at my own level. Let alone even ever meeting a GM...... http://sc2ranks.com/us/2833778/AkusTa
Therefore, depending on what kind of regular master player David Kim is, if he even is a master... I might be able to beat him as the skill curve is exponential. Master and GM make a HUGE difference. And we have players who spend every day playing the game who sometimes don't achieve GM, let alone all 3 races.. Wouldn't that be pathetic if regular players who are not professional could beat the game developer? He must lie. It is impossible to be professional tier at all 3 races. And IF he is GM, he cheesed his way there with no understanding for the game, if he didn't have someone place the account there for him. There is no 100% proof that he does his job unless he actually plays and allows us to see him. Which is definitely not the case. David Kim without a doubt would be crushed by ANY professional now days. His mechanics have most likely fell behind in the never ending race of improvement. Beta ranking has no relation to todays rankings. We have professionals that have fallen out unable to keep up with the best. Latest example, Jinro. Jinro would still mop the floor with me 99% of the time. Even if I'm mid master.. AND even if [David Kim] was grandmaster.. Grandmasters are mopped away by professionals. The only people credible for balancing the game FAIRLY are the very best players with a vote and voice from every race. But this will never happen. Additionally, nobody has found his "korean ID" yet. Who is this invisible team of developers David Kim talks about? Why aren't our professionals asked for their opinions? They know best don't they?
There is no doubt that David Kim is at the very least high master. It is confirmed that he was GM random once. Under Dayvie this is not in dispute.. Anyone who doubts his skill at this game clearly wasn't around during the WoL beta, the guy was untouchable during the WoL beta, he was universally regarded as the best player in the world by a vast margin. Obviously because he had played the game longer than anyone else Everyone who is able to get to GM once at any point in this game can make high master currently even with zero practice. If incontrol stopped playing today, came back in a year he would be high master within 70 games played no matter the balance patches. People who think DK is diamond are out of their mind. DK is at the very least high master and that he's GM on NA is certainly not inconceivable.
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.
On March 15 2013 06:34 Exarl25 wrote: Buff the Ultra? Are they crazy? That thing is monstrous right now. I always hated the idea of the burrow charge in the first place anyway. Zergs were forever complaining in WoL about Ultralisks getting stuck behind their other units so the solution is to essentially give it a teleport because god forbid Zerg players have to learn some basic army management?
tbh, the ultra gets pushed away by zerglings all the time
why is it so hard for them to make a code to let ultras walk over units that are smaller than them
What a joke. In your eyes it's pathetic if he's not GM, and equally pathetic if he is a GM cause he must have cheesed his way there.
Your argument is a joke as it holds no support to even be considered. David Kim is basically saying he is more credible than the professional players because he is a "GM in all 3 races" where there is no 100% proof of him being so. Unless you can prove this, then I will actually take your opinion as something even worth considering. Here is me beating a GM who fell out of practice which refutes SiskosGoatee's argument. But I am only mid master...
His record on his league history shows the deterioration of skill. Or maybe someone who got there with cheese. Whatever the case may be, even being a grandmaster in one race for a certain time period certainly does not make you credible forever, or even credible during that time period as we do not know the cause of the reason that he is there. Even professionals who have to practice every day and hide their build orders from opponents have more transparency than David Kim.. When was the last time we saw David Kim play a real game? Fooling around with a straw man on the battle report is not a real game..
Make Oracles cost 75 Gas, similar to the Gas cost of an Observer. Keep the Mineral cost the same, and it's still a decent investment. This makes it harder to decide whether to go for Obs or Oracle. As long as a Widow Mine or Spore Crawler/Queen are there to defend, it gets shut down. Eventually it will become common to always go for fast-mine or fast-spore, and then the Oracle will not be much more useful than an Observer.
Void Rays should take 3-5 seconds to Charge the Prismatic Alignment after activating it. I don't think the problem with WoL Voids was that you had to charge them up first, it was that you had to attack something to charge them up. Just require Protoss to activate the Prismatic Alignment about 5 seconds before engaging.
Widow Mines should have a slightly smaller Splash radius (equal to a Tank seems a bit much), but they should still do Splash damage. Maybe if Digging Claws made them fire a bit faster too, it would still be a good unit in late game.
Bring the Ultralisk Charge back yes!! But I think you should require players to Burrow the Ultralisk manually, and then be able to Charge at any unit within range. This would add better micro, and not just make it A-move.
Another change that would make lategame more interesting would to make Blinding Cloud cut all Range in Half but allow it to affect Air. This would make it a more versatile spell that pairs well with Fungal. It would be more useful vs Skytoss, and less useful vs Tank/Bio. Which is exactly what the spell needs.
A glaring problem when spectating PvP (it will get more noticable as time goes on) is that it can be very hard to tell which Mothership Core casted Time Warp. For any newer player watching a tournament for the first time, they will not understand this spell at all. (Remember the way MSC used to spin when it used Envision? How about bringing back the spinning for Time Warp? It would look cooler anyway.)
Also, make Afterburners require 10 Medivac Energy to use.. please. It's not a lot of Energy.. I don't think it should be. But it makes it a far more interesting ability than a cooldown.
Anyway, I don't think you realize that DK has a full time job.
Maybe I should reword that sentence. David Kim's position is 'commonly' justified by his own statement of being "GM in all 3 races". I understand he has a full time job [and that is why he should not be the one dealing with balance]<(Mistake, the MAIN problem is that there isn't transparency of his actual job. He therefore is not credible for balancing the game due to his inability to show transparency in his ability to play and understand the game at professional level) but rather the professional players themselves as a collective group as they are the most experienced in terms of understanding the game. But of course that's not the way it works. This was the same problem in creating the constitution (in terms of where to relegate power) of the US. A distant and busy federal government that doesn't understand local conditions as opposed to the articles of confederation that allowed the local governments to understand local conditions best. A deal was made and the states got certain rights while the fed got other rights which created our balanced system of government. This is the same problem in terms of the authority being provided to David Kim who has not proven to have understanding of the game. Except there is no solution cause the players really have no say in it, except for maybe protest which could hamper their profits. Additionally, nobody is really protesting, except maybe Ryung and his incident in GSL. In terms of David Kim's position as balancer of the game, I very much believe that the pros would not agree with it. And although I cannot speak on behalf of the pros, I think there might be a possibility of this due to this. http://touhonoob.mykomica.org/starcraft/src/1354369161734.jpg
Ridiculous statement. That's not how the SC2 team works, at all.
You caught me. That's me just trying to grab some attention, and lacking a little research in some areas... However, wouldn't you agree that the team is not as transparent as it could be? But I think I'm done for tonight. I hope I did provoke some discussion though. Night everyone
Are you seriously suggesting that David Kims job would be on the line had it become known that he was a master player? Besides, if you think about it, telling lies to the public will get you in more trouble than not being GM, even as a game balancer.
Yes because grand masters will 99% of the time beat regular masters unless they are roughly on the GM border. As a mid master I can tell you this from experience as I have a hard time achieving a 50% win rate at my own level. Let alone even ever meeting a GM...... http://sc2ranks.com/us/2833778/AkusTa
Therefore, depending on what kind of regular master player David Kim is, if he even is a master... I might be able to beat him as the skill curve is exponential. Master and GM make a HUGE difference. And we have players who spend every day playing the game who sometimes don't achieve GM, let alone all 3 races.. Wouldn't that be pathetic if regular players who are not professional could beat the game developer? He must lie. It is impossible to be professional tier at all 3 races. And IF he is GM, he cheesed his way there with no understanding for the game, if he didn't have someone place the account there for him. There is no 100% proof that he does his job unless he actually plays and allows us to see him. Which is definitely not the case. David Kim without a doubt would be crushed by ANY professional now days. His mechanics have most likely fell behind in the never ending race of improvement. Beta ranking has no relation to todays rankings. We have professionals that have fallen out unable to keep up with the best. Latest example, Jinro. Jinro would still mop the floor with me 99% of the time. Even if I'm mid master.. AND even if [David Kim] was grandmaster.. Grandmasters are mopped away by professionals. The only people credible for balancing the game FAIRLY are the very best players with a vote and voice from every race. But this will never happen. Additionally, nobody has found his "korean ID" yet. Who is this invisible team of developers David Kim talks about? Why aren't our professionals asked for their opinions? They know best don't they?
What a trash post... You have at least 50% winrate no matter what. You can't have "a hard time achieving" it. How hardcore you want to play is up to you.
Wouldn't that be pathetic if regular players who are not professional could beat the game developer?
What the fuck are you talking about... You probably forgot a negation or something, but yeah, players are supposed to beat game developers. It has always been the case, in all games.
He must lie. It is impossible to be professional tier at all 3 races.
AND even if [David Kim] was grandmaster.. Grandmasters are mopped away by professionals.
You make it sound like David Kim being GM would make him professional level, then 3 sentences later say that GMs are "mopped away by professionals".
David Kim without a doubt would be crushed by ANY professional now days.
No shit Sherlock. David Kim is not a professional player, he's being paid as a Blizzard employee remember? And afaik, there is no professional player that would lose to amateurs (barring extremely skilled and talented ones who could go pro anyway but have something else to do). You don't pay or sponsor someone if they're bad. Professional players who have "fallen out" are not professional anymore, that's how it works.
The only people credible for balancing the game FAIRLY are the very best players with a vote and voice from every race.
Again, no. Bolding and caps locking doesn't make it more right.
Why aren't our professionals asked for their opinions?
They are, in fact, Blizzard has a special forum for pros, and David Kim often discusses directly with pros.
Now, the worst of all:
There is no 100% proof that he does his job unless he actually plays
His fucking job is not to play the game, and certainly not as a professional (because that would be in essence absurd). He's there to design a game, make sure it's enjoyable to play for everyone (not only good players), and try to make it so that it's as balanced as possible. His ladder rank doesn't put his job on the line, ultimately the overall SC2 gameplay is. If it's good, he's doing a good job, if it's bad, he's not, and he could be GSL champion for all I care, it wouldn't change that. Of course, being a decent player and getting feedback from pros does help his job, but he should not being judged for it.
Your only redeeming quality is that you're a decent master Terran, props to you for that.
Edit:
I understand he has a full time job [and that is why he should not be the one dealing with balance]
David Kim's job is "Game Balance Designer". You are ridiculous, you think he sells apples on the market or something?
Are you seriously suggesting that David Kims job would be on the line had it become known that he was a master player? Besides, if you think about it, telling lies to the public will get you in more trouble than not being GM, even as a game balancer.
Yes because grand masters will 99% of the time beat regular masters unless they are roughly on the GM border. As a mid master I can tell you this from experience as I have a hard time achieving a 50% win rate at my own level. Let alone even ever meeting a GM...... http://sc2ranks.com/us/2833778/AkusTa
Therefore, depending on what kind of regular master player David Kim is, if he even is a master... I might be able to beat him as the skill curve is exponential. Master and GM make a HUGE difference. And we have players who spend every day playing the game who sometimes don't achieve GM, let alone all 3 races.. Wouldn't that be pathetic if regular players who are not professional could beat the game developer? He must lie. It is impossible to be professional tier at all 3 races. And IF he is GM, he cheesed his way there with no understanding for the game, if he didn't have someone place the account there for him. There is no 100% proof that he does his job unless he actually plays and allows us to see him. Which is definitely not the case. David Kim without a doubt would be crushed by ANY professional now days. His mechanics have most likely fell behind in the never ending race of improvement. Beta ranking has no relation to todays rankings. We have professionals that have fallen out unable to keep up with the best. Latest example, Jinro. Jinro would still mop the floor with me 99% of the time. Even if I'm mid master.. AND even if [David Kim] was grandmaster.. Grandmasters are mopped away by professionals. The only people credible for balancing the game FAIRLY are the very best players with a vote and voice from every race. But this will never happen. Additionally, nobody has found his "korean ID" yet. Who is this invisible team of developers David Kim talks about? Why aren't our professionals asked for their opinions? They know best don't they?
What a trash post... You have at least 50% winrate no matter what. You can't have "a hard time achieving" it. How hardcore you want to play is up to you.
Wouldn't that be pathetic if regular players who are not professional could beat the game developer?
What the fuck are you talking about... You probably forgot a negation or something, but yeah, players are supposed to beat game developers. It has always been the case, in all games.
David Kim without a doubt would be crushed by ANY professional now days.
No shit Sherlock. David Kim is not a professional player, he's being paid as a Blizzard employee remember? And afaik, there is no professional player that would lose to amateurs (barring extremely skilled and talented ones who could go pro anyway but have something else to do). You don't pay or sponsor someone if they're bad. Professional players who have "fallen out" are not professional anymore, that's how it works.
There is no 100% proof that he does his job unless he actually plays
His fucking job is not to play the game, and certainly not as a professional (because that would be in essence absurd). He's there to design a game, make sure it's enjoyable to play for everyone (not only good players), and try to make it so that it's as balanced as possible. His ladder rank doesn't put his job on the line, ultimately the overall SC2 gameplay is. If it's good, he's doing a good job, if it's bad, he's not, and he could be GSL champion for all I care, it wouldn't change that. Of course, being a decent player and getting feedback from pros does help his job, but he should not being judged for it.
Your only redeeming quality is that you're a decent master Terran, props to you for that.
I understand he has a full time job [and that is why he should not be the one dealing with balance]
David Kim's job is "Game Balance Designer". You are ridiculous, you think he sells apples on the market or something?
Nicely summarized.
It hurts my head how dumb people are if they think that you have to be a top pro to balance the game. Most pros would be terrible game designers / balancers.
Again, no. Bolding and caps locking doesn't make it more right.
Pointing out that "Bolding and caps locking doesn't make it more right" (neither was that the intention as you assumed, but rather to put more focus on fairness.) does not refute my point that professionals are more credible to balance the game than he is. All of your other points are sensible in that, yes he is an employee and his job is not to play, because yes, it is out of his capability. The point I was trying to prove is that "professionals are more credible to balance the game than he is." But we do not see transparency as an obvious thing. We do not see the results of the input of professional players as the results of our balances. We only see the changes, and nothing more. If you could direct me to this special forum that might show transparency, I'd agree with your argument completely. The most common justification I've seen so far for his position however is his own statement of "GM in all 3 races." and just people saying whatever they want to say without concise proof. Additionally, you cannot completely understand a game if you do not play it.. This fact becomes more relevant as you become better because mechanics and the human limit is mostly understood by the actual players, and real strategy is only seen by the actual players due to their shifting focus based on the human capacity for attention which also changes as you start intuitively feeling the game, which leads to new understanding. David Kim balancing the game is like our guys in congress trying to fix ALLL the problems without actually seeing the local conditions.
Again, no. Bolding and caps locking doesn't make it more right.
Pointing out that "Bolding and caps locking doesn't make it more right" (neither was that the intention as you assumed, but rather to put more focus on fairness.) does not refute my point that professionals are more credible to balance the game than he is. All of your other points are sensible in that, yes he is an employee and his job is not to play, because yes, it is out of his capability. The point I was trying to prove is that "professionals are more credible to balance the game than he is." But we do not see transparency as an obvious thing. We do not see the results of the input of professional players as the results of our balances. We only see the changes, and nothing more. If you could direct me to this special forum that might show transparency, I'd agree with your argument completely. The most common justification I've seen so far for his position however is his own statement of "GM in all 3 races." and just people saying whatever they want to say without concise proof.
Do you want David Kim to be like "Oh yeah, MC said Protoss should get insta-nukes, and after lots of testing, we agreed with this and added that in!"
??
I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish here.
It hurts my head how dumb people are if they think that you have to be a top pro to balance the game. Most pros would be terrible game designers / balancers.
I'm just going to quote this for truth.
If you let professional basketball players balance basketball, Dwayne Wade would ban hand-checking and Dwight Howard would ban zone defences.
'Professionals' in any field mask their biases and self-interest with false objectivity. If IdrA was Protoss, I'm sure he could construct a thoughtful, coherent 15 minute defense of Skytoss and explain why it is balanced.
All the things about "power at low league vs high league" really shows that there are some things badly wrong with the game. That was kinda obvious from the beginning and sadly they dont want to fix those things. Not smart.
David Kim does not have the competence to understand the game at the same capacity at which the professionals do.
I would actually agree with that. Indeed, David Kim probably doesn't know how the game is optimally played as well as professionals. However you must not confuse "gameplay skill" (physical speed, decision making, metagame, micro etc...) with "game design" skill. David Kim is paid to create a good game for every race, in short, to ensure that everyone (including professionals) is having fun and showing interesting gameplay, each at their own level. You don't need to be #1 GM to be good at this. I would even say that it would make you biased and forget about 90% of Starcraft player base.
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.
However, I think they have a tendency to not want to revert changes, no matter bad they turned out to be :p. And I wouldn't read too much into David Kim claiming he's GM level in all 3 races. He's probably at least high masters and has been official GM in the past, that's good enough. Remember that Day9 also claimed that he was at some point GM level for all races...
>The game globally balanced, I repeat, the game is globally balanced.
Game shouldn't be balanced around lower levels of play in sea/NA. It should be balanced around top KR.
>To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
>To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
Once again, why are they balancing for bronze >.>
You do realize this paragraph mentions that he thinks the unit needs a buff for top level play right?
On March 15 2013 15:45 Misacampo wrote: Things I don't like.
>The game globally balanced, I repeat, the game is globally balanced.
Game shouldn't be balanced around lower levels of play in sea/NA. It should be balanced around top KR.
>To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
Once again, why are they balancing for bronze >.>
Once again, professional, Grandmaster players from Korea only account for 200 - 500 people, out of the millions of existing players, and millions more potential users and spectators.
Making the game only fun or playable for the handful of professional diehard nerds that play it 50+ hours a week is like eSports getting a Born to Lose tattoo on it's forehead.
I'm a little tickled that he took the time to mention that hellbats are fine without even commenting on medivacs.
Good interview though. Most of what he says makes a lot of sense, actually. I wouldn't mind a little more umph behind the ultralisks, from the protoss perspective. Ultras make for fun games. And yeah, sadly, GGrays can't keep giving me free wins forever
>To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
Once again, why are they balancing for bronze >.>
You do realize this paragraph mentions that he thinks the unit needs a buff for top level play right?
yes but he's saying he doesn't want to do it because it makes low level players sad
It hurts my head how dumb people are if they think that you have to be a top pro to balance the game. Most pros would be terrible game designers / balancers.
'Professionals' in any field mask their biases and self-interest with false objectivity. If IdrA was Protoss, I'm sure he could construct a thoughtful, coherent 15 minute defense of Skytoss and explain why it is balanced.
This is what we call a faulty assumption. If IdrA retained his skill but was being paid to design the game then I can assure that he would eliminate any conscious bias.
It's undeniable that professionals understand the game better than plat random players like Browder, however playing at a professional level does not = biased. Idra is biased because that's how he vents in casual form, but it has nothing to do with his skill level.
On March 15 2013 15:45 Misacampo wrote: Things I don't like.
>The game globally balanced, I repeat, the game is globally balanced.
Game shouldn't be balanced around lower levels of play in sea/NA. It should be balanced around top KR.
>To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
Once again, why are they balancing for bronze >.>
Once again, professional, Grandmaster players from Korea only account for 200 - 500 people, out of the millions of existing players, and millions more potential users and spectators.
Making the game only fun or playable for the handful of professional diehard nerds that play it 50+ hours a week is like eSports getting a Born to Lose tattoo on it's forehead.
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.
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.
Oh and blinding cloud.. Actually Viper has so many counters it's not even funny.
On March 15 2013 14:55 Rabiator wrote: All the things about "power at low league vs high league" really shows that there are some things badly wrong with the game. That was kinda obvious from the beginning and sadly they dont want to fix those things. Not smart.
There is something "badly wrong" because some units require more skill to use or defend against?
It hurts my head how dumb people are if they think that you have to be a top pro to balance the game. Most pros would be terrible game designers / balancers.
'Professionals' in any field mask their biases and self-interest with false objectivity. If IdrA was Protoss, I'm sure he could construct a thoughtful, coherent 15 minute defense of Skytoss and explain why it is balanced.
This is what we call a faulty assumption. If IdrA retained his skill but was being paid to design the game then I can assure you that he would not be biased.
It's undeniable that professionals understand the game better than plat random players like Browder, however playing at a professional level does not = biased. Idra is biased because that's how he vents in casual form, but it has nothing to do with his skill level.
I think the greatest fallacy — in any profession — is that the more skilled and knowledgeable someone is in their field, the more objective they are.
I'm just saying that you can't assume someone is more objective just because they're more knowledgeable or capable . There's a lot of people that are great at what they do but lie to themselves constantly.
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
On March 15 2013 15:45 Misacampo wrote: Things I don't like.
>The game globally balanced, I repeat, the game is globally balanced.
Game shouldn't be balanced around lower levels of play in sea/NA. It should be balanced around top KR.
It gets balanced for the top players, but also for other leagues. Blizzard said several times in formal interviews – that one here is informal – that the highest level of play gets prioritized. But they also aim to balance it for lower leagues.
If would be irresponsible to leave a glaring low-level balancing issue to make one race OP in that skillrange, so that players of the other races abandon the game.
Lets even consider that a small balance issue is left for top-tier players, to create balance for lower leagues. That still could be overall a good thing. Because glaring imbalance at low levels = less players = less views = less tournament prize money = less esports.
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).
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.
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.
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 ...
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.'
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.
Consider 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.
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.
Consider 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.
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
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.
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.
Consider 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?
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.
Consider 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 ...
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.
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.
Consider 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.
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.
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.
Consider 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.
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.
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....
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.
Can you guys tell me what you think of this idea to balance the Medivac boost?
Instead of being instant LUDICROUS SPEED--how about reducing the acceleration? Something more in line with how the Phoenix flies around. So instead of abusing the cooldown to teleport between drop points, its main utility is to get from Extraction Point to Drop Off Point--your Main to his Main (because waypointing around the edge of the map = takes a long time for the drop to hit). In my opinion, the instant effect of the afterburners makes it look silly and arcade-like too.
If you people keep asking for nerfs, you gonna destroy this game. Becareful what you wish for.
Widow mine nerfed? guess what, All you gonna see is WOL style terran, no new units Medicvac speed nerf? Ask anybody if they can tell the difference between WOL and HOTS if that was to happen
People will keep asking for terran nerfs, until terrans are where they were in WOL: the race they had 80% winrate against (seriously, how many people I heard talking about their huge winrate vs terran, it made me puke).
These statements are really annoying and should have been put down long ago. Nerfs are another valid tool to use and GomTvT wasn't much better than swarm season whatever revisionists will say. I hope blizz gets balance handle quickly because this game won't have the honeymoon good will WoL had.
please blizzard, with respect to the ultra, i couldnt care less about charge atm, please just make these vastly needed changes:
(1) have the ultra make a different SOUND when it attacks. compare the sound it makes in sc2 to sc1...fucking jokes, man.
(2) do something about how stupid the ultra looks whenever it does a sharp turn. for fuck's sake, its supposed to inspire fear, not awkwardness and laughter.
(3) change its fucking appearance. make the collector's edition version the default version or something. am i the only one who thinks the ultra looks fucking retarded, somewhat cartoonish even and not even remotely badass in sc2?
please. ultras are supposed to be badass. its like blizz took the ultras from sc1 and gave them an extra chromosome, if zerg even have those...bleh.
On March 15 2013 06:13 geokilla wrote: I'm not so sure Bronze players should be considered with balance for unit nerfing or buffing, such as the Oracle. With Bronze league, I feel the bigger problem is macroing properly and knowing what the general builds are.
I have a friend playing HOTS and he goes like 1 base 6 rax. Ya it gets the job done, but it's not viable in the long term if your opponent can muster a sufficient defense.
The problem is will a protoss ever switch into a macro game, when his proxy oracle is so much more effective? Will he invest all the time to reach a similar level when the same performance can be reached so easily? As I heard Bronze is cheese vs cheese all day anyway. And you can go to Master with cheese only (even grandmaster, but then you need to be a really good cheeser I assume). Macro games will be more fun to the players, but nobody likes getting crushed by players he could easily beat before and cheese gets boring faster as all games are the same.
Yes because hell advance the ladder until it stops working and he platues.... Duh
On March 15 2013 17:58 Chicken Chaser wrote: Can you guys tell me what you think of this idea to balance the Medivac boost?
Instead of being instant LUDICROUS SPEED--how about reducing the acceleration? Something more in line with how the Phoenix flies around. So instead of abusing the cooldown to teleport between drop points, its main utility is to get from Extraction Point to Drop Off Point--your Main to his Main (because waypointing around the edge of the map = takes a long time for the drop to hit). In my opinion, the instant effect of the afterburners makes it look silly and arcade-like too.
Yeah I think medivac speed is too over the top.
IMHO it should be 3 secs worth of 'extra speed boost' , I think the 'boost' speed should be nerfed its ridiculously fast.
On March 15 2013 18:59 Addicted2Dreaming wrote: please blizzard, with respect to the ultra, i couldnt care less about charge atm, please just make these vastly needed changes:
(1) have the ultra make a different SOUND when it attacks. compare the sound it makes in sc2 to sc1...fucking jokes, man.
(2) do something about how stupid the ultra looks whenever it does a sharp turn. for fuck's sake, its supposed to inspire fear, not awkwardness and laughter.
(3) change its fucking appearance. make the collector's edition version the default version or something. am i the only one who thinks the ultra looks fucking retarded, somewhat cartoonish even and not even remotely badass in sc2?
please. ultras are supposed to be badass. its like blizz took the ultras from sc1 and gave them an extra chromosome, if zerg even have those...bleh.
Yes you are the only one. Ultras look great and the collectors edition is fucking awful
On March 15 2013 18:59 Addicted2Dreaming wrote: please blizzard, with respect to the ultra, i couldnt care less about charge atm, please just make these vastly needed changes:
(1) have the ultra make a different SOUND when it attacks. compare the sound it makes in sc2 to sc1...fucking jokes, man.
(2) do something about how stupid the ultra looks whenever it does a sharp turn. for fuck's sake, its supposed to inspire fear, not awkwardness and laughter.
(3) change its fucking appearance. make the collector's edition version the default version or something. am i the only one who thinks the ultra looks fucking retarded, somewhat cartoonish even and not even remotely badass in sc2?
please. ultras are supposed to be badass. its like blizz took the ultras from sc1 and gave them an extra chromosome, if zerg even have those...bleh.
Yes you are the only one. Ultras look great and the collectors edition is fucking awful
Agreed. I always thought ultras were the coolest looking zerg unit in SC2, a vast improvement over SC1.
On March 15 2013 17:39 Zerg.Zilla wrote: So David Kim thinks medivacs are fine? :/
I think he thinks medivacs are fucking fun to watch and use again, and keep the game from becoming stagnant.
Whether or not they're actually balanced ...
well, from IEM they feel a lot like mutalisk vs Protoss in TvP, which is not fun to watch. Protoss has to turtle hard for 5mins or more to not straight up lose - which is not very exciting to watch.
In the other matchups I think they create interesting gameplay. Also we may see if Protoss can figure faster feedback, blink or air openings to deal with them. It's much too early too call whether gameplay will stay the same whackamole-type of style or improve.
People crying about medavac boost need to learn2play. Terrans were always hugely crippled on large maps because of their game mechanics. On even macro, a terran army is always effectively smaller than a zerg/toss because of travel distance. Huge Gom Maps like Atlantis spaceship were always a huge disadvantage for terrans.
With the medavac speed boost, map design is opened up as they can really increase the size of the map. Protoss/Zerg/Meching Terrans can't just take free 3rds and 4ths anymore against a terran player on large maps.
And while drops are faster, every race has the tools to stop them. Don't think you can be as greedy as you could be in WOL. Balance is more even during game phases now (Early, middle, late) and requires all players to do well in each phase in order to do well (bye bye turtling broodlord/infestor zergs, you will not be missed).
If David Kim thinks people are not reacting to mines correctly AND he's GM on kr server, I say Blizzard should let him play a couple of showmatches with pro terrans as P/Z so we can all be enlightened as to how to deal with those pesky mine drops
On March 15 2013 23:30 uh-oh wrote: If David Kim thinks people are not reacting to mines correctly AND he's GM on kr server, I say Blizzard should let him play a couple of showmatches with pro terrans as P/Z so we can all be enlightened as to how to deal with those pesky mine drops
Yeah instead let's just nerf everything to shit because people can't be bothered to work on new ideas to deal with strats anymore. I thought this was the mindset we were trying to get rid of?
On March 15 2013 23:30 uh-oh wrote: If David Kim thinks people are not reacting to mines correctly AND he's GM on kr server, I say Blizzard should let him play a couple of showmatches with pro terrans as P/Z so we can all be enlightened as to how to deal with those pesky mine drops
Yeah instead let's just nerf everything to shit because people can't be bothered to work on new ideas to deal with strats anymore. I thought this was the mindset we were trying to get rid of?
Clearlly Blizzard should nerf everything to the point where no one can be agressive ever again. Then we will be back to late 2012 all over again.
As a Protoss player in mid to high masters as we speak in HotS I can't see any reason to nerf either medivacs or widow mines. It's harder to play against good drop play than before, but it's still possible. Just like many terran opponents are slowly realising Protoss can be dangerously aggressive early on with 1 base with hidden/proxy stargate openings. Likewise, I see no reason to nerf the Void Ray or the Oracle. A lot of players are notoriously slow to react to changes and many others are still experimenting. It's nothing new for those who played beta but I've had tons of success in early to mid games by making nothing but Zealots and Oracles (~5 or 6) and then adding in some Phoenix, upgrading to chargelot and getting Archons and Storm, and I've gotten tons of whine from Terrans how everything should be nerfed. Oracles do high dps while offering detection and utility in the form of envision while also being flying and fast to react to threats, Phoenix chase down medivacs and blow them up and in other situations can lift tanks or other dangerous units, Zealots just tank everything and later on the Archons and Templars do the heavy lifting. If game goes to 3 base and higher u can just add couple Robos for Colossus production.
Despite Blizzard getting stuff wrong every now and then I'm with David Kim in that we need to wait a good couple months before jumping into any kind of conclusions.
I feel like there's a similar situation now with widow mines/medivacs, they add so much to the liveliness of the game. If they get nerfed we might see the game get more stagnate, and arguably more boring. Early aggression adds a lot of diversity to the game, it might mean that some builds could dominate certain periods of time but stuff gets figured out in timely manner anyway.
GM with all 3 races on KR sever? Man must be good! This heartens me, perhaps there are some in blizzard who understand the game from a player point of view rather than pure development! I agree with him that we should wait and see what happens, atleast a season of play is needed before any decisions are made? Surely? Give people time to adapt/steal idea's off pro's :D
On March 15 2013 23:59 Andr3 wrote: Which TvZ did you guys like more?
Queen buff or no queen buff?
I feel like there's a similar situation now with widow mines/medivacs, they add so much to the liveliness of the game. If they get nerfed we might see the game get more stagnate, and arguably more boring. Early aggression adds a lot of diversity to the game, it might mean that some builds could dominate certain periods of time but stuff gets figured out in timely manner anyway.
I agree. Though the buffed drop play can sometimes be frustrating to play against, it adds a lot of diversity and fun as a spectator. Also it shouldn't be forgotten that protoss defense got buffed heavily with mothership core. So it should be possible to adapt to the new terran aggression.
On March 15 2013 23:46 xyzz wrote: As a Protoss player in mid to high masters as we speak in HotS I can't see any reason to nerf either medivacs or widow mines. It's harder to play against good drop play than before, but it's still possible. Just like many terran opponents are slowly realising Protoss can be dangerously aggressive early on with 1 base with hidden/proxy stargate openings. Likewise, I see no reason to nerf the Void Ray or the Oracle. A lot of players are notoriously slow to react to changes and many others are still experimenting. It's nothing new for those who played beta but I've had tons of success in early to mid games by making nothing but Zealots and Oracles (~5 or 6) and then adding in some Phoenix, upgrading to chargelot and getting Archons and Storm, and I've gotten tons of whine from Terrans how everything should be nerfed. Oracles do high dps while offering detection and utility in the form of envision while also being flying and fast to react to threats, Phoenix chase down medivacs and blow them up and in other situations can lift tanks or other dangerous units, Zealots just tank everything and later on the Archons and Templars do the heavy lifting. If game goes to 3 base and higher u can just add couple Robos for Colossus production.
Despite Blizzard getting stuff wrong every now and then I'm with David Kim in that we need to wait a good couple months before jumping into any kind of conclusions.
You should go to Korea and coach thoses rookie Korean protoss like Parting, they sure need a little bit of help and mighty wisdom from you sir.
On March 15 2013 23:59 Andr3 wrote: Which TvZ did you guys like more?
Queen buff or no queen buff?
I feel like there's a similar situation now with widow mines/medivacs, they add so much to the liveliness of the game. If they get nerfed we might see the game get more stagnate, and arguably more boring. Early aggression adds a lot of diversity to the game, it might mean that some builds could dominate certain periods of time but stuff gets figured out in timely manner anyway.
I agree. Though the buffed drop play can sometimes be frustrating to play against, it adds a lot of diversity and fun as a spectator. Also it shouldn't be forgotten that protoss defense got buffed heavily with mothership core. So it should be possible to adapt to the new terran aggression.
Even if it is IMBA, I think they have tons of options for how to fix it. I would like them to change the turn radius for a boosted medivac, so they control differently, rather than just being super fast. It would still give the terran the ability to make amazing drops in the late game, but would also make the ability a bit riskier to use form a control standpoint. It would also make it so they can't turn on a dime, which would give the prepared player the ability to punish it.
Hmm fungal growth plus corruption should take care of voidray's(if you can keep the infestors alive long enough, i guess) Havent tried it yet,so not sure.
I guess they'll do what they'll do, it's just sad we are already nerfing away many possibilities these units woul bring. If and when medivac boosters are nerfed I will likely quit this game depending on how severe it is. There are no players anymore who want to scout and figure out the best plan, the only want for easy expansions and their mineral dump units to counter all early aggression ( queen, ling, marine, zealot). God forbid terran use anything besides hellion banshee or hellion bio openings, because those are too hard to defend with a swell of lings + a spine or two
On one side widow mines add "life" to the game. On the other side they make a lot of zerg agreession/harass very risky and even less efficient. So it's little one sided, and in the end I think they will lead to more turtling. Terrans will go "hey I can take 3 bases really fast" and zerg will go "I can't move out, I guess I'll stay home and macro".
On March 15 2013 23:59 Andr3 wrote: Which TvZ did you guys like more?
Queen buff or no queen buff?
I feel like there's a similar situation now with widow mines/medivacs, they add so much to the liveliness of the game. If they get nerfed we might see the game get more stagnate, and arguably more boring. Early aggression adds a lot of diversity to the game, it might mean that some builds could dominate certain periods of time but stuff gets figured out in timely manner anyway.
I agree. Though the buffed drop play can sometimes be frustrating to play against, it adds a lot of diversity and fun as a spectator. Also it shouldn't be forgotten that protoss defense got buffed heavily with mothership core. So it should be possible to adapt to the new terran aggression.
Even if it is IMBA, I think they have tons of options for how to fix it. I would like them to change the turn radius for a boosted medivac, so they control differently, rather than just being super fast. It would still give the terran the ability to make amazing drops in the late game, but would also make the ability a bit riskier to use form a control standpoint. It would also make it so they can't turn on a dime, which would give the prepared player the ability to punish it.
First time I read that, sounds like a really good idea and physically it makes sense.
On March 16 2013 02:07 Sapphire.lux wrote: "rise of the Terran mech" ? Where? On ladder?
Let's see how the korean terrans play this week-end, I'll be very disappointed if all of them stick to bio-builds in TvZ (I gave up on mech TvP).
The problem with speedvacs are that they can bypass defensive structures and well positioned units. Dropships should take advantage of lack of defensive structures and well positioned units not ignore them at just speed boost over them.
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.
Consider 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.
They don't need to buff the oracle, they need to change it... Entomb was better than the current abilities, but if they don't like entomb than think of SOMETHING creative that isn't another damage based harassment ability.
On March 16 2013 13:53 osiris17 wrote: They don't need to buff the oracle, they need to change it... Entomb was better than the current abilities, but if they don't like entomb than think of SOMETHING creative that isn't another damage based harassment ability.
Dont see why the can't add another spell, make it researchable.
They had a problem with entomb for being too boring, so they replaced it with a much simpler, more boring ability that overlaps with the other air units, particularly the phoenix... And now the ability is not working the way it was intended. Better to scrap the ability and bring back Entomb along with a new spell. Now that would solve the problem. There are even ways of spicing up entomb... for instance make it effect 1 mineral patch, cost much less energy, and have a much lower cooldown ... So that harassing minerals requires micro and harassment.
There is so much potential for creativity with the oracle, but blizzard wants to make everyone happy from bronze to GM, and as a consequence they're afraid to be creative.
On March 16 2013 14:16 osiris17 wrote: They had a problem with entomb for being too boring, so they replaced it with a much simpler, more boring ability that overlaps with the other air units, particularly the phoenix... And now the ability is not working the way it was intended. Better to scrap the ability and bring back Entomb along with a new spell. Now that would solve the problem. There are even ways of spicing up entomb... for instance make it effect 1 mineral patch, cost much less energy, and have a much lower cooldown ... So that harassing minerals requires micro and harassment.
There is so much potential for creativity with the oracle, but blizzard wants to make everyone happy from bronze to GM, and as a consequence they're afraid to be creative.
I think the best way to make entomb work is give the shields 200 HP and cost 30 energy to cast, it only covers one mineral patch but at least this way it costs some APM to actually expel and you have the potential to get 6/8s of the minerals at a base. Give it a short casting range (maybe 2 or 3) and allow shield upgrades to scale with it.
Entomb was bad because it is an attack against the ground which will never move. I'm not a big fan of the current oracle, but at least it isn't entomb. Burst shot would be better than all this continous laser fire that plagues Protoss units.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
It's not necessarily BS -- there are occasionally GM players who play Random that pop up. Aside from this one former Code A Korean whose name escapes me at the moment (I believe he was a Terran in GSL/GSTL though), but then switched to random and , they're generally not at the same level as the mid-tier pros that you named, but it's certainly possible to play at least at GM level with all 3 collectively, at least outside of Korea.
I don't know if this has been discussed already (I only read up to page 3 or so), but where does David Kim live? In California, right? (I assume?) I think we should assume that he's low GM on all three races in the NA server, and that his user ID is written in Korean. If that's possible.
Otherwise, I don't see why he would be laddering up to GM on the EU or SEA or KR server from California/Blizzard HQ.
On March 16 2013 15:06 Falling wrote: Entomb was bad because it is an attack against the ground which will never move. I'm not a big fan of the current oracle, but at least it isn't entomb. Burst shot would be better than all this continous laser fire that plagues Protoss units.
It's an attack against mining minerals. My problem with the unit is not its efficacy. That can be adjusted through stats. My problem is the unit is simply boring and uninspired. At least we agree the unit needs a change.
On March 16 2013 16:29 MannerMule wrote: If they nerf the widow mines blast radius why don't they allow the player to micro the widow mine attack
I think this is a great idea. Either the ability to pick a target, or even better - hold fire/stop lurker capability. It would make them useful in more situations and more fun to watch, but balanced out by nerfed AoE and/or damage.
On March 16 2013 16:29 MannerMule wrote: If they nerf the widow mines blast radius why don't they allow the player to micro the widow mine attack
I think this is a great idea. Either the ability to pick a target, or even better - hold fire/stop lurker capability. It would make them useful in more situations and more fun to watch, but balanced out by nerfed AoE and/or damage.
On March 16 2013 16:29 MannerMule wrote: If they nerf the widow mines blast radius why don't they allow the player to micro the widow mine attack
I think this is a great idea. Either the ability to pick a target, or even better - hold fire/stop lurker capability. It would make them useful in more situations and more fun to watch, but balanced out by nerfed AoE and/or damage.
You can do that already.
Which, target fire or hold fire? Or both? Sorry, I haven't gotten a chance to play with mines much yet, I thought I read that you couldn't.
On March 16 2013 16:29 MannerMule wrote: If they nerf the widow mines blast radius why don't they allow the player to micro the widow mine attack
I think this is a great idea. Either the ability to pick a target, or even better - hold fire/stop lurker capability. It would make them useful in more situations and more fun to watch, but balanced out by nerfed AoE and/or damage.
You can do that already.
Which, target fire or hold fire? Or both? Sorry, I haven't gotten a chance to play with mines much yet, I thought I read that you couldn't.
When a unit comes in range of the Widow Mine, there is about a second delay before it actually attacks.
During this time, you can select the Widow Mine, and (with it still selected) right click on a unit.
The Widow Mine will attack the targeted unit (if it's it was in its attack range when you clicked on the unit).
To keep the Widow Mine from attacking, keep telling the Widow Mine to switch targets (though this requires a lot of clicks and requires at least two units).
They could give the Widow Mine the "Hold Fire" and "Weapons Free" abilities from the Ghost (which prevents auto attacking; or something similar since Widow Mine's ability is technically a spell).
On March 16 2013 16:29 MannerMule wrote: If they nerf the widow mines blast radius why don't they allow the player to micro the widow mine attack
I think this is a great idea. Either the ability to pick a target, or even better - hold fire/stop lurker capability. It would make them useful in more situations and more fun to watch, but balanced out by nerfed AoE and/or damage.
You can do that already.
Which, target fire or hold fire? Or both? Sorry, I haven't gotten a chance to play with mines much yet, I thought I read that you couldn't.
When a unit comes in range of the Widow Mine, there is about a second delay before it actually attacks.
During this time, you can select the Widow Mine, and (with it still selected) right click on a unit.
The Widow Mine will attack the targeted unit (if it's it was in its attack range when you clicked on the unit).
To keep the Widow Mine from attacking, keep telling the Widow Mine to switch targets (though this requires a lot of clicks and requires at least two units).
They could give the Widow Mine the "Hold Fire" and "Weapons Free" abilities from the Ghost (which prevents auto attacking; or something similar since Widow Mine's ability is technically a spell).
Widow mines are already stupidly powerful, no way they need to make it easier to use for terrans.
Zerg and Terrand can abuse the widow mine in its current state with a lot of micro, and thats cool.
If they nerf the widow mine heavily and reduce its supply cost, then it would be ok to make it easier to use.
Do any of you really think Blizz is going to change the way the units work after releasing the game? Forget it. They wont, like they showed it us on the past (Reapers someone?) They are going to fix some numbers, radius, splash, dps, etc, but they won't change the units at all.
On March 17 2013 21:35 Sogetsu wrote: Do any of you really think Blizz is going to change the way the units work after releasing the game? Forget it. They wont, like they showed it us on the past (Reapers someone?) They are going to fix some numbers, radius, splash, dps, etc, but they won't change the units at all.
Pure speculation. You're not giving anything useful to nobody.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
Well David is Korean, while those other players you mention are just Foreigners
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
Well David is Korean, while those other players you mention are just Foreigners
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
It's not necessarily BS -- there are occasionally GM players who play Random that pop up. Aside from this one former Code A Korean whose name escapes me at the moment (I believe he was a Terran in GSL/GSTL though), but then switched to random and , they're generally not at the same level as the mid-tier pros that you named, but it's certainly possible to play at least at GM level with all 3 collectively, at least outside of Korea.
You're talking about gumiho, he was originally random. Also there was guineapig who started as toss then changed to random for GSTL.
medivac are fine , that just bad players lossing vs them , the game out since not many time , so protoss and zerg , LEARN THE GAME and how to counter them , pro gamer are starting to counter them just fine .
and the mine totaly fine , again that just because protoss and zerg are terrible , they should just use overlord and obs for see them , they are some trick with burrow for get almost no dmg too , and some way for send only 1-2 zerling and take zero dmg .....but that to much to ask im thinking , only terran player figure stuft out for counter unit and stuft in this game....
On March 18 2013 03:01 quebecman77 wrote: medivac are fine , that just bad players lossing vs them , the game out since not many time , so protoss and zerg , LEARN THE GAME and how to counter them , pro gamer are starting to counter them just fine .
and the mine totaly fine , again that just because protoss and zerg are terrible , they should just use overlord and obs for see them , they are some trick with burrow for get almost no dmg too , and some way for send only 1-2 zerling and take zero dmg .....but that to much to ask im thinking , only terran player figure stuft out for counter unit and stuft in this game....
while zerg and protoss whine for get it nerfed .
You are just terrible at this game that's why you want an advantage - how about that theory?
Freeborn you sir are totally right, Terran players thinks the game is fine now when they got a unit that does 125+30 armored dmg. How about giving such high damage unit to Z and P so everyone will have one, what do you think will happen then? "herpderp, i am supposted to be able to win with no skill heeeerrpppdeeeeeeerp /Terran"
The risk by not nerving extremly strong stuff is that the amount of possible tech path gets reduced. For example: Strong mutas in PvZ could force out stargate openings from protoss. The game would still be balanced, but the variety in the gamepay would be diminished.
On March 16 2013 16:29 MannerMule wrote: If they nerf the widow mines blast radius why don't they allow the player to micro the widow mine attack
I think this is a great idea. Either the ability to pick a target, or even better - hold fire/stop lurker capability. It would make them useful in more situations and more fun to watch, but balanced out by nerfed AoE and/or damage.
You can do that already.
Which, target fire or hold fire? Or both? Sorry, I haven't gotten a chance to play with mines much yet, I thought I read that you couldn't.
When a unit comes in range of the Widow Mine, there is about a second delay before it actually attacks.
During this time, you can select the Widow Mine, and (with it still selected) right click on a unit.
The Widow Mine will attack the targeted unit (if it's it was in its attack range when you clicked on the unit).
To keep the Widow Mine from attacking, keep telling the Widow Mine to switch targets (though this requires a lot of clicks and requires at least two units).
They could give the Widow Mine the "Hold Fire" and "Weapons Free" abilities from the Ghost (which prevents auto attacking; or something similar since Widow Mine's ability is technically a spell).
It's not reliable at all with literally a second delay, and there is no smartfiring when you manually target so they will overkill. Target firing a single mine on a single unit is almost never worth the effort.
Let's take a look at MLG's terrans: - Polt: kills creator (upset?), dies vs life (korean) - Last: kills stephano (foreigner), kills killer (foreigner), dies vs life (korean) - Mvp: kills feast (foreigner), dies to mc (korean) - Taeja: kills sase (foreigner), dies to bomber (terran) - Bomber: kills goswser (foreigner), kills taeja (terran), dies to mc (korean) - Flash aka GOD: kills bly (foreigner), kills ret (foreigner), kills parting (upset?), kills innovation (terran) - MKP: dies to jakji (korean) - Jakji: kills MKP (terran), dies to rain (korean) - Innovation: kills huk (foreigner), kills leenock (upset?), kills rain (upset?), dies to flash (terran)
So basicly, you guys say terran is OP, based on: - Polt killing creator - flash killing parting - innovation killing leenock & rain
What about flash & innovation being gods and deserving their wins? Then there is left: polt vs creator. Let's nerf terran based on that bo3?!
I think it's funny for the call to buff oracle. I mean I've played like 5 HotS games and haven't even seen an oracle used or used it myself (I play random) but MC seemed to be able to stomp MVP and Bomber pretty easily. I saw Lucifron lose to proxy stargate -> Oracle twice at the Versailles HotS launch party vs WhiteRa. MC went like 9-2 with oracles at MLG even though terrans were tearing the place up.
One thing is for sure, putting up static anti air vs protoss is basically going to become a foregone conclusion, especially with buffs to DT openings and skytoss.
for those of you surprised at david kim's apperent skill level, he was hired as a balance tester for blizzard, and before that was a very high level scbw player.
so you figure, a very high level bw player, who was hired specifically for game balance design, would happen to know what the best unit compositions for every situation is, since he is the main guy who designed the balance in the first place.
so if you had actually designed the game, and knew every statistic about the game, and on top of that already had a very good fundimental starcraft macro, i can see how he would be so good.
side note, those beta replays that blizzard released, the terran player was david kim, using the name 'dakim' in game.
On March 15 2013 16:35 SolidMoose wrote: 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.
That makes no sense to measure widow mine dps like that. How about this, I have a unit that can only attack once per game, ONLY ONCE. Of course it one shots all the units and buildings of the opponent. In a 16 hour game the DPS would be pretty low wouldn't it?
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.
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.
I disagree with your opportunity cost argument completely. It seems to me that widow mines often get plenty of chances to do damage, and are always outrageously cost effective. How many pro games have we seen where they take out a 300 resource oracle? 23 zerglings and banelings? 175 resource Stalkers? 200 resource Mutas?
By your argument, you would say that cannons and turrets should be zero cost free because they can't even one shot anything and are 100% static.
On March 18 2013 08:01 Snowbear wrote: Let's take a look at MLG's terrans: - Polt: kills creator (upset?), dies vs life (korean) - Last: kills stephano (foreigner), kills killer (foreigner), dies vs life (korean) - Mvp: kills feast (foreigner), dies to mc (korean) - Taeja: kills sase (foreigner), dies to bomber (terran) - Bomber: kills goswser (foreigner), kills taeja (terran), dies to mc (korean) - Flash aka GOD: kills bly (foreigner), kills ret (foreigner), kills parting (upset?), kills innovation (terran) - MKP: dies to jakji (korean) - Jakji: kills MKP (terran), dies to rain (korean) - Innovation: kills huk (foreigner), kills leenock (upset?), kills rain (upset?), dies to flash (terran)
So basicly, you guys say terran is OP, based on: - Polt killing creator - flash killing parting - innovation killing leenock & rain
What about flash & innovation being gods and deserving their wins? Then there is left: polt vs creator. Let's nerf terran based on that bo3?!
polt vs creator wasn't an upset, polt just smacked creator 1-2 weeks before 5-1 iirc and he had a winning record vs him in wol as well
Im not sure if this has been said before. But instead of making burrow charge auto target a unit, the charge should be like a spell where u press it, then the ultralisk charge underground a certain distance in a straight line and then auto attacks whatever units are within its vicinity, and if no units are there (or your opponenets splits well and quickly!) you do nothing. I'm always more up for units that require control more so then automated control. Higher skill ceiling, funner to watch. Can do interesting things like have 1 ultralisk charge as a decoy to make them dodge in one direction, and then engage the army when its moving in a predictable pattern.
On March 15 2013 06:06 Rescawen wrote: Gm with all 3 races on kr ladder, maybe he is underrated after all. Except the maps are still bad. Thia interview makes me have faith !
He knows more about the game than anyone on the planet, I assure you of this. If you were to play him on the ladder, he could recognize anything you're doing and he will know exactly how to kill it without you having any chance whatsoever :D. If you beat him it's only because he let you win.
If he makes any balance changes it's only because he is seeing players aren't coping with whatever it is that is in question of being nerfed, not that it is actually uncounterable.
I feel like Kim is capable but I think that he should hire 3 ex pros for each race to help him out. I do think sc2 hots is pretty balanced but I expect to see some changes maybe after ro32 gsl.
Nerfing the radius of WMs won't change a thing against workers, since every medivac can carry 4 of them. Imho, one way for WMs to be balanced is to be visible after detonation for a couple of seconds. And they should not be able to get into medivacs at all.
As for charged ultras, we will see them as workers on April's 1st of 2014.
I'm shocked that they don't think terran needs a lot more changes. As it is, terran can literally spam mmm + widowmines/hellions all game and just ignore the rest of their units.
Also, do they really think turbo medivacs are balanced?!
On April 12 2013 21:16 Giganthrax wrote: I'm shocked that they don't think terran needs a lot more changes. As it is, terran can literally spam mmm + widowmines/hellions all game and just ignore the rest of their units.
Also, do they really think turbo medivacs are balanced?!
On April 12 2013 21:16 Giganthrax wrote: I'm shocked that they don't think terran needs a lot more changes. As it is, terran can literally spam mmm + widowmines/hellions all game and just ignore the rest of their units.
Also, do they really think turbo medivacs are balanced?!
who cares about balance as long it looks cool...
Well the boost looks really silly, IMO. And I don't see a lot of pros getting knocked off the map by the medivac boost. It may need tweeking, but its an awesome ability and needs to stay. Widow mines are also awesome. If anything, swarm hosts need some love. But Blizzard needs to keep everything awesome to keep the game interesting.
Widow Mines: The next nerf The entire development team agrees to say that the Widow Mines are currently too strong. Even Martians were aware of this anyway. Where doubts lingers though, is the the nature of the nerf. David thinks that the players have not yet learned to react efficiently against strategies based around Widow Mines, and does not want to make the unit useless. He is not shocked that a single mine can one shot a Stalker, since the stalker has more range. This is his opinion. The nerf that would make the most sense to him would be to reduce the size of the explosion, without hurting its damage, in order to limit its use against the mineral line or a pack of Zerglings.
Orcales: The eternal dilemma of Grand Masters vs Bronzes To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
Yeah, I think everyone's a bit sick of having widow mines in their mineral lines. For 75/25, you practically gain its value for killing one worker, and having all other workers come off the line for a moment while the one dies. I can't say that I agree about limiting its uses against packs of lings, though. Ling/Bling/Muta is an old comp, and Bio/Mine in TvZ is pretty new, if you hurt the mine's effectiveness against mineral lines (warranted, IMO), and you also make them less effective against zerglings and mutas - I'd be concerned for the mine's viability in TvZ. The mine's short range and long period to activate is already rather difficult to make work well, and really, in TvZ the splash is the main reason people use them.
Oracles getting buffed... sheesh. Not going to be too long until I just bite the bullet and include an early turret in my TvP gameplan.
Widow Mines: The next nerf The entire development team agrees to say that the Widow Mines are currently too strong. Even Martians were aware of this anyway. Where doubts lingers though, is the the nature of the nerf. David thinks that the players have not yet learned to react efficiently against strategies based around Widow Mines, and does not want to make the unit useless. He is not shocked that a single mine can one shot a Stalker, since the stalker has more range. This is his opinion. The nerf that would make the most sense to him would be to reduce the size of the explosion, without hurting its damage, in order to limit its use against the mineral line or a pack of Zerglings.
Orcales: The eternal dilemma of Grand Masters vs Bronzes To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
Yeah, I think everyone's a bit sick of having widow mines in their mineral lines. For 75/25, you practically gain its value for killing one worker, and having all other workers come off the line for a moment while the one dies. I can't say that I agree about limiting its uses against packs of lings, though. Ling/Bling/Muta is an old comp, and Bio/Mine in TvZ is pretty new, if you hurt the mine's effectiveness against mineral lines (warranted, IMO), and you also make them less effective against zerglings and mutas - I'd be concerned for the mine's viability in TvZ. The mine's short range and long period to activate is already rather difficult to make work well, and really, in TvZ the splash is the main reason people use them.
Oracles getting buffed... sheesh. Not going to be too long until I just bite the bullet and include an early turret in my TvP gameplan.
The mine is far and away most effective in TvZ. It is quite balanced in TvP imo. The problem is that you have to have godly micro to win with ling/bane muta vs an equal amount of MMMM.
Terran has always had to have godly micro to win against ling/bane/muta....now zerg has a bigger micro requirement too. I hope they don't nerf it too much or at all.
On April 13 2013 03:04 alukarD wrote: What happenned to the Banshee & Ravens? Im a protoss player, but still, those were good units and fun to watch.
They were only ever used for all ins vs Protoss and nexus canon makes those irrelevant.
Ravens are used quite often vs Zerg late game. Banshee openings are not used vs Zerg because the gas is better spent on mines/medivacs.
Ravens are still used vs bio with pdd to help with marauders. Banshees have the same use in TvT as a solid aggressive opener that you can rely on to kill a bunch of scvs plus scout.
Thats my point. I think they should find ways to reincorporate them on normal play in every matchup. Seriously, there are lke CERO of those units in recent high level matches. Just my opinion of course.
On April 13 2013 02:55 Emzeeshady wrote: Not really. Pulling marines behind marauders and splitting them a bit is actually pretty easy. Simply MMM vs Muta/Ling/Bane was fairly equal on the micro side as if you didn't surround from multiple angles and split banes to match marines then you were probably going to lose.
Except if you knew something about TvZ, you would know that pure bio was not viable at all against lings/banes/mutas, and virtually never played outside of a few games in which Terran was playing with some kind of advantage and/or massively outplaying his opponent. No wonder you claim "godly micro" is needed to handle Mines if you call "fairly equal" the micro needed from both sides to win with pure bio against lings/banes/mutas... Tone down the Zerg bias a bit if you want to be vaguely credible.
I could not agree more about skytoss. Oracles seem fine, but VRs are just too damn strong against corruptors. However, I'm surprised there were no comments about the Tempest.
As a (mostly) Protoss player, I agree about VRs. Flying units shouldn't be just as strong in a direct engagement for cost (or stronger) than ground units. You should have to pay for mobility, make a sacrifice of some sorts, a CHOICE.
On March 15 2013 06:15 MuteZephyr wrote: GM times three on kr ladder is seriously impressive. I'd love to see him in a tournament as a random player :D I want a rando hero! I'm sure blizz doesn't allow it though due to conflicts of interest and whatnot.
Interview sounded very reasonable. +5 respect stat to Mr.Kim in my mind. Looking forward to seeing what the team does in the future. The whole "more transparency" thing sounds superb as well.
From Liquipedia: He has not played in any tournaments, except in house (Blizzard only) ones, as he is a Blizzard employee. However, Dustin Browder at Blizzcon 2010 stated that David Kim has placed either first or second in every single one.
Does this mean there is a second person working for Blizzard that can beat a korean grandmaster? Also when they buffed infestor projectile speed they said something like our grandmaster players (plural) were unable to hit mutas.
I wouldn`t be surprised if more than just DK was GM. Realistically they need to have a couple players playing at(or at least understanding) the highest level just for analytical purposes. It comes down to learning what part of a X is broken, and what way will fix it without destroying the feel.
At the buff of the infestor fungal growth to a range of 10 and higher projectile speed, they said their grandmaster boys were unable to hit mutas (or something like that).
They used plural, which indicates they have multiple.
Edit: I am an idiot, I this thread was revived and it was so old, that I didn't realise that this posting was a response to me.
On April 13 2013 03:04 alukarD wrote: What happenned to the Banshee & Ravens? Im a protoss player, but still, those were good units and fun to watch.
They were only ever used for all ins vs Protoss and nexus canon makes those irrelevant.
Ravens are used quite often vs Zerg late game. Banshee openings are not used vs Zerg because the gas is better spent on mines/medivacs.
Ravens are still used vs bio with pdd to help with marauders. Banshees have the same use in TvT as a solid aggressive opener that you can rely on to kill a bunch of scvs plus scout.
I literally never see a banshee anymore in TvT, mines shut it down way too hard. Hellbat drop is the new and only 1-base play IMO.
On April 13 2013 03:04 alukarD wrote: What happenned to the Banshee & Ravens? Im a protoss player, but still, those were good units and fun to watch.
They were only ever used for all ins vs Protoss and nexus canon makes those irrelevant.
Ravens are used quite often vs Zerg late game. Banshee openings are not used vs Zerg because the gas is better spent on mines/medivacs.
Ravens are still used vs bio with pdd to help with marauders. Banshees have the same use in TvT as a solid aggressive opener that you can rely on to kill a bunch of scvs plus scout.
I literally never see a banshee anymore in TvT, mines shut it down way too hard. Hellbat drop is the new and only 1-base play IMO.
Well there is reaper allin too.
Hope they dont nerf the mine to much. Don't really see why they feel it's too strong, I just think it's not a fun/well designed unit, but hardly to strong, atleast not in pro play. It sometimes has nice detonations, sometimes blows half your own army up and sometimes blows just a few lings. Again hardly OP, but just a silly unit.
If you want to buff them to let them close on their targets, please give ultralisks a "unit walking" like abominations from the HotS campaign. You could even limit it to zerglings.
Widow Mines: The next nerf The entire development team agrees to say that the Widow Mines are currently too strong. Even Martians were aware of this anyway. Where doubts lingers though, is the the nature of the nerf. David thinks that the players have not yet learned to react efficiently against strategies based around Widow Mines, and does not want to make the unit useless. He is not shocked that a single mine can one shot a Stalker, since the stalker has more range. This is his opinion. The nerf that would make the most sense to him would be to reduce the size of the explosion, without hurting its damage, in order to limit its use against the mineral line or a pack of Zerglings.
Orcales: The eternal dilemma of Grand Masters vs Bronzes To my big surprise, all the statistics indicate that the Oracle deserve a slight buff at high level. According to David, the choice to open Oracle is very engaging for a Protoss gas wise. With this strategy, no fast +2 from the Forge (it is thus less versatile than the Twilight Counsel way) and is often hard to make profitable at high level. Knowing that, buffing the unit would provoke the anger of player from low division, due to the fact that they do not often know how to defend against the various proxy Oracles cheeses.
Yeah, I think everyone's a bit sick of having widow mines in their mineral lines. For 75/25, you practically gain its value for killing one worker, and having all other workers come off the line for a moment while the one dies. I can't say that I agree about limiting its uses against packs of lings, though. Ling/Bling/Muta is an old comp, and Bio/Mine in TvZ is pretty new, if you hurt the mine's effectiveness against mineral lines (warranted, IMO), and you also make them less effective against zerglings and mutas - I'd be concerned for the mine's viability in TvZ. The mine's short range and long period to activate is already rather difficult to make work well, and really, in TvZ the splash is the main reason people use them.
Oracles getting buffed... sheesh. Not going to be too long until I just bite the bullet and include an early turret in my TvP gameplan.
The mine is far and away most effective in TvZ. It is quite balanced in TvP imo. The problem is that you have to have godly micro to win with ling/bane muta vs an equal amount of MMMM.
Terran has always had to have godly micro to win against ling/bane/muta....now zerg has a bigger micro requirement too. I hope they don't nerf it too much or at all.
Not really. Pulling marines behind marauders and splitting them a bit is actually pretty easy. Simply MMM vs Muta/Ling/Bane was fairly equal on the micro side as if you didn't surround from multiple angles and split banes to match marines then you were probably going to lose. Now you can't even engage the Terran army unless you dance and dodge with three separate parts of ling/bane while suiciding units to kill mines. Not to mention Terran can pick up and fly away at ANY time now because of the turbo vacs ensuring that any attack is a no risk one.
The micro requirement was no where near equal. Absolutely no way, I've played both sides of the ball and as Terran you are often dropping during these engagements and splitting. Zerg can just a-move no problem and trade efficiently where as Terran cannot a-move into banelings. Of course on e the Terran has great micro Zerg needs to step it up to become more cost efficient, but you are delusional if you think it is an even effort
Anyone know when the balance patch is coming? It's brutal watching TvZ on GSL. All these great Z's play perfectly, gain advantages, then all die to the same WM, or some hellbat drop on a mineral line (even when the Z prepares) that kills off like 14 drones in exchange for 2 75 mineral units. I'm sorta glad T's are abusing WM and medivacs and Hellbats so at least the devs know what's broken about the units. Need patch soon though. All the Z's dying off this tourney
On April 22 2013 21:19 kamicom wrote: Anyone know when the balance patch is coming? It's brutal watching TvZ on GSL. All these great Z's play perfectly, gain advantages, then all die to the same WM, or some hellbat drop on a mineral line (even when the Z prepares) that kills off like 14 drones in exchange for 2 75 mineral units. I'm sorta glad T's are abusing WM and medivacs and Hellbats so at least the devs know what's broken about the units. Need patch soon though. All the Z's dying off this tourney
When you say all the Z's, you're talking about half of them right? 6 of them advanced, 6 didn't. 6 Terrans advanced, 4 didn't.
Seems soooooooo incredibly brutal indeed.
Edit: And I don't think Last can make it through Life and PartinG's group. So yeah, it will be about 50% success rate in Ro32. Guess what? That's what's expected for a balanced game.
On April 22 2013 21:19 kamicom wrote: Anyone know when the balance patch is coming? It's brutal watching TvZ on GSL. All these great Z's play perfectly, gain advantages, then all die to the same WM, or some hellbat drop on a mineral line (even when the Z prepares) that kills off like 14 drones in exchange for 2 75 mineral units. I'm sorta glad T's are abusing WM and medivacs and Hellbats so at least the devs know what's broken about the units. Need patch soon though. All the Z's dying off this tourney
18-15 in TvZ is so brutal indeed. Hellbats are 100 minerals for your knowledge, and building a Spine and a Spore per mineral line is enough to shut down Hellbats drops. But whatever, keep asking your patch because you're upset your Zerg heroes lost... Your favorite players were defeated = something is wrong with the game? What kind of terrible attitude is this? I can't even comprehend that... By the way you're completely deluded if you think Bboong and Soulkey had perfect anti-Hellbats drop defence.
I really hope they give ultras the burrow charge ability. It would be amazing from a spectator's view and actually make the unit viable. The only reason it isn't used more is because of the horrible pathing AI that occurs when it is trying to walk around tiny zerglings and banelings. By the time it actually reaches it's target it's halfway or 3/4 dead. By removing the clunky AI part, it will greatly increase ultralisk usage imo.
On April 22 2013 22:35 Butterednuts wrote: I really hope they give ultras the burrow charge ability. It would be amazing from a spectator's view and actually make the unit viable. The only reason it isn't used more is because of the horrible pathing AI that occurs when it is trying to walk around tiny zerglings and banelings. By the time it actually reaches it's target it's halfway or 3/4 dead. By removing the clunky AI part, it will greatly increase ultralisk usage imo.
What? A buff is the last thing Ultralisks need, especially one designed to auto-overcome the weakness of the unit. They are used in ZvT, and they're brutal. Watch high level TvZ games instead of repeating over and over those irrelevant 2011 pathing comments... Enough with those auto-positioning abilities.
On April 22 2013 22:35 Butterednuts wrote: I really hope they give ultras the burrow charge ability. It would be amazing from a spectator's view and actually make the unit viable. The only reason it isn't used more is because of the horrible pathing AI that occurs when it is trying to walk around tiny zerglings and banelings. By the time it actually reaches it's target it's halfway or 3/4 dead. By removing the clunky AI part, it will greatly increase ultralisk usage imo.
did you play HotS ? Ultra is a must have in ZvT late game now... the unit is viable and deals tons of damages.
On April 22 2013 21:19 kamicom wrote: Anyone know when the balance patch is coming? It's brutal watching TvZ on GSL. All these great Z's play perfectly, gain advantages, then all die to the same WM, or some hellbat drop on a mineral line (even when the Z prepares) that kills off like 14 drones in exchange for 2 75 mineral units. I'm sorta glad T's are abusing WM and medivacs and Hellbats so at least the devs know what's broken about the units. Need patch soon though. All the Z's dying off this tourney
Zerg has a 50% winrate in gsl and is the race with the most players. I'd love to know which zerg played perfectly/which game looked unfair. Whenever I watch I can clearly see why each terran or zerg won/lost based on their play rather than imbalance.
On March 15 2013 06:25 peidongyang wrote: I'm calling bs on the gm three races thing That means he is performing at a similar if not higher level than thorzain, sase and a lesser tier Korean pro Zerg at their respective races? Yeah bullshit.
*reads down replies that defend WM and medivac* Terran, terran, terran.. funny coincidence. You have to factor in that there were mirror match ups and Protoss that factored into the advances in GSL. I'm not using the # of T's vs Z's in GSL to gauge the units because that doesnt make any sense; there are just stronger players right now that are Z. It has nothing to do with that those strong Z players are losing to weaker T players which is the point I'm making.
To the person who said a spore stops hellbat drops, no it doesn't. A vast majority of hellbat/hellion/rine drop harrass either breaks even or pays off for the T (that's the whole reason why the T's that are winning are winning). go watch the ZvT's again; Other than soulkey vs maru, there are many moments when a Z will have ovs set up, prepare static, and move units/pull drones-- but the T will use afterburner to drop right onto drones with hellbats and take out at least 4 drones before either picking up/escaping (usually more).
Wasn't the whole point of scourge to compensate for Z's weak AA (don't tell me a queen or 2 and spores are viable to deter medivacs because they arent most times, especially with boost) and actually make T's work for drop harrass?
On April 23 2013 11:58 kamicom wrote: *reads down replies that defend WM and medivac* Terran, terran, terran.. funny coincidence. You have to factor in that there were mirror match ups and Protoss that factored into the advances in GSL. I'm not using the # of T's vs Z's in GSL to gauge the units because that doesnt make any sense; there are just stronger players right now that are Z. It has nothing to do with that those strong Z players are losing to weaker T players which is the point I'm making.
To the person who said a spore stops hellbat drops, no it doesn't. A vast majority of hellbat/hellion/rine drop harrass either breaks even or pays off for the T (that's the whole reason why the T's that are winning are winning). go watch the ZvT's again; Other than soulkey vs maru, there are many moments when a Z will have ovs set up, prepare static, and move units/pull drones-- but the T will use afterburner to drop right onto drones with hellbats and take out at least 4 drones before either picking up/escaping (usually more).
Wasn't the whole point of scourge to compensate for Z's weak AA (don't tell me a queen or 2 and spores are viable to deter medivacs because they arent most times, especially with boost) and actually make T's work for drop harrass?
Im gonna have to agree here. In WoL Terran did plenty of damage with their drops as it was, now they have a superfast medivac and hellbats and WM to drop on our worker lines and even if u respond perfectly to it, you are still losing a crazy amount and there is absolutely no risk to the T, he just picks up and boasts out of there...
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.ogaming.tv/sites/ogaming.tv/files/styles/news_large/public/news/large/davidkim-sc2-banner.jpg?itok=D1ZtnR9F)
![[image loading]](http://www.ogaming.tv/sites/ogaming.tv/files/upload/news/sc2/SC2-WidowMine.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.ogaming.tv/sites/ogaming.tv/files/upload/news/sc2/SC2-Oracle.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.ogaming.tv/sites/ogaming.tv/files/upload/news/sc2/SC2-VoidRay.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.ogaming.tv/sites/ogaming.tv/files/upload/news/sc2/SC2-Hellbat.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.ogaming.tv/sites/ogaming.tv/files/upload/news/sc2/SC2-Ultralisk.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://cdn.idigitaltimes.com/data/images/full/2013/03/08/6224.jpg)
