On July 29 2013 13:33 Wombat_NI wrote: You don't have to want a BW remake, or have a WC3-esque game to think that 'terrible terrible damage' can make for some really anti-climatic games, both as a player and as an observer.
would you really expect blizzard to change anything this big? They balanced and designed the units to function at this pacing of the game.
HOTS was the perfect opportunity to change fundamental flaws in game design, which is exactly what blizzard did when TFT (the frozen throne WAR3 expansion) came. Hero design, armor types, unit design, damage types, buildings, race fundamentals, economy, everything was drastically changed, towards the best.
But the changes is HOTS were, like everything else, underwhelming. They didn't even bother changing the in-game timer... Saying that "people are use to playing like this" is not even an argument at this point. It's just a poorly labeled excuse to avoid addressing critical issues. Or it's indirectly admitting that "we are happy with SC2 as it is now, there is no reason to change anything". Take a look at how LoL's lead designers address issues and how they interact with the community. The difference with Blizzard's people is light years away.
SC2 is on autopilot and these people know it. We are three years in and it's clear It will never become an esport of BWs or LoL's caliber; and this is what personally hurts the most.
Completely agree with this and it baffles me to see so many people rate HOTS so high. The fundamental difference from WOL is actually that they fixed the damn Infestor so the game opened up. Many people seem to think of WOL of just that last few months or so, when Blizz was the one that broke the game with the Queen change and then refused for a long time to fix the Infestor.
Most of the HOTS multiplayer was designed in the BETA anyway, so there is so much they could do in a few weeks. The question is what the fuck were they doing in the 2 years of development, single player?
Starcraft produces the least revenue and profit out of their 3 "worlds".
As Blizzard has stated in the past they move employees around to get new products out the door. They probably moved a bunch of guys that were assigned to SC2 over to D3.
We are lucky a company as great as Blizzard is still willing to invest heavily in the RTS genre.
My first glimpse of David Kim occurred in July 2010 on the bonus DVD. He was just a member of the design/balance team. Now he has a management position and a big title something like "Senior Game Designer".
I think David Kim deserves the promotion and the big title. If its one thing Blizzard knows how to do its how to hire, nurture, and develop game designers.
Thank you for all your hard work, Mr. Kim. And, thank you for tolerating personal insults from immature cry babies who can't handle losing.
On July 29 2013 13:33 Wombat_NI wrote: You don't have to want a BW remake, or have a WC3-esque game to think that 'terrible terrible damage' can make for some really anti-climatic games, both as a player and as an observer.
would you really expect blizzard to change anything this big? They balanced and designed the units to function at this pacing of the game.
HOTS was the perfect opportunity to change fundamental flaws in game design, which is exactly what blizzard did when TFT (the frozen throne WAR3 expansion) came. Hero design, armor types, unit design, damage types, buildings, race fundamentals, economy, everything was drastically changed, towards the best.
But the changes is HOTS were, like everything else, underwhelming. They didn't even bother changing the in-game timer... Saying that "people are use to playing like this" is not even an argument at this point. It's just a poorly labeled excuse to avoid addressing critical issues. Or it's indirectly admitting that "we are happy with SC2 as it is now, there is no reason to change anything". Take a look at how LoL's lead designers address issues and how they interact with the community. The difference with Blizzard's people is light years away.
SC2 is on autopilot and these people know it. We are three years in and it's clear It will never become an esport of BWs or LoL's caliber; and this is what personally hurts the most.
I completely agree with this. I really want SC2 to become great but so far it has been lack luster. They had a great opportunity to change the dynamic of the change that was clearly lacking in WOL but simply just added a bunch of units that didn't change the core problems.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, the biggest problem with SC2 right now is Protoss. The race is just awfully designed. As long as Warpgate exists the way it does now and Gateway units are really weak Protoss will continue to be the race about builds/timings/all-ins.
Protoss cannot split their army because Gateway units suck by themselves which leads to deathball vs deathball games with any match up involving Protoss most of the time.
Warpgates make any timings with Protoss an all or nothing strategy.
On July 29 2013 13:33 Wombat_NI wrote: You don't have to want a BW remake, or have a WC3-esque game to think that 'terrible terrible damage' can make for some really anti-climatic games, both as a player and as an observer.
would you really expect blizzard to change anything this big? They balanced and designed the units to function at this pacing of the game.
HOTS was the perfect opportunity to change fundamental flaws in game design, which is exactly what blizzard did when TFT (the frozen throne WAR3 expansion) came. Hero design, armor types, unit design, damage types, buildings, race fundamentals, economy, everything was drastically changed, towards the best.
But the changes is HOTS were, like everything else, underwhelming. They didn't even bother changing the in-game timer... Saying that "people are use to playing like this" is not even an argument at this point. It's just a poorly labeled excuse to avoid addressing critical issues. Or it's indirectly admitting that "we are happy with SC2 as it is now, there is no reason to change anything". Take a look at how LoL's lead designers address issues and how they interact with the community. The difference with Blizzard's people is light years away.
SC2 is on autopilot and these people know it. We are three years in and it's clear It will never become an esport of BWs or LoL's caliber; and this is what personally hurts the most.
Completely agree with this and it baffles me to see so many people rate HOTS so high. The fundamental difference from WOL is actually that they fixed the damn Infestor so the game opened up. Many people seem to think of WOL of just that last few months or so, when Blizz was the one that broke the game with the Queen change and then refused for a long time to fix the Infestor.
Most of the HOTS multiplayer was designed in the BETA anyway, so there is so much they could do in a few weeks. The question is what the fuck were they doing in the 2 years of development, single player?
Starcraft produces the least revenue and profit out of their 3 "worlds".
As Blizzard has stated in the past they move employees around to get new products out the door. They probably moved a bunch of guys that were assigned to SC2 over to D3.
We are lucky a company as great as Blizzard is still willing to invest heavily in the RTS genre.
It is a 60 euro game and HOTS is a 40 euro expansion, so it matters fuck all what place SC has in the companies revenue stream. We are not lucky for anything and they are doing RTS to make money, not charity.
On July 29 2013 17:02 kasumimi wrote: Or it's indirectly admitting that "we are happy with SC2 as it is now, there is no reason to change anything".
David Kim's comments have been more direct.
I'm a career Diamond leaguer. I'm happy with the game. my gf is a bronze/silver player she is happy. i play with an assortment of people from bronze to masters and they're happy as well.
i know one top 5 Masters/"5 time GM" player who plays 30+ hours per week and hates the game. Rages about it on a daily or weekly basis.
As soon as they stop liking the game they'll send a signal to Blizzard that is louder than any post on this forum. They'll stop spending money on Starcraft.
SC2 probably isn't going to change to the degree TFT changed WC3.
On July 28 2013 08:16 Beakyboo wrote: I feel like some of their justifications for balance don't really work. Maybe protoss achieves a pretty balanced win rate on ladder, and maybe even in high level tournaments, but I don't think that's really the whole picture. You win 50% of the time flipping coins, but you can't be consistent doing it, and it feels to me like every match up with protoss is a lot closer to flipping coins than the ones without.
It might be "balanced" but it's just hard for protoss to play all around builds that will carry a great player through a tournament. Protoss feels like it's got to commit a lot more to a particular tech and playstyle than zerg and terran. It feels like every match up involving protoss is super precarious, where the entire game comes down to singular decisions/engagements, rather than a back and forth dynamic. Unit composition is also much more a determining factor in match ups with protoss.
Maybe these aren't balance issues, but it's just gripes I have as an observer. The race frustrates me. Blizzard is too focused on win rates rather than improving the dynamic of the game.
I think this is a well simplified and raw explanation of what currently plagues Protoss players at the top. Once they run out of gimmicky or surprising tactics they simply crumble. If you are lucky and play PvP through the tournament a lot then your chances are highest (interestingly enough most Protoss champions did go through a lot of PvP) because you can reveal a lot less what you have planned in the other MUs.
Another point is that I feel like we have come full circle, in a sense, pertaining the design of the game. David Kim talks about the statistics, but as with Infestor/BL it's much more than statistics alone. We have come full circle again because the game designers are once again stuck on extracting balance entirely from statistics and that balance alone is the measure of a fun game; a topic that was vociferously and consistently present on these forums a year ago. Did they have a moment where they actually learned something, or was it something forced out of community pressure? The way they are discussing the issue leads me to believe it's the former, despite their utterances assuring us otherwise.
Does a tournament format, including scheduling and bo's, affect the results? Can an extended shift or overhaul in format alter the distribution of win rates? These are questions I would like to see discussed more frequently and included in statistical analysis. Do we see a certain race win more consistently when a tournament is of a certain format? If so, why?
My own thoughts around this is that longer series are detrimental to Protoss players, and I think the logic in this becomes more clear when looking at over all tournament formats and results combined with the gimmick/surprise based design of Protoss. The strength of Protoss play is actually eroded and undermined by it. As a tournament progresses it is typical that the later rounds have larger best of's. Simply put: Protoss has the clearest advantage in a bo1, but as a series extends to a bo3 and beyond there is significant impact in results. A typical final will have either a bo5 or bo7. Plenty of Protoss have reached a final, but not many have won and fewer still have lost in a close series. Once a Protoss reaches a final he will have revealed so much by that time that any surprises or gimmicks that can catch an opponent truly off guard are very minimal.
My conclusion is that if David Kim and et al. continue to adamantly refuse design changes for Protoss we will continue to see a shortage of Protoss champions. The way tournaments are formatted and the way the race is designed inherently interact and produce a disadvantage for the Protoss player. So what is better to change at this point? In my mind the answer is clearly to change the design of the race. Of course it's nice to have races with different styles which encourage variety, yet we are seeing the opposite since the variety is actually diminished because of the aforementioned issue. Variety needs to be emergent, it should not forced by design. All races should have core mechanics that are stable and are entirely playable on that basis, i.e safe and standard macro play and the variety in play should be rewarded when a player takes advantage of the small things that encourage a certain style.
This is so true, and well put. Yet many refuse to believe or don't understand it.
MC won a GSL Championship 6 gating July. Seed won his Championship with a Warp Prism 4 Gate all-in over MC. When Parting was on top, it was because he was Soul Training Zerg after Zerg when Zerg was the dominant race. Naniwa 4 Gated his way to an MLG championship.
Sorta an exaggeration. Yes, MC's championships were 2base all-ins. Seed took down players like Taeja in macro games though. Him allinning in PvP isn't really indicative of much at all, since PvP didn't really stabilize until Rain came along. Parting's PvT was also amazing in macro style, hence the "Parting Storms" and such. Yeah, he Soul Trained, but everyone knew that Zerg was imba back then anyway so it doesn't say much about Protoss as a whole (Terrans were getting stomped pretty badly as well).
But you can't deny most of them used lots of coin-flippy strats to win something, at least 50% of their games. Which is not an indication of protoss doing ok.
They are also high level GSL winners and players, who play their opponent, not some standard ladder match. Also, the matches cited are all from WoL, so they don't really matter for current balance.
I don't get your point. As BeyondCtrL pointed out there is no real solid macro style for protoss. Nobody said it's impossible to be successful with protoss, but if you are a successful protoss, you'll be most likely a allining / cheesy one and not a macroplayer. It's the same for Wol and HotS imho.
On July 28 2013 08:16 Beakyboo wrote: I feel like some of their justifications for balance don't really work. Maybe protoss achieves a pretty balanced win rate on ladder, and maybe even in high level tournaments, but I don't think that's really the whole picture. You win 50% of the time flipping coins, but you can't be consistent doing it, and it feels to me like every match up with protoss is a lot closer to flipping coins than the ones without.
It might be "balanced" but it's just hard for protoss to play all around builds that will carry a great player through a tournament. Protoss feels like it's got to commit a lot more to a particular tech and playstyle than zerg and terran. It feels like every match up involving protoss is super precarious, where the entire game comes down to singular decisions/engagements, rather than a back and forth dynamic. Unit composition is also much more a determining factor in match ups with protoss.
Maybe these aren't balance issues, but it's just gripes I have as an observer. The race frustrates me. Blizzard is too focused on win rates rather than improving the dynamic of the game.
I think this is a well simplified and raw explanation of what currently plagues Protoss players at the top. Once they run out of gimmicky or surprising tactics they simply crumble. If you are lucky and play PvP through the tournament a lot then your chances are highest (interestingly enough most Protoss champions did go through a lot of PvP) because you can reveal a lot less what you have planned in the other MUs.
Another point is that I feel like we have come full circle, in a sense, pertaining the design of the game. David Kim talks about the statistics, but as with Infestor/BL it's much more than statistics alone. We have come full circle again because the game designers are once again stuck on extracting balance entirely from statistics and that balance alone is the measure of a fun game; a topic that was vociferously and consistently present on these forums a year ago. Did they have a moment where they actually learned something, or was it something forced out of community pressure? The way they are discussing the issue leads me to believe it's the former, despite their utterances assuring us otherwise.
Does a tournament format, including scheduling and bo's, affect the results? Can an extended shift or overhaul in format alter the distribution of win rates? These are questions I would like to see discussed more frequently and included in statistical analysis. Do we see a certain race win more consistently when a tournament is of a certain format? If so, why?
My own thoughts around this is that longer series are detrimental to Protoss players, and I think the logic in this becomes more clear when looking at over all tournament formats and results combined with the gimmick/surprise based design of Protoss. The strength of Protoss play is actually eroded and undermined by it. As a tournament progresses it is typical that the later rounds have larger best of's. Simply put: Protoss has the clearest advantage in a bo1, but as a series extends to a bo3 and beyond there is significant impact in results. A typical final will have either a bo5 or bo7. Plenty of Protoss have reached a final, but not many have won and fewer still have lost in a close series. Once a Protoss reaches a final he will have revealed so much by that time that any surprises or gimmicks that can catch an opponent truly off guard are very minimal.
My conclusion is that if David Kim and et al. continue to adamantly refuse design changes for Protoss we will continue to see a shortage of Protoss champions. The way tournaments are formatted and the way the race is designed inherently interact and produce a disadvantage for the Protoss player. So what is better to change at this point? In my mind the answer is clearly to change the design of the race. Of course it's nice to have races with different styles which encourage variety, yet we are seeing the opposite since the variety is actually diminished because of the aforementioned issue. Variety needs to be emergent, it should not forced by design. All races should have core mechanics that are stable and are entirely playable on that basis, i.e safe and standard macro play and the variety in play should be rewarded when a player takes advantage of the small things that encourage a certain style.
This is so true, and well put. Yet many refuse to believe or don't understand it.
MC won a GSL Championship 6 gating July. Seed won his Championship with a Warp Prism 4 Gate all-in over MC. When Parting was on top, it was because he was Soul Training Zerg after Zerg when Zerg was the dominant race. Naniwa 4 Gated his way to an MLG championship.
Sorta an exaggeration. Yes, MC's championships were 2base all-ins. Seed took down players like Taeja in macro games though. Him allinning in PvP isn't really indicative of much at all, since PvP didn't really stabilize until Rain came along. Parting's PvT was also amazing in macro style, hence the "Parting Storms" and such. Yeah, he Soul Trained, but everyone knew that Zerg was imba back then anyway so it doesn't say much about Protoss as a whole (Terrans were getting stomped pretty badly as well).
But you can't deny most of them used lots of coin-flippy strats to win something, at least 50% of their games. Which is not an indication of protoss doing ok.
They are also high level GSL winners and players, who play their opponent, not some standard ladder match. Also, the matches cited are all from WoL, so they don't really matter for current balance.
I don't get your point. As BeyondCtrL pointed out there is no real solid macro style for protoss. Nobody said it's impossible to be successful with protoss, but if you are a successful protoss, you'll be most likely a allining / cheesy one and not a macroplayer. It's the same for Wol and HotS imho.
Rain is a real good example of a solid macro player who is champion quality yet has not won as much as he should. One 1st place was against Parting (PvP and a lot of PvP as a whole in the tournament) in WCS Asia Finals and the other vs. DRG in the OGN Starleague, which to be frank would have been a PvP as well if Parting and DRG switched places. Rain's 1st place finishes were a PvP and a PvZ against a DRG on the downswing who played the easier half of the tournament in comparison.
On July 29 2013 13:33 Wombat_NI wrote: You don't have to want a BW remake, or have a WC3-esque game to think that 'terrible terrible damage' can make for some really anti-climatic games, both as a player and as an observer.
would you really expect blizzard to change anything this big? They balanced and designed the units to function at this pacing of the game.
HOTS was the perfect opportunity to change fundamental flaws in game design, which is exactly what blizzard did when TFT (the frozen throne WAR3 expansion) came. Hero design, armor types, unit design, damage types, buildings, race fundamentals, economy, everything was drastically changed, towards the best.
But the changes is HOTS were, like everything else, underwhelming. They didn't even bother changing the in-game timer... Saying that "people are use to playing like this" is not even an argument at this point. It's just a poorly labeled excuse to avoid addressing critical issues. Or it's indirectly admitting that "we are happy with SC2 as it is now, there is no reason to change anything". Take a look at how LoL's lead designers address issues and how they interact with the community. The difference with Blizzard's people is light years away.
SC2 is on autopilot and these people know it. We are three years in and it's clear It will never become an esport of BWs or LoL's caliber; and this is what personally hurts the most.
I completely agree with this. I really want SC2 to become great but so far it has been lack luster. They had a great opportunity to change the dynamic of the change that was clearly lacking in WOL but simply just added a bunch of units that didn't change the core problems.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, the biggest problem with SC2 right now is Protoss. The race is just awfully designed. As long as Warpgate exists the way it does now and Gateway units are really weak Protoss will continue to be the race about builds/timings/all-ins.
Protoss cannot split their army because Gateway units suck by themselves which leads to deathball vs deathball games with any match up involving Protoss most of the time.
Warpgates make any timings with Protoss an all or nothing strategy.
I'm actually working on a balance change map (just for fun on my part, mind you) on Star Station. What I basically did was remove both warpgates and forcefields from the protoss and gave stalkers a buff in burst and dps damage. Should I get around to finishing it and publishing it so people can give it a try?
I'm a career Diamond leaguer. I'm happy with the game. my gf is a bronze/silver player she is happy. i play with an assortment of people from bronze to masters and they're happy as well.
i know one top 5 Masters/"5 time GM" player who plays 30+ hours per week and hates the game. Rages about it on a daily or weekly basis.
As soon as they stop liking the game they'll send a signal to Blizzard that is louder than any post on this forum. They'll stop spending money on Starcraft.
SC2 probably isn't going to change to the degree TFT changed WC3.
On July 28 2013 08:16 Beakyboo wrote: I feel like some of their justifications for balance don't really work. Maybe protoss achieves a pretty balanced win rate on ladder, and maybe even in high level tournaments, but I don't think that's really the whole picture. You win 50% of the time flipping coins, but you can't be consistent doing it, and it feels to me like every match up with protoss is a lot closer to flipping coins than the ones without.
It might be "balanced" but it's just hard for protoss to play all around builds that will carry a great player through a tournament. Protoss feels like it's got to commit a lot more to a particular tech and playstyle than zerg and terran. It feels like every match up involving protoss is super precarious, where the entire game comes down to singular decisions/engagements, rather than a back and forth dynamic. Unit composition is also much more a determining factor in match ups with protoss.
Maybe these aren't balance issues, but it's just gripes I have as an observer. The race frustrates me. Blizzard is too focused on win rates rather than improving the dynamic of the game.
I think this is a well simplified and raw explanation of what currently plagues Protoss players at the top. Once they run out of gimmicky or surprising tactics they simply crumble. If you are lucky and play PvP through the tournament a lot then your chances are highest (interestingly enough most Protoss champions did go through a lot of PvP) because you can reveal a lot less what you have planned in the other MUs.
Another point is that I feel like we have come full circle, in a sense, pertaining the design of the game. David Kim talks about the statistics, but as with Infestor/BL it's much more than statistics alone. We have come full circle again because the game designers are once again stuck on extracting balance entirely from statistics and that balance alone is the measure of a fun game; a topic that was vociferously and consistently present on these forums a year ago. Did they have a moment where they actually learned something, or was it something forced out of community pressure? The way they are discussing the issue leads me to believe it's the former, despite their utterances assuring us otherwise.
Does a tournament format, including scheduling and bo's, affect the results? Can an extended shift or overhaul in format alter the distribution of win rates? These are questions I would like to see discussed more frequently and included in statistical analysis. Do we see a certain race win more consistently when a tournament is of a certain format? If so, why?
My own thoughts around this is that longer series are detrimental to Protoss players, and I think the logic in this becomes more clear when looking at over all tournament formats and results combined with the gimmick/surprise based design of Protoss. The strength of Protoss play is actually eroded and undermined by it. As a tournament progresses it is typical that the later rounds have larger best of's. Simply put: Protoss has the clearest advantage in a bo1, but as a series extends to a bo3 and beyond there is significant impact in results. A typical final will have either a bo5 or bo7. Plenty of Protoss have reached a final, but not many have won and fewer still have lost in a close series. Once a Protoss reaches a final he will have revealed so much by that time that any surprises or gimmicks that can catch an opponent truly off guard are very minimal.
My conclusion is that if David Kim and et al. continue to adamantly refuse design changes for Protoss we will continue to see a shortage of Protoss champions. The way tournaments are formatted and the way the race is designed inherently interact and produce a disadvantage for the Protoss player. So what is better to change at this point? In my mind the answer is clearly to change the design of the race. Of course it's nice to have races with different styles which encourage variety, yet we are seeing the opposite since the variety is actually diminished because of the aforementioned issue. Variety needs to be emergent, it should not forced by design. All races should have core mechanics that are stable and are entirely playable on that basis, i.e safe and standard macro play and the variety in play should be rewarded when a player takes advantage of the small things that encourage a certain style.
This is so true, and well put. Yet many refuse to believe or don't understand it.
MC won a GSL Championship 6 gating July. Seed won his Championship with a Warp Prism 4 Gate all-in over MC. When Parting was on top, it was because he was Soul Training Zerg after Zerg when Zerg was the dominant race. Naniwa 4 Gated his way to an MLG championship.
Sorta an exaggeration. Yes, MC's championships were 2base all-ins. Seed took down players like Taeja in macro games though. Him allinning in PvP isn't really indicative of much at all, since PvP didn't really stabilize until Rain came along. Parting's PvT was also amazing in macro style, hence the "Parting Storms" and such. Yeah, he Soul Trained, but everyone knew that Zerg was imba back then anyway so it doesn't say much about Protoss as a whole (Terrans were getting stomped pretty badly as well).
But you can't deny most of them used lots of coin-flippy strats to win something, at least 50% of their games. Which is not an indication of protoss doing ok.
They are also high level GSL winners and players, who play their opponent, not some standard ladder match. Also, the matches cited are all from WoL, so they don't really matter for current balance.
I don't get your point. As BeyondCtrL pointed out there is no real solid macro style for protoss. Nobody said it's impossible to be successful with protoss, but if you are a successful protoss, you'll be most likely a allining / cheesy one and not a macroplayer. It's the same for Wol and HotS imho.
Rain is a real good example of a solid macro player who is champion quality yet has not won as much as he should. One 1st place was against Parting (PvP and a lot of PvP as a whole in the tournament) in WCS Asia Finals and the other vs. DRG in the OGN Starleague, which to be frank would have been a PvP as well if Parting and DRG switched places. Rain's 1st place finishes were a PvP and a PvZ against a DRG on the downswing who played the easier half of the tournament in comparison.
Sure but I guess many of his successful macro builds only work once (eg his oracle into expand vs flash some time ago). We'll need some more time to judge his play i guess.
HOW THE HELL ARE VIPERS NOT STRONG?! the Viper mechanic allows Swarm host + static d to work against protoss, and completely SLAUGHTERS mech play from terran. What the hell is he thinking!?
On July 28 2013 08:16 Beakyboo wrote: I feel like some of their justifications for balance don't really work. Maybe protoss achieves a pretty balanced win rate on ladder, and maybe even in high level tournaments, but I don't think that's really the whole picture. You win 50% of the time flipping coins, but you can't be consistent doing it, and it feels to me like every match up with protoss is a lot closer to flipping coins than the ones without.
It might be "balanced" but it's just hard for protoss to play all around builds that will carry a great player through a tournament. Protoss feels like it's got to commit a lot more to a particular tech and playstyle than zerg and terran. It feels like every match up involving protoss is super precarious, where the entire game comes down to singular decisions/engagements, rather than a back and forth dynamic. Unit composition is also much more a determining factor in match ups with protoss.
Maybe these aren't balance issues, but it's just gripes I have as an observer. The race frustrates me. Blizzard is too focused on win rates rather than improving the dynamic of the game.
I think this is a well simplified and raw explanation of what currently plagues Protoss players at the top. Once they run out of gimmicky or surprising tactics they simply crumble. If you are lucky and play PvP through the tournament a lot then your chances are highest (interestingly enough most Protoss champions did go through a lot of PvP) because you can reveal a lot less what you have planned in the other MUs.
Another point is that I feel like we have come full circle, in a sense, pertaining the design of the game. David Kim talks about the statistics, but as with Infestor/BL it's much more than statistics alone. We have come full circle again because the game designers are once again stuck on extracting balance entirely from statistics and that balance alone is the measure of a fun game; a topic that was vociferously and consistently present on these forums a year ago. Did they have a moment where they actually learned something, or was it something forced out of community pressure? The way they are discussing the issue leads me to believe it's the former, despite their utterances assuring us otherwise.
Does a tournament format, including scheduling and bo's, affect the results? Can an extended shift or overhaul in format alter the distribution of win rates? These are questions I would like to see discussed more frequently and included in statistical analysis. Do we see a certain race win more consistently when a tournament is of a certain format? If so, why?
My own thoughts around this is that longer series are detrimental to Protoss players, and I think the logic in this becomes more clear when looking at over all tournament formats and results combined with the gimmick/surprise based design of Protoss. The strength of Protoss play is actually eroded and undermined by it. As a tournament progresses it is typical that the later rounds have larger best of's. Simply put: Protoss has the clearest advantage in a bo1, but as a series extends to a bo3 and beyond there is significant impact in results. A typical final will have either a bo5 or bo7. Plenty of Protoss have reached a final, but not many have won and fewer still have lost in a close series. Once a Protoss reaches a final he will have revealed so much by that time that any surprises or gimmicks that can catch an opponent truly off guard are very minimal.
My conclusion is that if David Kim and et al. continue to adamantly refuse design changes for Protoss we will continue to see a shortage of Protoss champions. The way tournaments are formatted and the way the race is designed inherently interact and produce a disadvantage for the Protoss player. So what is better to change at this point? In my mind the answer is clearly to change the design of the race. Of course it's nice to have races with different styles which encourage variety, yet we are seeing the opposite since the variety is actually diminished because of the aforementioned issue. Variety needs to be emergent, it should not forced by design. All races should have core mechanics that are stable and are entirely playable on that basis, i.e safe and standard macro play and the variety in play should be rewarded when a player takes advantage of the small things that encourage a certain style.
This is so true, and well put. Yet many refuse to believe or don't understand it.
MC won a GSL Championship 6 gating July. Seed won his Championship with a Warp Prism 4 Gate all-in over MC. When Parting was on top, it was because he was Soul Training Zerg after Zerg when Zerg was the dominant race. Naniwa 4 Gated his way to an MLG championship.
Sorta an exaggeration. Yes, MC's championships were 2base all-ins. Seed took down players like Taeja in macro games though. Him allinning in PvP isn't really indicative of much at all, since PvP didn't really stabilize until Rain came along. Parting's PvT was also amazing in macro style, hence the "Parting Storms" and such. Yeah, he Soul Trained, but everyone knew that Zerg was imba back then anyway so it doesn't say much about Protoss as a whole (Terrans were getting stomped pretty badly as well).
But you can't deny most of them used lots of coin-flippy strats to win something, at least 50% of their games. Which is not an indication of protoss doing ok.
They are also high level GSL winners and players, who play their opponent, not some standard ladder match. Also, the matches cited are all from WoL, so they don't really matter for current balance.
I don't get your point. As BeyondCtrL pointed out there is no real solid macro style for protoss. Nobody said it's impossible to be successful with protoss, but if you are a successful protoss, you'll be most likely a allining / cheesy one and not a macroplayer. It's the same for Wol and HotS imho.
Rain is a real good example of a solid macro player who is champion quality yet has not won as much as he should. One 1st place was against Parting (PvP and a lot of PvP as a whole in the tournament) in WCS Asia Finals and the other vs. DRG in the OGN Starleague, which to be frank would have been a PvP as well if Parting and DRG switched places. Rain's 1st place finishes were a PvP and a PvZ against a DRG on the downswing who played the easier half of the tournament in comparison.
Sure but I guess many of his successful macro builds only work once (eg his oracle into expand vs flash some time ago). We'll need some more time to judge his play i guess.
Yes, that's what I meant; even though he has good macro play it does not benefit him nearly as much as other top players of the other races at his level.
On July 30 2013 04:21 EpicDemente wrote: HOW THE HELL ARE VIPERS NOT STRONG?! the Viper mechanic allows Swarm host + static d to work against protoss, and completely SLAUGHTERS mech play from terran. What the hell is he thinking!?
But they are quite worthless against 4m which is the mainstream and without the viper sky-toss would laugh at any zerg attempts to tickle that flying bringer of death. I don´t know if it needs any tinkering yet and i really can´t see a way of making it viable against terran without making blindin cloud also stun, (which would be broken as hell) or affect mines also.
They should work on more in-depth gameplay involving strategy, positioning and macro. You can only watch 20 minuts of banelings and mines blowing everything up and marines stimming to death while running from Zerglings and Mutas so many times. As someone said, SC2 is on autopilot now. They rely too much on action to keep it going. But guess what, there are ACTION games for that purpose. This is RTS, so stop fucking pretending like it's QL.
David Kim: This units is made for players with good micro. It a micro unit for both sides."
Can anyone explain to me how the widow mine is a micro unit?
I'll make it simple for you. You go into a game with a friend, and ask him to build a ton of bio and some widow mines. Then you build a ton of ling bane and a-move into the bio guarded by WMs. See what happens.
Then do the same thing, but don't a-move. Instead send out small groups of lings ahead, have an overseer or two with your attack and split your banes. See what happens then.
Edit: This might be superfluous, but you could have a test-run where your terran-friend a-moves his WMs and bio into ling-bane.
I think David Kim deserves the promotion and the big title. If its one thing Blizzard knows how to do its how to hire, nurture, and develop game designers.
Thank you for all your hard work, Mr. Kim. And, thank you for tolerating personal insults from immature cry babies who can't handle losing.
Go Dave Go!
How is wanting a better designed game considered "can't handle losing". If you 2 base allin all your games and win half of them then the game is balanced, yes. But is it fun to watch or play against? Think about that the next time you light a candle to DK. The man whose vision of competitive SC2 was marauders vs roaches vs warpgates in steppes of war.
I enjoy SC2. I enjoy playing it, I enjoy watching it. I enjoy it significantly more now than when the game first launched, which I think is a sign that the overall trend, though not without some stumbles along the way, has ultimately been to move towards a better game. So I wouldn't be a fan of ripping it up by the roots and starting it over. Could there be tweaks and changes made to the betterment of the game? Sure. But a full blown TFT style revamp? No thanks.
EPT
