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Interview w/ David Kim on Balance at IEM Shanghai - Page 4

Forum Index > SC2 General
110 CommentsPost a Reply
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Qikz
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United Kingdom12022 Posts
August 24 2013 14:48 GMT
#61
you DO realize Terran mech vs Protoss doesn't HAVE to be viable right? You can't have every option available to you, that's making your own race op. Bio in BW vs Protoss wasn't really viable except for few early game cheeses, and TvP in BW was the most balanced matchup we've seen ever.

That's like me complaining I can't go full sky toss vs. Terran.


I've said this before and I'll say it again but this is such a ridiculous stance to take.

Do you not want players to have options? Making mech viable makes agressive toss a lot more viable itself and it gives carriers a place in the game. Why the hell do you want to watch the same game every single game? Atleast in BW there was variation of meching styles, both offensive and defensive worked vs Toss and there was plenty Toss could do against it depending on the map.

There's one bio style that works. It's get a fast natural into third base into attack and hope you kill the toss before he gets all his AOE. It's boring as hell. Why can't we atleast as spectators and players have options?
FanTaSy's #1 Fan | STPL Caster/Organiser | SKT BEST KT | https://twitch.tv/stpl
Ambre
Profile Joined July 2011
France416 Posts
August 24 2013 15:00 GMT
#62
You guys are so annoying to read.

Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?

Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.

God damn it.
"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." - Aldous Huxley
pmp10
Profile Joined April 2012
3346 Posts
August 24 2013 15:02 GMT
#63
On August 25 2013 00:00 Ambre wrote:
You guys are so annoying to read.

Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?

Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.

God damn it.

You do realize many of us are spectators?
We want mech to work to see pros play it not our half assed execution from ladder.
Qikz
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United Kingdom12022 Posts
August 24 2013 15:08 GMT
#64
On August 25 2013 00:02 pmp10 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 25 2013 00:00 Ambre wrote:
You guys are so annoying to read.

Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?

Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.

God damn it.

You do realize many of us are spectators?
We want mech to work to see pros play it not our half assed execution from ladder.


This explains my place pretty well. I want to see players like Flash and Fantasy be able to mech again since I always enjoyed watching them mech in BW. Heck, I'd just like to see some fucking variety. Watching BIo/Mine over and over in TvZ and watching MMM in TvP over and over in TvP has made me want to quit watching and playing the game completely almost.
FanTaSy's #1 Fan | STPL Caster/Organiser | SKT BEST KT | https://twitch.tv/stpl
Cloak
Profile Joined October 2009
United States816 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-08-24 15:50:44
August 24 2013 15:50 GMT
#65
On August 24 2013 19:18 Coffee Zombie wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 24 2013 19:04 Zarahtra wrote:
On August 24 2013 18:56 Teoita wrote:
On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:
Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?

DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive.

I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first


You can't do that without making 3-7gate timings with blink or charge overpowered as hell. It's a much more complex issue.

It's just not the commute time. It's the frontloaded production screwing up reinforcement dynamics and allowing the construction of production buildings way, way late (compare gate=>tranform=>get unit to getting the first units out of a reactored rax or getting a hatch up and having the first inject wave finally spawn), it's the ability to proxy nearly everything for 100 without leaving your base defenseless, it's not being able to ambush reinforcements or camp production. It breaks just about every fundamental logistics-side thing games like this are built upon, and that cause things to make sense.


While the reinforcement aspect is altered, there is a replacement dynamic of pylon power, which should be fleshed out. If pylon power became more integral, it'd limit the all-innish tendency of Warpgate. If it was good enough, then Planetary Nexus would be unnecessary. Then we can return to Terran and Zerg early aggression against P balanced with the idea of P being able to aggress too.
The more you know, the less you understand.
Twinsentwinsen
Profile Joined February 2012
Sweden14 Posts
August 24 2013 15:55 GMT
#66
On August 24 2013 18:48 YyapSsap wrote:
...

I hope one day they really re-design immortal and the colossus. The latter especially, should have some sort of a weakness on a similar level as the siege tank.


like, being able to be hit by air-to-air or something crazy like that ^^
Cereb
Profile Joined November 2011
Denmark3388 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-08-24 16:14:34
August 24 2013 16:09 GMT
#67
On August 25 2013 00:08 Qikz wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 25 2013 00:02 pmp10 wrote:
On August 25 2013 00:00 Ambre wrote:
You guys are so annoying to read.

Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?

Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.

God damn it.

You do realize many of us are spectators?
We want mech to work to see pros play it not our half assed execution from ladder.


This explains my place pretty well. I want to see players like Flash and Fantasy be able to mech again since I always enjoyed watching them mech in BW. Heck, I'd just like to see some fucking variety. Watching BIo/Mine over and over in TvZ and watching MMM in TvP over and over in TvP has made me want to quit watching and playing the game completely almost.




Except mech is life-drainingly boring to play and watch in SC2 (unlike BW) and making it more viable would definitely not improve anything.

But I guess just making it slightly better would be alright, but how would you suggest doing that without messing with the nice balance situation we have going on?



Great responses from DK. But to me, he doesn't even need to be able to have such well thought out responses. Their work alone makes me confident in their ability to keep moving SC2 in the right direction.
"Until the very very top in almost anything, all that matters is how much work you put in. The only problem is most people can't work hard even at things they do enjoy, much less things they don't have a real passion for. -Greg "IdrA" Fields
Deleted User 135096
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
3624 Posts
August 24 2013 16:13 GMT
#68
woo TL Strat. Good questions.
Administrator
Coffeeling
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
Finland250 Posts
August 24 2013 16:16 GMT
#69
On August 25 2013 00:50 Cloak wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 24 2013 19:18 Coffee Zombie wrote:
On August 24 2013 19:04 Zarahtra wrote:
On August 24 2013 18:56 Teoita wrote:
On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:
Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?

DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive.

I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first


You can't do that without making 3-7gate timings with blink or charge overpowered as hell. It's a much more complex issue.

It's just not the commute time. It's the frontloaded production screwing up reinforcement dynamics and allowing the construction of production buildings way, way late (compare gate=>tranform=>get unit to getting the first units out of a reactored rax or getting a hatch up and having the first inject wave finally spawn), it's the ability to proxy nearly everything for 100 without leaving your base defenseless, it's not being able to ambush reinforcements or camp production. It breaks just about every fundamental logistics-side thing games like this are built upon, and that cause things to make sense.


While the reinforcement aspect is altered, there is a replacement dynamic of pylon power, which should be fleshed out. If pylon power became more integral, it'd limit the all-innish tendency of Warpgate. If it was good enough, then Planetary Nexus would be unnecessary. Then we can return to Terran and Zerg early aggression against P balanced with the idea of P being able to aggress too.


The power mechanic is binary enough to not really matter. You have power, or you don't, so pretty hard to see how that could be used to balance warp gates. And even then, it's just more complications that muddle the very basic rules and heuristics which should be natural.
Squee
Qikz
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United Kingdom12022 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-08-24 16:55:33
August 24 2013 16:51 GMT
#70
On August 25 2013 01:09 Cereb wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 25 2013 00:08 Qikz wrote:
On August 25 2013 00:02 pmp10 wrote:
On August 25 2013 00:00 Ambre wrote:
You guys are so annoying to read.

Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?

Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.

God damn it.

You do realize many of us are spectators?
We want mech to work to see pros play it not our half assed execution from ladder.


This explains my place pretty well. I want to see players like Flash and Fantasy be able to mech again since I always enjoyed watching them mech in BW. Heck, I'd just like to see some fucking variety. Watching BIo/Mine over and over in TvZ and watching MMM in TvP over and over in TvP has made me want to quit watching and playing the game completely almost.




Except mech is life-drainingly boring to play and watch in SC2 (unlike BW) and making it more viable would definitely not improve anything.

But I guess just making it slightly better would be alright, but how would you suggest doing that without messing with the nice balance situation we have going on?



Great responses from DK. But to me, he doesn't even need to be able to have such well thought out responses. Their work alone makes me confident in their ability to keep moving SC2 in the right direction.


Oh really? I can't wait to see your examples of the best terrans in the world playing a decent mech against the best protoss in the world. MVP vs Dimaga isn't the best Terran vs the best Zerg, but the game he went mech was by far the most entertaining game in that series. Mech is only "boring" to play and watch because where it's so bad, you need to ball everything up or just die. You can't really spread enough.

Having a good balance is fine, but when that balance is based around a never-changing metagame it's going to slowly kill the game as players are going to retire due to either injury or just getting bored of the game and spectators are just going to get bored of watching the same thing over and over. They need to do things to increase both viewership and playerbase and while the game is as dull as it is with a terrible map rotation (maps staying in too long and all maps playing out exactly the same with no defining features) it's just going to keep on shrinking.

Races need more options to keep the game alive. That's not an opinion, it's just plain fact.
FanTaSy's #1 Fan | STPL Caster/Organiser | SKT BEST KT | https://twitch.tv/stpl
People_0f_Color
Profile Joined August 2010
177 Posts
August 24 2013 19:00 GMT
#71
On August 25 2013 00:55 Twinsentwinsen wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 24 2013 18:48 YyapSsap wrote:
...

I hope one day they really re-design immortal and the colossus. The latter especially, should have some sort of a weakness on a similar level as the siege tank.


like, being able to be hit by air-to-air or something crazy like that ^^


An exploitable weakness that is fun to watch. Not "Kill this thing quickly before it kills what you have...quicker".
Melrik
Profile Joined August 2013
United States2 Posts
August 24 2013 19:29 GMT
#72
If they want to change the tank a bit, how about make it a little faster going in and out of siege mode? Then dmg/hp isn't affected for the other matchups, but it will add more complexity to using it as it's not so much of the set it and forget it. You will not need to get 20 tanks and leap frog 10 over each other. Many, many, times we see that if you catch them in the middle of changing you lose them all because it's difficult IMHO to leap frog them individually. But don't listen to me too much, I'm bronze. I don't really know what I'm talking about.
Buddy168
Profile Joined June 2012
United States157 Posts
August 24 2013 20:45 GMT
#73
Stephano.

Still breaking ZvP from retirement.
"You're being a useless fucking asshole" - Day[9]
Foxxan
Profile Joined October 2004
Sweden3427 Posts
August 24 2013 21:33 GMT
#74
so lets say they make mech viable in tvp,
it would be kinda fun cuz of more options i agree

but would mech really be anything special other than that?
Yes, i would like that option and it could probably be fun to watch from time to time

But compared to bw, is it even 25% of that?
Phoenix2003
Profile Joined August 2012
126 Posts
August 24 2013 21:38 GMT
#75
I should be able to go pure stargate and beat EVERYTHING terran has, but can't cuz marines and vikings exist. NERF marines and vikings, plz.
Yay for more playstyles.
fenrysk
Profile Blog Joined August 2011
United States364 Posts
August 24 2013 22:02 GMT
#76
I generally try to understand DKim's perspective on balance, and I generally accept his explanations, but more and more I wish the emphasis was less on "fun to watch" and instead more on "fun to play." The two are related, but not entirely the same.

http://fenrysk-art.deviantart.com
VayneAuthority
Profile Joined October 2012
United States8983 Posts
August 24 2013 23:01 GMT
#77
maybe harassment would be viable if you couldn't chronoboost 12 probes back, drop 8 mules from your orbitals, or inject 15 drones in seconds. lol.

at least he is catching on to the swarm host play in zvp, started seeing that a lot at the end of the season and did not like where that was going. Zergs are finally realizing that their static defense is broken as shit.
I come in for the scraps
dkby
Profile Joined May 2010
France28 Posts
August 24 2013 23:42 GMT
#78
On August 25 2013 07:02 fenrysk wrote:
I generally try to understand DKim's perspective on balance, and I generally accept his explanations, but more and more I wish the emphasis was less on "fun to watch" and instead more on "fun to play." The two are related, but not entirely the same.



That's exactly what struck me when I read this interview, he said several times "fun to watch", but as far as I know SC2 is a game before anything else, and giving priority to viewers by making the game balanced only for progamers is shocking, as a consumer and as a player.

I'm starting to be very fed up with Terran right now, TvT is boring, I feel it's very unfair to need twice apm than protoss in TvP to hope for a victory, and when I read such an interview I foresee things won't change before a long time, it's really sad and disappointing :'(

Penguinator
Profile Joined December 2010
United States837 Posts
August 24 2013 23:53 GMT
#79
So much hate for David Kim... Do you all realize that StarCraft is one of the most balanced competitive games in the esports scene right now? It's not perfect, and it probably never will be, but god damn can you all just be happy for what we have? Blizzard is constantly making improvements, and as soon as they do something right, everyone just picks something else to flame them for. I think this community would shrivel up and die if Blizzard ever actually made the game "perfect." You'd all have nothing left to complain about!
Towelie.635
Mehukannu
Profile Joined October 2010
Finland421 Posts
August 25 2013 00:31 GMT
#80
Wish they would just make mech viable so the terran match-ups would actually get interesting enough to watch. Seriously fed up with bio now. I really don't see why blizzard is keeping their head up in their asses regarding the whole mech issues. Bio is really, really boring after you have seen it, oh, like, say, three fucking years. T_T
C=('. ' Q)
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