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On January 11 2014 01:43 Justikhar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 01:22 templar rage wrote:
However, I do agree that David Kim/Blizzard should be spending more time trying to make the game better designed instead of chasing a 50/50 winrate. The process should be that they make a fun game, and then they balance it. This is probably what they're doing, but Blizzard believes they have a fun game and have moved on to balancing it, whereas we here aren't as confident.
And of course this is where Blizzard calls "BS". Why? Because here you are in this forum talking about a game that is essentially just the 4th expansion of a game that came out in 1998, over 15 years ago. Starcraft isn't a subscription model like WoW. They don't have to constantly placate to the base to maintain a revenue stream. They have other brands they can focus on, and even new ones (Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, etc) They are proud of the brand and the massive tournaments and fan LOVE for the game they seen over the years, so they choose to make a commitment to it, period. If it really wasn't a fun and beloved product, they could dump it like the thousands of junk games you never heard of sitting on a Gamestop shelf right now. Far contrary to your implication of them not not having a 'fun game', they have one of the most fun games of all time .... that's why this website exists, and that's why you're on said website talking about it. Much of this is standard human behavior, so there are no surprises here, but always worth acknowledging. Just a bunch of fat people in a candy store complaining to everyone in line how terrible that platter of free chocolates they just finished off was.
This.
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On January 11 2014 01:45 Grumbels wrote:Stats from aligulac for the WCS Korea Code A qualifiers: PvT 32–30 (51.61%)
PvZ 47–43 (52.22%)
TvZ 35–37 (48.61%)
35 PvP, 11 TvT, 40 ZvZ It's the same pattern: terran is slightly disadvantaged in both non-mirrors and there is a general lack of terran players to begin with.
Everything is within statistically acceptable deviations from 50/50, like usual.
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You can make a good equation to predict the win rate
But it can be really complicated because of the need to find the proxy variables to use as well, then test the sig. level and other tests like checking for multi collinearity
Time lags etc can be checked by stuff like arma models etc.
Personally I think blizzard mmr has been working great until recently and so I am inclined to trust their stats as well
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On January 11 2014 04:16 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 04:14 plogamer wrote:On January 11 2014 03:55 Whitewing wrote:On January 11 2014 03:47 Hider wrote:
Also, why the hell would you make EAPM a variable? That's never been indicative of skill. Remember when good ol' 100 APM Sjow beat life? I would never have the equation look anything like that at all.
You were talking about econometrics. An econometric analaysis is without a doubt gonna find a significant correlation between EAPM and skill-level. I think your confusing no outliers w/ correlation. But as you say, its not perfect indicator, and that's the problem: There are no good objective measures of skills (no explanatory variables) other than looking combined at MMR and distribution of the race. The end result is that you can come to a reasonably close estimate of what the game balance actually is at a given point in time, even if it's not perfectly accurate. Their stated goal is to keep balance within the 55-45% range for winrates, they're doing much better than that right now. No you can only do that if you have some really explanatory variables and a dataset that is cleaned for balance. Blizzard simple doesn't have that (as I argued in the previous post). All of the variables they will use are simply bias'ed. I'm telling you that you cannot possibly know what variables they do and don't have, or even what datasets they do have. Clearly they seem to think they know more about it than you do, and I'm inclined to believe that they probably do. You believe the data which shows balanced win-rates at gold, silver and diamond in PvT? I can accept that PvT is pretty balanced at the top level, but everyone knows that Protoss is clearly favoured in a-move and all-in scenarios - which makes up the majority of playstyles at lower levels. Can you explain how bronze, silver, and gold PvT is pretty balanced? Because I am not convinced it should be balanced given what we know about Protoss deathball vs Terran bioball. (note: I'm not arguing that PvT should be balanced at lower levels.) Probably because in bronze silver and gold, protoss player suck horribly at defending terran all-ins too. It's very hard to even find balance relevant at those levels where everyone is playing extremely sub-optimal. I remember watching Totalbiscuit win a bunch of games with a 1 base battlecruiser rush in gold. That's in no way indicative of whether balance exists or not.
Those where very funny games and were great to watch. But they should not account for balance in any way.
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They still have hope, though. They still, hope!
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Honestly, I think the big issue with Blizzard's game design/balance is that their patch discussion only seems to focus on winrates when they should be focusing on creating more viable strategies and dynamic gameplay. I know it's hard to separate these things because adding more viable strats/army comps in TvP will likely increase TvP winrate, but the game patching needs to be more about making the game dynamic and fun IMO.
Sticking with TvP: according to David Kim's data, the winrates are skewed in favor of Protoss, but not by a huge margin. Okay, that's good to know. But what about PLAYING the matchup? Balance whines aside, it seems pretty agreed-upon that Terran has very few options against Protoss, while Protoss has a wealth of options against Terran. The saving grace is that Terran's primary option is actually a really good one. I don't see how this is an acceptable outcome to one of the premier esports.
Losing isn't fun, but being pigeonholed into the same strategies and army compositions in hopes of winning ~50% of your games isn't fun either. Spice up the game, Blizzard. Give the players more options to explore and enjoy.
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On January 11 2014 04:22 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 04:16 Whitewing wrote:On January 11 2014 04:14 plogamer wrote:On January 11 2014 03:55 Whitewing wrote:On January 11 2014 03:47 Hider wrote:
Also, why the hell would you make EAPM a variable? That's never been indicative of skill. Remember when good ol' 100 APM Sjow beat life? I would never have the equation look anything like that at all.
You were talking about econometrics. An econometric analaysis is without a doubt gonna find a significant correlation between EAPM and skill-level. I think your confusing no outliers w/ correlation. But as you say, its not perfect indicator, and that's the problem: There are no good objective measures of skills (no explanatory variables) other than looking combined at MMR and distribution of the race. The end result is that you can come to a reasonably close estimate of what the game balance actually is at a given point in time, even if it's not perfectly accurate. Their stated goal is to keep balance within the 55-45% range for winrates, they're doing much better than that right now. No you can only do that if you have some really explanatory variables and a dataset that is cleaned for balance. Blizzard simple doesn't have that (as I argued in the previous post). All of the variables they will use are simply bias'ed. I'm telling you that you cannot possibly know what variables they do and don't have, or even what datasets they do have. Clearly they seem to think they know more about it than you do, and I'm inclined to believe that they probably do. You believe the data which shows balanced win-rates at gold, silver and diamond in PvT? I can accept that PvT is pretty balanced at the top level, but everyone knows that Protoss is clearly favoured in a-move and all-in scenarios - which makes up the majority of playstyles at lower levels. Can you explain how bronze, silver, and gold PvT is pretty balanced? Because I am not convinced it should be balanced given what we know about Protoss deathball vs Terran bioball. (note: I'm not arguing that PvT should be balanced at lower levels.) Probably because in bronze silver and gold, protoss player suck horribly at defending terran all-ins too. It's very hard to even find balance relevant at those levels where everyone is playing extremely sub-optimal. I remember watching Totalbiscuit win a bunch of games with a 1 base battlecruiser rush in gold. That's in no way indicative of whether balance exists or not. Those where very funny games and were great to watch. But they should not account for balance in any way.
Thought I made it clear that lower levels is not the measure for balance.
I was just under the impression that sub-optimal play favoured Protoss, and that the data should show that. When both sides are playing equally (statistically) sub-optimal, I assumed the strength of Protoss deathball and all-ins would be reflected in the data. That's all.
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I find it frankly astonishing that win rates are within 2% of each other across all leagues. That is amazing balance, and speaks to what a fantastic job DK has done with SC2.
I don't get all the whining in this thread. From what I've seen laddering this last year the game seems very well balanced. When I lose it's never because of some so-called balance problem, its because I messed up and/or my opponent played better. Whiners in this thread would do themselves and the rest of us a favor if they blamed themselves for their losses rather than their race.
I guess thats too much to hope for.
BTW: LOVE Swarmhosts, my favorite unit by far. I hope Blizz doesn't cave to all the whiners and leaves the SH exactly as is.
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Increase tank damage vs immortals! Chargelots and archons kill tanks anywaaaayZzzz
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I could care less about mech being viable, haha, so overall I'm actually fine with the game.
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On January 10 2014 19:32 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 18:52 aZealot wrote:On January 10 2014 18:31 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 10 2014 18:01 aZealot wrote:On January 10 2014 14:56 dcemuser wrote:On January 10 2014 14:37 aZealot wrote:On January 10 2014 14:24 stuchiu wrote:On January 10 2014 14:15 Roman666 wrote:On January 10 2014 14:06 stuchiu wrote:On January 10 2014 13:25 Plansix wrote:
[quote]
Ok, but I am going to ask you the same question, why would they do that? You don't just imply that their data is incorrectly gathered, but they do so with purpose with the intent to mislead. Do you really think they want an imbalanced game? I don't really see any good reason for them to "cook the numbers" to make the game appear balanced.
I don't think they would purposely mislead anyone. But it's easy to mislead yourself into just looking at the numbers. There was a reason BL/infestor wasn't touched for the last 6-8 months of WoL and it was because the numbers were balanced. It's easy to mislead yourself into thinking winrates are the problem rather than the design or function of the matchups. There are just too few people with too much information and too many objectives to comprehensively cover all paths and solutions to everything the want. From what I've seen in the last few years they want: 1) A balanced game across all levels of play (to attract more casual players. I can understand the sentiment, but you won't be attracting casuals to play more through ladder imho.) 2) They want it to be fun and dynamic. 3) They want to increase the skill cap. 4) They want less deathball matchups. 5) They want Zerg to be "Zergy" 6) The bunker must be changed. 7) They want to all races to have multiple options per matchup. But a lot of those objectives are contradictory. They felt Protoss was too weak early so they gave them photon cannon. That helped balance but increased the amount of deathball matchups and fun and dynamic gameplay (Nothing is more deflating than watching a TvP about to ramp up in speed to only be stopped cold by a photon cannon.) They want the game to be more fun and dynamic so they increase the speed of mutas, medivacs and oracles. But at the same time it decreases tension and awe of the game. Mass drops are now a standard play capable of being done by every solid Terran instead of a hard earned specialty way to play that was only done by MMA and Gumiho. Mutas became faster and gained regen increasing the "Multitasking" of Zerg players but in the end all it really did was let weaker players play like Soulkey/DRG/Leenook at the end of WoL without the extreme control, intuition and practice as it was much more forgiving. They wanted to give Protoss more options in the early game against both Zerg and Terran so they gave them the MSC, cheaper dts and an oracle. While Zerg can still play a variety of opening builds, Terran has been pigeonholed into going reaper cc every game unless they want to just randomly gamble on a cc or double proxy rax compared to Protoss' 4-5 solid openings that all transition well into mid-late (And this doesn't include obscure builds like First's double forge robo immortal build.) Which is why I assume they read all of the balance threads on here and other places. Even if they never release how they are reaching those numbers, even being critical of the methodology is still an important point to bring up so that both spectators and the dev.team don't take the numbers as the only truth. I doubt very much that they will ever comprehensively tell us how they came to these numbers and honestly they shouldn't. It only opens them to more criticism and takes away from actual balance discussion but its always important to not take these numbers at face value either. But what would be the point of releasing these numbers? To back their point, to have the unsinkable argument when some one would question their thinking? Without saying how they came up with these numbers, it even more sinkable argument, because everyone can question it. Seriously, what they were thinking? They just wanted something concrete to show why they think Protoss isn't as much of a problem as the community is making it out to be? Maybe they just wanted to show some of their reasoning and keep us as informed as they can without violating company policy? Who knows. In any case, I am glad that they keep their methods in-house and do not publicise. Nor should they (especially to a community as over-represented in armchair experts as SC2). It's a pity he felt he had to share it, even if partially. A more blatant fuck you to the community would have been a lot better. I'm sure it would have been a lot more cathartic for him too. Slow and steady as she goes from Blizzard suits me just fine. I would honestly much rather have some radical change, but I know that Blizzard can't and won't do that until the expansion (if they do it at all). As I have said above, my take on this is dependent on the degree of radicality of changes. I'd be against changes that lead to substantial re-learning of the game. Therefore, removal of units is out as is fundamental alteration of race mechanics (such as forcefields, floating buildings, spawn larvae etc). I believe the positive effects of these changes are largely unknown (and in the many cases usually imagined). I prefer a known state, whatever its shortcomings, to an imagined utopia. You prefer known states? So I guess we should have just kept Broodlord/Infestor vs. Archon toilet going for another 5 years or so. The risk in changing such a fundamental part of the match up was too great. And when Blizzard finally did change it, all the pros were so upset about having to relearn the matchup that they left in droves. Right? That totally happened. We have test realms and Betas for a reason. Blizzard needs to start taking advantage of them. TFT is what every expansion pack has the potential to be. It completely retooled ROC, and not a single person on planet earth will tell you that ROC was a better game. People keep mentioning BL/Infestor as a reason to patch ignoring the fact that it was a patch that brought about that state of affairs in the first place. I don't even know where to start addressing all of the wrongness in this single sentence for maximum dramatic power. First of all, really? Your big counter-argument to "sweeping changes are absolutely necessary and can be great for the game" is the problem was caused by a patch? Except it wasn't even that. BL/Infestor was already a problem by 1.3, and the ONLY buff Infestors had had by that point in time was Fungal preventing Blink. So unless you're going to tell me that Fungal preventing Blink caused BL/Infestor to happen in ZvP and ZvT, and then come up with another imaginary patch that single-handedly introduced the stupid Archon toilet that needed to go as badly as BL/Infestor did, what you've said is completely useless, and we're still left with a horrible game state that needed to go, and it went, and everyone was happy that it went, and nobody left the game because they had to re-learn the match-ups. Show nested quote +Where TFT is concerned, the problem is that SC the game is an e-sport with a lot of money and livelihoods on the line and with a number of other games in direct competition. It is also a different and more complex game. Moreover, the environment is not the same. There is no guarantee that LOTV will be TFT. The incentives are not there to make that kind of step again. Nor is HOTS in anywhere near as broken a state. Please don't exaggerate. HOTS is not broken. PvT, PvP, and possibly PvZ (haven't seen enough of it lately, but I hear bad things) are broken. ZvZ is supremely one-dimensional, but it kind of works, for what it is. On to the money and livelihoods. Excellent point, except as we've already seen from BL/Infestor and HOTS in general, nobody leaves the game when matchups change. Even now with TvP being basically the opposite of what it was at the end of WOL, are Korean T pros retiring more than Korean pros of other races? No, they're not. I admire your appreciation for stability, but as long as we're talking about peoples' livelihoods, wouldn't you rather remove all the cheese MSC and Oracle builds that get in the way of good, deserving Protoss, Zerg, and Terrans advancing in important tournaments when they get knocked out by a coin flip in a BO1 or a BO3? I'd rather lose all of that. I think that's what actually matters to pro gamers' livelihoods more than a few weeks of studying up on new matchups. Show nested quote +But, yes, going back to your first point. I'd rather Blizzard followed the right principles (patch slowly and carefully) even if they make the occasional mistake, than follow the wrong principles (patch too fast and poorly) and err often as a result. Except at the end of the day, we don't have "slowly and carefully," do we? We have "slowly and poorly." Random nerfs to Widow Mines that wouldn't be necessary if the buffs to Siege Tanks did what they were supposed to do, random buffs to Oracles that the entire community knows won't be of any use and pro Ps say nobody needed or asked for. I'm a fan of the Roach burrow tinkering, but you're telling me that's slow and careful? That could easily blow up in Blizzard's face right now. Your entire point is based on pros throwing hissy fits and leaving if the match-ups are significantly altered, and we've seen time and time again that that's just patently false, they're willing to roll with any changes. If anyone's going to throw hissy fits and leave, it's spectators who are tired of seeing terrible game design go unchanged for 4 years in a row. Guess what would get them to stay.
I am not sure what you are on about? I thought you were talking about the OL/Queen patch which most people seem to regard as the key patch that led to the long BL/Infestor era. Moreover, my point for the longest time has been that Blizzard should not re-apply their WOL approach to patching which was way too trigger happy. Patches upon patches lead to scenarios where avenues which players can explore and grow the game are closed. I don't like that.
You've also not understood my point about re-learning the game. Maybe I was not clear in my original post. I made that point in the context of radical changes to the game (e.g. fundamental changes to the economy or removing units or core gameplay elements). Re-learning the game at that level is what I am against. Remember, you may think it a good idea. But, I don't. And there are a lot of players who happily play multiplayer (1v1 to 4v4) who have gotten used to the game. You have to establish that changes on a core level are absolutely required before upturning the game. You have not. No-one has.
Learning a new way to play a match-up is fine, of course. That is what happens slowly and over time as the meta evolves, anyway. I'd like more of that, myself. Hence, my comment on maps which I think is one way of encouraging gameplay variety.
I'm not a fan of any of these recent patch changes. I like to think I've been clear that generally I want Blizzard to stay out of the game after release. The reason for this is the knowledge problem in the game where by the time Blizzard gain information that a match-up may be imbalanced it may already be on the way to being solved due to the knowledge sharing and solving that goes on in Starcraft. (I talked about this a while ago in a blog post: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=429165.) This is why the WM nerf was a bad idea because as Zergs were adapting to it (despite all their complaining), Blizzard responded to the community and patched. It has had consequences in TvZ and also,unfortunately, in TvP.
Hence why, to re-iterate, I'd rather they left the game alone for as long and as often as possible. If they must patch, they must be certain that it is required and they do it slowly and carefully. Even then there is no certainty they will get it right.
I also don't like that they have a specific vision for the game that seems to guide their patching. The recent Oracle patch was out of a desire from Blizzard to see more Oracles. Now, I think, Blizzard don't get to decide that. The same applies to the recent Roach tinkering. Again, I don't think Blizzard gets to decide that. The players do. Blizzard needs to stay out.
And, my point was not at all about players having hissy fits and leaving the game. That is totally not it. Maybe I did not explain myself clearly enough. But, either way, right now, it's not an explanation I am inclined to make again.
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On January 10 2014 12:26 Redfish wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 11:55 CutTheEnemy wrote:
On EU, 24% of masters players are terran now compared with 35% and 38% for zerg and protoss. How can he say its balanced considering this? His appeal to win percentages within leagues is highly misleading.
He's also been speaking for years as though he's ignorant of our main complaint- its isn't balance per se, its how hard and stressful it is to play terran and win. We know terrans can win once they go pro, but most of us aren't capable of sustaining the serious damage to our personal relationships, grades, hands and paychecks it takes in order to play the race competitively. In what world does having the same number of people play each race equal each race being balanced? Let's say that there are 20 terran, 90 zerg and 90 toss in GM. If the Terran in GM won 50% of both TvP and TvZ, would that really be imbalanced? Would you still cry imba if those 20 terran out of 200 won 90% in non-mirrors?
so out of 10 games on average the terran will practice tvz/tvp 9 times whereas everyone will be practicing pvt,zvt,tvt 1 out of 10 and yet the winrate is 50/50 when the terran is practicing those match ups 4.5 times more than the other races are practicing against terran.
Would you cry imba if a particular race could practice less than 1/4th the time you do and still win over half the time?
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On January 10 2014 11:36 jcroisdale wrote:
The last sentence, i cant tell if he is pandering to us the players, or are they actually going to listen after 3.5 years?
Pandering, I guess. If your read any random player comment about the balance, would you really consider it valuable input?
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On January 11 2014 04:37 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 19:32 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 10 2014 18:52 aZealot wrote:On January 10 2014 18:31 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 10 2014 18:01 aZealot wrote:On January 10 2014 14:56 dcemuser wrote:On January 10 2014 14:37 aZealot wrote:On January 10 2014 14:24 stuchiu wrote:On January 10 2014 14:15 Roman666 wrote:On January 10 2014 14:06 stuchiu wrote:
[quote]
I don't think they would purposely mislead anyone. But it's easy to mislead yourself into just looking at the numbers. There was a reason BL/infestor wasn't touched for the last 6-8 months of WoL and it was because the numbers were balanced. It's easy to mislead yourself into thinking winrates are the problem rather than the design or function of the matchups. There are just too few people with too much information and too many objectives to comprehensively cover all paths and solutions to everything the want. From what I've seen in the last few years they want:
1) A balanced game across all levels of play (to attract more casual players. I can understand the sentiment, but you won't be attracting casuals to play more through ladder imho.)
2) They want it to be fun and dynamic.
3) They want to increase the skill cap.
4) They want less deathball matchups.
5) They want Zerg to be "Zergy"
6) The bunker must be changed.
7) They want to all races to have multiple options per matchup.
But a lot of those objectives are contradictory. They felt Protoss was too weak early so they gave them photon cannon. That helped balance but increased the amount of deathball matchups and fun and dynamic gameplay (Nothing is more deflating than watching a TvP about to ramp up in speed to only be stopped cold by a photon cannon.) They want the game to be more fun and dynamic so they increase the speed of mutas, medivacs and oracles. But at the same time it decreases tension and awe of the game. Mass drops are now a standard play capable of being done by every solid Terran instead of a hard earned specialty way to play that was only done by MMA and Gumiho. Mutas became faster and gained regen increasing the "Multitasking" of Zerg players but in the end all it really did was let weaker players play like Soulkey/DRG/Leenook at the end of WoL without the extreme control, intuition and practice as it was much more forgiving.
They wanted to give Protoss more options in the early game against both Zerg and Terran so they gave them the MSC, cheaper dts and an oracle. While Zerg can still play a variety of opening builds, Terran has been pigeonholed into going reaper cc every game unless they want to just randomly gamble on a cc or double proxy rax compared to Protoss' 4-5 solid openings that all transition well into mid-late (And this doesn't include obscure builds like First's double forge robo immortal build.)
Which is why I assume they read all of the balance threads on here and other places. Even if they never release how they are reaching those numbers, even being critical of the methodology is still an important point to bring up so that both spectators and the dev.team don't take the numbers as the only truth. I doubt very much that they will ever comprehensively tell us how they came to these numbers and honestly they shouldn't. It only opens them to more criticism and takes away from actual balance discussion but its always important to not take these numbers at face value either. But what would be the point of releasing these numbers? To back their point, to have the unsinkable argument when some one would question their thinking? Without saying how they came up with these numbers, it even more sinkable argument, because everyone can question it. Seriously, what they were thinking? They just wanted something concrete to show why they think Protoss isn't as much of a problem as the community is making it out to be? Maybe they just wanted to show some of their reasoning and keep us as informed as they can without violating company policy? Who knows. In any case, I am glad that they keep their methods in-house and do not publicise. Nor should they (especially to a community as over-represented in armchair experts as SC2). It's a pity he felt he had to share it, even if partially. A more blatant fuck you to the community would have been a lot better. I'm sure it would have been a lot more cathartic for him too. Slow and steady as she goes from Blizzard suits me just fine. I would honestly much rather have some radical change, but I know that Blizzard can't and won't do that until the expansion (if they do it at all). As I have said above, my take on this is dependent on the degree of radicality of changes. I'd be against changes that lead to substantial re-learning of the game. Therefore, removal of units is out as is fundamental alteration of race mechanics (such as forcefields, floating buildings, spawn larvae etc). I believe the positive effects of these changes are largely unknown (and in the many cases usually imagined). I prefer a known state, whatever its shortcomings, to an imagined utopia. You prefer known states? So I guess we should have just kept Broodlord/Infestor vs. Archon toilet going for another 5 years or so. The risk in changing such a fundamental part of the match up was too great. And when Blizzard finally did change it, all the pros were so upset about having to relearn the matchup that they left in droves. Right? That totally happened. We have test realms and Betas for a reason. Blizzard needs to start taking advantage of them. TFT is what every expansion pack has the potential to be. It completely retooled ROC, and not a single person on planet earth will tell you that ROC was a better game. People keep mentioning BL/Infestor as a reason to patch ignoring the fact that it was a patch that brought about that state of affairs in the first place. I don't even know where to start addressing all of the wrongness in this single sentence for maximum dramatic power. First of all, really? Your big counter-argument to "sweeping changes are absolutely necessary and can be great for the game" is the problem was caused by a patch? Except it wasn't even that. BL/Infestor was already a problem by 1.3, and the ONLY buff Infestors had had by that point in time was Fungal preventing Blink. So unless you're going to tell me that Fungal preventing Blink caused BL/Infestor to happen in ZvP and ZvT, and then come up with another imaginary patch that single-handedly introduced the stupid Archon toilet that needed to go as badly as BL/Infestor did, what you've said is completely useless, and we're still left with a horrible game state that needed to go, and it went, and everyone was happy that it went, and nobody left the game because they had to re-learn the match-ups. Where TFT is concerned, the problem is that SC the game is an e-sport with a lot of money and livelihoods on the line and with a number of other games in direct competition. It is also a different and more complex game. Moreover, the environment is not the same. There is no guarantee that LOTV will be TFT. The incentives are not there to make that kind of step again. Nor is HOTS in anywhere near as broken a state. Please don't exaggerate. HOTS is not broken. PvT, PvP, and possibly PvZ (haven't seen enough of it lately, but I hear bad things) are broken. ZvZ is supremely one-dimensional, but it kind of works, for what it is. On to the money and livelihoods. Excellent point, except as we've already seen from BL/Infestor and HOTS in general, nobody leaves the game when matchups change. Even now with TvP being basically the opposite of what it was at the end of WOL, are Korean T pros retiring more than Korean pros of other races? No, they're not. I admire your appreciation for stability, but as long as we're talking about peoples' livelihoods, wouldn't you rather remove all the cheese MSC and Oracle builds that get in the way of good, deserving Protoss, Zerg, and Terrans advancing in important tournaments when they get knocked out by a coin flip in a BO1 or a BO3? I'd rather lose all of that. I think that's what actually matters to pro gamers' livelihoods more than a few weeks of studying up on new matchups. But, yes, going back to your first point. I'd rather Blizzard followed the right principles (patch slowly and carefully) even if they make the occasional mistake, than follow the wrong principles (patch too fast and poorly) and err often as a result. Except at the end of the day, we don't have "slowly and carefully," do we? We have "slowly and poorly." Random nerfs to Widow Mines that wouldn't be necessary if the buffs to Siege Tanks did what they were supposed to do, random buffs to Oracles that the entire community knows won't be of any use and pro Ps say nobody needed or asked for. I'm a fan of the Roach burrow tinkering, but you're telling me that's slow and careful? That could easily blow up in Blizzard's face right now. Your entire point is based on pros throwing hissy fits and leaving if the match-ups are significantly altered, and we've seen time and time again that that's just patently false, they're willing to roll with any changes. If anyone's going to throw hissy fits and leave, it's spectators who are tired of seeing terrible game design go unchanged for 4 years in a row. Guess what would get them to stay. I am not sure what you are on about? I thought you were talking about the OL/Queen patch which most people seem to regard as the key patch that led to the long BL/Infestor era. Moreover, my point for the longest time has been that Blizzard should not re-apply their WOL approach to patching which was way too trigger happy. Patches upon patches lead to scenarios where avenues which players can explore and grow the game are closed. I don't like that. You've also not understood my point about re-learning the game. Maybe I was not clear in my original post. I made that point in the context of radical changes to the game (e.g. fundamental changes to the economy or removing units or core gameplay elements). Re-learning the game at that level is what I am against. Remember, you may think it a good idea. But, I don't. And there are a lot of players who happily play multiplayer (1v1 to 4v4) who have gotten used to the game. You have to establish that changes on a core level are absolutely required before upturning the game. You have not. No-one has. Learning a new way to play a match-up is fine, of course. That is what happens slowly and over time as the meta evolves, anyway. I'd like more of that, myself. Hence, my comment on maps which I think is one way of encouraging gameplay variety. I'm not a fan of any of these changes. I like to think I've been clear that generally I want Blizzard to stay out of the game after release. The reason for this is the knowledge problem in the game where by the time Blizzard gain information that a match-up may be imbalanced it may already be on the way to being solved due to the knowledge sharing and solving that goes on in Starcraft. (I talked about this a while ago in a blog post: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=429165.) This is why the WM nerf was a bad idea because as Zergs were adapting to it (despite all their complaining), Blizzard responded to the community and patched. It has had consequences in TvZ and also,unfortunately, in TvP. Hence, why to re-iterate, I'd rather they left the game alone for as long and as often as possible. If they must patch, they must be certain that it is required and they do it slowly and carefully. Even then there is no certainty they will get it right. I also don't like that they have a specific vision for the game that seems to guide their patching. The recent Oracle patch was out of a desire from Blizzard to see more Oracles. Now, I think, Blizzard don't get to decide that. The same applies to the recent Roach tinkering. Again, I don't think Blizzard gets to decide that. The players do. Blizzard needs to stay out. And, my point was not at all about players having hissy fits and leaving the game. That is totally not it. Maybe I did not explain myself clearly enough. But, either way, right now, it's not an explanation I am inclined to make again.
being trigger happy on patches isnt necessarily a problem, you just have to continue to be willing to patch. yea, the ol/queen patch lead to stagnant broodlord/infestor play, but that only became a massive game destroying problem because that state of the game was allowed to persist. if they'd changed it again as that playstyle was becoming prevalent and too powerful, it woulda been a minor problem at worst.
when the game is either imbalanced or unenjoyable it's good to experiment with lots of things, it becomes more likely that you'll find something that works.
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Reading this thread you understand why the design team keep the community at arms length.
Still, at least they are trying and I'm a huge fan of that. Keep it coming.
It's just a real shame that the entire post is about balancing races against one another which is not ever going to be very informative or interesting. Of course it's something that the community bangs on about constantly but ... well... sometimes the community is stupid.
Why do you want mech to be viable?
What do you think about the inconsistency of unit behaviours in the SC2 engine? Is it something that's possible to ever address?
What part do you think map design should play in the balancing of races?
Have you considered giving map makers more tools to achieve a balance?
What do you think about needing more than 3 bases to achieve maximum income (assuming sensible worker numbers).
Is there any plan for a LotV release at present?
Will LotV be similar to HotS in scope?
Are engagements over too quickly?
It's a random and poorly made list. But describes the kind of thing I was hoping to read. No firm commitments needed, just some exposure of the thought processes of the design team at the moment. Responses that begin "For a while we were discussing..." or "We play tested this crazy change for a bit..." would have me salivating.
But hey, at least David Kim sees the need for engagement. It's a start.
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On January 11 2014 04:29 plogamer wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 04:22 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2014 04:16 Whitewing wrote:On January 11 2014 04:14 plogamer wrote:On January 11 2014 03:55 Whitewing wrote:On January 11 2014 03:47 Hider wrote:
Also, why the hell would you make EAPM a variable? That's never been indicative of skill. Remember when good ol' 100 APM Sjow beat life? I would never have the equation look anything like that at all.
You were talking about econometrics. An econometric analaysis is without a doubt gonna find a significant correlation between EAPM and skill-level. I think your confusing no outliers w/ correlation. But as you say, its not perfect indicator, and that's the problem: There are no good objective measures of skills (no explanatory variables) other than looking combined at MMR and distribution of the race. The end result is that you can come to a reasonably close estimate of what the game balance actually is at a given point in time, even if it's not perfectly accurate. Their stated goal is to keep balance within the 55-45% range for winrates, they're doing much better than that right now. No you can only do that if you have some really explanatory variables and a dataset that is cleaned for balance. Blizzard simple doesn't have that (as I argued in the previous post). All of the variables they will use are simply bias'ed. I'm telling you that you cannot possibly know what variables they do and don't have, or even what datasets they do have. Clearly they seem to think they know more about it than you do, and I'm inclined to believe that they probably do. You believe the data which shows balanced win-rates at gold, silver and diamond in PvT? I can accept that PvT is pretty balanced at the top level, but everyone knows that Protoss is clearly favoured in a-move and all-in scenarios - which makes up the majority of playstyles at lower levels. Can you explain how bronze, silver, and gold PvT is pretty balanced? Because I am not convinced it should be balanced given what we know about Protoss deathball vs Terran bioball. (note: I'm not arguing that PvT should be balanced at lower levels.) Probably because in bronze silver and gold, protoss player suck horribly at defending terran all-ins too. It's very hard to even find balance relevant at those levels where everyone is playing extremely sub-optimal. I remember watching Totalbiscuit win a bunch of games with a 1 base battlecruiser rush in gold. That's in no way indicative of whether balance exists or not. Those where very funny games and were great to watch. But they should not account for balance in any way. Thought I made it clear that lower levels is not the measure for balance. I was just under the impression that sub-optimal play favoured Protoss, and that the data should show that. When both sides are playing equally (statistically) sub-optimal, I assumed the strength of Protoss deathball and all-ins would be reflected in the data. That's all.
You are assuming that it gets to the point where Protoss is comfortably able to roll over the Terran with his 2/2 deathball. At that level, a Terran may drop sub-optimally but the Protoss will respond sub-optimally. He may not have enough gates up when the drop comes in, he may drag his whole army to his main and PO overcharge his main and lose all his probes at his natural. A few minutes later a Marauder heavy army comes in and kills him because he has too many Stalkers and no Charge.
You can 1-A deathball in Gold. But it is not necessarily always the case that you can do so or that it is always effective.
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lol, why are people so interested in balance RIGHT NOW.
Of course balance is an ongoing issue that should always be closely watched, but at this particular point in time, HotS is coasting. Balance is pretty equal at all levels and pros are getting better/worse results based on their own as well as their opponent's training regimin and methods.
Ofc you have trolls who shout imba after every game, but the community shouldn't be talking balance at all right now, except of course little interesting updates like 1-15 Protoss records in ProLeague. It's funny and interesting, but shouldn't arouse any real balance discussion.
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I'd like to see another factor added: game length time. Win rates for <10 mins; 10-20 mins and 20mins +, for example.
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On January 11 2014 04:49 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 04:29 plogamer wrote:On January 11 2014 04:22 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2014 04:16 Whitewing wrote:On January 11 2014 04:14 plogamer wrote:On January 11 2014 03:55 Whitewing wrote:On January 11 2014 03:47 Hider wrote:
Also, why the hell would you make EAPM a variable? That's never been indicative of skill. Remember when good ol' 100 APM Sjow beat life? I would never have the equation look anything like that at all.
You were talking about econometrics. An econometric analaysis is without a doubt gonna find a significant correlation between EAPM and skill-level. I think your confusing no outliers w/ correlation. But as you say, its not perfect indicator, and that's the problem: There are no good objective measures of skills (no explanatory variables) other than looking combined at MMR and distribution of the race. The end result is that you can come to a reasonably close estimate of what the game balance actually is at a given point in time, even if it's not perfectly accurate. Their stated goal is to keep balance within the 55-45% range for winrates, they're doing much better than that right now. No you can only do that if you have some really explanatory variables and a dataset that is cleaned for balance. Blizzard simple doesn't have that (as I argued in the previous post). All of the variables they will use are simply bias'ed. I'm telling you that you cannot possibly know what variables they do and don't have, or even what datasets they do have. Clearly they seem to think they know more about it than you do, and I'm inclined to believe that they probably do. You believe the data which shows balanced win-rates at gold, silver and diamond in PvT? I can accept that PvT is pretty balanced at the top level, but everyone knows that Protoss is clearly favoured in a-move and all-in scenarios - which makes up the majority of playstyles at lower levels. Can you explain how bronze, silver, and gold PvT is pretty balanced? Because I am not convinced it should be balanced given what we know about Protoss deathball vs Terran bioball. (note: I'm not arguing that PvT should be balanced at lower levels.) Probably because in bronze silver and gold, protoss player suck horribly at defending terran all-ins too. It's very hard to even find balance relevant at those levels where everyone is playing extremely sub-optimal. I remember watching Totalbiscuit win a bunch of games with a 1 base battlecruiser rush in gold. That's in no way indicative of whether balance exists or not. Those where very funny games and were great to watch. But they should not account for balance in any way. Thought I made it clear that lower levels is not the measure for balance. I was just under the impression that sub-optimal play favoured Protoss, and that the data should show that. When both sides are playing equally (statistically) sub-optimal, I assumed the strength of Protoss deathball and all-ins would be reflected in the data. That's all. You are assuming that it gets to the point where Protoss is comfortably able to roll over the Terran with his 2/2 deathball. At that level, a Terran may drop sub-optimally but the Protoss will respond sub-optimally. He may not have enough gates up when the drop comes in, he may drag his whole army to his main and PO overcharge his main and lose all his probes at his natural. A few minutes later a Marauder heavy army comes in and kills him because he has too many Stalkers and no Charge. You can 1-A deathball in Gold. But it is not necessarily always the case that you can do so or that it is always effective.
The sample size would balance out variables that you are pointing out. Unless you have a reason to think that Terrans play even less optimal than Protoss at that level.
I'm not saying that 1-A deathball is always effective. That would almost result in 100% winrate in PvT at those levels lol. Nor am I assuming that Protoss always gets the deathball rolling.
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how does blizzard determine a players skill level to be able to count his games towards the stats? these stats feel like bullshit to me.
its as if they only took peoples stats who had close to 50% winrate.
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EPT
