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Northern Ireland27201 Posts
On January 13 2014 17:13 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2014 05:42 Wombat_NI wrote:
Its never just been about the game being balanced, Blizz want their game to be entertaining both to play and watch and have frequently said as such.
Ideally these all go hand-in-hand, but I'd trade 50/50 parity for a more enjoyable experience in a heartbeat yeah, but it's going to be hard to reach a more enjoyable experience, if the game isn't balanced. It won't be enjoyable if you get fucked over by imbalances every 3rd game.
As Terrans are currently discovering :p
Nah facetiousness aside, I'm talking about things like late WoL PvZ which was decently 'balanced' in terms of percentages, but played out in a really frustrating way.
I'm not hopeful for Starbow either, which annoys me. I think it looks promising but really constrained in terms of growth by how damn awkward Bnet 2 is.
I also find it damn annoying to watch a game where armies are split and the Eco is slower and there are a lot more engagements all over the place. Blizzard should have at least experimented with this ages ago.
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On January 14 2014 00:26 Wombat_NI wrote:
I also find it damn annoying to watch a game where armies are split and the Eco is slower and there are a lot more engagements all over the place. Blizzard should have at least experimented with this ages ago.
What? You are annoyed by it? That's kind of what BW was all about. Or am I an illiterate inbreed who cannot make sense of your arcane linguistics?
As for the balance vs design part, what if we rebuffed infestors, gave infested terrans 5-5 upgrades, made the mothership cost 1k/1k and gave it vortex, recall, cloak, force field(which is cast automatically on any ramp that is in vision range), storm and spawn archon and about 20k energy. I'm pretty sure we could have fairly balanced PvZ with that, and it would be even better than WoL as a spectator.
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Northern Ireland27201 Posts
It's annoying because aspects of it are patently worth integrating into SC2 and we either get 'we don't have the technology' or 'if you want BW go play it'
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Oh that makes more sense. Yeah, it's kind of like constantly being reminded of what could have been in a way. The comments in the vein of "go play BW" are so amazingly asinine that I just ignore them. But still, as pessimistic and cantankerous as I usually am, I feel a sense of optimism about SB. It's a sign that even if blizzard won't try to change the game for the better, the community can. Whether SB succeeds or not, at the very least it's a first step.
And who's to say, Dota grew out of WC3 and became much bigger than its original host. I do agree about the general shittiness about Bnet 2.0, if SB starts growing it may very well be necessary to try and move the social aspect to another platform. No idea how Blizzard would take to that.
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This is your chance to play a lot of Starbow and be involved in its success.
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On January 13 2014 14:04 Talack wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2014 13:33 plogamer wrote:On January 13 2014 10:09 Squat wrote:LoL begs to differ. I know it's a team-oriented game, but Riot will COMPLETELY redesign items and champions on a regular basis, and they have completely changed the way the support role is played and how vision items function with this latest season. These are huge changes. Bigger than the queen buff IMO. And they happen relatively frequently.
If you are competent at balancing and designing your own game, you absolutely 100% CAN make consistent, big changes without negatively impacting the game. I couldn't disagree with you more on this subject, and it has been proven time and time again by a multitude of games.
I guess the best argument could be: do you trust BLIZZARD to make the appropriate changes, on a regular basis, to keep this game fresh and interesting without damaging the competitive side of things. I can see that being a legit concern.
The difference between changing items and champions in a moba and changing basic gameplay in a tightly tuned RTS with multiple unique factions is immense, there is no comparison. Everything in an RTS is inextricably connected, changing something fundamental, odds are you have to change almost all of it. There is also the matter of the sheer amount of time needed to properly play-test the changes each time. You'd need months of beta testing with hundreds of people for each iteration. It's not a reasonable process for a company trying to make money(i.e. all of them). As for the rest, I'm a realist, I have very little patience for irrationality or wishful thinking in any form. SC2 is what it is. The RTS market is more or less a wasteland outside of this game. Blizzard has one expo worth 40 or so dollars left to sell, then they are out of ways to monetize the product. Where is the incentive to do all the things you talk about? We can argue all day about what should be done, what we would like to see, but in the end we are arguing with math, and I've never seen anyone win that argument. If this game is going to have any significant changes it will have to come from the community. Blizz patched (though much less frequently later on) Diablo 2 for years and years. It is a big reason I support their products because of the love they showed for their games and the reputation they have accrued. It's an incentive that people are not discussing enough. Having a game over a decade old still having players is a sort of an advertisement. Keeps you in the scene and in the consumer's view. I understand when people say the expansion model is outdated. But it's a model in which Blizzard showed such excellence - perhaps leading to their continued success to this day. The blizzard that made d2/bw is not the same company that made d3/sc2 imo 
It is not. Old Blizzard was a product-oriented company. Make thing, polish thing, put it in a box, ship. You need a very different kind of organization with a very different mindset to maintain World of Warcraft. You need a service-oriented company built to churn out a lot of content constantly. Not much of a surprise that modern Blizzard offerings just feel very different than the old ones.
Even then, we should really remember that Old Blizzard made it's fame on the strength of the games' single player portions, on Battle.net's community features/ease of use and the games' absurdly strong map editors. Multiplayer balance was never their forte, and Brood War multiplayer was quite literally a happy accident. One they didn't mess up by overt micromanagement, granted.
I'd love for old Blizzard to return. Warcraft 1/2/3, Diablo 1/2, SC:BW built worlds. The characters were there and they were good, but the world was really the main thing about those games' campaigns. In old RTS fashion, you also were the commander yourself. Fast forward to SC2, you're impersonating Raynor, the cutscenes consist of a crapton of Hollywood-style moneyshots, and everything is all about personal drama. The mission statement of HotS was to answer the question "Who is Sarah Kerrigan?"
Brood War, this ain't.
On January 13 2014 14:20 z0rz wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2014 10:09 Squat wrote:LoL begs to differ. I know it's a team-oriented game, but Riot will COMPLETELY redesign items and champions on a regular basis, and they have completely changed the way the support role is played and how vision items function with this latest season. These are huge changes. Bigger than the queen buff IMO. And they happen relatively frequently.
If you are competent at balancing and designing your own game, you absolutely 100% CAN make consistent, big changes without negatively impacting the game. I couldn't disagree with you more on this subject, and it has been proven time and time again by a multitude of games.
I guess the best argument could be: do you trust BLIZZARD to make the appropriate changes, on a regular basis, to keep this game fresh and interesting without damaging the competitive side of things. I can see that being a legit concern.
The difference between changing items and champions in a moba and changing basic gameplay in a tightly tuned RTS with multiple unique factions is immense, there is no comparison. Everything in an RTS is inextricably connected, changing something fundamental, odds are you have to change almost all of it. There is also the matter of the sheer amount of time needed to properly play-test the changes each time. You'd need months of beta testing with hundreds of people for each iteration. It's not a reasonable process for a company trying to make money(i.e. all of them). As for the rest, I'm a realist, I have very little patience for irrationality or wishful thinking in any form. SC2 is what it is. The RTS market is more or less a wasteland outside of this game. Blizzard has one expo worth 40 or so dollars left to sell, then they are out of ways to monetize the product. Where is the incentive to do all the things you talk about? We can argue all day about what should be done, what we would like to see, but in the end we are arguing with math, and I've never seen anyone win that argument. If this game is going to have any significant changes it will have to come from the community. MOBA and RTS are actually quite similar when it boils down to basic design elements -- unit movement/pathing, positioning, spellcasting, attack range, attack damage versus defensive stats, etc. If you buff a champions range in a MOBA, the same benefits translate directly to RTS: easier to play defensively, more damage output to retreating targets, etc etc. I mean, if you think about it, changing one champion's stats or spells in LoL effectively changes the way 100+ other champions interact with said champion. At the very least, you have to directly compare champions of the same role: you can't safely buff Caitlyn's damage without comparing her damage to Ezreal, Vayne, Corki, etc. But those champions' damage output varies greatly depending on skill level/matchup/itemization, just like a unit's role can change depending on the matchup in an RTS. And buffing certain items has varying effects on champions that may or may not be able to make optimal use of that item. Both games are balanced on a razor's edge and could easily be thrown off with a simple change, as we saw with the Queen range buff in WoL. But, as IdrA mentioned earlier in this thread, breaking the game isn't a problem if you're capable of identifying the problem and willing to correct it in a timely fashion. I understand the realist part though. I definitely agree that the community will have to step up and finish the work Blizzard started. Fortunately, Blizzard gave us the tools we need to fix their mess. We just need to make better use of them. + Show Spoiler +On January 13 2014 13:33 plogamer wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2014 10:09 Squat wrote:LoL begs to differ. I know it's a team-oriented game, but Riot will COMPLETELY redesign items and champions on a regular basis, and they have completely changed the way the support role is played and how vision items function with this latest season. These are huge changes. Bigger than the queen buff IMO. And they happen relatively frequently.
If you are competent at balancing and designing your own game, you absolutely 100% CAN make consistent, big changes without negatively impacting the game. I couldn't disagree with you more on this subject, and it has been proven time and time again by a multitude of games.
I guess the best argument could be: do you trust BLIZZARD to make the appropriate changes, on a regular basis, to keep this game fresh and interesting without damaging the competitive side of things. I can see that being a legit concern.
The difference between changing items and champions in a moba and changing basic gameplay in a tightly tuned RTS with multiple unique factions is immense, there is no comparison. Everything in an RTS is inextricably connected, changing something fundamental, odds are you have to change almost all of it. There is also the matter of the sheer amount of time needed to properly play-test the changes each time. You'd need months of beta testing with hundreds of people for each iteration. It's not a reasonable process for a company trying to make money(i.e. all of them). As for the rest, I'm a realist, I have very little patience for irrationality or wishful thinking in any form. SC2 is what it is. The RTS market is more or less a wasteland outside of this game. Blizzard has one expo worth 40 or so dollars left to sell, then they are out of ways to monetize the product. Where is the incentive to do all the things you talk about? We can argue all day about what should be done, what we would like to see, but in the end we are arguing with math, and I've never seen anyone win that argument. If this game is going to have any significant changes it will have to come from the community. Blizz patched (though much less frequently later on) Diablo 2 for years and years. It is a big reason I support their products because of the love they showed for their games and the reputation they have accrued. It's an incentive that people are not discussing enough. Having a game over a decade old still having players is a sort of an advertisement. Keeps you in the scene and in the consumer's view. I understand when people say the expansion model is outdated. But it's a model in which Blizzard showed such excellence - perhaps leading to their continued success to this day. This is funny to me. I don't know how long you played D2 or how involved you were with the game, but it was incredibly broken and the community waited literally YEARS for patches that were discussed but never implemented. Of course, most of the D2 team had gone on to greener pastures and I'm sure the remaining team had little to work with, but D2 was a giant mess of a game. Fortunately, much like BW, the massive flaws actually made it a pretty interesting game. I'm too lazy to research the names of everything and their respective bugs, but I recall those lightning wisp things unintentionally applying their melee damage to their ranged lightning damage, making them do far too much damage overall. Hammerdins were never supposed to be able to damage magic immune enemies, which was documented for YEARS (not sure if it was ever fixed). And let's not forget about the amount of bots, dupes, and maphacks. I LOVED the game, but it's a terrible example of a diligent/competent dev team IMO.
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant.
I've been playing fighting games a lot lately and the system-first paradigm seems really strong to me. It guards against oppressive situations by implementing universal failsafes and gives people standard options that can be utilized regardless of matchup. Obviously the character/faction adds a ton of spice and nuance to it, but having a sound system at the characters/factions abstracted away level is just a really good thing in my experience.
In SC2 where there's one optimal endgame the balancing of that endgame and ease of getting to an endgame that's too good for comfort get amplified a lot and ask way, way more from the balance team. And even then, it probably just won't feel right. You need to balance stuff much more on a razor's edge and much smaller imbalances can tilt the system into disarray.
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On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant.
Funny thing I just remembered: SC2 does kind of work like that when the maps are smaller and taking a natural could be a big stretch. I mean, can't really blame a game made for Steppes, Blistering Sands and Scrap Station for scaling improperly to ones like Tal'darim Altar. Can really blame Blizz for not adjusting the econ scaling when those became standard though.
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On January 14 2014 02:57 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant. Funny thing I just remembered: SC2 does kind of work like that when the maps are smaller and taking a natural could be a big stretch. I mean, can't really blame a game made for Steppes, Blistering Sands and Scrap Station for scaling improperly to ones like Tal'darim Altar. Can really blame Blizz for not adjusting the econ scaling when those became standard though.
Judging by how poorly balanced the game was for the first year, it really wasn't "made" for those scale maps.
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2 years from now we will hear interviews saying that in HOTS pro league coaches used to force terrans to use mech so it wont get buffed .
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On January 14 2014 03:41 Sabu113 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 02:57 Coffee Zombie wrote:On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant. Funny thing I just remembered: SC2 does kind of work like that when the maps are smaller and taking a natural could be a big stretch. I mean, can't really blame a game made for Steppes, Blistering Sands and Scrap Station for scaling improperly to ones like Tal'darim Altar. Can really blame Blizz for not adjusting the econ scaling when those became standard though. Judging by how poorly balanced the game was for the first year, it really wasn't "made" for those scale maps.
Meant the economy scaling with regard to map size. Other insane balance issues like Warpgates and 3-range Roaches, well...
Plus honestly, watch those early games again. They're bad. Very bad compared to what's done now in terms of unit control and BO crispness.
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On January 14 2014 02:57 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant. Funny thing I just remembered: SC2 does kind of work like that when the maps are smaller and taking a natural could be a big stretch. I mean, can't really blame a game made for Steppes, Blistering Sands and Scrap Station for scaling improperly to ones like Tal'darim Altar. Can really blame Blizz for not adjusting the econ scaling when those became standard though.
If they honestly believed the game should be played on maps like Jungle Basin at the professional level I would be...amazed isn't quite strong enough of a word. I mean, even if we assume that is the case, what is the conclusion, that the game only functions on completely ass backwards horrifically bad maps that ruin any competitive integrity?
Either the game works on real maps or it doesn't work at all.
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On January 14 2014 04:04 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 03:41 Sabu113 wrote:On January 14 2014 02:57 Coffee Zombie wrote:On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant. Funny thing I just remembered: SC2 does kind of work like that when the maps are smaller and taking a natural could be a big stretch. I mean, can't really blame a game made for Steppes, Blistering Sands and Scrap Station for scaling improperly to ones like Tal'darim Altar. Can really blame Blizz for not adjusting the econ scaling when those became standard though. Judging by how poorly balanced the game was for the first year, it really wasn't "made" for those scale maps. Meant the economy scaling with regard to map size. Other insane balance issues like Warpgates and 3-range Roaches, well... Plus honestly, watch those early games again. They're bad. Very bad compared to what's done now in terms of unit control and BO crispness. Even a year into the game the games were pretty awful. I see tons of people romanticizing some of the "greatest games EVAR in SC2!!!!" from the middle of 2011 and lamenting that the game isn't like that anymore... when the quality of play in those games is so unbelievably bad (from a current pro standpoint) that it's amazing, in hindsight, that balance was even a discussion back then.
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On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
I'd love for old Blizzard to return. Warcraft 1/2/3, Diablo 1/2, SC:BW built worlds. The characters were there and they were good, but the world was really the main thing about those games' campaigns. In old RTS fashion, you also were the commander yourself. Fast forward to SC2, you're impersonating Raynor, the cutscenes consist of a crapton of Hollywood-style moneyshots, and everything is all about personal drama. The mission statement of HotS was to answer the question "Who is Sarah Kerrigan?"
Brood War, this ain't.
This sums up my opinion on the SC series as well. In the old campaigns you really feel like you are taking part in something significant, that the characters are important but there are much bigger forces and much higher stakes at play. Even things not in game would grab your attention, like when (not if) and how the UED would match up against the other factions. Contrast this with HoTS where you have Stukov spell this out in your face, but you can't help but feel it would be just another lightshow for the heroes and heroines to perform in. By focusing on and puffing up the main characters too much, the SC universe has become a theater of the petty, and no 200/200 army can create an epic feeling out of that.
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On January 14 2014 04:09 Squat wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 02:57 Coffee Zombie wrote:On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant. Funny thing I just remembered: SC2 does kind of work like that when the maps are smaller and taking a natural could be a big stretch. I mean, can't really blame a game made for Steppes, Blistering Sands and Scrap Station for scaling improperly to ones like Tal'darim Altar. Can really blame Blizz for not adjusting the econ scaling when those became standard though. If they honestly believed the game should be played on maps like Jungle Basin at the professional level I would be...amazed isn't quite strong enough of a word. I mean, even if we assume that is the case, what is the conclusion, that the game only functions on completely ass backwards horrifically bad maps that ruin any competitive integrity? Either the game works on real maps or it doesn't work at all.
It's Blizzard, what did you expect? They probably weren't aware of the competitive scene until someone of their legal department noticed Korea on the map in 2009 or so.
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On January 14 2014 04:26 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 04:09 Squat wrote:On January 14 2014 02:57 Coffee Zombie wrote:On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant. Funny thing I just remembered: SC2 does kind of work like that when the maps are smaller and taking a natural could be a big stretch. I mean, can't really blame a game made for Steppes, Blistering Sands and Scrap Station for scaling improperly to ones like Tal'darim Altar. Can really blame Blizz for not adjusting the econ scaling when those became standard though. If they honestly believed the game should be played on maps like Jungle Basin at the professional level I would be...amazed isn't quite strong enough of a word. I mean, even if we assume that is the case, what is the conclusion, that the game only functions on completely ass backwards horrifically bad maps that ruin any competitive integrity? Either the game works on real maps or it doesn't work at all. It's Blizzard, what did you expect? They probably weren't aware of the competitive scene until someone of their legal department noticed Korea on the map in 2009 or so.
People should watch some of the first BW pro matches that were played on Blizzard maps, L o fucking l were they terrible. It really wasn't till 2005ish that they got decent maps and even a bit further to get maps like blue storm, python, etc that we consider "staple" maps.
Blizzard really doesn't think its maps through(lol bloodbath).
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On January 14 2014 04:24 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 04:04 Coffee Zombie wrote:On January 14 2014 03:41 Sabu113 wrote:On January 14 2014 02:57 Coffee Zombie wrote:On January 14 2014 02:40 Coffee Zombie wrote:
You can ease the burden on balancing by good system design though. In a game where the economy scales so X workers on N+2 bases gets you more money than X workers on N bases things happen. If they misbalance say, the Tank so Terrans are top tier at turtling, the system has a natural countermeasure to turtling style play - take the map and throw money at the problem. I can mitigate the imbalance by being smart - I don't necessarily have to be Automaton 2000 to win that. This also helps against players that are just naturally really good at something. If you're really good at harassing, I can try to turtle with those OP tanks so the natural advantage is mine, but that again leaves me open for a counter. The thing is that none of it is faction dependant. Funny thing I just remembered: SC2 does kind of work like that when the maps are smaller and taking a natural could be a big stretch. I mean, can't really blame a game made for Steppes, Blistering Sands and Scrap Station for scaling improperly to ones like Tal'darim Altar. Can really blame Blizz for not adjusting the econ scaling when those became standard though. Judging by how poorly balanced the game was for the first year, it really wasn't "made" for those scale maps. Meant the economy scaling with regard to map size. Other insane balance issues like Warpgates and 3-range Roaches, well... Plus honestly, watch those early games again. They're bad. Very bad compared to what's done now in terms of unit control and BO crispness. Even a year into the game the games were pretty awful. I see tons of people romanticizing some of the "greatest games EVAR in SC2!!!!" from the middle of 2011 and lamenting that the game isn't like that anymore... when the quality of play in those games is so unbelievably bad (from a current pro standpoint) that it's amazing, in hindsight, that balance was even a discussion back then.
All things said and done, I think there's still so much room for improvement from the pro players. Yes, they have infallible, demi-god status in the fans' minds, but I think you hit the nail in your comment. Pro players are soooo much better than a few years back.
Things that I complained about, like unit clumping, seems a bit silly to me now. Especially when I see pro players today. Even I pre-split my units and use attack/move commands in a way to minimize clumping (for me, I click on minimap even).
In a sense, it increases the skill level and differentiates pro players who can maintain a spread on the units and those who still end up clumping because they aren't micro'ing well enough.
Marines, for example, notorious for clumping - are actually really easy to keep unclumped once you get the feel for how groups of units react to the distance of the command. If you command them to move really far, pre-split, in open terrain, they don't clump much.
When I watch Polt's marines run up to a seige line remaining pretty darn well spread out, I don't see any reason why any other pro can't emulate it. Or when Polt has marines spotting almost every corner of the minimap and I don't see it from other pro-players.
Clumping does have a huge advantage that we already know of - it increase dps density. And removing clumping like in starbow is A) hand-holding, B) taking away an advantage that can be used to maximum effectiveness by a player who knows how to counteract the negatives of clumping - effectively decreasing the skill-gap.
But yeah, I still can't think of warpgate being any good for the game. But that might change too, like it did with unit clumping.
ps. I have not tried starbow, to be completely fair, or even watched it. I'm only referring to unit clumping in this case, which if I read correctly, is a feature in starbow?
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On January 14 2014 05:08 plogamer wrote:
Clumping does have a huge advantage that we already know of - it increase dps density. And removing clumping like in starbow is A) hand-holding, B) taking away an advantage that can be used to maximum effectiveness by a player who knows how to counteract the negatives of clumping - effectively decreasing the skill-gap.
But yeah, I still can't think of warpgate being any good for the game. But that might change too, like it did with unit clumping.
C) making the game playable for people below pro level
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On January 14 2014 05:12 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 05:08 plogamer wrote:
Clumping does have a huge advantage that we already know of - it increase dps density. And removing clumping like in starbow is A) hand-holding, B) taking away an advantage that can be used to maximum effectiveness by a player who knows how to counteract the negatives of clumping - effectively decreasing the skill-gap.
But yeah, I still can't think of warpgate being any good for the game. But that might change too, like it did with unit clumping. C) making the game playable for people below pro level
Calling the game unplayable just because we play it poorly is not fair. Players below pro level will also continue to improve - especially with pro players blazing the trail.
I almost always play with 2 groups of armies in the later stages of a game. One for defense and one for offense. Then once I get planetaries set up, I can be even more active on the map with those armies. ( I'm emulating some of Polt's games <3<3<3).
Well positioned, like at a choke, a 70 supply army is almost as good as a 140 supply (like a deathball). Add a planetary, and I have greatly slowed the enemy's push while I have reinforcements building up, and I'm decimating the enemy base or production in the mean time.
I know I'm just me and my anecdote doesn't mean much. But I'm just trying to show that I'm no pro player but my gaming has improved drastically once Polt opened by eyes to marine spotting on maps.
TLDR: Just watch Polt. He is revolutionary in a not-so-obvious way. Casters still fail to point out Polt's map vision and it irks me to no end that the community could benefit so much (with their own game play.)
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I think it was one of the German's Tank generals saying to ONLY attack into a high ground when you have 4 times the army that the defending person have. We need to emulate realistic circumstances.
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One of the things that i hate about blizzard is that they could a crapton of crazy changes and make ALL OF THEM in the PTR Ladder to get great feedback and then translate it into the game. i fucking hate that they dont think about those type of things....
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EPT
