EPT[Star Hangshow] Balance in SC2 - Page 2
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brenosc2
Brazil1 Post
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404AlphaSquad
839 Posts
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Tamagoshi
Brazil981 Posts
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BisuDagger
Bisutopia19299 Posts
On July 02 2014 00:50 lilsusie wrote: Wow, thanks so much guys! I understand that LotV is coming soon (WHEN?!) but the idea of maps heavily influencing game play and stagnant meta is interesting. Why were BW players able to be more innovative, do you think? The map argument shouldn't even be in discussion until patching is over. You have 5+ distinct active maps in the pool all offering different forms of strategy. The major issue is that no one complains over map imbalance anymore like in WoL. The reason here is that balances issues lie so clearly outside of map design that not enough people are even focus in on map influence. That being said, I'll discuss maps anyway. Maps do have a clear advantage in brood war all the way up to 2012 the last year of BW 1.0 era. This year the maps became protoss favored. Fantasy loses back to back OSLs to Jangbi, but the map selection influence is highly debatable there. The blaring reference should be seen in the final pre hybrid proleague that April. Flash was sent out for the ace match on a clearly protoss favored map and Bisu ended up toppling him. Now here's the trick. Many complained map imbalance played a role in his lost and maybe stats should have been sent out, but Flash only lost two games that season to protoss and 3 losses total iirc which means the whole map issue was avoidable during regular game selection and in ace matches he just clearly was the best and could not lose. So that's the most recent map balance discussion in Brood War kespa era. Edit: cellphone! | ||
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parkufarku
882 Posts
On July 02 2014 00:26 Faust852 wrote: We should return to a point where all match up where equally balanced (right before WM nerf) and leave the game at this state forever. Wait, what? All match ups balanced before the WM nerf? That's not remotely accurate Oh wait, your icon explains everything. | ||
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ZAiNs
United Kingdom6525 Posts
Reporter: what do you think is the biggest problem with SC2? iloveoov: "I have played all blizzard games with the exception of WC3. In WoW, there was a character called the Warlock. He could win 2:1 and 3:1. But blizzard kept releasing balance patches. WoW has 10 classes but I saw as blizzard kept releasing buffs and nerfs. So what ended up happening was, people started playing Warlock when it was powerful but soon jumped to Hunter when that was proven to be powerful. One day I awoke to see that they were also doing the same thing to SC2." Reporter: I think you're referring to something other than balance. iloveoov: "Let's compare the two games; In SC1, they only released bug patches and was relatively untouched for ten years. We would do starleagues where at times there would only be one or two protosses. Terrans would occupy more than half the pool. If David Kim were there at that time he would have buffed protoss. That would have meant that we would have been without the exciting and awe-inspiring play of Bisu's prime. Protoss was the minority race and difficult. Thus, its play was given birth to by players like Reach and Nal_Ra. To be frank, I think it is David Kim who creates the winner when it is the gamer who must create the game. It doesn't matter what I say though; the truth is David Kim will keep on tweaking the game. I don't know what his true motives are. Is it to create a 5:5:5 of balance? I truly do not know." | ||
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Ansinjunger
United States2451 Posts
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404AlphaSquad
839 Posts
On July 02 2014 01:00 parkufarku wrote: Wait, what? All match ups balanced before the WM nerf? That's not remotely accurate Oh wait, your icon explains everything. Statistically it was more balanced than now = bad patch of Blizz b | ||
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[PkF] Wire
France24236 Posts
On July 02 2014 00:26 Faust852 wrote: We should return to a point where all match up where equally balanced (right before WM nerf) and leave the game at this state forever. I'd have loved that to be done long ago but with that stupid "three expansions" things you can't. I hope what you describe will happen quite quickly after LotV release though, like no more than a year or two after. | ||
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r691175002
249 Posts
On July 02 2014 00:50 lilsusie wrote: Wow, thanks so much guys! I understand that LotV is coming soon (WHEN?!) but the idea of maps heavily influencing game play and stagnant meta is interesting. Why were BW players able to be more innovative, do you think? I feel the core difference comes down to the difficulty of the game. Tasks we take for granted today were incredibly challenging in BW. Something as basic as changing rally points - a one click operation in SC2 - took multiple camera hotkeys and several seconds of 300+ APM madness. Just walking your army across the map could be a challenge, as anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves herding dragoons will tell you. Not only did you have to deal with all that crap, but workers needed to be individually told which patch to mine, you could only select one production building at a time, and you could only select 12 units at once. Macroing in BW often takes more APM than an entire game of SC2 Now I can't say that I think that is good design, but in Brood War you needed an immense amount of skill just to make the game do what you wanted. I haven't even talked about what it was like to play against another opponent, and the extent to which micro would influence the outcome of battles. In SC2, the challenge lies in far more volatile areas. Things like reading your opponent and selecting a build order can decide the game before you even scout, and a single bad fight is an instant loss. What I'm trying to say here, is that in BW, building an army and walking it across the map was hard enough that the best players could transcend balance with mechanics alone. Flash, Bisu, Jaedong, and others were dominating for years because of that. Hop on over to SC2 land and we have literally never seen a Protoss dominate for more than one or two tournaments, or a couple months if they are lucky. You hit a mechanical ceiling and there is no way to further differentiate yourself. The closest thing we have to someone whose mechanics transcend balance was MVP and now Taeja (The only Terran to have won anything for nearly a year) and I think many people will agree that the way mechanical skill can draw more out of the race is very Brood War like. If we move back to the question, why we see less innovation in SC2, I think its just because it is so much easier to innovate. In brood war, only a handful of players were good enough at the game to even consider innovating, and communication wasn't as prevalent. In SC2 we can have thousands of games played within two hours of the balance patch, build orders and videos up on youtube, players and casters analyzing every line of the patch notes, and a 100 page thread on team liquid. And the skill ceiling is lower. | ||
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Mojito99
Germany154 Posts
Is there such a thing as an official definition of balance? Many people believe the game to be balanced when a vs b has a 50% winrate over a large enough number of games (lets say 4 000) But if i would tell you in this scenario that the 50% winrate happends because a wins all games ending before 12 min and b wins all games above 12 mins would you still call that balanced. Most likely not. Therefore what is the "balance" we are talking about. If balance is 50% winrate than this is an extremely flawed concept of balance. But what does it mean otherwise? Another point entirely about patching: I see a trend that towards the later stages of an expansion, many forms of aggression get figured out. As Zerg is most likely the race defending early pressures this could explain zergs increasing winratios towards the end of expos. Now we patch the game to open up more attack paths and more pressures because Z winrates go up to high. Does this not mean we are punishing zerg players for having become better at the game than they previously were? - Thats again a very flawed concept of balance imo. This also implies, that even before there was no balance and zerg was potentially to strong - it only took some time to unlock the "potential" and gain enough experience to be able to adjust to the pressures... food for thought. PS: Zerg is just an example | ||
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SC2Toastie
Netherlands5725 Posts
On July 02 2014 00:30 Genesis_443 wrote: I'm a supporter of no more balance patches. It messes with builds too much, rendering some solid ones redundant forcing not only the race affected to change, but the other races to change also. Constant meta game shifts like this end up making the meta never truly settle, leading to what we see now, with players crying OP about every little thing that has not been figured out just yet. Sure Terran is struggling just now, but if NO more patches are applied and we look back in say 12 months from now, I would be willing to bet a fair amount that Terran players somehow figure something out that is highly effective against what we struggle against just now. Same for the other two races of course. You mean retire/race switch? Because the current state of the game is nowhere near balanced and Terran has little to no room left for experimenting, as Terran has been using the exact same style for 4 years, with the exception of having to pidgeonhole their builds even more against P/Z cheeses. | ||
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varsovie
Canada326 Posts
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Superbanana
2369 Posts
LotV should be a stable game, with few patches (much, much less than HotS), spread apart. So maybe a minor patch in each 3 or 4 months until the game is completely stable. Overall the game should be left for the players to adapt, but the game is far from the final version since there is an expansion coming up, so a few patches are natural. | ||
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Faust852
Luxembourg4004 Posts
On July 02 2014 01:00 parkufarku wrote: Wait, what? All match ups balanced before the WM nerf? That's not remotely accurate Oh wait, your icon explains everything. Stats 5 month before the WM nerf TvZ : July 50,43% August 51,92% September 48,02% October 51,46% November 50,43% But oh, I read your post history, and it explains everything. | ||
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EonuS
Slovenia186 Posts
On July 02 2014 01:16 r691175002 wrote: I feel the core difference comes down to the difficulty of the game. Tasks we take for granted today were incredibly challenging in BW. Something as basic as changing rally points - a one click operation in SC2 - took multiple camera hotkeys and several seconds of 300+ APM madness. Just walking your army across the map could be a challenge, as anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves herding dragoons will tell you. Not only did you have to deal with all that crap, but workers needed to be individually told which patch to mine, you could only select one production building at a time, and you could only select 12 units at once. Macroing in BW often takes more APM than an entire game of SC2 Now I can't say that I think that is good design, but in Brood War you needed an immense amount of skill just to make the game do what you wanted. I haven't even talked about what it was like to play against another opponent, and the extent to which micro would influence the outcome of battles. In SC2, the challenge lies in far more volatile areas. Things like reading your opponent and selecting a build order can decide the game before you even scout, and a single bad fight is an instant loss. What I'm trying to say here, is that in BW, building an army and walking it across the map was hard enough that the best players could transcend balance with mechanics alone. Flash, Bisu, Jaedong, and others were dominating for years because of that. Hop on over to SC2 land and we have literally never seen a Protoss dominate for more than one or two tournaments, or a couple months if they are lucky. You hit a mechanical ceiling and there is no way to further differentiate yourself. The closest thing we have to someone whose mechanics transcend balance was MVP and now Taeja (The only Terran to have won anything for nearly a year) and I think many people will agree that the way mechanical skill can draw more out of the race is very Brood War like. If we move back to the question, why we see less innovation in SC2, I think its just because it is so much easier to innovate. In brood war, only a handful of players were good enough at the game to even consider innovating, and communication wasn't as prevalent. In SC2 we can have thousands of games played within two hours of the balance patch, build orders and videos up on youtube, players and casters analyzing every line of the patch notes, and a 100 page thread on team liquid. And the skill ceiling is lower. I completely agree with you. On top of that, you have the ease of reinforcement factor (together with no selection limit) which can easily snowball with one lost fight to the point where you cannot recover from it anymore. Not to mention that the games, outside of pro games, are often much shorter and decided much faster (unless there are swarm hosts involved) with one lost fight because there is simply no way to recover from them. The fact is, balance concerns in broodwar were overcome by the amount of potential multitasking you could do, while in starcraft2 there is much less to be concerned about, which narrows down the possible chances of you being ahead of your opponent. Just playing BW with no player interaction (playing the game, not against the opponent) took enough multitasking to keep you busy most of the time. Fastforward to sc2, you are more concerned about what your opponent is doing because you simply have more than enough time to think about it. Playing the game itself is easier, playing against your opponent becomes more volatile. Not to mention you are also much more limited by what you can do in every matchup because of the hard countering system. For me, the pace of the game is simply too fast and I don't get the feel of "RTS" as I do from other games (like age of empires). It just feels like an action game to me. There is no build-up, you can easily reach supply cap in 13-15 ingame minutes which is even faster in real time. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45060 Posts
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Faust852
Luxembourg4004 Posts
On July 02 2014 01:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: It doesn't really matter to me if HotS keeps getting patched (it'll eventually stop when LotV comes out anyway), because LotV is what's going to eventually matter. In LotV, we'll have new units and abilities, and so patches will be inevitable (and necessary) for a while. Hopefully we'll reach a point, 1-3 years after LotV comes out, where we have fewer and fewer patches with fewer and fewer changes. They'll just kind of fade off, and then we'll be left to the good ol' meta game I think HotS should be kept alive and interesting to sustain players. If hots die before the release of LotV, Lot will be stillborn | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
Frequent feedback from the balance team what they think about the state of the game. Like every 2weeks on Friday. Those can be tiny and look like this: We are currently not seeing any huge problems. The matchup XvY has been looking slightly in Xs favor for some time now and we will be watching anything balance related carefully. We will keep you updated about this matter in 2weeks. If there have been heavy imbalances for more than 2-3 such updates, start testing very small changes (e.g. 5-10% higher/lower firerate on a unit; 10% costreduction on a unit etc.) for 1-2 such updates. If the issue still remains and the changes look OK, implement them and keep on watching whether the issue goes away for 2-3 such updates. For smaller imbalances, same approach with a longer periode before things get tested (like 4-6 such updates). I'm a big fan of balance updates for the following reasons: - The game is always going to be imbalanced in some way. Maybe someone, somewhere, somewhen will figure out something. But it's not good to have a year without Terrans in the GSL until they figured out that they could have done *strategy X*. And noone guarantees that it will happen. Same goes for maps. Maybe the will help, maybe not. - Small updates on balance implemented on underused units makes those units perform better, eventually leading to more diversity. - Small updates keep the metagame fresh. You always have something new to play with or to figure out how to play against. - You have a guarantee that you are not left alone with bigger issues, aka BL/Infestor (again, a phase of the game in which blizzard decided to "let players figure it out") If you balance even less frequently as blizzard has done with HotS, builds that get perfected later, e.g. MsC/blink will not get adressed. Which in this example has led to a very restriced mapdesign as bandaid solution, and anything that steps out of that (like King Sejong Station) is already on the border to imbalance. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45060 Posts
On July 02 2014 01:59 Faust852 wrote: I think HotS should be kept alive and interesting to sustain players. If hots die before the release of LotV, Lot will be stillborn That's true; what I meant is that new HotS patches *after* LotV comes out are irrelevant to me and almost everyone. I think Blizzard would focus only on LotV anyway (in the same way that they left WoL when HotS came out). | ||
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