On September 04 2014 10:26 ZombieFrog wrote: I think more patches are fine, especially because LoTV will render them moot anyways with new units and strats. Also, the BW thing is indeed a little misleading. It's true that the game was played competitively for many years without a balance patch, but they balanced it with the maps put in the map pool instead. Quite simply competitive games are going to need some form of balance tweaking, and between limiting map design or balance patches I would prefer balance patches so that every map doesn't feel the same.
Who knows how much Blizzard will even devote resources to LOTV as starcraft is not as profitable or a priority vs their other projects like FTP games with cash grab shops. The way Blizzard developers have been balancing all their games, is based on what looks cool, it's really stupid, all of their star developers left the company.
Blizzard has a trend right now, devs in every single one of their games are making 1 thing stronger than another and seem to change it every few months. I honestly rather see fewer balance patches with Starcraft just because of their developer trends when it comes to balance.
Doing stuff like "lets make a unit faster because it may look cool" is the kind of stuff David Kim was doing with Protoss. Rather see less patches...I'm sure Korean pros are getting sick and tired of constant random updates to the game
I hope and pray that LoTV will just be a DLC campaign where they can do all the fancy things they want (imba units/spells etc). Leave the current multiplayer as it is. The latest corrective patch (2.1.3) is stable and sustainable, IMO.
On September 03 2014 05:10 Ammanas wrote: I watched the two episodes in english and really enjoyed them! While the second episode was really entertaining, I think the first one was like super interesting. Seeing what people like theMarine and GoRush think about WCS, foreing scene etc was really unique.
What I find out is, that the person I mostly agree with in the show is the former WJS manager. I really liked what he said about why he thinks the foreign scene is so much behind the Korean one (in terms of skill I mean) and also I loved how they came to the same conclusion as most of us - exporting KR coaches, team-structure and practice regimen would most likely help the foreign scene (again, in terms of skill) much more then anything else!
So just wanted to say, thanks for the translations and I really look forward to the 4th episode!
Still holding out hope for more translated episodes.
On September 02 2014 23:51 Lunareste wrote: Does this mean OGN is going to be broadcasting Starcraft again soon?
LoveTV Starleague, believe <3
I don't think so:
Reserving the right studio is also what's currently causing the "delay" - as the organizer sOoL calls it, despite there never being any set date to begin with. Three commentators will bring you this epic action, two being already confirmed and the third being either an Afreeca BJ or someone else (work in progress).
On July 02 2014 04:19 Nimix wrote: Patching obviously broken things is good in my opinion (I.E the pre nerf fungal, arguably the immortal all in (lol @ mc vs stephano g4), the old 1 1 1) but the problems of sc2 are tied to core design that they are not willing to change, so the little tweaks to unit help to balance the winrates but don't fix the actual game problems. This has been talked to death, but in my opinion sc2 problems can't be changed by unit balance patches, and broodwar didn't have those (economic/race mechanics + abilities such as forcefields) so you can't really compare the two games.
This is the closest post I could find to what I think.
SC2 fundamental problems are with the pathing the MBS, automine stuff. all together, it makes the game very bland with no dynamics at all. If the game were left unpatched for years, the build orders would become stale and never change. Things would be optimized and there would be very little variance within MU.
In BW you could control space and build more dynamic sim cities, and the micro tricks made the units scale with the skill of the player. Most things in SC2 are just a vanilla ball of doom that walks around trumping the other player if you have more.
I agree that the fundamental problems with SC2, being stale build orders and deathball combat are temporarily masked by constantly changing unit stats and "balancing" the game. If they left it alone, the drab nature of SC2 would be all too apparent.
1) I think in general (or at least me) have hopes for LOTV, not for the new content per se, but because they think that HOTS isnt really 'patchable' anymore. Blizzard has had similar buff/nerf patchines since WOL, and only minor change have occurred to the overall gameplay (yes we dont have certain builds anymore (bl/infestor), but we still have deathball).
2) I think map-balancing is more for the serious gamers than the casual gamers, and its hard for observers to understand map balancing when they're casual gamers/just observers. Heck, i liked scrap station! seeing stupid air stuff and odd strategies was amusing as a watcher. My understanding of a map is only when TL writers decide to analyse the maps and i pretend to be knowledgeable to friends later on
The truth is, sc2 has fucked up design. No amount of patches or time will fix it. The game needs major overhaul when Lotv comes out.
BW was a masterpiece, you can't draw parallels to it. Its like saying Van Gogh didn't use pencils, we are not gonna use them too, then our pictures will be as good as his.
On September 19 2014 11:01 KeksX wrote: Swarm Hosts should be removed and replaced by Lurkers.
Just kidding. I think the game should be left alone for a while, but we should experiment much more with maps!
You might be kidding but I would love for that to happen if workable.
The main reason I'm kidding is that I simply do not believe that Blizzard will ever do a redesign of the game or do "crazy" stuff like that. I believe they will only do minor patches and for that reason, I think we should shift focus to maps because at this point it's our best bet to fundamentally change at least somehing to make it better.
So yeah, while I'd love to see changes like Lurker-like units being introduced and so on, realistically I don't think Blizzard will do anything like that.
IMO Patches should only be released to make the game more fun, if it's in a bad place. Otherwise we need the players to innovate and overcome balance, the rest we have maps for.
On September 30 2014 18:18 ejozl wrote: IMO Patches should only be released to make the game more fun, if it's in a bad place. Otherwise we need the players to innovate and overcome balance, the rest we have maps for.
If one side is losing pretty harshly, the game is not going to be a lot of fun for them.
okay here's my perspective on this, having played RTS for many years since a little kid, in sc2 since the start, having played some broodwar and a rich experience in mapmaking.
many times I see the argument that maps can fix balance, but this is far from the truth, the only thing you can do with maps is swing them in favour of a specific strategy that gives freewins, the problems are fundamental.
200/200 is one such problem, but far from the biggest, maxing out is part of the game, the problem lies in what the supply is and does, it can easily be fixed by redistributing supply values across units.
next is the problem of passive turtling, only 2 match-ups escape this due to their nature of design, that being an objective/condition for pushing out. in the TvZ match-up terran has to constantly hinder creep to avoid zerg map dominance and an advantage. the other match-up that escapes this is TvP, where the terran is forced to do damage or suffer the consequences of their inferior but more mobile units. the comparison to broodwar would be expansions, that was the condition for moving out and capturing space, but the lack of positional units such as a powerfull siegetank/minefields or lurkers/dark swarm or gateway/templar armys and later arbiters makes capturing and holding terrain non-existant, save for the match-up's where tanks are still relevant.
deathballing, nothing is more boring than one big stack of firepower vs another and engagements that end in seconds, and a large contributor to deathballing is the ability to select this entire ball in one go, either limited selection groups or alternative unit movement is necessary to alleviate this problem.
then there is also the issue of constant unit compositions, there are few units that are very all-round and a lot that are very situational, this is somewhat good RTS design, but the problem is the lack of flexibility in compositions, partly due to infrastructure and upgrades, and that units are overly focused on their specific purpose, being almost useless in other situations, aka immortals vs armoured units, ghost vs spellcasters etc.
from a map design perspective, there is little you can do, you have to allow the game to be playable in a balanced manner, and you can somewhat promote pushing out through watchtowers, primary examples of this would be the praised maps ohana, cloud kingdom and daybreak, which all had a watchtower on each side of the map as a constant objective to give a slight advantage, expansion patterns and spacial design can only be tweaked very little without balance issues blowing out of proportion.
I might have forgot something but so far this is my observation on the problems sc2 is facing, many of these have been fixed in brood war by what seems like a happy little accident, sc2 does not necessarily have to deal with these problems by solving them in the exact same manner brood-war did, but personally see little solutions.
Wish they'd rethink how they balance the game When a race is struggling, buff stuff they can't use rather than the few things they use. Patching like it is now leads to such a stale game.
On September 30 2014 18:18 ejozl wrote: IMO Patches should only be released to make the game more fun, if it's in a bad place. Otherwise we need the players to innovate and overcome balance, the rest we have maps for.
If one side is losing pretty harshly, the game is not going to be a lot of fun for them.
Past Protoss dominance over Terran was due to Blink maps. We knew it was due to Blink maps. We knew that maps like Polar Night and Frost and Heavy Rain had wide-open cliffs into the main that put Terran at a disadvantage when trying to hold against a highly mobile Blink Stalker army. There was no need for a patch but we got one anyway anyway, and that patch has actually ended up ruining the diversity of the match-up by eradicating Templar openings. If Blizzard had sorted out the map-pool sooner then all would've been fine. The map-pool did a lot more to stop Blink all-ins than the MSC and Mine changes did and anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to themselves.
That's just your opinion. Mine is that: We still don't have the same kind of maps around these days. If blizzard would finally sort out blink-balance, we could give mapmakers some more freedom back to create interesting map features. Also opening blink and rather quickly having storm available off of the same tech path was part of the problem imo. The mine patch(es), as much as I hate them for cutting variety in TvP did actually help with the balance.
Equally, current Terran strength against Protoss is mostly due to the maps. If you look at maps like Catallena, Merry Go Round, Nimbus and Foxtrot Labs (maps that all display Terran dominance in TvP) you will see that they share similar features. They have multiple drop paths that make it difficult/impossible to have enough Observer coverage to properly deflect drops. They have exposed third bases that cause Protoss to be more spread out than a Blink Stalker/Colossus composition (the composition Protoss is forced into due to the Mine patch) is truly capable of being. They also tend to have easy scouting paths into the main for Reapers that make surprising the Terran very difficult. We again do not need a patch and I hope we don't get one (unless all it does is revert said Mine patch), we just need a more standard set of maps.
Yeah, those maps are pretty good for Terran against Protoss. Though that's not all there is to be said, tbh. All the maps are having better Terran winrates in the last months, e.g. KSS is 55% T>P in the last 3months. And others like Overgrowth are NOW (read after the patches) decently balanced.
Look at Overgrowth. Look at Bel'Shir Vestige. Look at King Sejong Station Very standard 2P maps without any extreme features. Looking at win-rates for all match-ups we can see that they are all within 5% of 50% (except TvZ on KSS but that's only barely above 55%). At least 4 out of the 7 maps should be standard maps like this; it shouldn't be the case that we have as many wonky 3P maps as we have standard maps in the map pool.
That's the whole problem. Maps have been tinkered with to the extremes to make up for failed balance. I mean, you are talking about map features like a base being 4squares more open or 5seconds further from the natural and then go on to argue how that's too much for Protoss to deal with realistically. And winrates on those maps show that you are right. In my opinion, the correct response here is to fix balance so that Protoss can deal with those bagatelles. Not to make every map have the same 3rd base.
On September 30 2014 18:50 nkr wrote: Wish they'd rethink how they balance the game When a race is struggling, buff stuff they can't use rather than the few things they use. Patching like it is now leads to such a stale game.
This I can fully agree with. There is no reason to not throw out a patch tomorrow that buffs Carriers. Or add +vs shields to tanks. Etc.
EPT
When a race is struggling, buff stuff they can't use rather than the few things they use. Patching like it is now leads to such a stale game.
