EPTCommunity Feedback Update - December 18 - Page 10
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TheWinks
United States572 Posts
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Elentos
55458 Posts
On December 20 2015 08:41 Glorfindel! wrote: Well, you know a unit is broken when the Korean protosses repeats how broken the unit is in PvT, calling the match up a free win  They must be trying to distract us from something even more broken, they'd never do it otherwise. Or they're trying to bargain with Blizzard - adept nerf for Zerg nerf. | ||
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Penev
28451 Posts
On December 20 2015 08:43 Liquid`Ret wrote: they kicked ass in brood war, that's the only reason it felt right to me! I also don't want to end up having to play roach/ravager infestor in zvt like everyone is doing right now, that style sucks ass fun-wise.... so good lings are in my best interest. Ling/bane is pretty tough as it is with how larva intensive the style is...but.the damn ultra is too good to ignore..i'd rather have really great lings ( mobile/fast unit that is fun to use than 8 armor a-move bricks of units) Basically everyone is saying keep adrenal but nerf ultra's Blizz pls | ||
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Elentos
55458 Posts
On December 20 2015 08:57 Penev wrote: Basically everyone is saying keep adrenal but nerf ultra's Blizz pls But reddit asked for crackling nerfs last week, how should they know they're supposed to nerf something different this week? | ||
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Lexender
Mexico2623 Posts
On December 20 2015 08:57 Penev wrote: Basically everyone is saying keep adrenal but nerf ultra's Blizz pls They're still stronger than HotS, I mean there it was +18%, +30% is still a hefty buff its not like lings wont be stronger, just a little less stronger. | ||
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HeroMystic
United States1217 Posts
On December 20 2015 09:19 Lexender wrote: They're still stronger than HotS, I mean there it was +18%, +30% is still a hefty buff its not like lings wont be stronger, just a little less stronger. That said, Cracklings got nerfed faster than the original Snipe. | ||
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TheWinks
United States572 Posts
On December 20 2015 09:23 HeroMystic wrote: That said, Cracklings got nerfed faster than the original Snipe. Snipe got nerfed into the ground. You'd have to nerf adrenal to below 18%, where it was still worth researching even if it wasn't a top priority, to have the same impact as the snipe nerf. You would have to make it not worth the resources at all. | ||
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Lexender
Mexico2623 Posts
On December 20 2015 09:23 HeroMystic wrote: That said, Cracklings got nerfed faster than the original Snipe. It was in the beta right from the start, wich by the way I still dont get, it was ok to buff late game zerglings, but going from 18% to 40% was over the top, Its one of those thing that where done for experimentación and Im guessing only made it to the game because it was rushed. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15875 Posts
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paralleluniverse
4065 Posts
On December 19 2015 17:28 Excalibur_Z wrote: Yeah the decay suggestion was just one possible avenue, and I don't know if it's the best one considering it does separate the ladder into Master/the rest like you said. One thing I really hate in ladders is when you have a few players who get really high up and then never play again. The bonus pool handles this in an OK fashion, because eventually other players will surpass them, and those inactive players lose their relative rank but keep their point totals. However, it introduces point inflation which means you have to basically keep a running mental tally of what the current max bonus pool is, what everyone's adjusted points are, how much bonus pool everyone has saved up so you know how close they are to their potential, and it just gets messy quickly. So, I didn't want the bonus pool to be included in a league where the transition between Master and GM is fluid, which means sort it by MMR, but if you sort it by MMR you can have squatters who perch on their high rating and never play again. I think having some quota for keeping your rank for the season is a decent idea, but it also feels arbitrary at the same time. 20 games, 30 games, 40, whatever it turns out to be, you can still get to whatever that number is and perch. There's no continuous reengagement, and the pressure is temporary. The same is technically true for soft or hard decay systems as well, depending on the frequency (play your 14 games a week and you can breathe easy that week), but they keep you coming back pretty often. One idea I had was similar to the bonus pool, but one that imposes some penalty every time it hits a multiple of like a week unplayed. I don't really know how you would surface this to the player or make it understandable (which is a big problem), but I do like the go-at-your-own-pace aspect and the fact that it takes match quality into account, although spendable on loss seems like an oversight for high-level players so I'd probably make it only spend through wins. I'll run through some more mental iterations until I come up with something that I think is elegant, sensible, and functional. I would argue that activity is more important than measuring uncertainty (though they have similar goals) for a game because the game needs to be continuously relevant. You need that retention and reengagement for your game to remain healthy. You need a vibrant, vocal community that promotes and recommends your game to others, which drives new installs, which adds more players to the player pool, which reinforces ranking accuracy. Players won't play your game if they think it sucks, and they'll think it sucks if the game's matchmaking accuracy gives them poor quality matches. In that sense, it's cyclical. I don't think perching will be a big problem if season length is shorter, around 1.5 to 2 months. Sure, someone can play 20 (or whatever number of) games and stop but, firstly, that's not necessarily perching because in those 20 games their rating can go down not just up, and secondly, under any sort of reward/penalty system for activity, it's always possible to play the bare minimum amount of games. People can play the required number of games at the start of the season and stop, but it's always possible that a player plays only at the end of the season, even with bonus pool, and gets their rank locked in for that season. That's also in some sense, perching. The difference is that in the former, the games are massed at the start, the latter the games are massed at the end, and I don't see any particular reason to privilege the start over the end or the end over the start or even a uniform distribution of games throughout the season, especially if seasons are shorter. They'll still have to continuously engage every season to keep that rating. So what we're talking about here is really "how many games do we want players to play in a season, how do we want them to distribute these games throughout the length of the season, and how do we reward players for doing this?" For the purpose of skill-based ranking, we should only care about uncertainty about MMR, not about how many games they play or how they are distributed. So one possible way to penalize inactive players is to rank by a quantile of their MMR, and increase uncertainty about MMR when there is inactivity. This makes intuitive sense: the longer a player is inactive, the more uncertain we are of the player's skill, and hence the lower the quantile. In this idea, we are not directly penalizing inactivity, but rather uncertainty. Maybe this solution is technically difficult for Blizzard. However, you note that for the purposes of engaging people with the game, we should care about how many games people play and how those games are distributed throughout the season. That's the role of progression systems like the leveling system. The level cap should be removed like paragon levels in D3. If the bonus pool stays (it shouldn't, and I think I would prefer a decay system if I had to choose), it should be significantly reduced. Currently, for a 3 month (90 day) season, the total accrual of bonus pool is 1342 points for Bronze to Diamond and 2314 points for Masters/GM, which is just insane. What % of a player's points should come from activity? I would say 0% to 5%. | ||
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Gasi
38 Posts
Thor AA damage to flat 12 We are looking at ways to get a little more mech play in Terran matchups. Our first attempt at this will be to buff one of the more underused units. While this is effectively a double-damage buff against armored air units, we were noticing in our internal playtests that it doesn’t feel super overpowered. This is probably due to the fact that their damage against armored units was pretty low to begin with, and Thors attack multiple times per hit, making armor also be a big factor as well. However, we also know that internal playtesting doesn’t provide the full picture of a change, so we’d like to test this one out with everyone in order to see if this is in fact the best move for the Thor. How much more AA does mech players need ? Liberators, vikings, widowmines, pdd ravens not enough ? Instead of creating more problems maybe a simple revert back to the HOTS's mech upgrades system would be enough, splitting them was a bad decision.... Viper spell damage reduced from 90 to 60 We explored potential design changes as well as numbers tuning in this area, and for now we wonder if tuning the damage down to give more time for opposing players to micro against the ability is better. After this, we will be able to gauge where the ability is, and go from there. After giving it much thought, i do not think its possible for the parasitic bomb to be balanced, its like the shredder(hots beta) but works on everything and attach itself on the units...the parasitic bomb is essentially a no fly zone in starcraft I think removal of this ability is the right course of action. Let vipers spawn scourges for energy. They will work like in BW and will assists corruptors and mutas vs stuff like phoenix, voids, and pdd defenses. | ||
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klup
France612 Posts
On December 20 2015 18:39 Gasi wrote: How much more AA does mech players need ? Liberators, vikings, widowmines, pdd ravens not enough ? Instead of creating more problems maybe a simple revert back to the HOTS's mech upgrades system would be enough, splitting them was a bad decision.... the problem with mech upgrade split is not the cost its more the time and infrastructure to get the thing upgraded that is really annoying. increase cost but merge the damn upgrades  | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
On December 20 2015 05:37 HeroMystic wrote: You define what is a solution or a workaround by looking at the function of the unit. Siege Tanks are meant to siege areas and hold positions. As stated from someone else, the siege units that compare to this are Brood Lords, Lurkers, Liberators, Disruptors, and Tempest. All aformentioned units you don't attack into unless you're positive that you can break through the contained position, or dismantle the Siege unit. All of these units except the Siege Tank fulfill this solidly. What we have instead is a requirement to have a secondary unit in order for it to function. This is not depth added to the Siege Tank but rather depth added to the Medivac. What you're saying is being a siege unit isn't the tank's role anymore, when it still is and I don't really think that can be contested. Otherwise, what is it's role supposed to be? A Harass unit? Backline support? If that's the case then you can buff tank mode and increase it's movement speed so it can keep up with Bio. But that would be really silly. There is a difference between the extreme area control the siege tank offered in Brood War and the more limited artillery support and siege capacity that the unit possesses in Starcraft 2, somewhat independent of the unit's balance. The earlier iteration of the unit, with overkill and higher damage, would be trivially abusable in the Starcraft 2 environment. I think it obvious that the siege tank, in order to adapt it to Starcraft 2 should have balance features such as more power for tank mode, quicker sieging and maybe something like medivac pick-up. Calling the latter "depth added not to the siege tank but to the medivac" is silly by the way. Medivacs are omnipresent and introducing siege tank / medivac synergy therefore adds more to the siege tank than to the already ubiquitous medivac. And yes, maybe it should have a slight damage buff (the oft suggested +dmg to its primary target late-game upgrade?), I won't dispute that. Unit functionality is a slightly dubious concept regardless since it does not literally exist in the game but is imposed over it by the machinations of the designers and the expectations of the players. This is very typical for Blizzard: create a unit with the intention to fulfill a certain role, only for literally the opposite to happen (swarm hosts). I don't want to call that a healthy sign, since there is an element of designer incompetence here, but speaking more abstractly, if units find a use not in accordance with its design this can illustrate the creative process which happens when you allow the meta game to develop organically. This is a sort of evolutionary process which will shape the actual uses of the units and as you might remember from biology in high school, nobody designed the eye to see, it simply happened that way because it was advantageous; similarly nobody designed the widow mine to synergize with bio units and that did not stop players from theorizing that the widow mine creates symmetry in TvZ by counter balancing the baneling-marine interaction with the zergling-widow mine interaction. At other times Blizzard creates units and then will admit that they have no idea how they are going to be used. This was one of the motivations behind the replicant, which was scrapped when Blizzard started realizing exactly what the effect would be of letting this unit loose on the game. Now clearly the analogy with evolution breaks down at some point since Blizzard is actively interfering to change outcomes, so that if they were truly determined to turn the siege tank into effective area control they might be able to do so. Nevertheless, their agency is limited, in some ways which are theoretical and others which are self-imposed rules Blizzard has set for themselves. Don't change a unit unless it's a clear upgrade, don't create confusing mechanics, etc.. These are some of Blizzard's commandments, but they are not their only restrictions. They are not God, sometimes the game is too complicated for them to divine what would be exactly the right change to make, or maybe they lack testing or coding resources, or maybe the problem is not pressing enough to be worth the risk of making changes. This was offered as background to the following point: if the siege tank can be used effectively in the game then it does actually work and if the medivac pick-up lets the unit function more effectively then it's an effective change, all regardless of whether it does not fulfill some Platonic concept of area control since that's merely a fancy of the community: it has a powerful hold on the imagination but it can be abandoned at no cost. The word "effective" serves as a proxy for a variety of more or less statistical considerations, the main ones being balance and usage. They offer something concrete that Blizzard can aim for which can demonstrably improve the game in this fashion. I don't think you can truly fault them for this as designers. I'd like to see the siege tank in its true glory used for area control too, but it's just more in the line of abstract criticism and what you (and I) consider offenses to good taste, it's very subjective. | ||
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JackONeill
861 Posts
Reminds me of the 30 dmg zealot charge. Stop taking pills, cut off the booze or something, it's getting embarassing. | ||
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Xequecal
United States473 Posts
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Charoisaur
Germany15875 Posts
On December 20 2015 21:23 JackONeill wrote: PO 45 dmg. Of course, you go on holidays blizzard developpement team, you apparently need to cool off. Reminds me of the 30 dmg zealot charge. Stop taking pills, cut off the booze or something, it's getting embarassing. Why is that bad? It's less dps for more energy than before and one pylon can also be faster sniped than two. It's still a big nerf. | ||
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JackONeill
861 Posts
Blizzard needs to stop making protoss so gimmicky and retarded. | ||
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aQuaSC
717 Posts
On December 20 2015 23:24 JackONeill wrote: A clic on a pylone now 3shots a banshee. It 4shots a medivac. Blizzard needs to stop making protoss so gimmicky and retarded. You forget about the fact that Medivacs can move around - what about turrets? They kill Warp Prisms very quickly if flown straight into one or two, would you propose a nerf? If I see a wall of turrets as you see pylons, I just retreat and try to find a different opening - while I agree that overcharge did feel a little bit weird, I like how it prevents some instant game-ending moves that previous installments were riddled with. We'll see if this change will be bad. Change from 25 to 50 energy is definitely a nerf, no matter the damage. | ||
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Everlong
Czech Republic1973 Posts
On December 20 2015 23:34 aQuaSC wrote: You forget about the fact that Medivacs can move around - what about turrets? They kill Warp Prisms very quickly if flown straight into one or two, would you propose a nerf? If I see a wall of turrets as you see pylons, I just retreat and try to find a different opening - while I agree that overcharge did feel a little bit weird, I like how it prevents some instant game-ending moves that previous installments were riddled with. We'll see if this change will be bad. Change from 25 to 50 energy is definitely a nerf, no matter the damage. Pylons are supply buildings as well unlike Missile Turrets. Also, Protoss player (I guess?) speaking about how he likes he's able to prevent some instant game-ending moves feels really funny. May I suggest an option for Terran to prevent game-ending moves too? Like Oracles, Adept/Prism, Blink and such? | ||
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aQuaSC
717 Posts
On December 20 2015 23:48 Everlong wrote: Pylons are supply buildings as well unlike Missile Turrets. Also, Protoss player (I guess?) speaking about how he likes he's able to prevent some instant game-ending moves feels really funny. May I suggest an option for Terran to prevent game-ending moves too? Like Oracles, Adept/Prism, Blink and such? With MULEs removed, I'm all for that. It's funny how some people try to argument an issue with another possible issue. I'm a Protoss player, learning other races, and - attention, attention - I think Adepts are too strong. | ||
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