EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
Hey everyone – we’d like to begin by saying that we agree with your feedback that much of last week’s Community Feedback Update was about balance topics that were really up in the air, and that nothing was even close to finalized. We were still in the process of gathering as much feedback as possible, and sometimes updates will be like that. We won’t pretend like we know something clearly when we don’t because the goal of the weekly updates is to be completely honest and transparent.
This week, we wanted to get your thoughts more quickly on a few topics so we decided to push out the update soon so that we can be ready to do a balance update as early as before the end of this month if necessary.
Gathering KR Pro Feedback
One of the things we’ve been working on more aggressively the past few months is to improve in acquiring more collective Korean pro feedback. We would like to really thank KeSPA, all the Korean pro teams, as well as the Korean players for continuing to work through creating a better process.
We felt that we’ve made a lot of progress in gathering both community feedback and foreign pro players’ feedback. Getting these more aligned allows us to move together with majority of the players’ support. However, Korean pro feedback is an area that we’ve been attempting to improve for years as there are many differing opinions among players. In addition to this, a mindset we’ve worked to overcome is players asking for changes, and then feeling unheard because those changes were not made. At this point, we’ve learned how impossible it is to do everything that a top pro player suggests because of how completely different feedback can often be. Even worse, if two top-end pro players say completely opposing things, implementing one of those changes can cause us to lose the other person forever as a source of feedback.
This is a part of gathering feedback that we definitely wanted to fix, and there have been many ideas going around in terms of how best to do this. We wanted to make you aware that just recently, we just started a new system where KeSPA pings all the pro-players and teams in Korea to consolidate the feedback, and we will be communicating directly with them. This would serve the similar purpose as our weekly updates, forums, and sc2 sites do with you guys.
Details from KR Pro Feedback
Please keep in mind that pro players’ opinions can change as easily as anyone else’s depending on how their games and the meta changes, so the content here is only what we are hearing as of this week.
Much of the feedback is similar to what we’ve already been seeing and discussing. Overall, the most surprising feedback we’ve gotten from Korea is that Zerg struggles against Protoss. The least surprising feedback was that the TvP has a general vibe of being the most problematic matchup .
Concerning the Balance Test Map, there seems to be a good alignment on all fronts. The main differences from Korea was a bigger focus on potentially bringing mech play back into TvT, and for ZvZ to get mixed up a bit due to many games being Roach/Ravager only. We’re interested in reflecting these on the next Balance Test Map.
Balance Test Map and Balance Patch
After considering all the feedback gathered so far, we would like to finalize and implement the changes for the next Balance Test Map as soon as possible so that we can react with a patch as early as sometime this month if necessary. We would definitely like to keep the list of changes to only the most needed ones, so let’s focus our discussions around that this week. With that in mind, let’s get into the specifics and get discussions going quickly so that we can put out a test map as soon as possible.
Balance Test Map:
Photon Overcharge
We believe this is the most critical change needed as of now because Protoss is having such an easy time defending in the early/mid stages of the game due to how available Overcharge is. With this nerfed, other races’ tools to attack Protoss will be strengthened, meaning things like Adept harass or Warp Prism harass will be weaker as well since Protoss will need to invest more early game resources into defenses. Of course, more changes may be required in the long run, and we definitely want to take nerfs in smaller steps. Many of you brought this up this week as well, and we were happy to confirm once more that we are on a similar page regarding this philosophy.
As for the specifics of what to try next, we agree with your feedback in that 50 energy cost was the right move. We also agree that instead of changing up how many shots a unit takes to be killed, we can try tuning up the attack speed so that the DPS is still increased with the energy cost nerf.
Viper Parasitic Bomb
We would like to continue testing this nerf. Like we have been discussing together, we don’t think it’s a good thing that the current strength of this ability is preventing certain units from entering play. And even though we are getting some feedback that Zerg is the weakest race right now, we believe that’s mostly in the early/mid stages of the game, so nerfing Parasitic Bomb shouldn’t have a huge impact on Zerg’s overall strength.
Adept “-1 Damage to Light”
This was a solid suggestion from the community, and because TvP is most likely the biggest issue right now, we would like to try this change. Even though this would mean that Protoss is being double nerfed against Terran (along with the Overcharge nerf), we believe this might be okay as a lot of your feedback suggests that this matchup needs the most help, and we currently agree. We also like the fact that this specific change is a smaller nerf than changing Adept flag to Armored for the reasons you have all brought up.
Spore Crawler +bio Damage
There are a couple reasons why we believe strengthening Mutalisks is needed in this matchup. Adding the Ravager in LotV has given a lot more strength to Roach compositions, and adding the Parasitic Bomb ability made Mutalisks even weaker in ZvZ. Therefore, if we were to reduce +bio damage on Spore Crawlers even further and/or remove it, it could be a good move. It would bring Mutalisks to be powerful again in the mid game, and unlike the problem we had previously in HotS, there will be a clear counter to mass Mutalisks in the late game through Viper usage. The best case scenario will see a good mix of a variety of units in the early/mid game, and when Mutalisks are being used, the player massing them will have to transition out of them eventually.
General Mech Thoughts
This is the area we are most unsure on right now, and we should work towards adding something on this front. If we can get a good solution we will add it along with the other proposed changes above, but if we can’t discover a suitable change in time we won’t wait to test the other changes due to this desire.
The reason why we are unsure about Mech is because we can’t quite locate the exact reason Mech struggles. Between the feedback we’ve received so far and our internal conversations, we do have some strong guesses:
1. Like we discussed in a previous update, Siege Tank pick-up in TvT has made Mech lose much of the combat advantage it had against Bio.
2. The Liberator addition in ZvT has made Ravagers a “must have” in many early game situations, making Muta/Ling compositions less common. This dynamic has favored Bio since it is much more mobile versus Ravager shots, and has the added advantage of possessing extremely potent drop harassment (which Roach/Ravager compositions are weaker versus).
If you had thoughts on either of these points or have other reasons as to what the root issue with Mech may be, please let us know. Once we find the root cause, we can start discussing potential solutions in this area.
Map Diversity and Balance
Now let’s move on to some philosophy as the last topic for this week. One of the main points of discussion within the community this week was how the game can never be balanced if maps are as diverse as they are now. Yet, as many of you already know, our goal for Legacy of the Void is definitely not to have every map be so similar that each matchup has a “main” strategy that’s considered the only viable option at the pro level. We’ve clearly seen that in the past, this is by far the biggest reason that StarCraft 2 can become boring to play and watch. If there is one thing we cleary have to avoid in LotV, it’s making all the maps similar again.
At the same time, please also keep in mind that we’re not trying to say that it’s ok if a race wins 80+% times against another race on a specific map or anything drastic like that. While there will definitely be a higher chance to have imbalanced maps as we push map diversity, it is a side effect we are prepared to deal with on a case-by-case basis. We also wanted to point out that slight advantages here and there towards a specific strategy or race in a matchup is definitely okay on a per-map basis. It’s not okay however, if we see the win/loss ratios diverging too much on a per-map basis. Please keep this in mind when discussing and suggesting potential changes to the current map pool. We can definitely make balance changes to maps themselves, and we can definitely also remove maps in the worst case scenarios.
We want to be extra careful in treading this line, and not be too quick to judge so that we can continue to push map diversity. In a way, this is a fundamental change in our approach to maps, so we want to avoid overreacting (as we’ve sometimes seen in the past) and talk about specific issues and/or solutions on a per map basis.
For fun…
To close out this week’s update, I wanted to share a funny personal story. This has nothing to do with the game's design, so please feel free to skip onto the comments if you wish…
I was watching Life playing a Best of 69 series against a completely no name Protoss player who is a mid-Master in NA. Unbelievably, Life was losing 0-10, but was barely winning in the 11th game through really amazing Zergling/Overlord drop usage. I was thinking “WT* is going on?!?! Maybe we need to react much more quickly with a patch than we thought!” …. Then I woke up this morning and was so thankful that it was only a dream.
Source
