Community Feedback Update - April 15 - Page 9

On April 18 2016 04:14 Foxxan wrote:

So balance the game then. Stop look at the meta and balance the game instead? You dont think blizzard can do this?

On April 18 2016 09:48 [PkF] Wire wrote:

you can't balance something that's evolving. The dust has settled on double robo for P and it indeed seems strong, but Dark has shaken things quite a bit with his heavy baneling usage. I guess we can wait a bit more.

The highest level of strategy in many complex games, metagame refers to any aspect of strategy that involves thinking about what your opponent is thinking you are thinking.

Metagame comes into play in any game where no single strategy is dominant and opposing sides are aware of multiple strategies that can succeed dependent upon opponents' actions. In order to perform at the highest level, it then becomes necessary to think about what your opponent thinks you will do (which may depend on what he thinks you think he thinks he will do, etc.) and to make decisions based on clues regarding what level they are thinking on.

This term is most commonly used to refer to poker and other complex card games, but is increasingly being used in relation to video games with complicated player vs player elements and even traditional sports.

On April 17 2016 21:41 todespolka wrote:


You miss the point too. Lets say the game was balanced for gold. How would the game look like? and how would it look like at pro level?

Let me answer the first question: Yes, you are right, gold players cant micro like maru, thus marin vs baneling has more randomness and is based more on luck. Engagements are decided more or less by luck because of mistakes or because of the absence of skill. How can we balance that? We would need to make the game slower, units would need less damage, be less rewarding. Overall reduction of game tasks.

Skill would matter less. Bw is a great game because i can beat an opponent with less, when i play smart. But a game that is balanced for gold players, doesnt offer that. It would be extremely difficult to get an edge in such a game.

Sc2 is not as skill based as bw and look what happened. We have more random champions. At some point skill doesnt matter because there is nothing you can do, that makes a difference. Its like a roach battle, where only numbers matter.

If the game is balanced at gold level. What will a proplayer do? People say you have an infinite amount of things to chose from, but they forget that not every action has the same weight. I can micro single roaches, but when my opponent has 3-5 roaches more, i will lose the fight. Micro is not always worth because the ai is so good at it. In bw units were dumb, if i microed my units, i could gain an edge.

A game can be designed such that pro players can distinguish themselves and at the same time the tiniest mistake in lower leagues does not cause the obliteration of the whole army you spent 20 minutes to build up.

On April 18 2016 14:12 ZerglingSoup wrote:


Because balance decisions lie downstream of the Meta

In other words, the game is balanced first by players, then by blizzard.

The game-balance done by players is referred to as the 'meta' and it is accomplished as players hone their skills with particular units and abilities. The collective skillsets of all players generally define what is possible in any given starcraft match.

The game-balance done by Blizzard is the nerfs and buffs that come in response to anomalies in the meta. Conceptually, when it is determined that a particular race has some sort of unfair weakness or advantage in a particular aspect of the game, Blizzard makes the adjustments that they deem appropriate to address that case.

But, those perceptions can fluctuate quickly, because while Blizzard is testing and learning, so are players. Players can discover and unlock new ways to play the game that change the balance of the game. Imagine if Boxer never started using dropships, and no one really imagined using them tactically like they do today, but then Dream suddenly started doing it out of nowhere. It would completely change everything about the way the game is understood, and would upend whatever conversations Blizzard had been having at the time.

Of course, Starcraft is much too mature for anything that extreme to come along, but the same process still takes place with these finer details. It is mostly the players that are unbalanced. Players are extremely innovative and learn quickly.

I'm quite happy that Blizzard is cautious about changing things and isn't interfering too quickly or overreacting to seemingly problematic aspects of the game. It's a lot more fun to watch the players themselves invent new ways to exploit units and spells and then win games until someone else figures out how to take them down. Right now, I think LOTV is too young and players aren't quite good enough at it yet to really come to any strict balance conclusions, except when there are glaring issues like the mass adept right after release.

On April 19 2016 20:44 PressureSC2 wrote:
I never thought that Chess would begin to appeal to me more than playing Starcraft. I always saw Starcraft as Chess 2.0, including all of its glory, strategy, application of intellect, pride in one's ELO rating, but with lots of bells and whistles added. However, the state of the game has left me longing for the "S" in RTS.

Sometimes, I feel like my Queen can jump over pawns to capture. Other times, I feel like my opponent has two Queens because one of my units was intercepted before scouting the right fog of war. Then, there are times where it feels like we are both starting out without Knights and Bishops, and it is hard to recognize the game anymore, because it is very difficult to cover all the pawns that used to be covered on the board/map.

If Starcraft is not going to cover the Strategy genre, what market/niche is it going to cater to? Because the other games would appear to have everything else covered (action, social aspect, ease of pickup, free to play, etc.). Hate to say it, and it is unfortunate that it has come to this, but maybe it is time for some drastic real world change for Starcraft to rise again as a franchise.

On April 19 2016 07:26 SwiftCrane wrote:
I feel like even though the way people play the game has been changing drastically, and affecting balance significantly, it is still no excuse for nothing being changed in around 3 months. Sure if you give the players enough time they will learn to play around the bad design, but that doesn't mean that the game is well designed. The more you are forced to bend your playstyle around bad balancing decisions the less fun it is.

I don't wan't to have to open something like 3-rax reaper every TvT or be inevitably behind. Sure, if you force the players to play like this, they will have too much commitment to StarCraft to stop playing the game and they will adapt to this and make the game "balanced", but they will enjoy it less. A day will come when they will have had enough and they will switch to other games that are more worth their time.

There are so many thing in the game that are so ridiculous and need blizzard's immediate attention. Things like the new armor ultras, parasitic bomb, liberators, new Protoss immortal shield, pylon overcharge, mass air for all races, lack of mech anti-air, ravagers, invincible nydus, tankevacs (A siege unit that can quickly re position... literally defeats the purpose of the unit...) . There's so many areas that, while technically are ALL OP and can be balanced since all races can use them, force a specific meta, a meta so specific it leaves no room for any other playstyles. Boring to play and to watch.

If blizzard were to fix these things, players would still develop "a meta", but now they would have multiple playstyles, all viable available to them. A game of strategy should have strategic diversity. I don't want to see the same thing every time. I don't want to lose games because I refuse to conform my playstyle to really bad balancing and design.

3 MONTHS without any significant change is unacceptable. I don't care about balance test maps, community feedback updates that result in no changes, or updates that focus on bug fixes. I wan't, for ONCE, a balance update that fixes the things that clearly have no place in the game of StarCraft. I wan't to be able to play mech without getting absolutely destroyed by doom drops, endless streams of better, cheaper units, or mass air, because blizzard things the solution to mech being unpopular is to practically remove it rather than work out a way to fix it.

Balance test maps don't tell you much... update the game, look at how everyone reacts, then make fixes... please Blizzard, this game has so much potential and I implore you to not drive it into the ground like you have been doing for these past 3 months...

On April 19 2016 07:26 SwiftCrane wrote:
Balance test maps don't tell you much... update the game, look at how everyone reacts, then make fixes... please Blizzard, this game has so much potential and I implore you to not drive it into the ground like you have been doing for these past 3 months...

On April 19 2016 21:37 JackONeill wrote:
In the end, it all comes that to this :

DK and Blizzard feel LOTV is a complete product, that only needs balance work. The community feels that the game is still riddled with obvious bad designed stuff that needs immediate attention. Therefore the community feedback updates are stale and pointless since the very basis of the discussion is different between blizz/DK and the community.

But seriously. Band aid photon overcharge, disurptors, tankivacs, liberators, überNydus, parasitic bomb, cyclone, non viable mech, pointless thors, TvT marine tankivacs vs marine tankivacs, PvP disruptor ping pong, ravagers, reapers, adept shade, immortal barrier, revelation, 4 supply tempest, useless BC and raven, speedbanshees, liberator range abuse...
Take your fucking pick DK/blizzard. You can't just sit on your ass while looking at koreans somehow making terrible designed stuff look somewhat nice but while dumbing down any strategic aspect of the games. Instead of witchhunting hackers, which are pretty much non existant in this game compared to others, changing UIs, adding skins, or selling more mission packs (hmmm let's milk the dry-titted cow), fix the terrible design of the game.

a guy with 1 post.. who sounds like he's been playing Starcraft for years wants the game to boil down to 1 building that pumps out less than 10 different units. It warms my meckanical heart to know little Avi has the grassroots support of "the people".

On April 19 2016 21:37 JackONeill wrote:
In the end, it all comes that to this :

DK and Blizzard feel LOTV is a complete product, that only needs balance work. The community feels that the game is still riddled with obvious bad designed stuff that needs immediate attention. Therefore the community feedback updates are stale and pointless since the very basis of the discussion is different between blizz/DK and the community.

But seriously. Band aid photon overcharge, disurptors, tankivacs, liberators, überNydus, parasitic bomb, cyclone, non viable mech, pointless thors, TvT marine tankivacs vs marine tankivacs, PvP disruptor ping pong, ravagers, reapers, adept shade, immortal barrier, revelation, 4 supply tempest, useless BC and raven, speedbanshees, liberator range abuse...
Take your fucking pick DK/blizzard. You can't just sit on your ass while looking at koreans somehow making terrible designed stuff look somewhat nice but while dumbing down any strategic aspect of the games. Instead of witchhunting hackers, which are pretty much non existant in this game compared to others, changing UIs, adding skins, or selling more mission packs (hmmm let's milk the dry-titted cow), fix the terrible design of the game.

On April 19 2016 21:37 JackONeill wrote:
In the end, it all comes that to this :

DK and Blizzard feel LOTV is a complete product, that only needs balance work. The community feels that the game is still riddled with obvious bad designed stuff that needs immediate attention. Therefore the community feedback updates are stale and pointless since the very basis of the discussion is different between blizz/DK and the community.

But seriously. Band aid photon overcharge, disurptors, tankivacs, liberators, überNydus, parasitic bomb, cyclone, non viable mech, pointless thors, TvT marine tankivacs vs marine tankivacs, PvP disruptor ping pong, ravagers, reapers, adept shade, immortal barrier, revelation, 4 supply tempest, useless BC and raven, speedbanshees, liberator range abuse...
Take your fucking pick DK/blizzard. You can't just sit on your ass while looking at koreans somehow making terrible designed stuff look somewhat nice but while dumbing down any strategic aspect of the games. Instead of witchhunting hackers, which are pretty much non existant in this game compared to others, changing UIs, adding skins, or selling more mission packs (hmmm let's milk the dry-titted cow), fix the terrible design of the game.

On April 20 2016 01:02 SwiftCrane wrote:
This game has very real issues and blizzard's method of fixing those issues isn't working. I don't want only mech, and contrary to popular belief neither does avilo. I want diversity in strategy, the possibility of bio, mech and air in every matchup, the possibility of roach hydra, ling bane muta and so many more combinations to be viable in their own unique ways.