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United Kingdom20274 Posts
On May 05 2016 01:13 JimmyJRaynor wrote:hilarious to see an increasing # posts criticizing the concept of using player feedback from forums. the forum feedback is "stop taking forum feedback". 
Criticizing players for leaving feedback too.
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On May 04 2016 08:53 GGzerG wrote: Wait so the patch is being pushed back? Just like the tank patch from a few months ago. The development for the patch just magically vanished.
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DK addressed that by stating he'd be better at providing a post mort-em of PTR patches.
if SC2 made D3 , WoW or Hearthstone money Blizz would be able to have dozens of employees playing in every league to provide internal feedback and cross reference that with the wild jungle of public internet fora. Alas, LotV was only $40 and didn't even sell 2 million copies.
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On May 05 2016 02:24 JimmyJRaynor wrote: DK addressed that by stating he'd be better at providing a post mort-em of PTR patches.
if SC2 made D3 , WoW or Hearthstone money Blizz would be able to have dozens of employees playing in every league to provide internal feedback and cross reference that with the wild jungle of public internet fora. Alas, LotV was only $40 and didn't even sell 2 million copies.
From a business point of view it's more than understandable, as it's quite easy to see where the money comes from, I mean, Hearthstone is a card game, after all, almost pure $$$. Just seems to be the final straw for an era of sophisticated gaming compared to the p2w/casual/f2p cash grab they seem to be doing nowadays. Everything they touch they casualize, dumb down, make it more accessible, but I'm quite unsure if it's such a smart move to drive away their core audience as what made Blizzard special as a developer from the start was their ability to deliver games of such longevity and quality. Numbers will be good for a while, I guess, but what comes after that?
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these community posts make me so sad.. why on earth would you go to the community to balance your game?
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On May 05 2016 03:55 Creager wrote:Show nested quote +On May 05 2016 02:24 JimmyJRaynor wrote: DK addressed that by stating he'd be better at providing a post mort-em of PTR patches.
if SC2 made D3 , WoW or Hearthstone money Blizz would be able to have dozens of employees playing in every league to provide internal feedback and cross reference that with the wild jungle of public internet fora. Alas, LotV was only $40 and didn't even sell 2 million copies. From a business point of view it's more than understandable, as it's quite easy to see where the money comes from, I mean, Hearthstone is a card game, after all, almost pure $$$. Just seems to be the final straw for an era of sophisticated gaming compared to the p2w/casual/f2p cash grab they seem to be doing nowadays. Everything they touch they casualize, dumb down, make it more accessible, but I'm quite unsure if it's such a smart move to drive away their core audience as what made Blizzard special as a developer from the start was their ability to deliver games of such longevity and quality. Numbers will be good for a while, I guess, but what comes after that?
I'm just curious, how much of the community do you think would go for a game (i.e. a sc3 or wc4) that was sold at a lower price, but only included single-player campaign, with a cost of something like $5 a month for multiplayer ladder access?
I'm saying this because I'm pretty frustrated with LotV right now and would myself gladly pay a monthly fee to get the game fixed in the long run, or at least partially fixed.
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Bisutopia19152 Posts
On May 05 2016 06:31 feanaro wrote:Show nested quote +On May 05 2016 03:55 Creager wrote:On May 05 2016 02:24 JimmyJRaynor wrote: DK addressed that by stating he'd be better at providing a post mort-em of PTR patches.
if SC2 made D3 , WoW or Hearthstone money Blizz would be able to have dozens of employees playing in every league to provide internal feedback and cross reference that with the wild jungle of public internet fora. Alas, LotV was only $40 and didn't even sell 2 million copies. From a business point of view it's more than understandable, as it's quite easy to see where the money comes from, I mean, Hearthstone is a card game, after all, almost pure $$$. Just seems to be the final straw for an era of sophisticated gaming compared to the p2w/casual/f2p cash grab they seem to be doing nowadays. Everything they touch they casualize, dumb down, make it more accessible, but I'm quite unsure if it's such a smart move to drive away their core audience as what made Blizzard special as a developer from the start was their ability to deliver games of such longevity and quality. Numbers will be good for a while, I guess, but what comes after that? I'm just curious, how much of the community do you think would go for a game (i.e. a sc3 or wc4) that was sold at a lower price, but only included single-player campaign, with a cost of something like $5 a month for multiplayer ladder access? I'm saying this because I'm pretty frustrated with LotV right now and would myself gladly pay a monthly fee to get the game fixed in the long run, or at least partially fixed. A monthly fee would have stopped me from buying the game. I'm happy paying a one time fee. I won't feel ripped off if they decide to go free to play and make money off of microtransactions to increase the user base.
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It's been pretty clear for a long time, but now is clearer than ever: DK is not the person to balance the game. His hesitation will lead to nowhere
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I would bet the delay of the patch is mostly based on feedback from kespa and gsl.
As much as everyone of their respective race wants to whine about the unit comp they struggle vs - the current meta is pretty balanced. You saw the top Korean toss wreck the top Korean terran with liberators at their current strength (though I do think the nerf is based more for tvz it will also have an impact on tvp) - you see in proleague week after week great games in tvz which is almost completely balanced results wise this season - if the zerg survives until late game he is favored - if not the terran is - basically same story up until blord/infestor and the widowmine nerf in hots.
As much as it's easy to get drawn into the whine - to me if the game is very close to balanced (which it is not possible to be completely 100% balanced) we should tread carefully with changes - which seems like they are doing - which I think is a positive thing. We've seen more times than not (for sure) that changes made when the game is showing very close to balanced results can have a tremendous negative impact on the overall balance - so waiting for more sample size to me is the wise thing.
Disclaimer- when I say close to balanced results I'm referencing at the highest level of play - which is where the balance is most exploited and absolutely where the changes that are made need to be coming from - no one cares that you can't deal with some unit comp on ladder - just enjoy the game at your level and try to improve.
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As much as I dislike microtransaction models, particularily for an RTS game like SC2, I think I have to agree with BisuDagger here, as it would most likely help keeping Blizzard's continued investment in the game justified.
As a former WoW-player I honestly don't know if I would support a monthly subscription model, probably not, because I overall (and in hindsight) disliked the direction they went with that game over the years albeit them spending huge budgets on further development, which would, at least according to my personal experience, contradict your presumption that such measure would improve the game long term.
In addition to that there's no guarantee you'd be happy with the direction the game is going despite having a substancial increase in development funding, maybe if they decide to shift on their target audience (which I guess they already did somehow with LotV).
In the process of the development of LotV there as been a lot of eyewashing on Blizzard's end, I feel, maybe their hands are tied due to some shareholder decisions, I don't know, maybe they really wanna try and do the best they can to help the game, but reality for me is that I was a happy SC2 player at the end of HotS, game was good, a bit stale maybe, but I really liked it. Now, with LotV, although they made all those big announcements and even implemented some new stuff like co-op and DLC missions, I'm not a happy SC2 player anymore, at all.
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Wait what, they never went ahead with the tank patch ? O.o
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Mr. Kim,
Patch version, (what you got now) A balance map, (what you've been proposing) And a Nightly-build-balance map. (what could have been around since Wing of Liberty launched from beta... no big deal didnt miss any potential, with all the brilliant talent around to experiment with random changes the results can still be amazing.)
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I agreed that Blizzard shouldn't go to the whole community (bronze,plat, diamond player) to balance the game. They should focus on listening feedbacks from pro players and observe matches at the highest level. IMO, anyone else who ain't a GM have too much bias and don't have the skills to push the game to its full potential to determine whether any race is not balance.
Sure, the lower level players can complain about certain units feeling abusive (widow mines, liberators etc.). But their own skills limitation makes it hard to compare. I am just a mid Diamond player and I know my own input might not be the fact that the game is imbalance but rather my own skill level limitation.
I rather they focus on refining the game like they did with BW. Too many chefs spoil the broth.
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As a separate note, we often argue that if Blizzard has more financial incentive they will be better at balancing the game. The point is that I do not know if this arguement works..or the logic works. They are already doing micro-transaction-like manner with the Nova campaign. Even if they roll out more micro-transactions for decals or special unit models, i really doubt it will change the way they manage the game balancing aspect. I thought the original Arcade was also have micro-transactions as well (to buy a custom game) but that didn't roll out.
Personally, i feel like they are trying to hit too many targets at once (Nova campaign, Arcade, balancing the game etc). Wheras in BW, they only focus on 1v1 balancing.
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Maybe this is crazy, and obviously I'm not a pro player, but at this point, why do we even need balance changes anymore? I feel like the game is balanced enough that it can be changed/tweaked primarily through community maps at this point, like in BW. Having pro players and random forum members having this much power over the game, with people having the idea that if they whine hard enough, Blizzard will change the game in their favor, is just weird. BW worked fine without any balance changes, even if sometimes crap did get unbalanced.
I'm kind of an old grump at this point, though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
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On May 04 2016 19:01 Cyro wrote:
Stalkers are very weak against non-armored AA, that's most obvious against phoenix and mutas. They hit 1.4x higher against armored air and that damage point seems to be in a good place (for example, look at stalker vs medivac, stalker vs liberator, stalker vs viking, flying buildings, battlecruisers, void rays, carriers) but it's obvious that the AA-nonarmored damage is very low, maybe too low. It's been kinda that way for a very long time but we have gone along with it.
This has nothing to do with stalkers. Stacked air units are always very strong, no matter what, because you stack all the health and damage to one point or to a small area. Thats why you need aoe damage against air.
You can buff as much as you want, there will be always a number of mutas that will be stronger because of stacking. Thats how air units work. They stack all the health and damage at one point. Thats why you combat mass air units always with aoe which counters stacking.
Nontheless sentry shield and stalkers do well against mutas and you can counter micro (circle, stutter step when low numbers).
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
why do we even need balance changes anymore? I feel like the game is balanced enough that it can be changed/tweaked primarily through community maps at this point
Blizzard runs the ladder and nonkorean map pools right now
This has nothing to do with stalkers. Stacked air units are always very strong, no matter what, because you stack all the health and damage to one point or to a small area. Thats why you need aoe damage against air.
You can buff as much as you want, there will be always a number of mutas that will be stronger because of stacking. Thats how air units work.
It's clearly different w/ the stalker - this point in the scaling happens way way earlier for stalkers than for units like the Marine for a few different reasons. One of the main ones being that marines will never waste a shot because they fire an instant attack, while stalkers will waste 0% of their damage in a 1v1 but maybe 20%+ of their damage when there are a lot of stalkers and a lot of stacked mutas.
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I am curious , which community are Blizzard using to interface with. I only know of two TL or Reddit. Is there any others?
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
On May 05 2016 14:44 Topdoller wrote: I am curious , which community are Blizzard using to interface with. I only know of two TL or Reddit. Is there any others?
Bnet forums and some kespa guys
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On May 05 2016 14:44 Topdoller wrote: I am curious , which community are Blizzard using to interface with. I only know of two TL or Reddit. Is there any others? And PlayXP (https://www.playxp.com/sc2/)
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