|
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20745685920
Patch next week
After more playtests and more discussions with various people, we believe that it’ll be better to patch the current two changes to the live game sooner than later given the current situation. However, we do also want to point out that we definitely see the foreign community’s concern regarding the Queen buff, and we will definitely make sure to react quick if something breaks. But the two main reasons we would like to hurry up with this update is due to heavy feedback in favor of these changes on the KR pro side, and we also have a major tournament coming up in 2-3 weeks outside of Korea, so we would really love to push the change out to live as quickly as possible so that we can make necessary fixes before the WCS tournament if needed. So looking at this from both regions, it looks to be the right decision to patch quickly.
After the patch next week
We definitely hear your feedback regarding the potential for Ultralisk armor needing nerfs and the Liberator needing nerfs. We would really love to look at the impact of the Spore and Queen changes first before we start testing further changes. For example, if Zerg is performing much better in the early/mid game and are dominating in the late game, we can definitely take a look at the Ultralisk armor nerf, whereas if these changes were steps in the right direction but not enough, we can look at potential Liberator +light damage removal to its AA weapon.
Playing Skill vs. Game Design Skill
It’s been a while since we discussed more design philosophy based topics, and we noticed a topic being very big in the past couple weeks, so we wanted to share our thoughts regarding this. Specifically, we’re seeing a lot of posts discussing the importance of playing at a high skill level in order to be a good game designer.
Our thought is that these two have some overlap, but are different skillsets. We have seen so many examples of every mix of the two: A top player being so bad at game analysis, a top player being so good at game analysis, a bad player being so good at game design, and a bad player being also bad at game design. They’re just separate skills that one person can be good at none, one, or both of them. And the definition of a good player is so opinion based. For example, I’m currently in master league using random and if I say this to a pro player, they would think I’m pretty bad at the game. As compared to if I say this to a silver level player, they would think I’m good at the game.
The same goes for game design skills. Often times, game design skills are more difficult to quantify than say like awesome concept art skills or awesome programming skills. Interestingly, this is an area game designers on our team have a lot of discussions on regarding what an ideal game designer at Blizzard is, which is another fun topic that we can go into if there is desire for it for this in a future weekly update. And going more into detail on this current topic, the important thing for game designers working on SC2 is the ability to analyze game mechanics well. This is clearly a higher priority than playing the game at a pro level.
Just to finish off, we did want to ask a question that we ask ourselves often: In a perfect world scenario, would it be best to aim to have only game designers who are also the very best players at the game? Granted this might be near impossible to achieve, it is an interesting question because we can look at it from many different points of view. For example, I can argue that this is the best because the best player understand more parts of playing the game so he can analyze the game better as well. But I can also argue this isn’t ideal because he would be unable to see the game from a different perspective other than the top skill level, and the more ideal is to have a good mix of every type of gamer who all are good game designers.
We wanted to share our thoughts here because this is a fun topic to discuss, and we’ve also been leaning a bit more towards one way or another over the years on our team as well. Because there necessarily isn’t one, clear, perfect answer to this question, please let us know your thoughts as well and we will look forward to exploring this discussion from a potentially different angle!
|
Would the ladder renewal be installed along with the balance patch?
|
On July 02 2016 04:29 redloser wrote:
Would the ladder renewal be installed along with the balance patch?
Doubt it. Balance patches are usually their own thing.
|
I'm alright with this if Zerg needs a buff I'm glad it's a reasonable one. Hopefully in live they can get more relevant data about the changes.
|
Urgh. I fear this is such a terrible idea.
|
The queen buff is going to cause a much, much more safe mid-game zerg. Defensive play is going to rule the roost for a bit.
|
I am against the queen buff, not because of its effect on balance, but because the queen range is already absurd. It's just gonna feel super weird to have your drops sniped by queens from the other side of their hatcheries.
|
On July 02 2016 05:09 MperorM1 wrote:
I am against the queen buff, not because of its effect on balance, but because the queen range is already absurd. It's just gonna feel super weird to have your drops sniped by queens from the other side of their hatcheries.
And the Spore burrow speed feels weird too, almost as fast as a Siege Tank sieging.
|
is 1 more air range or slower root time gonna help that much vs tankivacs, hellbat marauder pushes, marine tank pushes, or mine marine drops?
I fail to see how this addresses Zerg mid-game weakness in ZvT (Liberator harass aside).
|
Well, definitely looking forward to losing all my low health medivacs to queens. That range is pretty insane.
Some change is necessary for Zerg and I'm glad they're trying to be a bit more aggressive with finding a solution. I'm just not sure they've found the right one.
|
On July 02 2016 05:09 MperorM1 wrote:
I am against the queen buff, not because of its effect on balance, but because the queen range is already absurd. It's just gonna feel super weird to have your drops sniped by queens from the other side of their hatcheries.
Yes it's absurd but what else do you suggest to defend against the liberators ? Make the minerals far away of the edges so that the queens can defend against them ? because right now almost all the zvt revolves around making the roach ravagers fast enough no matter what terrans opening you see...
|
I wanna see more design discussion blizz.
|
spore crawler is pretty much a unit now, not static defense
|
On July 02 2016 05:16 Nazara wrote:
is 1 more air range or slower root time gonna help that much
I bet that lurker, spore, spine, queen (+ ancillary lings / hydras) into eventual infestors + broods will be Zergs' mid-game after this patch.
Stephano's going to be laughing his ... erm ... behind off.
|
On July 02 2016 05:18 RaiZ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2016 05:09 MperorM1 wrote:
I am against the queen buff, not because of its effect on balance, but because the queen range is already absurd. It's just gonna feel super weird to have your drops sniped by queens from the other side of their hatcheries. Yes it's absurd but what else do you suggest to defend against the liberators ? Make the minerals far away of the edges so that the queens can defend against them ? because right now almost all the zvt revolves around making the roach ravagers fast enough no matter what terrans opening you see...
Nerf liberators instead?
On July 02 2016 05:18 Elentos wrote:
Well, definitely looking forward to losing all my low health medivacs to queens. That range is pretty insane.
Some change is necessary for Zerg and I'm glad they're trying to be a bit more aggressive with finding a solution. I'm just not sure they've found the right one.
I feel the same. But at this point in the short term at least getting the wrong zerg buff in is probably better than not buffing at all.
|
But at this point in the short term at least getting the wrong zerg buff in is probably better than not buffing at all. That's probably how Nexus Overcharge and Pylone Overcharge started.
"Buff not nerf" can be cancerous.
|
On July 02 2016 05:16 Nazara wrote:
is 1 more air range or slower root time gonna help that much vs tankivacs, hellbat marauder pushes, marine tank pushes, or mine marine drops?
I fail to see how this addresses Zerg mid-game weakness in ZvT (Liberator harass aside).
With that 1 extra range you can force medivacs to retreat faster than they have to now. You're more likely to snipe them with good focus fire. Killing the medivacs, or at least forcing them away, is a big deal and that ability's getting a buff. Worth to see how it plays out. Plus it's also a buff against Protoss air. Whether it ends up working out? Who knows.
Marauder/hellbat is an all-in but I don't think it's strong enough that Zerg needs extra help against it.
|
Zerg is getting a huge buff.... Goodbye aggressive Terrans and Protoss
|
I don't understand why they are buffing queens before looking into liberator AA damage.
Liberator AA damage should be adressed first, all the queen buff does is buffing hive rush strategies.
|
On July 02 2016 06:19 Charoisaur wrote:
I don't understand why they are buffing queens before looking into liberator AA damage.
Liberator AA damage should be adressed first, all the queen buff does is buffing hive rush strategies.
If they buff something Zerg it can also act as a buff against Protoss at the same time, so that could be a reason.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
