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Germany886 Posts
Community Summit
We had our biggest community summit this week lasting two full days. The first day included around thirteen hours of discussions, hanging out, and eating food, and the second day was a full day of working with discussions and feedback. We wanted to first extend a massive ‘thank you’ to everyone who came out, especially the players and influencers who had to fly to Valencia right away for Dreamhack this weekend. We had many discussions across a wide variety of topics including esports, what should come next for StarCraft, the current state of the game, and ideas on how to generally improve the Starcraft 2 game going forward.
There was a massive amount of information, and we will definitely have more info to share across these fronts as we work through the various feedback, suggestions, and ideas that were generated at this event.
Map Improvements
The new maps have definitely been a big topic within the community recently, so we also took the time to work through some current map improvements. Since we not only had two of the top mapmakers in the world, Jacky and Avex, but also the GSL partners who have been gauging and judging maps for years on site, we took the time to drill down into how we can make each of the new maps better. Below we’d like to discuss changes we came to regarding two of the maps.
Galactic Process
The two main changes here that we’ve came up with were adding the destructible rocks on the backdoor paths, but at a much farther distance than where they used to be so that it’s not so easy for the defender to just check if the rocks are being broken. The majority of the map related influencers agreed that the rock removal was good, due to it being so easy to watch over the rocks + there’s very little reason to utilize that attack path. However, due to early game defenses being a bit more difficult to due this change, a potentially better solution that was proposed was to add the rocks back, but much further away from the natural expansion.
The other change to this map was to add an unpathable area near the natural expansion area to make one of the paths narrower, which would make early game defense a bit easier.
If you guys agree with these two changes, we will work towards implementing these changes as soon as possible.
Dasan Station
The main change that we arrived at for this map was to add a path that is rocked off by rocks that players can use to go between the outer parts of the map towards the center parts of the map. The reason is that the biggest downside currently seems to be if the army is out of position, it’s too difficult to get back in position, and it takes too long to mine out the high yield base before it’s possible to move back and forth.
Unless the community has substantial reason against this change, we’ll look to get this added in as well.
Balance
Balance discussions seemed to indicated that the general consensus is that balance is much better than it has been in the past. Still, there were two points which were of intense focus during the summit.
There was a heavy emphasis on how we should not overreact with changes because even pros don’t know what the exact effects of the changes are.
These discussions were very interesting, because we noticed that even when someone started a conversation saying ‘X’ is a huge problem, others might ask the person how certain he or she is, and that person often replied by saying something like “yeah I really don’t know for certain right now.”
Nerf Warp Prism drops by reducing Warp Prism HP/Shield
- Surprisingly, this was the only unanimous potential change that came up.
- The reasoning for this change (instead of something like speed) was to allow the players who use Warp Prisms really well to be able to continue using them at a strong state, whereas players who aren’t as efficient with the Warp Prism micro should have a bit more trouble being successful with drops after a change like this.
Interestingly, some of those who attended have reached out to say that the Queen buff is working so well that a Warp Prism change may not be necessary from the ZvP angle. Regardless of whether the change is necessary, this just reinforces our belief that we need more time to gauge the exact effects of recent patches before we make further changes to related things.
We’ll continue to discuss the topics of the summit in the coming weeks, but we wanted to get these discussions in front of you right away as they are more immediately relevant. Please let us know your feedback, and thank you!
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I don't know, I think now you shouldn't tinker with the maps, since I wanna see what players come up with. Innovation on maps is reduced if things change around too much. Although if a change is only an improvement, then I'm certainly open to it.
Right now the only thing that really needs change IMO, is the pathing on New Gettisberg with the air blockers.
I'm pretty bored by all this balance discussion, I want to see some changes that can improve the matchups rather than win % adjustments.
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The point of a community summit shouldn't be to talk about balance at all. They should talk about the game design, the actual interactions in the game, no matter if it is technically balanced or not.
Most people don't care about balance, they will think it is balance (to feel better), but in the end it's mostly the design choices which either make the game feel rewarding to play or not.
You can get a balanced game with lots and lots of "bad" gameplay ineteractions. That is where the discussion should be, not if the balance numbers work out.
Disappointed.
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Nice feedback. And I agree that balance is really acceptable now and that we need to give the queen patch some time.
Look into the liberators circles on low settings though.
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Personally I think the learning curve is already too steep and making changes to the warp prism like proposed will only make it worse. In general, the game is too unforgiving for new players or casual players and it's worrisome that the balance team is still trying to make it steeper.
It's impossible to recruit friends to play sc2 because new players are simply so bad. It's not fun to get your scvs wiped out in 2 seconds because a good player had the perfect harass unit and could micro the crap out of it. I really think the community is suffering because the game had turned away casual players from everything except the arcade. My 2 cents
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Blizzard hypes about a great summit that ends up proposing a minor possible change. Meh. I think someone said in Reddit that they discussed huge changes on the summit. What happened?
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FireCake said on stream once that sc2 would get a lot easier to get into with tutorial videos for build orders, units, etc that would be accessible in game, like there is in LoL. I think it's a very good idea that would help immensely.
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Dasan Station
"The main change that we arrived at for this map was to add a path that is rocked off by rocks"
Rocked off by Rocks.
Sounds good
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On July 16 2016 03:04 GGzerG wrote:
Dasan Station
"The main change that we arrived at for this map was to add a path that is rocked off by rocks"
Rocked off by Rocks.
Sounds good
didn't even bother reading the part on Dasan Station, the map is just not salvageable
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?33494 Posts
On July 16 2016 03:04 GGzerG wrote:
Dasan Station
"The main change that we arrived at for this map was to add a path that is rocked off by rocks"
Rocked off by Rocks.
Sounds good
lol, yeah, I noticed that too.
I wonder if they talked about ultras... Good freaking gosh, I hate TvZ late-game...
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What an underwhelming and dissapointing summit.
When 90% of our community is pissed off and annoyed by balance and design issues and only 1 thing can be discussed as a potential issue, then i just think to myself what is the actual point of a community summit.
I said last time, the people that came out of the last community summit that said stuff like "blizzard are going to release an incredible game with many changes coming to the near future. They are going to be as active as ever before and really redesign issues and balance flaws that are currently in the game". Those things did not really happen, 3 balance changes that have been rather minimal to the game since release (nearly a year ago) and a couple of UI changes with bug fixes and a new ladder revamp. Not really my idea of "active" or "balancing and creating great design to the gameplay and its units".
Once again people came out of the summit saying that blizzard have so many huge changes planned and design and balance fixes to the game. And this is all that they announce. Disgusting really, those people that come out and say that stuff should be ashamed. I prefer honesty, i prefer someone that can come out of the summit and say it as it is such as: "discussions were made about the game and its future, we talked about design and balance and unfortunately could only come up with 1 potential balance issue which was the warp prism hp/shields possibly being too much at the moment."
Now if the people came out and actually were just honest about the summit then i would be much happier, ovcourse i would be disappointing because i would of been hoping for some really cool and potentially brilliant ideas to help change the design and balance of certain units within the game that are quite clearly an issue at this moment. But to just basically be lied to and then find out from a community feedback thread is just so aggravating. Guess we are not going to have fixes to major problems to our gameplay once again.
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The warp prism is a unit that has suffered from power creep and should be pulled back I think. I don't know if an hp nerf is the way to go about it though.
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Germany886 Posts
On July 16 2016 03:01 petro1987 wrote:
Blizzard hypes about a great summit that ends up proposing a minor possible change. Meh. I think someone said in Reddit that they discussed huge changes on the summit. What happened?
Apparently they will release the bigger changes at a later point, probably GamesCom / BlizzCon. Today they only revealed the minor changes they want to deploy very soon (basically like every community update).
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It was pretty obvious from the Map Test tournament that movements on Dasan were absurdly awkward, and I don't think adding rocks does enough to mitigatethat . I'm not sure where they'd add the rocks tbf, so we'll see.
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I do not even know what to say.
It is like 10 engineers are locked in a room for 2 days discussing the engine problems of a car and then concluding that the car's default colour should be changed from light blue to dark blue.
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On July 16 2016 03:10 Finnz wrote:
What an underwhelming and dissapointing summit.
When 90% of our community is pissed off and annoyed by balance and design issues and only 1 thing can be discussed as a potential issue, then i just think to myself what is the actual point of a community summit.
Well, according to people who went, they discussed a whole boat load of things for the future. DK only brought up one of those things today as they are ready to move forward with it already.
Give it time, I have my doubts as well, but being negative doesn't help whatsoever.
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I dunno if it's a PR fail or a failure of the community summit, but seriously, after inviting so many people :
On July 16 2016 03:17 MockHamill wrote:
I do not even know what to say.
It is like 10 engineers are locked in a room for 2 days discussing the engine problems of a car and then concluding that the cars default colour should be changed from light blue to dark blue.
This exactly.
It's like if the avengers all met to decide wether they should fight loki or not, and end up deciding that the seat of the toilets should be left up because there's a majority of guys.
Let's hear it for :
- mech viability
- cyclone
- thor
- SH
- BC
- viper
- terran diversity
- no zerg in the GSL ro 16 but only one terran in the DH ro16
- adept shade
- liberator's AG
Thanks once again DK !
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"some of those who attended have reached out to say that the Queen buff is working so well that a Warp Prism change may not be necessary from the ZvP angle."
Glad ZvP will be fine, unlike TvP. But i guess thats okay. Instead of reverting the queenrange and keeping the "stimmed" spore and reduce the warprism's health so all races benefit from it would be too much logic. The late game for zerg has been buffed even more with the range, killed a lot of builds for terran. But thats seems fine. Warprims pickup range is still stupid and is incredible annoying for the defender and feels gimmicky. The warprism is already a fast unit on its own to be annoying enough, for JUST MINERALS.
*Tempest still 4 supply
*nydus that cant be killed
*vipers hardcounter the counter to vipers
*adept shade cooldown starts directly, and not after the ability is done like with every other unit in the game
*after the shade it resets the attack timer as well
*Stasis ward, a free spell, doesnt expire in the game.
*mech still crap
*etc. etc.
8 Months since the release of LOTV, and we still discussing the same things over and over again.
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there are a lot of things to do, but plz take priority on reaper nade and pylon shooting buildings, both ruins game experience. (TvT early game and TvP pylons under ramp)
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I bet all that happend in that summit was laughing at people that still expect them to make SC2 a good game, and expending some of that Overwatch money into pizza and beer.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
