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Posted on behalf of Lead Multiplayer Designer David 'Dayvie' Kim:
Next Balance Update
We hear your feedback on potential additional changes to the Carrier that may be needed, but let’s do this cost increase first since there is good consensus on it so that we can move in smaller steps.
Interestingly, the balance of the current game looked better than expected in the first major tournament. This is the other reason why we decided we can take slightly more time before making next moves.
Let’s continue discussing, playing, and watching for not just where these two units currently are but also keep an eye out for if Hydralisks need a small HP increase, if Infestor burrow casting needs to be changed a bit, and if cyclones are in a good spot for Mech play. We also hear the concern that Reaper grenades might be powerful once the maps are changed to Season 1 maps, and if this is really the case when the maps go in, we’ll try to react quickly.
Balance Process going forward into next year
The other thing we wanted to discuss is the fact that the faster turn-around for smaller balance changes (during balance testing as well as during the off season) turned out much better than we had expected. Therefore, we wanted to get your thoughts on a potential change to our balance process.
Our thought was to make a change so that if there’s a higher confidence on a smaller balance tweak that needs to be made, we can just push that change out to the live game without doing a balance test map. Keep in mind though that if there’s a big change happening or if we need to make a riskier change, we would use the balance test map to test the changes well before going live.
The reason we suggest this is so that we can be a bit more agile in fixing more balance problems that may arise in the future at a much faster rate. Please let us know your thoughts.
Wrapping up this year
Because this might be the last update of this year, we wanted to take the time to thank everyone once again for working so hard with us throughout maintaining the balance of the live game, working together on the major patch changes, as well as putting extra effort into polishing the game since the patch launch. We know that identifying specific improvements or issues with games is very difficult and can be frustrating at times, but we were so impressed by how much our community as a whole has improved throughout the year. This gives us the confidence that SC2 will continue to be improved next year, and we look forward to working closely together with you next year as well! Happy Holidays and here’s to a great New Year!!
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if Infestor burrow casting needs to be changed a bit
yes
Reaper grenades might be powerful
yes
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I agree with making faster and smaller balance changes.
I agree that reaper grenades and carriers are too good.
Lowering the interceptor cost from 25 to 5 was unnecessary, Carriers were already strong. The only reason we did not see Carriers pre-patch is that it was impossible to play mech in TvP.
Now when mech is actually somewhat viable in TvP even they old Carriers are a strong counter. Lowering the interceptor cost was unnecessary and simply moved the unit from strong to OP.
I am surprised that you have not increased the cost of Swarm Hosts yet. Swarm Hosts are completely broken in TvZ vs mech, it basically prevents you from even moving out on the map.
Just because Innovation managed to do some timing attacks before Swarm Hosts were out does not mean that the unit is not broken.
Mech will never be viable outside of cheese and timing attacks until Swarm Hosts are nerfed.
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On December 21 2016 04:27 Charoisaur wrote:yes yes
Yes.
Someone should organize a bo13 paladino terminal TvZ showmatch to see exactly how good 3-rax reapers are.
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Agree with all of the above. It seems hydras are really hard to balance. In ZvP there is basically a window where they are extremely powerful, and then in the late game they are utterly useless.
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Balance Process going forward into next year
The other thing we wanted to discuss is the fact that the faster turn-around for smaller balance changes (during balance testing as well as during the off season) turned out much better than we had expected. Therefore, we wanted to get your thoughts on a potential change to our balance process.
Our thought was to make a change so that if there’s a higher confidence on a smaller balance tweak that needs to be made, we can just push that change out to the live game without doing a balance test map. Keep in mind though that if there’s a big change happening or if we need to make a riskier change, we would use the balance test map to test the changes well before going live.
good idea.
experiment with this approach and see if it works. a small/tiny balance tweak requires a lot of game play to determine if it produced the expected change in game play. i suspect not enough people are using the balance test map so it becomes a chicken//egg thing as far as getting meaningful testing data.
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Balance Process going forward into next year
The other thing we wanted to discuss is the fact that the faster turn-around for smaller balance changes (during balance testing as well as during the off season) turned out much better than we had expected. Therefore, we wanted to get your thoughts on a potential change to our balance process.
Our thought was to make a change so that if there’s a higher confidence on a smaller balance tweak that needs to be made, we can just push that change out to the live game without doing a balance test map. Keep in mind though that if there’s a big change happening or if we need to make a riskier change, we would use the balance test map to test the changes well before going live.
The reason we suggest this is so that we can be a bit more agile in fixing more balance problems that may arise in the future at a much faster rate. Please let us know your thoughts.
Completely agree, no need to go through the entire process and to add to that. There isn't going to be enough people queue'ing the test map to see how a 5 hp Baneling HP decrease pans out. Zergs don't want to go in and play a nerfed race of itself. Test map should be for the really huge patches and crazy ideas.
Hydralisk: Straight up buffing the Hydralisks health will make it a more well rounded unit. This is quite a different change from the +1 increase in range. A health buff is not gonna matter that much in what is now considered a healthy unit compositions. The Hydralisk is currently a glass cannon and benefits from having tanking Roaches (Ultralisks late game,) in front of it. It benefits from having Bile's + Banelings, since it will make the enemy move around it's army in an attempt to dodge big AoE, hence reducing the damage from the opposing player. A straight up health pool buff will push out some of these importances and instead be replaced by the Hydralisk. So my fear is that we see less diverse unit compositions from the Zerg in general, though it will probably still not be overpowered.
I wonder if instead it would be a better idea to introduce a late game Hunter Killer Hydralisk upgrade on Hive tech, which buffs the Hydralisk health pool by an even greater amount than what is currently being suggested and that way we see Zerg compositions change more over time. Hydralisk could look really bad ass when they upgrade into the Hunter Killer Hydralisk :D
Reaper: For the Reaper I think they should remove Combat Healing and buff it's Health pool accordingly, then for pure awesomeness they should add a late game upgrade, which makes the Grenade do additional devastating damage vs Structures. Qxc late game Reapers were so awesome and it should totally be a thing!
Baneling: Banelings should be 35 hp from the start of the game. This does not destroy ZvZ, so there's no reason for it to be on the upgrade anymore.
Cyclone: Give it range 4, but add in turret tracking. Give it an upgrade which buffs the Lock-On. My suggestion would be an upgrade to the acquiring range of Lock-On.
Infestor: Burrow Fungal should not be a thing, either change it's functionality while Burrowed, so that it casts Fungal ontop of itself, or completely remove the ability to Fungal while Burrowed. You can instead buff Infested Terran Egg armour, if you want to give the Infestor more love.
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david kim is so clueless. he's balancing everything ass backwards. he nerfs immortals, buffs tanks beyond anyone's wildest dreams, then wonders why all protosss are going air against mech? maybe because fighting it with ground units is horribly ineffective?
basically he's bouncing from one mistake to another, and then tries to fix it by making more mistakes. sc2 must be the only game that gets worse and worse the more the devs tune it and release expansions for.
User was warned for this post
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On December 21 2016 04:49 MockHamill wrote:
I agree with making faster and smaller balance changes.
I agree that reaper grenades and carriers are too good.
Lowering the interceptor cost from 25 to 5 was unnecessary, Carriers were already strong. The only reason we did not see Carriers pre-patch is that it was impossible to play mech in TvP.
Now when mech is actually somewhat viable in TvP even they old Carriers are a strong counter. Lowering the interceptor cost was unnecessary and simply moved the unit from strong to OP.
I am surprised that you have not increased the cost of Swarm Hosts yet. Swarm Hosts are completely broken in TvZ vs mech, it basically prevents you from even moving out on the map.
Just because Innovation managed to do some timing attacks before Swarm Hosts were out does not mean that the unit is not broken.
Mech will never be viable outside of cheese and timing attacks until Swarm Hosts are nerfed.
This is all so true, pretty much sums up how I feel completely. Carriers are totally overpowered right now even against Zerg, they absolutely annihilate anything outside of mass 3/3 Viper/Corruptor/Queen and even with that composition your micro and engagements have to absolutely perfect.
Once again, the team continues with the overwhelming power of massed air units which I think beyond obvious design changes (Swarm Hosts just need to be removed and Hydras need less damage and more durability) is the biggest problem in the game, mass aerial armies are just much too powerful and it creates boring games because the only thing that counters powerful air units is powerful dedicated AA units.
As you said, they finally got mech into a decent spot and then they made the Swarm host quite literally ONLY good vs mech (Just like Vipers) and also like you said, they made Carriers which were already strong and particularly strong vs mech into an OP hard counter.
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On December 21 2016 04:51 mindjames wrote:
Agree with all of the above. It seems hydras are really hard to balance. In ZvP there is basically a window where they are extremely powerful, and then in the late game they are utterly useless.
The window is because they do extremely powerful sustained DPS, so before Protoss can get out the necessary units to counter them Hydralisks in mass just apply the beat down to basic Gateway units.
The problem with this is that since they are so fragile, the necessary units to counter them are pretty much hard counters that as you said makes them useless and Protoss has a plethora of them. Colossus, Templar, Chargelot Archon, Skytoss, all handily annihilate Hydralisk armies, but before those units come out, Protoss struggles.
This can be fixed by reducing the attack speed so they don't totally incinerate basic units and buffing their health so that splash damage isn't so ludicrously effective vs them.
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No changes to economy yet?
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The day of the Blizzcon finale was an amazing, fast paced games. I really think that the game was well tuned for the final. I didnt think it was nessecary to announce a big patch annoucement in that sofa.
Seems like a snowball effect, everything was pretty good, eh? Then removeing big things, for examle tank/medivacs drops.
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Also they should look into nerfing the collossus and compensate toss somewhere else to make pvt fun again.
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Not a single word about swarmhosts.
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So, we heard your ideas on making the carrier both usable in most games, and much less binary- but we're ignoring it and moving on? And we hear that reaper grenades are too strong, but we're not going to address that in the time of the year we set aside for balance changes? Wouldn't want to mess with the off-season meta?
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On December 21 2016 05:24 SlammerSC2 wrote:
Not a single word about swarmhosts.
Its frustrating for sure.
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I'm pretty sure someone has kidnapped David Kim. Actually acknowledging the community's main complaints, that isn't like him at all.
On December 21 2016 04:50 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2016 04:27 Charoisaur wrote:if Infestor burrow casting needs to be changed a bit yes Reaper grenades might be powerful yes Yes. Someone should organize a bo13 paladino terminal TvZ showmatch to see exactly how good 3-rax reapers are.
You don't even need to do that, just watch any of Kelazhur or uThermal's TvZ's for the last 4 months
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reaper nades, add an upgrade in techlab cost 50/50 time 60 sec for them or something like that, they're only strong when there's a lot of them at very early stage and no problems when just 1-3.
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On December 21 2016 05:18 Espartaquen wrote:
No changes to economy yet?
what's wrong with it?
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Promising feedback.
I would love to see a nerf for the infestor even if I play Zerg. Don't delete the burrow casting ability because it's fun to play and really enjoyable to watch (especially when the casters are the O'Gaming crew) but a range nerf could be good. Zergs could still play this strats but it would be more risky and easier to prevent for the opponent.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
