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United States23395 Posts
I was just watching TING on BasetradeTV and I heard Demuslim talk about something interesting. He mentioned "the problem with tvp right now" - and he talked about an issue with potential income rates of Protoss vs Terran. His argument seemed to be that it is much easier for Protoss to rapidly gain income than it is for Terran.
A quick note - I am not trying to claim there are no balance issues that need to be taken care of. Also, please note that this post isn't to call out Demuslim. It's actually being made to call out about 90% of the outspoken community. And I like Demuslim, he seems like a cheerful and easy to get along with guy. But, he did make the fatal mistake of making a balance complaint while casting. And it inspired me.
To make my point, I am going to take us back in time, with a little history lesson. We are going to talk about sc2's predecessor, brood war.
Before the sc2 pro scene, the brood war pro scene was at the forefront of RTS e-sports. And before that, there was a time when esports was a fledgeling idea. At this point in time, there were almost *no* esports opportunities outside of korea...and in korea it was just beginning. Once a year we got the World Cyber Games. That was pretty much it. Everything else was made by the community, and the competition was mostly for honor - often there were no monetary prizes whatsoever. It was purely love of the game that drove competition during this period.
Now, other high level players from this period might have a different perspective - particularly ones that actually went to korea. So if they would like to contribute a differing view I would love to hear it. But from my own personal recollection - I almost never saw actual balance complaints from high level players. And ironically, as far as statistics go, Brood War was *less* balanced than sc2 has been for most of it's existence. Not by much, but there were clear racial imbalances that I believe continue to this day.
P>T>Z>P. Everyone knew. Sometimes we would see specialists or innovators rise up to defy the odds. But in general, Protoss knew they had to play exceptionally to win vs a good Zerg. I say this as a Protoss main. But it wasn't really something to complain about, it was just a fact of life. Each race had it's most challenging matchup. And the best players, they accepted that fact, and they rose to the challenge. In Korea, we saw numerous legends born - players who defied the odds and consistently won in all matchups. Players who could not be held down.
Since my experience was with Protoss, pvz is what I want to talk about. Note that the following are generalities, there are always exceptions. When I played pvz, there were two main ways to play. The first was to tech quickly into storm or reaver(probably storm), trying to survive early game and then leverage the tech advantage to slowly put yourself in an advantageous position. The second was to open with dedicated pressure, sacrificing your own tech and economy to attempt to slow down the Zerg even more(quick note, I am from before when corsair openings rose to popularity).
Here is the thing about these playstyles. In both cases, if you didn't outright win the game with a rush, you knew you would be behind in economy if the Zerg was playing macro. You'd likely be way behind in income. But that's okay, that was expected. That was part of the matchup.
Likewise, the Zerg knew they had to be way ahead in economy, or they were in for a rough time. Or, in PVT, there was a reverse situation. You typically expected to get a little bit ahead in economy. If you had managed to get up to 4 bases, but the Terran had somehow managed to accrue a similar income rate... well you were probably in deep shit.
So, where am I going with this? Well, I want to go back to what Demuslim was talking about. I think his statement is something a lot of people would agree with. The Terran can't safely match Protoss income rate, and that's a problem with the matchup.
I don't agree. I think we should look at the brood war examples as to why. I think, for some reason, too many people have decided *how the game is supposed to be*. I think that this rigidity of thinking sets people back, and makes them miss out on understanding and fail to see potential opportunities. Players, especially pro players, should be embracing the strengths of the race they are using - while working around the weaknesses.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Terran having to open up with hyperaggressive openings vs Protoss, for example. Maybe that's how the game should be played! It's all in your mind that there is something *wrong* with that. Maybe the best players are players who can embrace this playstyle, seeking to do the most damage possible and if not winning the game with it then *coming out ahead* to go into the later game. A lot of players act like the only thing you can do with an aggressive opening is win or lose, but that's silly. It's just an opening, and it puts you in some sort of position for later into the game. The amount of times I see players say *if X fails you lose*, is sad. Because it's not true. An opening can fail to kill an enemy but still put you in a great position if you do it well enough.
Players should not be looking at weaknesses as imbalances in the game. The races should not be directly compared. But they are, constantly.
If brood war came out now, instead of 20 years ago, the amount of complaining would be through the roof. It would be absolutely bonkers.
#You can't move out against Zerg it's impossible and they expand all over the map
#All Terran can do is turtle while Protoss can take a million bases
#I can't even get out of my base vs Terran all I can do is make a thousand sunkens and try desperately to get to lurkers so that I don't instantly die
etc etc
But instead, because brood war was new, players didn't know better. So, they embraced these aspects of the game and played around them. They perfected them. They weren't balance issues... they were the game.
To sum it up, I think that many members of the community need to re-think how they view balance between the races... and I think that pros should be gleefully embracing the strengths and weaknesses in the matchups.
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Thank you! There's definitely been times when balance was an issue (e.g., queen patch BL-infestor, 1-1-1), but you make things too balanced / similar, and people complain about design
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As a terran hearing statements like this really confuses me every time. (Demuslims statement)
Zerg has been superior in income rate compared to the other race for ages and nobody thinks it's a problem because people are used to it and Zerg is balanced around it.
In TvP however people think Protoss shouldn't have superior income because it's not how it has been in the previous expansions...
Protoss may be too strong right now in TvP but that may as well be a problem with unit balance and not with the economy.
Back when liberators were strong macro TvP was balanced as well despite Protoss having the superior economy.
However I disagree with this statement There is nothing inherently wrong with Terran having to open up with hyperaggressive openings vs Protoss,
I think when the matchup dictates too much how the players are supposed to play it makes the game really stale. The best example for this is Immo Sentry allin vs BL/Infestor.
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There is a significant difference that is missing. The big difference is that Blizzard continues to balance SC2 while it left BW alone for almost all of its professional existence. You could complain all you wanted in BW, nothing would change. It was a complete waste of time.
In SC2, if the community gets loud enough, Blizzard tends to cave to the demands. If your race is stronger, you'll do better in tournaments and get more money. So a pro player actually has an incentive to complain.
I'd be very cautious about listening to balance complaints from anyone who isn't a dedicated random player because they have an incentive to complain. And of course, I'd be cautious about listening to balance complaints from less than a professional level because there is so much they could do to improve their win rate before balance becomes an issue.
And the number of extremely high level dedicated random players is... 0? So I'd just suggest that Blizzard should be extremely slow in implementing changes.
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People complain because complaining causes changes.
Protoss players complained that the skill ceiling for controlling the protoss army was too high, so they added an auto attack to high templar.
Zergs complained that proxy rax was impossible to hold, and blizzard made it fucking impossible to misclick the scv building a bunker.
Terrans complained about cancelling stim by accidentally lifting their barracks, and blizzard just changed the game so that can't happen anymore.
When you have a developer that's sitting beside it's community bending over to their every whim, of course people are going to complain.
Those are just the most recent patches, the list of balance changes to SC2 over the years is staggering.
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On January 16 2019 02:25 RenSC2 wrote:
I'd be very cautious about listening to balance complaints from anyone who isn't a dedicated random player because they have an incentive to complain.
I think when you listen to pro players of all 3 races you will get to some conclusions despite the biases of the individual players.
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No direct link with your subject but i m pretty much surprised to never see a ghost in early TvP,
On the paper, he looks as good as a high templar and you can tech faster to produce them ?!
I m missing something ?
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United States23395 Posts
On January 16 2019 02:24 Charoisaur wrote:
I think when the matchup dictates too much how the players are supposed to play it makes the game really stale. The best example for this is Immo Sentry allin vs BL/Infestor.
This kind of statement I can agree with. If the argument is that some aspect of the game makes it boring for viewers or players then I think it is a debate people should be having. It's certainly ideal for the game to be a fun one... though I do fear some people don't find games fun simply because they aren't able to win with the playstyle they want to win with.
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As long as everyone who reads this post and says "yeah I agree" realizes that the natural conclusion that follows is that there should be no balance changes, I will be happy. And yes, I agree with this post generally speaking.
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I remember DeMuslim talking once about his WC3 days where orc was considered to be in a bad position. Even Grubby allegedly made a blog about the issue. Then a player came with a completely different hero strategy and "fixed" orc.
Too bad that Blizzard decided - due to popular demand - to patch orc somewhere around the same time, leading to a lot of tournament wins for orc players.
I don't know when this was and how it developed from there but it speaks volumes to me.
By the way I mostly end the stream when a player starts to blame balance... Not my idea of entertainment.
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Travis I'll try to respond as fairly and thoroughly as I can, as saying something in a 20 second segment over a relaxed and laid back cast and that being used to start a discussion can often be misleading. But also I want to start off by saying, I absolutely disagree that you should just accept something because "That's the way it is".
"Players should not be looking at weaknesses as imbalances in the game. The races should not be directly compared. But they are, constantly."
You did a lot of comparing between sc2 and BW, which I think is fair given that both are related in that they have the same 3 races and share a lot of the same basics. But what they are is anything but the same. Sc2 as its progressed has just grown further and further from it's predecessor, and not in a bad way. The jump in workers from BW from 4, to 6 in sc2, to 12 were all done to improve certain things, be it simply to negate very early game cheese outs, or to skip the mundane opening minutes to a game. BW has gone 20 years without a single change to anything besides maps. Sc2 on the other hand goes through a major Balance patch every year, heck just a week ago they tested removing a bug in beam damage and reverting it. One has balance patches, one doesn't, this makes change in one game something that can and should be talked about, so of course they are different.
With a major balance patch coming every year and the most recent happening in November which changed very integral things about the game, new to everyone, I think talking about the changes is fine to do. Now, there have absolutely been times in sc2's history which grows longer by the day in which things weren't deemed best for competition, the most notable being the "broodlord infestor" era of the game which to this day is highly regarded as the most imbalanced portion of sc2's history. You could even mention the blinkstalker Yeon su days where MSC had 13 vision range for blink stalkers, neither was balanced, but more importantly neither was good for the game viewer wise or fun wise.
Sc2 matchups generally have rules, one very simple one which I don't think anybody would disagree with for example is how Terran vs Zerg is played.
Terran works on slowing down the zergs economy with things like Hellions, Banshees, Vikings killing overlords, BC's, Hellbat pushes etc. You don't see Terran not open up aggressive vs zerg, this isn't something that's "imbalanced" as after all the early game aggression is done, you can see situations where both players are 130 ish supply and the game goes on. Arguing the whys of this would be that Zerg economy can grow quicker than terrans, thus terran work at slowing it down which is a terran utilizing its aggressive potential thus minimizing a zergs strengths and making the line of where both races should be more equal.
TvZ has been like that for a while, and I think it's in a really great spot especially with the number of openings that are viable becoming more varied with things like the BC viability and transfusion with the slight nerf opens up possibilities.
Moving onto TvP, the general rule has changed throughout time making it far less consistent in how to actually judge it or balance it.
Back in HoTS, Recalling the time of viking scv all ins (Terran would get a superior economy, hit protoss before they get a supreme army and win) this then was altered by Maru where Maru just doom dropped every protoss with medivacs instead of viking usage etc. But the general gist of things was that Terran's economy bloomed faster than a Protoss, but the Protoss if reaching max would have a better army.
This is no longer HoTS obviously, and talking about rules things have changed.
Protoss with the macro changes, chronoboost better, new units, mules nerfed the way things usually work is that Protoss get ahead economically. This is a tad weird since that's a role reversal of how things used to be, especially without really nerfing or buffing anything besides the macro mechanics (mule was nerfed slightly also).
One way that terran dealt with these changes and the flip to the rule, was proxy factory reactor builds and the like, they were deemed incredibly strong, even imbalanced throughout the latter seasons of GSL 2018. We saw TY and Maru used them to great effect, come Super tournament and Blizzcon, we saw Protoss learn to deal with these builds which was a sigh of relief for Protoss players. One thing that's worth mentioning though, is these builds came out of necessity due to the macro builds of terran no longer working, thus resorting to different methods. The recent patch disabled the reactor cyclone, thus removing the 1 slowing down ability of the terran.
To compare this to a different matchup, if you removed queens in ZvT, their defensive capabilities would be ridiculously stunted and maybe you'd never see zerg recover vs terran, the same could be said if you removed Hellions, zergs would never take damage and would always be ahead vs terran resulting in grand zerg favour.
If you remove the current 1 method that terran have of slowing down a Protoss, aka the proxy factory reactor, it results in a similar effect in TvP, this doesn't mean there aren't other methods, but a lot of what terran did revolved around this being a possibilty in slowing down a Protoss, just like Hellions are a possibility vs zerg, so you make those 12 extra lings instead of 6 drones. The fear of it and potential of it slows a race down.
This isn't a direct comparison of how 1 race is to another, this is talk of a constantly evolving and progressing game and a different take on the hows and why terran resort to the style of play they currently take vs Protoss, without saying anything about the strength of 1 races units to another races.
Also, just to clarify, I don't find TvP as fun as it used to be to watch (Which maybe I should have clarified when I said the problem with it) when it featured a lot of late game terran vs Protoss armies (Need I mention squirtle vs MvP with BC's vs Mothership and blackhole etc) or simply the Ghost vs HT snipe vs feedback situation. It now mainly features 2 base all ins and Protoss' attempts holding it, Maybe i'm alone in thinking the matchup can be more enjoyable for everyone, but all in all I just think it can be more and has been more than it currently is.
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Anytime anyone starts talking about balance, I generally ignore them.
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I kinda get both sides of this one, on one hand players would be well served to embrace the strengths of their race, even if its not exactly how one would want to play a matchup
On the other hand I get the frustration that arises from being "forced" to play a matchup a certain way in order to win
Also:
On January 16 2019 03:35 GreasedUpDeafGuy wrote:
Anytime anyone starts talking about balance, I generally ignore them.
Awesome contribution
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The match-up has turned into a master/slave relationship and nobody likes being a slave. Protoss currently have nothing but advantages and hopefully blizzard will continue to address them. There is no point in settling for anything less than balance perfection when there is a team of people who get paid to look after the game. Perfection may not be attainable but I am sure we as a community can help the game developers get close, there is no point of throwing in the towel now.
"I used to walk 20 miles to school, both ways up hill and through snow." I'm sure it made you work harder in order to make sure your children did not have to do the same.
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I think the game should be fun to play first and balanced after...
Currently Zerg vs Protoss starts with the Zerg defending 1-2 Adepts, then Oracle (phoenix) then chargelot (archon) while being behind in eco for the first 3:30 - 4:00 minutes of the game and being "forced" to play defensive. All because we lost our offense (early drops).
Now I personally don't think it is imbalanced because Zerg clearly can defend all Protoss aggression. I am just not really a fan of playing the game like that. A race being able to perform strong harrass without giving up too much eco or tech. But it is how the game is designed and I doubt much will change.
That is just one example. To me Starcraft just feels unfun to play at the moment :/ but you can't please everybody.
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Demuslim has some right thoughts though. While the "BW this, BW that" statement is right too, Travis forgot, as Demu pointed out, that Blizzard constantly patches SC2. So when somebody is arising with a new idea or some shit, it's usually when Blizzard says "CHANGE PLACES!!!!!!" and shuffles the game around.
I find it weird that Travis did NOT mention this. But maybe I overlooked it, it was a big wall. I dare to say... Should I say? Trump would love it! 
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Its true to an extent, but i have to somewhat disagree.
In starcraft2, they come out with these balance patches that havent had much playtesting and no mathematical analysis behind it.
Also, the one thing I think can be unfair is how certain matchups have VERY imbalanced number of available builds and playstyles between the races.
ZvT is the biggest example in my honest opinion.
The new BC openings added to the plethora of openings terran can do.
There is now virtually no choices for zerg in the first 6 minutes or more. You mass queen and drones with early third base and defend with as few units as possible, always ling/bane or roaches. If you mass queen, you cant attack, since they took out early ovie drops and nerfed nydus to hell. You cant use mass queen to punish someone playing greedy using air tech units to stay safe versus all rushes zerg can do.
Meanwhile, here are some of the infinite terran openings versus zerg.
1) Proxy 4 rax all-in gasless
2) Proxy 2 racks gas opening
3) mass reaper ( not very popular anymore, but can be deadly since we are out of practice versus it, ask ziggy)
4) classic hellion banshee
5) 2-1-1, not as strong as the other builds, but since it requires completely different answer than other builds, can still be good.
6) battle cruiser hellion rush (2 main version,s the 1 starport one, and the 2 starports one where u get a siege tank for defense and delay the bcs a bit to hit with 2)
7) cyclone/hellion ( not very viable as an opening anymore, but maybe)
8) hellion/liberator
9) widowmine/marine drop
10) stim marine/hellbat timings
11) super fast hellbat rush
12) 2 base marine tank all-in ( great on some maps)
13)...etc..i could go on all day
And we're not even talking about mid game unit composition, where terran has many more viable styles than zerg once again in tvz.. I think every terran unit can be rushed and be a viable tvz openings, thats just crazy.
Meanwhile from the zerg side we have:
1) pool before hatchery run lings around reaper and hope terran does not scout or make a marine after reaper
2) shitty ravager build ( a bit less shitty than before patch, still auto lose versus banshee or siege tank openings or good scouting
3) ling/bane bust ( not very viable as we are mostly always facing hellion openings)
4) mass queen ( pretty much the only build that doesnt auto lose against many builds from terran)
The problem is, terran has so many openings that looks somewhat similar that anything other than mass queens is incredibly risky or all-in. When you go mass queen, you forfeit any chance at being aggressive, letting the opponent do any tech opening he wants while not sacrificing economy himself.
The first 7 minutes of a ZvT, terran has many many opportunities to do game ending damage, at many point in those first minutes. Zerg on the other hand, even with perfect defense does not gain a significant lead, if at all. Zerg is fighting the entire early game to stay even with terran, while terran is fighting to gain a lead.
I feel like for the matchup to be a bit more fair, zerg would need a new hatchery unit ( not the queen) that can attack air, not even be great against air, but at least attack it so that one banshee or one oracle does not completely shut down the rush super cost effectively. This would keep terran a bit more honest, and maybe they would need to make a siege tank or two to be safe while going fast BCS or things like that.
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broodwar pros went back to broodwar for a reason
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On January 16 2019 04:25 Marl wrote:
broodwar pros went back to broodwar for a reason
Because SC2 was too hard
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WCS
