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On January 21 2019 18:12 graNite wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2019 02:09 travis wrote:
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! This way of thinking is wrong and hurting the game. When you want a game to be balanced around one or two playstyles and just say "maybe this is how they want us to play" then you are losing diversity, the most important part of the game. Diversity is even more imporatant than balance. Do you want to see a lot of different game with struggeling terrans that at least try something different every game or do you want to see the perfectly balanced game with every race having one strategy? What if building a spawning pool ended the game right away with 50% winrate? The game would be perfectly balanced, you would see the same zerg game every game. Is that what you want? Diversity in gameplay is more important than balance, stop shutting down calls for diversity with close mindedness of "maybe they want us to".
I fail to see how macro every game is any more appealing than proxying every game. At least you don't have to wait 5 minutes for something to happen when someone proxies.
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In 1998 Blizzard introduced deeply asymmetric races to the world of RTS. There were some slight asymmetries tried before that, but nothing like Starcraft. To this day this concept boggles people's minds and produces countless discussions and endless strategy development.
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On January 21 2019 14:38 BronzeKnee wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 20 2019 07:05 NonY wrote:
If you want to talk and think about balance, you have to consider two things:
(1) How this behavior/mindset/perspective affects your experience with the game
I think the issue can be thought of from the opposite perspective too, how the game affects your behavior and makes you feel. Balance is inextricably linked to game design. Poorly balanced interactions cause frustration, but they are often rooted in poor game design in Starcraft 2, and instead of just simply tweaking some unit stats to achieve balance, the game often requires wholesale changes because instead of following modern game design tenets, Browder and Kim choose to buck them. And thus a lack of counterplay is often the issue in Starcraft 2, and counterplay is such an important game design tenet in modern game design. League of Legends is built around it. Let's think about the 1-1-1 in WOL PvT for a moment. There was a lack of counterplay opportunities for Protoss, so the build dominated for a long stretch of time. In fact, Photon Overcharge had 13 range initially in HOTS to counter Siege Tanks. The lack of counterplay led to a situation where the strategy was considered imbalanced, and thus people got frustrated. I think it is important that people voice their frustration with things that are imbalanced because we have a shared experience with this game. No one is special, we all feel similar things in similar situations. And when enough people raise their voice, the chances of something changing increases. Ignoring that and basing design decisions purely on data is foolish, because frustration from imbalances is almost always a shared experience. And often, a win rate or whatever can be 50/50, but there are poorly design game mechanics cause players frustration that, if not addressed, can lead to the player base dwindling. I also take offense to the idea that it is a vice to indulge in analyzing balance. Yes, the game will likely always imbalanced and we can't directly control it, but the discussions can be informative and instructive, where people learn. And we aren't achieving anything more or less with our life playing than we are analyzing the game, provided we find the analysis enjoyable as I do and learn from it. Of course, some people can be very toxic too and they have to be ignored, just some people can also be toxic while playing the game and have to be ignored... and it doesn't damn the game, why should it damn balance discussions? There will always be bad apples who rage. The fact is, some people can discuss balance without getting toxic, and it isn't a negative environment for them. I can separate my feelings on balance from the times I play the game, and thrive on challenges (I enjoyed trying to defeat the 1-1-1 as a Protoss player). But I also see myself as a victim of nothing, I am always a survivor. So if this isn't a good environment for you, leave. But don't tell me it is a bad environment for me because you can't participate in it without negative feelings.
spoilered, since it's a bit reflective/meandering..
+ Show Spoiler +I used to enjoy engaging in the balance and design discussion threads a lot. I feel like it taught me a lot about game design. SC2 was more interesting in that respect than BW, because BW just happened and was something of a miracle, whereas SC2 is a very painstaking effort which has been patched a million times with a lot of community participation. And even if I prefer BW as a game I find SC2 more interesting as a failure, in contrast with BW, than BW as a success, on its own. It's like the Tolstoy quote about unhappy families. But those threads were often very toxic too, they required a lot of moderation, but eventually scared orf outsiders because of the opaqueness of the discussion, since the same 20 people were active in all the threads. I kinda feel like the psychology of a normal person is not suited to abstract discussion. I thought it was fair for TL to contain all the design and balance discussion to one thread + blogs, much like how political discussion is contained to a handful of threads.
But I also thought that from my personal perspective balance discussion on TL could be unsatisfying, since I would often come up with interpretations or ideas that I had difficulty fleshing out, so I would post my thought process about them, but then it's difficult to get constructive responses since people can't see into your mind. I think for the most part, even in well moderated threads, balance discussion attracts polemics. It's not really the vaguely academic research program that I envisioned as ideal. But to me the most interesting posts were always by Lalush, Day9, TheDwf, Hider, decembers..calm(?) about game mechanics and such.
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On January 21 2019 18:12 graNite wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2019 02:09 travis wrote:
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! This way of thinking is wrong and hurting the game. When you want a game to be balanced around one or two playstyles and just say "maybe this is how they want us to play" then you are losing diversity, the most important part of the game. Diversity is even more imporatant than balance. Do you want to see a lot of different game with struggeling terrans that at least try something different every game or do you want to see the perfectly balanced game with every race having one strategy? What if building a spawning pool ended the game right away with 50% winrate? The game would be perfectly balanced, you would see the same zerg game every game. Is that what you want? Diversity in gameplay is more important than balance, stop shutting down calls for diversity with close mindedness of "maybe they want us to".
Diversity is good and should exist, but even when matchups have been at their most diverse, there has been a standard way to play them. There always exists some underlying dynamic which is how we all understand the matchup is "supposed to go" if both players play "normally".
So the point is that this issue isn't against diversity. Everyone wants diversity. The argument is about what types of builds and styles are reasonable to accept as the standard way to play -- the underlying dynamic of the matchup.
Over the years, there have been groups of people who expect and then demand that a matchup consist of certain things. When a patch changes the viability of those things and throws those players into a different dynamic for that matchup, they get upset. But it'd be better if these players didn't have attitudes that resulted in them getting upset over this.
If the way they like playing PvZ is safely getting to 3-4 bases, defending the whole time while building up a death ball, they hate when the script gets flipped and it's now zerg who has the superior late game army, and it's protoss who is obligated to pressure, harass, do timing attacks, all-ins, etc, to prevent the zerg from getting to late game. So they say it's imbalanced because the only thing they know how to do is now bad and they are unwilling to start the project of learning how to do everything else.
So I actually think you're on the same side. The people who demand consistency are enemies of diversity. If terrans have been going fast expand against protoss for years and now they have to do 1base tech builds before they can expand, they get upset, call it imbalance, etc. They feel entitled to play the way they've been playing.
When they're forced to diversify, they are the ultimate pessimists and say there is no good solution and the game is imbalanced.
Diversity is good but you have to be careful about the people who are demanding that a certain way of playing be made viable when their motivation is based on their personal preference. They are not asking in the name of diversity, though they might be claiming so because it benefits their argument. The truth is that if their preferred way to play was the only way to play, they'd be happy.
People should work on several different styles and builds. They should figure out what works slightly better on each map. If by the middle of the season, they realize that their least favorite way to play is also having the most success, that's a bit unlucky. They have a tough choice to make between committing to that for the rest of the season to maximize MMR, or continuing to work on things that have been less successful but they enjoy more. It could be that if they work on those things more, they end up being great by the end of the season. It could be they never come around. Whatever the player decides to do, there should never be a point where they say "I must speak out to try to get Blizzard to buff my favorite strategy so that I can have it all". There is fun to be had in pursuing MMR and there's fun to be had in tinkering with unpopular strategies. Just pick one or do a bit of both and play the game. Don't think about trying to have the rules of the game changed to suit you.
edit: To be clear, having several styles be viable is ideal. And actually that's very common to see in every tournament. But it's inevitable that one style will prevail over others and that a very base-level dynamic for the matchup will emerge as the standard. People need to be able to go with the flow with respect to how that base-level dynamic can change. To a certain extent, you "have" to do certain things in each matchup. People need to be okay with those obligations changing and enjoy diversity where it exists in the current patch and meta.
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On January 22 2019 00:09 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2019 14:38 BronzeKnee wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 20 2019 07:05 NonY wrote:
If you want to talk and think about balance, you have to consider two things:
(1) How this behavior/mindset/perspective affects your experience with the game
I think the issue can be thought of from the opposite perspective too, how the game affects your behavior and makes you feel. Balance is inextricably linked to game design. Poorly balanced interactions cause frustration, but they are often rooted in poor game design in Starcraft 2, and instead of just simply tweaking some unit stats to achieve balance, the game often requires wholesale changes because instead of following modern game design tenets, Browder and Kim choose to buck them. And thus a lack of counterplay is often the issue in Starcraft 2, and counterplay is such an important game design tenet in modern game design. League of Legends is built around it. Let's think about the 1-1-1 in WOL PvT for a moment. There was a lack of counterplay opportunities for Protoss, so the build dominated for a long stretch of time. In fact, Photon Overcharge had 13 range initially in HOTS to counter Siege Tanks. The lack of counterplay led to a situation where the strategy was considered imbalanced, and thus people got frustrated. I think it is important that people voice their frustration with things that are imbalanced because we have a shared experience with this game. No one is special, we all feel similar things in similar situations. And when enough people raise their voice, the chances of something changing increases. Ignoring that and basing design decisions purely on data is foolish, because frustration from imbalances is almost always a shared experience. And often, a win rate or whatever can be 50/50, but there are poorly design game mechanics cause players frustration that, if not addressed, can lead to the player base dwindling. I also take offense to the idea that it is a vice to indulge in analyzing balance. Yes, the game will likely always imbalanced and we can't directly control it, but the discussions can be informative and instructive, where people learn. And we aren't achieving anything more or less with our life playing than we are analyzing the game, provided we find the analysis enjoyable as I do and learn from it. Of course, some people can be very toxic too and they have to be ignored, just some people can also be toxic while playing the game and have to be ignored... and it doesn't damn the game, why should it damn balance discussions? There will always be bad apples who rage. The fact is, some people can discuss balance without getting toxic, and it isn't a negative environment for them. I can separate my feelings on balance from the times I play the game, and thrive on challenges (I enjoyed trying to defeat the 1-1-1 as a Protoss player). But I also see myself as a victim of nothing, I am always a survivor. So if this isn't a good environment for you, leave. But don't tell me it is a bad environment for me because you can't participate in it without negative feelings. spoilered, since it's a bit reflective/meandering.. + Show Spoiler +I used to enjoy engaging in the balance and design discussion threads a lot. I feel like it taught me a lot about game design. SC2 was more interesting in that respect than BW, because BW just happened and was something of a miracle, whereas SC2 is a very painstaking effort which has been patched a million times with a lot of community participation. And even if I prefer BW as a game I find SC2 more interesting as a failure, in contrast with BW, than BW as a success, on its own. It's like the Tolstoy quote about unhappy families. But those threads were often very toxic too, they required a lot of moderation, but eventually scared of outsiders because of the opaqueness of the discussion, since the same 20 people were active in all the threads. I kinda feel like the psychology of a normal person is not suited to abstract discussion. I thought it was fair for TL to contain all the design and balance discussion to one thread + blogs, much like how political discussion is contained to a handful of threads.
But I also thought that from my personal perspective balance discussion on TL could be unsatisfying, since I would often come up with interpretations or ideas that I had difficulty fleshing out, so I would post my thought process about them, but then it's difficult to get constructive responses since people can't see into your mind. I think for the most part, even in well moderated threads, balance discussion attracts polemics. It's not really the vaguely academic research program that I envisioned as ideal. But to me the most interesting posts were always by Lalush, Day9, TheDwf, Hider, decembers..calm(?) about game mechanics and such.
TL has done an amazing job with moderation, and I think the analogy to political discussions, while imperfect, is a good one.
People get heated about certain topics. A lot of people can't handle them. And most of it comes back to the fact that most people can't control their emotions. It's why they rage in game, and then these kind of discussions devolve into personal attacks.
It's hard to learn self control, it's hard to be educated, it's hard to be knowledgeable. It's harder than playing Starcraft. Most people will never be able to do it, because you have to admit when you are wrong and learn. It takes courage.
But when we let people that aren't educated, knowledgeable or have self control take over, then ignorant and rash decisions get made. And if we decide these discussions aren't worth having because they are hard, then we stop learning and we stop improving, both in politics and game design.
Don't cater to those who can't control themselves. Accept them for who they are, and ignore them. And I don't do that because I am hateful, I do that because it is the only way to advance the discourse.
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Excellent post by Nony. Hits the nail right on the head. Couldn't have written it better myself.
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On January 16 2019 02:26 InfCereal wrote:
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.
Complaining in the last year has been the best way to get changes that you want into the game.
I am guilty of it too because it works and I fucking know it.
I actually love this recent balance announcement not because it slightly buffs protoss in some ways, but because it is not what the community was whining for.
I have a feeling the balance team is too whimpy to go through with the changes however after people whined.
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EPT
