On April 09 2019 07:23 Shuffleblade wrote: This racial distribution does point to there being a real balance problem at the highest level.
You mean a balance problem at the second highest level
The balance problem at the highest level (which only one person is playing at) is that T is over powered.
The balance problem at the second highest level (all the pros who aren’t Maru) is that T is underpowered.
It kinda feels like Terran right now is Fox from back in the first golden age of melee. You see glimpses of brokenness, but in the hands of every actually player he’s just too hard to use and so he’s functionaly underpowered and gets beaten by the Marths and Shieks of the world. As time passes and player level goes up, that will change.
You realize Melee is a game that wasn't patched times and times again whereas we are dealing with a game that is patched regularly?
And that it's normal in fighting games with 15+ characters to have tiers, whereas in a 3races RTS You wanna have as much balance as you can?
On April 09 2019 23:35 Elentos wrote: Quoting myself from the qualifier thread:
PvT winrate on the current ladder map pool (which will probably go into the Super Tournament unchanged) as per Liquipedia:
Cyber Forest - 104-58, 64.4% Automaton - 140-100, 58.3% Year Zero - 50-38, 56.8% Port Aleksander - 179-150, 54.4% Yeonsu - 229-192, 54.4% Kairos Junction - 211-195, 52.0% King's Cove - 67-79, 46.9% New Repugnancy - 45-53, 45.9%
Added Yeonsu as reference for a map that was considered genuinely broken (not just in 1 match-up either). If we're really gonna advocate for changes, this should be the first thing we look into as a short term measure.
Looking at maps is interesting but I think the most important question we need to ask ourselves is why is kings cove and new repugnancy terran favored?
New Repugnancy because the Terran pushes and timings are stronger there than on any other map. King's Cove I think is merely a matter of sample size. This isn't included in the stats above (since they're pulled from Liquipedia), but it was the 3rd map in every match in the Super Tournament qualifiers, where it was played 8 times in PvT and Protoss won 7 of those times.
And really the only reason I did look at this was a short term idea. In the long term, design (and balance) adjustments will have to be made that improve the TvP/PvT match-up as a whole without aversely affecting PvZ. But changing the maps first while you think of good "real" changes to do seems like the safe way to go about things.
On April 09 2019 07:23 Shuffleblade wrote: This racial distribution does point to there being a real balance problem at the highest level.
You mean a balance problem at the second highest level
The balance problem at the highest level (which only one person is playing at) is that T is over powered.
The balance problem at the second highest level (all the pros who aren’t Maru) is that T is underpowered.
It kinda feels like Terran right now is Fox from back in the first golden age of melee. You see glimpses of brokenness, but in the hands of every actually player he’s just too hard to use and so he’s functionaly underpowered and gets beaten by the Marths and Shieks of the world. As time passes and player level goes up, that will change.
I disagree with this. Maru is not an allmighty god and all other Terrans are not scrubs. This is solely about playstyle. You need specific skills to play like Maru does, and other T seem to lack that. But should we really force everyone to try to adapt to a particular playstyle? The beauty of the game is that each one likes to play it a bit differently. We have TY who is clearly a level above everyone else in multitasking, then we have Gumi who is really good at strategy and mech play (but lacks the top level mechanical capabilities in execution), Inno who is the best defensive macro player and Maru is the best offensive macro player with arguably best mechanics in the world.
So the only way to beat protoss right now seems to be to play like Maru. But what is you dont have the skills to copy his style effectively? How do you learn that? I dont like that and I think the game should be decently playable and balanced with different style of play.
Also on the other note, its the T that are relying on weird wonky strats, cheese and aggressive pushes to win. So if it will get better, that will be only for Protoss players, who can adjust and learn to defend this. But we'll see I suppose...
It's too bad that Terran did so poorly in the GSL Super Tournament qualifiers. It seems that Terran is pigeon holed into a certain playing style (ie. 2 base all in) and if Terran tries any other play style, they just can't seem to win with it. Hopefully, Blizzard has further changes down the road.
- If terran doesn't create an economic advatange VERY early on he's behind, if he doesn't go for a strategy capable of doing that damage, instead opting for a more economically focused opener there is very little that they can do to do a risky tech boost (think broods / multiple AoE toss) that will actually give them an army capable of attacking and winning if they hold their oponents agression. This always leads to proxies, all-in eco damage and timings being the best strategy, notice how maru is playing lategame on maps where he knows there is no way to kill his oponent because they are huge (year zero, king's cove) and goes for timings on pretty much every other map. This is terrible design for playing without weeks of preparation to find your oponents weaknesses and bad habbits.
Why does this happen?
- You can't out greed zerg because of their worker production mechanics. - You can't out greed protoss because of their map control and agressive capabilities when terran is trying to secure 3rd and 4th.
Your high gas units are not very asymmetric towards any other units right as they leave the factory or starport, instead requiring a heavy upgrade investment in +vehicle and/or +air weapons and in some cases like hellbats a tech lab on a 2nd factory. The power of 8 to 10 +3 tanks is ridiculous, but we never get to see it, +2 libs demolish everything on the ground but you need like 8 of them to not get picked off as they siege should you ever be caught in the open or by a flank once sieged, thor single target scales insanely well with upgrades... you get the picture.
Imho, the best change that terran could have would be to make vehicle weapons universal to air, and leave the armor separate so terran compositions can be a bit more flexible as the game evolves, leaving the necessary infrastructure as the limiting factor, not the upgrades. Without the early game mechanics or base acquisition speed being affected too much.
On April 10 2019 00:31 Doko wrote: For me the biggest issue is always:
- If terran doesn't create an economic advatange VERY early on he's behind, if he doesn't go for a strategy capable of doing that damage, instead opting for a more economically focused opener there is very little that they can do to do a risky tech boost (think broods / multiple AoE toss) that will actually give them an army capable of attacking and winning if they hold their oponents agression. This always leads to proxies, all-in eco damage and timings being the best strategy, notice how maru is playing lategame on maps where he knows there is no way to kill his oponent because they are huge (year zero, king's cove) and goes for timings on pretty much every other map. This is terrible design for playing without weeks of preparation to find your oponents weaknesses and bad habbits.
Why does this happen?
- You can't out greed zerg because of their worker production mechanics. - You can't out greed protoss because of their map control and agressive capabilities when terran is trying to secure 3rd and 4th.
Your high gas units are not very asymmetric towards any other units right as they leave the factory or starport, instead requiring a heavy upgrade investment in +vehicle and/or +air weapons and in some cases like hellbats a tech lab on a 2nd factory. The power of 8 to 10 +3 tanks is ridiculous, but we never get to see it, +2 libs demolish everything on the ground but you need like 8 of them to not get picked off as they siege should you ever be caught in the open or by a flank once sieged, thor single target scales insanely well with upgrades... you get the picture.
Imho, the best change that terran could have would be to make vehicle weapons universal to air, and leave the armor separate so terran compositions can be a bit more flexible as the game evolves, leaving the necessary infrastructure as the limiting factor, not the upgrades. Without the early game mechanics or base acquisition speed being affected too much.
I wouldn't mind that being at least, tried.
Perhaps it's not the best possible change necessarily, but it does seem a very good candidate to give Terran some more compositional flexibility by tweaking something that as you say, kicks in far too late to be abused in any kind of weird all-in kind of build. Cyclones being an example of the opposite, have perpetually bounced between changes as tweaks end up making them too potent in proxy builds, so they get pulled back a bit, then Terran have fewer options.
On April 09 2019 07:23 Shuffleblade wrote: This racial distribution does point to there being a real balance problem at the highest level.
You mean a balance problem at the second highest level
The balance problem at the highest level (which only one person is playing at) is that T is over powered.
The balance problem at the second highest level (all the pros who aren’t Maru) is that T is underpowered.
It kinda feels like Terran right now is Fox from back in the first golden age of melee. You see glimpses of brokenness, but in the hands of every actually player he’s just too hard to use and so he’s functionaly underpowered and gets beaten by the Marths and Shieks of the world. As time passes and player level goes up, that will change.
I disagree with this. Maru is not an allmighty god and all other Terrans are not scrubs. This is solely about playstyle. You need specific skills to play like Maru does, and other T seem to lack that. But should we really force everyone to try to adapt to a particular playstyle? The beauty of the game is that each one likes to play it a bit differently. We have TY who is clearly a level above everyone else in multitasking, then we have Gumi who is really good at strategy and mech play (but lacks the top level mechanical capabilities in execution), Inno who is the best defensive macro player and Maru is the best offensive macro player with arguably best mechanics in the world.
So the only way to beat protoss right now seems to be to play like Maru. But what is you dont have the skills to copy his style effectively? How do you learn that? I dont like that and I think the game should be decently playable and balanced with different style of play.
Also on the other note, its the T that are relying on weird wonky strats, cheese and aggressive pushes to win. So if it will get better, that will be only for Protoss players, who can adjust and learn to defend this. But we'll see I suppose...
While I agree with you on the fact that a change is needed I disagree in other areas. Maru is a god, he doesn't really have a "unique" style that other terrans doesn't play. He is just so damn good at macro and micro that he gets more value with the same builds as other terran players uses.
Seeing Maru micro diverse armies with for example bio, liberators, raven and ghosts blows my mind. The actual army control he has done at times in very intense moments blows my mind that it is even possible. Yeah I'm a fanboy but I really don't think its about playstyle, Maru is just playing better period. The times Maru bombs out it tends to be more because of stupid BO or decisionmaking mistake than pure execution. I don't think its about other terran players being scrubs and needing to get better though I feel there are few terran players that can ever reach Marus level, its not a fluke Maru and TY are the best ones (and Inno ofc) look at the age at when they started playing starcraft and how long they have played.
due to balance or not, i dont really care, but a tournament with only 2 terrans is less interesting to watch so this is really unfortunate as a spectator.
I think a lot of the whining and frustration comes from viewers. As a Terran player it does kind of take the hype out of an event like this where there are going to be so few Terran games being played, same as Katowice turned into.
I've never been a fan of every tournament being scrutinized for perfect racial distribution but when you see something like this trending across multiple events it does start to become worrying. We can wait and let the meta settle some more, but I think it is a tough situation because this is how these players make money so it is important to not let imbalance sit for too long.
I honestly think the game is impossible to balance. The issue is that even with Maru - who has gotten literally as close as humanly possible - to perfect Terran play - we haven't seen the skill ceiling for Terran. Not to say we have "literally" seen the ceiling hit @ the other races but the margin of how far away Terran is comparatively is the issue. Life/Rogue/Serral even Dark has shown consistent play near the ceiling as Zerg - Rain/Zest/Sos/Stats as Toss - but literally only Maru and for a short time Byun maybe has gotten anywhere near the ceiling. As long as players like Maru exist - you can't really mess with the balance too much otherwise at the pro level he'll never lose? I still do think he'll get figured out by Protoss again this year and probably a lot faster - and then we'll see another round of buff/nerfs - but until then you really can't even ask for it.
One thing I noticed with Maru in his recent play is he opens 1/1/1 literally every game with some kind of port/fac aggro - seems like DT tech would be good vs that? Haven't seen it used in openings too much vs him yet. Last year the proxy thing took Sos like 6 months to figure out - once he did though it was hilariously bad. It's only when literally no amount of extra multi/micro/strategy can get him the win vs a certain Toss style that we're going to see another change imo. It's tough for casual Terran players because you just literally won't ever be that good - so it feels like you are playing better / doing more / than your opponent and you still lose - but Maru is doing that at an inhuman level and showing some wins with it. My solution was to stop playing Terran after almost 8 years and peaking out around 5.6K - Zerg is fun and hard for a whole different host of reasons - but being a mechanical god is not one of them. I can also imagine conversely at the pro level it's probably very frustrating for Zerg and Protoss players facing a guy like him - thinking no amount of things I can do better will help me win lol.
On April 09 2019 22:57 deacon.frost wrote: If GSL is the only tournament that counts Zerg needs help Protoss is doing fine then
This is the conclusion that logic has driven us to, it must therefore be correct .
By the way, why is everyone talking about Maru as a unique exception? Maru didn't qualify for this tournament, he was seeded. Gumiho's the one you need to play like. But really, as pointed out in that earlier joke, non-Maru terrans performed fine in GSL, where Maru is excelling, and Maru has not been doing better in weekenders than other Terrans. His performance isn't contradicting the greater Terran trend.
On April 09 2019 07:23 Shuffleblade wrote: This racial distribution does point to there being a real balance problem at the highest level.
You mean a balance problem at the second highest level
The balance problem at the highest level (which only one person is playing at) is that T is over powered.
The balance problem at the second highest level (all the pros who aren’t Maru) is that T is underpowered.
It kinda feels like Terran right now is Fox from back in the first golden age of melee. You see glimpses of brokenness, but in the hands of every actually player he’s just too hard to use and so he’s functionaly underpowered and gets beaten by the Marths and Shieks of the world. As time passes and player level goes up, that will change.
I disagree with this. Maru is not an allmighty god and all other Terrans are not scrubs. This is solely about playstyle. You need specific skills to play like Maru does, and other T seem to lack that. But should we really force everyone to try to adapt to a particular playstyle? The beauty of the game is that each one likes to play it a bit differently. We have TY who is clearly a level above everyone else in multitasking, then we have Gumi who is really good at strategy and mech play (but lacks the top level mechanical capabilities in execution), Inno who is the best defensive macro player and Maru is the best offensive macro player with arguably best mechanics in the world.
So the only way to beat protoss right now seems to be to play like Maru. But what is you dont have the skills to copy his style effectively? How do you learn that? I dont like that and I think the game should be decently playable and balanced with different style of play.
Also on the other note, its the T that are relying on weird wonky strats, cheese and aggressive pushes to win. So if it will get better, that will be only for Protoss players, who can adjust and learn to defend this. But we'll see I suppose...
While I agree with you on the fact that a change is needed I disagree in other areas. Maru is a god, he doesn't really have a "unique" style that other terrans doesn't play. He is just so damn good at macro and micro that he gets more value with the same builds as other terran players uses.
Seeing Maru micro diverse armies with for example bio, liberators, raven and ghosts blows my mind. The actual army control he has done at times in very intense moments blows my mind that it is even possible. Yeah I'm a fanboy but I really don't think its about playstyle, Maru is just playing better period. The times Maru bombs out it tends to be more because of stupid BO or decisionmaking mistake than pure execution. I don't think its about other terran players being scrubs and needing to get better though I feel there are few terran players that can ever reach Marus level, its not a fluke Maru and TY are the best ones (and Inno ofc) look at the age at when they started playing starcraft and how long they have played.
I don’t think it’s mechanical, it’s decision-making just on a minute, too fast to consciously process level.
If you’ve been playing (roughly) the same style for years and years, you end up just innately knowing all the little calculations, ranges ‘can x amount of units snipe this and retreat back if I go for it?’ and all of that kind of thing.
Maru seems better at this vP, you can watch an Inno game or a Ty game and it’s basically indistinguishable, but Maru is making those decisions correctly all the time in a way that ultimately adds up to bigger advantages over the length of a game.
Ty is really bloody good at controlling lategame armies because he’s been consistently doing it for quite a while. Inno is Inno of course.
It’s a shame that TvT is barely even that pertinent a factor anymore either, with its different engagements and demands than vZ or vP, which themselves differ in those respects as well.
On April 10 2019 03:19 DomeGetta wrote: I honestly think the game is impossible to balance. The issue is that even with Maru - who has gotten literally as close as humanly possible - to perfect Terran play - we haven't seen the skill ceiling for Terran. Not to say we have "literally" seen the ceiling hit @ the other races but the margin of how far away Terran is comparatively is the issue. Life/Rogue/Serral even Dark has shown consistent play near the ceiling as Zerg - Rain/Zest/Sos/Stats as Toss - but literally only Maru and for a short time Byun maybe has gotten anywhere near the ceiling. As long as players like Maru exist - you can't really mess with the balance too much otherwise at the pro level he'll never lose? I still do think he'll get figured out by Protoss again this year and probably a lot faster - and then we'll see another round of buff/nerfs - but until then you really can't even ask for it.
One thing I noticed with Maru in his recent play is he opens 1/1/1 literally every game with some kind of port/fac aggro - seems like DT tech would be good vs that? Haven't seen it used in openings too much vs him yet. Last year the proxy thing took Sos like 6 months to figure out - once he did though it was hilariously bad. It's only when literally no amount of extra multi/micro/strategy can get him the win vs a certain Toss style that we're going to see another change imo. It's tough for casual Terran players because you just literally won't ever be that good - so it feels like you are playing better / doing more / than your opponent and you still lose - but Maru is doing that at an inhuman level and showing some wins with it. My solution was to stop playing Terran after almost 8 years and peaking out around 5.6K - Zerg is fun and hard for a whole different host of reasons - but being a mechanical god is not one of them. I can also imagine conversely at the pro level it's probably very frustrating for Zerg and Protoss players facing a guy like him - thinking no amount of things I can do better will help me win lol.
On April 10 2019 03:19 DomeGetta wrote: I honestly think the game is impossible to balance. The issue is that even with Maru - who has gotten literally as close as humanly possible - to perfect Terran play - we haven't seen the skill ceiling for Terran. Not to say we have "literally" seen the ceiling hit @ the other races but the margin of how far away Terran is comparatively is the issue. Life/Rogue/Serral even Dark has shown consistent play near the ceiling as Zerg - Rain/Zest/Sos/Stats as Toss - but literally only Maru and for a short time Byun maybe has gotten anywhere near the ceiling. As long as players like Maru exist - you can't really mess with the balance too much otherwise at the pro level he'll never lose? I still do think he'll get figured out by Protoss again this year and probably a lot faster - and then we'll see another round of buff/nerfs - but until then you really can't even ask for it.
One thing I noticed with Maru in his recent play is he opens 1/1/1 literally every game with some kind of port/fac aggro - seems like DT tech would be good vs that? Haven't seen it used in openings too much vs him yet. Last year the proxy thing took Sos like 6 months to figure out - once he did though it was hilariously bad. It's only when literally no amount of extra multi/micro/strategy can get him the win vs a certain Toss style that we're going to see another change imo. It's tough for casual Terran players because you just literally won't ever be that good - so it feels like you are playing better / doing more / than your opponent and you still lose - but Maru is doing that at an inhuman level and showing some wins with it. My solution was to stop playing Terran after almost 8 years and peaking out around 5.6K - Zerg is fun and hard for a whole different host of reasons - but being a mechanical god is not one of them. I can also imagine conversely at the pro level it's probably very frustrating for Zerg and Protoss players facing a guy like him - thinking no amount of things I can do better will help me win lol.
Maru gets a raven almost every game tho.
Eventually yeah but last few series I've watched he's going hard on the 1-1-1 aggro stuff till waay after you can have DTs - he doesn't even have an Ebay on time normally - He must just be confident in his scouting
And tangentially on balance, Terran has lost more of its top players and not really had replacements step up. They’ve been hit doubly here, they’ve lost more players of that clas than the other races, and they’ve had less either burst through from nowhere, or gradually improve to the very, very top of the game.
Mvp and Taeja to wrists, although the former would have had military service to factor in even without that. Byun to military service, Flash departed when he was on a consistent upward curve. It’s hypothetical land of course, it assumes not just maintaining skill but improving with everyone else, but if you had some of those guys fit and motivated and still in the scene does the Terran landscape look as bad?
As per what GSL tiers I think exist and how I kind of rank players. Players may slightly deviate, plus bracket luck but generally.
Qualifiers - Still obviously very bloody good players, good enough to make it into the main tournament out of qualifying, an achievement in itself. Generally then get dumped out there in the Ro32
Ro8ers - A step above the qualifiers, can be relied upon to generally get out of groups and beyond, maybe Ro4 with a miracle run or bracket luck but they generally fall short once they face one of the next tier in longer series.
Championship contenders - They won’t necessarily do it, they might be slumping or have a bad day, but players that are just that little better. They’ll be consistently there, or thereabouts and while they may not be favoured in every particular match necessarily, they’re all the players when you look at the field and mentally tick off who could win it.
When I consider each race’s players in this crude fashion, there really aren’t that many egregious upsets all that frequently. The very best Protoss players consistently outperform those below them, likewise the Zergs, likewise the Terrans only there are fewer of them at the very top of their race.
This isn’t to say there aren’t also issues balance wise either necessarily.
On April 10 2019 07:27 Wombat_NI wrote: And tangentially on balance, Terran has lost more of its top players and not really had replacements step up. They’ve been hit doubly here, they’ve lost more players of that clas than the other races, and they’ve had less either burst through from nowhere, or gradually improve to the very, very top of the game.
Mvp and Taeja to wrists, although the former would have had military service to factor in even without that. Byun to military service, Flash departed when he was on a consistent upward curve. It’s hypothetical land of course, it assumes not just maintaining skill but improving with everyone else, but if you had some of those guys fit and motivated and still in the scene does the Terran landscape look as bad?
As per what GSL tiers I think exist and how I kind of rank players. Players may slightly deviate, plus bracket luck but generally.
Qualifiers - Still obviously very bloody good players, good enough to make it into the main tournament out of qualifying, an achievement in itself. Generally then get dumped out there in the Ro32
Ro8ers - A step above the qualifiers, can be relied upon to generally get out of groups and beyond, maybe Ro4 with a miracle run or bracket luck but they generally fall short once they face one of the next tier in longer series.
Championship contenders - They won’t necessarily do it, they might be slumping or have a bad day, but players that are just that little better. They’ll be consistently there, or thereabouts and while they may not be favoured in every particular match necessarily, they’re all the players when you look at the field and mentally tick off who could win it.
When I consider each race’s players in this crude fashion, there really aren’t that many egregious upsets all that frequently. The very best Protoss players consistently outperform those below them, likewise the Zergs, likewise the Terrans only there are fewer of them at the very top of their race.
This isn’t to say there aren’t also issues balance wise either necessarily.
This is something to note. Protoss have lost MC, Rain, PartinG (till he came back) and maybe LiquidHerO with the likes of Stats stepping up while Zest, Classic, sOs etc. have remained.
I struggle to think of too many Zergs that have left besides Life of course and DongRaeGu with Rogue, Dark and Serral stepping up while soO has remained.
Meanwhile Terran has lost MVP, Taeja, Polt, Byun, Flash, MMA, Marineking, Bomber with no one really stepping up too replace them. That's a lot of players to lose with no replacement.
That's a huge amount of championship contenders that have been lost for terran
I see a heated debate about T vP and Maru's performance.
From my experience, T v P is not balanced since 2018 regardless of Maru's success and the noise that it creates when analyzing the scene. He is an outlier but it is also true that 2 out of his 3 GSLS were against two mentally broken down Protoss (Zest and Stats played horrible those days). However, I value his wins against Dark (WESG) and TY (GSL), since his contenders did not lose their minds. Both finals were spectacular and ended up 4-3.
Having said this, with independence of Maru, to fix T v P, one option is to think about ''epic balanced matches'' and look at the state of the game at that time. For example, the IEM 2017 T v P finals of TY vs Stats, was won strategically, by mind games and slightly better decision making. But that was a very well played and balanced finals: two players of the same level, same team, that know perfectly each other. I enjoyed a lot watching the other day that series and it made me think that some changes like bringing back the old widow mines could help to balance the thing. It will not involve changes in Z or P and therefore will not affect the existing situation in Z v P.
I guess this is better than undertaking a radical change in the race as some people suggested in this thread.
EPT
Protoss is doing fine then 
