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The statement "some of the members of the balance council have a financial stake in the outcome" may be technically correct, but to suggest that profit is their motive is disrespectful and childish. Like I said -
No, what's childish is to pretend that every member of the balance council is going to behave like a paragon of neutrality.
What exactly do you think is happening? The council is colluding to make one race more powerful than the others so that those players can win and then split the prize money amoung the rest of them? How exactly does this work? It doesn't make any logical sense. If you HONESTLY believe that the main reason members of the council are participating is profit rather than trying to pump life into a dying, orphaned game I believe you are
I don't know what prompted this fabulist strawman, because it's certainly nothing I said.
It would behoove you to recognize the obvious, namely that the balance council is not a monolith, but a collection of individuals. Some may be motivated solely by a desire to improve the game. Others may be participating to promote a more favorable competitive environment for themselves. Still others may unconsciously conflate the former with the latter, because humans are predisposed to view something that benefits them as an unconditional good. None of this should be controversial, and anyone designing a workable balance proposal process needs to take these factors into account.
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I believe I described it as a democratic process -
Democracy, while perhaps the most fair form of decision making, cannot be and has never been considered the most expedient.
If the council were a monolith, I would be concerned. I imagine, considering that they are (for the most part) humans, they will disagree about what is best for the game. The aim of the council, as I understand it, is to discuss these disagreements in committee and attempt to find balanced solutions to bring the game to a more balanced state.
We should not assume the council are a bunch of dunderheads who don't know how democratic process or human brains work, nor should we assume that they are malicious actors with the sole purpose of championing their own pocketbooks. I would even go so far as to say that we should probably assume that the members of the council might be intelligent enough to understand the concerns you bring forward and take them into consideration.
I am not saying that humans are infallable. I am saying that the members of the council are:
1. Attempting to make the game better, not worse
2. Probably acting in good faith to do so
3. Generally intelligent individuals in their own right
4. Acting democratically to come up with solutions
Will their solutions be perfect every time? Of course not. They will probably never be perfect even once, such is the nature of existence outside the realm of Platonic Ideals. But we have a team of people who are clearly invested in trying to make SC2 a better game. Not only do they probably have enough professional ethos to try to make a balanced game anyways, it is also in their best interest to have a game that is balanced and fun to watch (encouraging viewership/playerbase). To suggest otherwise is foolish, jaded or delusional
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On September 09 2023 07:21 Arghmyliver wrote:I believe I described it as a democratic process - Show nested quote +Democracy, while perhaps the most fair form of decision making, cannot be and has never been considered the most expedient. If the council were a monolith, I would be concerned. I imagine, considering that they are (for the most part) humans, they will disagree about what is best for the game. The aim of the council, as I understand it, is to discuss these disagreements in committee and attempt to find balanced solutions to bring the game to a more balanced state. We should not assume the council are a bunch of dunderheads who don't know how democratic process or human brains work, nor should we assume that they are malicious actors with the sole purpose of championing their own pocketbooks. I would even go so far as to say that we should probably assume that the members of the council might be intelligent enough to understand the concerns you bring forward and take them into consideration. I am not saying that humans are infallable. I am saying that the members of the council are: 1. Attempting to make the game better, not worse 2. Probably acting in good faith to do so 3. Generally intelligent individuals in their own right 4. Acting democratically to come up with solutions Will their solutions be perfect every time? Of course not. They will probably never be perfect even once, such is the nature of existence outside the realm of Platonic Ideals. But we have a team of people who are clearly invested in trying to make SC2 a better game. Not only do they probably have enough professional ethos to try to make a balanced game anyways, it is also in their best interest to have a game that is balanced and fun to watch (encouraging viewership/playerbase). To suggest otherwise is
I don't know how many different ways I need to say the same thing. The _point_ is to design the _process_ such that it accounts for individuals that don't act to maximize overall utility, rather than adopt the fantastical notion that everyone is going to play nice. Simply invoking "democracy" doesn't do that.
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You are just talking past me at this point. I'm literally saying democracy isn't perfect and we shouldn't expect it to be. People post as if they have the ideal solution and if the balance council would only listen to them everything would be perfect. We can't expect that and we shouldn't. Any rational individual can come to this conclusion and if we assume, as we should, that the council are mostly rational actors we should assume they can come to this conclusion as well. I actually think it's reasonable to assume that the council will "play nice" with each other and not scream incoherently about how their race is underpowered and everyone else needs to listen to them.
Edit: I also think that it's disrespectful to suggest the council members are secretly trying to come up with ways to make their own race op so they can win more.
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On September 09 2023 08:19 Arghmyliver wrote:
You are just talking past me at this point. I'm literally saying democracy isn't perfect and we shouldn't expect it to be. People post as if they have the ideal solution and if the balance council would only listen to them everything would be perfect. We can't expect that and we shouldn't. Any rational individual can come to this conclusion and if we assume, as we should, that the council are mostly rational actors we should assume they can come to this conclusion as well. I actually think it's reasonable to assume that the council will "play nice" with each other and not scream incoherently about how their race is underpowered and everyone else needs to listen to them.
I'm not interested in debating spherical cow models of human behavior. Feel free to have that conversation with someone else.
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Ah, my apologies, I didn't realize you were an accredited neuroscientist. By all means, feel free to explain to the council why they are wrong and why their brain chemistry is preventing them from coming to a reasonable conclusion.
Edit: Or better yet, devise and describe a method of decision making that is perfectly infallable. The world could certainly use it.
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I personally think the game's balance and gameplay only got worsened since the cabal took over, so that is all that matters. I've seen these guys online and many of them are of course nice people, and could have the best of intentions, but this matters not. The community (which it is important to mention, is not all who watch/play sc2) made an outcry and they followed through with the patch anyways. Again now there is outcry, but they will just keep it going. I dno if it's for youtube content, or to keep ppl engaged by waving carrots on a stick, by doing big patches. But no matter the reason they do act like a secret cabal slowly making the game worse. And we can only speculate.
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On September 09 2023 01:58 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2023 23:26 Drahkn wrote:
Harstem is delusional when it comes to balance in my personal opinion , he spends to much time in the Lambo,Serral
and Reynor bubble of perceived balance. Anyway who can take seriously the balancing of a game when it is balanced by people who stand a chance at making money from tournaments. No other serious organization does this.
You can clearly see it in the patchnotes of the PTR , there is serious pushing for making mech super viable which is not a balancing issue whatsoever that is more design change and is far from top of the main concerns of the game right now and it is still getting major attention.
Viper remains untouched and actually gets a buff another clear cut sign of incompetence in my personal opinion.
This unit is grabbing units with ease that cost 400 minerals and 300 gas and it has still not been addressed, the insanity is actually real, I have been facepalming at this game ever since hots release at the absurdity that is SC2 balance and how easy especially Zerg has had it over all these years.
Another good example of this is the Baneling, is has been nerfed several times now in the later stages of SC2 and it is still way to strong , what will it take for someone to call this out for what it is. Zerg and Terran get special treatment always has if it was intentional or not we will never know.
Now before any of you mods Warn or Temp Ban me , I have only stated my personal opinion on someone's ability to execute something, I have not personally attacked anyone
The reason it's done the way it is, is because Blizzard just doesn't want to put any resources into it. But honestly I don't understand those calls for a professional, external team of balance designers. We used to have this, and that team was responsible for: -leaving Broodlord Infestor untouched for a year -hour long Swarmhost stalemates -Mass Raven turtle -mega buff to infested terrans leading to BL/Infestor 2.0 - again untouched for a year -Voidray buff into 1 year skytoss vs Queenwalk meta I think the status quo is preferable
This pretty much sums up the history of SC2, just forgot to mention to Mothership Core, Widow Mines and Vipers. Two of those three are still plaguing the game.
So now they just let the community decide, as if the community knows what they want. That's like asking people to design pharmaceutical drugs because the industry professionals are bad at it. The results are guaranteed to be bad.
Game design is hard, Blizzard lucked out with Brood War since weird things like putting an Overlord in a group with Mutas helped them. They didn't get as lucky with Browder and Kim messing around with SC2, and it has been downhill since.
As someone who researches and follows game design, the past 10 years we've seen incredible leaps in game design, and companies have been very open about what works and what doesn't. Blizzard ignored all of it, and actually went in the opposite direction. It was incredibly shocking to me.
Just read through this from Riot from 2010... https://lawofgamedesign.com/2014/02/20/zileas-list-of-game-design-anti-fun-patterns/
If only Blizzard read and understood that. But honestly, Dustin Browder and David Kim at no one point showed anymore understanding of game design than I do of designing pharmaceutical drugs, their ideas were random and asinine. The Warhound never should have left a designers head... nor the Mothership Core and Photon Overcharge... just like many of things they ultimately removed from the game. They violated basic principles of modern game design.
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I totally agree with the OP when it comes to solving the protoss issue before "everything" else.
I think one of the main problems with Protoss is the lack of reliability of two important abilities, namely Storm and Nova, respectively of two important units, namely the High Templar and the Disruptor.
In my eyes, the lack of reliability of Storm/Nova is due to the fact that its main effect, i.e. damage, is not immediate and that there are effective ways of countering it, i.e. dodging.
My idea for solving this problem is to reduce the effect of counterplay by making the effect more immediate:
Ideas I have in this regard:
- Make nova explodable by the player whereby the damage increases over time:
For example: As soon as casted it does 30% damage when exploded, after x time it does y% damage and at the end of it's potential lifespan it still explodes automatically but only then does 100% damage.
- Increase initial storm damage but keep the overall damage the same. [Obviously it's a similiar idea as 1.]
Another idea to make the high templar more usable and reliable in general wld be:
- Add an upgrade for High Templar which reduces the time to morph into an archon.
I argue the High Templar is the worst spellcaster in the game when it comes to microing it. It's the slowest spellcaster, it's the weakest spellcaster hp wise (next to the sentry) and it's a ground unit. Because storm is often his more important spell for straight up engagements and storm is not very reliable and it takes so long for it to morph into an archon so the archon is often meat only in a fight it is morphed in...
...the high templar feels to me like a hit or miss unit: storm hits, then it did it job, storm misses it is pretty literally dead meat more often than not. By reducing the morph time thus enabeling the morphed archon to actively participate in fights more often could reduce this feeling and increase the reliability of the High Templar.
Thanks for your time & have a nice day all 
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I agree a lot with your post. Nova is too all or nothing and Storm rarely gets in much damage, strengthening Storm and making Nova more consistent would both be nice.
1. Change storm damage from 10 damage tics of 8 tics total (80 damage) to 0 35 0 25 0 15 0 5 (still 80 total). You can keep the coding that ensures any target affected by storm gets at least 2 tics. The initial damage would go up from 20 to 35 so you get more an impact from storming something but it also increases to power of baiting and dodging storm as well as diving in on an expiring storm
2. Change Nova from going full burst to having a smaller burst and applying a damage over time effect. If the purification nova touches an enemy unit it deals 7 damage every 0.5 second for 2 seconds. The Nova itself would have it's burst damage reduced from 145 to 100. Overall this would be a reduction in damage of 17. Numbers are of course subject to balancing but it's just an idea
As to High Templar being overly weak, yeah that's definitely a thing.
Comparing Ghosts, Infestors, and High Templars
Cost: The one area HTs come out ahead. HTs cost a total (going with gas = 2x minerals), 350 resources while Ghost and Infestor both cost 400
Speed: HTs are a big loser here. At 2.82, they have the same speed as a burrowed Infestor off creep (and this is only after they received a buff, they were even slower before!). On Creep a burrowed Infestor is faster. On or off creep an unburrowed Infestor or Ghost are both faster. Supposedly this is balanced by having an auto-attack to make them easier to control, but I'd rather have their speed improved
Health: HT's have the lowest health total at 80, Infestor and Ghost are both higher at 90 and 100 respectively
Defensive movement: Ghosts cloak and Infestors get burrow move. Both are able to move around obscured from the enemy. HTs actually leave a minor trail behind them while also being the slowest of them all. Now I like the effect so would not suggest removing it, but giving them some kind of defensive movement ability would be nice.
AOE spell special ability: All 3 units have an AOE ability with Ghost and Infestors both getting some additional affects to their abilities. EMP reveals cloaked units and drains energy. Fungal reveals both cloaked and burrowed units in addition to its slow. Storm has no such benefit only dealing damage which is not instant like EMP or guaranteed like Fungal making it less consistent than either other spell. It is worth noting that EMP damage is faction specific and otherwise it's an anti-caster ability so it having some disproportionate damage is somewhat acceptable. The only major thing I'd say from this is to equalize the special benefit and have all 3 spells reveal any obscured unit and consider the fact that storm persists after it is cast it's "special ability"
Single target spell functionality: All 3 have a single target special ability that is good to remove troublesome units. Steady Targeting is great at killing things, though only against biological units (considering it's other spell is faction specific against Protoss, some disproportionate effectiveness is again understandable). Neural instantly removes a troublesome unit and turns it into an ally, though only temporarily. Feedback negates a spellcaster and with the reduction of units with energy in the game it gets progressively less useful as there are less and less troublesome units it can get rid of. Additionally with the damage nerf it doesn't actually kill anything, it just removes it from the field for a bit, factoring in all Zerg units heal and Terran units can be healed or repaired. Snipe kills things and neural leaves units vulnerable to being killed by your army as it can't fight back and will eat damage from its former allies while controlled.
Ghost is the obvious winner here costing the same resources as an Infestor but being faster at base (and only slightly slower than an Infestor on creep), having more health, having auto-attack, and being better at killing/doing damage to the other 2 factions. The one big benefit an Infestor has is that with the Ghost cloak nerf an Infestor can spend a much longer period of time obscured from the enemy and needing detection to find. As to the other two I would argue HTs are the weakest with Infestor in the middle.
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Seems a lot of people agree with my post, the question is now though as the balance council goes radio silent, do they have the humility to backpedal and completely change what they wanted to do or will their egos get in the way?
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Or, they just recognize that different groups of players will bitch and complain no matter what they try to do.
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On September 20 2023 01:59 Whatson wrote:
Or, they just recognize that different groups of players will bitch and complain no matter what they try to do.
That's the completely wrong mindset. You can't just say people are going to complain no matter what because that's not true. There are plenty of things the community agrees on I'll list a few.
-Protoss weak at pro level (needs buff)
-Widow mine does not need unburrow buff
-Cyclone didn't need a rework
-ghost could probably use tweaking
Again I'll reiterate. Priority should be get Protoss in a playable state where they are winning just as much as the Zergs and Terrans and
THEN focus on experimental changes and redesigns.
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On September 20 2023 02:29 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2023 01:59 Whatson wrote:
Or, they just recognize that different groups of players will bitch and complain no matter what they try to do. That's the completely wrong mindset. You can't just say people are going to complain no matter what because that's not true. There are plenty of things the community agrees on I'll list a few. -Protoss weak at pro level (needs buff) -Widow mine does not need unburrow buff -Cyclone didn't need a rework -ghost could probably use tweaking Again I'll reiterate. Priority should be get Protoss in a playable state where they are winning just as much as the Zergs and Terrans and THEN focus on experimental changes and redesigns.
Can we be real for a sec? With the current pro player pool, if you make protoss able to win as much as terran and zerg in top tournaments, you will absolutely destroy the game for everyone else and actually make it imbalanced.
Go look at top GM in both EU and NA, look at the amount of races they play against. You see stuff like 250 protoss, 100 terran, 50 zerg, or similar numbers.
WIth how much better serral and reynor are, if you make the current protoss pros win as much as them, what do you think the ladder numbers are gonna be ? 250 protoss 50 terran 10 zerg?
How is that not going to kill the game?
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On September 20 2023 03:50 Snakestyle1 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2023 02:29 CicadaSC wrote:On September 20 2023 01:59 Whatson wrote:
Or, they just recognize that different groups of players will bitch and complain no matter what they try to do. That's the completely wrong mindset. You can't just say people are going to complain no matter what because that's not true. There are plenty of things the community agrees on I'll list a few. -Protoss weak at pro level (needs buff) -Widow mine does not need unburrow buff -Cyclone didn't need a rework -ghost could probably use tweaking Again I'll reiterate. Priority should be get Protoss in a playable state where they are winning just as much as the Zergs and Terrans and THEN focus on experimental changes and redesigns. Can we be real for a sec? With the current pro player pool, if you make protoss able to win as much as terran and zerg in top tournaments, you will absolutely destroy the game for everyone else and actually make it imbalanced. Go look at top GM in both EU and NA, look at the amount of races they play against. You see stuff like 250 protoss, 100 terran, 50 zerg, or similar numbers. WIth how much better serral and reynor are, if you make the current protoss pros win as much as them, what do you think the ladder numbers are gonna be ? 250 protoss 50 terran 10 zerg? How is that not going to kill the game?
I think so too. The ladder will be fucked. A lot of big dog protoss are retired or in military. Who are the Serral/Maru/Reynor etc of Protoss right now? Hero, Maxpax? Maxpax doesn't even do offline.
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On September 20 2023 04:38 bulldozer06701 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2023 03:50 Snakestyle1 wrote:On September 20 2023 02:29 CicadaSC wrote:On September 20 2023 01:59 Whatson wrote:
Or, they just recognize that different groups of players will bitch and complain no matter what they try to do. That's the completely wrong mindset. You can't just say people are going to complain no matter what because that's not true. There are plenty of things the community agrees on I'll list a few. -Protoss weak at pro level (needs buff) -Widow mine does not need unburrow buff -Cyclone didn't need a rework -ghost could probably use tweaking Again I'll reiterate. Priority should be get Protoss in a playable state where they are winning just as much as the Zergs and Terrans and THEN focus on experimental changes and redesigns. Can we be real for a sec? With the current pro player pool, if you make protoss able to win as much as terran and zerg in top tournaments, you will absolutely destroy the game for everyone else and actually make it imbalanced. Go look at top GM in both EU and NA, look at the amount of races they play against. You see stuff like 250 protoss, 100 terran, 50 zerg, or similar numbers. WIth how much better serral and reynor are, if you make the current protoss pros win as much as them, what do you think the ladder numbers are gonna be ? 250 protoss 50 terran 10 zerg? How is that not going to kill the game? I think so too. The ladder will be fucked. A lot of big dog protoss are retired or in military. Who are the Serral/Maru/Reynor etc of Protoss right now? Hero, Maxpax? Maxpax doesn't even do offline.
I agree with this but still think Protoss needs some sort of buff at the highest level. For this reason, I think all changes should be towards making units more microable but less strong when strictly a-moved.
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On September 20 2023 03:50 Snakestyle1 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2023 02:29 CicadaSC wrote:On September 20 2023 01:59 Whatson wrote:
Or, they just recognize that different groups of players will bitch and complain no matter what they try to do. That's the completely wrong mindset. You can't just say people are going to complain no matter what because that's not true. There are plenty of things the community agrees on I'll list a few. -Protoss weak at pro level (needs buff) -Widow mine does not need unburrow buff -Cyclone didn't need a rework -ghost could probably use tweaking Again I'll reiterate. Priority should be get Protoss in a playable state where they are winning just as much as the Zergs and Terrans and THEN focus on experimental changes and redesigns. Can we be real for a sec? With the current pro player pool, if you make protoss able to win as much as terran and zerg in top tournaments, you will absolutely destroy the game for everyone else and actually make it imbalanced. Go look at top GM in both EU and NA, look at the amount of races they play against. You see stuff like 250 protoss, 100 terran, 50 zerg, or similar numbers. WIth how much better serral and reynor are, if you make the current protoss pros win as much as them, what do you think the ladder numbers are gonna be ? 250 protoss 50 terran 10 zerg? How is that not going to kill the game?
The game is already beyond broken because the intern gave 20 buffs to protoss to accommodate for the player pool. If you search through OP's twitter you can litearlly find a tweet between him and special where he whines that sc2 should be balanced around the playerpool so that ppl like maxhax can have the same tournament winnings as serral.
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On September 20 2023 06:06 THERIDDLER wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2023 03:50 Snakestyle1 wrote:On September 20 2023 02:29 CicadaSC wrote:On September 20 2023 01:59 Whatson wrote:
Or, they just recognize that different groups of players will bitch and complain no matter what they try to do. That's the completely wrong mindset. You can't just say people are going to complain no matter what because that's not true. There are plenty of things the community agrees on I'll list a few. -Protoss weak at pro level (needs buff) -Widow mine does not need unburrow buff -Cyclone didn't need a rework -ghost could probably use tweaking Again I'll reiterate. Priority should be get Protoss in a playable state where they are winning just as much as the Zergs and Terrans and THEN focus on experimental changes and redesigns. Can we be real for a sec? With the current pro player pool, if you make protoss able to win as much as terran and zerg in top tournaments, you will absolutely destroy the game for everyone else and actually make it imbalanced. Go look at top GM in both EU and NA, look at the amount of races they play against. You see stuff like 250 protoss, 100 terran, 50 zerg, or similar numbers. WIth how much better serral and reynor are, if you make the current protoss pros win as much as them, what do you think the ladder numbers are gonna be ? 250 protoss 50 terran 10 zerg? How is that not going to kill the game? The game is already beyond broken because the intern gave 20 buffs to protoss to accommodate for the player pool. If you search through OP's twitter you can litearlly find a tweet between him and special where he whines that sc2 should be balanced around the playerpool so that ppl like maxhax can have the same tournament winnings as serral.
I must have missed those 20 buffs.
In the last patches Protoss got mostly nerfed
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EPT
