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On September 10 2023 08:24 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2023 01:58 Charoisaur wrote: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.
Curious, what of modern game design would you suggest Blizzard use for sc2? Riot's theory on anti-fun is all well and good, but it's hardly robust and hardly a dominant theory - even Riot has strayed away from it over the years; 'anti-fun' often just turns in to 'not-fun'.
Notable growth in game dev otherwise that spring to mind are abusing dopamine cycles (loot boxes, mobile games) and competitive approachability (fortnite's bot lobbies, HeroesOTS 'casual' moba, mobile pubg etc) both of which I'd argue Blizzard has attempted to incorporate into Sc2... It isn't like there's a treatise on how to properly design an RTS in the last 20 years. You say game design is hard and I agree. I just disagree that Blizzard went against any grains and failed because of it.
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On September 20 2023 07:56 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2023 06:06 THERIDDLER wrote: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
Sentry itself has 4 (build time, speed, guardian shield, halluc). See if you can find the other 16, your couple of protoss brain cells can do it I believe in you!.
User was warned for this post.
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And sentry is still B-tier unit at best.
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On September 20 2023 12:23 THERIDDLER wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2023 07:56 Charoisaur wrote:On September 20 2023 06:06 THERIDDLER wrote: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 Sentry itself has 4 (build time, speed, guardian shield, halluc). See if you can find the other 16, your couple of protoss brain cells can do it I believe in you!. User was warned for this post.
You can't honestly be serious, the sentry buffs are minuscule compared to the nerfs Protoss got (battery nerf, Disruptor nerf) and the buffs terran got (Liberator and Raven buff)
Also I play terran so I don't have "Protoss brain cells"
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Northern Ireland26155 Posts
On September 20 2023 09:16 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2023 08:24 BronzeKnee wrote:On September 09 2023 01:58 Charoisaur wrote: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. Curious, what of modern game design would you suggest Blizzard use for sc2? Riot's theory on anti-fun is all well and good, but it's hardly robust and hardly a dominant theory - even Riot has strayed away from it over the years; 'anti-fun' often just turns in to 'not-fun'. Notable growth in game dev otherwise that spring to mind are abusing dopamine cycles (loot boxes, mobile games) and competitive approachability (fortnite's bot lobbies, HeroesOTS 'casual' moba, mobile pubg etc) both of which I'd argue Blizzard has attempted to incorporate into Sc2... It isn't like there's a treatise on how to properly design an RTS in the last 20 years. You say game design is hard and I agree. I just disagree that Blizzard went against any grains and failed because of it.
If they did transgress particular modern norms of sound game design I’d be interested in hearing specifically how too.
Honestly a few missteps aside after a certain point I can only criticise design too much, because one either fully redesigns the entire game, or keeps fudging on the foundation that already exists.
IMO the biggest fundamental problem with SC2 is, in context the frequently agreed ‘best-designed’ race is the worst-designed in the overall context. Terran, especially bio is too strong and too microable. It is fun to micro bio, it is not fun to be kited indefinitely when you can’t do anything. Warp gate is the other big one for me, but honestly I think it ranks second.
The game needs a lot of reliable anti-bio weapons, and unreliable ones that are hugely potent. And it just has so many knock-on effects.
I like asymmetry, I basically exclusively play the micro/glass cannon army in any RTS, despite the years of abuse I got for playing Nelf in WC3 :p
But this level of it? We can contrast WoL with now, a much more potent and integral Collosus that does reliable damage, versus the current state of the game where the very potent, but much less reliable disruptor is there. The former isn’t particularly fun to do, the latter is more so but very inconsistent.
PvT works out as a dance not of all sorts of micro and manouvering but does the Toss nail its AoE, or does the Terran dodge.
Whereas in WC3, higher time to kill also factors in but say Nelf archers are squishy, slow and don’t nuke everything in seconds, so you can get on top of them with melee units, especially with speed scrolls.
As to your latter point, designers have got a lot better at designing dopamine dungeons, it’s pretty unarguable and it’s pretty detrimental to other areas, or indeed users in many cases.
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I basically wholly agree with that post. At the end of the day, SC2 is a hell of a game and Blizzard has all kinds of recent history showing they could've done much worse. There's plenty in the design of SC2 that you could argue could be better, I just don't see it as Blizzard failing to keep up with modern design along the way. Like you say, there's only so much you can do without having to rebuild it from the ground up.
And yeah, dopamine dungeons ARE bad. Finding that balance is important, just in a lot of cases devs aren't incentivized to.
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EPT
