New Balance Patch: 5.0.12 - Page 12

On October 10 2023 05:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
in order to change, test, and implement anything requires money to pay employees to do these things.
this is why the current patch was implemented in such a haphazard fashion with different servers on different patches for almost a week.

i'm good though. i realize what is going on and my expectations are close to zero. which is in alignment with the budget for this project.

if you want to get excited about the screw ups... have fun.

On October 10 2023 05:56 WombaT wrote:

What testing do you need beyond the initial ‘this cyclone change isn’t good’ that was generally a very strong majority when it WAS tested and floated?

What does it have to do with budget?

They DID the budget part in doing preview builds, sticking it in test realms. They have a whole ton of pros who, to my knowledge do it for free consulting with them who said the cyclone change was a bad idea.

They had community hubs like TL where generally people said the cyclone change was a bad idea.

The only deciding factor here is pushing different builds that already exist.

They have the budget to at least make, test and roll out changes. What changes they actually choose to push to the live version of the game therefore are largely disassociated from budget no?

You’re not seriously arguing this point, come on.

On October 10 2023 06:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
the team creating a new balance patch is not part of the team that makes game design decisions.
you have to pay the team creating the new balance patch money. and that budget has declined. therefore, we are seeing mistakes.

the patch was not tested because there is no testing budget. that is how a super obvious bug like the cyclone bug got through.

Pig stated the pros didn't play much on the PTR because they were too busy playing tourneys.

The big decrease in the budget for SC2 has had a negative impact on the quality and reliability of the balance patch process.

On October 11 2023 01:11 WombaT wrote:
I just don’t see how this specific call can be attributed to a lack in budget. You’ve built your new feature, you’ve surveyed users and they don’t like it largely. You doing it anyway isn’t due to a budget constraint but a poor judgement call

On October 11 2023 01:11 WombaT wrote:
The cyclone isn’t a bug though, it’s intended behaviour.

On October 19 2023 22:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

call? the Cyclone is fucked. you can drill down to any single individual software development activity. and you can pull out the final step of the process and then observe that it took 1 minute and then claim the budget should be less than $1 for it.

everything relies on budget.

Pig explains it fairly well. I subscribe to his opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL-coOp5czM&t=1400s


you can brick your opponent's Cyclone by picking up its target and putting it in a transport like a Medivac or Warp Prism.
that is intended behaviour?

On October 19 2023 23:20 Charoisaur wrote:

Yeah I've thought about that too, the way they are doing things by voting on different ideas that are thrown out basically means there can't be any overarching vision behind the changes. David Kim and the subsequent blizzard balance team surely made mistakes, but you could clearly see they had specific goals / a specific vision in mind on what they want to achieve - and ultimately they succeeded as at the point when they had to abandon the game, it was in a vastly better state than in early WoL, so they have overall improved the game tremendously.

I can't say that for the current council, most of the changes seem okay on paper but they also seem quite random and not following any specific vision. I can't say they have improved the game at all.

On October 20 2023 03:05 WombaT wrote:

Brick it how? Is it left unable to utilise its regular attack for a period or what? That’s new to me if that is happening, and would, I imagine be unintended.

But pick-ups and blinks out of range have been counterplay options, and IMO good ones from the day the cyclone rolled out.

Pig talks a lot of sense there, and I’ve not disputed budget is an overall factor, but specifically for the cyclone how is that the problem.

They’ve got their volunteers in the balance council, they had a PTR run, they had people run PTR tourniesthey’ve plenty of avenues for feedback from players from the scrub to the pro tier.

Feedback on that particular change? Pretty bloody negative.

The budgetary constraint of what? One person taking a few hours to run through correspondence with the balance council, browse the TL PTR thread and r/Starcraft2 for a bit? Maybe a few Discord servers

I’m still unsure why you’re arguing budgetary constraints rather than someone, somewhere being lazy or exercising poor judgement. The whole point of a patch is to improve the general experience, if you’re ignoring the market research you’ve already done, I don’t see how it can be anything else.

If they didn’t do the market research of test PTR builds and just rolled out whatever, then yes maybe I would concede that the problem is budgetary but that isn’t the case here.

On October 20 2023 02:48 [Phantom] wrote:
Regarding the cyclone... I don't think this change will age well. One thing I don't understand it's why it doesn't require technolab. It's already better than a stalker, and now it comes 2 at a time? This enables terran to make them very fast, and remake them very fast. If they are going to let them be reactored they need to increase their building time.

The unit itself is very unfun...an automatic stim marine that shoots and kites at the same time... I think the unit will age as badly as Brood Lords and Swarm host.

And if this is the type of change Scarlett proposes that doesn't bode well for her game or stormgate.

On October 20 2023 03:15 WombaT wrote:

Gamers are great at articulating what they don’t like, much less so at well, designing games that they actually enjoy.

On the other hand top level players, particularly pros have more insight than anyone to the nitty gritty and the ramifications and potential enabled by changes.

I feel like the best balance would have been the devs having that vision, informed by general user research, and the pros help to refine it and determine what would, wouldn’t work, and what potential undesirable externalities could be introduced.

Consultants really over well, however the structure works currently

On October 20 2023 05:54 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

now that you know the Cylcone is bugged maybe you can better understand the problem.
if you've been watching Groups A,B, and C of the GSL this season you'll notice the Cyclone has become an endangered species.

On October 20 2023 06:34 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
The cyclone is in a weird spot. Design wise it's weird that it can be reactored, yet still takes the same ~30 secs to build.
Balance wise, it makes sense though. Mech has trouble producing units early on since Factories are expensive. So being able to reactor out cheap all-rounder units early on helps smoothen out the early game.

On October 20 2023 08:55 WombaT wrote:

Odd in that there was a lot of Cyclone builds but ok just make stuff up

On October 20 2023 11:22 Fanatic-Templar wrote:


I wish Protoss could get reactored Phoenixes. I love the unit, but it's such a commitment and so hard to bounce back when you take losses.

On October 20 2023 06:34 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:


It's really weird to me too that Liberators can also be reactored. It's a flying siege tank.

The cyclone is in a weird spot. Design wise it's weird that it can be reactored, yet still takes the same ~30 secs to build.
Balance wise, it makes sense though. Mech has trouble producing units early on since Factories are expensive. So being able to reactor out cheap all-rounder units early on helps smoothen out the early game.

The part that sucks is that Blink Stalkers still counter them a bit too hard.
It would be ideal if the autoattack was strengthened and the lock-on was a slightly weaker attack.
Or if the cyclone's lock on made it move a little slower and in return got more range or damage.
That kind of design would make Blink micro less impactful and make the Cyclone more interesting and have more counterplay.

On October 23 2023 19:07 ejozl wrote:

The Cyclone and the Stalker is the exact same unit now. Same costs and +vs Mech and +vs Armoured is almost the same. They are both striders that need micro to make them good and they both scale poorly with upgrades.
If Cyclones beats Stalkers or vice versa, it just means that it is a stronger unit. What they should do is not make boring ass same units. Mech has Tanks to counter Stalkers, so it does not need Cyclones to do this. However, it ofc needs to do more vs. Stalkers than Hellions.