New Balance Patch: 5.0.12 - Page 5

On September 22 2023 12:14 CicadaSC wrote:


4th no matter what, balance of the game should be around who IS playing the game, not who WAS playing the game. Saying welp, protoss, you're out of luck because no one talented is playing your race is a horrible mindset, and horrible for game health assuming ~33% of players play Protoss.

On September 22 2023 12:14 CicadaSC wrote:


The amount of intentional dishonesty and framing here is appalling.
First of all, when those guys were all still playing Protoss was still underperforming in tournaments, 2nd of all stats is back, 3rd of all why are u comparing the lowest players to the best and saying they have to match why not say Classic/herO instead of creator/showtime? I think we all know why. 4th no matter what, balance of the game should be around who IS playing the game, not who WAS playing the game. Saying welp, protoss, you're out of luck because no one talented is playing your race is a horrible mindset, and horrible for game health assuming ~33% of players play Protoss.

Yes if Ragnarok is the best zerg in the world he should be competitive against the best terrans or protosses. Why would you want to watch a game with three races where only two races are competitive, that's silly.

This whole line of argumentation is cope anyway because it relies on the notion that some of the retired protosses might be crushing today if they were still here, while we have the real world, where we could observe them not crushing before they retired, to test that theory against.

On September 22 2023 22:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:


Do you actually believe that? Imagine a scenario where the best zerg in the world is ragnarok. Should the game suddenly be balanced so he wins as much a zerg players have before? Or do you think the game shouldn't be balanced around pro play at all? (then i could moreso see your statement making sense).
Ofc you have to balance a game around the potential of the race in human play, not around who is the best atm in the pro scene.
To be clear, if the scene is healthy, if there are new players trying to push for the top (and some succeeding), if the competitive integrity of the scene is high, then ofc one can more or less assume that the top players of each race are about the same 'skill', one can balance around that as a result. (more or less).
But when we are in an environment like ours, where this simply is not the case, when both the player pool is shrinking if anything, and the scene doesn't really provide a professional career to the degree where people can consider it a viable path, then this simply isn't true. Yeah stats might be back, but how hard is he trying to get to the absolute top again in the current, dying scene? Many players aren't as motivated anymore because anyone with half a brain realizes that sc2 pro won't be a viable profession for all that much longer anyway.
So we can balance around "the best we have", but that will most likely result in actual imbalance, because balance isn't about having an equal outcome at all costs, it's about equal opportunity to do as well as the other races. (and this factors in merit).
Which isn't to say that protoss doesn't need some help, i tend to think it does, i think that some design decisions and balance makes it so that picking protoss reduces the consistency one can achieve, but i majorly disagree with your foundational pov on balance.

On September 22 2023 22:43 Charoisaur wrote:

The thing is that there is no objective way to measure skill.
In an asymmetrical game you can never say with 100% confidence that player A really won because he's the better player
Even if the best Zerg in the world would be Ragnarok, we couldn't say 100% confidently that he's worse than the top P/T players because players also can improve and others get worse and also it could be possible that Ragnarok was always as good as them and his race just used to hold him back, while Serral/Reynor/Dark were 2 times as good as the top players from the other races.

But that's not even the case here, with Classic and herO there are two proven championship level players active.

Maybe Protoss would win more if Zest/Trap/PartinG would still play but that's just hypotheticals, you can't use that as an argument. Maybe they would do just as bad as the current Protoss players, maybe Zerg would win every tournament if Life was still playing etc. etc.
In balance discussions you can't use hypothetical results that might or might not have happened if other players were active at the moment.

The reason we have to balance around the current player set is because it's the only measurement of balance at the highest level there is, that isn't based on assumptions of hypothetical scenarios.

On September 22 2023 22:48 Nebuchad wrote:


Yes we should balance around that especially in this example because in this example zerg is so bad that even the best player is stuck in master and unable to develop a game interesting enough to not be some random no name, that would mean there's something especially wrong with zerg's balance.

Hey Balnazza remember before the last patch that nerfed protoss, when herO was competitive with the heavy hitters and winning tournaments? How have you determined that the 40m headstart is not what the other two races received in that last patch that nerfed protoss?

On September 22 2023 22:55 The_Red_Viper wrote:


It doesn't matter that one cannot be 100% objective about it, this is a foundational issue regarding how the game should be balanced, not what makes it the easiest to "balance".
Yes, if we think the game is balanced when the outcomes are equal, then we can do that mostly, but that is, as i argue, not what balance actually entails in a scenario like ours. One can assume somewhat equal distribution of skill if the scene is healthy, if there are new players coming into the scene trying to become the best, then we can assume that the law of large numbers more or less evens it out. But as it stands we definitely cannot assume that, for multiple reasons i already stated.

So i am not appealing to any specific player not being here any longer, i am appealing to the state of the scene on the whole, that it doesn't allow us to believe that the outcomes SHOULD be similar at the very top. And as most conversations really just look at number of tournament wins, this is just totally nonsensical argumentation.

An ideal approach would try to understand why certain dynamics are 'unfair', try to understand what tools a race has allows them to be more consistent than others, try to eliminate high variance interactions which seem to be in favor of a particular race due to its design, etc.
Is that "objective" in the same way as superficially looking at outcomes? No. But that doesn't mean the latter is the better approach.

On September 22 2023 23:00 Nebuchad wrote:


The reason why that seems absurd to you is because you offered an absurd hypothetical. It is impossible that we would reach a situation where the best zerg in the world would be someone who is in master and unable to get higher than that. But if we take your absurd hypothetical and pretend it's reality, the conclusion would not be "Zergs are master noobs", it would be "there is something seriously wrong with zerg at a fundamental level".

On September 22 2023 23:09 Charoisaur wrote:

Those two go hand in hand. If one race is getting destroyed at the pro level there are bound to be certain dynamics that appear unfair when following the pro scene. Like +2 Banes one-shotting workers currently appears "unfair" and makes Protoss to fragile, but if Serral, Reynor and Dark would retire tomorrow, it would seem like an easily defendable tactic for top Protoss players.

On September 22 2023 23:19 Nebuchad wrote:


But even in the extreme example we should still be balancing in the same way. It's not "my fault" or "I don't want to engage", I'm just telling you you're looking at it wrong, the assumptions that you're making are much more dangerous in terms of balancing a game because they aren't based on anything measurable.

On September 22 2023 22:58 geokilla wrote:
If Serral, Dark, Solar and Reynor suddenly retired, you can expect Zerg to not win anymore tournaments. Does this mean we need to buff Zerg even more to compensate? Come on now...

On September 22 2023 23:11 Nebuchad wrote:


Damn do you reckon maybe the fact that in the current state of the game mistakes as protoss cost you the game almost immediately while it is much more realistic to recover from a mistake as terran or zerg plays a part into how consistent players manage to be?