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Balance threads suck.. But, just like you need to have a beer and bitch about work on a Friday afternoon, sometimes you gotta have a place to post your unreasonable balance takes on TL. |
On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years.
Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in.
Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2.
Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO
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I was here.
btw I just wanted to say that two things can be true at the same time. Serral is clearly the best and most skilled player right now and has been for quite some time AND zerg is definitely a bit broken and is clearly the best race to play on the highest levels of competitive circuit if you want to win trophies.
Hope I helped 
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Zerg "looks" op since the dawn of time because they run away with a game so ridiculously fast when unpunished. No race scales as fast and hard as Zerg, this is not new.
What I'd like to see since basically the classic era was more ways to strategically punish Zerg for its choices. Yet the Queen is still in such a strong spot that makes it nigh impossible to do so. E.g if Zerg was forced to build more defensive structures , the droning would be a lesser concern.
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Terran and Zerg are just fine, Toss needs the buff obviously... The winning% of Katowice speaks for itself
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United States33608 Posts
Fighting games with small userbases have been on my mind since around 2019~2020 as something we might see in SC2's future. As the pro/competitive player base shrinks, the character/faction choices of the most talented players end up having an outsize influence on what we perceive as "balance."
Not that I spent a ton of time browsing mortal kombat or smash melee communities, but my impression is that people just accept that this is the nature of things (ofc they still complain cause complaining is inherent to gaming).
At the same time I'm reminded of a somewhat old interview TL did with David Kim, where he said perception of balance is as important as statistical balance (or something to that affect). I guess in an actively supported SaaS-type game, that basically must be the guiding principle to keep fans happy—it doesn't matter if the game is "truly" balanced as long as it feels balanced. But we're long past that state of support for SC2 (or are we?).
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On February 13 2024 18:14 Waxangel wrote:
At the same time I'm reminded of a somewhat old interview TL did with David Kim, where he said perception of balance is as important as statistical balance (or something to that affect). I guess in an actively supported SaaS-type game, that basically must be the guiding principle to keep fans happy—it doesn't matter if the game is "truly" balanced as long as it feels balanced. But we're long past that state of support for SC2 (or are we?).
I agree.
Sometimes it makes sence to shift the balance slightly to cater to the playerbase of other races. Zerg has been historically good during every era. Terran was strong during stretches and bolstered by a large influx of legacy Korean Terrans. Protoss arguably had the worst performance overall suffering by either a medicore TvP or TvZ.
And quite frankly to this day I can't really decide for myself if it is Serral being so much better than all other pros or if he is basically the only one who figured out the full potential of his race.
I think we have seen the peak of Protoss & Terran performance during SC2s lifespan and at its absolute top it is just a few % lower than a perfectly played Zerg. Statisically it makes little to no difference in the grand scheme of things and needs no fix.
On the other hand it is undeniable that 4 out of the top 5 players of all time are Zerg. I find it hard to believe this come down to individual skill. If anything Maru is the outlier that plays above his expected races' potential while Serral being the one playing the best race AND being the best player making the gap as enormous as it seems.
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such a lame post discrediting serral's ability. he's the sc2 goat.
And of course, it's made by a very low level player. You should just enjoy the spectacle that is sc2 and try to find a way to see the greatness of serral. There's enough complaints about protoss, but there's no reason to believe that terran is weak against zerg right now whatsoever.
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On February 13 2024 18:14 Waxangel wrote:
Fighting games with small userbases have been on my mind since around 2019~2020 as something we might see in SC2's future. As the pro/competitive player base shrinks, the character/faction choices of the most talented players end up having an outsize influence on what we perceive as "balance."
Not that I spent a ton of time browsing mortal kombat or smash melee communities, but my impression is that people just accept that this is the nature of things (ofc they still complain cause complaining is inherent to gaming).
At the same time I'm reminded of a somewhat old interview TL did with David Kim, where he said perception of balance is as important as statistical balance (or something to that affect). I guess in an actively supported SaaS-type game, that basically must be the guiding principle to keep fans happy—it doesn't matter if the game is "truly" balanced as long as it feels balanced. But we're long past that state of support for SC2 (or are we?).
I disagree with most of that. It's usually not only very clear to see or 'feel' balance but the objective data is always there.
DK's takes were always just him hiking his pants up trodden around the pile of shit to give an acceptable PR answer.
I think the thing most people sleep on is that fun will always overshadow poor balance, and that is the mark that sc2 missed.
Instead of removing 'unfun' elements they opted to double down and force them.
Old games like Smash64 are a good example. Balance is terrible but it doesn't matter. I personally think it's a dogwater competitive game, but it is still played and enjoyed that way. Isai or Boom would have won every single tournament if they just played pika or Kirby.
The age old issue is how you address it.
If it were up to me I would just periodically ask the top few players of each race their thoughts on each match-up (even the one they didn't play). Then make my decisions based on that collective, as it would be very easy to identify emphasis and bias.
My changes would be focused on looking to negate any frustrating aspect, before moving onto numerical balance changes.
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On February 13 2024 17:30 Kitaen wrote:
Zerg "looks" op since the dawn of time because they run away with a game so ridiculously fast when unpunished. No race scales as fast and hard as Zerg, this is not new.
What I'd like to see since basically the classic era was more ways to strategically punish Zerg for its choices. Yet the Queen is still in such a strong spot that makes it nigh impossible to do so. E.g if Zerg was forced to build more defensive structures , the droning would be a lesser concern.
This is actually good point imo. It would be nice, if the early game would allow more options to make zergs life more difficult and make them choose what defense to use in each situation. Although that sounds like a "minor" thing to fix, its actually a huge can of worms that would need to address before any queen nerfs. Otherwise zerg just dies too easily. I also think this is more related to the change of starting workers going from 6 to 12. But anyways, its prolly a too drastic change at this point of games life cycle to be happening. In addition, I do not think the balance is that far off especially in TvZ that it needs any big changes anyways. Protoss however is a different subject entirely.
On February 13 2024 17:56 CaRn1FeX wrote:
Terran and Zerg are just fine, Toss needs the buff obviously... The winning% of Katowice speaks for itself
Yes. /lock the thread.
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How can anyone say Zerg isnt too good at the Premier tournament level? Is it coping, bias, or straight up being dishonest xD
I don't care how much the casters try to convince us that Serral is just that much better at the game than his counterparts of the other races, if he loses four queens to five Reapers in the early game against the best TvZ Player in the world at the moment (maybe tied with Maru), there is no way he should win that game, let alone comfortably. That game is a microcosm of ZvT and ZvP - Zerg simply has too big a margin of error compared to Terran and especially compared to Protoss (Protoss is the main issue here, which I will get to later). Zerg is straight up absurd - it obviously has the best macro/defensive style available. Sure, that's how it was designed to be. We can even say it should have the edge in lategame. But it also has the strongest early game and now, with the new Infestor play, a very punishing midgame. Let's be real here - we talk about the supposed Book of Protoss Bullshit but that doesnt even work anymore at the pro level. Zerg all-ins and cheeses are far more potent, and are far more forgiving if they fail, because Zerg is capable of taking huge damage and making comebacks (as we saw when Serral lost 4 Queens). Zerg simply has too many tools. It's very telling that Infested Terrans were removed and replaced with something that is never used, and Banelings were nerfed, and Infestor Baneling still trashes Terran better than any Protoss splash does (Protoss is supposed to be the best splash race). Goes to show you can take the most OP thing out of the game and the Race still dominates hard. Meanwhile Protoss just gets hit with Nerfs lol. No real compensation.
Let's not act like it's only Serral either. For the last several years, whenever big tournaments come around the corner, It's just been Zerg dominance. Let's be real - nobody really cares as much about weeklies, or even smaller Premier tournaments like ESL, super tournaments, etc. What matters is when the big tournaments come around all the top Zergs have to do is turn on the jets and one of them wins, except for Oliviera's miracle run and Maru half the Code S. You take out Serral and you still have the Lion's share of big tournaments going to Zerg even if you include Code S as well.
There is simply no excuse for this.
The biggest Problem still remains, however, is how trash Protoss is. For the last several years it didn't matter how deep the Protoss talent pool was - they simply could not win anything big except HerO's single Code S. We are talking about Stats, Zest, SoS, Peak Trap all falling flat on their faces on the biggest stage. It happened against both Zerg and Terran, but obviously Zerg was the biggest culprit by far. In that same time period Soo, Serral, Reynor, Dark, Rogue, Solar, Maru, Cure, Ty, Oliviera, Innovation all won bigtime.
But yeah - with regard to the topic, there's no reason Serral should just be able to make someone like Maru look like a player 1000 mmr lower. Maru is probably the biggest freak of nature this game has ever seen - has won/dominated in multiple eras of the game, was never weak, was a top 3 most fearsome team league player of all time, dominated the hardest region bar none in all of LotV. He is no less a player than Serral, sorry. He plays a race that doesn't have the margin of error of Zerg, though. It's why he can drop series against Cyan while Serral could streamroll every player that isn't Zerg (telling that ZvZ is his worst matchup, which Maru has always been bar none the best TvT player all the time).
Why is the Infestor allowed to burrow move anyway? Make them sitting ducks like Protoss High Templars
I repeat again, though - the biggest Problem by far is how outclassed Protoss as a race is. I believe all it will take is a big buff to a late game unit locked behind Fleet Bacon. Doing meme things like increasing the movespeed of gateway casters is not going to do anything especailly when it's always paired with huge nerfs xD
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What competitions would you consider the big tournaments?
And just to clarify: ZvZ is Serral's worst match up. He is also currently (Aligulac) the best ZvZ player in the world and the best vZ player in the world.
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On February 13 2024 21:12 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
What competitions would you consider the big tournaments?
And just to clarify: ZvZ is Serral's worst match up. He is also currently (Aligulac) the best ZvZ player in the world and the best vZ player in the world.
I would consider it any of the Huge Prize Pool Tournaments (Blizz Con, IEM Katowice, WESG whenever it had a big Prize, and now Gamers8) or GSL Code S
I am not saying Serral is a bad Player or anything. It is telling that his worst Match-up is Zerg though. Especially in Big Tournaments. It's the difference between playing player with the same amount of tools as you and players who are much smaller margin of error and fewer tools than you.
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I mean: as long as we understand that Serral's worst match up is still the match up in which he is the best in the world. Serral currently has the highest rating of every player vs zerg. There is no one as good vs Zerg than Serral at the moment.
Let's take a look at the claim 'If it wasn't for Serral, Zerg would still win the majority of tournaments'.
- Iem Katowice: Serral vs Maru final. => Terran
- Master's Colloseum: Serral vs Hero final => Protoss
-- Esl Master's Winter: Clem vs Serral => Clem actually won so => Terran
- ESL master's winter Euripe: Serral vs Clem => Terran
- GSL => Sollar vs Gumiho => Zerg
- Master's colloseum 6: Serral vs Cure => Terran
- Gamers 8 => Reynor vs Cure => Zerg
- GSL => Maru vs Dark => Terran
- ESL masters Summer= > Serral vs Gumiho => Terran
- Esl Masters summer Europe => Serral vs Maxpax => Protoss
- GSL => Maru vs Cure => Terran
- IEM Katowice => Oliveire vs Maru => Terran
So if Serral didn't exist, we would have in the premier tournaments, since katowice 2023:
8 terran wins
2 protoss wins
2 zerg wins
The methodology I used was just to look at the final and take the other finalists, if it was against serral, as the actual winner. You can argue that this is a problematic methodology and it is, in a sense, but it's a reasonable approximation for the purpose of this.
Now, let's say 'Serral' is his own race. If we then look at the major tournaments, here are the victories for the 4 races:
- Zerg: 2
- Serral: 6
- Protoss: 0
- Terran: 4
Take into account that in 3 of these serral did not participate (gsl), that means Serral won 6 out of 9 tournaments he participated in. And if he didn't exist, all 6 of those would have been won by a terran or protoss, because none of those were a zvz final.
Let's look at it even more detailled:
- Iem Katowice 2024: The other zerg semi-finalist was Dark, who already lost earlier 2-0 to maru.
- Master's colloseum: Hero was beaten by Reynor, but also beat Reynor in the loser's final. So toss up if that had gone to zerg or not imo.
- Master's winter Europe: Serral beat Reynor in the winner's bracket, Clem beat Reynor in the Loser's bracket. So again, a reasonable toss up. But just like before: it was the non-zerg who went through to the final.
- Master's Collosseum 6: Serral was actually knocked down to the loser bracket (3-1 by Clem). Serral then proceeded to go 19-3 in maps vs Lambo, Dark, Maxpax, Maru, Byun and Cure. But anyway. If Serral didn't exist, this would easily been taken by one of terrans.
- Esl masters summer: we would perhaps have had a final between Reynor and Gumiho. This could have been won by a zerg, yes.
- Esl masters summer europe: serral was the only zerg semi-finalists. A protoss or terran would reasonably have taken this.
I mean: if we just look at the objective available evidence, claims such as 'the lion's share of big tournaments would go to zerg' appears to be not true. It would probably be far more equal to the extend that we can deduce something based on counterfactual data estimates. I realize that this isn't a perfect method by any stretch of the imagination, but the evidence definitely doesn't support wide accusations of 'it would be zerg anyway!!'
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On February 13 2024 21:20 NoMacroNoHonour wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 21:12 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
What competitions would you consider the big tournaments?
And just to clarify: ZvZ is Serral's worst match up. He is also currently (Aligulac) the best ZvZ player in the world and the best vZ player in the world. I would consider it any of the Huge Prize Pool Tournaments (Blizz Con, IEM Katowice, WESG whenever it had a big Prize, and now Gamers8) or GSL Code S I am not saying Serral is a bad Player or anything. It is telling that his worst Match-up is Zerg though. Especially in Big Tournaments. It's the difference between playing player with the same amount of tools as you and players who are much smaller margin of error and fewer tools than you.
No mate it's actually not. Serral is by far and away the best late game ZvZ player there is. When he loses, it's because of timing attacks and the larva mechanic, and other things that make the matchup volatile (Mutas.). If you were familiar with serral's game, you wouldn't be talking such nonsense. 'It is telling'. Laugh.
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Northern Ireland26794 Posts
On February 13 2024 18:14 Waxangel wrote:
Fighting games with small userbases have been on my mind since around 2019~2020 as something we might see in SC2's future. As the pro/competitive player base shrinks, the character/faction choices of the most talented players end up having an outsize influence on what we perceive as "balance."
Not that I spent a ton of time browsing mortal kombat or smash melee communities, but my impression is that people just accept that this is the nature of things (ofc they still complain cause complaining is inherent to gaming).
At the same time I'm reminded of a somewhat old interview TL did with David Kim, where he said perception of balance is as important as statistical balance (or something to that affect). I guess in an actively supported SaaS-type game, that basically must be the guiding principle to keep fans happy—it doesn't matter if the game is "truly" balanced as long as it feels balanced. But we're long past that state of support for SC2 (or are we?).
I feel Kim is correct, but he’s not really talking pure balance I guess.
I think that perception is certainly important, but really what folks are talking about is ‘is my race as fun as the others?’, or alternatively ‘are the demands on me fair?’
I think some of the most consistent issues have stemmed from these two questions as much, if not more so than pure balance. Can you beat x, well sure, you just have to play a certain way, and you may not have fun playing that way. Even though the game is ‘balanced’ in this hypothetical, it’s not really, to you anyway.
I remember way back, inspired by my beloved Liquid HerO and trying to ape his PvZ style. I wasn’t terrible at my dubious ‘peak’ and had some pretty decent games, nonetheless my PvZ sat in the 30% range, luckily compensated for by my PvT being in the 70s. I just sat with a replay or two, a TL guide when strategy was more active and had a blink allin and Parting’s ‘Soul Train’ grinded out well relative to my level. Then just started to win rather a lot, but to me I didn’t really enjoy it. I wanted to play a straight-up macro game, I just wanted to win a bit more! At my level, or even above that the matchup was theoretically balanced sure, but if you have to play in a way you don’t enjoy to win it still absolutely feels imbalanced.
The game is just full of a lot of frustrating interactions, sometimes going both ways. A good example I think being the disruptor, especially in PvT.
It doesn’t feel fun, or fair if you just eat a purification nova that came from outside vision range when you were looking away, or you make a micro flub, or maybe just aren’t good enough to split bio well yet. Equally, on the other side of the equation, if your opponent is looking, has mastered splitting, it also feels frustrating that you’re never landing a blow, because there’s actually nothing you can personally do to impact that, you’re just hoping your opponent messes up.
If there’s not effective counterplay, or there’s a big disparity in execution on the attacker/defenders side it will definitely move the needle in terms of perceptions of balance, even if a matchup is ultimately balanced.
I’m unsure why the FG community are a bit more sanguine on balance versus us RTS folks, I guess there are more moving parts to the latter.
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On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO
The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world.
Here's his last few games:
02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852
02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online
02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online
02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online
02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online
He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player.
I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant.
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I haven't followed Sc2 since Wings of Liberty, but I was drawn to this thread for some reason and thought I'd have a look in TLPD to see who Serral is and the ELO ranking there has him 19th, but it's for HotS.
Is ELO still calculated? The top 10 someone posted on the front page seems to have numbers way too high to be the same formula
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Northern Ireland26794 Posts
Bunny barely plays, MaxPax plays a lot, and a lot of weeklies.
ELO inflation is a thing with Aligulac, even the folks that run it have conceded that is the case.
Since January 1st 2023:
- Bunny is 151–148 (50.50%) in games and 56–52 (51.85%) in matches.
- MaxPax is 1592–554 (74.18%) in games and 706–161 (81.43%) in matches.
Bunny made a Ro4 in GSL in this period, MaxPax made a Euro finals too, I think an argument can be made that MaxPax may currently be in better shape, and slightly favoured but it wouldn’t be by a huge amount.
But his ratings are massively, massively inflated compared to a guy who’s roughly on the same level (and I picked Bunny specifically because he doesn’t play weeklies)
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On February 13 2024 01:46 Pandain wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 01:19 goldensail wrote:
Will we ever see a Terran player stronger than Maru and Clem? Personally I doubt it. And if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral, a reasonable person can be expected to question the validity of the balance. What does this even mean considering Clem beat Serral 3-1 at their previous meeting and Maru 2-0'd Serral in the Masters Colloseum group stage?
That sc2 has a luck factor at the highest level. And anyone can beat anybody on a given day.
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Northern Ireland26794 Posts
(3482) MaxPax 0-0 Bunny (2849)
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43.23% 3-0 0-3 1.45%
31.63% 3-1 1-3 3.29%
15.42% 3-2 2-3 4.97%
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90.29% 9.71%
Median outcome: MaxPax 3-1 Bunny
Estimated by Aligulac. Modify.
Not to belabour the point but there’s flawed and there’s almost useless.
I don’t think there’s anyone here that gives a 90% chance of MaxPax beating Bunny, a player with more tangible competitive achievements in a meaningful tournament.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/MKfbplB.png)
