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On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote:
Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now.
 IEM Katowice/2024
Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted.
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You all laughed at me a few weeks ago right after IEM when I made a post specifically about Infestor being near impossible to spot with burrow movement and how broken it is and that it was gonna get nerfed, it was obvious after watching those Serral games, who is laughing now , love to say I told you so
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I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense.
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On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote:
Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted.
Trigger 0-2 Solar
0-2 Scarlett
Stats 0-2 Shin
Skillous, Astrea, Fireflying all 0-2 to Serral
Skillous 0-3 Dark
her0 0-2 Dark
2-0 Reynor
Showtime 2-1 Reynor
1-2 Dark
Cyan 0-2 Dark
0-2 Reynor
What part of these results suggests imbalance to you? HerO and Showtime going toe to toe with two top3 zergs? All the other protoss, who are nowhere near the caliber of the best zergs getting wiped by all of them? What are you expecting if your perceived imbalance didn't exist, exactly? Trigger, rated around 2350, to take a map off of Solar and Scarlett? Serral's protoss opponents to take a map off him, where even Clem and Maru couldn't? Cyan, rated 2300, to take a map from the top 3 zergs? Please, put down the "zerg imba" lense, and actually look at reality for what it is.
Claiming imbalance based on these results is basically what the majority of balance babies on reddit and here have been doing incessantly for years.
Due to the inherent region-locked qualifiers of this tournament, extremely low level protoss (Cyan, Firefly, and Trigger) took the places of much better protoss (Classic, Parting, and Creator). Those three would almost definitely snatch at least a few more maps for protoss. Of course, the results would still look lopsided, because some of those zergs had been performing like monsters for several years. They're just better players.
It was a terran that blocked herO from advancing into the quarterfinals, not a zerg.
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On March 08 2024 09:43 Nakajin wrote:
Just saw that one : Siege Tank Turret now tracks previously attacked unit.
Does anyone know if it changes attack priority or things of that nature?
Yes, it changes the attack priority of the unsieged tank to prefer the target it is already shooting at, provided the target hasn't left the tank's range. Once the unit it is targeting down dies, if no further command has been given it tries to shoot the next-closest unit to where that unit was. However, if an order has been given after the original unit it was shooting at dies (like a move order stutter step) the tank will revert to how it operates in-game right now (just pick the closest unit as its next dedicated target).
The purpose is partly to make the turret rotate less, as in the live game the turret will wildly swing around because it endlessly re-calculates its target based on distance, which can result in very large angle swings. The tank is a "heavy" unit, and so the turret should "feel heavy". Additionally, it makes the extremely rare micro situations with the unsieged tank not feel like a piece of crap
I'm not sure if it's on PTR but at least the file I'm looking at, the Yaw Idle Rate reduction change for the tank has also been added. This one is a purely visual change that makes the turret "relax" to its reset version instead of snapping to reset if it detects no target nearby. Again, just makes the turret feel heavier and more like a tank.
The Immortal received the targeting change, but no dedicated visual change. The cyclone is apparently receiving a purely visual change to the turret to bring it in line with "looking" at the unit it's gonna shoot at, like other turret units, although if some difficult technical issues are resolved there is a remote possibility it could also receive the targeting change.
The Phoenix is noticeably absent. The targeting change on the Phoenix is the most important targeting change, and I have no idea how they managed to fix the Tank/Immortal/Cyclone without doing the Phoenix. It's actually kind of funny tbh lul. The Phoenix cannot currently target fire ingame because issuing a move command breaks whatever target fire order you just issued it (it recalculates based on distance every time you issue a move command, which you do constantly since it fires while moving). Because the weapon period cannot be controlled as the weapon automatically fires the second it enters range, you can't even "sync up" the attacks across phoenix with a timed moving-shot like you could with other weapons to get around it. So... yah. My money is if we don't see the phoenix fixed in this patch, we're basically guaranteed to see it in the next patch
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On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote:
I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense.
People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed.
I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end.
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On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote:
I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end.
The problem here is that these are people who've spent significant amounts of time playing ONE game - do they have profound knowledge of the game they are playing? Yes, very likely. Do they understand every aspect and unit interaction aka the big picture? I highly doubt this, because, at the end of the day not even the game designers do, there always is some trial & error factor that needs to be considered as it's a pretty damn complex game, after all, which kinda makes it hard to be aware of every little nuance.
Everyone is subjective and therefore has a slightly tinted view at things, so if not even the people designing the game could get it right 100% of the time, how are we expecting PLAYERS to do it better, esp since we're long past the unit stat tweaks and instead are getting unit reworks.
I certainly still hope for the best, but I'm more of a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' person, as you might end up not improving the game, but making it worse over time.
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On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote:
Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted.
That's not how statistics work though (and neither is Perceveire's post). You don't look at 29 games and make conclusions that contradict the evidence that you get from the data of the whole patch.
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On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote:
I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end.
I think you haven't looked past your bias at all. Professional SC2 players are young people who spent the majority of their life's getting good at a video game. That doesn't teach you anything about integrity. Nothing at all. What it does teach these young men and women, is winning at any cost. And sacrificing most other things, to achieve that win.
You seem to be putting these young professionals at a very high pedestal. And there is little to no evidence to warrant that.
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On March 09 2024 19:23 Creager wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote:
I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end. The problem here is that these are people who've spent significant amounts of time playing ONE game - do they have profound knowledge of the game they are playing? Yes, very likely. Do they understand every aspect and unit interaction aka the big picture? I highly doubt this, because, at the end of the day not even the game designers do, there always is some trial & error factor that needs to be considered as it's a pretty damn complex game, after all, which kinda makes it hard to be aware of every little nuance. Everyone is subjective and therefore has a slightly tinted view at things, so if not even the people designing the game could get it right 100% of the time, how are we expecting PLAYERS to do it better, esp since we're long past the unit stat tweaks and instead are getting unit reworks. I certainly still hope for the best, but I'm more of a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' person, as you might end up not improving the game, but making it worse over time.
I want to point out that from a KNOWLEDGE perspective, there are few people better equipped to analyze the game interactions properly. The issue is not with the knowledge. The issue is that the people on the balance council have other interests outside of SC2, that directly compete with what the sc2 balance council should be trying to achieve.
Be it financial investment in a different game. Or a developmental role at a competing company. Could even just be the goal to finally win a big prizepool at a big tournament. Or to keep being in contention for the big price pool at the big tournament.
My point is, that it is impossible for ANY person in such a situation to make a decision on balance, that is independent of these outside considerations.
Therefore, people in these situations, should never get to make balance update decision for SC2.
I agree with you creager. We Cannot expect the players to make good decisions for SC2s balance.
I do however no longer "hope for the best" because so far, all the attempts they made fell flat on the ground.
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On March 09 2024 19:45 Branch.AUT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote:
I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end. I think you haven't looked past your bias at all. Professional SC2 players are young people who spent the majority of their life's getting good at a video game. That doesn't teach you anything about integrity. Nothing at all. What it does teach these young men and women, is winning at any cost. And sacrificing most other things, to achieve that win. You seem to be putting these young professionals at a very high pedestal. And there is little to no evidence to warrant that.
Your outlook is very dark and twisted. There are myriad examples of athletes and competitors showing tremendous signs of great sportsmanship in virtually all arenas of competitions, most of which have money and prestige many orders of magnitude greater than SC2. Despite this enormous temptation, they still maintain their integrity and humility.
In SC2, there is Rogue, who admitted the 2018 imbalance in favor of zerg. Harstem has consistently denied that protoss has been weak against zerg. In fact, he claims the opposite. There are countless examples of players showing respect for each other, and almost always attributing their losses to their own mistakes during interviews.
Frankly, these "young people" are many times wiser than you, if you really view them with such undeserved cynicism.
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On March 09 2024 19:31 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote:
Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted. That's not how statistics work though (and neither is Perceveire's post). You don't look at 29 games and make conclusions that contradict the evidence that you get from the data of the whole patch.
I wasn't making any statistical claim. My post was to give proper context more than anything.
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On March 09 2024 20:32 Perceivere wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 19:31 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote:
Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted. That's not how statistics work though (and neither is Perceveire's post). You don't look at 29 games and make conclusions that contradict the evidence that you get from the data of the whole patch. I wasn't making any statistical claim. My post was to give proper context more than anything.
Sure I get it, but it's also not true that the reason why we shouldn't care about Katowice results in this conversation is because it makes sense to us that some people lose to some other people, I just wanted to add that.
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On March 09 2024 20:24 Perceivere wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 19:45 Branch.AUT wrote:On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote:
I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end. I think you haven't looked past your bias at all. Professional SC2 players are young people who spent the majority of their life's getting good at a video game. That doesn't teach you anything about integrity. Nothing at all. What it does teach these young men and women, is winning at any cost. And sacrificing most other things, to achieve that win. You seem to be putting these young professionals at a very high pedestal. And there is little to no evidence to warrant that. Your outlook is very dark and twisted. There are myriad examples of athletes and competitors showing tremendous signs of great sportsmanship in virtually all arenas of competitions, most of which have money and prestige many orders of magnitude greater than SC2. Despite this enormous temptation, they still maintain their integrity and humility. In SC2, there is Rogue, who admitted the 2018 imbalance in favor of zerg. Harstem has consistently denied that protoss has been weak against zerg. In fact, he claims the opposite. There are countless examples of players showing respect for each other, and almost always attributing their losses to their own mistakes during interviews. Frankly, these "young people" are many times wiser than you, if you really view them with such undeserved cynicism.
When you have no arguments besides "I REALLY HOPE THIS IS GOING TO BE GREAT" I suppose the personal insult is a way to go. Kudos!
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On March 09 2024 19:31 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote:
Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted. That's not how statistics work though (and neither is Perceveire's post). You don't look at 29 games and make conclusions that contradict the evidence that you get from the data of the whole patch.
There is always a response to shut down any type of statistical analysis, huh. Interesting thing throughout the whole patch zerg was performing protoss, but I guess there is yet another reason for why that also doesn't count
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On March 08 2024 05:14 Mizenhauer wrote:
Can we just delete the cyclone and be done with this 8 year farce?
I think it is time to bring back the HERC.
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On March 09 2024 18:03 Perceivere wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote:
Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted. Trigger 0-2 Solar 0-2 Scarlett Stats 0-2 Shin Skillous, Astrea, Fireflying all 0-2 to Serral Skillous 0-3 Dark her0 0-2 Dark 2-0 Reynor Showtime 2-1 Reynor 1-2 Dark Cyan 0-2 Dark 0-2 Reynor What part of these results suggests imbalance to you? HerO and Showtime going toe to toe with two top3 zergs? All the other protoss, who are nowhere near the caliber of the best zergs getting wiped by all of them? What are you expecting if your perceived imbalance didn't exist, exactly? Trigger, rated around 2350, to take a map off of Solar and Scarlett? Serral's protoss opponents to take a map off him, where even Clem and Maru couldn't? Cyan, rated 2300, to take a map from the top 3 zergs? Please, put down the "zerg imba" lense, and actually look at reality for what it is. Claiming imbalance based on these results is basically what the majority of balance babies on reddit and here have been doing incessantly for years. Due to the inherent region-locked qualifiers of this tournament, extremely low level protoss (Cyan, Firefly, and Trigger) took the places of much better protoss (Classic, Parting, and Creator). Those three would almost definitely snatch at least a few more maps for protoss. Of course, the results would still look lopsided, because some of those zergs had been performing like monsters for several years. They're just better players. It was a terran that blocked herO from advancing into the quarterfinals, not a zerg.
It was cure who blocked hero, you know, the best TvPer in the world, but sure let's not bring that up. But more importantly, you looked at all the ZvP matches and concluded every match played out the way it was meant to. Fine, let's apply that to TvP. Which Terran beat a Protoss they traditionally wouldn't have beat? Since your post inherently relies on the Protoss field being inherently weaker than usual, surely you can see how to applies to them facing Terran as well, right?
I'll note the reason why I brought IEM was because this was yet another datapoint reddit used to claim TvP was too skewed for Terran.
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Northern Ireland25334 Posts
On March 09 2024 19:56 Branch.AUT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 19:23 Creager wrote:On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote:
I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end. The problem here is that these are people who've spent significant amounts of time playing ONE game - do they have profound knowledge of the game they are playing? Yes, very likely. Do they understand every aspect and unit interaction aka the big picture? I highly doubt this, because, at the end of the day not even the game designers do, there always is some trial & error factor that needs to be considered as it's a pretty damn complex game, after all, which kinda makes it hard to be aware of every little nuance. Everyone is subjective and therefore has a slightly tinted view at things, so if not even the people designing the game could get it right 100% of the time, how are we expecting PLAYERS to do it better, esp since we're long past the unit stat tweaks and instead are getting unit reworks. I certainly still hope for the best, but I'm more of a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' person, as you might end up not improving the game, but making it worse over time. I want to point out that from a KNOWLEDGE perspective, there are few people better equipped to analyze the game interactions properly. The issue is not with the knowledge. The issue is that the people on the balance council have other interests outside of SC2, that directly compete with what the sc2 balance council should be trying to achieve. Be it financial investment in a different game. Or a developmental role at a competing company. Could even just be the goal to finally win a big prizepool at a big tournament. Or to keep being in contention for the big price pool at the big tournament. My point is, that it is impossible for ANY person in such a situation to make a decision on balance, that is independent of these outside considerations. Therefore, people in these situations, should never get to make balance update decision for SC2. I agree with you creager. We Cannot expect the players to make good decisions for SC2s balance. I do however no longer "hope for the best" because so far, all the attempts they made fell flat on the ground.
There’s certainly a pretty heavy pro presence in terms of consultation, but are they actually making decisions and actively calling the shots?
This patch had some tweaks that went in based on mapmaker feedback, that a guy like Harstem just shrugged and had no real opinion of. So presumably those suggestions were sourced from the mapmaking community as the patch note indicated. Or the various QoL changes which weren’t something on the pro radar, but the dev team have either noticed themselves, or been made aware of from other sources.
Or last patch where every pro known to be involved in the Balance Council was negative on the Cyclone change, but it still ended up in the game.
While it’s important to be wary of the pitfalls of putting too much stock in the opinions of those with direct personal interest in said changes, so too is it I think to do so within a framing related to what that role actually is.
Additionally not all pros are created equal, somebody like Pig who I believe consults on the mysterious council does SC2 for a living, but as a content creator and caster rather than as a competitive Zerg player. Harstem is still an active pro, and hopefully 2024 is the #YearOfHarstem but he’s pivoted a bit to content stuff too. He’s quite open with his opinion that Protoss is actually stronger than Zerg outside of your Serral level of players, based on his experiences and observations off-racing as Zerg to a GM level. An observation that absolutely tracks with Zerg’s generally declining presence in the top amateur/not pro bracket of the playerbase that high master/GM covers.
It seems to me the process isn’t that different from ye olden days, with the SC2 team sourcing feedback from various areas, with pros featuring heavily, and trying to make judgement calls on what feedback is reasonable versus what is biased.
The only difference is nowadays it’s the pros who are known to be on the Balance Council who are effectively the public face of the process and thus carry the blame in many eyes for what goes into patches, whereas previously it was ultimately David Kim who used to be that lightning rod.
All one can hope to do is aggregate knowledge of various stakeholders, try to account for bias and try to patch in a way that achieves whatever objectives one might have. What is balanced, what is fun to play and what is entertaining to watch I’d say are those 3 main areas.
Pros despite bias leaking in will generally have the best knowledge to deal with the nitty gritty of balance, and likely have as good a sense of what’s entertaining as anyone else.
I’d say they’d have a skewed sense of what is fun, just because they’re so good at the game that what’s frustrating to mortals they perhaps don’t have a great sense of.
Furthermore I mean, read any thread on TL (where we handily have racial icons) or a Reddit and it’s patently apparent that racial bias is just as prevalent, if not even more ingrained in the average player as it is a pro. So it’s not like weighting the average player is going to get you opinions divorced from that factor.
Getting into TLDR territory (for a change) but I do think the pros are getting the blame a bit unfairly here for what’s ultimately a consulting gig rather than a decision-making one. Perhaps the still semi-mysterious structure of how the Balance Council actually operates is partly to blame there.
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On March 09 2024 20:45 Branch.AUT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 20:24 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 19:45 Branch.AUT wrote:On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote:
I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision.
A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates.
Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT.
This is utterly insane.
End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end. I think you haven't looked past your bias at all. Professional SC2 players are young people who spent the majority of their life's getting good at a video game. That doesn't teach you anything about integrity. Nothing at all. What it does teach these young men and women, is winning at any cost. And sacrificing most other things, to achieve that win. You seem to be putting these young professionals at a very high pedestal. And there is little to no evidence to warrant that. Your outlook is very dark and twisted. There are myriad examples of athletes and competitors showing tremendous signs of great sportsmanship in virtually all arenas of competitions, most of which have money and prestige many orders of magnitude greater than SC2. Despite this enormous temptation, they still maintain their integrity and humility. In SC2, there is Rogue, who admitted the 2018 imbalance in favor of zerg. Harstem has consistently denied that protoss has been weak against zerg. In fact, he claims the opposite. There are countless examples of players showing respect for each other, and almost always attributing their losses to their own mistakes during interviews. Frankly, these "young people" are many times wiser than you, if you really view them with such undeserved cynicism. When you have no arguments besides "I REALLY HOPE THIS IS GOING TO BE GREAT" I suppose the personal insult is a way to go. Kudos!
Putting all caps words into others' mouths—another sign of great maturity and wisdom.
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Northern Ireland25334 Posts
On March 09 2024 21:21 lokol4890 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 19:31 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote:
Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted. That's not how statistics work though (and neither is Perceveire's post). You don't look at 29 games and make conclusions that contradict the evidence that you get from the data of the whole patch. There is always a response to shut down any type of statistical analysis, huh. Interesting thing throughout the whole patch zerg was performing protoss, but I guess there is yet another reason for why that also doesn't count
Listing a bunch of results where B/C tier Protoss are losing to S/A class Zergs isn’t really any kind of earnest statistical analysis.
PvZ is in a better spot than it’s been for a while. A top Protoss can beat a top Zerg, or lose ofc. herO going 1:1 versus Dark and Reynor at that tourney.
Week before Kato herO made a final defeating Reynor. Since then we’ve had two Protoss emerge from a Code S group, both beating Dark along the way.
It’s not perfectly balanced sure, but we’re in a scenario where if the best PvZer in herO is in some kind of shape, he’s got a borderline 50/50 shot against any Zerg except perhaps Serral.
Whereas going back 2/3 years even the best PvZers you gave maybe a 40/60 shot, or worse against any of the top Zergs. They could still win matches but if you compound those odds with multiple matches in a bracket they start to look pretty bad. Whereas PvT Toss was at worst 50/50 at equivalent levels, sometimes perhaps even favoured at times.
Nowadays it feels the reverse is true, and PvT is now that 40/60 matchup in a big tournament setting. Far from impossible to take a win a match, but the odds of doing so in multiple PvTs get worse and worse the more you’re playing in a bracket.
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