Without a community there will be no pros, so to some extent, the balance council does have to satisfy the wants and needs of the community. The community for a while now seems to have a majority consensus that Protoss is underperforming at the top level yet very little seems to be done to address this. Most people see these proposed changes as an overall nerf to protoss. For instance, the spore crawler is buffed to compensate with the queen mineral increase, yet showtime and dns still expect zerg to make the same 6-7 queens vs protoss, but now they also have a spore which kills an oracle in 8 shots instead of 11. At the very top level, i.e., vs serral, it was already near impossible to get damage done with the oracles unless u were willing to sacrifice them. With this change, showtime thinks getting damage done will be near impossible. The community shares these concerns. Also, spore and spine buffs, liberator circle and re-siege speed increase, being able to salvage your turrets and sensor towers if u are playing for cost efficiency, i.e., late game, all get buffed. nothing makes sense. When game devs are balancing a game, they do so with the intention to make the game better for the players. THE PLAYERS need to be happy with the changes that is crucial or naturally people will stop playing the game. So, we the community hold the power. Balance council should be more conscientious of this when making changes. What do you guys think? Right now it is just what the pros think is best, do you think the balance council should listen more to the community?

Woosixion

120 Posts

October 24 2024 01:53 GMT

I think the best form of protest is if we the community collectively uninstall the game and start playing brood war.

Conreik

France51 Posts

October 24 2024 09:20 GMT

Or maybe, play the PTR, do your best and let the stats show whether the changes are good or not.

Nebuchad

Switzerland12447 Posts

October 24 2024 11:01 GMT

Okay so, no, I don't believe that we should listen to the community more because the community believes just about anything it is possible to believe about Starcraft. Many people believe that protoss is very underpowered right now, and it's not, so we shouldn't listen to these people. Many people believe that all protoss pros suck and that in a balanced game they would lose all the time to the best zergs and terrans, and that's wrong, so we shouldn't listen to these people either.

The best thing to do right now is probably just to let the game die and hope that Stormgate is good. If we're not doing that and we're sticking to Starcraft, the best thing to do is to keep the council but make it a lot more transparent, so that we get a better sense of the problems in terms of dynamics that have transpired in the last few days. There should also be a new map pool in connexion to the patch? I'm assuming, and that map pool will probably be less terran favored.

Nakajin

Canada8989 Posts

October 24 2024 11:19 GMT

The WombaT's patch is starting a revolution now, what was this guy thinking?

Nebuchad

Switzerland12447 Posts

October 24 2024 11:33 GMT

On October 24 2024 20:19 Nakajin wrote:
The WombaT's patch is starting a revolution now, what was this guy thinking?

Always had my doubts about him

M3t4PhYzX

Poland4248 Posts

October 24 2024 11:56 GMT

On October 24 2024 10:53 Woosixion wrote:
I think the best form of protest is if we the community collectively uninstall the game and start playing brood war.

Welcome home, y'all.

SamirDuran

Philippines895 Posts

October 24 2024 13:18 GMT

Maybe the players should try to play the PTR first before making a conclusion that this is a bad patch?

WombaT

Northern Ireland26617 Posts

October 24 2024 13:45 GMT

On October 24 2024 20:19 Nakajin wrote:
The WombaT's patch is starting a revolution now, what was this guy thinking?

On October 24 2024 20:33 Nebuchad wrote:

Show nested quote +

Always had my doubts about him

Of all the revolutions I wished to inspire! …

Expect a stock apology/non-apology video imminently haha

THERIDDLER

Canada128 Posts

October 24 2024 13:45 GMT

#10

Is anyone gonna miss this whining troll when he uninstalls?

Creager

Germany1923 Posts

October 24 2024 13:48 GMT

#11

On October 24 2024 22:45 WombaT wrote:

Show nested quote +

Of all the revolutions I wished to inspire! …

Expect a stock apology/non-apology video imminently haha

You should've announced the posting of this comment on Twitter.

Balnazza

Germany1281 Posts

October 24 2024 13:56 GMT

#12

Is it just me or are we starting to completly overreact over this?

bela.mervado

Hungary408 Posts

October 24 2024 17:05 GMT

#13

On October 24 2024 22:56 Balnazza wrote:
Is it just me or are we starting to completly overreact over this?

yeah
i got the same feeling
tl.net looks like reddit in the past few days

Philippe

354 Posts

October 24 2024 17:14 GMT

#14

On October 25 2024 02:05 bela.mervado wrote:

Show nested quote +

yeah
i got the same feeling
tl.net looks like reddit in the past few days

All things considered the patch is not as bad as it's being made to be. It's the lack of transparency about the process that puzzles me more.

Sure David Kim got a lot of flak as the public face of balance back then (it's a thankless job sometimes imo), but somebody (even if anonymous) has to reveal the thought process behind this patch.

Nakajin

Canada8989 Posts

October 24 2024 18:26 GMT

#15

On October 25 2024 02:05 bela.mervado wrote:

Show nested quote +

yeah
i got the same feeling
tl.net looks like reddit in the past few days

Nah, we're back to old tl, welcome to TZCraft 2 vibes.

MJG

United Kingdom1451 Posts

October 25 2024 21:56 GMT

#16

On October 25 2024 03:26 Nakajin wrote:

Show nested quote +

Nah, we're back to old tl, welcome to TZCraft 2 vibes.

ZTarcraft 2: Legacy of the Void Inside the Skulls of the Balance Council.

BronzeKnee

United States5219 Posts

October 26 2024 02:30 GMT

#17

On October 24 2024 22:18 SamirDuran wrote:
Maybe the players should try to play the PTR first before making a conclusion that this is a bad patch?

This take is so bad.

If I take all the gas out of your car, do you actually need to try and start it to know you won't get anywhere?

We all have the power of prediction within us. We can predict, with good certainty, that if you nerf X and buff Y, Y will be stronger and X will be weaker.

Zerg got a bunch of buffs and 175 mineral Queens, Protoss got important nerfs to Immortals and Shield Batteries and buffs to nothing. Go out and try and start that car now, see if it runs.

smithwilliams

1 Post

October 29 2024 08:54 GMT

#18

--- Nuked ---

outscar

2832 Posts

October 30 2024 04:24 GMT

#19

I never touched SC2 since early LotV but just reading patch notes made me puke. This gotta be a joke right? Salvaging turrets and sensors? Unecessary bloat. Stim pack for hydras? As if they're not fast on creep and have high DPS. 275 minerals for hatchery - who you think you are to change a value that was same since 1998 lol. Who in their right mind approved this? Even Artosis called this patch cursed, nuff said.

My applauses! David Kim and co. already killed the game decade ago and forced BW pros to switch back and now with this patch even pros who never played BW might go try it.

Yoshi Kirishima

United States10366 Posts

October 30 2024 05:13 GMT

#20

On October 24 2024 22:18 SamirDuran wrote:
Maybe the players should try to play the PTR first before making a conclusion that this is a bad patch?

Patch 5.0.1.1 was when things went downhill. Protoss Battery Overcharge got nerfed from 100% to 50% healing, and didn't get enough to compensate; Terran then got Raven buffs so it came out earlier and you could go for a 1-2 Raven push with Interference matrix even earlier than before. What do you think the outcome of these changes together meant? Of course, that the Raven pushes already strong vs Protoss would now become way stronger. And so PvT winrate fell to 40% for months, and when the next patch tried to address this a little, winrate was still around 40-45%. This was the worst year of balance for any MU across all of SC2 history - David Kim's team always kept balance pretty close to 50%, 45:55 situation at worst.

Sometimes you do not need to try a patch when you can clearly understand that the balance is not good. This patch gives Terran several nice buffs and Protoss gets a Battery Overcharge replacement which is maybe in a very hopeful view might be about as good as Battery Overcharge, but would still mean Protoss earlygame would be a bit more vulnerable vs Terran pushes than before, and this early game windows has always been a critical time for Protoss where they often barely hold or die outright.

Many people said the same back then - to try the patch out and see how it goes. Well we did and the changes went through, and were kept for very close to 1 full year (with minimal reverts; making Interference Matrix a quick upgrade is nice, but it was all because Ravens became cheaper and quicker to build in the first place - Matrix duration never got nerfed to compensate!) I've lost trust in the council; our voices are not being heard enough, the anti Protoss bias is way too strong and it's really starting to hurt and kill any remaining enthusiasm people have about this game. Starcraft has always been an RTS of high integrity because of the balance and asymetric design of the 3 races, and the balance council is threatening to destroy that. We need to act NOW now wait til later.

Remember that also Protoss had to deal with multiple years of PvZ being very difficult in LotV. They finally got the MU relatively balanced there (after the voidray slight revert and end of opening voids vs queen walks meta), and then Protoss has to deal with this PvT imbalance roughly on the same level as PvZ's toughest years (around 2019-2020 ish iirc). This is why we should stop being so afraid to buff Protoss up a bit; they've really suffered the most from balance throughout LotV. Even if Protoss ends up being slightly favored in the MUs, we can always pull things back!