On March 12 2025 06:04 Monochromatic wrote: This is something I've been thinking of a lot recently.
Balance the game to the average tier level, and balance the top tier matchups with maps.
Balancing the game to the top tier level is a massive mistake which confuses skill, imbalance, and reputation.
Don't think I could have said it better myself. Relatively certain that every other game does this on the market, including WoL and HoTS. LoTV missed the mark big time, which has resulted in his failure, while everything else continues to grow.
Balancing only at top level stunted the scene's growth.
Playership and viewership has a non-negligible relationship. I'm sure that when new viewers got into the scene and felt like trying their own hand at the game, they got hit with arcane mechanics such as rapid-fire and inject-macros that is not an innate part of the base game.
I know many don't play and just watch. Many will also point to physical sports and say more people watch than play. But they played a lot when young and able. Some older fans of physical sports still get together play some casual games. I want to have that itch to play once in a while before my body starts aching and I need to stop - not because I found the games frustrating and suffocating.
Simple, but difficult & expensive answer: why not both?
Game should feel reasonably fun across all levels of skill. By that, I don't mean a conscious acknowledgement of fun, since many will find it "fun" to keep winning. I mean a type of fun that keeps you coming back for more despite all your superficial complaints.
When PiG played Terran ladder recently on stream, he gave up after a few games. I. Felt. It. In. My. Bones.
Now that budget for this game has been cut down by Blizzard, that ship has likely sailed. But maybe it doesn't have to be that way for the average pro level. That's still a very small number of players to balance for.
And maybe, (and I hate myself for even using this approach), it will trickle down to casuals playing the game more.
On March 11 2025 15:28 Vindicare605 wrote: Normally my answer would be firmly in the top tier level camp, but that's as long as there actually is a thriving top tier level scene.
If the well of available tournaments to enjoy as a spectator is no longer there, then the upside of enjoying Starcraft 2 at the professional level is diminished to the point that it's not worth the trade off of being unbalanced for the average player.
So the way I see it we're in a transitionary period right now. If the pro scene isn't going to get a new jolt of life in the next 1 or 2 years then I'm going to switch my stance to wanting the game balanced around the people playing it instead of the pro scene.
Yeah agreed. Balance is balancing many things beyond tip-top competitive parity. Including fun, and including factoring in the level of players you actually do have.
If various subreddits are to be believed, perhaps it’s a vocal minority but a LOT of Zergs are really not having fun, taking breaks or switching faction because they (largely) hate PvZ specifically. Tweaks may fuck up the pro level of play, so not tweaking is somewhat understandable, but wouldn’t make a huge amount of sense if it didn’t meaningfully exist
I think even now it’s thinning out to the degree that maybe the top-tier approach is flawed. With seemingly every patch and new meta we’ve gradually moved over a stretch from Serral + multiple Zerg WCs, GSL champs, and a handful of others winning premiers or placing deep, to like basically only Serral maintaining peak form.
On March 12 2025 01:11 MrIronGolem27 wrote: The comment chain here shows that the wording of the poll is horribly flawed and nobody is reading the question thoroughly...
Unless it was changed, the wording of the poll is about as clear as you could make it.
If people’s attention span is thus that even reading a single sentence before commenting, not much one can do.
I said that was going to happen didn't I Wombat?
They buffed Skytoss which is something that we've known since WoL that Zergs hate to play against, and they buffed late game Skytoss without giving Zerg anything compensentory to deal with it in the late game.
Of COURSE Zergs are gonna be upset about that, especially on the ladder where Skytoss is much more dominant.
It's the cycle that we've seen repeated over and over again. Protoss sucks at top level, they buff Protoss, Protoss is unfun to play against on ladder and dominates ladder like it always does, people complain till Protoss gets nerfed.
We've seen the cycle over and over again.
The cycle repeats…
In this particular instance I think as much an unintended side effect that sucks, rather than a straight buff that’s doing it.
I actually liked the idea of energy overcharge instead of battery. I also, incorrectly thought lower level P would really struggle versus T without the latter. Where it seems like, broadly OK.
PvZ Oracles can get pumped with energy and be more active offensively, but also really reliably hold greedy bases, where before they didn’t have the juice. So you can accelerate to SkyToss really reliably.
The cherry on top is you can’t abduct Mommaships, which really tips the scales.
Any RTS will have metas settling, dominant strategies. You end up with real problems when they’re just not fun.
I don’t think there’s been a single heavy-air meta that’s been particularly fun. Not to play with, against or even to watch. And by heavy air I mean like, featuring heavy air units, not ‘a lot of air units’. Plenty of muta-heavy styles, super fun.
The problem is that buffing Skytoss is the only feasible way to increase Protoss late game viability especially against Zerg. We can't buff their ground armies because their ground armies are tied to Warp Gate.
So whenever Protoss is unable to win at the top level, the only two options are to buff their timing attack capabilities or buff Skytoss. Neither of which are fun options for people on the ladder where these options are both a: already very strong and b: no one likes to play against.
It's a design problem for Protoss. Always has been, always will be.
I agree completely. Warpgate is the original sin of SC2 Protoss design, with which all Protoss ground armies have been forever cursed. The existence of the warp prism makes this problem 10x worse. When I snipe a terran or zerg drop, it feel great. When I snipe a prism, it feels like I've accomplished very little.
I might give the SC2 editor another go. Remove warpgate, buff zealots, stalkers, and sentries appropriately.
Delete the disruptor, the swarmhost, and maybe the cyclone or the liberator ground attack. Disruptors and swarmhosts are not fun to play with or against. Disruptor is ridiculously punishing to players with poor micro. swarmhosts are basically just used to torture metal league players (seriously, there is a silver/gold league meta where players go 2base or 1base nydus swarmhost every game) and by Rogue whenever he finds a good map to abuse them on. I remember a game Rogue played on Golden Wall vs some terran in GSL where he played nydus swarmhost, it was disgusting to watch.
Remember when the liberator was designed as an anti muta unit? lol
Revert to 6 worker start. When sOs, the only player in HotS to win 3 WC level events (a record unbroken until Serral's 2024), can't express his strategic skills in LotV any more, the game have lost something very important. There is no clearly defined early game, mid game, and late game any more.
Then I just have to convince people to play it....
On March 12 2025 13:42 TheLordofAwesome wrote: I agree completely. Warpgate is the original sin of SC2 Protoss design, with which all Protoss ground armies have been forever cursed.
why can't we just make it so units warped in far from a completed nexus start with 0 shield, and won't start regen for a few secs. we would still have defensive warp ins, but offensive ones would be much less powerful. or fuck defensive warp ins as well, make all warp ins 0 shield.
we could even slow down the prism, and make the speed research cost 50/50/57s, restoring the current speed only.
i'm sure the shieldless warp ins were mentioned before, what could possibly go wrong with that. protoss not winning a major? we are used to that.
I've always found this question to be somewhat of a false dichotomy. There are ways to make things less punishing and intense for lower levels while also giving room for skill expression for high levels. I say "somewhat" because there are some cases where it's difficult to balance one and not the other, but in most cases there is likely some kind of solution that could help multiple skill levels.
For example, small unit cost changes. At average levels where people float resources, these mostly just affect cheese unless the map mines out and everything gets spent. At high levels, it can have an impact on the optimization of entire build orders.
First: Less balance in general Second: Balance at the top
Every time Acti-Blizz popped off a patch for whatever meme strategy of the week was going down because the thousands of tin players were crying on reddit, pros were already solving it. They removed the threat zone of many builds and concepts which forced the game into an extremely macro focused big game with less variety.
On March 12 2025 03:25 Vindicare605 wrote: It's the cycle that we've seen repeated over and over again. Protoss sucks at top level, they buff Protoss, Protoss is unfun to play against on ladder and dominates ladder like it always does, people complain till Protoss gets nerfed.
I don't pay much attention to SC2 these days as I primarily play AoE4 and watch AoE4 tournaments, but I noticed the influx of some top Euro SC2 pros (and even Nina today) come play AoE4. This is SortOf's comments on why he is playing AoE4 these days:
This is what has always happened in the last 15 years of SC2. Once Protoss gets buffed, ladder is dominated by Protoss even more and the entire SC2 community (minus the Protoss players) get angry. I remember when things were more balanced, Protoss was already dominating ladder, but not to the extent that I have heard recently.
Right now, SC2 needs everything going for it, with ESLTV not doing anything at the moment, the issues with the GSL, no Katowice this year, etc. Some SC2 pros looking at AoE4, looking at other games, or retiring, is not a good thing.
To be honest, since I don't watch SC2 as much these days, I benefit when some of the SC2 pros coming over to try AoE4 again. Not that AoE4's e-sport scene is really strong - it is actually quite weak, and the prize earnings are very low. But it says a lot when AoE4's e-sport scene is quite weak, but it is still attracting some SC2 pros to come over. In any case, I am enjoying watching SortOf, Elazer, Nina (and even UThermal in chat says he is trying AoE4) in AoE4.
And ladder being overrun by Protoss, when Protoss was already dominating ladder on the EU server, is just making things worse.
Ideally, both are achieved. Top tier should possibly have more priority without the average getting out of control. But the question is: are we currently balancing for top tier? or for the agenda like Toss champion?
Balancing around the bottom does no good. While the pros could figure it out regardless there are simply too many factors at the bottom to balance around. Decision making, speed, macro, micro, strategy, scouting if any ONE of those things are lacking from a player and they lose 100% of the time they face X thing because of it, then you are changing core values of the game to make up for the fact that player X should simply do one of those things better.
Every playerbase improves in skill the longer a game is out: look at Rocket League in year one versus year five versus modern play, for a trivial example. In a sufficiently deep game, the things you need to understand and be able to execute in order to reach a given rank are perpetually increasing. This is true in Starcraft, Dota, Counter-Strike, Smash, Street Fighter, etc... every meaningful esport, plus plenty that aren't. If you balance the game by looking at data from weak or average players, you're ignoring the insights into balance provided by looking at the best players.
But you're simply kicking the can down the road: those insights from current elite players are what an average player will be expected to know in the future. Pros are already handling the new interaction correctly and accounting for it in their play- weaker players aren't yet. Thus, games must be balanced around elite play or the changes made won't reflect balance realities. Balancing around average players means deliberately choosing to have a meta that's constantly in flux and constantly in need of updates.
Perfect balance is a measurable goal. You can judge how balanced an asymmetric game is by examining various usage and win rates and evaluate whether a game is moving closer to or farther away from perfect balance as it's patched. No game will ever hit that goal, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't aim for it. The inevitable errors made in attempting to achieve perfect balance (and other changes made for the sake of design rather than balance) should determine the metagame- not what units or characters happened to get patched this season. Too many games continue to get this wrong.
How should a competitive scene even exist if balance wasn't revolving around the top? Remove Zealot Shields cause noobs can't micro against chargelots? Every game with a pro scene focuses on the top if im not mistaken, and imo for good reason - let's say Terran is the "baseline most difficult race to play well" for this argument's sake and therefore receives buffs not fit for pro play - over time, we would be back to the glory days of GomTvT in a more extreme manner than back then.
On March 19 2025 04:36 SharkStarcraft wrote: How should a competitive scene even exist if balance wasn't revolving around the top? Remove Zealot Shields cause noobs can't micro against chargelots? Every game with a pro scene focuses on the top if im not mistaken, and imo for good reason - let's say Terran is the "baseline most difficult race to play well" for this argument's sake and therefore receives buffs not fit for pro play - over time, we would be back to the glory days of GomTvT in a more extreme manner than back then.
Competitive scene is suffering despite balancing only around the top. Game is just not fun to play at lower skill levels. I'm not great in Overwatch either but damn is that game fun (until I get burned-out but that's every game).
You can aim buffs and nerfs to target units with high skill ceiling vs low skill ceiling so that pro scene vs casual scene are both considered in the process.
No one is asking for a drastic change that leads to one race dominating. So save your fearmongering. If you don't see the problem with Clem choosing Protoss vs T because he cannot get enough practice vs T on ladder, that's a sad situation even for the pros.
Noobs also matter because when young noobs pick up the game, and gradually get better at it, they might become pros. If you make the game oppressive at lower skill levels, they won't become the next pro players.
On March 19 2025 04:36 SharkStarcraft wrote: How should a competitive scene even exist if balance wasn't revolving around the top? Remove Zealot Shields cause noobs can't micro against chargelots? Every game with a pro scene focuses on the top if im not mistaken, and imo for good reason - let's say Terran is the "baseline most difficult race to play well" for this argument's sake and therefore receives buffs not fit for pro play - over time, we would be back to the glory days of GomTvT in a more extreme manner than back then.
Competitive scene is suffering despite balancing only around the top. Game is just not fun to play at lower skill levels. I'm not great in Overwatch either but damn is that game fun (until I get burned-out but that's every game).
You can aim buffs and nerfs to target units with high skill ceiling vs low skill ceiling so that pro scene vs casual scene are both considered in the process.
No one is asking for a drastic change that leads to one race dominating. So save your fearmongering. If you don't see the problem with Clem choosing Protoss vs T because he cannot get enough practice vs T on ladder, that's a sad situation even for the pros.
Noobs also matter because when young noobs pick up the game, and gradually get better at it, they might become pros. If you make the game oppressive at lower skill levels, they won't become the next pro players.
I don't agree. How could you buff a unit for lower skill levels that wouldn't break them at pro level? Even automatic injects or something like that would give pros a huge edge too. Could you give an example of a sensible change?
The high barrier of entry is one of the main reasons SC2 experienced its downfall, I'm not arguing against that - but that's the nature of the game, you can't compare it to Overwatch, it's just a highly complex game by nature. A few tweaks here and there won't change the fact that a competitive SC2 looks like rocket science to the uninformed.
In my opinion, making the campaign free to play was a good start, as I feel like it best eases people new to RTS into the game. That and constant patches, let's not call it catering towards lower level play, but quality of life changes for everyone, would have done wonders, especially during a time such as BL inf.
EPT
