EPTIf I believed this new direction could be fleshed out and given the care it needs then maybe but we all know that's not the case.
TL Poll: How do you feel about the 5.0.16 PTR balance chan…
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Moonerz
United States467 Posts
If I believed this new direction could be fleshed out and given the care it needs then maybe but we all know that's not the case. | ||
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ProTech
United States491 Posts
Far as the ECO changes are concerned, literally is what the game needs. LOTV eco changes were by far the worst thing they could have ever done to the game, so I'm happier than a pig in shit to see the game go back to the ceiling in terms of skill. | ||
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BaiZhuZhu
19 Posts
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BaiZhuZhu
19 Posts
On May 30 2026 19:48 WombaT wrote: Implementing the UI tweaks Stormgate and other modern RTS games have made is a no-brainer for me, presuming it’s non-trivial to do Lemme customise unit priority dagbabbit! HAHA THE OLD FANS OF SC2 WILL NEVER ALLOW ANY CHANGES LIKE THAT | ||
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Cygnus
United States853 Posts
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Sorusaba
310 Posts
On May 30 2026 18:21 axi wrote: Blizzard looked at a skyscraper teetering on collapse and decided to blow up the foundation. This isn’t a “balance patch”—it’s a catastrophic demolition of SC2’s core DNA. The 5.0.16 PTR doesn’t iterate; it obliterates. Your “pro scene” is already on life support. Most pros are semi-retired, and the few still playing aren’t theorycrafting—they’re mourning. You’ve taken a competitive ecosystem running on fumes and poured sand in the gas tank. Few will waste months re-learning economy, supply, and production timings because some detached developer had a “vision” for one-to-three-base gameplay. The casuals? They’re not adapting—they’re lost. The playerbase that endured a decade of neglect is now told to forget everything they know about macro, builds, and timing. But the real crime is the knowledge death spiral. Veterans who spent years refining guides and coaching methods now have curricula that are worthless overnight. They can’t teach what they don’t understand. Meanwhile, new players—already fighting SC2’s brutal learning curve—have been cut off at the knees. They learn half a build, the patch hits, and suddenly they’re stuck in a game that no longer resembles the one they were trying to learn. You’ve walled off generations of players and bricked up the door. SC2 wasn’t dying because the early game was too short. It was dying because Blizzard abandoned it, then occasionally returned to kick it in the teeth. This isn’t a revival. It’s the final shovel of dirt on the coffin. Why are you subjecting humans to read your generated text? It's just a forum post. Why not write it yourself? :´) | ||
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ETisME
12828 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27253 Posts
On June 09 2026 12:42 BaiZhuZhu wrote: HAHA THE OLD FANS OF SC2 WILL NEVER ALLOW ANY CHANGES LIKE THAT They’re not BW players haha. Folks weren’t exactly massively enthusiastic about Stormgate, but least from my perusing of the subreddit/knowing a lot of SC2 players IRL, at least some of the QoL improvements were actually pretty popular and people would be OK if they were ported to SC2 Other games like BAR do cool shit too, although some I dunno if they’d mesh well. Also some people may be against changes, but ultimately come to like them. I myself was against displaying worker counts on minerals etc in SC2 and thought it ‘dumbed down’ the game in terms of visually gauging and boxing workers etc. But nah it was actually a pretty bloody good change, especially as Legacy made things so much faster | ||
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Durnuu
13325 Posts
The creative players are all gone, and they're not coming back. | ||
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ProTech
United States491 Posts
On June 09 2026 12:41 BaiZhuZhu wrote: total crap lol. slowing down an already boring early game, WHY?!?! because you very likely started your starcraft adventures as an LoTV player. No one, and I do mean no one who has played starcraft since 1998 will agree that a 12 worker start is somehow good for the game. It removes strategic diversity and creates what we have today: an extremely stale meta that no matter how you change the balance and unit interactions it will be the same 3 builds that you rotate through, and it makes the game predictable virtually at all phases of the game. There is a reason the player base tanked from the millions to ~250K upon release, and then took the better part of 2 years for a resurgence to happen which frankly only happened because of F2P ( another disaster for SC2 ) and Covid, so the game company got the absolute wrong understanding of what was really happening with the player numbers. The only thing that has kept this game alive to this day, is CO-OP which the AI suggests to have between 500K~1.5m players. | ||
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ProTech
United States491 Posts
On June 10 2026 20:45 Durnuu wrote: I like the changes, but honestly ? It's too late. The only players left are the ones that like the current state of LotV. The creative players are all gone, and they're not coming back. I agree on some level that the ship has sailed, simply due to how the gaming environment as a whole has devolved. Video gaming isn't really about a high skill ceiling anymore, its more about being able to easily create content and create game popularity through this type of networking. In todays environment, SC2 doesn't really have the qualities to captivate the type of " gamer " players on average have devolved into. RTS in general is just a niche that's being filled for old school gamers. which you can very clearly see by looking at viewership metrics, virtually all games that take " skill " do not have what you would consider a " reasonable " player count/viewership count. | ||
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NinjaDuckBob
186 Posts
In an ideal world, I'd love to see a Protoss that isn't reliant on Warp Gate, Forcefield, Adept Shade, and Recall to compete. | ||
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TelecoM
United States10819 Posts
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ProTech
United States491 Posts
On June 11 2026 14:03 TelecoM wrote: I love it, please make it go live already. While we're all used to changes going live mid-season, I sincerely doubt we're going to see the patch go live until next season start. The changes are so radical I don't think anyone with working brain cells would implement these kinds of changes mid season. | ||
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Robert White
5 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17737 Posts
On June 11 2026 05:52 NinjaDuckBob wrote: In an ideal world, I'd love to see a Protoss that isn't reliant on Warp Gate, Forcefield, Adept Shade, and Recall to compete. I remember the good old days in 2003 when 4 zealots clumped together scared my marines behind any cover they could find. They should make the Zealot and Stalker more durable if they are removing instant mobility gimmicks. | ||
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Necr0KAM
5 Posts
at least: Scourge Goliath and Arbiter; 1 per race. TY | ||
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ProTech
United States491 Posts
On June 11 2026 22:39 Robert White wrote: PTR balance changes are always interesting because they can feel very different once players start testing them in real games. I’d like to see how the changes affect each matchup over a few weeks before judging them too strongly. One gigantic misconception that goes around in SC2 communities in general is that the theory side of StarCraft somehow translates into the practical side of StarCraft. I've said it many times, but I'll say it again: You are not going to have any sort of understanding about the game after 100 games, and 30 hours. The reason for this is because while YOU may have more more experience than most players, players on average have ZERO understanding of what they are doing. This is why you need thousands, upon thousands of games under your belt before you try and convince anyone who's even remotely decent at starcraft that you know what you're talking about. This is a massive mistake that developers have made in the past 11 years with LOTV, they spend too much time rushing things rather than getting an accurate reading of whats going on in the gam, thus resulting in the garbage we have in lotv. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27253 Posts
On June 12 2026 04:07 ProTech wrote: One gigantic misconception that goes around in SC2 communities in general is that the theory side of StarCraft somehow translates into the practical side of StarCraft. I've said it many times, but I'll say it again: You are not going to have any sort of understanding about the game after 100 games, and 30 hours. The reason for this is because while YOU may have more more experience than most players, players on average have ZERO understanding of what they are doing. This is why you need thousands, upon thousands of games under your belt before you try and convince anyone who's even remotely decent at starcraft that you know what you're talking about. This is a massive mistake that developers have made in the past 11 years with LOTV, they spend too much time rushing things rather than getting an accurate reading of whats going on in the gam, thus resulting in the garbage we have in lotv. What about, I dunno, fun? Do people need thousands of hours to assess that too? | ||
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ProTech
United States491 Posts
On June 12 2026 04:18 WombaT wrote: What about, I dunno, fun? Do people need thousands of hours to assess that too? From a casual player perspective, at least whats reflected in the player base numbers over LoTVs life span, its pretty clear that the casual base didn't like the 12 worker start. Its pretty easy to discern this from the MASSIVE player drop from HoTS --> LoTV. In theory, a slowed down game should cater to lower tiers of play, at least that's how it was from 1998 - 2015 Due to covid/F2P i think the blizaard got the very wrong idea with what was happening with that player spike up to 500K accounts. | ||
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