EPTWe need to continue talking about the recent patches and where to go from here as a community.
StarCraft has shaped a massive part of my life - I’ve learnt so much and met amazing people. I know there are many people sharing this sentiment. That is why watching the decline over the last few patches has been rough.
Balance changes lately are stitched together Frankenstein-style - some community suggestions here and there, some random surprises with no explanation. Blizzard simply has not allocated the resources for an unbiased expert with a vision for how to improve the game.
I've spent far too many hours over the last 15 years thinking about balance and patches. What follows is a framework for judging patches, and for making better patches.
Like most of my other StarCraft posts over the years this will be long and theoretical and at parts ranty. My hope is that the persevering reader will be rewarded with some new perspectives.
The goal of this post is not to complain about the recent patches. Rather, the goal of this article is to help out everyone involved in suggesting and making changes, and to share a framework that can be used for more meaningful future discussions.
Chapters 2–3 cover the fundamentals - what I believe are the most important aspects to understand when it comes to patches. Chapter 4 applies them to the current patch and chapter 5 lays out where I think we should go from here. Chapter 6 is folded - with some bonus hot takes & wilder ideas for those interested. Finally, chapter 7 has some polls to see where the community stands.
2. What is the goal of balance patches?
The simple answer is to make the game fun to play and fun to watch.
We want to hook in the casual player that reads the patch notes and based on that alone, decides whether to boot the game up again or let it keep collecting dust.
This section introduces terminology that can be used for meaningful discussions. Let’s break “fun” down into:
- Balance - no explanation needed.
- StarCraft Lore
Let the three races stay meaningfully different and keep their identity. Zerg should feel "swarmy" etc. - Flow-state
StarCraft is full of mechanics that start out as pure friction and, over time, become subconscious second nature. The feeling of flow and engagement is very satisfying.
Before digging into Novelty and Familiarity below, it is crucial that we use these terms in the same way. This is easiest explained with the following back-story for why these terms are needed.
We often see discussions where person A says “we should have as few and small changes as possible”, and person B says “we should have more changes and mix things up”. My goal with this post is to be objective and helpful, but the discussion that A and B are having is a useless zero-sum game. Instead of looking at just “new things vs keeping things consistent” we can realize that both these terms have positives and negatives. So let’s split these into 4 cases instead:
- “Bad new things” - A new change where there's nothing to figure out - no interesting decision tree opens up. For example if marines fire slightly slower with slightly higher damage. Now you have to do the work to retrain your brain and muscle memory without any reward.
- “Good new things” - aka Novelty. This adds puzzles, tactics, and experiences to explore.
- “Bad consistency” - This is when things are repetitive and boring rather than feeling meaningful. An extreme example is having to inject larva every 10 seconds and if you forget once you immediately lose the game. That would create a very consistent experience, but it would be exhausting rather than enjoyable.
- “Good consistency” aka Familiarity - This is where we have a solid foundation and feel like the ground is not moving below our feet. We are able to maintain our positive flows. If our fundamental skills and knowledge constantly get crushed then the playing experience would be focused on re-training those and getting back to where you used to be. On the flip side, with a solid foothold we can focus on the fun novelties and explore new things at our own pace.
Suddenly the fight between person A and B can be more nuanced and rephrased as “A wants novelty and consistency, but consistency is a bit more important for them.”, “B wants novelty and consistency, but novelty is a bit more important for them”. This is no longer a zero-sum game - we can create patches that make both of them happy.
- Novelty
Humans are curious. Novelty is fun in itself. Novelty can come from new changes but it can also be generated from the players themselves in a game that encourages exploration. - Familiarity
The feeling of solid ground; being able to explore at your own pace without the basics shifting under you. Almost every change disturbs familiarity to some degree, but some more than others.- An educational example in StarCraft is that making a unit cost more messes significantly with familiarity since existing builds are destroyed and the player will initially feel like resources are disappearing and are lower than expected. The player might also get stuck trying to make something they can't quite afford and it breaks flow.
- If we instead reverse it and lower the cost of something, it does not prevent you from playing the exact same build as before. Instead it just lightly encourages you to make even more stuff to spend the extra money.
- It's exactly the same with cooldown times or attack speeds. If you increase the shooting rate of a unit it will still be possible to stutter-step at the same speed as before, it is just less optimal and you're encouraged (but not forced) to train and improve it.
- While familiarity is not very important for pros since they will play hours daily and quickly get used to the new stuff, it is much more important for returning and casual players.
- Imagine you come back to play some SC for the first time in a few months with fresh expectations and plans. In game 1 you lose a frustrating key fight because subgroup-priority has changed. In game 2 you lose because all your builds were taken away from you. In game 3 you thought your probes would escape the widow mine but the lock-on time is now shorter and you lose to the first widow mine drop.
- To some degree we all know returning to SC will feel a bit like this, but we should aim to minimize this struggle. Otherwise many returning players will give up instead of making a real comeback.
- An educational example in StarCraft is that making a unit cost more messes significantly with familiarity since existing builds are destroyed and the player will initially feel like resources are disappearing and are lower than expected. The player might also get stuck trying to make something they can't quite afford and it breaks flow.
- Diversity in strategies
For the playing experience this might be a bit controversial since some people like to do the same thing over and over, but this is crucial for the viewers to stay engaged over time. - Back-and-forth
Once again this is even more important for the viewers than for the players, but the ability for comebacks to happen makes the game more exciting for everyone. - Dopamine and other brain chemicals
This is admittedly an extremely messy category. How do you measure this? Isn’t it too subjective? But sometimes we just have to ask the question if a change makes the game feel better and we will know the answer in our stomachs. Does reading the patch notes trigger excitement for the new or feelings of loss for what you no longer have?
As a simple example, crushing a ton of marines with a giant ultralisk feels amazing. Being rewarded for microing and paying attention to something feels great. Predicting your opponent's move and hard-countering it makes for a sweet victory.
3. Core Concepts of SC game theory
Finally, before we can judge if changes are good or not I want to highlight some important game theory that has been repeatedly overlooked in patches. This chapter will simply consist of some separate sections dealing with one aspect at a time.
StarCraft is complex
Similar to nature’s ecosystems, seemingly small changes can have large rippling effects, and it can be near impossible to predict exactly how they will play out beforehand.
The key is having small iterations, and admitting mistakes with rollbacks of problematic changes to find alternative approaches.
The different game stages are tightly connected
Not just in chronological order! Changes to the end-game will affect which midgame playstyle is chosen, since it is dangerous to max out on a midgame army that cannot transition into the end-game smoothly.
Similarly, the early game and midgame are extremely tightly coupled, since if you have a weak transition between them it becomes difficult to take a 3rd or 4th base and your opponent will simply outscale you. This means that changes to the midgame will affect which openings are valid, and vice versa.
A small change to something common is more impactful on balance than a big change to a niche play
First of all there is the obvious reason for this: if something is seen in 10 games out of 10 while something else is seen in 1/10 games, the former will have a bigger effect.
Looking at the recent patches we saw a buff to larva spawn rate which affects 10/10 games and the early, mid and late game, while adepts and colossi with +2 and +3 are slightly stronger which affects a small amount of games. And out of the games that actually include adepts and colossi, it has 0 effect on both the early game and early midgame, and also 0 effect on the end-game since adepts and colossi are not end-game units.
There’s also another reason niche changes can have tiny impacts. Essentially everything in SC has a counter (end-game aside). So if you buff something niche then the opponent can also react by blindly preparing more for it or changing their playstyle which makes the niche strategy come into play less. Similarly, a nerf can be dodged by switching to another playstyle instead.
As an example, suppose we have a world where Protoss opens with HT in every single PvT and has a 60% win-rate. Now suppose a patch comes along and nerfs HT openings by increasing the storm research time. Maybe Protosses then switch to opening with colossus instead. Colossus might have a 59% win-rate and then balance was barely affected at all even though HT was previously seen in every game.
Timings are at the core of every strategy
I purposely use the phrase timings as opposed to timing attacks to emphasize that in addition to head-on timing attacks, I am also talking about the timing that harassment hits and also defensive timings.
In the earlygame and early midgame, time is often a bigger factor than pure cost efficiency. While it matters in every matchup, it is most illustrative against Zerg since they are more flexible. If you delay an attack against Zerg by 10 seconds (and hit with the same number of units) then Zerg can drone for 10 seconds longer before having to build units. With 3 hatcheries and 3 queens that means 6 extra drones. If you then have 56 drones instead of 50 that means the Zerg has 12% more economy. Or the less greedy person might instead note that the Zerg can have 6 more roaches against e.g. a hellbat or zealot all in, which will snowball the fight. The non-Zerg races will have some combination of the above; a bigger eco and a bigger army. The defender might also have a defensive upgrade or building finishing in time.
It is therefore important to keep in mind that changing how quickly things hit often has a bigger effect than it sounds. For example, if oracles cost 25 extra minerals it would not change the oracle timings at all, but if they build 5 seconds slower it would make life much easier for the defending player, especially against 2 or 3 oracles which would hit significantly later.
Hidden threats have a huge impact just by existing even if they are rarely seen in the game
If you play safe, you always need to balance the things you want (eco, preparing your attacks, teching, upgrading) with being able to defend against the most hard-hitting attacks possible given your current scouting. The hidden threats that matter are the biggest extremes, e.g. a strong straight up attack, cloaked units, air units, or even massive hidden greed. Caution has to be taken when affecting these extremes even if they are very rarely seen in games, because it will modify what a safe player must be prepared for.
There is another funky counterintuitive effect that comes from this also:
Buffing a unit sometimes leads to fewer of them being built
One reason for this is that SC is a game of partially hidden information, so you tend to blind counter the biggest threats.
For example, if we buff mutalisks so much that Protosses are forced to blind counter them with a phoenix opening then mutalisks will never actually be built.
There is also another completely separate cause for this effect. Some units are built for specific reasons, you might call them tools (that thing that protoss has better). Once they fulfil their purpose it is not worth making any more of them. For example, if you buff viking damage people might stop making vikings at a lower number since then you need fewer vikings to take down broods / colossi / tempests, allowing the Terran to do more drops and counter-attacks instead, or build ghosts sooner.
Different stats have different roles
This is perhaps the most obvious but also the most important. In the earlygame and early midgame the time of getting units out is the most important. In the later midgame the general unit strength and cost efficiency is important, and in the lategame and end-game the “supply efficiency” becomes important. When I say supply efficiency I mean how much unit X adds to your maxed army considering its supply cost . A high (cost / supply) - ratio of a unit generally indicates that we encourage players to build it in the late and endgame but maybe not in the midgame. Some units with a very high cost / supply - ratio are ghosts, ravens, BC, HT, archons, mothership, carrier, banelings, infestors, brood lords, corruptors.
A high gas cost is a way to prevent massing of a unit and make it difficult to make in the earlygame. E.g. If we make mutalisks cost 25 minerals and 150 gas instead of 100/100 they will still have similar value when making ~6-10 of them, but it would become harder to make them the core part of the army as we sometimes see in ZvZ and ZvP.
Protoss Shields is another useful tool for making more targeted changes since it only affects the Protoss matchups if you e.g. give a unit bonus damage vs shields. It also has asymmetry in mid / lategame in PvT where in the lategame the shields are fragile due to mass EMP while that is not the case in the earlygame. Use this simple way to target certain matchups or game stages.
The biological marker is similar to shields in that one race (Zerg) has far more of those units.
There are more advanced stats to look into as well. Adding HP helps vs all units while adding armor helps a different amount against different units.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the number of shots to kill something is not directly inversely proportional to the damage. As an example, when the adept was nerfed from 23 to 22 damage it made them almost equally strong against everything except scvs and marines where they suddenly took another shot to kill them. Similarly vs mines and hellions that have exactly double the health of scvs and marines they took 5 shots instead of 4. This was a nifty way to nerf it specifically in PvT while keeping it almost identical in PvZ since drones and lings take 2 shots to kill regardless.
Use these little tricks to target changes with more precision to avoid unwanted side-effects.
4. Discussing the recent changes
Changes can be categorized into 3 buckets. For each change I'll look at its apparent goal and what else it touched.
Type 1 change - Attempting to fix an existing issue
These types of changes should be targeted with precision. If we nerf X, we don’t want to also nerf Y and W.
Instead of nerfing X directly, you can add counters to X, also with high precision, to prevent messing with familiarity and flow while also introducing novelty at the same time.
Also, ensure first that there are existing viable alternatives to X, otherwise it will have a big impact on balance. If there are none, you need to buff or add an alternative.
- Queens cost 25 minerals more and hatcheries 25 minerals less.
Apparent goal: Fix the issue of mass queen openings, which tend to lead to a defensive Zerg in the entire early game and midgame since queens are much stronger defensively than aggressively.
What else it touched: Very little! Small effect on the opening thanks to the clever hatch cost change, small effect on the midgame due to queens not being too key there, and small effect on the late game since 25 minerals is not a big deal there compared to e.g. making queens cost more supply or be weaker instead. Importantly, Zerg had alternative viable playstyles with both roach and zergling openings. Flow and familiarity were also minimally affected compared to e.g. nerfing the stats of the queen.
- CC cost goes from 400 -> 300.
Apparent goal: Fix the issue of Terrans struggling to take their first expansion at a good time, which became difficult due to the 8 worker start. Zerg has queens and Protoss has chrono boost so they can build workers more quickly than Terran. The goal was met.
What else it touched: Unfortunately basically everything, and in unwanted ways. It makes every Terran timing faster and it makes every timing against Terran weaker. On top of that, it encourages Terrans to mass orbitals and sit and turtle for the late game which is not how most people want Terran to be played.
- Increased larva spawn rate
Apparent goal: The patch notes had 0 description, but my guess is that similar to Terran the 8 worker start was troublesome for Zerg. Zerg wants to only make drones early, uninterrupted, meanwhile Terran and Protoss would come across harassing them while building workers behind the harassment.
What else it touched: Buffing larva spawn rate is cute since it doesn’t mess with familiarity and flow much, but if this needs reverting then that will be really annoying for Zergs. It also doesn’t affect the end-game. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but buffing a core mechanic that helps with every timing tends to have bigger implications and snowball more than it sounds. Did we want to help Zerg in the midgame and late game also? If yes this was a brilliant change. If not it was a big oversight. Hard to say.
- Abduct now considers Siege Tanks a valid target
Apparent goal: Fix the issue of Terrans turtling with tanks in TvZ and the insane cost efficiency of the TvZ late game. This change helps.
What else it touched: Very little, it also improves the feel of StarCraft when we avoid “exceptions” like this one - we don’t want players being confused about which units can be abducted and which can't. Giving credit here for simply reverting a previous change that was “not it”.
Type 2 change - Novelty
- Microbial Shroud can now be cast without requiring an upgrade from the Infestation Pit
Apparent goal: Fix the issue of people not feeling like using this niche spell. This change helps with that significantly.
What else it touched: This is a beautiful example change, since it has 0 effect on existing strong timings, 0 effect on the end-game and almost no effect on balance since infestor openings are currently niche. It also does not mess with flow or familiarity at all. Also, if for some reason this starts becoming a problem when people figure it out it is very easy to just nerf it in the future.
- All armor upgrades for Zerg are 50/50 cheaper
Apparent goal: The patch notes said nothing, but I am guessing it is related to adding more novelty in decision making in which upgrade to choose in ZvZ and ZvP, and in ZvT to help keep up with Terrans who rather recently got their upgrades made cheaper in patch 5.0.13.
What else it touched: Does not mess with familiarity or flow. Will probably introduce some new timings. Small buff to Zerg in every MU, especially against Terran where armor is important due to the low damage per shot of marines. In ZvP it will mostly affect the strength of zealots, carriers and void rays.
- Gateways build units faster after warpgate is done, and warpgates cost 25/25 to transform
Apparent goal: Introduce strategic choice in when to use warpgates and when to use gateways. This goal was met!
What else it touched: This change disrupts familiarity and flow significantly. All Protoss attack timings are also significantly weaker. If you want to hit a stargate or robo attack there is no reason to start a void ray or colossus 60 seconds before you attack because they will not have time to build and move across the map. Instead you warp units close to the attack moments before attacking. This is similar to how hard-hitting Zerg ravager attacks will reinforce the last wave with zerglings since roaches would not have time to run across the map before the attack hits. As mentioned in chapter 3, the fact that the hard-hitting threats are now weaker is significant. All that is not to say that warpgates are always the better choice in this patch. Producing from regular gateways has other advantages not related to hitting strong timings. You can cancel the units reactively. You can also squeeze out more units defensively and for a lower cost if you e.g. want to transition to non-gateway units after. It’s also possible to simply hit less hard timings and do more transitions instead.
- “Slow warp-ins” are removed, now they will always be fast
Apparent goal: Honestly not sure. Maybe just make life smoother for Protosses, and this is doable since warpgate timings were nerfed in other ways, otherwise this would be OP.
What else it touched: Encourages Protosses to gamble and build aggressive pylons with their all-ins instead of a warp prism. Warp prisms have better skill-showcase and are less random - some games will be decided simply by whether the pylon is found or not.
- 8 worker start + accompanying eco changes
Apparent goal: Add decision-making and action to the early game. Make expansions less natural and the path to the end-game less direct. Mix up the openings to see fresh things. Was the goal met? We see new opening builds of course, but the rest I would argue that nobody knows, this is super complex and there were so many other changes at the same time that it becomes impossible to attribute cause and effect.
What else it touched: A massive hit to familiarity and flow, all knowledge and muscle memory of build orders were thrown out the window. This also has balance implications. I think the main issue was that it takes longer for Terran to build 4 workers than it does for Zerg and Protoss so they fell behind, and the 300 mineral CC was introduced to compensate for this, but as mentioned that has big side-effects outside the early game. But also that begs the question, if the goal is to make the game balanced around the same fast expansions, what is the point of reducing the worker count in the first place?
My personal take on the whole 8 worker vs 12 worker discussion:
+ Show Spoiler +It’s a fun idea! Some people have come up with really interesting arguments for this. Maybe in theory you can make a better game from scratch with 8.
That said, the tricky part is that in the last decade the game has been tweaked and balanced around starting with 12 workers.
Changing such a fundamental piece as the number of starting workers requires turning other levers, and that forces turning of other levers, and it cascades out of control. Doing this in a controlled way would at best take a year and require constant work and very clever adjustments. I would personally argue this time could be spent instead focusing on the midgame and coming up with fun novelties.
We have to separate the discussion “would SC be better if it had an 8 worker start?” vs “would SC become better if we now introduce an 8 worker start?”
Type 3 change - QoL
A lot of great ones! No need to highlight or discuss too deeply.
- Changelings’ deaths are contagious to other nearby Changelings.
It is pretty annoying to spend 30% of your late game time just clicking changelings. - Fixed an issue where SCVs could not have build orders queued sequentially onto structures already being constructed by another SCV.
Doesn’t make normal macro significantly easier, just helps out in some complicated and frustrating scenarios. - Mule Repair is now set to auto-cast by default (Mules with a harvest order still do not attempt to repair units).
Clever! Muling to repair has a massive mineral-cost, it doesn’t need a micro-cost as well. Will feel bad though when you have a damaged building nearby and misclick a mule on the mineral patch and it no longer shows up as an “inactive worker”. Hope to see this in a pro game one day
More controversial
- Changelings automatically inherit the current order queue of the casting Overseer.
Primarily a QoL improvement for Zerg in that it makes it easier to spread out mass changelings when you have mass overseers. In other words, it negates the other changeling QoL change and means non-Zergs will have to click more spread out changelings.
5. Future Inspiration: What to Strive For
Considering how complex StarCraft is, there are three different paths forward for keeping SC fair and fun.
On one extreme we make unpredictable changes followed by constant adjustments. The only issue here is that Blizzard is too inactive for this approach to work.
The other extreme is to revert to a stage most of us agreed was fun and balanced and call it a day. No more changes needed, the game is great. The issue here is many of us would miss novelty.
What I propose in the current stage is a middle ground, where we are cautious and make small changes with clear goals.
- Keep up the QoL changes. Focus them on making the game more satisfying, not less difficult.
- When there are issues, make precise fixes that don’t mess with familiarity or have widespread effects.
- Introduce fun novelty, targeted primarily at the midgame. In my mind, the goal-state is having a game where we transition between different mid and late game techs rather than aiming directly for the end-game. The best games strategically for playing and definitely for viewing are when both players have transitioned a few times, making the game state unique and unknown and exciting for everyone.
They should:- Be buffs that sound exciting
- Have room for exploration
- Be niche, have clear counters but still have a role when those counters are not in play
- Encourage strategic transitions and diversity as opposed to introducing new all-ins
- Target the midgame
But also be careful when introducing this novelty that you avoid impacting the points from the previous section:- Aim for a tiny effect on the early game and end-game
- Aim for a tiny effect on key hidden threats
- Aim for niche buffs that will not be seen in every game
- Aim for changes that have minimal effect on existing strong timings
- Be buffs that sound exciting
When each change has a clear goal it is easy to see what works and what doesn’t. Revert changes that did not have the desired effect and introduce alternatives.
6. Hot takes & wilder ideas
+ Show Spoiler +
The above aimed to give an objective and informative breakdown, followed by some ideas that I strongly believe in. Here are some opinions that I don’t know if they are good or not but I want to also throw them out there.
Not every MU has to be balanced in the late game
A MU can be perfectly balanced with a 50-50 win-rate even if one race has a stronger late game. If done right, we can also encourage the race with a stronger end-game to have strong harass and non-all-in timings that disrupt the opponent, which still maintains back-and-forth aggression.
Poll: SC is most fun to watch when …
every MU has a fair late and end-game (1)
50%
either, this is not an important aspect for me (1)
50%
some matchups have an uneven end-game (0)
0%
2 total votes
either, this is not an important aspect for me (1)
some matchups have an uneven end-game (0)
2 total votes
Your vote: SC is most fun to watch when …
(Vote): every MU has a fair late and end-game
(Vote): some matchups have an uneven end-game
(Vote): either, this is not an important aspect for me
Objective balancing
Keeping SC balanced requires an unbiased expert. Since we don’t really have this, another approach would be to make balance decisions objective rather than subjective. What we have to let go of is the idea that “the top N players of race X are better than the top N players of race Y”. Of course I agree that is never perfectly true. But in my opinion the subjective view people have of the top pros' skill is equally far off and biased.
That said, one approach for objective balancing is to set some measurement X for how well the different races do, and balance the game based on that. X could be prize money, who wins the biggest tournaments etc. Then we can have simple levers to pull balance-wise based on that. From what I could come up with, the simplest approach would be adjusting the max supply. So e.g. split the prize money over the last 6 months on the different races and the top race loses 1 max supply and the losing race gains 1 max supply. Then this is repeated every 2 months. The exact details can probably be worked out a bit cleaner, but this is the general idea.
Poll: The proposed “objective balancing” would be
Less fair than the current balance approach (2)
100%
Equally fair as the current approach (0)
0%
More fair than the current balance approach (0)
0%
2 total votes
Equally fair as the current approach (0)
More fair than the current balance approach (0)
2 total votes
Your vote: The proposed “objective balancing” would be
(Vote): Less fair than the current balance approach
(Vote): Equally fair as the current approach
(Vote): More fair than the current balance approach
Introduce mutually exclusive or poisonous end-game upgrades
My favorite part about SC a decade ago used to be doing complex tech-transitions and scouting and predicting the opponent's army choices and countering them. The years of the balance council emphasized micro and unit activity over hard counters. Nowadays you can play Protoss at pro level with only zealots, stalkers, immortals, HT and tempest (with an oracle here and there) in every matchup.
After retiring and playing other games I’ve re-found my old tech-transition joy in Battle Aces and Mechabellum. We can take inspiration from what those games did well. Battle Aces forced asymmetry from the beginning of the game by basically being a simplified SC where you pick a subset of the units before the game starts. At the start of the game both players see what options the other person has, and can start mapping out a tech-transition strategy which is unique in every game.
Units in Mechabellum have many different upgrades that take the unit in different directions. One upgrade might increase the unit’s attack but at the same time reduce their range. Another upgrade might increase their splash but reduce their damage. And for every upgrade you buy for a unit the other upgrades increase in price. This means that you’re forced to choose what direction you want the unit to go in since you can’t just get every upgrade like you can in the StarCraft end-game. It also encourages diversity in units, and creates great strategic diversity between games.
Rather than completely changing how SC works or introducing randomness in the beginning, I think the end-game is a perfect place to start mixing in this type of diversity in SC. Either with poisonous upgrades that buff one thing and nerf another, or with mutually exclusive upgrades where you’re only allowed to pick one of them. For example, imagine an upgrade that increases the range of all units and spells but reduces their damage. Or an upgrade that increases the movement speed of all units but decreases their health. Or two mutually exclusive upgrades where one gives all units 8 extra vision range and the other lets you walk larva away from the hatchery to anywhere you want. Of course these types of upgrades can also be unit-specific, e.g. giving the cyclone the choice of two late game upgrades that either gives it 4x damage vs buildings or makes it immune to stun and gives it auto-repair similar to the reaper. After balancing those upgrades out so that we see approximately half of each one, we will see increased diversity of playstyles in the late game. We make it more possible for different players to showcase different playstyles. And instead of always converging on the same end-game we can branch out in unique directions in different games.
Poll: Creating end-game diversity with poisonous / mutually exclusive ups is
A good idea (1)
100%
Neutral (0)
0%
A bad idea (0)
0%
1 total votes
Neutral (0)
A bad idea (0)
1 total votes
Your vote: Creating end-game diversity with poisonous / mutually exclusive ups is
Ending note
This article would be incomplete without mentioning “Patches’ versus mod”. While it has many similar goals to what I have written about (e.g. “Increase the depth and relevance of the mid game.”), it is far more ambitious and introduces dozens of changes. Familiarity is not highly prioritized, but it introduces many fun novelties unlike the recent Blizzard patches.
Links
5.0.16 Patch Notes
5.0.16 Hotfix Patch Notes
5.0.16b Hotfix Patch Notes
Patchs' mod
7. Polls
Finally, some polls to see where the community stands on this topic.
Poll: What kind of player are you?
Former player (9)
39%
Casual player (8)
35%
Active ladder player (5)
22%
Pro or semi-pro (1)
4%
Returning player (0)
0%
Mostly a viewer (0)
0%
23 total votes
Casual player (8)
Active ladder player (5)
Pro or semi-pro (1)
Returning player (0)
Mostly a viewer (0)
23 total votes
Your vote: What kind of player are you?
(Vote): Former player
(Vote): Casual player
(Vote): Returning player
(Vote): Active ladder player
(Vote): Pro or semi-pro
(Vote): Mostly a viewer
Poll: The recent patches made me play ...
Much less than before (16)
73%
The same amount (4)
18%
More than before (1)
5%
Much more than before (1)
5%
Less than before (0)
0%
22 total votes
The same amount (4)
More than before (1)
Much more than before (1)
Less than before (0)
22 total votes
Your vote: The recent patches made me play ...
(Vote): Much less than before
(Vote): Less than before
(Vote): The same amount
(Vote): More than before
(Vote): Much more than before
Poll: Because of the recent patches I watch SC ...
The same amount (8)
36%
Less than before (8)
36%
Much less than before (4)
18%
Much more than before (2)
9%
More than before (0)
0%
22 total votes
Less than before (8)
Much less than before (4)
Much more than before (2)
More than before (0)
22 total votes
Your vote: Because of the recent patches I watch SC ...
(Vote): Much less than before
(Vote): Less than before
(Vote): The same amount
(Vote): More than before
(Vote): Much more than before
Poll: What do we want now after the recent patches?
Revert and introduce fun novelties that better preserve familiarity e.g. some Patches' mod stuff (13)
59%
Keep 8 worker start but keep iterating to fix the related issues (5)
23%
Revert and stop changing the game, it was good before (3)
14%
Keep as it is today (1)
5%
Revert and put in every single Patches mod change instead (0)
0%
22 total votes
Keep 8 worker start but keep iterating to fix the related issues (5)
Revert and stop changing the game, it was good before (3)
Keep as it is today (1)
Revert and put in every single Patches mod change instead (0)
22 total votes
Your vote: What do we want now after the recent patches?
(Vote): Keep as it is today
(Vote): Keep 8 worker start but keep iterating to fix the related issues
(Vote): Revert and stop changing the game, it was good before
(Vote): Revert and introduce fun novelties that better preserve familiarity e.g. some Patches' mod stuff
(Vote): Revert and put in every single Patches mod change instead
