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Russian Federation8 Posts
tl;dr they just returned 5.0.15 with some minor changes
Official link:
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24301513/starcraft-ii-5-0-17-ptr-patch-notes
Developer’s Note: Following the release of the last major patch, we have been collecting and closely reviewing your feedback. Our intention was to try something new, particularly with workers, and needed time to let the meta develop in order to ensure the most accurate feedback was being considered. Based on that feedback, for patch 5.0.17 we are rolling back most balance changes to the live release of StarCraft 2 from patch 5.0.16 to 5.0.15. This will be on PTR for the next few days while we bug test, before we push to live.
Economy - Worker Start Count increased from 8 to 12.
- Default Large Mineral patch resource count increased from 1,600 to 1,800.
- Default Small Mineral patch resource count decreased from 1,100 to 900.
- Default Vespene Geyser resource count increased from 2,000 to 2,250.
- Total Default Gas per base increased from 4,500 to 5,000.
TerranCommand Center - Cost increased from 300 to 400.
- Supplies increased from 13 to 15.
Widow Mine - Attack launch delay increased from 0.85 seconds to 1.07 seconds.
Reaper - Build time reduced from 34 seconds to 32 seconds.
Ghost - Health increased from 100 to 125.
- Attack damage changed from 15 to 10 (+10 vs Light).
- Attack range reduced from 7 to 6.
- Movement speed increased from 3.85 to 3.94.
- Steady Targeting:
- Damage reduced from 170 to 130 (+40 vs Psionic).
- Energy cost reduced from 75 to 50.
- Cancels upon taking damage.
ProtossNexus - Supplies provided increased from 13 to 15.
Warpgate/ Gateways - Researching Warpgate no longer speeds up production time of units from Gateways.
- Warp-in Time is determined by 'slow power fields'.
- Universal warp-in Time splits from 4s to 11s in slow zones and 3.6 in fast zones.
- Warpgate cooldown values:
- Zealot: from 22 to 20
- Adept: from 22 to 20
- Stalker: from 22 to 23
- Sentry: from 22 to 23
- High Templar: from 35 to 32
- Dark Templar: from 35 to 32
- 'Transform to Warpgate' ability now costs 0/(0) down from 25/(25).
Shield Battery - Starting energy when placed near a Nexus will be 100, otherwise 50.
Sentry - Forcefields now only take 1 bile to destroy, down from 2.
Colossus - Colossus damage decreased from 12(+3 vs Light) to 10(+5 vs Light).
Mothership - Shields increased from 200 to 350.
- Life decreased from 400 to 350.
Adept - Adept damage modifier per attack upgrade decreased from 2(+2 vs Light) to 1(+1 vs Light).
- Train time reduced from 33 seconds to 30 seconds.
High Templar - Damage increased from 100 to 110.
Disruptor - No longer has phantom weapon.
ZergHatchery, Lair, and Hive - Supplies increased from 4 to 6.
- Cost reduced from 300 to 275.
Creep - Spread/Recede delay reduced from 0.55 seconds to 0.45 seconds.
Larva - Periodic spawn rate increased from 9.9 seconds to 10.7 seconds.
Spore Crawler - Damage against Biological reduced from 20 (+15 vs Biological) to 20 (+10 vs Biological).
Carapace Upgrades - Level 1 cost increased to 150/150 from 100/100.
- Level 2 cost increased to 200/200 from 150/150.
- Level 3 cost increased to 250/250 from 200/200.
Infestor - Microbial Shroud range decreased from 12 to 9.
- Microbial Shroud must be researched from the Infestation Pit.
- No longer has a weapon.
Viper - Abduct can no longer be cast on Siege Tanks.
Overlord - Base speed without Pneumatized Carapace increased from 0.85 seconds to 0.9 seconds.
Mutalisk - Mutalisk Glaive targeting no longer obeys attack priorities.
- Weapon arc bonus reduced from 180 to 45.
Bug Fixes - Archon merge completion sound volume reduced slightly.
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United States1963 Posts
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I could cry of happiness right now
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Nice
Seems they are working on the next one aswell
Blizz-elliot
We can't share timing yet for when the next PTR will go live but it is already being worked on. Reverting as we did today was our best option for being able to address so much of the critical feedback we've gotten on the patch, while focusing new changes as part of the next patch after 5.0.17.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft2/comments/1wuasra/5017_ptr_update/
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Bisutopia19387 Posts
I get the full revert, but I do hope that we can still expect them to try new changes and that the backlash didn't discourage them from future updates.
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I can play starcraft with clear mind after this. I didn't like the slow pace at the beginning.
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Finally, I can return to StarCraft II, which I remember most.꒰˶>ᗜ<˶꒱
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I had my doubts that Blizzard would be willing to acknowledge they made a mistake and do a full revert, but it's great news to those of us who still play StarCraft. Hopefully after this they stop making further balance patches, the game is fine.
It works for Brood War, so I see no reason why it can't work for StarCraft 2.
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I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out.
This feels like a big L to me that Blizz just goes back to what's safe before the community at large has time to really find things and learn. For example, I haven't seen a single Protoss master the ceiling of the new Warpgate changes. What if that creates some god tier player nobody has ever heard of before because he figures it out and blasts onto the scene?
But no, we get the same old LotV. Not bad. Not great. Scene isn't growing. It just is what it is. :/
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On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out.
I'm usually not someone for doom&gloom, but I think it was very clear that the pro scene was not "fine". Players of all races complained and voiced their concerned that laddering isn't fun, some players vanished, possibly because of the patch.
Not to mention that I'm quite sure this is the first time in the history of SC2 that we have multiple competing patches that were actually used in tournaments/cups.
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love you blizzard, finally I can play my favorite game again!
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On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out.
This feels like a big L to me that Blizz just goes back to what's safe before the community at large has time to really find things and learn. For example, I haven't seen a single Protoss master the ceiling of the new Warpgate changes. What if that creates some god tier player nobody has ever heard of before because he figures it out and blasts onto the scene?
But no, we get the same old LotV. Not bad. Not great. Scene isn't growing. It just is what it is. :/
pros have been practicing on the patch for 3 months. What makes you think there's some hidden way to utilize warpgates pros didn't figure out yet?
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i'm back! i did leave.
i got my Megamania, River Raid, and Chopper Command patches while I was away. 
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Did they at least keep features like spellcaster (phantom) attacks?
Edit: No, they didn't. After MONTHS of waiting you'd expect at least them porting the QoL features, but no, this is literally 5.0.15...
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On October 01 2026 05:03 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out. I'm usually not someone for doom&gloom, but I think it was very clear that the pro scene was not "fine". Players of all races complained and voiced their concerned that laddering isn't fun, some players vanished, possibly because of the patch. Not to mention that I'm quite sure this is the first time in the history of SC2 that we have multiple competing patches that were actually used in tournaments/cups.
Honestly the biggest problem is that they did a bunch of changes and then suddenly stopped, it was fine experimenting but they had to keep adjusting, they decided to stop in a very weird point.
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On October 01 2026 05:37 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out.
This feels like a big L to me that Blizz just goes back to what's safe before the community at large has time to really find things and learn. For example, I haven't seen a single Protoss master the ceiling of the new Warpgate changes. What if that creates some god tier player nobody has ever heard of before because he figures it out and blasts onto the scene?
But no, we get the same old LotV. Not bad. Not great. Scene isn't growing. It just is what it is. :/ pros have been practicing on the patch for 3 months. What makes you think there's some hidden way to utilize warpgates pros didn't figure out yet?
Exactly that. It's only been 3 months. Often takes much longer than that for big shifts. Not just warpgate, that was only an example.
How long did people play Brood War before Bisu figured out how to utilize Sair/DT appropriately?
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On October 01 2026 06:34 Lexender wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 05:03 Balnazza wrote:On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out. I'm usually not someone for doom&gloom, but I think it was very clear that the pro scene was not "fine". Players of all races complained and voiced their concerned that laddering isn't fun, some players vanished, possibly because of the patch. Not to mention that I'm quite sure this is the first time in the history of SC2 that we have multiple competing patches that were actually used in tournaments/cups. Honestly the biggest problem is that they did a bunch of changes and then suddenly stopped, it was fine experimenting but they had to keep adjusting, they decided to stop in a very weird point.
Yeah. The problem with the previous patch was that it attempted too much at once, including changes to the fundamentals of the game, which just cannot be pulled off with the sorry level of service that SC2 receives these days. The patch might have succeeded with close monitoring, constant fine-turning, and serious consideration of community feedback, but it sure did not in a single iteration plus a few rushed hotfixes, followed by months without any correction and communication.
So reverting to the previous version is definitely the right choice, but it should not be forgotten that version 15 had its own problems, with stale and oppressive metas, especially in ZvP.
Also it is a bit frustrating that they bring back even the non-abductability of tanks, the most needless and lore-inaccurate change in the history of the game.
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On October 01 2026 06:51 Mistakes wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 05:37 Charoisaur wrote:On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out.
This feels like a big L to me that Blizz just goes back to what's safe before the community at large has time to really find things and learn. For example, I haven't seen a single Protoss master the ceiling of the new Warpgate changes. What if that creates some god tier player nobody has ever heard of before because he figures it out and blasts onto the scene?
But no, we get the same old LotV. Not bad. Not great. Scene isn't growing. It just is what it is. :/ pros have been practicing on the patch for 3 months. What makes you think there's some hidden way to utilize warpgates pros didn't figure out yet? Exactly that. It's only been 3 months. Often takes much longer than that for big shifts. Not just warpgate, that was only an example. How long did people play Brood War before Bisu figured out how to utilize Sair/DT appropriately?
You're not wrong.
However, the main problem was that everyone hated playing on this patch. the early game was miserable to play with how clunky it felt (supply blocks, worker cuts etc.)
and the warpgate stuff took a lot of Protoss' racial identity and made them feel more like terran 2.0.
For exciting patches like patchessc mod I'd concede that waiting for pro players to adjust would be cool, but this weren't exciting changes whatsoever
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I still don't know why I need a separate installation for PTR
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Thank god. The previous patch was total garbage to play and to watch
Once it’s live I can finally reinstall and play the game again.
Warp gate change was still the dumbest shit ever. You don’t change something that has been the core of toss for 15 years.
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On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
The pro scene seems to be doing well.
In what universe?
I'm disappointed that they reverted and did nothing else; though I don't think I trust them to.
There's some changes conceptually that are good and healthy for the game, but were botched so hard and put together with the others the whole thing just became a disaster, and I'd assume they'll never touch any of these again since they'll be lumped as "we tried this before and it was horrible"
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On October 01 2026 06:51 Mistakes wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 05:37 Charoisaur wrote:On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out.
This feels like a big L to me that Blizz just goes back to what's safe before the community at large has time to really find things and learn. For example, I haven't seen a single Protoss master the ceiling of the new Warpgate changes. What if that creates some god tier player nobody has ever heard of before because he figures it out and blasts onto the scene?
But no, we get the same old LotV. Not bad. Not great. Scene isn't growing. It just is what it is. :/ pros have been practicing on the patch for 3 months. What makes you think there's some hidden way to utilize warpgates pros didn't figure out yet? Exactly that. It's only been 3 months. Often takes much longer than that for big shifts. Not just warpgate, that was only an example. How long did people play Brood War before Bisu figured out how to utilize Sair/DT appropriately?
Unfortunately, SC2 is no longer in its prime state, even the entire RTS has become a relative minor game category nowadays. With the shrinking player base, the game simply cannot afford to wait that long for a hope to thrive in Patch 5.0.16.
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Russian Federation10 Posts
I see people complaining, but this is okay to me! I am happy with this, I have returned.
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People always blame balance on the game dying. There have been many awful patches, it's just that a 2010 game can hardly keep up a player base when new interesting games are coming out. No one except Artosis wants to play StarCraft and only StarCraft forever.
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Was the Muta change too strong?
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United States33704 Posts
Wonder how modded SC2 is going to do now that the economy has been reverted. I feel like it could be an opportunity for someone to come out with a well-done mod that fixes Protoss imba issues with 5.0.15? Would be interested in seeing how the SHIN mod plays with more high-level players, for example.
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How to make life wonderful?
1. Buy a goat.
2. Sell a goat.
3. Happy life!
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Didn't HT get like 50 changes? What patch are they even on.
Seems weird not to specify. I'm assuming it's the 6s version since shroud is still in the game.
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On October 01 2026 04:57 Mistakes wrote:
I still don't understand all the hate for this patch. It's interested me more than anything has in SC2 in the last 10 years. The pro scene seems to be doing well. Tournaments are exciting. And we barely had time to really figure anything out.
This feels like a big L to me that Blizz just goes back to what's safe before the community at large has time to really find things and learn. For example, I haven't seen a single Protoss master the ceiling of the new Warpgate changes. What if that creates some god tier player nobody has ever heard of before because he figures it out and blasts onto the scene?
But no, we get the same old LotV. Not bad. Not great. Scene isn't growing. It just is what it is. :/
It's quite simple, it wasn't fun to play (or watch). So much so that GM league had huge player fallouts and couldn't even stay remotely filled.
The worker change didn't add any strategic diversity, it neutered it. The flowchart of possibilities was so small that you'd have to turn off your monitor to be surprised by something. Only zvz got any early game type of gambit, and the only value it added was overwhelming player frustration for the most part.
The patch was beneficial to me, all my winrates improved especially zvz, pvp, and zvp (obvious exception of PvZ declining). But my goal isn't to win a game on ladder - it's to improve and have fun, and the patch simply wasn't fun. One matchup was effectively removed, and the game script became boring.
The patch had some good ideas. Hopefully the next update expands on it.
Few things off the top of my head:
Shroud baseline is more than fine.
I'd like to see a secondary cybernetics core upgrade to increase gateway build time, one of the few interesting experiments.
Keep the phantom caster attacks, it doesn't impact high level play.
Find a replacement for mules, literally anything at this point.
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On October 01 2026 02:49 BisuDagger wrote:
I get the full revert, but I do hope that we can still expect them to try new changes and that the backlash didn't discourage them from future updates.
Agreed, the Protoss changes I think really injected a lot of excitement into the game and I hope that they use PTR to really experiment with those kinds of changes and look at similar stuff for Terran and Zerg too...
I just think they went about the last few patches weren’t very well thought out and mixing it all with the worker changes was too much
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Sad to see this happen, it just means that any future positive changes won't even be considered and now we're back to playing one dimensional starcraft, rip.
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I asked Gemini for help to compare 5.0.16, 5.0.16b and 5.0.17 to get the changes that went through.
Here is the output of that:
Economy & Map Pool
Map Pool:
Updated map pools across 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 remain active as introduced in 5.0.16.
Terran
Planetary Fortress Cost: 250 Minerals / 150 Gas (Increased from 150/150 in 5.0.16b; not explicitly reverted in 5.0.17).
Widow MineAttack Launch Delay: Increased from 0.85 seconds to 1.07 seconds (New in 5.0.17).
ReaperBuild Time: Reduced from 34 seconds to 32 seconds (New in 5.0.17).
Medivac & Subgroup PriorityCommands: "Load Nearby Units" command functionality remains intact (from 5.0.16)
.Subgroup Priority Order: Remains updated to (Ghost, Marine+Marauder, Raven, Battlecruiser, SiegeTank) (from 5.0.16).
Protoss
Shield Battery
Starting Energy: Starts with 100 energy if built near a Nexus, otherwise 50 energy (New mechanism in 5.0.17; replaces the 75 baseline energy from 5.0.16).
Sentry
Forcefield Durability: Forcefields now take 1 Corrosive Bile to destroy (Reduced from 2 in 5.0.17).
Hallucination Behavior: Hallucinations inherit the current order queue of the casting Sentry (QoL update from 5.0.16).
Mothership
Shields: Increased from 200 to 350 (New in 5.0.17).
Health (Life): Decreased from 400 to 350 (New in 5.0.17).
Adept
Train Time: Reduced from 33 seconds to 30 seconds (New in 5.0.17).
Warp Prism: "Load Nearby Units" command functionality remains intact (from 5.0.16).
Zerg
Overseer
Changelings: Automatically inherit order queue of casting Overseer, and death contagiousness to nearby Changelings remains intact (QoL/Behavior update from 5.0.16).
Infestor:
Neural Parasite expiring only upon structure completion on SCVs remains active from 5.0.16).
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Viper
Abduct can no longer be cast on Siege Tanks.
WTF???
Do they mean SiegeD Tanks?
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For the future, they need to establish what the process for changes will be. They can't make new big changes with this mess being remembered. Any bigger change needs people to trust the process. Have regular PTR updates. One every two weeks at least. Be conservative with releasing the patch from PTR.
They also need to have and communicate a vision for the future if they want to make any bigger changes. Without vision, it is hard to evaluate if they are moving in the right direction at all. Especially, Protoss needs this vision for gameplay in each matchup. They should also be somewhat confident in the vision so that they are willing to make new changes on top of previous ones to achieve the overall vision instead of repeatedly backtracking.
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Any idea when Blizzard will move from PTR to deploying the patch? Is there any fixed period it soaks in PTR or just "whenever"?
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I honestly would be very surprised if they try to do anything again. The fact that they reverted even the well received changes makes me thing that the community response will just give them reason to waste even less resources here, they will probaly tweak a few things, see if the response is overall good and then disappear again.
My bet is we get 2-3 parches to tweak a few things and then we wont see anything until at least late 2027.
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On October 01 2026 18:50 Legan wrote:
For the future, they need to establish what the process for changes will be. They can't make new big changes with this mess being remembered. Any bigger change needs people to trust the process. Have regular PTR updates. One every two weeks at least. Be conservative with releasing the patch from PTR.
They also need to have and communicate a vision for the future if they want to make any bigger changes. Without vision, it is hard to evaluate if they are moving in the right direction at all. Especially, Protoss needs this vision for gameplay in each matchup. They should also be somewhat confident in the vision so that they are willing to make new changes on top of previous ones to achieve the overall vision instead of repeatedly backtracking.
The mess was created because there were not enough people testing the PTR so they pushed it to the ladder. The playerbase was at an all time low at the time of changes so there's no real way to get feedback from players unless they actually force it on the ladder, which is a terrible idea for obvious reasons, but due to the overall lack of a player base it wasn't a choice.
Blizzard is trying to bring players back to the game, but the ship has sailed, high eco destroyed any chance of that, so now they're stuck with the high-eco player base that remains.
The reason the majority of the players left back when they made the original changes to the game was because the skill of the game dropped from the ceiling to the floor, StarCraft in a high-eco settings is a super low expression of skill. So high-eco was the absolute #1 killer of the game. Skirmishes are lame, positioning is lame, and overall strategies are one-dimensional and boring.
Not enough time was given to this current state of the game, and the developers are just freaking out because they don't have that player base buffer that they used to have.
The other collosal mistake that happened with this transition is that the map pool never changed from high-eco concept. Players all feel like they're playing a watered-down high eco setting because the maps really didnt adjust for the eco settings. IMO this is one of the main reasons it was met with negative feedback.
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On October 01 2026 19:44 ProTech wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 18:50 Legan wrote:
For the future, they need to establish what the process for changes will be. They can't make new big changes with this mess being remembered. Any bigger change needs people to trust the process. Have regular PTR updates. One every two weeks at least. Be conservative with releasing the patch from PTR.
They also need to have and communicate a vision for the future if they want to make any bigger changes. Without vision, it is hard to evaluate if they are moving in the right direction at all. Especially, Protoss needs this vision for gameplay in each matchup. They should also be somewhat confident in the vision so that they are willing to make new changes on top of previous ones to achieve the overall vision instead of repeatedly backtracking. The mess was created because there were not enough people testing the PTR so they pushed it to the ladder. The playerbase was at an all time low at the time of changes so there's no real way to get feedback from players unless they actually force it on the ladder, which is a terrible idea for obvious reasons, but due to the overall lack of a player base it wasn't a choice. Blizzard is trying to bring players back to the game, but the ship has sailed, high eco destroyed any chance of that, so now they're stuck with the high-eco player base that remains. The reason the majority of the players left back when they made the original changes to the game was because the skill of the game dropped from the ceiling to the floor, StarCraft in a high-eco settings is a super low expression of skill. So high-eco was the absolute #1 killer of the game. Skirmishes are lame, positioning is lame, and overall strategies are one-dimensional and boring. Not enough time was given to this current state of the game, and the developers are just freaking out because they don't have that player base buffer that they used to have. The other collosal mistake that happened with this transition is that the map pool never changed from high-eco concept. Players all feel like they're playing a watered-down high eco setting because the maps really didnt adjust for the eco settings. IMO this is one of the main reasons it was met with negative feedback.
We heard this argument that fast eco destroyed the game and that patch would somehow revive StarCraft. It didn't. The opposite happened, 4400-4500 MMR players got promoted to grandmasters as recently as 1-2 weeks ago and grandmasters had around 165 players out of 200 expected.
Community was split into co-op, patches mod, people quitting and some like me who continued to play despite the patch. I've never seen so divided community since StarCraft 2 beta and I've played for that long. Yes, there were bad patches but this was making something like multiverse of StarCraft which never happened before.
After this revert, StarCraft will probably not get a sudden influx of new players but some of players will return. Also, I disagree there wasn't enough community feedback. You can go back to the initial poll on TL and see that the vote for liking and disliking the patch was evenly split. That was before people tried the patch. Now people overwhelmingly support reverting the patch, you can check the new poll.
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On October 01 2026 19:44 ProTech wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 18:50 Legan wrote:
For the future, they need to establish what the process for changes will be. They can't make new big changes with this mess being remembered. Any bigger change needs people to trust the process. Have regular PTR updates. One every two weeks at least. Be conservative with releasing the patch from PTR.
They also need to have and communicate a vision for the future if they want to make any bigger changes. Without vision, it is hard to evaluate if they are moving in the right direction at all. Especially, Protoss needs this vision for gameplay in each matchup. They should also be somewhat confident in the vision so that they are willing to make new changes on top of previous ones to achieve the overall vision instead of repeatedly backtracking. The mess was created because there were not enough people testing the PTR so they pushed it to the ladder. The playerbase was at an all time low at the time of changes so there's no real way to get feedback from players unless they actually force it on the ladder, which is a terrible idea for obvious reasons, but due to the overall lack of a player base it wasn't a choice. Blizzard is trying to bring players back to the game, but the ship has sailed, high eco destroyed any chance of that, so now they're stuck with the high-eco player base that remains. The reason the majority of the players left back when they made the original changes to the game was because the skill of the game dropped from the ceiling to the floor, StarCraft in a high-eco settings is a super low expression of skill. So high-eco was the absolute #1 killer of the game. Skirmishes are lame, positioning is lame, and overall strategies are one-dimensional and boring. Not enough time was given to this current state of the game, and the developers are just freaking out because they don't have that player base buffer that they used to have. The other collosal mistake that happened with this transition is that the map pool never changed from high-eco concept. Players all feel like they're playing a watered-down high eco setting because the maps really didnt adjust for the eco settings. IMO this is one of the main reasons it was met with negative feedback.
Actually the first couple of days were probably some of the highest action the PTR has ever seen across all leagues. The problem is that after that point, a lot of people kinda went "ew", returned to the main server, and kind of assumed a bunch of that stuff is not gonna make it to the game.
But Blizzard apparently didn't attribute that dropoff to the changes not being popular. This whole ordeal is just a big disconnect between the players and the devs.
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United States1963 Posts
On October 01 2026 19:44 ProTech wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 18:50 Legan wrote:
For the future, they need to establish what the process for changes will be. They can't make new big changes with this mess being remembered. Any bigger change needs people to trust the process. Have regular PTR updates. One every two weeks at least. Be conservative with releasing the patch from PTR.
They also need to have and communicate a vision for the future if they want to make any bigger changes. Without vision, it is hard to evaluate if they are moving in the right direction at all. Especially, Protoss needs this vision for gameplay in each matchup. They should also be somewhat confident in the vision so that they are willing to make new changes on top of previous ones to achieve the overall vision instead of repeatedly backtracking. The mess was created because there were not enough people testing the PTR so they pushed it to the ladder. The playerbase was at an all time low at the time of changes so there's no real way to get feedback from players unless they actually force it on the ladder, which is a terrible idea for obvious reasons, but due to the overall lack of a player base it wasn't a choice. Blizzard is trying to bring players back to the game, but the ship has sailed, high eco destroyed any chance of that, so now they're stuck with the high-eco player base that remains. The reason the majority of the players left back when they made the original changes to the game was because the skill of the game dropped from the ceiling to the floor, StarCraft in a high-eco settings is a super low expression of skill. So high-eco was the absolute #1 killer of the game. Skirmishes are lame, positioning is lame, and overall strategies are one-dimensional and boring. Not enough time was given to this current state of the game, and the developers are just freaking out because they don't have that player base buffer that they used to have. The other collosal mistake that happened with this transition is that the map pool never changed from high-eco concept. Players all feel like they're playing a watered-down high eco setting because the maps really didnt adjust for the eco settings. IMO this is one of the main reasons it was met with negative feedback.
Blizz's biggest fault was negligence—not the patch itself. If they had routinely updated the patch on an aggressively regular schedule (i would have suggested biweekly) with player feedback, they might have actually come out with a really solid product after a few months. The fact that they never committed to the patch is why it failed.
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Imo this patch was doomed from the start. Such big changes would require a lot of work to test, tweak and fine tune so we can have a balanced game. Perceived balance is very important and ultimately I think players realized this version of the game would always be an unbalanced mess.
Thinking of all the different eco tweaks and upgrade timing changes over the years that changed during the lotv worker change it always seemed a big ask to recalibrate the game to accommodate 8 workers.
Also fwiw I don't even think worker count changes are worth all the eco fallout. I'd rather a new unit or two even if theyre broken for a bit. Feel like that would be a lot more fun anyways.
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On October 01 2026 21:48 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 19:44 ProTech wrote:On October 01 2026 18:50 Legan wrote:
For the future, they need to establish what the process for changes will be. They can't make new big changes with this mess being remembered. Any bigger change needs people to trust the process. Have regular PTR updates. One every two weeks at least. Be conservative with releasing the patch from PTR.
They also need to have and communicate a vision for the future if they want to make any bigger changes. Without vision, it is hard to evaluate if they are moving in the right direction at all. Especially, Protoss needs this vision for gameplay in each matchup. They should also be somewhat confident in the vision so that they are willing to make new changes on top of previous ones to achieve the overall vision instead of repeatedly backtracking. The mess was created because there were not enough people testing the PTR so they pushed it to the ladder. The playerbase was at an all time low at the time of changes so there's no real way to get feedback from players unless they actually force it on the ladder, which is a terrible idea for obvious reasons, but due to the overall lack of a player base it wasn't a choice. Blizzard is trying to bring players back to the game, but the ship has sailed, high eco destroyed any chance of that, so now they're stuck with the high-eco player base that remains. The reason the majority of the players left back when they made the original changes to the game was because the skill of the game dropped from the ceiling to the floor, StarCraft in a high-eco settings is a super low expression of skill. So high-eco was the absolute #1 killer of the game. Skirmishes are lame, positioning is lame, and overall strategies are one-dimensional and boring. Not enough time was given to this current state of the game, and the developers are just freaking out because they don't have that player base buffer that they used to have. The other collosal mistake that happened with this transition is that the map pool never changed from high-eco concept. Players all feel like they're playing a watered-down high eco setting because the maps really didnt adjust for the eco settings. IMO this is one of the main reasons it was met with negative feedback. Blizz's biggest fault was negligence—not the patch itself. If they had routinely updated the patch on an aggressively regular schedule (i would have suggested biweekly) with player feedback, they might have actually come out with a really solid product after a few months. The fact that they never committed to the patch is why it failed.
100% agree, there was so much excitement and engagement on PTR with these new changes, that could have continued and been snowballed into something really cool had they kept up with it right up to Blizzcon... instead of just getting to maybe a quarter a way through the process, pushing it to live, and then giving up..
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Northern Ireland27436 Posts
On October 01 2026 21:48 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 19:44 ProTech wrote:On October 01 2026 18:50 Legan wrote:
For the future, they need to establish what the process for changes will be. They can't make new big changes with this mess being remembered. Any bigger change needs people to trust the process. Have regular PTR updates. One every two weeks at least. Be conservative with releasing the patch from PTR.
They also need to have and communicate a vision for the future if they want to make any bigger changes. Without vision, it is hard to evaluate if they are moving in the right direction at all. Especially, Protoss needs this vision for gameplay in each matchup. They should also be somewhat confident in the vision so that they are willing to make new changes on top of previous ones to achieve the overall vision instead of repeatedly backtracking. The mess was created because there were not enough people testing the PTR so they pushed it to the ladder. The playerbase was at an all time low at the time of changes so there's no real way to get feedback from players unless they actually force it on the ladder, which is a terrible idea for obvious reasons, but due to the overall lack of a player base it wasn't a choice. Blizzard is trying to bring players back to the game, but the ship has sailed, high eco destroyed any chance of that, so now they're stuck with the high-eco player base that remains. The reason the majority of the players left back when they made the original changes to the game was because the skill of the game dropped from the ceiling to the floor, StarCraft in a high-eco settings is a super low expression of skill. So high-eco was the absolute #1 killer of the game. Skirmishes are lame, positioning is lame, and overall strategies are one-dimensional and boring. Not enough time was given to this current state of the game, and the developers are just freaking out because they don't have that player base buffer that they used to have. The other collosal mistake that happened with this transition is that the map pool never changed from high-eco concept. Players all feel like they're playing a watered-down high eco setting because the maps really didnt adjust for the eco settings. IMO this is one of the main reasons it was met with negative feedback. Blizz's biggest fault was negligence—not the patch itself. If they had routinely updated the patch on an aggressively regular schedule (i would have suggested biweekly) with player feedback, they might have actually come out with a really solid product after a few months. The fact that they never committed to the patch is why it failed.
Yeah agreed with this 100%. Too many radical changes at once to not tweak subsequently on a pretty high cadence
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I am officially declaring victory in the battle I have waged since 2009 in defense of the Warp Gate mechanic and against all the terrible suggestions to neuter it. It was implemented, it was not fun, people did not like it, and I win. So there.
On the other hand, it is somewhat remarkable that Blizzard decided to straight-up revert. Previous patch was not perfect balance-wise so hopefully we can tune that a little bit going forward.
But yes, like everyone else I look forward to laddering again.
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On October 02 2026 00:31 Captain Peabody wrote:
On the other hand, it is somewhat remarkable that Blizzard decided to straight-up revert. Previous patch was not perfect balance-wise so hopefully we can tune that a little bit going forward
Since they made it clear that they are working on a new patch, I imagine this is what happened:
They took a large risk in 5.0.16
--> they saw it play out --> player decline was in a different direction than what they expected
--> !!they want to stop this decline in some way!! (Feels worth pointing out)
--> they don't know in which direction they want to go OR --> they don't have enough time to risk a further decline in player base
--> they revert to the last acceptable state for many to stop decline
--> they gain more time to tweak the game, which they should use to decide whether the changes they want go into the direction of patches mod or keep the lower number of upgrades
Feels worth pointing out that using some patches mod inputs would be a low risk high reward move.
Honestly they should put in some work on the interface and PvE which I think would get a lot more people to play the game and be introduced to the eco system.
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EPT
