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[Edit: A lot of people seem to be falling into the whole "I'm in Diamond league so he can't possibly be talking about me" attitude. The level to which TvP was imbalanced in BW would probably extend well into Masters league. Would you continue to play the game as a Diamond and below player if you knew you could switch to a specific race and easily catapult into Masters? That's the kind of imbalance at lower levels I'm talking about here and it's basically what exists in BW.
Nor does this thread say that this game needs to have balance changes at the low levels as it currently exists. SC2 is very well balanced at most levels currently. However the skill ceiling will rise and may require balance changes that could have enormous effects upon lower leagues. That's what I'm talking about here.]
This thread will be about whether or not it's wise to only balance for the highest level of play. Now I'm sure higher level players will read this and roll eyes and angrily think " l2p n00bs", but please keep this in mind while you read this, if the general SC2 scene dies down you'll end up just being the person who's really good at something nobody cares about.
"Only balance for the highest level of play" is something I see a lot on balance related threads. There's also somewhat common allusions to the fact that BW took 10 years to balance and that we should be patient and not overreact. What's funny about this is the vast majority of people who post/read on these forums would probably find BW an incredibly imbalanced game if they played it. BW is the epitome of RTS game balance, however for the vast majority of the skill spectrum BW was not a well balanced game at all. In fact it was probably worse than SC2.
The shining example of this is TvP in BW. A personal anecdote: I started playing BW about 3-4 years ago and chose Terran because they were badass. I found iCCup through a friend and played roughly 5-10 games (pretty high for full time eng. student at U of T) per day for several months and studied Liquipedia harder than my calc class before I could even get out of D-. However during that time I decided to take a little Protoss experiment. In a week and without any builds in mind other than a general idea of what I saw from replays I was able to get into C- and almost C. To put that into perspective that would be like a player struggling in Gold league as Terran getting into Masters league in a week by switching to Toss and basically messing around.
Now I stuck with Terran anyways despite my terrible W/L rate because I just found it more fun to die by self destructing than it was to "1a2a3a..." and win. Also it helped when I realized that I was actually better than the D+ toss who were flooring me. What I absolutely DIDN'T think is that there needed to be any balance changes because clearly at the highest level Terran armies were amazing and didn't need any buffs despite the fact that at low levels there was a HUGE discrepancy in skill required to play the respective races.
My basic question is: Would the foreign SC2 scene survive if there was such a huge skill discrepancy at the lower levels of play? (By the way if you've just recently got promoted into Masters league and now when you look in the mirror you've noticed that your balls/tits look bigger than usual, calm down, in BW you would qualify for "the lower level of play" too.) In our NA winning=fun culture I'm really not so sure. Though I decided to stick with Terran and eventually did get much better, when I think of most of my friends I doubt any of them would. While it might be easy to say "W/E I like this game and I'm good so I don't care about your troubles" the fact is that almost every single spectator of SC2 events is also a player. If there's anything that dissuades new players it has a negative affect on new spectators which hurts the feasibility foreign tournaments and therefore the entire foreign scene.
Even though at this point we have a fairly balanced game at most levels of play with SC2 an extremely important thing to consider is that SC2 is absolutely NOWHERE near the skill level that BW has achieved. There's a reason that all the current SC2 pros were BW B team players and players who passed their prime. And while it might comfort our collective souls to think that MVP = Flash that's completely ridiculous. I shudder to think of what somebody with the macro mechanics of Flash could do with the Zerg race. Imagine playing against a Zerg when the Queens NEVER get over 25 energy and creep tumors are re-spawned right after their cool-down finishes. The macro potential of the Zerg race is ridiculous if played perfectly. Someday the skill level might reach a point that most pro Zergs can do that and therefore being able to inject every 25 energy might become an imbalance. They might need to change that one day to once every 40 energy for Toss and Terran to have a chance. How would the larvae restriction affect low-level Zerg play? Chances are someday there will be a necessary change at the highest level which will be crippling change at the low levels. This could seriously undermine the desire for new players and kill the expansion of the foreign scene.
That's why I'm slightly leery of the whole concept of only caring about balance at pro levels. While I don't think anybody can honestly argue that it's possible to balance the game at ALL levels of play I think that there might have to be some other solution if foreign players are going to keep interest. Perhaps different leagues could have different balance settings (i.e. Diamond and below have a different set of rules than Masters and up.) Something like how you have a 19'9" college 3 point shot and a 23'9" NBA 3 pointer. If you're playing between leagues you play by the higher leagues rules. Now I think anybody could spot problems with a system like this, however I'm just putting this out there as my idea of a way to avoid creating huge imbalances at low leagues for the sake of higher leagues.
TL;DR
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I think balance affects all levels of play
I would like to state that balancing the game should purely only consider 1v1 at the pro level; however, there are many imbalances that excist throughout different leagues.
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I recently started a new account as Zerg. I killed my own hatch at the start of the game with 7 workers in all 5 of my placement matches.
At silver level my build was nydus worm worker rush, no lings, no roaches, just workers. It would work regardless of the build my opponent was doing (4gate, reactor hellion etc). This is obviously a joke build, but it worked.
If players can be beaten by a Nydus worker rush balancing the game based on what they think is fucking retarded. End of.
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Creating different rules for different leagues will interfere with the whole learning curve. Awful idea.
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On September 22 2011 06:21 Roxy wrote:
...however, there are many imbalances that excist throughout different leagues.
Do tell.
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your tl dr is missing
User was warned for this post
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It makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever, to balance the game in relation to anything but the highest levels. This thread should be closed.
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You are all making the mistake of thinking that when I was talking about BW imbalance I was talking about the equivalent of Silver league. No this was like huge imbalance at Master's league level players.
Anybody remember that "Gold to Master's Think I can do It?" or whatever thread? If this was BW, the answer would be. "Switch to Toss /thread" I really don't think you're appreciating this.
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It's also clear people are only reading the last paragraph T_T
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On September 22 2011 06:18 YumYumGranola wrote:
the fact is that almost every single spectator of SC2 events is also a player. If there's anything that dissuades new players it has a negative affect on new spectators which hurts the feasibility foreign tournaments and therefore the entire foreign scene.
This is not true.
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I want balance at the highest level. The people who are best at the game and dedicate their entire lives to the game deserve balance more than anyone else.
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On September 22 2011 06:27 Shaetan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 06:18 YumYumGranola wrote:
the fact is that almost every single spectator of SC2 events is also a player. If there's anything that dissuades new players it has a negative affect on new spectators which hurts the feasibility foreign tournaments and therefore the entire foreign scene. This is not true.
Well I certainly don't know any...
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Balance at the highest level = Competitive E-Sport.
That's it.
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On September 22 2011 06:29 YumYumGranola wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 06:27 Shaetan wrote:On September 22 2011 06:18 YumYumGranola wrote:
the fact is that almost every single spectator of SC2 events is also a player. If there's anything that dissuades new players it has a negative affect on new spectators which hurts the feasibility foreign tournaments and therefore the entire foreign scene. This is not true. Well I certainly don't know any...
Well then by jove it must be true!
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I did play BW and I played terran.
Now I was D for a long time and TvP was very difficult, from holding reaver drops and DTs, to just surviving while taking your expansion. Being D is equivalent to High Diamond/Low master, atleast it was two years ago.
Terran had it hard, and I do think it's important to make sure one race isn't just 1a'ing and the other race needs perfect micro to be on even ground. That was the ncie thing about BW, the competition against abilities and micro, they both had a high skill cap, instead of one person watching and one person working his ass off doing perfect macro.
Don't balance for platinum or lower because well, it's silly to do, at that point players play so poorly that a 50% handicap can make them lose games. But I do agree that diamond level players as well as the average masters should have pretty even balance. And right now I don't think it's much of a problem, maybe protoss is a bit stronger when both players have poor multitasking but I dont see any problems.
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On September 22 2011 06:31 Shaetan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 06:29 YumYumGranola wrote:On September 22 2011 06:27 Shaetan wrote:On September 22 2011 06:18 YumYumGranola wrote:
the fact is that almost every single spectator of SC2 events is also a player. If there's anything that dissuades new players it has a negative affect on new spectators which hurts the feasibility foreign tournaments and therefore the entire foreign scene. This is not true. Well I certainly don't know any... Well then by jove it must be true!
I think it is more reasonable to assume that most SC2 viewers are also players than it is to assume that most are not players
How would someone understand the game if they do not play it?
Do you regularly view anything you dont understand?
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There is no such thing as balancing for the highest level of play only. All units have a potential power and should be balanced on that potential power.
If there's a unit that is difficult to understand or use properly due to some artificial barrier of usage that is a game design issue not a balance issue.
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On September 22 2011 06:31 Shaetan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 06:29 YumYumGranola wrote:On September 22 2011 06:27 Shaetan wrote:On September 22 2011 06:18 YumYumGranola wrote:
the fact is that almost every single spectator of SC2 events is also a player. If there's anything that dissuades new players it has a negative affect on new spectators which hurts the feasibility foreign tournaments and therefore the entire foreign scene. This is not true. Well I certainly don't know any... Well then by jove it must be true!
Lol fair enough, although you're equally guilty unless you have some knowledge or evidence that you're not declaring.
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You picked a rather poor example I think because you're condemning a whole race as 'ezmode' instead of proving that a specific thing is 'more difficult' at a certain level. Also, I think when people consider lower league balance they try to adhere to a false notion of 'equality' instead of thinking about the effort required to improve. A common example is the dynamic you see in low league PvT where players complain about a perception of bio/gateway/colossi/vikings at varying levels of development. Do I think it's 'more difficult' for a bio terran to defeat a roboing protoss? Sure. Do I think the jump the terran has to make in order to incorporate vikings in their play is any more difficult than the jump the protoss had to make to incorporate colossi? Not really.
The reason why low league play can't really be examined for balance reasons is that if either player improved even by the smallest margin, they'd probably demolish their opponent.
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What's an example of an SC2 balance change that was targeted at the lower leagues and had a negative effect on professional play?
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EPT
