EPTShould us plebian complain about balance? no. Should pro players? maybe. But I guarantee you they are playing more often than they are complaining. Even Idra.
[Balance] Weighing the Consequences - Page 5
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confusedcrib
United States1307 Posts
Should us plebian complain about balance? no. Should pro players? maybe. But I guarantee you they are playing more often than they are complaining. Even Idra. | ||
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Kontys
Finland659 Posts
On January 11 2012 06:57 mbr2321 wrote: EDIT: a sort of TL;DR something I really like: On January 11 2012 07:56 LightTemplar wrote: Look for the flaw that lost the game not the flaw in the game. That is wrong. No way around it. If you can't approach game analysis strategically, your thinking is likely to be worth nothing. You have to consider strategic interactions, it's just the way it is in games of imperfect information. Yes, the metagame evolves, and we can keep hoping for miracles, but it is completely plausible to show that (for example) currently Terran has massive advantage over Zerg for the first 10 or so minutes of the game. And no, this is not a problem that can be measured as something like a "meme", eg, how many times a month we get someone on the blizzard forums complaining about this or that build being overpowered. That is to say, the comparison to political slander is wrong. We can be analytic about this by, for example, building a choice-response tree for a match up (sequential game) and seeing, as a result, that for the first 10 minutes or so Terran is invulnerable to attacks unless Zerg does a surprise all in (elects for a highly unusual strategy) of some kind, AND that Zerg can die to a variety of Terran attacks that aren't even all-in, and most of which require different counters, on top of seeing them coming (if you just made a round of drones and didn't see it, the game ends there). We can then conclude that T has it really good in the early game and the early middle game against Zerg. The judgement is of course subjective. We can find objective justification, by seeing how often zergs die in ZvT before 11 minute mark, and compare it to how often terrans die in TvZ before the 11 minute mark. However I am not aware of such databases existing currently. It would be highly useful to build such a DB. In my opinion building a thorough choice-response tree is a totally valid way of doing analysis. And it is potentially even more valid than pure statistic, due to players not being completely rational about their options. And human inability to do all potential standard builds perfectly, even if players always chose their builds and transitions perfectly. | ||
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ArcticFox
United States1092 Posts
On January 11 2012 17:32 CortoMontez wrote: + Show Spoiler + I brought this point up in a discussion in last night's LR thread, but I think it is worth repeating. In almost all games there is some element of randomness and chance. At one extreme there is coin-tossing, which can be considered completely random; and at the other extreme is a game of chess, where randomness is merely confined to how well the players can read the board. In SC2, the more scouting can be done by the players, the further the randomness is pushed from the coin-toss end to the chess board end. Although it is fairly obvious that an actual coin-toss is balanced, in SC2 the 'coin-toss' scenarios tend to favour one side more than the other. This seems most pronounced in ZvZ, PvP and PvT. Since we are talking about balance, I shall only focus upon the non-mirror PvT matchup, drawing briefly upon TvZ for comparison. A common situation in PvT: A single barracks with two depots is scouted at the terran wall by the probe. The gases are unable to be seen. There are two builds which are most likely from this information: 1. 1 Rax expansion 2. Marine-Tank-Banshee all-in With two options of what to prepare for (technically there are more options, but this is a simplification), the P player must now flip the metaphorical coin, with the following possibilities (assuming 13 gate with a pylon scout): 1. Proceed to 1 gate expand, assuming marine tank banshee is incoming. A marine tank banshee all-in IS incoming. This leaves approximately a 50% chance of the protoss player surviving based upon pro-games. 2. Proceed to 1 gate expand, assuming marine tank banshee is incoming. Terran is 1 rax expanding. The protoss is now behind economically, and approximately even on army/tech. 3. Use any non-expand build, or a safer expand build, assuming 1 rax expand. Terran is marine tank banshee all-inning. Protoss loses due to insufficient economy. 4. Use any non-expand build, or a safer expand build, assuming 1 rax expand. Terran is 1-rax expanding. Protoss is now either behind economically, or has to risk a push which if it fails (50% is a conservative guess based off pro-games) also puts protoss behind economically. Now we can put approximate odds on each situation: Situation 1: 50% chance of each player being ahead. Situation 2: Terran Player is ahead. Situation 3: Terran Player wins. Situation 4: 50% chance of each player being ahead. Excluded from these situations is the possibility of the terran going for a 3-4 rax marine all-in, which further pushes this coin-toss scenario into the terran's favour. By comparison, in TvZ, unless the Z is being extremely greedy by skipping all forms of army or detection, they can deal with almost any terran build with good micro and positioning. e.g. 11-11 rax (drone micro), reactor hellions (queen blocks), hellion marauder (map presence for early scout). Admittedly 2-port banshee seems to be the exception here, where without blind lair tech or mass spores, it is extremely difficult to hold. I will admit that I play protoss, and am most likely heavily biased, but I'm fairly certain that with the undebatable existence of coin-tossing in SC2 (think PvP or ZvZ), that sometimes the coin can be biased. Is this post flamebait or something? The TvP was true about 6 months ago before the 1/1/1 was figured out. It wasn't even still relevant *before* the patch that buffed immortals and nerfed rax build time, because by then Protoss had finally done some innovation and figured out ways to handle it. Let me specifically pull something out of this: By comparison, in TvZ, unless the Z is being extremely greedy by skipping all forms of army or detection, they can deal with almost any terran build with good micro and positioning. e.g. 11-11 rax (drone micro), reactor hellions (queen blocks), hellion marauder (map presence for early scout). Admittedly 2-port banshee seems to be the exception here, where without blind lair tech or mass spores, it is extremely difficult to hold. During the time where 1/1/1 was supreme, everyone was emulating oGsMC's style of play. Not a bad thing to do, being a GSL Champion and all. Problem is, he was the only one really succeeding at the time, literally *EVERYONE* was stealing it. And yes, MC's standard PvT was also an extremely greedy build, though he usually used it to transition into a 2base push rather than a full blown macro game if he could help it. Terrans then figured out that a hardcore 1/1/1 would punish MC's style (and quite a few builds like it) and started doing it. For about 2 months there was a stagnation where Protoss were doing MC's style, then complaining that they were losing to an all-in that was specifically tailored to counter that style. How does that make sense exactly? The 1/1/1 is old news now, especially since the patch. It can't even stop the build it's designed to counter unless the Protoss is a much weaker player than the Terran. Now, if you want to get into coin-flip situations in TvP, we could always talk about how a Terran in the late game has to have perfect scouting to keep an eye on colo/templar/archon numbers so that they don't over/undermake vikings and have enough ghosts to EMP everything (which is also 1.5x higher now since the EMP nerf.) It's a legitimate complaint, which is being seen come to prominence on Calm Before the Storm. You can see on the larger macro maps why so many Terrans were relying on all-ins and 2-base timings to kill Protoss -- it's EXTREMELY DIFFICULT (not impossible, not imbalanced, but hard as f***) to keep good enough recon on a Protoss to have a money mix to be able to handle the attack. If the Terran wins the large battle, he can usually do some damage, but not a great deal before enough zealots are instantly warped in to repel it. If the Protoss wins the big battle, the game is pretty much over, as in small numbers a Terran can't recover. Imbalanced? I don't believe so -- as I said, a LOT of pressure is on the Terran to keep up good enough recon to keep it from being a coin flip, but it *is* doable. Just as well-timed overlord sacs are doable. Just as building observers to see what is coming is doable. Whether all of this is good or bad is up for debate. But in every non-mirror, there's always more of an onus on one race or the other to keep up better scouting and be the reactive race, and which also changes throughout the game (PvT -- Protoss reactive early, Terran reactive mid/late -- TvZ, Zerg reactive early, Terran reactive mid/late, PvZ I'm less versed on but it feels like Protoss reactive early, Zerg reactive mid/late). If the reactive player is more skilled, and more aware of what to do in a certain situation b/c he's played it 1000 times and has fantastic scouting, he can look nearly unbeatable, which can start the cries of imbalance. If the reactive player is less skilled, or less aware of what to do against something, he can start to think that he can never win.....which can also start the cries of imbalance. If something is genuinely imbalanced, it takes more than a few weeks of working with it to be good. If people spent all the effort they spent whining about whether something is actually imbalanced, and put it into map awareness, build optimization, and working on timings, they would see the game is a lot closer to balanced than they make it out to be. Personally I thought TvZ was unplayable until my map awareness improved and I stopped sieging my tanks late every engagement. To the point that the Zergs I was playing at the time all started whining about how impossible ZvT is. =/ | ||
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Olsson
Sweden931 Posts
1) Five rax reaper was broken. Just like you said with the 1/1/1 was op it's easy to execute and yields high results. In both theory and practice FRR was broken and blizzard must've confirmed this on their test realm as they balanced reaper eventually. 2) Balance must be discussed for it is important in a strategy game and an ESPORT. If you disregard balance/imbalance (which you seem to ignore but it actually exist) then everyone will eventually switch to the imbalanced race/tactic and only do that, making the game one sided and boring. Which would be like making a rule that you can't pass the ball in basketball but you must score yourself. | ||
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Talin
Montenegro10532 Posts
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Ryndika
1489 Posts
On January 11 2012 12:21 RedDragon571 wrote: I think the reason so many people quit the game revolve around GAME DESIGN not balance. Sc2 and blizzard sold its soul to the devil because it thought it could attract a more casual (larger) player base by simplifying game mechanics, removing micro relative to bw, speeding up the game pace (macro mechanics mules, inject, chrono) adding simplified unit counters (bonus dmg) and removing terrain advantages. Sc2 is better looking and way more easy than BW. Yes, we have seen huge growth in western e-sports because we attracted that larger casual, (much less patient and hardworking) player base. All at the cost of reducing the "staying power" and "lasting appeal" of the game. I still love starcraft 2, because compared to every other game out there it has the highest learning curve, greatest strategic depth and biggest challenge of any other RTS. However, All those decisions, to make the game easier, made it much more blurry at top level play. I doubt we will see many repeat GSL winners, I think the jury is out on whether the game has the difficulty and mastery, that will let the top players stay at the top. The player with the best mechanics and decision making should win most of the time. However, In ladder, and elsewhere, I feel there is a problem of mechanically inferior players that copy a timing push, who get out X number of units at X time and simply just win because the copied a pro players build. I think it is too easy to imitate pro players because the mechanical bar is so low. All of this contributes to each game being not as entertaining. 1. Most sc2 games decide the winner in one climatic battle. 2. It is much more difficult for someone to come back from being "behind" because of the macro mechanics. 3. Micro is far less interesting and less rewarding. B team pro can easily copy A team pro's strategy and execute to a similar degree. 4. Macro is power overwhelming, if you have more units, you can kill your opponent, because, terrain advantages positioning and map control are much weaker. 5. Mechanics are so simple even a bronze league player can almost pull of a Korean pro level timing push early in the game. 6.PvP and Z v Z are uninteresting to all but people who play them, due to game design flaws, not spectator friendly. TLDR: a bit of a ramble, but basically, Game Design has simplified Starcraft into something everyone CAN play easily, but simultaneously made it into something less interesting TO play or watch. Expansions are expected to reboot franchise, and will lack the "lasting appeal" that a better designed game like Brood War was unless fundamental game design is altered. Yes I agree with most you say, eventho I don't know if it's true, I still feel like this is the case where better player has less options to outplay opponent. This is also the reason I'm not playing so much anymore, but starcraft has reputation of evolving all the time so I still follow the scene and see what's up, maybe play a game or two per day avg. (Would play more if any of my friends who bought sc2 would still play.) I guess I'mt trying to say that sc2 should be more like BW (maybe, maybe not) and blizzard happily disagrees with this statment. | ||
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ishboh
United States954 Posts
In the end, its hard for anyone to declare imbalances because its hard for anyone to play a perfect game. | ||
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Gotmog
Serbia899 Posts
On January 11 2012 07:24 mbr2321 wrote: Consider, then, that perhaps there is something wrong with the Protoss mindset within the general trend of strategic evolution. Perhaps Protoss should be looking for different ways of dealing with Zerg and Terran strategy instead of blaming the game. I remain of the oppinion that Protoss is just horribly designed... They will either be terribly op, or terribly up...there is no middle ground. They rely to much on deathball OR all in timing atacks. And those can be either to strong or to week. There is no middle ground there. Only thing they can do that is neither, is some cute prism play vs Zerg or light air play vs zerg. And PvP remains the silliest mu in sc2. | ||
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Mazaire
Australia217 Posts
Ps: reading some of the comments is destroying my soul, no matter how intelligent they word it they are elaborately saying, ZOMG GAME SO IMBALANCED PLZ FIX BLI$$ | ||
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hersenen
Belize176 Posts
-The relationship of marines to banelings; at high levels marines can arguably become TOO cost efficient for zerg to deal with but at low levels banelings are WAYY to cost efficient vs a new terran player who doesn't even have half the micro needed for effective splits. It's overall bad game design and no one is the winner. -The relationship of collosus in PvT, PvZ, and even PvP. PvP it seems whoever has the most collosus late game wins even if macro is relatively even, thats not fun or dynamic. PvT and PvZ, well did you make the counter to collosus? No? well then you INSTANTLY LOSE, did you make too many corrupters or too many vikings? YOU ALSO LOSE. Oh you made just enough and micro'd them well? Then you live, but dont get that much of an edge because now they just switch to something else like archons or HTs. It's not fair that protoss can go collosus with little to no reprecussions when for the other races it's life or death. -I don't like how Bio is the only viable option TvP besides silly 1-2base timings that incoporate thors/tanks (as if that even counts as "mech") -I don't like how Blizzard prefers slow strong expensive a-move units to quick cheap micro rewarding units. The phoeniex is a GREATly designed unit, the collosus and thor are NOT. -I don't like how slow hydras are. I dont like how garbage ultras and carriers are. I wish the carrier was a viable late game unit in all the matchups, much like the collosus so it would be more of a choice: do I go collosus or carriers? (right now you only go collosus out of those two if you dont want to lose) -I don't like hero units. -I want more units that promote micro in ALL the races. I remember day9 saying something like in BW good micro could increase the value of the unit by x9 if you had godly micro, in SC2 the max is like 1.5x which is garbage. -Disgusting blob vs blob armies where the last army standing wins the game. ugh. (you know what im talking about) | ||
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Rob28
Canada705 Posts
-The relationship of collosus in PvT, PvZ, and even PvP. PvP it seems whoever has the most collosus late game wins even if macro is relatively even, thats not fun or dynamic. PvT and PvZ, well did you make the counter to collosus? No? well then you INSTANTLY LOSE, did you make too many corrupters or too many vikings? YOU ALSO LOSE. Oh you made just enough and micro'd them well? Then you live, but dont get that much of an edge because now they just switch to something else like archons or HTs. It's not fair that protoss can go collosus with little to no reprecussions when for the other races it's life or death. ^ I agreed with your other points, except this one. First of all, overmaking vikings is not some huge endgame threat to terrans. Terrans have scan, essentially a wallhack for SC2. If you aren't properly prepared, then you aren't playing Terran properly. Second, vikings can convert and attack ground units, something Terrans seem to forget, like, always. Third, colossi aren't immune to everything except vikings: they take damage from that bioball and those supporting tanks just like everything else on the battlefield. Fourth, if a terran is really shitty at making vikings to counter colossi, they can always go with banshees instead... but they don't, for some reason (range most likely, but fuck, banshees cloak!). Fifth: one word... ghosts. Also, I don't think you realize just how crippling it is to a Protoss to lose even a small group of colossi. Those things don't grow on trees you know. And tech changes if they don't work? That requires going up a whole tech branch, and making two new buildings just for the sake of producing one unit... hardly what I'd call a flippant "just switch to HT/archon" moment, but actually a real investment of resources to need to pull off. Remember, protoss tech is not linear the way zerg and terran tech is. Of the three races, it's the one that actually has a tech "tree", rather than a tech "stick". | ||
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o)_Saurus
Germany260 Posts
On January 11 2012 23:52 Gotmog wrote: I remain of the oppinion that Protoss is just horribly designed... They will either be terribly op, or terribly up...there is no middle ground. They rely to much on deathball OR all in timing atacks. And those can be either to strong or to week. There is no middle ground there. Only thing they can do that is neither, is some cute prism play vs Zerg or light air play vs zerg. And PvP remains the silliest mu in sc2. You got the point imho. But i disagree on PvT. Did you saw Grubby vs. Goody on Tal'darim? It was just a perfect execution of 3gate eco-pressure by Grubby (if you like to call it this way). He put lots of pressure on Goody without being allin or in a "must kill lot or lose" situation. I feel that this might be the future of PvT but i agree on your point on PvZ because you mostly can not affort to lose you're army even one time against zerg. In this case i might also pick Grubby as an example against Destiny in g2 and g3. Although he won g3 it was a HUGE comeback after loosing his "first" army consisting mostly of sentrys. Marines and even tanks are way cheaper and more "loseable" than every early P army you can imagine. Ofc it's bad if terran loses his first army but definitly not that over as if protoss does. This leads to the situation you discribed, when P either wins or lose within their first push ("terribly up/op"). Some kind of recall might fix it, a cheaper sentry (ofc with less energy) could also do good. I'm heavily awaiting HotS in that matter... edit/ Maybe i didn't figure it out well enought but this post is not supposed to complain but to underline the "bad design of protoss", shown in the lack of mobility and cheap units. | ||
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CaptainCrush
United States785 Posts
On January 11 2012 06:57 mbr2321 wrote: Whenever someone is complaining about imbalance, or talks about imbalance, time, space, and energy is taken away from more important discussion. That was the most lengthy way I have ever seen someone say that they think the game is balanced and that we need to look at our own play before making imba claims.... I just wasted much of my own time, space, and energy reading this :/ | ||
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
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imPermanenCe
Netherlands595 Posts
On January 11 2012 22:30 confusedcrib wrote: I think that someone who complains about balance first posts here on TL, gets warned, posts on reddit, gets downvoted, and finally goes on the b.net forums where they quickly drift off the front page; Too bad this isn't true, balance threads are the most populair ones, those are the threads I always see when I go there (so I stop visiting them). Bnet forums is FULL of balance whiners. And it's so tempting to post there, but mostly there can't be reasoned with. edit: I kinda lose my respect for players that whine about balance. At least the ones that whine about their own race when they lose. Even if it's unbalanced, you make like 20 errors yourself, go fix those first. | ||
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Cereb
Denmark3388 Posts
I can only speak for myself, but the few times I have been considering that something might be imbalanced was during the times where I was playing 30-40 games a day for weeks trying to crack a particular build / mu. Those were the times where I would consider complaining out of sheer frustration... However, the times where I'm playing like 5-10 games some days a week, I couldn't care less cause first of all I know I'm not in any position to judge anything and secondly I haven't invested a huge amount of time into looking at it so it's not nearly as frustrating. I understand that some people play like 2 games a week and still complain... I just wanted to point out that it's not always the case. | ||
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Erik.TheRed
United States1655 Posts
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36156 Posts
On January 12 2012 00:26 kcdc wrote: Let's not kid ourselves--imbalance can and often does really exist. This. Basically there are two points: 1) We lost a game because we made mistakes; 2) Some imbalance exists. People forget that 1 and 2 are not mutually exclusive. | ||
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[17]Purple
United Kingdom3489 Posts
On January 11 2012 10:34 run.at.me wrote: Truth is, there are imbalances and always will be. It is impossible to have a 'perfectly balanced' game, unless there is only one race. I agree with most of your article, however a lot of the 'imbalance' talk comes with the difficulty of executing the strategy in comparison to the difficulty to defeat the strategy. People want to feel as though 2 people of the same skill level, on 2 different races, will have a 'tie'. This is in theory ofcourse, but we all know that it isn't true. So while units and strategies themseleves might not be imbalanced in the game, the balance of skill required to execute/defeat a certain strategy has an ENORMOUS disparity in SC2, hence the ongoing whining. And the whining is justified, a strategy that is easy to execute should be relatively easy to defeat. But as we all know, this game is a bit of a joke in that respect, and bad players doing shitty easy builds work their way up the ladder. So sure, think of new strategies to 'beat' these builds. But we WANT a game where your skill level determines your rank, not your ability to exploit a races advantage for easy wins. Sounds like you only want mirror matches, asymmetrical races will always force they player to EXPLOIT their race because it is the only edge that they can have over the other race who are also EXPLOITING their race. Easy builds as you call it can beat other players because their lack of experience of dealing with those kinds of builds... the element of surprise gives the attacker an advantage and if you want to remove that you might as well remove the fog of war and play some chess. | ||
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Scootaloo
655 Posts
While terrans have seem the least development build and strategywise, if anything, with toss and zergs having to constantly come up with new buils to counter le fromage du jour shouldnt they be the most innovative and versatile players? | ||
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