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In terms of watching SC2. The reason SC2 doesn't work is because the game is overly balanced. Although some would argue Protoss are overpowered, or now Zerg. The point is when a player becomes exceptionally efficient at a strategy, to the extent where he cannot be beat, the strategy gets nerfed i.e., Innovation and Hellbats. Nevertheless, what does every sport need in order to achieve? It needs a star! Jordan, Pele, Ronaldo, Tiger etc. The star can be promoted and this in turn develops a fan base around the star and then the viewers get emotionally attached and more involved in the sport. This is the cycle of how sports get large fanbases. Indeed, you can support teams, however SC2 to a large extent is an individual game such as golf.
From the perspective of professionals
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rFKPPrd.png)
If the game is constantly balanced stars cannot emerge. For instance, Innovation was the best player around with Hell Bat drops but then they got nerfed and now he is still a good player but very beatable. When there are no stars within a sport it is very difficult for the viewer to become emotionally attached to the game. This is what SC2 needs emotion. Last year Jaedong held startcraft on his back! One of the only times I was truly emotionally invested was when I watched Jaedong play last year. But now watching Jaedong play makes me want to cry. Without engaging the viewer SC2 will fail. SC2 needs to have stars that we want to see win but if the game is consistently being re-balanced this will not occur as no one player can dominate.
The issue with balancing is that it assumes that there should be equality between the races and this creates a Zero Sum game whereby when you nerf (buff) a race you directly disadvantage (advantage) one race over the other. Whilst I appreciate Blizzard are in a difficult position and should not just let one race be better than another, I think they should place more emphasis on allowing professionals to be creative and this may help stars emerge. Many commnetators acknowledge that lesser players simply watch the best players and replicate their style. This leads to a batch of very uncreative players. An example of innovation is Polt's strategy to counter attack blink stalkers when they leave the base. It is a very dangerous path when a company goes down the root of patching the game to make it more balanced because it can be viewed as: Oh a player gets so good that he wins, this players vods are mimicked by other players, oh now the race is OP. So is it by chance that there are so many Protoss players and Protoss are deemed to be OP. Or does the rationale work differently? Protoss is also the least standard out of all the races, therefore timings and costly strats are very powerful albeit risky. Or because there are so many Protoss players more Protoss play more often, they invest more time and energy into understanding how Protoss by the very fact there are more players play one particular race. Now this race that is far more developed than other races can beat other races (including Protoss themselves) because all this investment by the players has produces more intricate play, but rather than rewarding player for developing a better understanding of the game Blizzard nerfs them! The motto from Blizzard is play and be good, but dont be too good otherwise we will nerf you because everyone should have the equal opportunity to win. Is that the rationale of Sports to you? Does a soccer team like Leeds United have the same chance of wining as Real Madrid? No, they are not playing on an equal playing ground. When Messi or Ronaldo dominate a sport does Fifa say hey we have to put them with a lesser team as to level the playing ground? In addition, balance changes can be triggered by populous opinion.
In my opinion video games are not a traditional form of sport, they are post-modern. Do you know any other sports where the conditions by which the game is played change so much? How many times do they bring out new football pitches? new goal? new soccer shoes? Moreover, all these changes could rationale be considered minor in comparison to patch changes that regularly occur in SC2.
From the perspective of the consumer/casual player
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kHVKpJv.png)
Also, the psychological qualities necessary to play games are very different. invariably SC2 requires too much initial investment in order to reap the benefits out of it, I think that you are only going to attract a certain type of player with this mechanic, there is not enough luck involved, if you are playing someone who is better than you that is it, you are very unlikely to win.This would be simple to measure, wins versus loses and see does APM on average predict the winner throughout the leagues. Psychological this is a big problem for casual gamers. Learning all the strats the counters, timings, increasing APM, improving micro it can be a form of self-flagellation. Whereas I believe MOBA games are really all about just clicking on enemies and casting spells? This has a very appeasing sensation to the person neurologically an extremely hedonistic game play (Operant conditioning: a stimulus that is presented in a variable ratio offers the most effective form of positive reinforcement and the quickest and most enjoyable way that humans learn i.e., slot machines at casinos). I play a game for fun not to learn a whole load of strats before I can make it out of Bronze league!! So to wrap it up MOBA=Hedonism SC2= psychological self mutilation. That being said perhaps there are inherent cultural differences which explain why let's say Americans (hedonistic nation) are not that invested in SC2 while Koreans (honour nation) are. I will write more or answer questions if there is an appetite for the discussion.
 
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I though Summer was starting, guess it's now called "SC2 is dying Season". A bit too long if you ask me, needs some cool acronym.
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You can still have stars in a balanced game. The problem with hellbats was that EVERYBODY was abusing them and there was no inherent risk with going for them. Stars that abuse one thing that is imbalanced aren't stars at all. Think about Polt. He's been doing the same 1-2 builds for years with balanced units and is still winning tournaments. This is because he's an all-around solid player that found a solid build that compliments his style. He's a true superstar Terran. Being a star is based on being all-around solid and being charismatic.
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can comfirm, i only watch sc2 with a laptop on a cemetery, otherwise it just doesnt have the right atmosphere
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The thing that makes a game unbalanced should not be the game but the players skill. These supers stars of other sports are not abusing a unbalance in the game they are abusing the unbalance in there skill.
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"The issue with balancing is that it assumes that there should be equality between the races"
Genius.
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wow, finally someone says "overly balanced". I agree 100000x
Blizzard just patches everything that seems strong, even if excellent players made the difference and not the unit itself. A very great example is the decrease of infestor speed in may2011 (I think), Everyone except few sucked at control own infestors and after that patch everyone control them very good and the "few" lost one of their strenght: fights with great control of own support-units. (Yes the speed-decrease was a huge buff for everyone, almost nothing for better players)
Design of sc2 hurts me pretty hard. Deathball, 2sec fights at 200/200, 3base income-cap, hardcounter units, very straightforwardly games, t3 units most boring sc2 units, spells like FF & TimeWarp, etc.
At any time, if there comes a new rts-game to esports, goodbye sc2 for me.
Edit: 50-50 is always bad/boring. A vs B 52-48, B vs C 52-48, C vs A 52-48 is much more exciting.
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Finally these threads start again. I was afraid "sc2 is dying" threads were dying.
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You know what other game is, to use your term, overly balanced but still has stars? Chess, which has been a non-traditional sport for much longer than any video game and still has had its stars. The analogy often used between Chess and Starcraft is apt for a number of reasons, in that strategically speaking you cannot employ certain strategies and expect to make forward progress in your ELO or ladder ranking respectively. So when you say:
I play a game for fun not to learn a whole load of strats before I can make it out of Bronze league!!
You are ignoring the fundamental premise of the entire game which is strategy. Now if you want to play for fun, and do wonky builds that is fine and well, I lost to mass Raven on Antiga Shipyard, and remember being rather pissed about it; but saying that a steeper learning curve is killing the game is a gross overstatement.
Bobby Fisher, to stretch the tired Chess analogy even further, thought that standard Chess had become stale as well, that the early game was almost completely sorted in terms of viable strategies and he opted to create a game called Chess, or Fisher960 (the two are used interchangeably at times) wherein the back row of pieces is completely random, and there are 960 possible combinations or orders of the back rank. Similar things have happened with the Arcade and Starbow.
There are many ways to skin a cat so to speak, or have fun with SC2. You seem to have a rather narrow scope of your options.
The issue with balancing is that it assumes that there should be equality between the races...
You ever sat on a three-legged stool where one leg is shorter than the other two, or all three were different lengths?
Your thoughts on Protoss are also about six months behind, and rather strange at that. I would say the focal point of balance of late has been the reemergence of Hellbats post Transformation Servos removal.
Protoss is also the least standard out of all the races...
Warp in not withstanding, mechanically Terran and Protoss are much more akin to one another than Zerg is to any of the other races.
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I agree with this blog. All my favorite stars have been nerfed into the ground in this game.
They were all Terran 
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On June 27 2014 22:56 Paljas wrote:
can comfirm, i only watch sc2 with a laptop on a cemetery, otherwise it just doesnt have the right atmosphere
Hahahahahahah amazing response.
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SCII already died in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. You're a bit late to the party.
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its the same reason why nobody watches the world cup, soccer is a mirror matchup so its boring as shit and way too balanced so theres no stars
and clearly people doing well with a certain race suddenly is not due to imbalance but because they clearly are all working harder than the other races
have you ever considered over representation of a certain race or unit or build is due to their increased effectiveness shutting out the competition and not some kind of conspiracy by blizzard to nerf anything effective to the ground?
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a whole new kind of balance whine + ded gaem, thank you
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Canada11202 Posts
So if racial imbalance creates stars... then I guess Warcraft II had the starpower, and BW had none?
I think the premise is faulty, and therefore so are the conclusions.
If instead of 'balance' you meant 'signature moves', then we might have something there. BW had a lot of signature moves whether it was muta micro or vulture micro. But an imbalanced race doesn't create stars so much as revulsion (or else capitulation- everyone play Orc). An OP units just means you will see them every game. But unless they have intrinsic microbility, it again doesn't create starpower, only " *yawn. I only see X unit in every matchup, in every game."
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On June 27 2014 23:27 Dingodile wrote:
Edit: 50-50 is always bad/boring. A vs B 52-48, B vs C 52-48, C vs A 52-48 is much more exciting.
No, the human factor is more than enough to make seemingly boring stats be exciting. A slight percentage of difference doesn't change anything because it's what's called the margin of error, which is much less important than just people being people and general shifts in meta and whatever.
That said it has always been my opinion that part of the reason why I can't find SC2 exciting anymore is that the emphasis for the game is put on making it balanced rather than making it enjoyable to play and to watch. That's not to say it's boring, although I myself have not been really enjoying it for the last >year. It's just that I feel like the design philosophy has always been about competitive play and finding the best of the best. By itself, it sounds like a great idea and I might have thought it was when I was at the Blizzcon in 2009 and I couldn't wait for SC2 to come out and I wanted it to be a hard, unforgiving game.
Yet in the end I think that too much of the design philosophy goes into balance, as if Kim and Browder were just looking at fluctuations in the meta, looking at how those affect win rates and pushing those inconsistencies down with hotfixes as if game design was now just a game of whack-a-mole on a misshapen bell curve. In some cases, it's justified, but to me it seemed like the expansion was just a slightly more elaborate instance of this happening. They just slapped on some mud and polished it so it would fit into this bland preconception of how the game should be played. A sort of mold which limits creativity, imagination and the fun that reavers and mutas used to be.
Despite that, SC2 is not dying. Perhaps it's not as popular as it might have been if Blizzard had better supported the game when it was new and if blizzard ceased to operate like a company in the 90's and the early 2000's. Yet, it's not dying. SC2 is where it should be, as an aging, complicated game that retailed for $60 and up to $80-90 if you bought the game and its expansion on amazon.ca today. Even with the cards played right, nothing could have competed with the recent surge of F2P MOBAs which were frankly destined, regardless of SC2's success, to overtake it without contest. I hate them, but you can't deny that those games inherently have what it takes to get people playing it. It's free, it's easy to get into the game and play with people who are of your level, it's easy to lie to yourself and blame your team for your failings, it's easy to feel confident about your ability even when you don't know what you're doing. SC2 is expensive and it's a niche, it's complex, it's stagnant.
There's no harm in being a niche and I think that all those "SC2 is dying" doomsday messages come from the fact that SC2 used to be the big shot game and now that it isn't, people feel like somehow something is wrong about SC2 while in reality it's just that there's something incredibly right about MOBAs from a marketing standpoint.
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1st Point: What evidence is there that SC2 is dying? Blizzard has at least one more expansion pack planned, prize pools continue to rise, ladder games queue up quickly and the meta-game rarely becomes stale before Blizzard unleashes new maps or a patch. KeSPA runs a healthy pro-league and the GSL remains popular.
2nd Point: There aren't stars? Soo isn't a Star? Parting? MC? Maru? I think what you mean is that there aren't Stars with long careers (NesTea being the notable exception), but that is due to the nature of e-sports (It's a young man's game) especially in Korea where players careers are cut short for mandatory military service. Still, powerhouse teams like SKT remain relevant through roster changes and foreign teams have been quick to sign popular stars like Jaedong to keep their careers alive.
3rd Point: The LoL factor. I don't think we should be surprised MOBA's are surpassing SC2 in popularity especially outside Korea. They are considerably more accessible to play and team sports have a long history of being more popular than their individual counterparts. That said, nothing beats Starcraft as a test of skill and strategy and it looks to remain the crown jewel of individual e-sports for the foreseeable future.
The Broader Point: Starcraft will always be a niche game in most places. It's just too damn fucking challenging to be anything else. If it's dying (which I've established, it's not), that's the reason. It's dip in popularity have nothing to do with balance or specific game mechanics. But for those of us who have committed to learning the game, seeing it played at the highest level is a beautiful thing. Check out Heart's comeback versus XiGua in game 2 of their series(WCS America) and tell me again that SC2 is in anything but great shape.
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Its actually amusing at one point, after reading for a time, because he mentions people like pele being stars in soccer (or football for most people I suppose, I'm north american)...at that point the argument should have been relinquished. Soccer, a game where both sides are evenly balanced, and both sides play by the same rules. And there are still superstars, people who gain national and sometimes worldwide acclaim. You don't need to read anything else after that. The same is true for countless other games and sports.
Chess is perfectly balanced, you could not have a more even game besides who goes first (which is minor as best as we can tell). Yet you have superstars in chess that people love to watch, like Magnus Carlsen or Viswanathan Anand. Think of any number of other professional sports, there are stars everywhere. You can only conclude that the issue has nothing to do with over-balancing the game. Even at ideal balance levels it should be irrelevant if *every other* sport is any indication!
Anyway I think it would irritate everyone to no end to see the game being blatantly imbalanced in some way. I'd rather they try the opposite even if it makes the game a bit more boring.
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On June 28 2014 01:21 radscorpion9 wrote:
Its actually amusing at one point, after reading for a time, because he mentions people like pele being stars in soccer (or football for most people I suppose, I'm north american)...at that point the argument should have been relinquished. Soccer, a game where both sides are evenly balanced, and both sides play by the same rules. And there are still superstars, people who gain national and sometimes worldwide acclaim. You don't need to read anything else after that. The same is true for countless other games and sports.
Chess is perfectly balanced, you could not have a more even game besides who goes first (which is minor as best as we can tell). Yet you have superstars in chess that people love to watch, like Magnus Carlsen or Viswanathan Anand. Think of any number of other professional sports, there are stars everywhere. You can only conclude that the issue has nothing to do with over-balancing the game. Even at ideal balance levels it should be irrelevant if *every other* sport is any indication!
Anyway I think it would irritate everyone to no end to see the game being blatantly imbalanced in some way. I'd rather they try the opposite even if it makes the game a bit more boring.
But they don't make new pitches or goals ergo...
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EPT
