EPThttps://old.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/15y47y3/competitive_mappool_balance_update_test_september/
TLnet Poll - How do you feel about the proposed balance ch…
How do you feel about the proposed balance changes from ESL/Balance Council? :
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TL.net Bot
TL.net132 Posts
https://old.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/15y47y3/competitive_mappool_balance_update_test_september/ | ||
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Kitai
United States876 Posts
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QOGQOG
834 Posts
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teapot_
39 Posts
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Poopi
France12904 Posts
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Charoisaur
Germany16006 Posts
The rest of the changes seem alright, especially Ghost, Baneling, Disruptor | ||
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Ciaus_Dronu
South Africa1848 Posts
I like the consistency changes for sizes on minimap, and some of the changes are good common sense (banes not 1-shotting probes, slower lurkers, immortals having a way to buffer EMP). I hate with a burning passion the infestor changes, and the mine change. What the actual **** went through someone's mind that led to `the widowmine needs to be better at surviving'. It's asinine. The viper change is also dumb. We are buffing (even if negligibly) the overtuned Zerg caster and totally murdering the one we apparently are trying to see more of? Was microbial shroud not enough of a joke? Trying to make mech viable vs Protoss by giving it a rollerblading mech marine is probably not it. Hydra buff is weird, and overall some of the changes feel like they create strong ZvP timings, which I'm skeptical of. Making improvements and changes largely to skytoss is also just not a direction I like, even if the changes themselves are likely not all that impactful. Oh, also midgame ZvT is going to be totally ****ed. It's gonna be a rough time for Zerg. | ||
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PartingFan
17 Posts
Some big complaints: - This is supposed to be a "Community" patch but we don't know who is responsible for the changes, how they come up with them, or who makes the final decisions. ESPECIALLY when all pros on the council are claiming they only know a very small part of the final patch. - No mention of the patching timelines. Is this going to be the only patch for another year, or they will have chances to gradually fine-tune the balance? If the former is true, then they are absolutely INSANE to go with the changes they propose. Again, the last patch destroyed the game's balance for more than a year, but there are absolutely no mentions of how they think what went wrong and plan to not repeat it. In software development language, no post-mortems. Ironically this "Community" patch is a total black box to the community, they are acting like Blizzard's game design team while they are not. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany16006 Posts
On August 30 2023 18:31 PartingFan wrote: Without going into change details, the communication and transparency have been very bad overall. Some big complaints: - This is supposed to be a "Community" patch but we don't know who is responsible for the changes, how they come up with them, or who makes the final decisions. ESPECIALLY when all pros on the council are claiming they only know a very small part of the final patch. - No mention of the patching timelines. Is this going to be the only patch for another year, or they will have chances to gradually fine-tune the balance? If the former is true, then they are absolutely INSANE to go with the changes they propose. Again, the last patch destroyed the game's balance for more than a year, but there are absolutely no mentions of how they plan to not repeat it. Ironically this "Community" patch is a total black box to the community, they are acting like Blizzard's game design team while they are not. I can actually 100% understand that, given how much every change gets flamed, if you go on reddit you can find lots of name-calling towards the balance council, calling them morons, clowns or worse. Nobody wants to be the new David Kim. And given how many absolutely terrible balance suggestions I read here and on reddit, and how clueless the community in general is about balance (remember Zerg cabal memes into TvT finals at Blizzcon) it's probably a wise approach to not listen too much to community feedback. Honestly, what use would it have to you to know who makes the final decision, except having someone to flame? | ||
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PartingFan
17 Posts
On August 30 2023 19:21 Charoisaur wrote: I can actually 100% understand that, given how much every change gets flamed, if you go on reddit you can find lots of name-calling towards the balance council, calling them morons, clowns or worse. Nobody wants to be the new David Kim. And given how many absolutely terrible balance suggestions I read here and on reddit, and how clueless the community in general is about balance (remember Zerg cabal memes into TvT finals at Blizzcon) it's probably a wise approach to not listen too much to community feedback. Exactly, the purpose is not to have another DK, no single person to decide the fate of the game. But the decision-making process should be clear to the community. And please read my post again, I'm not suggesting to take community opinions either. Please don't direct this transparency conversation that way. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany16006 Posts
On August 30 2023 19:26 PartingFan wrote: Exactly, the purpose is not to have another DK, no single person to decide the fate of the game. But the decision-making process should be clear to the community. And please read my post again, I'm not suggesting to take community opinions either. Please don't direct this transparency conversation that way. Well, doesn't matter if it's one guy or a group of people, due to the way the community is, nobody wants their name associated with being responsible for the decisions. Scarlett got a lot of hate last patch, just because Harstem said she came up with some of the changes | ||
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PartingFan
17 Posts
On August 30 2023 19:31 Charoisaur wrote: Well, doesn't matter if it's one guy or a group of people, due to the way the community is, nobody wants their name associated with being responsible for the decisions. Scarlett got a lot of hate last patch, just because Harstem said she came up with some of the changes Why do you keep mentioning that point about names? Names are unimportant. Read up on the Michelin star system. Everybody knows how it works, nobody knows who the inspectors are. As of now nobody in the community knows how the Balance Council works. No thought process was shared. No decision-making process either. They just throw a patch at the community's face and tell them to try it. It is totally pointless to judge a patch if we know nothing about the reasonings behind and what are the follow-up plans. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany16006 Posts
On August 30 2023 19:38 PartingFan wrote: Why do you keep mentioning that point about names? Names are unimportant. Read up on the Michelin star system. Everybody knows how it works, nobody knows who the inspectors are. As of now nobody in the community knows how the Balance Council works. No thought process was shared. No decision-making process either. They just throw a patch at the community's face and tell them to try it. It is totally pointless to judge a patch if we know nothing about the reasonings behind and what are the follow-up plans. What's left for you to know that doesn't include names? We already know a group of 50-60 pros discuss the changes in their discord and then some of them decide on which ones to implement. I guess the exact amount of people making the final decision would be interesting, but something tells me that wouldn't satisfy you. | ||
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tigera6
3433 Posts
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Tsubbi
Germany7996 Posts
Maybe slight adjustments to the game and qol changes is what should be focussed on again, thats how the council started in the first place. | ||
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Lyyna
France776 Posts
Already made a few comments in the other thread (https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/615481-new-sc2-balance-test-mod-along-with-new-map-pool?page=5#84 in particular) so gonna try to keep it shortish ( edit : oops... ) - Cyclone change is terrible and doesn't address any of mech issues in TvP, or even in other matchups where it is quite rare in the current meta. At best, it will hide issues behind an OP unit that is so strong that any other flaw of the strategy matters... and then, why make any other unit ? - Cyclone already feels several niches, both as part of several early game openings, both defensives and offensives, which are both very commonly used in all matchups and as a rarely-but-not-never seen cornerstone of battlemech. It can be said that the current unit is quite balanced and then why change it specifically ? - It is similar in essence to the previous "reactored cyclone" iteration in attempting to """"fix"""" mech with an all purpose, somewhat cheap,fast "frontline bruiser" able to fight in the early game efficiently, and covering for the slower and more expensive tanks in a role akin to BW vultures & goliaths. That change ended up doing nothing of the sort ; the unit was either not made at all since bio was overall better/more fleshed out, or as people who experimented with it quickly realized, simply made in large numbers without any other mechanical units, resulting in dull, mono unit games involving large clumps of cyclones just smashing into things and standing there doing their pewpew thing. What part of this change is supposed to prevent the same situation ? - This new version is even worse, since instead of "just" being tanky, high attack damage, and moderately fast, it also retains the powerful kiting capability of lockons and can be made even faster. So you get an unit that is both a very strong direct figther, but is also able to deal considerable damage while staying out of harm's way, and is able to do so for a large period of time with relatively simple micro. How is that supposed to end ? What are, according to the councils, supposed to be the available counterplays available ? - PvT is not even in a good place right now ; why would terrans get even more tools there ? Why not first make PvT a better experience on both sides equally, THEN focus on the whole mech TvP thing, which by nature means large changes in how the matchup is played (if anything because now protoss will have to actively scout and react to terran compositions, rather than knowing that by the midgame, they'll face bio, just like they have been for over a decade now) ? Overall, it is my belief that - Whoever engineered this change has very little experience with mech play, particularly in TvP, besides a couple of occasional mech games on the ladder, and a moderate number of games in competition during the short periods when a specific meta/mappool favored it - As a result of it, they went for the lowest hanging fruit, and for something that would largely make mech "bio like" - high mobility, high damage, focused on skirmishing and being mobile, rather than anything evoking slow mech play. It feels terribly uninspired, lazy, and really trying to shoehorn it into the same existing niche as the standard strategy rather than actually changing thngs - It means the strategy has to directly compete in the same niche as bio, except with a more expensive infrastructure and no drops, replaced with more direct combat power... Which means that either it is much stronger than bio at fighting, and there is little reason to do other stuff, or it doesn't compete with bio in direct combat either after balancing, and then why wouldn't you just play bio if it's both better at fighting and can move better as well ? - In its current form, the cyclone will have to be nerfed, and there is a good chance it will swing the other way - meaning that we would lose the previous cyclone's usages without replacements, while having no reasons to use it compared to bio Their names are irrelevant ; it's not like there are thousands of professionals left in the game anyway, so most guesses would probably hit the mark of who is at least remotely involved with the council. However ,the utter lack of disclosing their reasonings, timelines, and potential other ideas considerably hurt the balance council's credibility, and make it seem like a revival of the early Blizzard balance team methods. I'm guessing we'll get a bunker build time change soon from them ? We don't know the relevant experience of the people behind it - and when it comes to something as niche as TvP mech, it is quite important ! We don't know what other changes were considered and rejected, and why We don't know what is the expected in-game result of the changing in concrete terms We don't know what is the reasoning behind settling on this We don't know what are they are considering if this change doesn't work out one way or another ; whether it is how long it would take for a new change to be made, or what kind of change could come Complete blackbox | ||
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THERIDDLER
Canada126 Posts
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Moonerz
United States457 Posts
Or is the goal to drastically rebalance the game in an attempt to fix some of the underlying issues? Obviously this has higher reward and higher risk as seen by the test cyclone being busted at the moment. If something like that was on the end patch of lotv like bl/infestor was for WoL it ruins replayability. | ||
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Scarlett`
Canada2392 Posts
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Vindicare605
United States16095 Posts
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