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TL;DR: I'm really disappointed with how blizzard handles SC2's multiplayer balance and especially the design, they did so much wrong in my opinion. They only add band-aids or number tweaks, but the game has a broken core and they don't adress it. They are stuck in the wrong direction, unwilling to turn around.
Disclaimer: Long, very critical text. I'm not trying to say everything was better back then, it wasn't, but i'm saying what's still terribly wrong in lotv.
[The following is just an example, this is not a whine thread about mech viability, but instead how i dislike the big picture of lotv and it's flawed design]
i often play mech and when it gets scouted, the opponent terran often starts to turtle into mass air with ranged liberators.
Since i can't attack into a defensive tank position myself, i'm forced to basically add starports and do exactly the same thing ---> massing air.
This situation interrupts the actual gameplay of mech vs bio or mech vs mech 100% and forces both players to play a painful mass air turtle game.
Is this good gameplay ? Is this fun ? I highly doubt it. Maybe someone likes that kind of stuff, but i personally really don't enjoy this at all.
i enjoyed the hots meta much more, where the mech terran had hellbat/medivac + tanks vs bio + tanks.
It was very action packed and skill based. You could actively engage armies and trade units (another reason for this, was the stronger economy back then. ), but if such strong hardcounter units like liberators with range upgrade exist, or raven auto turrets deal such an insane DPS, it basically becomes impossible to play like that, because if you invest into medivacs and hellbats, you dont invest into ravens and vikings.
I hope this will change someday... I hope tanks could be weaker while still being viable in every matchup, i wish mech would be more fun, i wish mech would atleast be viable,... I wish terrans could engage tanklines better, without mass air, but instead with micro based engagements.
Unfortunately all of this can't work because of so many new units and mechanics that got added in lotv. Tanks can't be weaker, ravagers would be even stronger vs them (Tanks would simply not be viable anymore), You're forced to mass air vs ranged libs, because you have no ground unit that can deal with it,... (Just some examples)
Why are air units in general always so dominant ? Why don't we have a healthy amount of ressources per base ? Why do we have T1 units with extremely powerful and spammable Spells like reapers, ravagers and adepts,...
Why have ultralisks so much armor ? why do we need units like liberators to deal with it ? Why is cyclone such a pointless, heartless, boring unit ? why does the viper hardcounter every mech unit ? why is the raven so crazy strong (isn't it supposed to be a support unit ? ), Why are disruptors so gimmicky and coinflippy? Why does my main run out of ressources when i take my 3rd ? (I'm terran, mules suck your bases out so fast, it's not enjoyable). Why do we have atleast 3 completely stupid, unenjoyable maps each season ?
Why does Lotv still feel like an early beta version ?
Why are nydus worms still invincible ? Why have queens such an insane range ? Why do we have T1 overlord drop !? Why can you kill someone with a pylon ? Why are stasis wards basically a mini vortex ? Why did banelings recieve a health buff ?
Even zergs agree it wasn't necessary^^
Bio vs LBM used to be the best matchup in hots, it was so cool to watch and play. Now it's basically Something inbetween cancer turtle lategame shitfest and... well, i dont know. That's about it. Some zerg also spam roach/ravager infestor all game long, so my question is: why did you change something that was so good and turned into something terrible ?... Why do we have burrow fungals ? Why are >Battlecruisers< able to literally teleport anywhere on the map without vision !?!?
I thought you wanted to do a big redesign instead of a "We just add more shit, because we think we didn't had enough yet"... "We saw your feedback and we noticed that the game is not where we want it to be, so we decided to make mech viable by adding more hardcounters to it and we also add blink DT's and of course burrowed fungals, because that's what makes RTS great" - Balance Team
Are you serious ?
Protoss players requested to shift protoss strength more towards gateway units so that they don't have to turtle to collosi, back in hots... so far, so good. So then you decided to add the adept !? One of the most annoying, gimmicky, frustrating and RTS-Design-breaking units i've ever seen. After multiple adept nerfs, the unit is finally "not that stupid" anymore. Why didn't you just make the Stalker more reliable, maybe more "dragoon"-like?
Let's take a look on the meta. Oh, that's right. Protoss still has to turtle to collosi AND we also have a shitty new unit.
Zerg's requested a protoss all in nerf, because they were too strong, so far so good. Then you decided it would be the best to add a ravager. Literally a normal roach, but with spammable high impact spell that is able to crush the forcefields. Why didn't you just nerf the actual problem, the forcefield ? Why ? Why did you add another poorly designed unit, that just added another thousand problems. Wyh did you decide to completely break an almost perfect RTS, instead of actually adjusting the balance, where it was necessary ?
You achieved some of your goals.
Protoss all ins are not that dominant vs zerg than it was back then, Offensive pylon warp ins are finally gone, immortals are finally not that strong anymore vs tanks, tempests also recieved a nerf,...etc. But at what cost ? You completey broke the game instead of addressing the real issues, Instead of nerfing lategame mech vs zerg a bit and buffing its midgame with for example a viper nerf, you just made mech complete shit. Just to name an example.
Protoss is not enjoyable in lotv, it's annoying. You took the heavy macro aspect away from zerg and changed them into a gimmicky spam race with stacked injects etc,... You "redesigned" the macro mechanics, Something that was completely unnecessary. All you did is you took the skill out of every race, except for terran, mules simply got nerfed instead of redesigned. Zerg's macro used to be hard, but equally rewarding (zerg was cool^^), you sucked the macro decision making and management out of protoss. The current version of Chronoboost is a joke design wise, just like >>stacked injects<<.
People didn't like turtle games, so you reduced the ressources per base to an absurd low amount. The low economy in lotv makes it so much harder to recover from harass. You didn't fix the actual cause of turtle games. Turtle games were caused by Bad unit designs like ravens, Protoss relying to much on high tech like collosi, vipers, swarmhost, mass air usually being stronger, than the ground units that are supposed to counter air. You ignored the actual problem, and instead added new ones. That's LotV and it's multiplayer developement in a nutshell.
....
i could continue for days, you get the point^^
Let's be real for a moment, Those units only achieved one thing:
They limit the strategical options of every race. They make the game so much more unforgiving for newcomers and top players.
They make the game worse.
The results of those changes are obvious.
We literally see the same build over and over and over and over again, Every matchup, every map.
Sometimes a cheese and that's it.
Star craft is not Star Craft anymore. StarCraft in it's current state is not what it could be.
Why am i writing this down, why am i so angry ? Because i'm one of the most passionate SC fans out there and i don't like how blizzard handles this situation.
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Star craft is not Star Craft anymore.
You got that right. I'm not even sure it really was. But honestly, isn't there a place other than General these kinds of pointless, poorly proofread rants could go?
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They should get Day[9] to balance the game
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I'm sorry, i'm not english. My text sounds so angry because that's exactly how i feel. I wanted to know if i'm the only one feeling like this.
i'm literally playing the same builds every match, every matchup and i still try to improve, i still love this game. I'm just disappointed about what blizzard made out of this beautiful game. It could be so so so much more, so much better. It's like you see your good old friend slowly dying, but you can do nothing to help him. It's really sad for me, i love this game, i play it everyday and i consider it one of my hobbies. But it's unfortunately not in my hands and i have to watch how they ruin this for me.
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Is it just me guys ? I'm very disappointed.
Yes, it's just you - well, no, I'm kidding
But maybe it's just not very convincing to complain of being countered by an opponent, who scouts your quite onesided (and maybe a Little stubborn?) build...
Instead of feeling miserable because of the mighty overpowered units or builds, your opponents are using, you could just start and try to play different. maybe not stubborn mech: ah, I'm massing tanks, I should be supposed to win, because tanks should be near invincible.
bio tank liberator is very powerful in some games. bio mine cyclone in others, even skyterran is somewhat viable again in certain circumstances
well, honestly, if you want to stick to always the same three or what units, you could instead play Paper, Scissors, Stone
I try to be not too sarcastic, but you're tempting me
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Honestly I feel like if they just revert to some HotS build the game will see a resurgence, even WoL was way more enjoyable than this.
Remove bullcrap units like Swarm Hosts, Cyclones, Liberators, Distruptors etc and refocus on what makes the core game good. But we all know this will never happen.
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okay it sounds like i have to make things more clear. I don't need 100% mech viability to be happy with lotv.
I dislike the big picture of lotv, I dislike it's design and how games play out.
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I think mech vs bio is not so common now because the new tanks are so much stronger ands its difficult to trade with bio tank which leaves air as the only answer. Maybe tanks should be nerfed a bit to somewhere between pre 3.8 and now. Also as primarily bio player i hate playing against mech right now. But in general I'm very happy with Legacy right now and i think it much superior to Hots and Wol
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the game core is broken since 2010, i don't think they want to redesign it now or in the near future they refused to take any suggestion from the community
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No structure in this post. You can't even look at one particular problem and try to understand it. Your knowledge of this game is very shallow: You call the adept a gimmick, neither are disruptors, say that they took the skill out of every other race than the one you play yourself, say the meta is Protoss massing colossi (which is a thing of the past, thanks to its nerf and the introduction of the adept) and these are just a few examples.
Another thing I noticed is that your view on this game is very narrow. You deem your game experience as representative for anyone else's. You also seem to only care about what you find hard or annoying to deal with exclusively as a Terran player.
You didn't even proofread your post. Just FYI: You don't put a blank key between the last word of your sentence and your punctuation mark.
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On February 10 2017 08:27 ReachTheSky wrote: They should get Day[9] to balance the game they probably can't afford him; ATVI revenue keeps falling because their games are so bad. they only made $2 billion over the last 3 months.
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On February 10 2017 08:27 ReachTheSky wrote: They should get Day[9] to balance the game
Please don't ask Day[9] to dive into a dumpster fire.
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On February 10 2017 08:41 Siegetank_Dieter wrote: okay it sounds like i have to make things more clear. I don't need 100% mech viability to be happy with lotv.
I dislike the big picture of lotv, I dislike it's design and how games play out.
Blizzard has been doing PR rather than truly developing the game with a vision since LotV beta. This whole "asking the community for guidance" thing is a PR ploy that results in them doing very little in the end and not having to take responsibility for that.
They have been acting like they are "taking advice from the community" but have directly did the opposite of what polls were supporting in many cases. They decide to implement something the majority is asking them NOT to do, and blame it on the community.
Meanwhile, the community ideas that are amazingly well thought-out, that are supported by the entire community, are ignored. They really don't want suggestions from the community. It's a ploy. If they truly wanted the communities help, they would listen to the best ideas the community has, not random comments you barely hear anyone supporting.
Sadly, it seems competitive SC2 is intentionally being left behind. All signs indicate Blizzard is likely working on another RTS (probably the Brood War remake).
Team 1 has been put on another project and they have not stated what it is yet - but Team1 is their RTS team (who last worked on Heroes of the Storm, and SC2 before that).
Blizzard has been actively patching much content in to the coop modes and mission packs, but the competitive development has been severely lacking. Blizzard does not ever give up on their games being continually profitable unless they have other projects that will compete with their own titles. If they are giving up on the competitive side of SC2, traditionally the only reason they would do this is another competitive RTS soon.
Plus, just look at the direction the PR is taking. They are keeping players "on the hook". Telling them changes will be happening in the future, etc. But they are ignoring the ridiculously huge amount of discontent going around. This is a very common form of marketing. The more upset players are now, and desperate to see change, the more excited they will be when they see a new release giving them everything they wanted (but would never be able to get on SC2).
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oh boy another "let's complain about sc2 again everybody" thread
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On February 10 2017 08:47 Buffbefehl wrote: No structure in this post. You can't even look at one particular problem and try to understand it. Your knowledge of this game is very shallow: You call the adept a gimmick, neither are disruptors, say that they took the skill out of every other race than the one you play yourself, say the meta is Protoss massing colossi (which is a thing of the past, thanks to its nerf and the introduction of the adept) and these are just a few examples.
Another thing I noticed is that your view on this game is very narrow. You deem your game experience as representative for anyone else's. You also seem to only care about what you find hard or annoying to deal with exclusively as a Terran player.
You didn't even proofread your post. Just FYI: You don't put a blank key between the last word of your sentence and your punctuation mark.
Attacking the person who critiques the game doesn't do any good for you, this person or the game you play so either give some reasonable argument or stay silent. Your post is worse then OP.
What I would also like to point out is the fact that if more and more people speak loudly how they dislike the game then there must be a reason for that - whether you like it or not.
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Overall the design decisions in HOTS and LOTV have been increasingly terrible. WOL was an awesome game that got everyone excited, but that had some pretty big flaws (deathballs, forcefields, useless units, very immobile metas).
Then the first mistake blizz made was to rest on their laurels and not balance/tweak the game when it was really necessary. People left en masse during the BLfestor era because it lasted for more than a year. A stupid meta that plagued pretty much every MU zerg played.
Then HOTS came out, and we got what was arguably the worst designed units i've every seen in a RTS. The oracle, the "worker friendly" harass tool that was supposed to make stargate tech viable for toss devolved into a steroided banshee that completely dictated openings versus protoss. The tempest was supposed to be the protoss answer to mass mutas, but devolved into a siege breaking capital ship overlapping heavily with the carrier, and synergizing with storm and revelation in an extremely abusive manner. The mine quickly became one of the most hated terran unit for toss and zerg. The MSC quickly became the most hated gimmick in the protoss arsenal. The viper effectively removed agressive mech and colossi from the zerg matchups. Even the only "decent" unit HOTS brought, the hellbat, was so imba at the released it managed to plague competitions heavily, and they had to nerf it in an extremely niche and incoherent way (space occupied in medivacs). And finally, the SH, the siege breaking zerg unit, turned out to be the most hated unit in the entire game, inducing the most hated meta we've ever seen.
Also, the changes to WOL units were also very, very bizarre. Everything got sped up, with a triangle "faster/regen mutas" <> "boost for medivac" <> "nexus overcharge". Mutas completely lost their strategical aspect (loosing health was a big deal, your mutas were weaker for a while), medivacs became extremely oppressive and the overcharge was the dumbest thing i've ever seen in an RTS. From carefull, strategic play, the game was much more about execution and EXPLOSIONZZZ. We went from zergs harassing with mutas and retreating as soon as a thor was seen, to mutas YOLOing in terran production, either wrecking everything, either getting obliterated by 3 mines in a bloody explosion.
However, blizz surprised me, they fixed the hellbat quite quickly. But the SH and the blink allins? Took ages again. More people left, again. By the time LOTV came out, the hype was practically non existent. I've never been part of a community where the next installement of the game was that underhyped. Blizz seemed to have learned from their mistakes, and promised an eco revamp to solve the deathball aspect of the game, a warp revamp, and a long beta to test out everything.
In the end we got a long beta where the most circus-worthy changes were made (30 dmg zealot charge hahaha), and where very little was effectively done. When the game came out the eco changes were new, but synergized with even more options to kill workers to make games very volatile and frustrating. The new units were maybe more interesting in design, but implemented in a final version so shitty that each one of them broke a matchup. Adept broke TvP, disruptors broke PvP, cyclones broke everything then nothing, liberators broke TvP, and lurkers/ravagers broke everything, then people adapted. And what did we get for WOL/HOTS unit changes? MORE SPEED (banshee speed/tankivac). MORE BADLY DESIGNED BS (parasitic bomb/ultra armor). And that even broke the game further.
Even more people left (third exodus), and with 3.8 we got something that had "mostly" beneficial effects on design. Now we stand in a weird place, where more design changes NEED to happen if we want the game to crawl back to a good spot. And the list of mandatory things to look at is very, very long. To give a few exemples : - disruptor still omnipresent in PvP, while being meh in other MUs - mechvZ and PvZ late game in a weird place, where both the BL and the ultras are quite bad, which forces an overreliance from zerg on the viper as both AA and sniper unit - SH breaking mech while being terrible against everything else - pylon overcharge and pylon rushes - reaper being useless past the early game, while inducing the most stupid allin ever - BC jump and raven 24 damage turret and unavoidable missiles being probably the most cancerous version of skyterran we've seen in ages
And what prevents blizz from agressively using the test map to test design changes? A test map where oracles really were a worker friendly harass unit (maybe through the stasis ward), where SHs were AoE anti air T3 units, or where ravens where nerfed and had their turret remplaced by a defensive matrix would be played by everyone.
But in truth, blizzard isn't interested in multiplayer anymore, and that's why they're not testing. Once LOTV came out, blizz shifted ressources away from multi towards solo (nova missions), coop (missions, commanders) and goodies (skin and annourcers) : which is what people pay for. Apparently blizz doesn't intended to gain money through having a healthy, competitive and well designed multi mode (like WOL was known for) that sustains a very active professional scene with lots of viewers : they invested their ressources into more purchasable content, to milk the cow before it dies. What is actually genius was the community feedback updates as a way to smooth things with the community and make people think blizzard cared and was still investing in the multiplayer. That was a very good PR move to divert people's attention from the fact that the game was still badly designed when LOTV came out. Therefore I think we'll have to wait for a long, long time before any design changes are made to multiplayer mode. If blizz is doing what i think they're doing, they have no interest into changing the multi, because any unpredicted stuff would require amounts of work that the tiny suriving multiplayer department (led by DK who is the PR figure of the terrible designs of HOTS and LOTV) isn't capable of producing.
The thing that saddens me the most is the fact that overall, with the speeding up of everything, focus on worker harass and "big explosions", LOTV became an action game with strategical components instead of an RTS. The risk-reward ratio of most units and builds got completely screwed. At the end of the day, LOTV is much more about execution, multitask and APM than it's about strategy, management, planning and mindgames.
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I do wish Mech was more viable in pro game play. It's nice to see games without constant pure bio. Terran v Protoss was always my favorite to watch in Broodwar and to watch bio vs T/P/Z is pretty prosaic, dry and humdrum.
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On February 10 2017 08:54 -NegativeZero- wrote: oh boy another "let's complain about sc2 again everybody" thread Maybe we can throw this post, and all other similar ones, into one of avilos threads, and call it "saving sc2 from itself by buffing mech" or something. That will free up the forum for the rest of us that want to enjoy the game.
OP: have you read any of avilos rants (sorry, constructive feedback)? Seems like he could be your friend, or at least you his follower.
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I am not a great player by any definition, cruising low diamond zerg/high plat terran, so anything I have to add can be taken as another point of view from somewhere in the middle of the ladder. Honestly though, all the balance issues that the pros speak of don't really affect my meta. But while I don't have anything to complain about, I am extremely satisfied with the way blizzard has meticulously listened and considered the changes that have to be made suggested by pro-gamers. Sure it takes months to go through with any sort of change, but testing for those changes are necessary! The pitchforks are always raised whether they make the change too fast or too slow.
I almost exclusively played mech in HotS and have discovered that my playstyle is extremely outdated and simply does not translate well into LotV. Furthermore, as the global player skill increases slightly, more people are knowledgeable on how to abuse mech. The theoretical solution is to find alternative ways to make mech more aggressive or unpredictable (aka not turtle on 3 base then leapfrog for the W). I am glad blizzard is not handing the answer to us like candy though, because mech in the hands of good players still looks like the perfect shield/perfect weapon.
A complaint of my own: Playing against mech for many is "pointless, heartless, and boring." I can lose to 14 pools, cannon rushes, and proxy reapers all day but one crushing, zone focused mech game and I feel suffocated and have to take a break.
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The no high-ground low-ground policy Blizzard apparently decided on I think has limited diverse play in this game. Why did they make that policy?
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