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Walls upon walls of text and still many people doesn't get it.
Browder was/is/still is clueless about what made BW great. This is not about BW vs SC2, this is about SC2 failing to be loved by the people who it matters most to, The progamers who switched and/or the ones who took SC2 to a professional and serious level. Western "E-sport" isn't going to survive if its a bunch of casuals that plays in it, 'Lackluster' is what it's called.
Fuck what you casuals think. Fuck what artosis or tasteless think, they aren't playing the game for competitiveness. They are bagging money from the hype. Prove me wrong if this isn't the truth.
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On June 13 2011 19:15 adeezy wrote: I think blizzards done an excellent job balancing the game considering how long it has been out. Have you seen the statistics? Anything within 55-45 is pretty awesome
so let's say
one race all-ins or does coinflips (that the race doesn't know how to deal with yet) to get their 50%
then the other race just plays standard to get their 50%
That isn't balance
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On June 13 2011 22:50 aimaimaim wrote:Walls upon walls of text and still many people doesn't get it. Browder was/is/still is clueless about what made BW great. This is not about BW vs SC2, this is about SC2 failing to be loved by the people who it matters most to, The progamers who switched and/or the ones who took SC2 to a professional and serious level. Western "E-sport" isn't going to survive if its a bunch of casuals that plays in it, 'Lackluster' is what it's called. Fuck what you casuals think. Fuck what artosis or tasteless think, they aren't playing the game for competitiveness. They are bagging money from the hype. Prove me wrong if this isn't the truth.
+1. Blizz seem to get defensive of themselves whenever people mention scbw to them. the thing is most people dont give a damn to compare sc2 to scbw if sc2 was really a good successor. and being a developer they surely look at the game from the pov of a casual player ( a bad casual player, they dont seem to play much zerg or protoss) and thus not too surprise that they made changes 'for' the casual players. and not being able to listen and digest the useful information from the community doest help at all.
and you can see alot of people seem to be ignoring the current state of the game - they are either happy that they are winning with their race(look at the winning ratio of each race in western scene) or they are making good money atm or they simply dont care enough for the game.
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Can I just say something to everyone who has allot of passion and strong feelings about what would make the game better? Get involved. Maverck has done an incredible job making a SC2 mod of BW. Follow his lead either by playing his SC2BW map, promoting Esports on that mod, making your own version of how you think SC2 should work or any other constructive innitiative.
Saying that SC2 would be better with X and showing it are two worlds apart. The former infinitly inferior to the latter.
Also the Stalker is much more the Dragoon role than the Immortal.
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I don't understand why people don't do tests of changes. Experiment with the stats, we have a map editor.
Find out what would happen if we removed a unit, buffed a unit, made it faster, etc. etc.
We have an amazingly powerful map editor, find out what the changes would be like, get feedback, have daily releases where you can test the changes with the community.
Evidence for how a game would improve if we changed a couple of things.
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This is not only one of the best threads I've ever read on these forums, it is also one of the most important. I hope Blizzard can put aside any biases or pride or whatever else and realize that there are problems with the game that could be fixed without comprimising any of their stated goals for what they want the game to be.
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On June 13 2011 22:50 aimaimaim wrote: Fuck what you casuals think. Fuck what artosis or tasteless think, they aren't playing the game for competitiveness. They are bagging money from the hype. Prove me wrong if this isn't the truth.
QFT. Western Esport won't survive in it's current state. SC2 pro esport is slowly becoming "I play because of the money".
But artosis or tasteless have done soooo much for Esport. Too bad imho the problem lies at the "new noob friendly features", and as Lucifer (famous WC3 player?) said in a recent interview: "SC2 is too automated, I've easily made it into Grandmaster". It's not something that they can fix. But they are doing their part. Respect to u guys!
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Philadelphia, PA10406 Posts
I don't entirely agree with Cecil here, just because his experience and his work is one way doesn't mean that Blizzard's process or decision making is the same, however this should be requoted on the new page. Smart post.
On June 13 2011 18:49 CecilSunkure wrote:I'm contracted out to MGS (Microsoft Game Studios) working on the balance team as a tester (player) for the new Age of Empires game called Age of Empires Online, so I can probably provide some interesting insight. We have a ridiculous amount of limitations over at MGS. Where I work I know is similar to how Blizzard's test team functions, but Blizzard seems to have near endless resources when compared to AoEO's development cycle. In seeing what changes Blizzard has been able to do since the beginning of SC2's release, I'm pretty content with what has come around myself, and hope that you all can lighten up a bit and realize that people at Blizzard are experts, extremely intelligent, and will do everything they can to ensure this game is as successful as possible. I feel like a lot of people complaining about balance/design issues know nothing about balance, design, the game in general, and about developing a video game. I recently wrote a long article about improving your 1v1 in SC2, and one of my first sections was about how much you suck. I wrote that part because I knew most people reading my article will simply not realize how lacking they are. When people start talking about balance and design from a player's perspective, they almost always don't realize that they are talking about design and balance from a... player's perspective. Usually they know no design vocabulary, and have no experience with or any grasp on the process or methods of balancing out an RTS. Just realize that balancing an RTS is a very organic and non-linear process, and that just because you play on the NA ladder and are angry doesn't mean you know a damn thing about how to fix whatever it is that's upsetting your player experience. The state of balance in an RTS game is like an object formed out of many pieces. Whenever a piece is modified, added, or removed, the state of every other piece in the object is thusly modified as well -albeit to varying degrees. Everything is relative to everything else. This makes the process of balance a very volatile and non-linear one. You have to have a very proficient understanding of how the entire object (game) works in its current state in order to predict how a future modification will affect the entirety of all the other pieces. Understanding the current state of balance in a game is no easy task either; you have to discern the difference between the cause of problems and the symptoms thereof, all the while knowing which problems are actually problems. A lot of times something will look like a problem, and actually dissipate once something external to the balance or design of a game changes (e.g. test team work conditions, strategic evolution, paradigm shifts). Working at MGS I've seen a lot of decisions made by executives, higher ups, and design leads that impact balance in a significant way. None of these people that I have had experience with have even played a single competitive game of AoEO in their life. Naturally, these decisions almost always affect balance in a negative manner. However this doesn't necessarily mean that whoever made the decision is a moron for not listening to the balance team; every decision is made based on what benefits the decision will return in relation to the amount of resources needed to implement the decision. You want to maximize profits with the smallest amount of resources spent, otherwise you'll go out of business. There are often times priorities over balance, like making sure the game is in a playable state, or perhaps ensuring design aspects in areas other than 1v1 are up to par. Even though Blizzard has more resources to throw around, including the most valuable resource: time, they still follow the same rules we do. In understanding all this, take another look at the Dustin Browder interview. He was basically right about everything (if I understood the questions correctly). I believe the question was "From a viewer's perspective, SC2 isn't as fun to watch as BW because battles have such high variance, units cluster together in a ball, AoE is too strong. What do you think about this?" Dustin responded with (this is just my interpretation): "BW pathing was terrible, and it's just not acceptable to have the same thing in SC2. This is why units now cluster. We will however allow tweaks and modifications to mitigate the ballishness. We aren't willing to revert to old pathing just for the sake of Esports in order to achieve balance. We have to keep this game inviting and fun for newer players, and we don't want people getting frustrated because they can't easily move their units. Making units smarter and easier to use allows the game to appeal to a broader audience. In terms of AoE and variance in battles, that's a good thing for viewers. We don't want the general audience to know the outcome of every single battle before it happens." -This actually ties into information theory. The idea is that uncertainty in a game is required for meaningful play to arise. If all outcomes are known to the players, then the players will not be able to interact with the game state in a meaningful way, and similarly this applies to viewers as well. The entire part of the OP about meatshields is just a straw-man fallacy. Blizzard isn't fascinated with them. The part of the OP talking about which units are boring just goes to show that people voted for the units that annoy them the most. David Kim said that the Immortal's role in-game is now focused on burst damage as opposed to it's intended role. This has nothing to do with a meat-shield fascination, it's just making an observation. Show nested quote +Quote from OP: Answers like "We encourage users to go back to BW if they want to" does not help SC2 Progamers in anyway because they can't do that. Meaning that instead of looking at an issue in depth, it will simply be completely ignored. Actually Dustin said "If users liked to watch BW more than SC2, it's still watchable and our company still benefits from it. Go watch whichever one you like more." It did not mean that the issue will be ignored or side-stepped. He felt the "issue" with battle variance was non-existent (from a viewer's perspective), and I agree with him. I don't agree with his unit pathing decision from a competitive player's perspective, but I do agree with it from a business perspective. Truly, I think there's little to no miscommunication from the community to Dustin or Blizzard. The miscommunication seems to be from Blizzard to the community. And by this I mean most of you all don't seem to get what's going on or being said to you. I hate saying this because it sounds like something an arrogant asshole would say, but it's true. Summary: Balancing an RTS is extremely tedious. Outside suggestions must be taken with a grain of salt. You cannot let loose balance changes into public unless you are positive they are the best ones to release. The development team must cater to a very wide array of needs from a vary diverse population, and there is a priority list schema enforced in decision making (for example in the HoTS interview Browder stated they will not make a drastic change to pathing just for the sake of Esports, and I believe this is because it alienates a large majority of their target audience). As a player, you likely don't know a damned thing about balance or design, or developing a major title video game, so you should be reserved with your opinion. Although I did write this to try to provide some insight into those things, so opinions around here expressed can be a bit further developed. Personally, I've been very happy with all the balance changes made to this game to date, except for the recent intended 4 gate nerf. Overall it's my opinion that Blizzard is patching thing too fast. Progamers don't even seem to have that great of an understanding of the game, and I don't think the dust has ever settled in order for Blizzard (or anyone for that matter) to see clearly. If I could have it my way, I'd patch even slower than what we are currently experiencing with SC2.
I agree with this to a point. I think that balance whining by nearly everyone is fruitless and based in a mistaken perception of the complainer's skill. This goes even for IdrA, who takes it as an article of faith that he should beat always beat players like Minigun, because of his practice in Brood War. But Sc2 is a different game, and however you want to put it; it's easier, it's luckier, it is still not fair for IdrA to chalk up his losses to imbalance, just as it's hilarious for a diamond player to assume that imbalance lost him a game.
However, I still think Blizzard has their head in the sand with regards to competitive play. Drawing lessons from the history of BW balance; the game was not balanced by Blizzard, but rather by map makers. We can clearly see this effect in Sc2, maps like Testbug are difficult for protoss against zerg in several respects, and necessitate a specific style of play from protoss in order to gain an advantage. Blizzard's approach to map making seems to be completely haphazard and bizarre. Their insistence in keeping Delta Quadrant in the map pool is hilarious. Introducing maps like Slag Pits is lunacy.
And things like unit pathing that resists clumping are not incredibly difficult to do and merit investigation. That they dismiss them out of hand suggests to me that they don't understand very well what that means for the game, beyond simply making AOE powerful.
For the period in which BW was truly balanced; Blizzard was entirely absent. And for that reason, I buy the idea that a lot of the subtleties of that experience are not understood by their team. This is unfortunate, but not entirely surprising. There are very few people in the world, (myself most definitely not being one of them) that grasps enough of BW to really speak to how that game worked itself out.
All of this said; Sc2 is quite balanced at the moment. But I think the OP subtly hinted at a larger issue, which is that Sc2's balance isn't as exciting as BW's was. In BW, how come the corsair and the science vessel were used as counters for the mutalisk? That process took much more innovation that Blizzard seems intent to allow.
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posts like this disgust me. Complaining to Dustin Browder about the game, talking about least favorite units in star2 that need redesign?
I love this game, and still excited that a sequel to starcraft was made! Blizzard did an OUTSTANDING job with the whole entire game! I hate when people talk about imbalance, and shit they hate. This game went above and beyond my expectations.
Let's stop wasting time nit picking everything, and just talk about the stuff that matters, like strategy and build orders.
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On June 13 2011 23:58 canSore wrote: posts like this disgust me. Complaining to Dustin Browder about the game, talking about least favorite units in star2 that need redesign?
I love this game, and still excited that a sequel to starcraft was made! Blizzard did an OUTSTANDING job with the whole entire game! I hate when people talk about imbalance, and shit they hate. This game went above and beyond my expectations.
Let's stop wasting time nit picking everything, and just talk about the stuff that matters, like strategy and build orders.
I respect you as a zerg who doesn't cry. But we have to still recognize that there are indeed many shortcomings of sc2 that can be fixed easily right now but just aren't for different reasons.
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Canada13372 Posts
On June 13 2011 23:48 tree.hugger wrote:I don't entirely agree with Cecil here, just because his experience and his work is one way doesn't mean that Blizzard's process or decision making is the same, however this should be requoted on the new page. Smart post. Show nested quote +On June 13 2011 18:49 CecilSunkure wrote:I'm contracted out to MGS (Microsoft Game Studios) working on the balance team as a tester (player) for the new Age of Empires game called Age of Empires Online, so I can probably provide some interesting insight. We have a ridiculous amount of limitations over at MGS. Where I work I know is similar to how Blizzard's test team functions, but Blizzard seems to have near endless resources when compared to AoEO's development cycle. In seeing what changes Blizzard has been able to do since the beginning of SC2's release, I'm pretty content with what has come around myself, and hope that you all can lighten up a bit and realize that people at Blizzard are experts, extremely intelligent, and will do everything they can to ensure this game is as successful as possible. I feel like a lot of people complaining about balance/design issues know nothing about balance, design, the game in general, and about developing a video game. I recently wrote a long article about improving your 1v1 in SC2, and one of my first sections was about how much you suck. I wrote that part because I knew most people reading my article will simply not realize how lacking they are. When people start talking about balance and design from a player's perspective, they almost always don't realize that they are talking about design and balance from a... player's perspective. Usually they know no design vocabulary, and have no experience with or any grasp on the process or methods of balancing out an RTS. Just realize that balancing an RTS is a very organic and non-linear process, and that just because you play on the NA ladder and are angry doesn't mean you know a damn thing about how to fix whatever it is that's upsetting your player experience. The state of balance in an RTS game is like an object formed out of many pieces. Whenever a piece is modified, added, or removed, the state of every other piece in the object is thusly modified as well -albeit to varying degrees. Everything is relative to everything else. This makes the process of balance a very volatile and non-linear one. You have to have a very proficient understanding of how the entire object (game) works in its current state in order to predict how a future modification will affect the entirety of all the other pieces. Understanding the current state of balance in a game is no easy task either; you have to discern the difference between the cause of problems and the symptoms thereof, all the while knowing which problems are actually problems. A lot of times something will look like a problem, and actually dissipate once something external to the balance or design of a game changes (e.g. test team work conditions, strategic evolution, paradigm shifts). Working at MGS I've seen a lot of decisions made by executives, higher ups, and design leads that impact balance in a significant way. None of these people that I have had experience with have even played a single competitive game of AoEO in their life. Naturally, these decisions almost always affect balance in a negative manner. However this doesn't necessarily mean that whoever made the decision is a moron for not listening to the balance team; every decision is made based on what benefits the decision will return in relation to the amount of resources needed to implement the decision. You want to maximize profits with the smallest amount of resources spent, otherwise you'll go out of business. There are often times priorities over balance, like making sure the game is in a playable state, or perhaps ensuring design aspects in areas other than 1v1 are up to par. Even though Blizzard has more resources to throw around, including the most valuable resource: time, they still follow the same rules we do. In understanding all this, take another look at the Dustin Browder interview. He was basically right about everything (if I understood the questions correctly). I believe the question was "From a viewer's perspective, SC2 isn't as fun to watch as BW because battles have such high variance, units cluster together in a ball, AoE is too strong. What do you think about this?" Dustin responded with (this is just my interpretation): "BW pathing was terrible, and it's just not acceptable to have the same thing in SC2. This is why units now cluster. We will however allow tweaks and modifications to mitigate the ballishness. We aren't willing to revert to old pathing just for the sake of Esports in order to achieve balance. We have to keep this game inviting and fun for newer players, and we don't want people getting frustrated because they can't easily move their units. Making units smarter and easier to use allows the game to appeal to a broader audience. In terms of AoE and variance in battles, that's a good thing for viewers. We don't want the general audience to know the outcome of every single battle before it happens." -This actually ties into information theory. The idea is that uncertainty in a game is required for meaningful play to arise. If all outcomes are known to the players, then the players will not be able to interact with the game state in a meaningful way, and similarly this applies to viewers as well. The entire part of the OP about meatshields is just a straw-man fallacy. Blizzard isn't fascinated with them. The part of the OP talking about which units are boring just goes to show that people voted for the units that annoy them the most. David Kim said that the Immortal's role in-game is now focused on burst damage as opposed to it's intended role. This has nothing to do with a meat-shield fascination, it's just making an observation. Quote from OP: Answers like "We encourage users to go back to BW if they want to" does not help SC2 Progamers in anyway because they can't do that. Meaning that instead of looking at an issue in depth, it will simply be completely ignored. Actually Dustin said "If users liked to watch BW more than SC2, it's still watchable and our company still benefits from it. Go watch whichever one you like more." It did not mean that the issue will be ignored or side-stepped. He felt the "issue" with battle variance was non-existent (from a viewer's perspective), and I agree with him. I don't agree with his unit pathing decision from a competitive player's perspective, but I do agree with it from a business perspective. Truly, I think there's little to no miscommunication from the community to Dustin or Blizzard. The miscommunication seems to be from Blizzard to the community. And by this I mean most of you all don't seem to get what's going on or being said to you. I hate saying this because it sounds like something an arrogant asshole would say, but it's true. Summary: Balancing an RTS is extremely tedious. Outside suggestions must be taken with a grain of salt. You cannot let loose balance changes into public unless you are positive they are the best ones to release. The development team must cater to a very wide array of needs from a vary diverse population, and there is a priority list schema enforced in decision making (for example in the HoTS interview Browder stated they will not make a drastic change to pathing just for the sake of Esports, and I believe this is because it alienates a large majority of their target audience). As a player, you likely don't know a damned thing about balance or design, or developing a major title video game, so you should be reserved with your opinion. Although I did write this to try to provide some insight into those things, so opinions around here expressed can be a bit further developed. Personally, I've been very happy with all the balance changes made to this game to date, except for the recent intended 4 gate nerf. Overall it's my opinion that Blizzard is patching thing too fast. Progamers don't even seem to have that great of an understanding of the game, and I don't think the dust has ever settled in order for Blizzard (or anyone for that matter) to see clearly. If I could have it my way, I'd patch even slower than what we are currently experiencing with SC2. I agree with this to a point. I think that balance whining by nearly everyone is fruitless and based in a mistaken perception of the complainer's skill. This goes even for IdrA, who takes it as an article of faith that he should beat always beat players like Minigun, because of his practice in Brood War. But Sc2 is a different game, and however you want to put it; it's easier, it's luckier, it is still not fair for IdrA to chalk up his losses to imbalance, just as it's hilarious for a diamond player to assume that imbalance lost him a game. However, I still think Blizzard has their head in the sand with regards to competitive play. Drawing lessons from the history of BW balance; the game was not balanced by Blizzard, but rather by map makers. We can clearly see this effect in Sc2, maps like Testbug are difficult for protoss against zerg in several respects, and necessitate a specific style of play from protoss in order to gain an advantage. Blizzard's approach to map making seems to be completely haphazard and bizarre. Their insistence in keeping Delta Quadrant in the map pool is hilarious. Introducing maps like Slag Pits is lunacy. And things like unit pathing that resists clumping are not incredibly difficult to do and merit investigation. That they dismiss them out of hand suggests to me that they don't understand very well what that means for the game, beyond simply making AOE powerful. For the period in which BW was truly balanced; Blizzard was entirely absent. And for that reason, I buy the idea that a lot of the subtleties of that experience are not understood by their team. This is unfortunate, but not entirely surprising. There are very few people in the world, (myself most definitely not being one of them) that grasps enough of BW to really speak to how that game worked itself out. All of this said; Sc2 is quite balanced at the moment. But I think the OP subtly hinted at a larger issue, which is that Sc2's balance isn't as exciting as BW's was. In BW, how come the corsair and the science vessel were used as counters for the mutalisk? That process took much more innovation that Blizzard seems intent to allow.
great post very good read. thanks to cecil and yourself tree.hugger.
I think blizzard should not make any patches for the next few months (6ish would be a nice experimental start) to see what we players do with it. With exception to bug fixes and terrible obvious imbalances like the 1 food roach with 2 armour from beta. but then again nothing like this actually exists at the moment.
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On June 13 2011 23:48 tree.hugger wrote: However, I still think Blizzard has their head in the sand with regards to competitive play. Drawing lessons from the history of BW balance; the game was not balanced by Blizzard, but rather by map makers. We can clearly see this effect in Sc2, maps like Testbug are difficult for protoss against zerg in several respects, and necessitate a specific style of play from protoss in order to gain an advantage. Blizzard's approach to map making seems to be completely haphazard and bizarre. Their insistence in keeping Delta Quadrant in the map pool is hilarious. Introducing maps like Slag Pits is lunacy.
Are you suggesting they replace crap like DQ with crap like Testbug?
All of this said; Sc2 is quite balanced at the moment. But I think the OP subtly hinted at a larger issue, which is that Sc2's balance isn't as exciting as BW's was. In BW, how come the corsair and the science vessel were used as counters for the mutalisk? That process took much more innovation that Blizzard seems intent to allow.
Corsair is an obvious counter to mutas...
On the one hand they need to leave things alone to allow innovation, on the other they need to change the maps the community doesn't like...tough position :0
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On June 13 2011 23:12 oGs420 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 13 2011 19:15 adeezy wrote: I think blizzards done an excellent job balancing the game considering how long it has been out. Have you seen the statistics? Anything within 55-45 is pretty awesome so let's say one race all-ins or does coinflips (that the race doesn't know how to deal with yet) to get their 50% then the other race just plays standard to get their 50% That isn't balance
so true,there is no balance if there are so many random factors and coinflips <.< no matter what the win % is
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Just the 2 things I'm going to adress:
On June 13 2011 18:49 CecilSunkure wrote: David Kim said that the Immortal's role in-game is now focused on burst damage as opposed to it's intended role. This has nothing to do with a meat-shield fascination, it's just making an observation.
On June 13 2011 23:48 tree.hugger wrote: In BW, how come the corsair and the science vessel were used as counters for the mutalisk? That process took much more innovation that Blizzard seems intent to allow.
The "observation" about immortal's role shows they don't understanding their own unit design. The players did not invent the very high damage to armored, the unit was designed that way, comparing them to stalkers you will easily notice that the difference in damage to armored is huge, while the difference in durability is not that big, except vs tanks(splash reduces the effect in higher numbers) and thors(without cannons) and MMM is understandably the dominant strat. I didn't list ultras, since they dealt a lot less damage back then.
Corsair and Irradiate being used as a counter to mutas was a process that took innovation? WTF? Corsairs were specifically designed to counter muta/wraith/scout, how is using the unit for it's intended purpose a process that took innovation? From BroodUnits.doc in my BW folder: The Corsair fires short quick bursts of Photon energy that are very effective against groups of small flying units. Who could've thought about that innovative use? Blizzard in 1998.
What actually changed was pro maps, they had easy to defend naturals for PvZ, allowing safe fast expo(prior to that PvZ win % in pro game games was noticably in zerg's favor), which resulted in the Bisu build and (probably) the biggest upset in SC history.
Irradiate is the same thing, it's obviously good vs relatively expensive bio units and units that clump. Who could've imagined it would be good vs mutas?
People claim about way too much stuff that it's because of players figuring things out or innovating, for example something I've seen several times is marine use in TvT, when in fact it's because tanks went from 60 to 35 damage to light, which is a huge change and the actual reason(having maps in which tanks can't siege almost from natural to natural also helped).
What BW had was good and solid design, it wasn't simply about having "cool" units... "a siege tank that doesn't need to siege and can scale cliffs would be so cool", "easily blocking the opponent's retreat would be so cool", etc.
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On June 13 2011 18:49 CecilSunkure wrote: The miscommunication seems to be from Blizzard to the community. The way I see it is not as a miscommunication, but rather as a misconception of the game. Starcraft 2 doesnt seem to be intended as an RTS but rather as an RTAS (real time action-focused strategy game), where the emphasis is on ACTION and less about strategy. Thus the death balls and the unlimited unit selection and the tiny Blizzard maps were born. They WANT RUSHES, because they follow the stupid motto that more explosions are better for the game. All this focus on action and speed makes the game more volatile and this is not a good thing, but the Blizzard designers think it is necessary to cater to todays generation of gamers who cant focus on a 25 minute macro game. Well you play how you are taught to play the game and if you are taught to play "casual" you will become a casual gamer ... thats how they are "balancing" the game for WoW. Sadly they are forgetting that SC2 isnt Wow and that the "eSport SC2" wont be kept interesting by tons of casuals, but rather by the progamers. These need reliability of their success chances though and a volatile game doesnt offer reliability.
IdrA has complained a lot of times about imbalance and has gotten a lot of slack for saying "Player X shouldnt be beaten by a worse player" and this is the sign of this volatility. An example: Terrans are supposed to be able to turtle and defend well, but how much chance of survival does any of their buildings have against a decently sized Protoss death ball? Well a Planetary Fortress survives for about 5 seconds unless it is repaired by 25 SCVs full time and those can be blocked from their job easily by Forcefields or die to Colossi. Does the PF kill a significant amount of the attacking army? Not really, so it almost doesnt seem worth it. Another example: How long does it take eight Marauders with Stim to take down a Nexus? Far less time than it takes for any defense force to arrive. Yet another example: How can a Terran keep his Planetary Fortress alive against 50 Banelings being rightclicked on it? Only with a decent amount of Sige Tanks. Usually these are elsewhere, because 1-2 sieged Tanks dont really make a difference anymore. The stupidest example of them all: How much chance of winning does the Zerg have with a Terran on close ground spawn on Metalopolis? The change from "automatic loss" to "winnable game" depending upon the spawn position really makes the volatility evident. Sadly the opposite is also true ... if the maps get HUGE there is almost nothing Protoss and Terran can do to Zerg to stop them from getting their economy rolling and thereafter crushing the opponents with waves of units. This is a problem which is created by the volatility of the macro mechanics. A lot of nerfs had to be introduced to make close spawns work, while a longer rush distance would have worked just as well ...
There are lots of examples how the "improvements" made from SC1 to SC2 have made the game more volatile and thus harder to balance AND harder to play consistently on. Volatile games are just unforgiving and if you make a tiny mistake you could lose it all in the blink of an eye. That isnt a good design philosophy IMO.
Since there are more units in a typical engagement in SC2 there is a much greater need for good balance. Blizzard would make a wise decision if they removed some of these new mechanics which increase the volatility of games. A few thoughts I had on this topic:
- Add the dynamic unit movement to the game AND increase the distance between Colossi. Reason: It looks more natural, it will give opportunities to the players for more micro and it reduces the "attacking dps per square" for such problematic units as Colossi.
- To offset the "defensive bonus" of the dynamic unit movement all area effect attacks (Siege Tank, Psi Storm, EMP, Seeker Missile, Fungal Growth, Colossus, Thor AA, ?(not Forcefield)) have to be increased in efficiency. These effects "had to be nerfed" too much to take the tight unit formations into account or they would have been dominating the game, but with the addition of dynamic unit movement the choice is left to the player AND HIS MICRO SKILLS again ... try to bunch your units for maximum dps per attack square OR go for an open formation to minimize the losses from area attacks. This would give skilled players another advantage to "micro their units" just like Terrans already have to do against Banelings ... but there isnt any need for Zerg to do the same.
- I would suggest to have a maximum limit of "24 supply" in each control group. Reason: This forces casual players to learn to multitask and that is a good thing. It also prevents the huge death balls from being too easy to manage and thus too effective.
- Make defensive structures tougher / more viable. Reason: Defensive structures are the only way to defend against unexpected types of attacks and they should be able to "pull their weight". I am not asking for turrets to be built in 5 seconds and having 1000 hit points, but they need to not die in a few seconds like they do to the tight attacking formations now. Most good players will get mobile units to attack and not want to waste their resources on defensive structures, so it should be ok to toughen them a bit if you want to play differently.
- Remove / seriously nerf Reactors, MULE, Larva inject and chronoboost. Reason: These mechanics speed up the unit production to the point of being able to "flick a switch" and surprise the opponent with a totally different unit combination which he hasnt prepared a "counter" for.
- Remove Stim from Marauders but give back the ability to slow even massive units. Reason: It is too easy to snipe buildings with 1-2 Medivacs full of Marauders AND there is no point in slowing small units. If Marauders cant run away from faster units they are endangered a lot more and this should offset the snare on the Ultralisks ... that way the decision would be in the hands of the players and their skill to use the units again (drop microing Marauders to slow Ultralisks ?). Nerfing Marauder slow for units XYZ takes the choice out of the hands of the players.
- Either add some cheap ability to units with expensive spells (Thor, BC) so they can "defend themselves" from Feedback OR remove their energy (at least until the ability is researched!). Reason: Having to EMP your own forces just to not have that vulnerability is just stupid design and it lets the High Templar "counter" too many terran units with an instant ability. Zerg dont have that problem, but imagine what would happen if Broodlords had to purchase their Broodlings or Ultralisks a charge attack with Energy ...
- Get rid of the idea of "counter units". Reason: A unit which is designed to counter a specific other unit often misses a purpose if these other units are dead on the other side and is otherwise dull (Corruptor anyone?). Stick to creating units because you had a funky idea.
I dont presume to have found the philosophers stone, but there are things which make it harder to balance the game than it could be and these are in the general design / design concept of the game.
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On June 13 2011 23:48 tree.hugger wrote:I don't entirely agree with Cecil here, just because his experience and his work is one way doesn't mean that Blizzard's process or decision making is the same, however this should be requoted on the new page. Smart post. Show nested quote +On June 13 2011 18:49 CecilSunkure wrote:I'm contracted out to MGS (Microsoft Game Studios) working on the balance team as a tester (player) for the new Age of Empires game called Age of Empires Online, so I can probably provide some interesting insight. We have a ridiculous amount of limitations over at MGS. Where I work I know is similar to how Blizzard's test team functions, but Blizzard seems to have near endless resources when compared to AoEO's development cycle. In seeing what changes Blizzard has been able to do since the beginning of SC2's release, I'm pretty content with what has come around myself, and hope that you all can lighten up a bit and realize that people at Blizzard are experts, extremely intelligent, and will do everything they can to ensure this game is as successful as possible. I feel like a lot of people complaining about balance/design issues know nothing about balance, design, the game in general, and about developing a video game. I recently wrote a long article about improving your 1v1 in SC2, and one of my first sections was about how much you suck. I wrote that part because I knew most people reading my article will simply not realize how lacking they are. When people start talking about balance and design from a player's perspective, they almost always don't realize that they are talking about design and balance from a... player's perspective. Usually they know no design vocabulary, and have no experience with or any grasp on the process or methods of balancing out an RTS. Just realize that balancing an RTS is a very organic and non-linear process, and that just because you play on the NA ladder and are angry doesn't mean you know a damn thing about how to fix whatever it is that's upsetting your player experience. The state of balance in an RTS game is like an object formed out of many pieces. Whenever a piece is modified, added, or removed, the state of every other piece in the object is thusly modified as well -albeit to varying degrees. Everything is relative to everything else. This makes the process of balance a very volatile and non-linear one. You have to have a very proficient understanding of how the entire object (game) works in its current state in order to predict how a future modification will affect the entirety of all the other pieces. Understanding the current state of balance in a game is no easy task either; you have to discern the difference between the cause of problems and the symptoms thereof, all the while knowing which problems are actually problems. A lot of times something will look like a problem, and actually dissipate once something external to the balance or design of a game changes (e.g. test team work conditions, strategic evolution, paradigm shifts). Working at MGS I've seen a lot of decisions made by executives, higher ups, and design leads that impact balance in a significant way. None of these people that I have had experience with have even played a single competitive game of AoEO in their life. Naturally, these decisions almost always affect balance in a negative manner. However this doesn't necessarily mean that whoever made the decision is a moron for not listening to the balance team; every decision is made based on what benefits the decision will return in relation to the amount of resources needed to implement the decision. You want to maximize profits with the smallest amount of resources spent, otherwise you'll go out of business. There are often times priorities over balance, like making sure the game is in a playable state, or perhaps ensuring design aspects in areas other than 1v1 are up to par. Even though Blizzard has more resources to throw around, including the most valuable resource: time, they still follow the same rules we do. In understanding all this, take another look at the Dustin Browder interview. He was basically right about everything (if I understood the questions correctly). I believe the question was "From a viewer's perspective, SC2 isn't as fun to watch as BW because battles have such high variance, units cluster together in a ball, AoE is too strong. What do you think about this?" Dustin responded with (this is just my interpretation): "BW pathing was terrible, and it's just not acceptable to have the same thing in SC2. This is why units now cluster. We will however allow tweaks and modifications to mitigate the ballishness. We aren't willing to revert to old pathing just for the sake of Esports in order to achieve balance. We have to keep this game inviting and fun for newer players, and we don't want people getting frustrated because they can't easily move their units. Making units smarter and easier to use allows the game to appeal to a broader audience. In terms of AoE and variance in battles, that's a good thing for viewers. We don't want the general audience to know the outcome of every single battle before it happens." -This actually ties into information theory. The idea is that uncertainty in a game is required for meaningful play to arise. If all outcomes are known to the players, then the players will not be able to interact with the game state in a meaningful way, and similarly this applies to viewers as well. The entire part of the OP about meatshields is just a straw-man fallacy. Blizzard isn't fascinated with them. The part of the OP talking about which units are boring just goes to show that people voted for the units that annoy them the most. David Kim said that the Immortal's role in-game is now focused on burst damage as opposed to it's intended role. This has nothing to do with a meat-shield fascination, it's just making an observation. Quote from OP: Answers like "We encourage users to go back to BW if they want to" does not help SC2 Progamers in anyway because they can't do that. Meaning that instead of looking at an issue in depth, it will simply be completely ignored. Actually Dustin said "If users liked to watch BW more than SC2, it's still watchable and our company still benefits from it. Go watch whichever one you like more." It did not mean that the issue will be ignored or side-stepped. He felt the "issue" with battle variance was non-existent (from a viewer's perspective), and I agree with him. I don't agree with his unit pathing decision from a competitive player's perspective, but I do agree with it from a business perspective. Truly, I think there's little to no miscommunication from the community to Dustin or Blizzard. The miscommunication seems to be from Blizzard to the community. And by this I mean most of you all don't seem to get what's going on or being said to you. I hate saying this because it sounds like something an arrogant asshole would say, but it's true. Summary: Balancing an RTS is extremely tedious. Outside suggestions must be taken with a grain of salt. You cannot let loose balance changes into public unless you are positive they are the best ones to release. The development team must cater to a very wide array of needs from a vary diverse population, and there is a priority list schema enforced in decision making (for example in the HoTS interview Browder stated they will not make a drastic change to pathing just for the sake of Esports, and I believe this is because it alienates a large majority of their target audience). As a player, you likely don't know a damned thing about balance or design, or developing a major title video game, so you should be reserved with your opinion. Although I did write this to try to provide some insight into those things, so opinions around here expressed can be a bit further developed. Personally, I've been very happy with all the balance changes made to this game to date, except for the recent intended 4 gate nerf. Overall it's my opinion that Blizzard is patching thing too fast. Progamers don't even seem to have that great of an understanding of the game, and I don't think the dust has ever settled in order for Blizzard (or anyone for that matter) to see clearly. If I could have it my way, I'd patch even slower than what we are currently experiencing with SC2. However, I still think Blizzard has their head in the sand with regards to competitive play. Drawing lessons from the history of BW balance; the game was not balanced by Blizzard, but rather by map makers. We can clearly see this effect in Sc2, maps like Testbug are difficult for protoss against zerg in several respects, and necessitate a specific style of play from protoss in order to gain an advantage. Blizzard's approach to map making seems to be completely haphazard and bizarre. Their insistence in keeping Delta Quadrant in the map pool is hilarious. Introducing maps like Slag Pits is lunacy. And things like unit pathing that resists clumping are not incredibly difficult to do and merit investigation. That they dismiss them out of hand suggests to me that they don't understand very well what that means for the game, beyond simply making AOE powerful. For the period in which BW was truly balanced; Blizzard was entirely absent. And for that reason, I buy the idea that a lot of the subtleties of that experience are not understood by their team. This is unfortunate, but not entirely surprising. There are very few people in the world, (myself most definitely not being one of them) that grasps enough of BW to really speak to how that game worked itself out. Like I said, I'm pretty happy with what has happened so far from Blizzard's end, but I didn't say they couldn't improve. I really think most decisions they made to their 1v1 map pool were made with the idea in mind that newer players cannot be alienated, and lower level players cannot be lost and confused. They just don't cater to the high level community heavily in that regard. I think they should, as it's a damn ladder map pool, but I'm sure their decision has currently fulfilled whatever goals they had for it.
Also, I've never thought that map makers at Blizzard knew what they were doing. My experience tells me that the majority of maps are made from level designers that don't understand competitive play, and the ones put into map pool go through the test team and David Kim, neither of which should be nearly as competent as the teams of people creating BW maps. So it's expected (at least to me) that they'll be lacking, and Blizzard knows this as well. They seem to just be hoping that the competitive community will just make their own maps for tournaments, while they can keep their current ladder map pool design in affect in order to achieve whatever goals they are striving for in doing so.
On June 14 2011 01:21 lololol wrote: What BW had was good and solid design, it wasn't simply about having "cool" units... "a siege tank that doesn't need to siege and can scale cliffs would be so cool"! I think the overall way BW was constructed simply made it less prone to a lot of headaches people have nowadays in SC2. Better pathing, more efficient AI, easier spell casting, multi-building select, infinite selection cap, all of these things make the game more prone to annoying shit than back in Brood War.
For example compare the Templar Psi Storm from the two games. SC2's obviously has less DPS (yes I know this is apple's to orange's), and the same goes for most AoE attacks from BW to SC2. Take a look at Plague --> Fungal Growth. You have to make spells, abilities, and some units in general a lot less effective due to fundamental differences between the games.
So I don't really think it's fair to say BW's design was better, when I think that BW was just less prone to the headaches caused by today due to the vast differences between the two situations of BW and SC2. You also have to realize that BW was released for how long before it got to its current state? SC2 is an infant compared to that timespan. Give it some good hard time (assuming Blizzard lets the dust settle so we can figure shit out, and lets skilled and external groups handle map making moreso than now).
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So much good analysis in this thread
Too bad blizzard will ignore this too...
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On June 14 2011 01:50 Roxy wrote: So much good analysis in this thread
Too bad blizzard will ignore this too...
kick dustin back to command and conquer
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On June 14 2011 02:04 Veritassong wrote:Show nested quote +On June 14 2011 01:50 Roxy wrote: So much good analysis in this thread
Too bad blizzard will ignore this too... kick dustin back to command and conquer
Agree, one disgraces franchise is enough for one man
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C&C Generals was a very good game, better than 3 or 4. Ragging on Browder for that makes no sense at all.
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