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Hello everyone. There’s a lot of talk these days about balance, and how we can get there. Everyone likes to throw out balance solutions, but we rarely find ourselves really looking into why we don’t like the current balance. I propose a solution by changing how we approach balance.
Right now, so much focus around balancing the game is terribly focused on hard numbers and how they directly interact with other numbers in the game. We’re prioritizing a mathematically balanced game, rather than game play that’s healthy. The two certainly are independent from each other, but I feel the focus is in the wrong direction. StarCraft has long been about players being so good they can overcome imbalanced units provided they have tools to fall back on.
Instead, I’d like to shift us towards talking about healthy game play. There’s certainly some talk out there about build diversity and unhealthy units, it’s a hard thing to quantify, and even harder to relate this discussion to the numbers that need to be applied to a patch. So, I’d like to propose another manner of thinking about balance.
Let’s drop all other concepts we apply to balance. Instead, let’s look at the most basic aspects of play in StarCraft II:
Micro- One’s ability to manage units within a fight. Good micro increases the value received from one’s units.
Macro- One’s ability to keep up with fundamental mechanics, and their ability to balance production with economy. The crossing T’s and dotting I’s of StarCraft.
Multitasking- One’s ability to manage multiple fronts/threats. Players with better multitasking break their opponents with sheer APM.
Threat Management- One’s ability to read the game, and make the proper responses. Good threat management equates to scouting well, knowing what they see, and making the correct preparations from there.
In theory, we want every game to play equally into all four aspects. Usually, the “meta” reflects this. The player who averages best in all categories wins; but that wouldn’t make for much of a strategy game. This is where builds and play styles come in. A player with good multitasking is going to force aggressive drop-oriented builds to capitalize on their strength. A player with good macro over responds to scouted information, to secure a late game scenario where his macro can shine.
In doing so, each player finds their strength and determines how they can use that to make up for their weakness. Of course, the other player must also be taken into the equation. If my opponent has poor threat management, I’ll force all-ins even if that isn’t my strength. I believe this is where the true strategy comes from in SC2.
So, how do we transfer this to balance? We take a build, and estimate how much it lends itself to each aspect for both players. This is where things can get messy, so let’s try to keep things simple. Let’s look at a build, analyze how much it leads towards each aspect of play (lets put it on a 1-10 scale)- then analyze how much the opponent must lean on the same aspects.
Here's an example to hopefully clarify things: Let’s start simple, and keep things in HotS where things were a bit more familiar. We’ll start off with the old two base immortal/sentry all-in: (10 equating to near perfect execution required)
From the Protoss side of things: This was fairly micro intensive. Let’s give it an 8 there. Macro wasn’t all that required. Production was pretty set, mostly just the fundamentals were required here. I’ll say we can give it a 4 here. Multitasking was pretty minimal, though zergs do my default force some level of multitasking. Let’s put it at a 3. Lastly, threat management. Protoss had some things they had to worry about, but the build was generally safe enough against all-ins, and hit fast enough tech plays wouldn’t hit. Again, I’d say about 3. Total score: 18/40- Not very good.
From the zerg side of things: Micro was certainly required here, probably about a 7. Macro was important, as the build was strong enough you had to have a solid economy behind it. That said, it hit pretty early so macro was rarely able shine. I’ll say 6. Multitasking was once again, minimal. I’ll give it a 3. Lastly threat management. This build required the zerg to scout moderately well, but there wasn’t much to scout. Overall, I’d guess zerg needed about a 7 here. Total score: 23/40- Still not very good.
Overall: 41/80- a fail by any standard. Obviously, some will disagree with these numbers- but we should all be fairly close. By this analysis, we’d say this is not a healthy build. It’s certainly fairly balanced, requiring roughly equal effort on both sides- but it’s not emphasizing enough of the core game. Further, we could look at the scores, and identify multitasking is an area we could improve here. Perhaps this could have been by increasing the availability of drops from zerg.
Without getting into specifics, we could then look at LBM vs Bio/Mine in the days of HotS. Doing that, we’d find it required high macro/micro/multitasking/and threat management from both sides- and we could conclude that was fairly healthy. Hopefully that all made sense...
tl;dr- Rather than jumping straight into balance suggestions, why don't we instead look at how these things play into the fundamentals of the game: Micro/Macro?Multitasking/Threat Management.
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Both balance suggestions and game fundamentals are a waste of time when you have a developer that refuses to even patch the game.
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Sadly, I must concur with Teogamer. The developers may talk a lot, but they haven't actually demonstrated any real sign in changing their philosophy in how they tune their game.
But saying that, I feel like you should mention about dichotomy & variance. When I say the word, dichotomy, I mean in the sense of have a situation/unit that only feels like there only exist two reasonable outcomes (regardless of how this situation occurred or the amount of investment).
In a Real Time Strategy game, I firmly believe that it should reduce the amount of things that exist within the game that has this dichotomy aspect. If not reduce, at least reduce its impact in the grand scheme of deciding a victor. Here's an example to hopefully clarify things:
A unit that has a dichotomy in usefulness: The Dark Templar - If the opponent has detection, this unit is relatively useless and way to expensive for it's suitability. And it lacks means to bypass this detection or usefulness outside of combat (a.k.a, like the Observer). If the opponent lacks detection, there is almost nothing the player can do to stop the Dark Templar other than running away. - Negative outcome: This unit is really useless in most situations, but in those small periods where the opponent lack detection, they are nearly invincible.
A mirco situation that has a dichotomy in outcome (though uneven in mirco required for both sides): Marine/Marauder vs Ultralisk - If the player controlling the Marine & Marauder have the skill to stutter step, they have the ability to effectively reduce the melee unit's dps to zero due to being faster (with stimpack) and having more range. - Negative outcome: To 'balance' the possibility that the melee unit might deal almost zero damage in many situations, the Ultralisk must be able to massacre the range unit when it can reach them. Therefore, forcing an even higher mirco requirement for the Marine/Marauder player while the Ultralisk player have little increase in need of mirco.
A tactic situation that has dichotomy in result: Defensive Scouting - If you see it coming, you're fine. If you don't, you can be wrecked within seconds. - Negative outcome: This actually isn't that bad. It's only bad when entire defensive tactics are heavily reliant on scouting and knowing beforehand what your opponent is going to do to just survive. One spec of fog left unchecked can result in your lost, and this causes a lot of stress on people to be paranoid of the unknown.
A gameplay situation that has a dichotomy in benefit: High Ground advantage - If you have no vision on the high-ground, your low ground units can't do anything. But once you have vision, the high-ground becomes nearly irreverent. - Negative Outcome: Terrain becomes become even less import as soon as the game reaches a certain point. This leaves choke points being the only other factor in how terrain affects outcome of battles (assuming players just don't go mass air units).
When things have a dichotomy nature, it lacks the ability to really show skill and diversity within the game. This is why something like the LBM vs Bio/Mine was good because there existed a wide variance of outcome that both players could end up without ending the game, depended on their skill that had reasonable reaction time to handle it.
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On May 06 2016 12:05 Clear World wrote: Sadly, I must concur with Teogamer. The developers may talk a lot, but they haven't actually demonstrated any real sign in changing their philosophy in how they tune their game.
But saying that, I feel like you should mention about dichotomy & variance. When I say the word, dichotomy, I mean in the sense of have a situation/unit that only feels like there only exist two reasonable outcomes (regardless of how this situation occurred or the amount of investment).
In a Real Time Strategy game, I firmly believe that it should reduce the amount of things that exist within the game that has this dichotomy aspect. If not reduce, at least reduce its impact in the grand scheme of deciding a victor. Here's an example to hopefully clarify things:
A unit that has a dichotomy in usefulness: The Dark Templar - If the opponent has detection, this unit is relatively useless and way to expensive for it's suitability. And it lacks means to bypass this detection or usefulness outside of combat (a.k.a, like the Observer). If the opponent lacks detection, there is almost nothing the player can do to stop the Dark Templar other than running away. - Negative outcome: This unit is really useless in most situations, but in those small periods where the opponent lack detection, they are nearly invincible.
A mirco situation that has a dichotomy in outcome (though uneven in mirco required for both sides): Marine/Marauder vs Ultralisk - If the player controlling the Marine & Marauder have the skill to stutter step, they have the ability to effectively reduce the melee unit's dps to zero due to being faster (with stimpack) and having more range. - Negative outcome: To 'balance' the possibility that the melee unit might deal almost zero damage in many situations, the Ultralisk must be able to massacre the range unit when it can reach them. Therefore, forcing an even higher mirco requirement for the Marine/Marauder player while the Ultralisk player have little increase in need of mirco.
A tactic situation that has dichotomy in result: Defensive Scouting - If you see it coming, you're fine. If you don't, you can be wrecked within seconds. - Negative outcome: This actually isn't that bad. It's only bad when entire defensive tactics are heavily reliant on scouting and knowing beforehand what your opponent is going to do to just survive. One spec of fog left unchecked can result in your lost, and this causes a lot of stress on people to be paranoid of the unknown.
A gameplay situation that has a dichotomy in benefit: High Ground advantage - If you have no vision on the high-ground, your low ground units can't do anything. But once you have vision, the high-ground becomes nearly irreverent. - Negative Outcome: Terrain becomes become even less import as soon as the game reaches a certain point. This leaves choke points being the only other factor in how terrain affects outcome of battles (assuming players just don't go mass air units).
When things have a dichotomy nature, it lacks the ability to really show skill and diversity within the game. This is why something like the LBM vs Bio/Mine was good because there existed a wide variance of outcome that both players could end up without ending the game, depended on their skill that had reasonable reaction time to handle it.
That's a very good point, and something I've struggled a bit to comprehend how to apply it to a similar scale. (Obviously, not everything can be put on a scale- but it's easier to look at if we can.) Perhaps I could apply a scale of forgiveness- How much a player being better in one aspect can make up for a low rating in another.
In the DT example, not much can make up for the player failing to accurately scout the DT's and respond appropriately. At the same time, responding to DT's only puts you slightly behind a macro play which can be made up by better macro.
I think it's also important not to apply this too heavily if we put it on the scale, however. Being able to make up for a lacking in one area is important, but its also interesting when a player has to adapt themselves to make up for an opponent trying to exploit a weakness. Maybe I just give it a 1-5 scale rather than the 1-10?
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No matter what metrics you use, i don't think that they match the reality of rts. Much of the problem is that people like to use units and compositions that don't require much skill. (I.e. Cannon rushing, DTS, Mass air, Mech) and want to see them at the highest level of play to say that the game is balanced. In terms of the patches and games Zergs are dominating europe, Protoss Dominate NA, and Terran and Protoss Dominate Korea.
LOTV hit most of these main points. All the races have more options. They require much closer skill level and players from all races are seen in tournaments. For example basetrade tv was complaining about all the zvz in their korean quals. But then gsl had almost no zergs late into the tournament. The skill is much more comparable. There are easier strategies which are good for newer players to take games off more skilled players while improving their own skills.
Terran- Widow mine and liberators, Mass rapers, 3 base parade pushes, mech/skyterran Protoss- DTs, Mass void, Mass carriers, Mass adepts, Chargelot/Immortal/archon Zerg- ling drops, ravager timings, proxy ravager builds, hydra,ling bane pushes.
I have a hard time as a random player worrying so much about balance as understanding the game. Even if you choose a different metric, I don't know that it helps. Blizzard's recent buffs help small ways in the late late game at the highest level, but help much more for lower tier players, but were rejected by the people they were meant to help who instead want easier things to execute to be most powerful. (mech, carriers, etc)
I don't see how giving more metrics is better than the current approach of working with the top people from the various leagues and seeing what they think improves the game and trying to help lower league players to learn to enjoy the game more instead of focusing on balance. For me, I think the game is more fun than it has ever been, even more so than brood war now.
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