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With the recent announcement of a second straight year of major game design changes to SC2, it has become clear that Blizzard is taking an approach where overhauling several unit identities on a regular basis is acceptable or perhaps even the norm, so I figured I'd take the time to write a little bit about my thoughts. I'd just like to preface this by saying this piece is solely my opinion and is by no means an objective truth, and I recognize that someone could disagree with me while making perfectly logical arguments as to why they disagree (CatZ comes to mind). With that being said, I'd like to focus on two aspects of the changes - the philosophy behind major design changes in general, and the specific changes themselves.
Change, Change, and More Change
Having played a significant amount of somewhat competitive Dota 2, I am very familiar with a game being turned on its head on a regular basis. Dota's yearly revamp has become a point of excitement for players, where every year they have a new set of toys to play with and the hero balance is flipped on its head. This philosophy works well in Dota, where the huge pool of heroes with extensive counterplay as well as the pick-ban system prevent any one hero or strategy from becoming too oppressive, and of course, minor balance tweaks can be made to deal with unintended circumstances quickly. Another perk of making such big changes on a regular basis is that by the time people figure out what the best strategies are, they may be well on their way to changing and falling out of favor. Being a competitive Dota 2 player is a constant state of adapting to change.
In Starcraft II, we don't have quite the same case. Strong strategies can dominate the meta for months at a time with no way to avoid them, and it's not quite so simple to pick up a new race if you don't like the direction your race is going. Every time you make sweeping changes, you run the risk of nearly ruining the game for months at a time. Players build their playstyles and their enjoyment of the game over the course of a year, only to see them fall apart when a major change is made. For example, I built my original Legacy of the Void style around my love for Tankivac aggression, perfecting my micro as well as an array of build orders around my strength with the unit. We can see something similar in regards to ByuN's mastery of Reapers.
Completely removing a tactic (Tankivac) outside of a major expansion seems, to me, unfair to players who are caught completely off guard by such a major change. The reaper nerfs, on the other hand, are an example of a good StarCraft-y approach to toning down a strategy that is healthy for the game in theory, but perhaps just a bit too strong in practice. ByuN's reaper play is action-packed, with constant back-and-forth micro and multitasking, and the only real problem was that it was just a bit too good. For casual players who don't play the game as often, the threat of change is even more severe - it's easy to imagine a scenario where a player who only logs on a couple times a month is quickly overwhelmed by the massive strategic shift.
To me, one of the coolest things about Starcraft is that we don't need constant change for the meta to develop - we have seen proof in Brood War that even with many years of balance inactivity, new strategies can be discovered with just map pool changes and different players coming along. For example, the dominant PvZ opener of Forge FE was not even thought to be viable until the mid-2000s, nearly half a decade since a single balance change. This development was brought on solely by player innovation and map changes. In the late 2000s, we saw mech play become popular in TvZ, followed by further evolution to a bio-goliath style, and then a bio midgame followed by a mech lategame.
With this in mind, I don't agree with the philosophy of constant change in Starcraft II. It goes against the reasons I fell in love with the game - the constant pursuit of mastery, developing strategies bit by bit with the tools you are given. Everyone gets the same tools, and it's what you do with them that sets you apart. Even with something as simple as 2-base marine tankivac all-in, I spent an entire year ironing out different parts of my build orders, overall strategy, and execution, just to have it completely removed.
While some may argue that major design changes can improve the game, Blizzard had their chances with two major expasions - Starcraft II is now seven years past release and the people who are still playing the game are the ones who enjoy the game as it is currently designed. Alienating your remaining fanbase that has already dwindled from the glory days doesn't seem practical, even if the game does end up "better" in the long run. It's understandable to make changes when strategies become too dominant, but change for the sake of change is not something I see a need for in Starcraft II.
The Elegance of Simplicity
Now independent from the idea of whether or not you think change is a good thing, I'd like to discuss another core principle of Starcraft that I believe Blizzard is straying away from. One of the trends I see in the patch changes is overcomplicating units - it's no longer enough for a unit to do just one thing, and it's no longer enough for an ability to just do one thing. Some examples:
- Mines now are invisible only before they shoot, but after they shoot, they're visible despite still being burrowed
- Cyclone Lock On fires faster, but only for the first few attacks
- The High Templar can now attack, because just casting spells wasn't enough
- The Observer now has an active ability
- Infestor spells function differently on creep and off creep
These changes are a continuation of changes we saw throughout HotS and LotV, where, for example, the Immortal gained an active ability (that was later removed), the Hellion gained a transformation, the Battlecruiser gained a new ability, etc. Overall, there just seems to be a trend towards ability overload, and unit mechanics getting more and more complex to be shoehorned into designated roles.
Many of the most entertaining moments in Starcraft history have been created by units that do nothing but the simplest tasks - move and shoot, with perhaps one simple ability like stimpack or blink to give the unit a unique identity. Units did one or two simple things, and we didn't have a whole bunch of conditionals and abilities surrounding every unit interaction. One of the biggest things that people freak out about is something like ByuN's ability to target banelings with marines - literally nothing but attacking a unit with another unit! But we recognize the skill that such a tactic requires and are rightfully in awe of an all-time great player's ability to use a simple unit in ways that mere mortals cannot.
To summarize, I feel that Blizzard's constant design changes as well as the actual changes themselves are both taking Starcraft II in the wrong direction. Not because I think the actual changes have a negative effect on gameplay, but because they are detaching Starcraft II from some of the core principles that make the Starcraft franchise the best RTS games of all time.
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I also like simplicity. Great post! Complicated things often have this feel of bandaid solutions.
I do feel though SC2 right now might benefit from some changes.
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I think saying Blizzard has had their chance and that things should be left alone is an absurd position, and people are massively overreacting to the extent of the changes. So the Raven has different abilities, Terran is still Terran. It's not like you suddently lose all that time you put into the game as though it's worthless. You see way more change in DotA/League patches than you do in StarCraft, this kind of update is hardly comparable to the iterations those games go through.
I don't understand why changes cannot be tried out, and that's what this. You talk about being against changes for the sake of it because you will alienate the remaining fans, I mean you can leave it alone and alienate fans or you can change things and alienate fans does it really matter which path you take? There's nothing inherently right about doing either way, there's not some fundamental aspect of StarCraft that means the game must be what it is now and never vary from that. Trying things out and talking to the community about the proposed way forward seems better to me than doing nothing.
It also seems very deceptive to say things like adding the ability to atttack with HT or root an Oracle for vision is an overload of abilites and adding too much complexitiy when these are largely added to be ease of use features.
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Thanks for writing this, I completely agree. I really dislike this approach of making random changes just to shake things up. Letting the meta develop without interfering is way more interesting.
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I think that there's a new balance team in place and this is the first of their work since D.Kim (and company?) went to work on other things.
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On August 18 2017 08:45 Ansibled wrote: I think saying Blizzard has had their chance and that things should be left alone is an absurd position, and people are massively overreacting to the extent of the changes. So the Raven has different abilities, Terran is still Terran. It's not like you suddently lose all that time you put into the game as though it's worthless. You see way more change in DotA/League patches than you do in StarCraft, this kind of update is hardly comparable to the iterations those games go through.
I don't understand why changes cannot be tried out, and that's what this. You talk about being against changes for the sake of it because you will alienate the remaining fans, I mean you can leave it alone and alienate fans or you can change things and alienate fans does it really matter which path you take? There's nothing inherently right about doing either way, there's not some fundamental aspect of StarCraft that means the game must be what it is now and never vary from that. Trying things out and talking to the community about the proposed way forward seems better to me than doing nothing.
It also seems very deceptive to say things like adding the ability to atttack with HT or root an Oracle for vision is an overload of abilites and adding too much complexitiy when these are largely added to be ease of use features. Yes but what's the reason for those changes? Raven were problematic that change is good but Ghosts or Infestors are completely fine so why are they changing them?Just to shake things up because they think that will attract new viewers? Kinda misses the point since every major patch upsets a part of the player base because their strategies are getting invalidated.
I want SC2 to be the best game it can possibly be but when you change things that are working perfectly fine I think the risk of making the game worse is very high.
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On August 18 2017 09:09 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2017 08:45 Ansibled wrote: I think saying Blizzard has had their chance and that things should be left alone is an absurd position, and people are massively overreacting to the extent of the changes. So the Raven has different abilities, Terran is still Terran. It's not like you suddently lose all that time you put into the game as though it's worthless. You see way more change in DotA/League patches than you do in StarCraft, this kind of update is hardly comparable to the iterations those games go through.
I don't understand why changes cannot be tried out, and that's what this. You talk about being against changes for the sake of it because you will alienate the remaining fans, I mean you can leave it alone and alienate fans or you can change things and alienate fans does it really matter which path you take? There's nothing inherently right about doing either way, there's not some fundamental aspect of StarCraft that means the game must be what it is now and never vary from that. Trying things out and talking to the community about the proposed way forward seems better to me than doing nothing.
It also seems very deceptive to say things like adding the ability to atttack with HT or root an Oracle for vision is an overload of abilites and adding too much complexitiy when these are largely added to be ease of use features. Yes but what's the reason for those changes? Raven were problematic that change is good but Ghosts or Infestors are completely fine so why are they changing them?Just to shake things up because they think that will attract new viewers? Kinda misses the point since every major patch upsets a part of the player base because their strategies are getting invalidated. I want SC2 to be the best game it can possibly be but when you change things that are working perfectly fine I think the risk of making the game worse is very high. Every major patch upsets part of the player base, but every time you don't patch something you also upset another part of the playerbase. The question is what moves StarCraft in the best direction as a game, and I fail to see how testing stuff is a negative. It's not like they let out a huge patch onto the live server and were like lol guys have fun.
So maybe the ghost and infestor changes don't work out, but maybe they make the game more enjoyable to the majority of players or potential players. There is no harm in trying things, and overall I think the game can only be made better through this process.
SC2 can't be the best game it could be if you change nothing, and again I think it's important to say that these changes are nowhere near close to the kind of reworks you get in games like LoL.
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As someone who has played Starcraft 1 and 2 both from the beginning, I disagree with the entirety of the first sentiment, but agree mostly with the second.
First, Starcraft 2 is a fundamentally different game than Starcraft 1. The goal of this game has seemed from the start to allow strategic diversity while rewarding solid mechanics and tactics. While I understand that some people enjoy spending a year perfecting a single build, I would say this is not the case with the majority of the SC2 player base. While the current state of SC2 is not completely stale, I think we can do a lot better in terms of strategic diversity.
Now, I basically agree with your second point. Design is hard work, and we can't be satisfied with band-aid fixes that don't make any sense. For instance, making hellbats take the same space in a medivac as an immortal does for protoss is nonsense. It should have been a temporary fix, but it has stayed in the game since it solved the issue in TvT at the time. Meanwhile, this change takes a unit that is already undesirable and hampers its usage even more. Simplicity is an important value in games, as looking at the game now there is no way to understand why many things are the way they are other than that it might have caused a balance issue at some time in the game. Because of situations like this, you end up with units that are underutilized, and I completely agree with an approach that tries to keep these units interesting.
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I mostly agree with your point about elegance, but I don't think all your examples are good. The high templar attacking isn't anything inelegant, do you complain about ghosts or sentries attacking? The infestor change though is absolutely awful from an elegance standpoint.
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I think it's good that they are making massives changes as long as it provides an increased avenue for interacting with your opponent at all stages of the game. I strongly feel that being able to interact with your opponent on a frequent basis is the most important factor of RTS. Removing the mothership core allows exactly this. It allows terran to interact with protoss more early game. New builds will arise, old builds from wol may become useful again. It also provides for more entertaining games to watch. Now I won't have to listen to as much filler/banter from casters during event casts.
@Pokebunny- I think in regards to your complaint about units doing more than 1 thing, or having more than 1 purpose may be a little premature. I don't think having the extra abilities will take away from anything, however, there is a chance it could limit diversity if those extra abilities are too good so i do see space for potential concern or at least close monitoring.
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It's about which aspect SC2 wants to emphasize - micro or macro? I always preferred the macro-approach of SC compared to the micro-intensive and spelloverloaded WC3, but somehow they try to bring even more spells and active abilities into SC2.
I have to agree with Pokebunny here, I feel "overcomplicating" how abilities function and change just to keep people occupied is not good for the overall quality of the game. One of the main problems with SC2 throughout it's whole lifespan is the clusterfuck of gamechanges just to keep players interested without properly or timely identifying and fixing real problems of the game and leaving it at that. There will be certain units that won't be used as frequently as others, simply, because some unit will always outperform another. I don't want a semi-new game every year, just fix broken stuff without changing the game otherwise, and yeah, it may be sound a bit entitled, but I put a lot of effort into learning how to play the game and I like improving on small aspects of my play which I figure out over time, but having to re-learn timings, builds etc. on such a frequent basis makes it harder for me to hop on and off. When I want to learn new stuff, I go play a different game, I don't need a game I bought 7 years ago to change that constantly, because at some point it may not be the game I bought anymore.
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I agree with the overall point : change for the sake of change does not make much sense to me in sc2, and simple and elegant game/unit design should be the goal.
That being said, most of the changes proposed make sense to me. There are some changes that look really problematic to me that I don't see the point of (fungal no longer hits air for instance, this looks stupid to me) but extensive testing should allow to get rid of anything nonsensical.
What I hope is that they don't go for major overhauls each year for the sake of doing it. It's unsettling, especially for the less dedicated part of the fanbase - people who play 5-10 games a month - and doesn't allow for the meta evolutions and switches I personally relish. If the game at one point reaches a solid state - which is what they're trying to achieve here - I don't want it to be thrown away altogether. But as far as this year's update goes, I'm rather optimistic it will turn out well.
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I wonder how does high templar attacks =( Archon like attack ?
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On August 18 2017 18:34 elmerpogs wrote: I wonder how does high templar attacks =( Archon like attack ?
It's going to be the same as in the campaign and co-op, I guess.
I actually like this particular change. The DPS are negligible, but given how many active abilities there are for Protoss players, it will remove one of the single most frustrating events in 1v1 games: HTs walking dumbly into enemy forces when you a-move your army. I know I'm supposed to keep them back in a separate group or make them follow ranged units, but for lower-level players too often there simply isn't enough APM to do it.
Plus: no more 1 hp zerglings sniping my HTs, which is barely noticeable from the balance standpoint, but making me happier nonetheless :D
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This whole F2-thing shouldn't even exist, it's just so anti-strategic and encourages bad habits. I really don't care much about HT auto attacks, but boy this is one stupid change to come up with, because noone ever even asked for this, it's totally not needed. So, if it has such a miniscule impact on the game, why not have it in there? Because that's exactly what I don't want, random changes just to be able to go around and show everybody the long list of potential changes you thought up.
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This always is funny for me to see SC2 community react to anything happening before testing things out. I understand your point. But really, try new changes before jumping to conclusion after 1 read.
In any case, balance team can do w/e they want, changes or no changes people will complain. So in the end, I can understand that they listen more to themselves than the community.
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I agree with you in part, I dont' want SC2 to turn into a moba, that needs a major update at least once every year to keep the game "fresh", however, there is something big that you are missing: SC2 must be untouched only if its design is fun, which is the main goal of every videogame. You make the reference on two units, tankivac and reaper, that you maybe consider rewarding to master, but you can just surf a bit through the bnet forums, TL or reddit and you'll find that most of the community absolutely hated those things, not because they were "just a bit too good" ,but because they were , according to most of us, just terrible designed. And now that Blizzard finally started to listen to us, we need to support their job. I don't care about pros because ,if the game is fun , new players will take their place anyway
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I wasn't around for a while, and holy shit , tankivac was a thing. What a shitty concept.........
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I personally wonder why can't we have race specific balance? I.E an upgrade that does bonus damage to SHIELDS for mutalisks or a protoss upgrade that grants bonus disrupter damage on creep?
Or something like photon cannons make marines fire slower?
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On August 18 2017 20:42 Kingsky wrote: I personally wonder why can't we have race specific balance? I.E an upgrade that does bonus damage to SHIELDS for mutalisks or a protoss upgrade that grants bonus disrupter damage on creep?
Or something like photon cannons make marines fire slower? it's not really in the spirit of starcraft so far
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