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On March 09 2024 19:56 Branch.AUT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 19:23 Creager wrote:On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote: I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision. A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates. Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT. This is utterly insane. End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end. The problem here is that these are people who've spent significant amounts of time playing ONE game - do they have profound knowledge of the game they are playing? Yes, very likely. Do they understand every aspect and unit interaction aka the big picture? I highly doubt this, because, at the end of the day not even the game designers do, there always is some trial & error factor that needs to be considered as it's a pretty damn complex game, after all, which kinda makes it hard to be aware of every little nuance. Everyone is subjective and therefore has a slightly tinted view at things, so if not even the people designing the game could get it right 100% of the time, how are we expecting PLAYERS to do it better, esp since we're long past the unit stat tweaks and instead are getting unit reworks. I certainly still hope for the best, but I'm more of a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' person, as you might end up not improving the game, but making it worse over time. I want to point out that from a KNOWLEDGE perspective, there are few people better equipped to analyze the game interactions properly. The issue is not with the knowledge. The issue is that the people on the balance council have other interests outside of SC2, that directly compete with what the sc2 balance council should be trying to achieve. Be it financial investment in a different game. Or a developmental role at a competing company. Could even just be the goal to finally win a big prizepool at a big tournament. Or to keep being in contention for the big price pool at the big tournament. My point is, that it is impossible for ANY person in such a situation to make a decision on balance, that is independent of these outside considerations. Therefore, people in these situations, should never get to make balance update decision for SC2. I agree with you creager. We Cannot expect the players to make good decisions for SC2s balance. I do however no longer "hope for the best" because so far, all the attempts they made fell flat on the ground.
Again, being a top player might give you very good overall knowledge on how the game plays, but it still gives you 0 knowledge about design systems or what philosophy was predominant when initially designing SC2, but also data/client structure which largely determines what you can and cannot do, therefore limiting the total number of design approaches. Other aspects of the game that you personally might enjoy less than your peers and feel are highly impactful for your enjoyment of the game might boil down to the game just not catering towards your personal preference rather than being outright problematic for the majority of the player base.
How do you weigh and prioritise those issues? Is it a democratic process where everybody gets to vote on everything? I wouldn't even need to go as far as you and focus on conflict of interest of the involved players, as I honestly don't believe people on there are simply doing it to finally get their shot in the lime light, but it also cannot be completely ruled out, so there's some risk factor to it.
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On March 09 2024 21:31 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 19:56 Branch.AUT wrote:On March 09 2024 19:23 Creager wrote:On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote: I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision. A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates. Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT. This is utterly insane. End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end. The problem here is that these are people who've spent significant amounts of time playing ONE game - do they have profound knowledge of the game they are playing? Yes, very likely. Do they understand every aspect and unit interaction aka the big picture? I highly doubt this, because, at the end of the day not even the game designers do, there always is some trial & error factor that needs to be considered as it's a pretty damn complex game, after all, which kinda makes it hard to be aware of every little nuance. Everyone is subjective and therefore has a slightly tinted view at things, so if not even the people designing the game could get it right 100% of the time, how are we expecting PLAYERS to do it better, esp since we're long past the unit stat tweaks and instead are getting unit reworks. I certainly still hope for the best, but I'm more of a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' person, as you might end up not improving the game, but making it worse over time. I want to point out that from a KNOWLEDGE perspective, there are few people better equipped to analyze the game interactions properly. The issue is not with the knowledge. The issue is that the people on the balance council have other interests outside of SC2, that directly compete with what the sc2 balance council should be trying to achieve. Be it financial investment in a different game. Or a developmental role at a competing company. Could even just be the goal to finally win a big prizepool at a big tournament. Or to keep being in contention for the big price pool at the big tournament. My point is, that it is impossible for ANY person in such a situation to make a decision on balance, that is independent of these outside considerations. Therefore, people in these situations, should never get to make balance update decision for SC2. I agree with you creager. We Cannot expect the players to make good decisions for SC2s balance. I do however no longer "hope for the best" because so far, all the attempts they made fell flat on the ground. There’s certainly a pretty heavy pro presence in terms of consultation, but are they actually making decisions and actively calling the shots? --snip snip-- Getting into TLDR territory (for a change) but I do think the pros are getting the blame a bit unfairly here for what’s ultimately a consulting gig rather than a decision-making one. Perhaps the still semi-mysterious structure of how the Balance Council actually operates is partly to blame there.
I cut he part in the middle out, and I am going to focus on the opening and closing statements here. Not because the part in the middle is wrong in any way. It might be. It might not be. There is no way of knowing, because most of it is speculation. Since you mentioned them specifically: I don't know Harstem of Pig personally. Never talked to them. They might actually believe the things they say in curated, edited youtube content. They might not. Since it's impossible to verify or falsify, discussing their candor is pointless. Personally im not going to take their word as fact, purely based on trust. Neither am I taking Lambo's off-hand comment on a HSC couch that "nobody liked that change and it got in anyway" at face value.
I think you certainly nailed the issue in the opening statement. We have no information on who is consulted, how those opinions get used and which decisions are made. Ever since the mass layoffs in SC2 team, my assumption was that the team only had mid level custodians left. That leaves the "community balance council" the only entity still developing the game.
In my opinion: It's all shady back door dealings. And it either needs to step out into the light. Or cease completely. Because right now they are making the game worse for the third year running.
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On March 09 2024 21:28 lokol4890 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 18:03 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote: Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted. Trigger 0-2 Solar 0-2 Scarlett Stats 0-2 Shin Skillous, Astrea, Fireflying all 0-2 to Serral Skillous 0-3 Dark her0 0-2 Dark 2-0 Reynor Showtime 2-1 Reynor 1-2 Dark Cyan 0-2 Dark 0-2 Reynor What part of these results suggests imbalance to you? HerO and Showtime going toe to toe with two top3 zergs? All the other protoss, who are nowhere near the caliber of the best zergs getting wiped by all of them? What are you expecting if your perceived imbalance didn't exist, exactly? Trigger, rated around 2350, to take a map off of Solar and Scarlett? Serral's protoss opponents to take a map off him, where even Clem and Maru couldn't? Cyan, rated 2300, to take a map from the top 3 zergs? Please, put down the "zerg imba" lense, and actually look at reality for what it is. Claiming imbalance based on these results is basically what the majority of balance babies on reddit and here have been doing incessantly for years. Due to the inherent region-locked qualifiers of this tournament, extremely low level protoss (Cyan, Firefly, and Trigger) took the places of much better protoss (Classic, Parting, and Creator). Those three would almost definitely snatch at least a few more maps for protoss. Of course, the results would still look lopsided, because some of those zergs had been performing like monsters for several years. They're just better players. It was a terran that blocked herO from advancing into the quarterfinals, not a zerg. It was cure who blocked hero, you know, the best TvPer in the world, but sure let's not bring that up. But more importantly, you looked at all the ZvP matches and concluded every match played out the way it was meant to. Fine, let's apply that to TvP. Which Terran beat a Protoss they traditionally wouldn't have beat? Since your post inherently relies on the Protoss field being inherently weaker than usual, surely you can see how to applies to them facing Terran as well, right? I'll note the reason why I brought IEM was because this was yet another datapoint reddit used to claim TvP was too skewed for Terran. I'm not sure how PvT has anything to do with this. Are you suggesting that since the PvT rate in the tournament (37.8%) is much higher than the (17.2%) of PvZ that PvZ is more imbalanced? Upsets, of course, also happen. No one thought Cyan could do what he did to Maru. You don't make large statistical conclusions out of extremely small sample sizes, regardless. Even with large sample sizes, it's still difficult, because there are so many factors at play, such as individual skill.
If anyone is saying that TvP is terran-favored based on this single tournament, I'd also say that is also a weak argument for the same reasoning. However, a faulty reasoning doesn't mean the conclusion was incorrect. I personally think the MU is terran-favored. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Maru at some point implicitly agree? He said that Protoss' only viable option was to open phoenix into colossus, but even that only gives them a 50% chance at best, if the Terran plays correctly. My memory isn't great these days.
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TvP advantage is because how many openers terran have that gives them clear edge and ability to end games at mid game with +30 army pop. Remember that terran army trades roughly equality to protoss army, so any army size advantage is big. Another thing to note late game army control is much harder for terran side, you can tell me its not, but fact is it, and no terran in the world wants to play late game tvp, even if theoretically terran army is stronger. So what happens is terran gets early advantage > allin toss > wins at high %. I also see times were terran doesnt get early advantage and game goes to macro full end game, and honestly i dont see any imbalance from terran side in those games.
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Northern Ireland20891 Posts
On March 09 2024 22:15 Branch.AUT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 21:31 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 19:56 Branch.AUT wrote:On March 09 2024 19:23 Creager wrote:On March 09 2024 18:13 Perceivere wrote:On March 09 2024 17:23 Branch.AUT wrote: I think it is time to come together as a communiy, put our bias and fandom aside, and make a decision. A decision to stop putting the updates of the game DIRECTLY in the hands of people who benefit financially from imbalances in these updates. Stop putting updates into the hands of people, who develop and profit from a COMPETING PRODUCT. This is utterly insane. End this balance council nonsense. People were screaming "imba" long before the balance council was formed. I'd like to think professional SC2 players have more integrity than to warp a game's balance in their favor. I think the moment we begin to doubt the integrity of our pro players is the moment the scene truly begins to fall apart. It happened in the Korea with Life. SC2 isn't that big anymore; the vast majority of pro players stand to make very little income from tournament wins/results. For the most part, the game is a labor of love. I think we should be more careful to attribute selfishness onto the people whose work is a major factor as to why the scene still exists. The SC2 scene can only stand if both the fans and the players are united. Once separated, it's the beginning of an end. The problem here is that these are people who've spent significant amounts of time playing ONE game - do they have profound knowledge of the game they are playing? Yes, very likely. Do they understand every aspect and unit interaction aka the big picture? I highly doubt this, because, at the end of the day not even the game designers do, there always is some trial & error factor that needs to be considered as it's a pretty damn complex game, after all, which kinda makes it hard to be aware of every little nuance. Everyone is subjective and therefore has a slightly tinted view at things, so if not even the people designing the game could get it right 100% of the time, how are we expecting PLAYERS to do it better, esp since we're long past the unit stat tweaks and instead are getting unit reworks. I certainly still hope for the best, but I'm more of a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' person, as you might end up not improving the game, but making it worse over time. I want to point out that from a KNOWLEDGE perspective, there are few people better equipped to analyze the game interactions properly. The issue is not with the knowledge. The issue is that the people on the balance council have other interests outside of SC2, that directly compete with what the sc2 balance council should be trying to achieve. Be it financial investment in a different game. Or a developmental role at a competing company. Could even just be the goal to finally win a big prizepool at a big tournament. Or to keep being in contention for the big price pool at the big tournament. My point is, that it is impossible for ANY person in such a situation to make a decision on balance, that is independent of these outside considerations. Therefore, people in these situations, should never get to make balance update decision for SC2. I agree with you creager. We Cannot expect the players to make good decisions for SC2s balance. I do however no longer "hope for the best" because so far, all the attempts they made fell flat on the ground. There’s certainly a pretty heavy pro presence in terms of consultation, but are they actually making decisions and actively calling the shots? --snip snip-- Getting into TLDR territory (for a change) but I do think the pros are getting the blame a bit unfairly here for what’s ultimately a consulting gig rather than a decision-making one. Perhaps the still semi-mysterious structure of how the Balance Council actually operates is partly to blame there. I cut he part in the middle out, and I am going to focus on the opening and closing statements here. Not because the part in the middle is wrong in any way. It might be. It might not be. There is no way of knowing, because most of it is speculation. Since you mentioned them specifically: I don't know Harstem of Pig personally. Never talked to them. They might actually believe the things they say in curated, edited youtube content. They might not. Since it's impossible to verify or falsify, discussing their candor is pointless. Personally im not going to take their word as fact, purely based on trust. Neither am I taking Lambo's off-hand comment on a HSC couch that "nobody liked that change and it got in anyway" at face value. I think you certainly nailed the issue in the opening statement. We have no information on who is consulted, how those opinions get used and which decisions are made. Ever since the mass layoffs in SC2 team, my assumption was that the team only had mid level custodians left. That leaves the "community balance council" the only entity still developing the game. In my opinion: It's all shady back door dealings. And it either needs to step out into the light. Or cease completely. Because right now they are making the game worse for the third year running. You kind of have to take their opinions at face value otherwise one is assuming duplicity and mendacity at work.
If every pro’s PTR reaction that I saw was negative to the initial cyclone change, in the absence of alternative information I have to assume that’s the feedback they were giving. Even Heromarine as a Terran player didn’t like it, although his rationale was more ‘it won’t help make mech be more viable’ than couched in whether it made T stronger or weaker.
More transparency would absolutely be nice, equally if, as seems likely SC2 is operating on an absolute skeleton crew (see bugs like Colossus range you’re left with few options in effectively crowdsourcing knowledge through which to patch outside of pros doing that element.
There’s been a few missteps at times, but overall I don’t think this era has been that bad in terms of how balance and design have been tweaked and iterated on.
I’d argue it’s been better handled than at times when it was purely Blizzard’s domain and we had long periods of very potent and unfun metas like BL/Infestor, or Swarmhost turtle strategies
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If they don't buff protoss significantly, this patch does not have any impact. Some of the changes are nice to have but neither does tackle the major problem SC2 has balance wise: Protoss being dominated by both, T and Z, because it does not have any proper variations in early to mid game strategies/timing attacks.
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With SC2 being in its twilight, it's a bit sad if Protoss will have to continue to suffer in TvP. It's already been a full year since the Battery Overcharge nerf, and despite the patches to try to make back up for it, it still hasn't been enough. I can't imagine how many of those close PvT series would have went Creator's way for example at DH Atlanta if Protoss had a slightlyy stronger earlygame.
I will be really sad if the Cyclone reverts back to its former state, as a Mech player who finally got a solid toy that can make it work in LotV... I hope this change can be enough. I guess there is the lategame Lib nerf, and the WM nerf too, which definitely helps earlygame. (It's not uncommon for pros to slip up and lose 7-10 workers to 1 WM unfortunately. Since the economic damage per worker killed increases exponentially, if the max damage is reduced more to around 5-7 workers then saving that 2-3 workers + lost mining time really makes a difference).
Though, another idea I had. Pros mention that one reason Cyclones is strong is it's hard to scout for it because it's reactorable and you don't know if it's WMs or hellions or Cyclones. Would making it require a Tech Lab, and reducing its build time a bit make up for that? It would make it a bit more of a commitment for Terran to build a Tech lab instead of a Reactor, so i think it could also make it a bit more of a Mech oriented opener than a Bio one.
Another idea. Would there be more of a rock paper scissors dynamic if say, Cyclone lost its Armored tag, but lost 20% HP? For example keep the suggested PTR change, but keep the HP at 110 and remove Armored tag. That way, it'd be a little stronger vs Stalkers (thus helping Mech open vs early blink openers) and much more vs Immortals, but it would then be weaker to Stargate, and even adepts and chargelots and colossus later too. I guess it might be a little big of a nerf in TvZ though, and possibly have the side effect of being even stronger in TvT (would die to tanks in 3 shots instead of 2).
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On March 09 2024 21:21 lokol4890 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2024 19:31 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 16:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 09 2024 11:30 lokol4890 wrote:On March 09 2024 10:41 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2024 10:39 highsis wrote: Why are we buffing zerg when they are clearly the strongest race at the moment? ZvP has no issue? Seriously?
ZvP isn’t actually that bad at the minute, Protoss are doing OK there although maybe struggling a bit in PvT This keeps getting brought up yet in both main tournaments of 2024, as well any probably most premier tournaments of 2023, zergs kept bopping protosses. But that's not relevant to current times as there were recent patches that changed the way ZvP works. I would agree with Wombat's assessment that ZvP is generally fine right now. IEM Katowice/2024Protoss went 5-24 in PvZ at IEM. For reference, this is a bigger gap than PvT yet everyone claims PvT was busted. That's not how statistics work though (and neither is Perceveire's post). You don't look at 29 games and make conclusions that contradict the evidence that you get from the data of the whole patch. There is always a response to shut down any type of statistical analysis, huh. Interesting thing throughout the whole patch zerg was performing protoss, but I guess there is yet another reason for why that also doesn't count
Meanwhile in the real world I have argued based on data that protoss was so underpowered that the game wasn't worth watching in the last five years against a bunch of people who kept arguing that protoss players were just bad and didn't deserve to win. I've just looked at the current situation in PvZ and it's different.
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Mexico2170 Posts
I've always wanted the pylon range nerf it suffered in wings of liberty reverted. Now that they changed the vision maybe they should rever the pylon energy field now.
It would help with map variety allowing the entrace to be made slightly differently, and how make some crucial pylons less vulnerable.
It was nerfed due to 4 gate when you could put a pylon in the lowground outside the range of stalkers and warp in the highground, but you can't do that anymore so it should come back.
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On March 10 2024 02:06 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Though, another idea I had. Pros mention that one reason Cyclones is strong is it's hard to scout for it because it's reactorable and you don't know if it's WMs or hellions or Cyclones. Would making it require a Tech Lab, and reducing its build time a bit make up for that? It would make it a bit more of a commitment for Terran to build a Tech lab instead of a Reactor, so i think it could also make it a bit more of a Mech oriented opener than a Bio one.
Yes, balance council doesnt understand terran philosophy. Armored units was for tech lab, while lights units are for reactor.... Such a detail ! I mean, nobody here wouldn t have done this mistake as this forum is of course full of SC2 expert... isn t it ,
Second argument, there are not enought light units in SC2
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On March 10 2024 06:57 Vision0 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2024 02:06 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Though, another idea I had. Pros mention that one reason Cyclones is strong is it's hard to scout for it because it's reactorable and you don't know if it's WMs or hellions or Cyclones. Would making it require a Tech Lab, and reducing its build time a bit make up for that? It would make it a bit more of a commitment for Terran to build a Tech lab instead of a Reactor, so i think it could also make it a bit more of a Mech oriented opener than a Bio one.
Yes, balance council doesnt understand terran philosophy. Armored units was for tech lab, while lights units are for reactor.... Such a detail ! I mean, nobody here wouldn t have done this mistake as this forum is of course full of SC2 expert... isn t it , Second argument, there are not enought light units in SC2
Wow i didn't even realize that but you're right haha. Hmm if Cyclone HP is decreased a little and becomes light, it could be a little better for Mech vs early Blink Stalkers, while having a new weakness to adept or phoenix/stargate opener. Previously, adept was shit vs Mech, and Cyclones made opening Stargate even worse. It could also make Colossus a good option.
Meanwhile, Cyclone would be able to trade evenly vs Stalker/Immortal, and Mech could safely take their 3rd. Against Stargate or Adept, you can make WMs or hellions or even Thors, and against Colossus you can make Vikings or Tanks.
Cyclone would become really weak vs Banelings, but you shouldn't be able to just mass Cyclone vs Zerg lol.
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On March 10 2024 06:57 Vision0 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2024 02:06 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Though, another idea I had. Pros mention that one reason Cyclones is strong is it's hard to scout for it because it's reactorable and you don't know if it's WMs or hellions or Cyclones. Would making it require a Tech Lab, and reducing its build time a bit make up for that? It would make it a bit more of a commitment for Terran to build a Tech lab instead of a Reactor, so i think it could also make it a bit more of a Mech oriented opener than a Bio one.
Yes, balance council doesnt understand terran philosophy. Armored units was for tech lab, while lights units are for reactor.... Such a detail ! I mean, nobody here wouldn t have done this mistake as this forum is of course full of SC2 expert... isn t it , Second argument, there are not enought light units in SC2 Ghosts, Banshees and Ravens are light and from techlab, Vikings and Medivacs are armored and from reactor
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On March 10 2024 08:03 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2024 06:57 Vision0 wrote:On March 10 2024 02:06 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Though, another idea I had. Pros mention that one reason Cyclones is strong is it's hard to scout for it because it's reactorable and you don't know if it's WMs or hellions or Cyclones. Would making it require a Tech Lab, and reducing its build time a bit make up for that? It would make it a bit more of a commitment for Terran to build a Tech lab instead of a Reactor, so i think it could also make it a bit more of a Mech oriented opener than a Bio one.
Yes, balance council doesnt understand terran philosophy. Armored units was for tech lab, while lights units are for reactor.... Such a detail ! I mean, nobody here wouldn t have done this mistake as this forum is of course full of SC2 expert... isn t it , Second argument, there are not enought light units in SC2 Ghosts, Banshees and Ravens are light and from techlab, Vikings and Medivacs are armored and from reactor
Well Ghosts aren't Light, but... maybe they could be. It feels wrong seeing clumped ghosts getting hit by banelings, casters say "oh no!" but then most ghosts are still alive after tanking 10 baneling hits. Maybe it could be interesting to let Phoenixes, Oracles, and Adepts do bonus damage to Ghosts. Maybe it could give them more niche uses in mid-game comps?
Also thinking about things more, I wonder what SC2 would be like without rapid firing. I think it might be better, the mechanical aspect is already relatively low... rapid fire only makes massing spellcasters scale better than it needs to be. It makes it easy to do mass gateway warpins and mass snipes for example, and after this PTR mass interference matrix or instant feedbacks.
Also, for Cyclones another thing they could play with again is make it so that Lock-On has a higher dps than the normal attack. This would allow small numbers of early game Cyclones to do well, such as vs early Blink stalkers, but massing Cyclones would be worse because in a straight-up fight their Lock-On won't be available after the first kill. This would benefit bio openers more too though which isn't a desired outcome, so this would have to be mixed with some other things to make it less strong for bio openers.
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On March 10 2024 08:03 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2024 06:57 Vision0 wrote:On March 10 2024 02:06 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Though, another idea I had. Pros mention that one reason Cyclones is strong is it's hard to scout for it because it's reactorable and you don't know if it's WMs or hellions or Cyclones. Would making it require a Tech Lab, and reducing its build time a bit make up for that? It would make it a bit more of a commitment for Terran to build a Tech lab instead of a Reactor, so i think it could also make it a bit more of a Mech oriented opener than a Bio one.
Yes, balance council doesnt understand terran philosophy. Armored units was for tech lab, while lights units are for reactor.... Such a detail ! I mean, nobody here wouldn t have done this mistake as this forum is of course full of SC2 expert... isn t it , Second argument, there are not enought light units in SC2 Ghosts, Banshees and Ravens are light and from techlab, Vikings and Medivacs are armored and from reactor
I m not surprised at all that air units compared to ground units are designed from the opposite mind of view. Don t you ?
Then you are wrong, ghost have no tag armor
On March 10 2024 08:31 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2024 08:03 Charoisaur wrote:On March 10 2024 06:57 Vision0 wrote:On March 10 2024 02:06 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Though, another idea I had. Pros mention that one reason Cyclones is strong is it's hard to scout for it because it's reactorable and you don't know if it's WMs or hellions or Cyclones. Would making it require a Tech Lab, and reducing its build time a bit make up for that? It would make it a bit more of a commitment for Terran to build a Tech lab instead of a Reactor, so i think it could also make it a bit more of a Mech oriented opener than a Bio one.
Yes, balance council doesnt understand terran philosophy. Armored units was for tech lab, while lights units are for reactor.... Such a detail ! I mean, nobody here wouldn t have done this mistake as this forum is of course full of SC2 expert... isn t it , Second argument, there are not enought light units in SC2 Ghosts, Banshees and Ravens are light and from techlab, Vikings and Medivacs are armored and from reactor Well Ghosts aren't Light, but... maybe they could be. It feels wrong seeing clumped ghosts getting hit by banelings, casters say "oh no!" but then most ghosts are still alive after tanking 10 baneling hits. Maybe it could be interesting to let Phoenixes, Oracles, and Adepts do bonus damage to Ghosts. Maybe it could give them more niche uses in mid-game comps? .
Yes if you are thinking to units which haven t tag armor, you have (mainly, i don t remember all):
Queen, Ghost, Banelings, Broodling and Interceptor
Only Broodling and Interceptor looks to fit a no "tag armor", because of their functionnal role in fight.
Queen should get a transform ability which improve his function to extend creep and to get the healing spell (Queen cost is now 100 minerals, morphing in "Sister queen for 75 minerals. (avoid spamming tumors spell like a dumb in modyfing the multiplicator coefficient of creep spread, increase mana spell cost of tumors spell, adding small cooldown) The question of queen's armor is a hot subject in the community, i feel. So, as phoenix are one of the main threat, his tag armor can only be an armored tag, then if you decide to morph some of your queens to get a better extension of creep, the armor tag could switch to light (but "sister queens" get healing spell)
Banelings supply cost should be equal to one, light armor tag added + fire rate of all units in SC2 decrease by 25%
Finally, add light armor to ghosts with some counterparties
PS: in WoL, Banelings probably keeps their supply cost while morphing for a "quality of life". Mean that developpers could decided to make the morph easy because of the supply max cap equal to 200. But ravagers has been added, so the question and discuss around this subject is still open.
These modification list could be a part of the "balance light/armored units chapter in SC2.
The no tag armor is more a clue that developpers haven t done the game balance process completely (but almost......)
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TBH the protoss early game issue is more of an issue because zerg has a free early game due to Queens still existing, and terran actually has strong early game units in the reaper and clone that allow them to be bigger bullies than before. Destroying the omni-situational queen is still the way to fix it. Protoss is an issue because the other two races have better early games.
ofc I'm a boomer hater so take everything I say with a pinch of salt.
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On March 10 2024 21:40 Wintex wrote: TBH the protoss early game issue is more of an issue because zerg has a free early game due to Queens still existing, and terran actually has strong early game units in the reaper and clone that allow them to be bigger bullies than before. Destroying the omni-situational queen is still the way to fix it. Protoss is an issue because the other two races have better early games.
ofc I'm a boomer hater so take everything I say with a pinch of salt.
Protoss has an early game issue because of Warp Gate. It cant have the same kind of "normal" openings as the other races because any opening advantage you're able to get with early units can quickly snowball out of control with a Warp Gate timing because Warp Gate is able to mitigate all defender's advantages.
So Protoss early game has to be balanced around everything being turned into a Warp Gate all in.
Queens need to be balanced in such a way so they are able to be strong enough defensively to STOP Warp Gate all ins.
I think anyone with a brain in this community can agree that having Zerg's entire defensive identity wrapped around the Queen is bad game design, but we can't even get to a point where we can start to fix it while Warp Gate exists because the second we start nerfing the Queen's defensive capability is the second that PvZ becomes unplayable because Warp Gate all ins will start wiping Zergs out to say nothing of the impact such a change would have on TvZ and ZvZ also.
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Who said queen will be less efficient against other units ?
It s not because queens would be splitted in two complementary units that the balance will suddenly slip.
The mecanism of warp gate is broken because of the new economy introduced with 12 workers, in doing this insanity, developpers have killed build orders and put to the trash most of the no-warp gate strategy/pressure.
But let s not discuss about the 12 workers, even if we put this aside, queen remain the only unit able to deal with the other best units along the game and without any building requirement or gas. (until very middle end game at least)
For Warp gate upgrade, Time of warpgate units has to inverted with gateway units cooldown. (This is part of chapter "decrease fire rate of all units by 25%) By the way, if not reverse to 9 workers, warpgate upgrade is removed and gateway now acquire the warpgate function ON/OFF (gateway minerals cost from 150 to 200)
Ofc i prefer return to 9 workers and it has to be tested without changing the cost of gateway buildings. And i mpretty sure most of the pro prefer a 9 workers start (or 6) than 12
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On March 11 2024 02:35 Vision0 wrote: Who said queen will be less efficient against other units ?
It s not because queens would be splitted in two complementary units that the balance will suddenly slip.
The mecanism of warp gate is broken because of the new economy introduced with 12 workers, in doing this insanity, developpers have killed build orders and put to the trash most of the no-warp gate strategy/pressure.
But let s not discuss about the 12 workers, even if we put this aside, queen remain the only unit able to deal with the other best units along the game and without any building requirement or gas. (until very middle end game at least)
For Warp gate upgrade, Time of warpgate units has to inverted with gateway units cooldown. (This is part of chapter "decrease fire rate of all units by 25%) By the way, if not reverse to 9 workers, warpgate upgrade is removed and gateway now acquire the warpgate function ON/OFF (gateway minerals cost from 150 to 200)
Ofc i prefer return to 9 workers and it has to be tested without changing the cost of gateway buildings. And i mpretty sure most of the pro prefer a 9 workers start (or 6) than 12 The only no-warp-gate strategy/pressure I remember from before 12 workers is 2 gate zealot all-in, which is the equivalent of a ten-pool. Good riddance tbh, all in all I find the 12 workers a large improvement in part because most of the pre-ten worker all-ins got removed.
I also don't think warpgate is that much of a problem anymore after consecutive nerfs and if we want to change Protoss way of aggression nerfing their counters or reducing tech building costs to open up build possibilities is a preferable way than making P about gateway units again.
I have to admit that I don't get how Protoss air is kept unchanged when void rays only see a little use in PvP and are garbage in the other two matchups and phoenix are a niche build in both MUs too.
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On March 11 2024 00:54 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2024 21:40 Wintex wrote: TBH the protoss early game issue is more of an issue because zerg has a free early game due to Queens still existing, and terran actually has strong early game units in the reaper and clone that allow them to be bigger bullies than before. Destroying the omni-situational queen is still the way to fix it. Protoss is an issue because the other two races have better early games.
ofc I'm a boomer hater so take everything I say with a pinch of salt. Protoss has an early game issue because of Warp Gate. It cant have the same kind of "normal" openings as the other races because any opening advantage you're able to get with early units can quickly snowball out of control with a Warp Gate timing because Warp Gate is able to mitigate all defender's advantages. So Protoss early game has to be balanced around everything being turned into a Warp Gate all in. Queens need to be balanced in such a way so they are able to be strong enough defensively to STOP Warp Gate all ins. I think anyone with a brain in this community can agree that having Zerg's entire defensive identity wrapped around the Queen is bad game design, but we can't even get to a point where we can start to fix it while Warp Gate exists because the second we start nerfing the Queen's defensive capability is the second that PvZ becomes unplayable because Warp Gate all ins will start wiping Zergs out to say nothing of the impact such a change would have on TvZ and ZvZ also. Effectively the warp gate issue can be solved by just pushing it down the tech tree, this is not an excuse. Currently, the matchup is botched because the Queen is a omni-situational existence. Capping the amount of queens or anything similar doesn't deal with the issue you present anyway. Also, a lot of the early game power creep happened exactly because the Queen was an answer to literally everything. Warp gate is fixable, this ain't.
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The root of the whole "Queens defend everything" problem dates back to the very beginning of SC2, when Blizzard decided to push Hydras later into Lair tech and made Roaches the early ranged unit for Zerg. Suddenly Zerg doesn't have any early game mobile anti air units other than Queens. You have to rely on Queens and Spores for all the potential Phoenix, Voidrays, Oracles, Banshees, Medivacs plays in early game. So they had to buff the Queens, until at some point Zerg found out that Queens were buffed to a point that mass Queens became the answer to almost all early aggressions.
You can't nerf Queens now because that's the only thing Zerg could rely on for early game defense.
Yet another example of SC2 design team's attempt at deviating from BW ended up backfiring...
Zergs will happily accept nerfs to Queens if you give them BW Hydras back.
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