Balance Council needs to be fired

[Sentry-2358]

@Miro-11607

Reddit has been a mostly Protoss centric rabbit hole for years that, frankly, has a lot of delusions about what Protoss is and isn’t

And what about the pro Part ?

Protoss Pros dont think the Patch is good at all. I guess No one thinks the Patch is good at all. Even terran Pros know its worse for protoss.

The Patch got good ideas but Bad execution. Its Not a Shame to admit it.

@Miro-11607

, I’m quite content to wait and see where the dice falls

Did you wait Long enough for the obvious ?

@Miro-11607

Mmm… I’m not so sure about that yet; I think as far as the maps will go, only time will really tell

Did you See enough ?

The good old terran Style. Just say lets wait a Bit. Wait for next Patch where obvious nerfs happen and nothing got helped. Then Just say lets wait again. Its Just funny how it Happens everytime.

@Miro-11607

Unironically, mothership is actually really, really strong - I quite like it. I could easily see Mothership rush being a genuine thing for

I Like it too but it could be problematic for zerg and doesnt really Adress Something that should get fixed. It doesnt Help tvp.

@Miro-11607

Again, two very different stages of the game, but sure, you do you

Not really. They Said its GENERALLY a dumb Thing. Which is true. Same goes for pf. Terran has by far the Most laziest and strongest defense. I dont mind. But if we Talk about Overcharge being lazy and too Strong we might want to Talk about the elephant in the room.

Seeing Spirit waste everyones time with mech Style vs serral is simply Boring. Its so hard to kill a much much much worse terran for zerg Just because of Tank and pf.

@Miro-11607

As far as MaxPax goes, MaxPax is notorious for being slow to change anything when adapting or looking at his builds; he’s very set in his ways and rarely refuses to experiment until someone el

Ah OK. Even If protoss Pros or Pros Generally say its a Bad Patch thats worse for terran you still Like the “protoss Pros are Bad” and “lets See and wait” approach. I See

@Miro-11607

I do recall that he liked energy overcharge though

Ofc. Its a good Thing. But doesnt Help that protoss is pretty fragile and very Hit or Miss.

@Miro-11607

I mean, it would directly restore the balance between Templar and Ghosts from ye-olden-days. Ghosts - and EMP specifically - weren’t OP then, so fixing that should inherently fix the relationship they already have

This is very much Up to debate. Interactions can be shifted towards either Side depending on new Revelations. For example when the Control of reapers got so good they killed everything with No counterplay you still cant say: “hey but they were Balanced before”

Also Things Like widow mines: only because it was Patched in and never really Got adressed doesnt mean its fine. Sometimes it Takes time to Figure Out whats the real Problem.

@Miro-11607

Yeah? Because looking away from your army for half a second and having the entire thing get vaporized is a pretty good reason not to have it kill an unstimmed marauder; at least my suggestion means that you still 1-tap stimmed marauders during an engagement, while you’re not as heavily punished for going and doing your macro tasks the moment you look away

Yeah ? But how does it feel to Look at your Army and See the Ghost Just Putting an emp somewhere and without any counterplay and See your whole shields getting removed and also your whole Hopes of winning the Battle.

At least disruptors have downsides.

@Miro-11607

You say that, and yet it’s still surprising how much faster I reach supply cap when I make them, and how much weaker my army feels because of the smaller unit count as a direct result.

Yeah but These are feels. Maybe you havent Had enough practise with new Patch ? If pros are saying hey this Patch is very mean to protoss while they dont Adress Ghosts enough at all you say protoss needs more practise with new Patch but the Ghost Nerf is very visible and noticeable. You Claim you feel the difference of your five Ghosts you build ? Really ? You notice the difference of 5 Marines in Like a 10 Minute Match ? Thats maybe the Case for pro Play but certainly Not for 3.5k. compared to shield battery lol.

@Miro-11607

I AM disagreeing that the range nerf to the tempest was the bigger of the two, given it is a semi-mobile long range artillery

Then you are again disagreeing with what for example pig says. People with a Lot more knowledge and reason behind His words.

@Miro-11607

The game isn’t built around a tier-based system. Stop it with this

Ah OK. Then i guess teching Up is a hoax. Cool. Then why do we Lock Units and Upgrades behind Tier systems at all ? Let us Just build Carriers without any tech building. Yaaay

[TerranicII-1450]

@Sentry-2358

Ah OK. Then i guess teching Up is a hoax. Cool.

SC2 units generally do not have the kinds of higher-tech replacements that you would get in a game with an actual tier system. You have units that serve different roles and do not get replaced.

[DankTemplar-11542]

Honestly, they should just disband the balance council and bring it back in-house with the MS RTS team. It’s very clear they don’t know design or balance and that there’s some issues with what seems to be cronyism in the Balance council.

You just don’t end up in this situation where your balance patch is so freaking bad that it’s nearly unanimously dunked on for being a biased piece of crap without willful ignorance and that “We don’t want to nerf the Ghost but we’re being forced to” comment paints a pretty telling picture.

Get the kiddos off the council and get paid professionals doing the job properly.

[JorgeCis-1237]

I read the balance council comment on the ghost to mean, “we dont know what the right balance change is yet, but the community wanted the 3 supply change so we will try that first.” I agree with the sentiment that they should have tried a few other things and then settled on the best change. There was a post i read somewhere that it sounded like they were pressed for time on the patch? I wonder what the rush was on Blizzard’s end.

[CaptainMitt-1272]

The thing is, I’d imagine it’s actually really hard to balance the game. Because everyone has different opinions, so I’m sure much of the council wanted a big nerf on the ghost, but some of the council is biased towards Terran, and didn’t want a nerf, so they compromised. I think the supply increase is a good step in the right direction, hopefully the next patch we get something a little more. At this point, we’re lucky we even get balances.

[abs-2628]

As a terran i am really pissed that they overnerfed sensor towers but kept creep spread as it is. So terran is not allowed to have motion detection (not even vision but motion detection where usually we still need to throw a scan !) but zerg can see 70 % of the map ?

Tell me that they are not biased towards zergs - i want creep tumors to cost 50 energy but have 100 hp (to compensate for energy) - this will force zergs to spread creep carefully in the right direction rather than just spamming.

[guyzamiester-1851]

100% agree, they should just accept that turtling is a part of the game, it’s the first good mission of SC1 yet they treat it like it’s a dirty word. Also, changing things like Hatchery cost should be illegal.

Making spore crawlers (they wanted spines too) better is also crazy, Zerg gets everything so easily now. As a random player with no bias, I would pick Zerg anyday. Even Protoss is good.

[TerranicII-1450]

If they are going to do “wait and see” changes, it might be wiser to make and test balance patches more often.

[Adventurer-16000863]

@abs-2628

As a terran i am really pissed that they overnerfed sensor towers but kept creep spread as it is. So terran is not allowed to have motion detection (not even vision but motion detection where usually we still need to throw a scan !) but zerg can see 70 % of the map ?

Creep encourages interaction. Sensor towers discourage interaction. Big difference. Encouraging the players to interact reduces the stalemate and turtle nature of the game.

[OverFjell-2528]

Yeah because both sensor towers and creep spread are equivalent in terms of APM spend

[OverFjell-2528]

Think of the poor intern! Can’t make him do that much, they might have to actually pay him a wage then, and imagine Blizzard investing in Starcraft

[Adventurer-16000863]

@CaptainMitt-1272

The thing is, I’d imagine it’s actually really hard to balance the game

It isn’t. It’s one of the easiest jobs on the entire planet and can be summarized as a three step process:

1. Measure matchup winrates in isolation from any other factor.
2. If the win-rate is >55%, reduce the power level of the strongest unit used in that matchup (measured in trading efficiency or a combination of some other metrics, computed as Z scores combined with Stouffer’s method and weighted by their correlation with win-rate).
3. Repeat this process until the win-rates comfortably fluctuate between 45% and 55%.

The only reason they think it’s hard is because it is an anti-problem. An anti problem is a problem with an easy answer, but this trips up intelligent people because they assume the answer can’t be that easy and so they make the problem more complicated than it is and that creates secondary problems. They then focus on the secondary problems (mistaking them for the real problem).

Adjusting power levels of a race in a matchup is as easy as 1,2,3 but they get caught up on the complex theoreticals of how it will play out inside the meta. "But if we nerf the marine’s cost, how will that affect the Sicilian-Mexican hybrid queen drop opener, variant 7-b-9, on maps A, B and C? The proper answer: it doesn’t matter because it all aggregates into the win-rates which you measure in the future to make sure the nerfs have the intended effect (if they don’t, you repeat 1,2,3 until they do).

SC2 is an absurdly complicated game and you couldn’t understand it in its entirety even if you wanted to. You have to treat it like a black box where you turn knobs to vary the inputs until the outputs produce the desired result. You don’t actually care what’s happening on the inside as long as the output is correct.

[guyzamiester-1851]

I think that the Queen and Hatchery changes were a bit wrong. Yes, the Queen is a pretty controversial unit, but the biggest issue was the Nydus Worm. I know they think it’s fun, but giving quick global range to the Queen, whose only weakness is speed, is questionable. My first post was complaining about Nydus Worm range.

[OverFjell-2528]

@guyzamiester-1851

Realistically, Overlords shouldn’t be able to transport Queens either. Their weakness is speed, don’t circumvent it

You could say the same thing about sticking a thor or tank in a medivac. Being able to chase mutalisks with a thor in a boosted medivac is kinda absurd.

[guyzamiester-1851]

You know what they did with Nydus Worm, they double buffed it (from SC1). SC1 Nydus was Hive tech, and it only worked on creep (the exit). Massive difference. You couldn’t even do that in SC2 with the creep changes. Never double buff stuff.

[OverFjell-2528]

I didn’t say anything about the nydus. I was quoting you about the queens in overlords

[guyzamiester-1851]

Yeah, I wasn’t replying to that lol (just ranting). I don’t have a strong opinion on the thor/tank + medivac.

I think I take back what I said about the Queens + Overlord.

[DankTemplar-11542]

Balance is nearly impossible with the way they’re doing it. I mean who are you balancing around low leaguers? Pros? GM? It’s different for everyone.

Pros literally are outliers so balancing around them is…well, for example, how do you balance Zerg when Serral is around? You can’t. You’ll end up nerfing Zerg just to stop Serral dominance. Same applies to anyone who’s “too good”. You can’t really balance around their tiny shortcuts that get you killed on ladder and pro meta where people study one another’s games.

So do you balance around low leagers? Nope because they’re so sloppy below Diamond that anything backed up by solid macro will appear imba.

So how about GM? Can’t do that either because it’s filled with alts which skews stuff pretty badly.

And if you balance around Diamond-Masters you’re just going to get a different flavor of what we currently have.

Then you mix in people misunderstanding race representation and it’s relation to balance (popularity indicates popularity, nothing else) and it’s just a mess.

A mess that the balance council is not qualified to handle. Blizzard needs real staticians who can also do things based on ‘feel’ when appropriate because the numbers will be so complex there are times where they won’t reflect the changes that need to happen.

My bigger problem with the balance council is their corrupt processes. I can almost guarantee you that there’s at least 1 bad actor who’s using Tsun Zu’s The Art of War like it’s sage life advice or some weird sociopathic nonsense to get exactly what they want.

You need salaries tied to jobs like this because that provides monetary incentive to keep things reasonably fair.

[guyzamiester-1851]

My humble view is that ladder should be based around strong amateurs, so it’s not their job, it’s their hobby.
Pros and noobs have custom maps/mods + AI respectively, so that makes sense to me.

You know a funny example, in Chess, the best player (Carlsen) is getting bored, so now he goes to ‘random’ tournaments. He didn’t say, “I’m bored, so I’m going to change the rules for the entire population” lol.

[Adventurer-16000863]

@DankTemplar-11542

Balance is nearly impossible with the way they’re doing it. I mean who are you balancing around low leaguers? Pros? GM? It’s different for everyone

Nonsense. If race causes a change in performance then it must affect all those who play that race minus 1-5% as outliers. If performance changes within racial boundaries then race is not the cause. You are describing no correlation between race and performance: https://i.imgur.com/7lYBxVg.png.