Because of the way mutators are designed, queuing up for a random B+ game can create games that either feel marginally more difficult than brutal or damn near impossible. This is terrible game design. Imagine if people playing ladder had the possibility of either playing someone close in skill or several tiers higher. I understand that there is always going to be some inherent RNG depending who you get as your ally but this compounds the issue.
The easiest solution is to just give each player the option to veto a handful of mutators at the start of each game that hardcounters a commander or simply is no fun to play. If you find that everyone is vetoing a certain mutator, then you know that nobody enjoys playing it so maybe consider changing it or removing it. I’ve been trying to avoid B+ entirely and just playing custom games because its such a wildly inconsistent experience that ranges from boring cause its too easy to maddening. I rather play with 5x the points worth (HOTS+Avenger) than one game with double edged or fatal attraction. Reaching a skill-level where basic brutal is often too easy has reduced how much time I spend playing because its just become a crapshoot trying to find an enjoyable game. Forcing us to either find people to make custom games or custom maps is both unrealistic if one simply wants a game at an odd hour and it fractures the player base.
So true… The mutators are not properly categorized I swear. You could put all the easy ones in one game and I would still find it easier than the mutator where you lose money for whatever action you perform. Literally makes the game unplayable.
I don’t like people’s attitudes of, if you don’t like it then leave, because that’s exactly what people do: they don’t like it so they quit. That’s why these game modes are dead. Mutators need to be recategorized, and there needs to be punishments for allies that consistently queue into brutal+ just to lose because they are weighing down their teammate.
I remember making a post about this before, and the top response was basically, if you don’t like it, then start making friends to queue up with. Mate, that is not the right response to this crappy situation. We need to push for co-op fixes and updates, not allow for stupid things to continue existing.
Pages can be written about the wildly inaccurate point balance of mutators. Some are also way harder in combination. Concussion on its own is nbd but with a “dodge this” type on top is very deadly. A lot can be done to flesh out the B+ experience but a simple starter is to just let us veto mutators the way we can technically veto (all other) maps. The ideal product is one where at the start of the game, the players can agree on adding more mutators than B+1 allows and have the exp scale accordingly. Vetos only help prevent there be stupid hard/frustrating games. You can still end up with stupid easy games. Expecting people to go into custom just isnt realistic for being able to play when you want. I still do it whenever I have someone despite not getting bonus leveling just cause the B+ fun factor is so erratic.
Ugh, you remind me of that one time I played on Void Launch. With Concussion + Blizzards… and something else. Mind you, the Blizzard also caused Concussion.
You can get diffusion + double edge or diffusion+life leech+short sighted on B1, so the damage that gets reflected to you now heals the unit, and you dont have the vision to blow them up from afar. That is ridiculous when you can just as well get alien incubation + walking infested which is like nothing.
Some mutations interactions and synergies makes it almost impossible to play; poor programming (Synergies like Mineral shield + fatal attractions and Magmines attacking temple etc), broken functions (the OPness of fatal attraction) and rating of mutation plays are to blamed for that.
The start of fixing this problem maybe tweaking excessively tedious mutation like Fatal Attraction (Very annoying mutation) to lesser level.
Also, re-arrange mutation point to more acceptable level.
I think it is important to prevent certain mutation synergies especially in B+. Maybe developers can implement a system that filters out certain mutations that may cause synergy.
For example during the loading screen after selecting B+, the first mutation could chooses a mutation, and then the server can determine which second mutation or third mutation cause less synergy and select them.
For example: 1. Life Leech > 2. (Avoid most synergetic mutation) Alien incubation > 3. Mineral Shield. (5 mutation)
Otherwise player can randomly get excessively difficult synergy like for example:
Life Leech 2. Double Edged (+4) or 3. even Barrier (+6) (Brutal+1 can go up to 4~6).
I’m not sure how to tweak them in Over Brutal+, but at least the above proposal render Brutal + less tedious and more playable.
Implementing smarter system to filter mutation synergy is more effective than vetoing other mutations in my opinion (You got to enjoy the challenge after all).
Just the past 2 mutations alone already tells the whole story. I got people complaing about how I apparently rated the mutations incorrectly because last week’s was way easier than this week’s despite having a higher rating. I literally just used Blizzard’s point system for mutators.
Long story short, I just play regular Brutal on my weekly streams, and whenever I play co-op.
After reviewing the responses to that complaint in that thread the answer became pretty clear. Ranking by just the mutator without taking the map into consideration is why there’s such a discrepency in the difficulties from what they’re ranked to how hard they actually are.
Blizz can You please remove thoose mutators, please ? It’s broken experience, it’s non sense! Brutal is way to easy and Brutal+ is way to hard with uneven chances. It’s just cheating the game against player. SC2 is wonderfull game but with Mutators its pointless…
I find mutations tedious. Granted I’m not a wizard at this game but you can make brutal more challenging by not playing with mastery points, limiting your use of hero / top bar, 1 basing the mission. Granted your ally can make it too easy anyway.
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Listen to the Terrys of the world, folks, it may be their only time to feel like they’re shaking things up.
ive play like some brutal+ games with friend, its much more fun than playing normal brutal, ofc the most important thing is u need to invite a player that u know that they can hold their ground and cooperate together to be fun, if not can be kind of streesfull. Just hope that the experience is increased.
