Best take of the PTR patch and the balance council’s approach. Reasonable, passionate and informed. Love it.
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Linking to a time in a twitch video doesn’t work on the bnet forums unless you use the ` character to quote the URL like so:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2284374115?t=1h2m3s
It’s called the backtick character and it’s next to the 1 on your keyboard. If you hit shift it produces a ~tilda~. This links to the 1st hour, 2nd minute, 3rd second of his video. But yes PiG is great.
Is this the clip you are talking about?
https://clips.twitch.tv/BelovedBrightLampNononoCat-_gSS9ZCf7YuTx924
This really cracks me up because it’s exactly what I predicted months ago. I predicted the balance counsel would eventually have to come out and publicly admit that the game is not balanced and never will be. Protoss is designed, quite deliberately, to have a lower skill floor and it was done this way to make Protoss appealing to MOBA players which in theory should increase the popularity of the game by making it less elitist. Balancing the game has limits due to this, and Protoss will always have some advantage no matter what. Historically, Protoss have enjoyed a 58.5% win-rate advantage, on an equal skill/effort basis, in ZvP. That’s the average over all balance patches.
This is the reality of SC2 balance but at the same time it shouldn’t be used as an excuse for allowing worse-than-necessary balance issues like the immortal trading at 2.6:1 efficiency which is just nuts and there’s no justification for it.
Another thing I’d add on to this is that he’s kinda overstating how cemented the game state is. Things can still be done that nerf average protoss performance while increasing professional protoss performance. A good example of that is the removal of shield battery overcharge and the addition of the energy recharge ability. This makes protoss defense very strong in the hands of someone like hero who will put that energy to good use with stasis traps and blink, but very weak in the hands of a garden variety GM toss who might now put the stasis traps in the right spots. This is called a variance buff. It reduces the power level of protoss but only for the lower skilled ones. Buffs like that have the ability to make protos win premier tournaments while simultaneously reducing how many protoss are in grandmaster.
The APM requirements of each race are a fundamental limit that balance will never be able to overcome due to something called the relative randomness factor which is a concept used when modeling if you have an advantage in stock trading or not, and it’s identical to how sc2 works so sc2 balance will obey the same rules. But that’s way too complicated for discussing on these forums.
I suppose we can go over the basic idea of the RRF. In statistics there is a thing called a random walk which is a point at a position and it can move randomly left or right or up or down. Many points doing this process will produce a bell curve. If there is a bias in the movement of the points, such as the points having a 10% higher probability of moving up instead of down, it produces a skewed normal distribution. This is analogous to the movement of a marine in the future because it could move up, down, left or right, and we don’t know which it is. But we do know it might more likely to move away from a baneling. So predicting the movement of a marine is to take the probability of moving backwards minus the probability of moving forward. That tells you on average what direction it will move and by how much. There is one more factor to this and it’s the variance. How far will the marine move on average? If it’s only 0.0001 units then the marine has a very predictable behavior that is easy to exploit, but if it’s 10 units then it’s very unpredictable. So on a fundamental level, how easy it is to counter-micro depends on how predictable the outcome is. If an outcome is less predictable, it’s harder to counter micro. Now this isn’t the complete picture because it’s the relatively randomness that matters. If both players have the same randomness factor, they are equal in the micro battles, but if one has a high randomness factor and the other a low randomness factor then the one with a low randomness factor is disadvantaged because his micro will be predictable. SC2 balance can approach the limit of this predictability factor but never exceed it. It is the fundamental limit of game balance. The race that has the most advantage here is the race with the highest relative randomness factor. Blink stalkers are a good example because they have a very high randomness factor but the zerglings attacking the stalkers have a relatively low randomness factor. So if you were to compute this typical game factors, you’d see protoss has the RRF advantage. That means on a fundamental level the game can never be more balanced than the RRF limit. That limit is quite likely 58.5% in advantage of protoss.
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Please don’t derail a decent topic with your insanity. Thanks.
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The time he starts talking about the patch and balance is 1:32:00
I have to say its a great point of view and very accurate.
Thanks for the Video DankTemplar.
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- Pig is frustrated that the cyclone limits PvT openers. He says oracle openers are useless as are adepts. He says a 2 cyclone drop can outright kill a protoss with drop micro.
A fair point and I have to agree with him on that one.
- He also says that high level protoss should be buffed irrespective of other levels. He says protoss need to win premier tournaments and if it buffs protoss at lower levels then it buffs them at lower levels. He admits protoss is easier and argues that it doesn’t matter.
This is absolutely wrong and very dangerous for the health of the game because prioritizing esports over the player base will cause players to leave the game and then you won’t have anyone watching esports.
- He argues that the player base will accept that the game is fair based entirely off of pro level play.
Absolutely absurd. If you think that gamers care more about pro play than their own gaming experience then you’re living on another planet. PiG is apparently live streaming from Mars.
- He argues that a 25 mineral nerf won’t matter because low level protoss float 700 minerals anyway.
He’s basically saying that changing the balance doesn’t matter because players make mistakes. This contradictory to his following claim:
- He rages that Dark is allowed to make mistakes but that Hero is not. He says it’s a double standard.
Wait wait wait, he just said balance and mistakes are not related, but now they are. Also, Dark does not make the same quantity and quality of mistakes that Hero does. I have never seen Dark lose half his mutalisks to a single bile wave but I have seen Hero lose half his void rays in that fashion.
- He argues that it is impossible to change the fact that protoss can win vs 1,000 mmr higher players.
Obviously absurd, as it’s easy to nerf the strategies they use to do that. But he’s arguing, again, that balance can’t be used to change Protoss’ outcome, which is in direct contradiction to his future claims:
- He then argues that making 2 or 3 small changes to protoss is all that’s needed to help them win at a pro level.
HOLD ON A SECOND BRO, you just said balance can’t stop Terran and Zerg from losing to protoss 1,000 mmr below them. So which is it? If balance can fix high level protoss, it can fix low level too. In fact, it should fix both.
- He argues that terran and zerg have been balanced around the top and nothing else and that protoss should be the same.
He’s absolutely wrong about this one as well because David Kim did 95% of the balancing of SC2 and he definitely factored in ladder balance. Favoring esports over the player base has only become a sentiment since the esports people took over and it’s no wonder why esports people, like PiG, want to design the game for esports: they make money off of it. That’s their careers. This is the biggest criticism that I’ve had for the balance counsel because, being composed of pro players and tournament casters, it’s obviously going to be biased towards producing quality esports and not making gamers have a fun time. The result is that players are going to get absolutely wrecked by protoss, and quit the game. If you think a guy losing 10 games in a row vs protoss will say “Golly, I am so glad protoss can finally win premier tournaments, I think I will keep playing” then you’re living under a rock. Gamers care about their own experience. Esports is peripheral. That’s the long and short of it. I think the counsel needs to consider both and try to fix both and the idea of blinding buffing toss for the sake of esports is just absurd. It’s absolutely crazy.
The biggest flaw by far in PiG’s reasoning is that you can’t fix high level and low level protoss at the same time. He’s wrong about that. You can fix both with variance buffs. A variance buff is a buff that reduces the automation of the game to give less consistent results, meaning it takes skill to get good results, while increasing the power level of a unit. A good example would be making immortal shields have to be manually triggered, but increasing the duration of the shields by 50%. That makes the immortal’s peak strength higher, but makes it so that only high skill players can access it. This would fix low level protoss and high level protoss.
He’s just wrong and ranting an emotional. In fact he is so emotional that I don’t think that level of emotion allows rational thinking at all which is why he’s spouting so many contradictory things in his rants. Balancing SC2 should be a matter of calm, cool, calculated moves based on evidence and not emotion.
It’s fine, totally fine, to be emotional. I get where he’s coming from. Everyone is allowed to have a good rant every now and then. But let’s not pretend this is good advice for the game because it’s not. I think he’s right to be concerned about the pro play but he’s very wrong about everything else. He’s wrong that it’s more important than the casuals and he’s wrong that you can’t fix both.
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Helps that he has some insight on how things run at the Balance Council after contributing previously.
I also think Winter made some especially good points that it’s not even just about the changes themselves; It’s about how those changes are perceived. Between the lack of communication and the minimal changes during past PTRs a lot of the community just doesn’t have faith that their concerns are being listened to.
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And from what we’ve been told, this is largely a problem with some Terran council members being super obnoxious and highschool politicking.
If it’s going to exist then there just has to be some systemic changes. You essentially need a “Speaker of the House” who can tell someone to sit down and shut up and kick them out if they get unruly. Not an easy job if you like having friends lol.
Streamers, casters and the scene alike see a big growth in interest when a patch drops. Then they see it’s mostly QoL that pro players love and I agree but it only has a few big changes that shakes everything up. I think if they had the resources they’d do more yolo changes and then just dial them back over the year, only for them to do it again 1-2 years later. That’s the usual design MO for blizzard in other games. The usual counter argument is that it’s a competitive game that values cautious approach to keep the status quo. It’s this line of thinking where you get most SC2 “players” who only watch the premier tournaments every time they pop up rather than logging in and playing themselves. They could even return to previous patches or unit aspects in the past. Let’s try the old immortal barrier 1 season, try tankivac, bring back IT for a season, the old colossus, have adepts that shoot up. Those are the things that would spark interest.
What’s the bet the average player saw the PTR notes, wanted to play, noticed it’s a 28 gb download and thought against doing it.
It’s important to note that feedback is negatively biased due to response bias. Every single patch that’s ever been made has had nerds raging that someone needs to be fired. Relying on the most vocal and least rational users is not a good way to judge community sentiment. How do I know they aren’t rational? Because not a single one of them has played a single PTR game, and, even if they had, the PTR has only been live for a few days which is nowhere near enough time to form such solid and firm and extreme opinions. This kind of feedback from the community is nothing but garden variety nerd rage.
Oh come on. As if that isn’t what you are doing right now, and everyone else discussing the patch.
What? lol? This is why I don’t wanna talk to you.
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Terran players advocate for their interests - DankTemplar: 
PiG vies for Protoss’ interests - DankTemplar: 
Also DankTemplar: I AM NOT PLAYING POLITICS LIKE THOSE DIRTY TERRANS!
Dude, I don’t even play like a normal Protoss. All the changes have zero impact on my style except for maybe the Lib change which is obviously overtuned.
Then you shouldn’t mind those terrans advocating for their interests, should you, since it doesn’t affect you, right? 
Come on man, admit you are looking out for your own interests the same as every other person. It’s not constructive to criticize terran players for doing the same thing you are doing. We all care about SC2 and want to see it succeed.
What’s interesting to me is that this is a measurable shift in PiG’s disposition towards balance. He’s been saying Protoss is too powerful and happy to call out Hero’s mistakes. The only thing he hasn’t reversed position on is that balance should be done for the highest levels (he’s been expressing those sentiments for awhile). But everything else is a radical 180 compared to what he’s said in the past. If I had to guess, he’s probably friends with Astrea and Astrea has a bug in his ear.
It doesn’t much matter because it’s a live cast and people say dumb stuff while live all the time, especially when they are passionate about something, so we might be over analyzing it but then again he also benefits from the attention since he’s a youtuber and all. He’s also one of the fastest talkers in the entire sc2 caster scene so he tends to talk and think later. It’s one of the things I respect about him because I am the opposite. I highschool I had a good friend who was the same way. I always admired his ability to take risks but didn’t envy the messes he’d get himself into that could’ve been avoided by taking a step back. He passed away a few years back but his parents and I are still good friends.
I do agree that the Balance Council needs to have any kind of order and mechanics that prevent to ask for massively biased changes, but also needs to be Audited too.
To play with other Races would help the Balance Council (Pro Players) to be counscious of what they are asking for.
And since its a matter of money, the solution would point in that way.
I proposed a Tournament Oriented Balance, basically in order to get money and get the prize, all races have to be balanced.
Forcing the Balance Council (Pro Players) to be fair with what they are asking.
Well he himself said he’s capturing the vibe that the wider community has given. Hearing that their most ambitious patch in years also got a load of backlash isn’t a promising sign. 
I just saw that they’re putting Sc2 into a battle pass.
Yes, it will probably be the end of adventurous balance patches. That’s why it’s unfortunate that people are willing to die on the “hero can’t beat clem, also screw the lower levels” hill when it’s a cheap argument meant to rattle the cages of low league protoss and will quite likely cement the current state of balance, including the state of high level PvX matchups, because the counsel was punished for being courageous. But it is what it is. I tried to save sc2 but wasn’t powerful enough. Lmao. Oh well. Life moves on.
Yeah it cracks me up. It’s hilarious actually because 95% of the people making these comments are Grandmasters since they are the only ones who care that much about the game to debate about it online. You can confirm this by counting how many people care more about pro play than care about casual play. Ovewhelmingly, they care about pro play. Huh, how about that. Why is that? Oh wait GM level Protoss care about the thing that’s going to get them buffs. How about that. It’s an echo chamber effect and they can’t break out of it to see the game from the perspective of a casual player. No casual player will care that Hero gets to beat Clem if that casual is getting wrecked by Protoss on the ladder. But I digress. These arguments have been made a thousand times and it’s clear the “esports comes first” agenda is the dominant faction in the elite SC2 circles. That’s a bummer. The only way to improve SC2 is to replace it with a new game and new management. I think that’s crystal clear at this point. There’s a small chance the balance counsel perseveres through the adversity & that the community likes the new patch, but I do not think that will happen because the counsel made a few tactical errors in their changes that make that unlikely. Generally it’s a good patch, but that’s not what they needed – they needed a perfect patch and this isn’t it. The community members are going to rattle the cages of ladder protoss to leverage a balance patch for esports and that will be the end of SC2 as a casual game. It will be designed specifically for the purpose of being an esport. As a SC2 elitist myself, this doesn’t bother me for my own games personally. I find it interesting because I design and market games myself so I closely study the situation to learn from it.
I don’t mind Terrans advocating. That’s fine. But when you reach DaveRoid levels of bias, you need to take a step back and understand you’re not the center of the world.
Vocal terrans are the absolute worst because for some reason they bully others and adults don’t wanna deal with that crap.
This is why a Speaker of the House is important, someone who can call out the nasty actors and keep them in check.
What’s happening in the balance council is Lord of the Flies, basically. It’s dumb and juvinille and it can easily be addressed with a real authority figure.
Hell, pay me 35k a year CAD and I’ll freaking do the job. That’s a big nothing burger for Blizzard and it keeps their game from falling apart and I don’t need to know balance, I just need to know how to keep bullies in check.
I agree that terrans can be biased but the same is true also for Protoss. Protoss has been allowed to utterly dominate the ladder because anytime someone tries to fix it the ladder protoss have a melt down and point to premier tournaments as the reason they should get buffed. Do you not see how biased that perspective is?
If you want to convince me that you are a reasonable person, unlike the terrans you criticize, you need nuance in your argument to acknowledge that Protoss has an issue on the ladder in addition to the issues in the pro scene. That’s the one thing biased people don’t have – nuance.
The difference is when has Protoss bias been active in terms of balance? Basically never.
Nerf, nerf, slight buff. Repeat.
It’s not good. Yes Protoss takes less skill to use. If you know how to set up rapid fire gateway units can be nutty for lower levels. And honestly, that kind of tells me that lower level players need help.
Let Terran freaking autocast their production.
ID Khow to help Zerg, they mostly just need QoL changes to bring the low level higher up. Maybe not to the level of autocast inject but we need to bring the lower level higher up too.
That’s what the patches need to start doing. Help inefficiently automate processes. Make manual injects 60% faster but keep auto injects too. THEN belance around it so Serral isn’t a freaking GOD and an statistical anomaly that we can’t process properly.
Same with any other pain point that’s over inflating people’s skill. Automate MULE drops. Automate chronoboost, etc. And then balance. Bring the floor up and then balance around it.
The balance council misunderstands the issues and apparently a Terran is screaming their butt off about it all and making things difficult.
Get a real authority figure in there who can time out the screaming toddler and let adults discuss stuff. For real.