So they absorbed Vicarious within Blizzard ? Well, this indeed looks as a restructuring, with some individuals leaving or being transferred to other teams ; while a new, smaller team now takes on the maintenance of all the classic games.
« What this means is that we’re not going to be producing additional for-purchase content, such as Commanders and War Chests, but we will continue doing season rolls and necessary balance fixes moving forward. On that last note, we’re not planning a Q4 balance update given that we did one a few months ago, but as always, we do plan to continue doing them as needed in the future. »
So that means that they’ll indeed keep doing balance changes and updates, but I think the important word is “necessary” changes. The way I see it, it means they will only adjust glaring imbalances, and not go for large changes nor units redesigns.
Let’s keep in mind that if the same studio is going to be in charge of several games, that means they will have reduced means for each game. So while we’re not forsaken, it’ll likely be only adjustments and necessary updates from now on.
I dont know if the team is smaller or bigger, but it seems they didnt have personnel that could cover all aspects of what the games needed dedicated to classic games, and they even outsourced lots of stuff.
All this games have always been in charge of Classic Games division for what I understand.
From where I see it, this stand alone studio with great past history of remakes, is a lot more than we used to have for Classic Games. Let’s just hope this is their final plan, as of now they refused to say what exactly they’ll be doing, but we can take an informed guess based on the past of the studio and the departure of many classic games devs.
The “necessary” changes part could have many interpretations, as in “why would you make unecessary/useless changes?”.
A fresh team can come up with stuff that blizzard likes to add and others that they refuse, we’ll just have to wait and see, but you cant say for certain what will happen, we dont know that, we will eventually, probably along this year or the other, but at least some aspects of balance changes will happen.
I hope I am wrong, but I think the new team will just repair broken things and fix bugs but not keeping the balance patches flowing,that’s a small task that doesn’t require a lot of dev time and probably will be done by blizz employees as usual because they are the ones with experience and know the pro contacts to gather info about balance if needed.Supporting the game I’m sure they are gonna support it,ESL wrote even about a season in 2022 because as Katowice got online treatment the prize pool was lowered and distributed to 2021-2022 events 2022 which means at least there is some funding that year.
The Vicarious Visions team are all Blizzard employees now, and “fully dedicated to existing Blizzard games and initiatives”. Also w3 needs a lot of work, is not a small task, small team would never finish.
If one opener has a 70% win rate while all the others have a 20% win rate, resulting in a 50% average win rate, that’s still a balance issue.
Gotta use your brain mate taps head twice
P.S. want a few examples of this problem?
8 damage on charge Zealots
Bunny Build (fast Liberators vs Zerg on specific maps)
Tankivacs
8 armor Ultralisks
Archon Toilet
Infested Terrans+Brood Lords
I can keep going…
Point being; balance isn’t as simple as “win rate lolz”. There’s a lot of subsets of data which have to be analyzed; something Blizzard has historically failed at until the issue snowballs so out of control it defines big name tournaments.
Imo, it’s because of the corporate culture of wanton hubris. A new studio handling these duties might be devoid of that type of corporate culture.
I actually agree on win rates being flawed as they don’t take into account how a win was obtained such is a race doing all ins for most of the wins and so on.
I also feel the issue with problems snowballing is Blizzards prior approach in nerfing one issue but leaving another that the nerfed issue was fighting against as some times something broken or working unintended can actually help balance. For reference in BW some elements are broken but each races broken element balanced out match ups, nerf one of theses elements and you get these snowballing issues.
An example of SC2 having unintended elements that actually balanced the game was ironically in the late HOTS era in the Raven/Tempest/SH battle, all were bs but at least you had your own bs to counter other bs. When one got nerfed it set off a chain reaction of trying regain balance that skewered the game in all directions from the tankivacs, reaper era, high AA damage Libs, 8 armour ultras, pylon canons, burrowed fungal, etc…
Right now the SB has effectively made a problem come full circle it was introduced to force units to be made to defend bases instead cannons are made with them and the army is free to roam the same issue that Blizzard tried to remove when they removed pylon canons. What I don’t get is Nexus Canon was perfect not too strong and still required some units to defend but was adequate in defending and it just got shelved in fact a few good ideas got shelved.
Lol stop using aligulac… if that thing takes Heromarine beating gerald or gungfu 50 times on ladder because much bigger skill, this will add up a lot to TvP looking so good…
I think the reason why Nexus cannon was taken away wasn’t because of balance but because it was pretty much hated across the board since you can’t realistically kill a Nexi to prevent that damage (and rightfully so). That was more a design decision.
The SB is definitely a problem. Old charge just needed some damage removed from it and added back via scaling upgrades, that solved most of the all-in vs Protoss issues without making them Turtletoss.
Something’s messed up with the ladder. 5.5k mmr players are being labelled “bronze 3” with a “you are at risk of demotion this season” warning next to their mmr. LOL.
Yep (though I would’ve said 70-30 in that case ). The thing is unless pro players don’t use their brain, they’ll probably go more for strategies closer to 70% winrate than to 30%, don’t you think ?
So if let’s say one race has 45% it means they have 45% despite the allins. Anyway, there is also map pool considerations to be taken in account ; so one single variable at a single moment is often a somewhat fragile base of evaluation.
Right. Let’s say absolutely necessary changes, in case of massive imbalance, obvious even to people not familiar with SC2. Not sure that will happen.
That’s a pessimistc, yet realistic vision. One point though, is that Vicarious has been charged of all the classic games maintenance ; which means the support is aimed for the long term, even after ESL sponsoring ends.
Wait & see indeed. I would like to believe you’re right, but I’m afraid Diogenex’s vision is more likely.
Anyway, if we’re surprised in that aspect, I’ll be the first to rejoice !
Vicarious Visions will absorb Blizzard in the long run. VV is older than Blizzard and they’ve made far more successful titles. Blizz have become extremely incompetent in the eyes of Activision, it is the only reason why they would pull off a move like this. WC3: Reforged was seen silently as an extreme failure to Activision management, not only did WC:R not get received well by the public but the internal response was so bad many of the members on the classic team left the company. Then there is the cancellation of the Starcraft FPS, this is more money down the drain. On top of all that OW2 and Diablo Immortal have been delayed. Blizzard hasn’t released a new game in over 4 years now.
Work ethic has become extremely poor at Blizz, it is the reason why nothing is happening. It is a collective result of HR colonizing a lazy culture along with management that lacks assertion, when new people join they enter into the lazy culture and get on the bandwagon to take 6+ years to make a new video game. The correct answer to this is Vicarious Visions.
Lol nexus cannon was far from perfect. Shield batteries are much healthier than that, nexus cannons denied any sort of early harass, it was essentially a protoss planetary from the get go. If anything the only issue with batteries is overcharge.
Well it seems they denied any new RTS, so they may as well allow some creative changes to SC2 to renew things, I would, then again, they are not me.
Only by taking good care of SC:R and SC 2 I would be happy, or all classic games for that matter, those are their most loyal fans. The 100% ownership of user custom content is terrible and very outdated, Unreal Engine 5 asks for 5% after substantial earnings, yes the blizzard games have the Art, but they should dial back to at least 50%, you have to incentivize in some way the hard work of content creators. No one will work that hard in something that someone can take away at any time without even mentioning your name in the credits, a “new dota” will never come out under this conditions.
Balance aside, the Motheship Core was one of the best Art designs in the game, they should have just reworked it, huge loss, I loved the design.
That’s the precise base on which the metagame is built : some strategies will win more than others when facing current playstyles. And that is why some strategies become “meta”, while the currently perceived as underperforming ones are progressively pushed away from current metagame.
Basicially they hired bunch of amateurs who have never had any experiense with rts games to maintain most best rts titles ever made? Thats beyond comical.
