I know normies don’t like technical jargon so I made this meme to help illustrate my feelings:
https://i.imgur.com/gSMHOCf.png
That one was so flippin funny I made a second one:
https://i.imgur.com/kHZrQQE.png
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Are you sure about hese sc2 numbers?,sounds like bs to me,I clearly remember seeing wol sales numbers at 8-10 millions+ and hots and lotv having more than 1 million each one,I think lotv had 1 million just at launch date.
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I’d like to point out something that was hardly considered here, map design. Race balance is not the only factor that goes into the game balance, and as far as we can expect from a balance perspective, map design is the best tool we have to see new changes.
I’m rather new to starcraft still so I won’t claim any special knowledge on balance for this game, but I will assert a few assumptions and opinions here.
Symmetry is not equal to balance.
Too many of the maps I see are carbon copies of eachother with a few variables tweaked, and it seems symmetry is one of the main factors they take into account when making maps. Personally I would love to see some anti-symmetric or at least maps using different types of symmetry made and see how that affects the meta, for examples load up brood war and look at the 7 player maps. Not all balanced surely, but interesting nonetheless.
Base counts should not be invariable.
From what I can infer, most of the maps made have the exact same amounts of bases on them. Imagine if a map was made with 2 less bases on it, or 4 less bases. Or 4 more bases. How would this affect the meta? In my opinion, maps have too many bases, and this at least indirectly leads to a scenario complained about here, the late game turtle fest. Knowing you have plenty of resources to gather allows you to turtle in the hopes that you will gather them. This emphasizes a large worker count to allow you to take those resources efficiently. Take brood war late game artosis mining out most of his half of the map on his low 40 worker count vs the airtoss on 60+ workers scrambling to reestablish his bases where there are still plenty of patches left, and ending up killing artosis beforehand after some 40 mins of game time (and somehow outmining him, yes this game took place a few days ago) and compare that to sc2 where both races often go to 80+ workers for the majority of the game and an hour and a half in they are still fighting over the side bases while their 4 brood lords assault the wall of cannons. Higher worker counts means lower army size, lower army size results in less ability to pressure if the opponent can quickly rebuild that small army due to his large economy, yet both players are emphasized to go to high worker counts.
Maps don’t need to be removed from the pool so often.
When they add new maps they remove older maps, I guess to keep the map pool small or to remove the unbalanced maps. Yet, unbalanced maps will still be there and some strategies can live or die depending on the map they are good on. Removing maps from the pool decreases the amount of viable strategies. The longer a map is available the more time there is for players to establish new strategies on it. I know people want to see new stuff but that doesn’t mean we have to remove old stuff.
And you could call me an idiot all day without realizing that you never adressed a single point I made and instead focused your verbal energy on promoting your own intellectual superiority.
What is the difference between strategically viable and and mechanically optimally from the standpoint of game design? Think very hard on it.
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Sc2 WOL>HOTS>LOTV
WIN7>WIN8>WIN8.1>WIN10>WIN11
Politically incorrect but this is the truth. Let’s go back…
never buy lotv for me it is not starcraft. the races are already “symmetrical” the boring maps, too many units and the position on the map is not important … the strategy is conspicuous by its absence
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Hard disagree, nothing enjoyable about the start of every game being so long I could make a sandwich before anything interesting happens.
Lol yeah, enjoy no DX12 and increasing security concerns due to Win7 having its support dropped in Jan 2020. No Elden Ring on Win7.
There’s always those that prefer stagnation.
The races are completely distinct still…no idea why you think they’re all identical. The maps are balanced, that’s the point. I would rather have 8 similar maps that are balanced than 8 completely distinct maps where you can know the winner by what race they’re playing on the map (cough bw cough). Positioning is still critical. You see losses due to bad positioning all the time. Believe it or not, strategy still wasn’t affecting you in WoL or HotS unless you were Top GM. Mechanics > Strategy in literally every single RTS. That’s intrinsic to the “real time” part of it. You can be a strategic genius but if you have 20 APM you’re just going to lose because you don’t have as much stuff. That was still true in WoL. If you want a 100% big brain strategy game you’ll have to play Turn Based Strategy games where mechanics do not matter at all, it’s only strategy. It’s amazing to me that in 2022 people still don’t get that about RTS.
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