I’ll say from the get go, im not advocating this from the perspective that one race is overpowered. Broodwar is asymmetric and balanced through a changing set of map variables, so sometimes terran is OP, sometimes protoss is, etc. That is not a discussion on what the balance of broodwar is.
This is a discussion on what needs to be done to rejuvenate broodwar. Namely, patches. The game is stale. The meta is stale. The maps are stale. 9 crystals in the main, 1 gas, 8 crystals in the natural, 1 gas. Even something as simple as that is stale stale stale. We are literally playing on maps ten years old, on metas whos fundamentals were set in stone even longer ago than that. 3 hatch muta into 4 gas defilier defined zvt in mid 2005 and always has since and it always will. ALWAYS. Unless we do a balance patch. The player base average is almost 30, the top players who are popular are not just aging, but they are ailing. Injured from the game.
Change or die. Something has to be done. My hope is to see repeated balance patches, a few a year, I suppose linked to new seasons, which would in turn bring fundamentally new maps to the rotation.
ht t ps ://linkto. run/p /5IJ65YWE
^If theres a way to make a poll in my actual thread someone tell me, otherwise use this please.
Forum Mod Edit: This post has been edited by a moderator due to masked language as it is in violation of the Code of Conduct.
I wonder how well thats working for SC2 right now.
Rough translation:
Blizzard invited 8 Ex-Pro streamers to share with them about Starcraft Remaster (before it was launched)
Involved streamers: (7 of them were mentioned in video)Terrans: Sea, Flash, MindZerg: Effort, herOProtoss: Bisu
During the event, Blizzard asked them how balance patches should be handled
All 8 of them were absolutely against blizzard doing any balance patches
For unit AI bugs, Bisu was absolutely against patching the dragoon AI
“After the release of Starcraft Remaster, Blizzard barely does server patches, how are we supposed to trust them with balance patches which needs way more attention”
“We’ve seen what happened to SC2, and we knew that Blizzard wasn’t going to care about Starcraft Remaster once it was released. Blizzard had already all-in’d in overwatch”
A badly handled balance patch can ruin a game, and that can mean the end of career for the SC1 streamers
“What if blizzard pushes out a bad balance patch that breaks the game, and then forgets about Starcraft Remaster. It will become a dead game”
“I would love to have balance patches, it keeps the game fresh. However, I knew that Blizzard wouldn’t care about SC:R”
“SC:R doesn’t bring in money for Blizzard, hence it was inevitable that SC:R will receive little attention after launch”
I pulled this from reddit, here they rough translated flashes video talking about balance and what nots. So no they will not make a balance patch.
I dont mind balance changes but throw them in the test server so people can try them first and then make a poll about whether it should be rotated into the official servers.
“The game is stale. The meta is stale. The maps are stale. 9 crystals in the main, 1 gas, 8 crystals in the natural, 1 gas. Even something as simple as that is stale stale stale. We are literally playing on maps ten years old, on metas whos fundamentals were set in stone even longer ago than that. 3 hatch muta into 4 gas defilier defined zvt in mid 2005 and always has since and it always will. ALWAYS. Unless we do a balance patch. The player base average is almost 30, the top players who are popular are not just aging, but they are ailing. Injured from the game.” ??? What ?
Funny if you consider that the meta is constantly changing … Also Did you follow the last e-sport leagues? The Protoss are dominating after some years of terran and Zerg dominance…
“3 hatch muta into 4 gas defilier defined zvt in mid 2005 and always has since and it always will. ALWAYS” What ? Mets is always changing …
I agree… That blizzard should put more different Maps with more crazy starting positions into the ladder …
I am the kind of person that would like to have this points in some maps/modes in the future to be taken seriously by the competitive scene:
Ore mineral (like SC2, spots with stronger mineral)
Regular maps with UMS “spice” like gates that open and close on given periods of time. It would be great to see how Korean Pros handle maps that also have “time events” like this.
2v2 tournaments and casts, Maybe we can have a TEAM KSL when Team Match Making is launched?
Macro Micro tournaments, or Team Melee tournaments. (This is a dream of mine)
But thats about it… asking for balance patch is something that nobody is going to take in consideration. I agree with the “crazy starting positions”…somehow, but you have to understand this maps have to have certain design patterns and rules etc that several years of Starcraft evolution help create.
What i would like to see is a tournament that RANDOMIZES maps from a BIG pool, lets say 100 maps that are already “community tested” and also “based on basic rules and design patterns”, then in the stream WE the viewers will see what map are Korean pros going to play but they themselves have no idea !! until the game has started, i think that would be awesome.
But then there is the problem of tournament balance, where the loser can pick the next map and so on.
So, is my opinion that a balance patch is by NO MEAN necessary to spice the game up and make it more interesting. This is a classic game and we common folks have NO SAY regarding balance patch or changes to the game, those have to come from the Korean pro escene, otherwise they are meaningless, that is my position about balance patch and changes to the meta:
“Let the pros decide whether the game has to change or not”
Blizzard dosen’t make maps for BW. The community makes the maps. Want crazier maps ether make them or find a map maker guy to make one. The ladder, ASL, and KSL just pick what maps they want to use. How do you think we ended up with sparkle.
let me have a serious reply to your suggestions so other people may be mistaken
are you kidding? Theres more changes to meta now than for 7-8 years before. Theres new builds coming out all the time, new adaptions to current meta. 2012-2015 before flash had terran on that undominant spot and labelled as a joke race, and now flash and his new revolutionary builds are changing meta every time he plays.
TvZ:
Mech play became once again standard part of terran play in regular maps when it was thought out to be only viable on selective maps, 1010 fast gas builds are gaining steam, 2/3 port wraith are coming back with new optimizations, Soma has been showing that 2h plays can pressure top terrans more than 3h builds, and aggressive 2h builds are a very viable, maybe the new standard ahead of 3h .
Theres also the whole mech switch before being new meta for while before switching to neo sk and then battlecruiser based SK recently, if you want to argue about unit compositions/gameflow being stale
TvP
The new bunker expand completely eclipsed other macro terran openers from before as the new gold standard due to relevance of fast nexus and speed shuttle play. Bunker expand into academy armory or vult 1fact1port or 2fact openers are the meta for tvp, when previously it was just 2 marine double and FD, and now variants of biomech are coming out.
This is just recent (few months old at most) meta shifts for terran side only.
you seem to have 0 clue what you are talking about anyway with that “crystal, gas” thing so just dont type garbage out when you have no clue about balance in first place.
the meta is far from stale this is explained to you on TL second it would ruin the beautifull game that we have this is not some arpg where you change up the balance/damage numbers every patch to attract players gtfo
This post is coming from mindless indeed. Calling mineral and gas formations “stale”. Maps that are still balanced and produce epic 40+ min. games boring. LMAO!
I sure know what we need. We need SC2 kids not to come here. We’re not going to let to kill our game and do what you did to yours.
If you’re bored of the game you can play something else. It’s so apparent that you don’t love Brood War and indeed you might just be a sc2 troll spamming all over the internet the same sentence over and over again.
There’s only a couple things I think really desperately needs changes, but even then I think it shouldn’t really be done or at least until the community is ready to accept balance changes in general which they definitely are not right now, and could likely never be.
Staleness != bad, especially if the already-available pool of options is quite large. And it is.
you think progamers that earn their livelihood with the game (being successful in asl/ksl other leagues has a large effect on how popular their streams are)
would lie about not wanting balance changes and how they fear it could possibly ruin the game /popularity … right that’s not how this works
next time think it over carefully when you write something about scbw streamers you can’t compare scbw streamers to regular entertainment twitch streamers who dont depand on just 1 game for their core business but just stream casual games and get their income from being entertaining
The patches for servers and features are slow to come. What makes you think blizzard will be any faster with balance patches when they are famous for being slow with all but most busted of patches? Even overwatch is extremely slow with patches, sc2 has been stuck with current protoss meta for months after “shake up” patch and has been patching wrong way since, bw gets barely any significant patch and we dont even have features promised at launch yet
It makes complete sense why korean progamers dont trust blizzards balance patch when users at korean community (namely ygosu) dont either
Umm did you not read who they talked to? They talked to the top pros who are not only currently playing Brood War but also still competing in high end tournaments in Korea.
Terrans: Sea, Flash, Mind
Zerg: Effort, herO
Protoss: Bisu
If you think there opinions dont matter at a competitive level then your not paying attention to whats going in the BW scene. You can disagree with them but they have probably put more time and thought into this game then most of the current devs.