We are still victims of ill game design for E-sports

General Discussion
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I discussed this months ago but now it is about time for the game’s release and needs to be brought up and discussed again.

The outrageous and clear game design flaw that I am referring to would fall under the concept of “Incomplete Differential Inversionism”

We see this problem in both Wc3 and the Starcraft series, but Wc3 is the simplest way to see the problem for novices of analytics.

It is clearly identified in the night elf race as their units have the ability to cloak when it is night time, but then we see no corresponding capability of proper implementation for NE buildings during the day time. A proper example would be for NE buildings to harness the power of sunlight during the day, gathering the energy for the sake of unit quality movement speed while uprooted. The perfect inversion to units that can cloak during the night. This both establishes the identity and philosophical completion that the race needs to prevent deceptive illnesses from entering in to the competitive scene.

Think I am wrong? Well just consider how problematic the zerg race (as parallel to the night elf race) was in starcraft and how inverted incompletionism has disgraced the race’s identity(swarm) and rendered them Philosophically Broken according to the majority of the fans and critics.

The divide in the zerg race is even speculatively worse then the NE design because neither side was ever completed.

When perceiving the 3 races from a position of thematics… their represenations are as follows…

Protoss - Agressive Quality (Best represented by their shields and recovery) However, imagine a gateway that is produced before a pylon that quickly produces and holds a zealot that can be quickly warped in at pylon proxy on the enemy.
Terran - Positional Ability (Positioning bunkers with the ability to repair/salvage)
Zerg- Reactive Quantity

As you can see I have identified zerg as reactive quantity but due to zerg being a race that is divided and directional as it is, it may also be said that zerg lack also…

Aggressive Low Quality

And even though this concept is proper, it has not been properly expressed due to the negative connotations of “Low Quality”. The proper expression is rather…

Aggressive Utility

So now you are dying to know exactly how Zerg are missing Reactive Quantity and Aggressive Utility on each side of their division of function…

  1. On the Reactive Quantity side… they are missing the ability for multiple drones to be able to quickly fuse and unfuse from each other in the production of creep colonies and for the creep colonies to effect the creep around them to slow enemy units that walk on the creep. This is just a progressive way to qualify the direction of defense that is particularly not wise for the zerg race in particular.

  2. On the Aggressive Utility side… they are missing the ability for overlords to mutate in to speculatively a ground unit that cannot attack(This actually justifies why overlords occupy larvae), but when itself is attacked by anything and loses life pool, a corresponding amount of broodlings are released to life pool loss. When burrowed, these units may have the ability of a delayed self detonation to release all broodlings, but perhaps these units would be blind, particularly underground in order to “properly complete the inversion” of overlords that are used for vision! Once again we see this concept pop up. (Note the natural aggressive nature of overlords as they are immediately sent out to scout)

  3. Even after the 2 points prior, there is still the issue of zerg warrior movement speed and too many different units that need speed research. However, I believe the simple solution is to make the research of the speed upgrades faster if not instantaneous with proper explanation from lore.

So as you can see, the problem is much more severe and complex with the zerg race as it is to the Night Elf race. This is due to the Night Elf merely trying to find its identity through schematics of melee and missle roles which goes to show how all the races achieve their differential in Wc3 where as the races in starcraft achieve their identity through the aim of each being entirely different.

Why do all the work in putting out such great graphics for wc3 if you would not fix something so simple and profound as this for the sake of what is clearly beautiful and harmonious to the community, particularly the competitive scene?

If anything, remember this about the culture of blizzard’s competitive strategy gaming scene…

-The best defense is a good offense
-Do not make units unless you are going to use them

And what does this mean for the races of NE and Zerg whos defense structures are alive? (sacrificed from drone or wisp)

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That was the largest number of words I have ever seen used to say, “Night Elves should have day powers, because Zerg Overlords can’t morph into land units”

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Inversionism as previously stated

Night Elf buildings should have day powers because night elf units have night powers and the wisp is not sacrificed in to a building, it is transformed in to a building still rendering it with at least partial unit classification.

Zerg Overlords should be able to morph in to land units of utility classification due to occupying larvae for reasons that are not significant enough as is.

You reduced it down sure, but you reduced it down a bit too much…

Had to help you out

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I still fail to see why you’d need a day-side power to Night Elves. The inversion itself is the disabling of their ability during the day (along with other mechanics like Moon Wells not regen’ing). Themactically it makes sense due to the background (as their Goddess is the Moon, why would they get powers from the Sun?)

Sure you could argue that their buildings are plants and need a corresponding mechanic, but that doesn’t really matter considering they’re magical, sentient plants, not standard corn-crops. Their mechanic is the ability to literally uproot themselves, and then “plant” themselves somewhere else.

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I remember previously talking about how in particular, ancient protectors would not be able to root during the day because it would be over powered. This might also correspond with not being able to uproot during the night.

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Alot of things in Wc3 isn’t correctly represented. what is anyone going to do about them ?

1 - oh what the hell, i’m not even going to try listing everything.

point is, what you say is not going to be done by blizzard, most likely because it requires radical melee balance changes. and a sudden big update to a singular race.

one would think if they even plan on doing this they should pay attention to all races in a specific period of time.

and plus, i’m not sure how i feel about this, but… the E,sports topic is well blizzard has always been big about E,sports so why would they stop now.
also they balance the game around 1v1 instead of also considering teamplays.
(point being you can’t really do anything about it)

i just, tend to stay behind and look to the custom community to bring the flavored change ether i or many others want, there isn’t REALLY anything stopping people from getting behind a custom melee lets say (besides being lazy and unwilling enough to support the makers) so it could have a big players base all apart from regular melee.

everyone just stays out pretending they aren’t interested enough and then demand radical changes to be done to the actual melee, where they can muster up a support for a map that’s probably going to be much more controlable by their own hands for goodness sake because the maker be it themselves or a person is MOST LIKELY always a simple discord message behind from contact.

while the classic dev team is focused on well … “whatever they want” i guess. which is still give or less more good then bad.

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In all the years of constantly being downvoted on the sc2 forums, it didnt crossed your mind, that… well lets say your virtue doesnt lie in proposing balance or design changes.

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TL:DR: Complexity for the sake of complexity is not always the right choice or fun.

I don’t really understand why would you really make all those changes you propose, OP. You seem not to see “contrast” to abilities and gameplay in where there is already. Like previously said in comments NE night cloaking isn’t working on day time. It’s already something that other races don’t have and devs must compensate it somehow for them.

Also something like not being able to uproot or root during specific time of day is not fun and it isn’t under direct control of the player. The player can’t influence the time of the day and must go by it.

Blizz has stated something like this recently in one of their posts in one of their games. That things that aren’t under influence of the player but are unnecessarely disabling the gameplay or something else are not really necessary and may be detrimental to fun aspect and other things involved etc.

Complexity for the sake of complexity is not always the right choice. It may be “right choice” from a certain point of view but it may not be for example fun or even not very logical as it is.

Also “night elves” are called “night…” so you could assume for at least a casual player that doesn’t know too much of warcraft lore it does look appropriate for them to be having some things centered around night. As their night cloaking thingy is indeed currently and also are moonwells.

As my very personal opinion I myself dislike the idea of for example NE buildings disability of rooting mechanic during certain time of day. It just doesn’t seem very logical or FUN for me.

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I’ve played Starcraft 2 since it’s launch and starcraft a decade before that, and I can count on 0 hands the number of times I’ve heard people complain that inverted incompletionism has disgraced the race and rendered them philosophically broken. Even hearing it this first time just made me laugh. Who cares? Of course the game doesn’t fit a perfect philosophical analogy. That makes it more true to life. Or do you need your appendix for something?

If the devs sacrificed gameplay for perfect thematic philosophy they’d turn the races into boring caricatures of themselves.

Beyond that, I strongly suggest you work on what the writing industry calls “flowery” language. 2/3rds of what you wrote didn’t need to be written. And just made your comment needlessly complicated to read.

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That’s funny, I counted hundreds saying that zerg was philosophically broken…

Who said anything about perfect?

Just quality would be good enough to as to not imply that it leans towards only milking money out of people’s pockets…

Rewrite my OP in how you would have wrote it so that I can point out why you are wrong

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You were the guy who wanted Night Elf buuldings to be the melee parallel to t1 melee units werent you?

Yeah, your ideas are bad. Sorry but L2P before suggesting changes. Unrooting in the day has never been nor should ever be a strategy.

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Oh wow, this takes me back. Still at it I see, Kyfoid

It’s interesting how you can form coherent sentences, even coherent paragraphs, yet they mean nothing. After a quick google search, I see you’ve also made a name for yourself on the DotA and LoL forums.

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Wow, I wasnt aware of this Kyfoid character, but seems like he has a legacy behind him. Guy has the community outing him with ‘kyfoid thread, didn’t read’ thing going on.

Well at least it makes it easier to flag the thread for trolling.

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What if nothings have the most potential to be greatest somethings?

Speaking of things being mis-represented… (Stormknight)

Power vs Potential

Let me use the game of starcraft as example for how power can and most likely was confused with potential.

Let me define what a power would be in regard to spells…

Any spell that has the ability to finish off enemies, triggering the kill, would be considered a power.

Just look at the zerg race and their spells and you realize that these spells are not powers, rather, they are mostly just potentials. Sure the queen that casts spawn broodling is the only real power that zerg had but the function is so ill that it is mostly nothing of a counter and instead a stalemating function.

Of all the potentials in the zerg race, the most significant one is plague because it actually does damage which means the opportunity for zerg to not have to make units and focus more on their economy which is what they need to do in order to have a viable shot at winning.

The problem is that both the Potential and the Power of the zerg race are unlocked at tier 3 together. (Defiler/Ultralisk)

This means that zerg is absurdly “top-heavy” to the point that the game was a disaster because of it, and then sc2 was an effort to bring some from the top to the middle but then ultimately still didn’t solve anything.

When I said that zerg was about aggressive utility, I should have also said that this could be aggressive potential. Broodlings being released from overlords(coming from larvae) that mutate in to “utility with potential” ground units that have no attack of their own. Releasing broodlings corresponding with life lost…

What am I trying to say with this?

That the problem with zerg was ill concept and design between plague and broodlings and overlords the occupy larvae with out significant enough utility/potential value…

Broodlings themselves could have eaten away at the opponent down to 1 life, or half life in protoss’ case, fixing both a bad spell (spawn broodling) and a poorly implemented concept (plague)

Just look at how significant a lack of identity and philosophy can ruin everything…
For Warcraft its easy, simple and small… but it isn’t insignificant
For Starcraft it is straining, complex and huge… but it isn’t impossible to address

Why is there this difference between the games?

Because in warcraft 3 uniqueness is easy to a achieve between 4 races in the freedom of rpg elements where the foundational uniqueness in Melee to Missile is easier to understand. This does not mean that a problem cannot exist however and so it does with the Night Elf race aforementioned…

Starcraft relying solely on strategy game design and 3 races is extraordinary if not damn near impossible to find uniqueness and identity between the races in a simplified manner with out harming quality competitive experience. Which is why philosophical conceptology must be consulted.

The bottom line
Starcraft cannot escape philosophy because it is a 3 race strategy game. (Blizzard realizes that this might not be good for business so they move on to make Warcraft3)

Warcraft 3 being a 4 race RTS/RPG cleanly escapes philosophical problems and then we get all excited because then we think that this is going to lead us to raw problems that can be addressed for the sake of a quality competitive experience…

But then… Blizzard pulls the ultimate reverse fake and doesn’t follow through once again?

I hope Blizzard ends up being the paul bearers at my funeral so that they can let me down one last time…

As if going back to drag me through the hell of a starcraft trilogy sequal wasn’t bad enough… here have some more money for garbage!

The Line at the Bottom
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Just try to put yourself in their shoes for a minute…

You got the fans demanding the power of the swarm(numbers), the power of the swarm(numbers) we want the power of the swarm!

But then you have this concept of broodlings that both die, as they do, AND cannot finish off enemies like plague and these elements never come together in one’s mind to represent the swarm because it doesn’t perceive as power whatsoever…

In proper philosophical expression it becomes…

“Weakness with Great Potential”

All along, if only the fans had merely said “WE WANT THE FULL POTENTIAL OF THE SWARM” then maybe it would have clicked in Blizzard’s mind?

Probably not… because once again we resort back to the philosophy problem in our flawed ways of perceiving things in our confusion between… you guessed it…

Weakness Power and Potential

A failure to find identity within extremism

Where’s the design team’s chalk board with the layout of each race’s aim?

Protoss - Powerful
Terran - Technical
Zerg - Weakness with the utmost Potential

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Using one RTS as an example as to why changes in another, completely different RTS should happen is just a strange look.

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w3 was created before esports. for sure they had balance in mind when designing races but also gameplay. that NE buildings doesnt have day time mechanic is not due to “esport” or balance reasons but rather because others like over complexity.

The more relevant issue i would be saying (if at all needed because this is the pinacle of first world problems) is that balancing based on pro level are making the game (any game) less enjoyable for mid and low levels.

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I wouldnt say it was created before esports. SC was an esport in korea well before WC3 hit the shelves.

But I agree that WC3 was jumping into new territory and took ots time to reach the level it was known for.

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Dude complexity in speech is cool and all but make it understandable for the common man.

Now I really dont want to sit and analyze what you are saying and see “oh ok yh”

Just keep it concise and short.

Like you probably are addressing the problem with detail and proper info but aint no body except a few exceptions going to read this article.

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just wanna say this was a facinating read, it really does suffer from esports, well starcraft 2 anyway

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Links. I want links to all these hundreds of people saying zerg are philosophically broken, and that because they’re philosophically broken the game feels broken for them. Cuz I call bull.

Now, here’s a simple, adequate rewrite of your entire post:

I feel the Night Elf race could harmonize with itself better than it currently does. One way for them to better harmonize as a race would be to add the ability of NE buildings to harness the power of sunlight during the day, similar to how their units harness the darkness at night. Not only would this be an interesting mechanic to work with, it would more adequately cement the identity of the race.

Is that perfect? Of course not. You’ll say it doesn’t get your entire point across. It’s not “nuanced” enough. There’s more to your idea that my simplification doesn’t get across. That’s all a load of crap. Your comment gets almost nothing across. It’s overly wordy, expresses more than it needs to, and alienates the audience.

In short, your comment is designed to make you sound really smart. My comment is designed to actually get the point across.

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