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//: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm |OT| Like Riding a Bike
- Thread starter Corran Horn
- Start date
Crimsonlink
Member
The greatest moment in the final game of jjakji vs Revival.
If you haven't watched then get your ass over to YT and watch it!
I mean god damn RIP MUTA and Revival's heart
If you haven't watched then get your ass over to YT and watch it!
I mean god damn RIP MUTA and Revival's heart
unknownstranger
Member
There seems to be a lot of mass Muta murdering in Revival's games. Also that moment is why I kept trying to tell everyone that the widow mine nerf was fine.
unknownstranger
Member
Game 4 was why I hate mech. Once Terran gets Ravens the only way Zerg can possibly kill them is with chain fungals. Zerg should try and just base race more often once it reaches that point though.
AdventureRacing
Member
He's right he doesn't owe the community anything. He has pretty much already disappeared from the community anyway over the last few months so not much is changing anyway.
Crimsonlink
Member
Maybe not the community as a whole but he does owe up that one in 16 spots for 100K.
It could have gone to another foreigner or korean to play in the tourney.
Hell the least he could have done is play out the 3 games with all cheeses and then announce his retirement.
People payed money to go see this tournament and not to mention the effort ESL went though to invite and bring the players over.
Its not like the players don't get something out of this. Money no as that only goes to 1st place but they get important WCS points and a chance to interact with the fans.
Its very important to be active in the scene or you will be forgotten.
MKP is gonna struggle to have the pull he did in 2011 and early 2012.
Oh well Naniwa is talented, he might come back. But he made some new haters and lost some fans, probably more than he gained.
I'm neutral about it personally except being disappointed about the forfeit.
AdventureRacing
Member
I don't disagree with what you're saying. It was a dick move what he did, he never had any intentions of seeing this through and should have given up his spot if that was the case (both for his own sake and everyone elses).
I just mean in general if he wants to leave the scene he has no responsibility to it. It doesn't really worry me too much. He has basically been missing for months now and i hadn't really noticed. There seems to be more foreigners starting to look better now so hopefully we can actually see some more people being competitive in some tournaments instead of just naniwa and scarlett.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
stay classy
honestly, it seems to me like nani probably isn't a guy with a lot of emotional resilience. forfeiting was stupid and disappointing, but i bet the flak he gets from it will really get to him, even if he says otherwise. like everyone else going through rough stuff, i wish him the best.
AdventureRacing
Member
Just had another person tell me to kill myself after losing a game. I wish i could say that sort of thing was uncommon. So many people take this game way too seriously, especially when we're just fucking around having fun at such a low level.
Valkerionseven
Member
Sad but true, exactly why I just could not take League of Legends anymore. After the massive tournies started and the influx of random kids trying to "be pro" the community just turns toxic.
Happening to way to many good games the past few years.
Crimsonlink
Member
That would be awesome but they would have to nerf the energy cost of EMP by increasing it to 100. Though turning off abilities would be worth the being able to only use 2 EMPs.
No Storms lol.
Edit:
How non Protoss players feel right now after IEM's quarter finals. Adventure and other Protoss players should avoid Twitter and reddit.
unknownstranger
Member
Still wouldn't change much since they're too expensive to deal with early blink stalkers and stalkers are close to useless in late game other than dealing with Vikings (and even then Storm is better).
I do not mean this as Toss imba qq. I do agree with Hero on this all the same, but I think part of this problem could be alleviated if Stalkers didn;t also have to double as being the main stay toss unit that also fills the position of the dragoon.
It puts the unit in a very awkward place (with warp ins) where you can snowball into wins. I sort of hope that they bring back the Dragoon for LotV, and make Stalkers a bit weaker, but give them blink by default. Let them be a pure harass hit and run unit. It would be nice if Warp in was made more tactical, like it demanded nexus energy or something, (Aside from Warp Prism) just to result in contains as oppose to unsatisfying early game wins.
Is it just map design, or would the game be more satisfying with the Stalker taking a more specialized (but still flexible due to blink) role? I kind of feel like making the toss units more diverse while weakening the rolling thunder aspect of them would provide better games over the long term.
And I won;t lie, ever since the patch made widow mine bio a thing in TvP, I feel like the matchup is a little more fair, with protoss having to micro their army against mines a lot.
In summary:
- Weaken Blink stalker stats but give them blink by default
- Reintroduce the Dragoon or an equivalent
- Make warp ins cost energy or have some sort of limit
- Give Warp prism ability to circumvent this limit
unknownstranger
Member
It's partly due to map design. There's no maps right now like Whirlwind where your main is basically on an island. There should be a few more maps with gold bases but the problem is how easy it is for Protoss to take/harass it on Habitation Station. The ramp is so small that it's easy for them to wall it off and nearly impossible to punish them for taking it early, and the minerals are set up to where Colossi can easily wipe workers out. I still think post-nerf Daedalus is mostly fine and Terran need to learn to wall their natural much closer to their CC.
He's awesome. One of the most brilliant tacticians in the game since the very beginning. Definitely a fun player to follow.
StopMakingSense
Member
Apollo will be casting Code A with Wolf, cool.
Crimsonlink
Member
Whoa link to the news? Khaldor not going to cast Code A? Dang!
StopMakingSense
Member
I figured that, I guess was thinking more about chargelots and kiting and stuff like that, what would happen if it disabled the things that lets toss catch up quickly and how that would change engagements and the like. I just want more ghosts really.
Ezpz tvp timing for you fools that still go bio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaNhc58HwLA
Also this perspective is needed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaNhc58HwLA
Also this perspective is needed
TotalBiscuit said:
Crimsonlink
Member
demosthenes
Member
When all the other games are experiencing significant growth and you're stagnating then there is cause for concern. SC2 isn't dying or going to disappear, but it needs Blizzard to put the effort in. Look at how Valve have been able to turn GO around.
Crimsonlink
Member
Valve has done a crazy job with Dota 2 and CS: GO, sad that Blizz can't manage the same. They have the huge COD company Activision to back them up as well.
I really hope LOTV is the shot in the arm SC2 needs.
Reaper of Souls is out next week so thats a good thing with Heroes hitting Beta near fall most likely and Hearthstone already out.
One of the big reasons why CS:GO and Dota 2 are growing so fast is the quality of life that Valve offers with their infrastructure. Steam, user-generated content, holiday events, marketplace integration, excellent in-game observing features. Battle.net is way behind on those fronts. The observing feature is one of the main things I'd love to see included in Legacy of the Void. I know SC2 has an observing mode but it's really barebones in comparison. Valve offers great value too. There's nothing you need to pay for in Dota 2 that affects gameplay and you can either play for appearance loot drops or pay fair prices for them. Unfortunately, looking at the Heroes alpha I think Blizzard is looking to take as much cash as they can from players with their F2P model. $20 for a mount isn't value.. hell the full Diablo 3 game is on sale for that much right now. I wouldn't blame Blizzard for making the campaign something you have to pay for as a lot of work went into it, but if you want to grow the game I think ladder play should be free and find other ways to monetize.
Beyond that Valve also isn't afraid to put out massive, meta-changing updates. If they recognize a real problem in their games they'll address it directly. Blizzard seems to prefer small band-aid patches when in my opinion there's some real fundamental issues with the game that have been pointed out by the community. I really hope they're taking those problems into account for Legacy.
Beyond that Valve also isn't afraid to put out massive, meta-changing updates. If they recognize a real problem in their games they'll address it directly. Blizzard seems to prefer small band-aid patches when in my opinion there's some real fundamental issues with the game that have been pointed out by the community. I really hope they're taking those problems into account for Legacy.
unknownstranger
Member
Blizzard's problem is they're too scared to make even slight changes while every other esports game is making big changes constantly. I can't even remember what blizz changed in 2.1 from 2.0.
LYGF To Disband Due to Health Issues of CEO
Damn shame. Best of luck to the CEO returning to better health. I respected LYGF because they initially saved the careers of quite a few players who were strongly considering retirement.
R.I.P. Genius, Tassadar, Neige, etc.
Damn shame. Best of luck to the CEO returning to better health. I respected LYGF because they initially saved the careers of quite a few players who were strongly considering retirement.
R.I.P. Genius, Tassadar, Neige, etc.
StarCraft is very easy to watch which is fantastic and it has a legacy of talent and as a 1v1 game does a great job at creating player stories, histories, and rivalries. I'd entirely expect it to have much greater views/active player base.
The numbers are still good, but they aren't growing like Dota 2, LoL, or CS:GO.
Valve in particular has seen very excellent sustained growth in Dota 2, and it seems like they turned CS:GO around completely and added a ton of community features which also directly supports tournaments and highlights the players and teams.
Also, as mentioned audience engagement is nice, but we can't tell anything ROI related from the numbers. I highly doubt SC2 viewers are worth 30x more, and probably not 5x more. There's a reason RIOT has credit cards and Coke onboard with them and not Blizzard. (Aside from them bleeding money for their eSports marketing)
ding ding ding
Plus the meta sucks
Blizzard is pushing out what is going to make them money.Valve has done a crazy job with Dota 2 and CS: GO, sad that Blizz can't manage the same. They have the huge COD company Activision to back them up as well.
I really hope LOTV is the shot in the arm SC2 needs.
Reaper of Souls is out next week so thats a good thing with Heroes hitting Beta near fall most likely and Hearthstone already out.
I only watch SC2 (uninstalled) and I can't even throw money at it like I can for Dota 2 (Paying to support prize pools, Valve, and organizers. You get to watch from the ingame client and have the replays and can view player perspective with saved audio commentary streams). And of course you can watch VODs free on Twitch/DailyMotion if you don't buy a ticket as well.
Not that I'd even want to since nothing is exciting about the events going on. The $100,000 or nada was cool, but we had the worst finals in the history of SC2 because PvP is so shit.
CS:GO @ ESL = Biggest or tied(?) prize pool from Valve going #eSportsCrates and fixing a ton of shit and providing quality of life improvements to sway over CS 1.6 and CSS players (see above player numbers WOW).
Dota 2 = Captains Draft tournament hype!
It's even more embarrassing to consider Dota 2 has like <30 active devs on it.
Blizzard isn't doing anything to get players excited (and there's nothing to spend money on or ways to support players or tournaments like in CS:GO or Dota) in the massive downtime between expansions. The balance changes feel so minor to keep balance in check that the tournament meta just isn't fun to watch unless it's TvZ or TvT for me.
Basically I want Valve to purchase StarCraft BW rights and remake it in HD with the Dota 2 Client feature set. I don't think anything would make me happier.
SteveWinwood
Member
Someone will just remake broodwar in the dota 2 custom games.
get outta here
SteveWinwood
Member
yo i used to watch starcraft
and then i started to literally fall asleep when anything but zerg was playing
and zvp was the most broken shit
work my ass off and some joker pressed 4 buttons and clicked twice and won
StarCraft is very easy to watch which is fantastic and it has a legacy of talent and as a 1v1 game does a great job at creating player stories, histories, and rivalries. I'd entirely expect it to have much greater views/active player base.
The numbers are still good, but they aren't growing like Dota 2, LoL, or CS:GO.
Valve in particular has seen very excellent sustained growth in Dota 2, and it seems like they turned CS:GO around completely and added a ton of community features which also directly supports tournaments and highlights the players and teams.
Also, as mentioned audience engagement is nice, but we can't tell anything ROI related from the numbers. I highly doubt SC2 viewers are worth 30x more, and probably not 5x more. There's a reason RIOT has credit cards and Coke onboard with them and not Blizzard. (Aside from them bleeding money for their eSports marketing)
ding ding ding
Plus the meta sucks
Blizzard is pushing out what is going to make them money.
I only watch SC2 (uninstalled) and I can't even throw money at it like I can for Dota 2 (Paying to support prize pools, Valve, and organizers. You get to watch from the ingame client and have the replays and can view player perspective with saved audio commentary streams). And of course you can watch VODs free on Twitch/DailyMotion if you don't buy a ticket as well.
Not that I'd even want to since nothing is exciting about the events going on. The $100,000 or nada was cool, but we had the worst finals in the history of SC2 because PvP is so shit.
CS:GO @ ESL = Biggest or tied(?) prize pool from Valve going #eSportsCrates and fixing a ton of shit and providing quality of life improvements to sway over CS 1.6 and CSS players (see above player numbers WOW).
Dota 2 = Captains Draft tournament hype!
It's even more embarrassing to consider Dota 2 has like <30 active devs on it.
Blizzard isn't doing anything to get players excited (and there's nothing to spend money on or ways to support players or tournaments like in CS:GO or Dota) in the massive downtime between expansions. The balance changes feel so minor to keep balance in check that the tournament meta just isn't fun to watch unless it's TvZ or TvT for me.
Basically I want Valve to purchase StarCraft BW rights and remake it in HD with the Dota 2 Client feature set. I don't think anything would make me happier.
There's a great core game here with unlimited depth and amazing pro players to watch, but the fundamental problem is Blizzard, yes. The expansion model for new features is archaic for a competitive multiplayer game in 2014, hell, even having to pay for the game in the first place is archaic and limits userbase by a factor of ten or more. Features are lacking, pro scene support is lacking, balance updates are lacking.
To be fair to Blizzard, SC2 has to be a nightmare to balance, but honestly I got sick of balance talk overwhelming all other considerations when I followed the SC2 scene closely. I mostly play and follow Dota 2 these days and balance is largely a non-issue, and Icefrog et al do a great job moving the meta along and keeping things fresh for everyone. They really feel in tune with the player base at large and the pro scene and I nod in approval at just about all of the patch changes.
I sure do miss the inhuman displays of micro+macro skill sometimes, though.
Crimsonlink
Member
Biggest 3 reasons right there. Baffles me how they went backwards in social features while moving gameplay forward from Battlenet 1.0 to 2.0
Sadly this seems to be the case with many people. Whether its people sick of balance whine or sick of whining in the first place for so long and nothing changing.
I wish this Icefrog person could give David Kim and the rest of SC2 balance team a call.
RTS and MOBA might be 2 different beasts and more is needed to balance the RTS units but dang if David Kim's answer makes me want to cry. ;_;
Anyways drop by sometimes, we can link you to the best SC2 games while avoiding the not so good ones.
You can catch some of the insane micro battles players have in game.
Here is all of IEM Katowice playlist, skip the finals but everything else has good games for the most part
Life vs Taeja and herO vs Hyun were probably the 2 best series in the tournament along with Polt vs Dear/herO.
Balance is much easier for a game like Dota 2 where teams can ban out the overpowered heroes, and have a deep pool to dip in for new strats. It would be like if SC2 the players could ban out one unit before the game started. In that case, we'd never see the mothership core again. It's also much easier to add heroes in Dota 2 than to drop a new unit into SC2. Starcraft is a balance nightmare. The ripple effects of tiny changes can disrupt the balance to disaster. So while it might be easy to notice a problem, compensating for it without screwing everything else is as hard as having an interesting pvp match.
unknownstranger
Member
Ban marines and proxy 10 gate all day.
Crimsonlink
Member
There is also maps to consider as well. Some old nerfs and buffs need to be looked at again. It would be nice if Blizz just made a weekly/bi-weekly balance map that tweaks something so we can test it out and see how it works. Waiting weeks and weeks upon Blizz to finally say, "Oh hey something is wrong so lets try this out" is just so slow and inefficient.
It also paints a bad picture for what might happen after LOTV when no more mayor changes will enter the game, supposedly at least (just going off the DK reddit Q&A where he just seems terrified of making any big change, even in expansions). If they're still interested in keeping the game alive at that point they'll need a structure in place to make smaller and preferably larger changes to the game and this balance map structure doesn't cut it in my view. I've previously talked about this but they need a change-up in how evolving the game should happen, as apparently others have pioneered these last years (haven't tried DOTA or other titles brought up as examples myself but I trust others in what they're saying here).
I still believe in having a two-tier balance plan open to the public, one short term containing balance fixes for the next few patched (how it is like right now) and one longer term (perhaps six months) with larger game-changing ideas that the pro scene and public gets ample time to give feedback on and prepare for. This could be new units or spells, changing base game mechanics like the oft-cited high ground advantage, or just a directed attempt at moving the meta game along (then again I'm not sure I trust Blizzard in picking a direction for meta).
What's the fault of balance, and what's the fault of the players? I think everyone can agree blink all-ins are overpowered, though a chunk of that is due to poor map design. In IEM, I watched zergs get slaughtered... but they were throwing away banelings like they were free, and for the most part ignoring higher tiered units. Other races complaining about swarm hosts being OP, and the zergs aren't even using them. Can't go broodlords because terran has so much anti-air? Well stop leaning on mutas as a crutch, and maybe they won't focus on anti-air.
unknownstranger
Member
Terran never builds Vikings against Zerg unless they're going mech and Ravens counter Brood Lords harder than Vikings since they can't run from Seeker Missiles. In ZvZ it means 2 less Corruptors per Brood Lord to protect them from their Corruptors. ZvP is the only matchup they're not bad in unless you're against pure Skytoss.
Put more succinctly, yes.
The fumbling slowness of the Arcade, poor tutorials, and social features at launch no doubt did not help the casual player base either. UMS is nowhere near what it was which is insanity in 2014 (That's a whole nother topic about map makers and discovery).
I'm sure Icefrog has a certain amount of liberty, probably not the same for the Blizzard team unfortunately.
Some of the issues are core to the game (imo) like the streamlining of 1 gas to 2 gas (effectively reducing army supply cap by 10-15 in workers needed), linear mineral mining saturation benefits keeping 2/3 bases optimal (No benefit for T or P to go 4 or 5 base), etc. that are felt as too ingrained to remove.
Perhaps the biggest problem is it's very hard to see someone outskill their opponent. Drop offense and defense is probably the best way this is seen today in TvP, but rarely in engagements. I don't get that special sense of wonder because all the units are so straight forward.
Things like SC2BW and Starbow are just more dynamic and far more interesting to watch.
I'd favor a large tournament map pool with more bans over stressing too much about balance. Metrics drive balance extremely close to 45-55% (and often we see 49-51% in the reports) which on paper is great, but the games produced at a pro level just aren't that fun to watch anymore.
I'm on board the Dota 2 train since everyone on TF2, my Steam Friends list, and most SC2 people moved over. I never thought I'd get into it, but here I am and it's wonderful.
Anyway I'm just ranting again since I care so much :[
TY and Maru are about the only ones who shine sometimes.
Here's a Bisu vs Hero (PvZ) Finals set from this week with both Korean and English casting! I suggest watching game 1 of the Finals as that is what PvZ should look like. KR // ENG
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/402419-small-vod-thread-20?page=21#420
And here is some mutha fuckin BW TvT from this week (Sea vs Hiya Finals)
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/bw-tournaments/446263-gcs4-final