Maybe I will be less "SCARED" of public criticism of this blog, and start "tagging" posts so people in searches would randomly find this blog, but hey personally I just like writing stuff down in my twisted vision of well almost everything and well, having freedom instead of getting shut down, which inevitably i almost always get :D.
Anyway, onto ramblings on some current TOPICS in both my life, forums I read and such and I wanted to discuss a few things to myself and get my thoughts down on well a post :).
TOPIC NUMBER 1: WHINING
Ok, so I am pretty well mystified I guess is the best way to describe it at how some people have a constant ability to whine about almost anything, regardless of what happens. You have some people who whine about insignificant things like, idk, a model of a unit or npc or something and are like RAWR DON'T LIKE, and actually these sort of things are legit in my opinion, because hey thes insignificant whines are all about subject matter which is purely subjective. I mean, if I like something because it's pink/purple, I can tell you not everyone will. It's a world of free will after all so everyone has an opinion on well.. everything.
However we get to say more SIGNIFICANT WHINING, I mean at the moment I am experiencing this on 2 fronts: on Starcraft 2 balance and wow cataclysm balance. I'll start of f with the Starcraft 2 balance, because it is probably the least flawed of the 2 types.
At the moment theres alot of whine from people who are like TERRAN IS IMBALANCED!!??!?!?! both from zerg and protoss opponents, who seem to think terran is some kinda juggernaut that is impossible to take down. Firstly, I would like to state that I think nothing is imbalanced in this game, there are powerful things (LIKE EMP VS. PROTOSS) and there are also weak things, but nothing is so strong that it is "IMBA".
With that out of the way, I find it increasingly irritating that people claim that terran is imbalanced and whatever they do they are defeated by it. Firstly, lets just state some statistics, we have 6000 terrans 7250 protoss 5000 zerg 2000 Random in the diamond league across all regions approximatly.
People who have played over 100 games in diamond we have 1350 Terran, 1800 Protoss, 1200 Zerg, 100 random.
So we see that firstly in ladder Protoss is the most played and that Terran is second and Zerg is third most played. Again this doesn't say much other than perhaps protoss is slightly easier or more fun to play (you could draw either conclusion with different explanations easily).
However, they are pretty even mostly.
Now the biggest problem I have with say the whining is because people always seem to approach a problem with 0 creativity, they are like RAWR THIS IS OVERPOWERED, perhaps they even think they are some sort of god playing and won't dare look at their own play before looking at the opposing players.
What I mean by this is that they will be beaten by something they believed to be overpowered, maybe like EMP in a pvt matchup, but they won't approach the problem by like saying HUH? what can I do to make this thing less powerful, is there anyway I could have won, was it actually just inevitable I would lose because I got behind in the game.
Like they will look OUTWARDS, before looking INWARDS, also they will be like HUH WELL I FELT FORCED TO DO THIS AND THEN THIS GOT OWNED, like say zerg feel like they have to expand early vs. terran/protoss and obviously this leaves them open to early timing attacks, now sure you could argue this is a flaw with zerg mechanics, but a 1-basing zerg is going to be stronger than a ONLY JUST EXPANDED 2-basing zerg.
People want to whine that terran is "IMBALANCED" because they can do 50 different openings, and pretty much they are all viable, but I mean that is because protoss/zerg feel like they HAVE TO expand vs. Terran, so of course your army is going to be weaker and are going to be vulnerable to early timing attacks.
HOWEVER, my biggest concern rather than specifics, is the fact that people won't back up their facts with credible evidence, they back it up with anecdotal evidence, and because we are all human (hopefully) naturally everybody remembers the NEGATIVE EVENTS, over the positives, like say you go EXACTLY 50-50 in a matchup, you feel like you probably went 40-60 because you don't remember the wins unless they were like EPIC but you remember losses because LOL LOSS, so you end-up feeling you are playing against imbalance.
The next most annoying concern is that most people who complain haven't explored trying options against a certain tactic, like they think something is IMBA, but will keep throwing the same tactic against it and be like Huh? a build that defeats my build IMPOSSIBLE!?!?!, I remember a wise-man once saying that progress in builds goes like this you have a winning strategy, and then it gets stopped. The natural progression of this is to try your strategy but with MORE STRUCTURES or MORE UNITS, for an example of this see 3-gate -> 4-gate -> 5-gate all-in plays.
IF A STRAT DOESNT WORK BRUTE FORCE MAKES IT WORK!!!!
So yeh, people refuse to be creative and try out new things, its dangerous and stuff and somehow impossible, because the opposing player can somehow magically have every single unit en-masse in every single game at every single point. Somehow the opponent always dictates what you do, (this is the case in vs. Zerg really, but that's cos that is how zerg work) but yeh, sometimes the explanations are ludicrous.
One of the last things I don't like about whining is how like... people refuse to give in.. to whatever you do or say or suggest. THEY ARE RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG. Doesn't matter how legitimate or cool you are, unless you agree with them they are never happy, now in starcraft this whine is made prominent by suggesting strategies and stuff to combat this and it's immedietly rejected with either a petty pop at me/the suggester or it is deflected and replaced with BUT THIS IS IMBALANCED.
So you are left with these people are like, no matter what happens this is imbalanced in its current state and "WHATEVER THEY DO" (which is usually 1 thing every game) they lose to it.
Maybe you would ask, what would make an ability or unit imbalanced? well I would say a unit or ability is imbalanced, if like it meets a few criteria.
1) YOU HAVE TO USE IT, ie in a certain matchup you have to use it, or would be foolish not to. Lets say a ghost in TvP, I mean emp is very powerful so you would be foolish not to use it vs. Protoss.
2) You are in a scenario where like you have an army x and an army y, normally x beats y, adding the "imbalance" makes y beat x, and whatever you add to x can't turn the tables on y.
This second point is my major criterion for imbalance, and I don't think anything satisfies this, like lets say we have army x and army y, being like Army X is like 2 Ultralisks and Army Y is 10 marines, firstly X beats Y, now we add stim to marines and micro and (I BELIEVE) that 10 marines with stim and micro will beat 2 ultralisks but we can add infestors with fungal growth to stop the micro and again ultralisks win. This goes on forever basically, but the point is, there is nothing that beats something ALL THE TIME REGARDLESS.
The only thing that comes close is like maybe 15-20 void rays, which will demolish almost everything.
3) If in an even game, lets say nobody attacked and the 2 players macrod identically off of 2 bases, this 1 player can make this 1 unit or ability that is the other player cannot do anything about at that stage even if it was scouted.
What I am talking about here is, say somebody made like a mothership, and the fleet beacon was scouted early, and both players had the same resource income, the opposing player could not do ANYTHING, and it was basically an automatic loss. This could mean the player had to micro the unit, but basically if he did that it was an auto-win.
The idea is that although there is something you can do to combat the strategy and you saw the strategy, you don't have enough time or enough macro to beat it when the opposing player can get access to it.
There are probably more criteria, but I can't think of them right now, these are 3 fairly good stepping stones and note they ALL NEED TO BE satisfied for something to be deemed overpowered.
THINGS THAT DONT MAKE SOMETHING IMBALANCED:
1) If something you need to do to beat something requires more skill than the other player
Sure you are putting in more micro to beat something, but hey thats part of the game. (HOWEVER if say one race required more micro and more macro to be EVEN with another race that would be imbalanced, but only if it was in like 70%+ of scenarios imo)
2) It beat a strategy that was scouted.
3) You scouted it and still lost
(Yes this is controversial maybe but the point is, if you scout say LOTS OF HELLIONS and make LOTS OF ZERGLINGS, yes you are going to lose that battle.)
4) If something is unbeatable by YOUR BUILD.
Yeh, there are other criterion.. of course there are like playstyle choices and all that jazz, but hey, I hate the talk of imbalance, really I don't think anything is truly imbalanced unless it meets those criteria above, which nothing does really.
Think this post satisfied my rambling nature though, maybe i'll make another post about how I hate how much wow players whine and people whine in general, but hey it would probably turn into some 20,000 word thesis, and I'm not in the mood for writing THAT MUCH.
Hoping to start laddering in starcraft 2 later, urgh scary tiems :<. LOSING SUCKS IMBALANCED etc will be incoming :)).
