Chaque semaine, David Kim, Senior Game Designer chez Blizzard et responsable de l'équilibrage sur Starcraft II : Legacy of the Void, fait le point sur le développement du jeu et s'exprime sur les prochaines évolutions à venir et sur les retours qu'elles avaient suscités dans la communauté.
Cette semaine, la nouvelle carte de test d'équilibrage et la future mise à jour d'équilibrage sont au centre des discussions :
- Suite aux retours de la communauté coréenne sur les Protoss, Blizzard est prêt à réaliser une dernière série de tests avant de déployer une mise à jour d'équilibrage. Voila pourquoi une nouvelle carte de test est disponible avec les futurs changements pendant quelques jours. Le patch arrivera le jeudi 28 janvier.
Voici les modifications en test qui seront éventuellement présentes dans la prochaine mise à jour :
- Le coût en énergie de la Surcharge photonique augmente de 25 à 50, sa durée augmente de 15 à 20 secondes et sa vitesse de tir augmente de 1,25 à 1.
Les Protoss ne pourront plus défendre avec deux surcharges à la fois et ne pourront plus temporiser aussi longtemps qu'avant. A voir si le nerf n'est pas trop fort pour le PvZ.
- Les dégâts de l'Adepte sont réduits de 10 (+13 léger) à 10 (+12 léger).
Nerf d'apparence infime mais suffisant qui va permettre aux Terrans de respirer face au harass adepte. L'unité protoss aura besoin désormais de trois tirs (contre deux auparavant) pour tuer un VCS ou un Marine (sans bouclier).
- Les dégâts de la Bombe parasitaire de la Vipère sont réduits de 90 à 60.
Blizzard ne voulait pas trop nerf le sort. Blizzard surveillera que les Zergs ne se fassent pas dominer dans les airs une fois ce changement effectué.
- Les dégâts de l'Aiguillon rampant sont réduits de 15 (+15 bio) à 15 (+5 bio)
Changement qui ne touche que le ZvZ. Si la mêta se voit à nouveau dominée par les Mutalisks, Blizzard reviendra sur ce nerf. Mais la Bombe paraistaire de la Vipère même nerf est censé contré le mass mutalisks.
Enfin, les Tanks seront absents de la prochaine mise à jour. Blizzard est certain qu'il faut nerf le drop des tanks en mode siège tout en leur donnant une compensation pour la perte de mobilité que cela entrainera. Néanmoins, Blizzard n'est pas encore certain des modifications à effectuer sans que cela ne déséqulibre trop les match-up. Comme il n'y a pas autant d'urgence à voir le Tank siège modifié (contrairement à l'adepte), le sujet reste à l'étude.
Blizzard sur Community Feedback update - January 22 (Source)
Hey everyone.Most of this week's update concerns the upcoming Balance Test Map, however we'd also like to briefly discuss feedback in Korea and our recent discussions about Siege Tanks.
KR Feedback on Protoss
Recently, we've definitely seen the feedback on Protoss strength both from Korean Pros and our Korean community as a major point of discussion, especially after some comments made by professional Protoss players. In response to this very notion, we've been preparing to test changes for Protoss and have been glad to see that you guys agree with the direction we've been considering over the past few weeks. We also noticed numerous people in the Korean community pointing out how Protoss may not be as OP as others have made it out to be due to statistics. While this may or may not be true, we definitely appreciate that there are people trying hard to see it from the big picture instead of just jumping on the band wagon. We normally don't focus a feedback to a specific region like this, but because of how big the consensus was in this area last week in Korea, we wanted to address this concern.
With that said, we will be looking to make changes to Protoss very soon on the two fronts we've been discussing over the past few weeks. We believe these nerfs to the Adept and Photon Overcharge will improve both Protoss non-mirror matchups, but have the greatest impact in TvP, where Protoss is currently more problematic. Please keep in mind that even after the balance update goes live, we'll definitely be keeping a close eye on the state of the game in case further changes are needed.
Also, we have noticed that information regarding balance or the dev team's thoughts aren't getting spread around as well in Korea compared to other regions, and we will definitely be discussing ways to improve this.
Next Balance Update Schedule
We are aiming to get the Balance Test Map released today, and hope to aggressively test out the changes for a potential balance patch to the live game next week on January 28th (PST). This date aims to allow enough time to aggressively test, while also avoiding interrupting DreamHack and next week's matches in Korea. On that note, we heard your feedback regarding letting players know better when a Balance Test Map testing is going on. The best feedback we heard on this front was to possibly have the StarCraft 2 landing screen have a background with details about the Balance Test Map. It could also include details of a chat channel for players to join to organize games depending on race and skill level, and we're looking to add something like this to help facilitate testing.
The plan is to test these changes and then make a call on which specific ones will be good for the game:
Photon Overcharge
Energy cost increased from 25 to 50
Duration increased from 15 to 20 sec
Weapon period decreased from 1.25 to 1
Adept
Damage decreaed from 10 (+13 light) to 10 (+12 light)
Viper
Parasitic bomb damage decreased from 90 to 60
Spore Crawler
Damage decreased from 15 (+15 bio) to 15 (+5 bio)
Let's keep the discussions and playtesting focused on these specific changes so that we can together make a call on which changes can go into the game. Let's go more into each of the topics so that we can keep the discussions more focused.
Photon Overcharge
Due to the overall strength of Protoss recently, we feel that this is a solid change. Other races will be able to go on the offense more against Protoss, meaning we can tackle the main issue we see of Protoss just leaving 1 Mothership Core on defense while safely going on the offense with units such as Adepts or Warp Prisms in the earlier stages of the game. We've discussed this one many times over the last few weeks, so we probably don't need to go too much more into detail, but please note that the nerf to this ability is quite big and we would love to hear your thoughts on the specific numbers after you have played on the Balance Test Map.
Adept Damage
We agree with majority of you that TvP is the most problematic matchup by far right now, so we believe this extra nerf on top of the Overcharge nerf is needed. It's a big change against Terran due to the relationship changes with Marines and SCVs. Let's focus on testing this change in mind with the big changes to Photon Overcharge to make sure that it's in fact good to do both changes at the same time.
Viper Parasitic Bomb
The biggest issue as we've discussed before with this ability is that it prevents many of the air based compositions from coming into play. We just need to make sure that this nerf is not too big to the point that we see overwhelming numbers of air units all of a sudden. Let's focus the playtesting and discussions around making sure that this doesn't happen.
Spore Crawler Damage
This is probably the safest change of the bunch since it only affects the ZvZ mirror matchup. Still, we've heard your feedback that this could bring back a Mutalisk dominated metagame, but we wonder if the Parasitic Bomb changes will make enough of a difference to strike a balance between the two different tech paths. Also, keep in mind that this change is pretty easy to tune even after the patch goes out, so if we need to make another adjustment after next week, we can easily do that as well.
Siege Tank
Thank you for the productive discussions over the past week about Siege Tanks. Here are our thoughts:
- If TvZ is in an even state, we completely agree that Siege Tank should be buffed if they lose the ability to be picked up by Medivacs.
- At the same time, we are getting some feedback from high level players in Korea that Zerg is struggling vs. Terran in the matchup. This may mean that we would want to test changes to the Siege Tank one at a time.
- Overall, we don't feel that both TvZ and TvT are at a point where we need to patch something ASAP.
- Because we are sticking to the most needed changes only for the balance update that's coming very soon, we can continue discussing this topic going forward, but don't need to focus on it this week.
Overall, let's try to first examine the exact state of TvT and ZvT before we make a call on what changes needs to be tested for the Siege Tank. We believe this is the main reason why opinions were so split on this area.
Thanks for your continued feedback. Please login and play the Balance Test Map as we'd love to hear your feedback on the changes after you've played a few games to try things out. Thanks!
