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Hey folks,

I wanted to put some thoughts down about this balance update. You can read it here (https://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20752845503).

The way this update is phrased concerns me and makes me wonder exactly what Blizzard’s balancing process is. I’m referring specifically to this quote:

“While there has been a lot of great feedback regarding suggestions for PvT, this change looks to be the solution proposed by many players out there.”

I’ve seen this kind of phrasing in enough updates that I don’t think it’s an accident anymore. It comes across to me like balancing decisions are made by some form of informal polling, like crowd sourcing. To begin with, there are a lot of problems with this (survivorship bias, vocal minority bias, etc) even in areas where polling makes sense.

But really, the main issue is this: strategic balance is not a democracy. It has right and wrong answers. There needs to be some objective criteria that can be used to measure whether an idea is good or not. Simply taking the most popular idea off of a message board is not a good idea - for instance, this would have resulted in a cyclone buff a couple months back, whereas now the general consensus is that the unit is already too strong.

I’m also concerned about the way this is phrased. Why “looks to be” instead of “is”? Why “many players” and not “most players”? Is there any data guiding these changes or is it just a gut feeling? I’ve no issue with the latter but I’d rather the developers be up front about it. The way this sentence is written just comes across as unnecessarily evasive. “Many players” can “look to be” saying virtually anything on virtually any topic.

I think Blizzard should be more upfront about how their balancing process actually works. The issue is not communication but transparency. The quoted sentence is a great example of communication without transparency.

Also, frankly, I think it would make the StarCraft II team look good. I think Blizzard doesn’t get enough credit for the strength of their game design and some transparency in how they do things would go a long way in showing this. I wrote a short piece about this same issue when I commented on frustrations in the community with Legacy’s design: https://www.facebook.com/brownbeargaming/posts/1801302280118892

Finally, If you’re interested in my ideas around how to balance, you can read it here: https://illiteracyhasdownsides.com/2016/12/10/racial-balance-in-real-time-strategy-games/

All the best,
brownbear