This one speaks for itself.
Is problematic when you keep talking, or so learned Bashiok of the Blizzard Blues.
With the release of Starcraft II now a solid month behind us, players have begun to clamour for a patch to address their woes. The problem, as with all clamoring, is that everyone clamors their own way, and the clamors of others make them only more clamoros, leading to a shuddering cacophony of clamoration, and an assault on decent ears everywhere.
Also leads to a strange desire for Clamato juice. Ceasar, anyone?
All the clamoring is about what people want. Zerg want to be tougher, Terrans don’t want their Siege Tanks nerfed and Protoss just love jamming out Zealots through “proxy Gateways”. Every avid player of SCII has a favorite side, a list a mile long about what is wrong with their favorite side and why the other two sides are in fact Blizzard’s favorites, and why none of their own overpowered characteristics should be changed.
Ah, the glory and pitfalls of a strong online community.
Forum posters have accused Blizz of refusing to release a decent patch because they’re waiting until – wait for it – the next expansion.
This is nonsense, by the way, since not balancing a game to sell more copies of a game that isn’t even out there is a tough sell. This would be like having your television break and the warranty repair company telling you that they won’t bother fixing it since a new model is coming out soon and you’ll probably just buy that.
Strangely, we think you’d take your business elsewhere, and while Blizzard does big business, they’re not so stupid and money-mad to leave a game broken until they release another money sink, or so says Bashiok in a Blue Post, QQing himself a little over the lack of trust fans have in the company.
The Blues have promised that a patch is incoming, most likely in the middle of September, to address what they believe to be the most significant balance issues. They claim that it couldn’t be released as quickly as Beta patches were, due to both the user base and the fact that different regions of the world are experiencing different problems. Take note, forum QQers – this actually makes sense.
Among the planned changes are yet another decrease to the Siege Tank’s damage in Siege Mode, mostly due to it’s ability to decimate any ground force in the latter stages of the game. The straight across 50 damage is being replaced with 35 +15 armored, which means that things like Marines can survive more than one shot, and Zealots can take 5 in the face before going down.
5? 5? What the hell, man! This got us going, despite our best efforts.
Sure, Protoss have shields – but it’s a tank – a freakin’ tank! Maybe the gun doesn’t work so well, so how about you try running him over? He can hang out under your treads all day long, shielded and thrashing around.
Sorry – we love the Siege Tank, and while we understand the need for balance, we deeply feel the loss of awesomeness.
To get back on track, we’ll mention that Protoss are also getting the nerf stick – Zealots are supposed to get a build time increase, as are gateways, and Zerg are getting their Ultralisk tweaked again, removing the Ram skill because its more useless than the basic attack. That ‘lisk just can’t catch a break.
As stated in the Blue Post, the main intention of the upcoming patch is to limit the amount of players that are relying on Protoss Zealot rushes using Proxy Gateways and Terran Siege Tank rushes mid-game.
In what can only be described as a stunning use forum posters’ ability to actually read (their grammar is so terrible it seemed unlikley) the instances of these rush techniques spiked sharply after Bashiok told everyone these same techniques were overpowered.
Whoops.
The guy has a tough enough job dealing with the ravening hordes that demand exacting statistics and accountability for his every action, but we’re thinking he should probably put a bit more of a lid on the “here are ways to win the game that we’re going to fix but haven’t” statements.
Perhaps he’ll get a fix in an upcoming patch.
