I feel like this thread is turning into a grudge match...

Here, I'll try to be concise as possible. I think that the best way to judge balance is to first look purely at the numbers. From what I've been hearing, it sounds like the Chinese are dominating the top 10 with the Aztecs, at the very least, decently close behind. Add in the win to lose ratios, and it looks to me like a simple answer: Chinese need a small nerf, Aztecs remain unchanged, and the vikings get some sort of significant boost. It looks to me like Ronimo's proposed (and now implemented in the PC version) patch does exactly that. Before this argument continues, I'd really like to get some input from players of the European PC version to see if any more balancing is even required.

On another note, I don't really know if the word "balance" has to solely pertain to the technical strengths and weaknesses as much as the overall scope in power AND usage of all three factions. Currently, the problem in Starcraft II is that the Terran and Protoss are far more popular than the Zerg, though comparable in strength. Therefore, Blizzard is looking for little ways to buff the Zerg to make them more appealing, yet not overpowered. Maybe this ideology should be applied to Swords and Soldiers. If, after this patch, the factions use is still not quite even, it's most likely less of a matter of strength and weaknesses and more a matter of the players' own preferences.

I hope I gave something worth thinking about here.

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If the moon was made of barbecued spare ribs, would you eat it?

Amen!

I've played almost 700 matches and using Dragon is the 2nd most popular tactic behind Sword spam... and you're still going to deny that it's a legit tactic?


Read page 1 & 2 (posts by david_A, Snowkissed, Japes, niqster) and you still think I have been the only one to voice this opinion? Also traps stops 1 ZM but if he's spamming ZMs and swords there's f*** all you can do about it unless you have MC. Really I would be interested in such a list but the fact is Aztec are countered easily by Chinese until MC, even then you could still get dragoned.


To be fair I hardly use Chinese to have had to deal with that tactic (also a good Viking player is hard to come by), but I've never seen that happen in practice.


Again you haven't read through my posts, twice I mention sword/rocket spam as a legit way to stall.... and it's not like you're researching a 300g spell when they're right up in your base, you can save for it when you've pushed pretty far.


He has the best win ratio of anyone who mains Aztec and the most wins.... I don't know why he isn't #1 anymore (he was for the longest time). I've dropped to #5 and worse against Chi players earlier today, but recovered vs some Viking players (I couldn't believe it b/c of it's rarity).... and it does matter how many people use a particular race, since most of the time average players will be looking for the strongest faction and the easiest way to win! This happens all the time in online RTS (even fighters too)!

I'm fine to stop arguing about this as it seems like you don't really understand what I'm saying, and vice versa. I'm more than happy to discuss this in a PM. I personally can't wait for the patch so I can try out the new catapults!

I've thought about the idea of boulders jumping towers.. it would make boulder more broken than dragon (although skill would be necessary for proper use) since you can kill their whole army and their workers.... lol

Yeah the more I think about the AOE heal it would help Viking a lot, you can't have the AOE effect be too strong though otherwise it would just be broken w/ Vikings' fast mana regen (post uprade of course). Personally I'd be fine to keep the cooldown as it is but have it only heal 5-10 hp/sec around the selected unit being healed, since to heal the whole group to full hp would require several heals. Or I guess you could have the AOE heal for equal to 35hp/sec but only heal for 0.5-1 sec in the AOE (main unit still being healed for 35hp/sec over 3 seconds).

Maybe a shorter cooldown on jags could make them a bit more useful (jags are deadly if stacked), anything else might make them too powerful

Assuming the jags will live for that long

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The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.

I think its great that there is so much discussion, or arguments, about the balance of this game. It shows that people care and that is a fan base to grow on with a well balanced game.

It is sad to see there isn't too much feedback or input from the Devs while these ideas are being bounced around...

With that being said I would also like to ask the Devs, or anyone for that matter, when this patch is supposed to be out?

It is safe to say the game just can't be enjoyed as much as I would like it to, when 85% of the games are Chinese, and if they are something else and lose, they then switch to Chinese for the rematch lol.

This is extremely unfortunate and I hope this patch is adding a lot more than just what has been stated previously in this post, and soon!.

I'd argue against referencing the "top 10" list until (and I'm sure its been mentioned) we have user profiles with percentage breakdowns in race. I'm not convinced Aztecs is still my most preferred race (switching to Viking.)

Anyways back on track about balances...
So despite the Viking's ridiculous health bars and mana regen, I find their speed to be an Achilles heel. Why must they walk at the most leisurely pace. The worst offender being catapult! Hell, sometimes I'll forget I've purchased one, only to have it show up for battle minutes later. Now I know we have Rage, but its really not enough because I see this scenario happening too often: a couple Berserkers break ahead of group and force the enemy's ranged units into a cluster, massacre to follow. Perhaps if these men (and machines) moved at the same pace?

Second,
I think we all love and hate Swords because they have a unique, passive ability (25% Reflection). Why don't more units get to be this cool? What if Zerkers or Jags had chance criticals, or Catapults increased the surrounding units movement speed? Instead of making the races more like each other (eye for an eye, Jaguar for a Sword), let's instead jazz them up!

Patching on the PS3 takes a while, because it always needs to go through Sony. Especially in this case, because we are also patching in the Playstation Move support in the same patch. So we already made our balance changes for this patch, but you guys can't use them yet, because we had to do some fixes to how we made the Move work. That's also why I don't know for certain when the patch will be out, because if we need to do further Move fixes, then it will take longer... However, as it stands now, I think/hope the patch will probably be released in two weeks.

We log lots of balancing stats, so personally I can't wait to see how our balance changes affect the statistics!

Quick question: can we be expecting more balance patches/updates in the future? I'm sure that it's a lot of work to get the PSmove support up, so that's probably taking most of your time, but just wondering if this game will continue to receive support via updates and/or DLC? At this point I'd be happy with balance updates and new maps... voice chat would be great too.

As Snowkissed mentioned, it'd be nice to have player profiles with general statistics (wins vs each faction, etc.). I don't know how much work is required to do this, but if we could view our last 10 match results, %/# of wins vs each faction, #times we chose each faction, it would help a lot. This is quite common for disc-based retail games w/ an online mode (dunno if it's too much to ask for a PSN title).

I like the idea of having more passives, although jaguars already have leap, the swords obviously have the most useful of the 3 (if you consider high hp a passive). I think if catapults moved too fast, Viking might be too powerful post-patch because of the new pult upgrades. Well actually as long as the cooldown is as long as it is now, I can't see too much of a problem with it.

I doubt we will be adding any new features after the Move patch, but we may do another balance patch later on. That depends on what the balance statistics tell us in the weeks after the patch. You guys are right in pointing our the current version needs a balance patch, but if the fixes we do know make the balance good enough, then we may not need to do another one after that.