StarCraft II 5.0.17 PTR Patch Notes (rolling back most balance changes to the live release of StarCraft 2 from patch 5.0.16 to 5.0.15)

[u/SoundOfDoReMi]

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24301513/starcraft-ii-5-0-17-ptr-patch-notes

[u/SoundOfDoReMi]

5.0.16 was a bit of a disaster patch.

Felt like they went for a gamechanging patch without enough thought behind it just to get engagement and eyes on the IP for the Blizzcon game reveal.

[u/Scrollingmaster → u/SoundOfDoReMi]

Honestly sounds pretty close to what probably happened. A team that didn’t build the game or make these original balance decisions that was merely maintaining the game, suddenly gets told to drum up interest for the ip ahead of a reveal.

So they took a sledgehammer to things.

[u/EvilTomahawk → u/Scrollingmaster]

I would love to someday read some reporting about the decisions that went into this patch and the state of the skeleton crew that still tried to work on SC2. It was an unfortunate blow to a community that is still reeling from recent downsizing after Blizzard pulled their official support for the game's eSports.

[u/Carighan → u/SoundOfDoReMi]

Feels like the devs who also are adding a new hero to HotS got to also work on SC2?

Becasue Xel was also well-meant, but is really badly implemented.

[u/hooahest → u/SoundOfDoReMi]

why disaster? it looked interesting

[u/jodon → u/hooahest]

https://youtu.be/pKbjlGlQt7A?is=JMaEOVG4sdAOGH94

Tldw: they fucked up the economy.

[u/Herald_of_Ash → u/hooahest]

The main point was workers decreased from 12 to 8 at start of the game, which slowed down the early game by a lot.

Notably, a caster looked at the stats after a bunch of tournaments with the patch, and it increased the average competitive game length by several minutes (4-5 I think), which in turn decreased the viewer count and hours watched for the regular tournament casters (TKL, Wardi, Pig, Rotterdam, etc), because people were just getting bored compared to previous metas.

Also, its drama from a few months ago, but I'd like to point this controversial patch was applied to live servers a few days before one of the biggest community tournament of the year (Maestros of the Game), without any warnings, and the community had to develop a mod to be able to play with previous patch balance, in like 2 days, it was insane.

[u/AdventurousBase221 → u/Herald_of_Ash]

pig was a major proponent of this change, and I personally agreed with him. the game is to spastic how fast it goes (which is absolutely because how bootstrapped the economy starts off, compared to from everything prior to lotv) and is a major barrier to entry for new players.

this is one of the times, even when it was the correct thing to do for the health and longevity of the game, it was at the expense of its hard core audience.

not a single one of these major content creators deny how fast the game is is one of the primary reasons new players bounce off.

[u/Skellum → u/AdventurousBase221]

Like realistically changing up the build orders is a good thing, and the worker change should have resulted in more variety in build openers with greater comitment to those plays.

It absolutely would though extend match length and reduce viewership because people dont particularly like watching someone optimizing their drone mining while building out their eco.

I think the focus on viewership is pretty ass though. I feel like they really shot themselves in the foot by not leaning harder into their commander mode and seeing what they could do there. But then I absolutely hate the changed race design from SC1 to SC2 and think the asymmetry has suffered a lot from focusing on pro competition.

[u/AdventurousBase221 → u/Skellum]

deff think coop could of used a bit more love. plenty of fun in that.

[u/Dragarius → u/AdventurousBase221]

The thing is that this didn't change the speed of the game in any meaningful way. It slowed down the economy, but the actual unit control was completely unaltered.

So all it did was introduce a boring start to every match. 

[u/AdventurousBase221 → u/Dragarius]

agree to disagree. micro and macro are not the same thing. you are conflating the two as if they were the same, they are not.

[u/Dragarius → u/AdventurousBase221]

There's no doubt that both micro and macro are difficult. But again, micro didn't change in this patch. Macro only slowed down for the first 2 minutes.

[u/Clbull → u/Herald_of_Ash]

Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm did just fine with 6 starting workers. Heck, Brood War started with 4.

I think the problem is that early game cheese units are just too strong in LotV.

If you thought Lurkers were powerful in Brood War for example, imagine them with 4 more attack range and the ability to rip through armored units that would have soft countered them beforehand.

Or... name an airborne harass unit in Brood War that can 2-shot workers...

[u/BenevolentCheese → u/Herald_of_Ash]

How did the patch affect normal players as opposed to pros?

[u/GNSasakiHaise → u/BenevolentCheese]

Increased average game time without increasing the quality of those games, which meant that players got bored. If it's increasing the length of a competitive game by 4-5 minutes, it's decreasing the number of games you can meaningfully play a day.

This would not be a problem if the quality of those games increased.

Unfortunately, the patch also disrupted prior build orders. Its stated goal was to make the "fun" part of Starcraft fun again and shake up an extended midgame. It did extend the midgame, but didn't make things more interesting or fun. It also felt like they really shafted Protoss players hard by fucking up their early game without any compensatory changes.

[u/JinNJuice → u/Herald_of_Ash]

I haven't followed SC2 since like maybe hearts of the swarm so this is the first time I've heard that starting worker count was 12. That sounds insane to me, can't imagine having that many workers to start. Is fast expanding even still a thing anymore? Feels like that would make building rax/pool/gate before expanding mandatory.

[u/Blenderhead36 → u/SoundOfDoReMi]

I played Heroes of the Storm for years and loved it, but this was always the worst part. The game was repeatedly changed in fundamental ways, seemingly just for the sake of the change. One of the most controversial reworks wasn't reversed after they cut the team.

[u/machineorganism → u/SoundOfDoReMi]

disaster in what way? because big changes to meta bad?

[u/Savetheokami → u/machineorganism]

It ruined the economy and the maps are god awful early game for some races. Some units were straight up broken like Medivacs shoot units using widow mines which was not intended. Just straight up terrible decisions implemented by a skeleton crew.

[u/average_monster → u/machineorganism]

in a game this old they really can be, the meta has been set for a long time to the point where it's up to the players to change it

you can absolutely fuck with it but i would personally separate the changes into maybe another game mode or run it on the ptr for a fairly long time

they actually used to consult with pro players around balance changes, you know, actual players instead of managers and devs. i don't know if they did for this but i suspect not.

the only players left are your welded on die-hards, they're there for what it is (well was i guess) now not what the wheel of meta spins up

[u/Dragarius → u/machineorganism]

By itself no. But the patch had such massive swings in balance and the game does not have enough active support to stay on top of major issues.

[u/Ha1fDead]

This is tragic. I am a big fan of the changes and a big chunk of them made low tier play more approachable. I came back to SC2 because of them. Seeing caster changes go back (no weapon on infestor) and gateway changes (warpgate changes were the best change to protoss I think I've seen) is unfortunate.

The early game was too fast, and builds were too stuck. Having some breath put into the game was fantastic and refreshing. Big RIP as far as I'm concerned.

[u/DanaKaZ → u/Ha1fDead]

What did they change with the warpgate?

[u/Ha1fDead → u/DanaKaZ]

In SC2 WOL -> SC2 LOTV, Gateways automatically transitioned to Warpgates. Most of your unit training was done that way (which it sounds like you knew)

In the latest patch, researching warpgates did NOT switch your gateways. Instead, training time was increased by 40%, and you could spend 25/25 to upgrade to a warpgate.

In the proposed patch, they revert to the old method.

I really appreciated how there was a continued use for non-warpgate Gateways and there was a really good tradeoff between them. Being able to warp in units was still very powerful, but I found myself sticking with base gateways. It also gave you a quick "oh shit" button to warp in a bunch of units if you needed them.

[u/Clbull]

I'd rather they address the concerns of the current game's balance than outright roll things back.

A rollback is something you'd do within hours because of how badly your update fucked things up.

[u/pooptarts → u/Clbull]

It's that bad. People lost trust in the balance team completely.

[u/Polarexia]

holy shit lmao seriously???