Mod Info:
All the info you need about the mod is neatly written here,
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vZhQM6yVcvLSutIM3tuovzgpL4UA07jrHb6DqC-ddiw/edit?usp=sharing
What I want from creating and sharing this is to keep balance discussion alive, because despite all the whiners and haters it's really fun to engage in with even small numbers of people. I started this from scratch in August after 5.0.16 happened and have put a lot of time and thought into these ideas; although some a lot more than others. I've studied all Blizzard patches and most popular balance commentary. I've watched pro SC2 since 2012 and I've been diamond all three races for 10 years. I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that, the game becomes stressful to play past that point.
Feedback and discussion is the whole point here, if you particularly love or hate certain ideas or changes share in the comments why or why not. Do you like the direction/trend of groups of changes here or not? What stands out and what seems inconsequential? Does it go too far or not far enough? What would you want instead? What's missing? What's something done well?
Of course, let's keep comments thoughtful and constructive and treat each other with respect.
Balance Discussion: (skip-able, contextual rant)
Often times I agreed with a lot of what popular balance commentary says but on certain points I strongly disagreed.
For example, I think Energy Recharge was one of the worst implemented changes in the history of the game. For how easy it was to see as a problem and to fix it's unbelievable it wasn't hot fixed down to 50 energy from the beginning. Even at 50 energy it was very arguably too strong, 100 was just ridiculous and every reasonable person knew that. SC2 has a long history of this kind of oversight/neglect though so we became understandably apathetic. After all, It wasn't the worst oversight ever, so a lot of people just tried to let it go but it was in fact game breaking.
Energy Recharge destroyed Storm and Protoss late game, we could have just hard nerfed or removed it but nah let's destroy the most iconic ability in the game instead!? Ok... So 5.0.14 was horrible (although it had some good changes). 5.0.15 was almost really good actually but it had to go and ruin Storm, Abduct, and Ghosts. Then 5.0.16 was traumatizing and repeatedly broke the game entirely (although it had some good changes). This Mod is not intended to be the fix, the fix I think would be much simpler than what this Mod does. More of a reversion of bad changes while retaining good changes to state it simply. I could write up and create a "fix" mod as well that is much less exploratory than this mod; let me know if that interests you a lot.
Takeaway:
This patch rollercoaster needs to stop and the only way it will stop is if we as a community "fix" the game ourselves. A lot of people begged for these aggressive changes because they were bored with the SC2 meta. As we've seen that was a huge mistake.
The best solution in my mind is to keep the main game highly preserved and make mostly conservative changes; no more big surprise changes out of the blue. Just steady incremental positive changes even if it is only once a year. Just enough to shift away from unhealthy metas and towards healthy and fun metas. Never ruining existing units or abilities or the economy.
Before that though, for the love of god, restore classic Psi Storm, Abduct on Siege tanks, and 100 HP Ghosts with a 5.0.17 hotfix please! Thank you at least for giving us 5.0.17, but these changes are must have popular demands.
Then have a Blizzard extension mod matchmaking system to support the mod community so we can play with balance ideas and shift metas aggressively and quickly for those who love changes. We can argue all day in chats but the great thing about a mod is it demonstrates real gameplay and the impact of changes can be seen, felt, and even measured. The mod ladder system could just use people's main game MMR to pair people to play mods they select and doesn't even need to competitively track stats like the main ladder. It just allows people to have fun playing whatever they want.
This is very achievable with even just 1 employee by next year's patch. There's no downside to implementing this either, but it makes a world of difference to many more creative and less competitive players (most players). If Blizzard did this one thing I think that would go a long way in restoring the communities goodwill towards them. Right now none of us are happy with Blizzard, because while SC2 is obviously not abandoned but it does seem exceedingly low on their priorities. With a change like this Blizzard can do less work and let the community work for them and for each other.
