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I agree with points that you've said, but I think rather than saying your race sucks, even with some things that I agree on, maybe you should focus on YOUR play.
You say that you lose battles easily without touching your opponent, try to look past the 'racial imbalances' that your proposing and watch replays, be very critical and see what you did wrong. Did you get a good enough flank with the lings, were your hydras spread well, did your mutas engage at the right time/angle, were your banelings spread enough, did you bring them in from the wrong side etc. etc. etc.
although yes most time I do crush zerg armies, very rarely will I do so without losing a good portion of my army, and then lose to the next wave. And also occasionally the opposite occurs, and I get stomped.
Moving into an area, and then being greeted by roaches spread in front of you, hydras on high ground and behind roaches, all well spread, and lings flanking in from either side is always a horrible position to be in and rarely winnable. And yes its hard to get in the position, but rather than thinking how balance changes could get you there, think about how you can get your opponent there.
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On January 25 2011 10:37 Soulish wrote:
Yet another person tries to write a formal article without the spelling and grammatical foundations to back it up. end result? I read up until "defiantly" and stopped.
you're right, imperfect grammer and spelling obviously make his idea worthless. I'm sorry but you can easily understand what he was trying to say. That type of attidute hurts more than it helps, if you judge somethings value based on form rather than content you're going to miss out a lot in life.
Back to the thread.
The fundimental truth is that IF your game play is made up of ladder, you're going to roughly have a 50/50 win record. So in a way, unless you are trying to win turnys, the balance of the game is almost mute - as you can play any race at almost any skill level in the ladder and come out 50/50. That is awesome for the casual.
Still that doesn't mean that all races are equal.
And in fact if you're going to accept that zerg is the harder race to play, then where is the payoff?
that is my fundimental issue with zerg. I don't think that perfect zerg will beat a perfect Terran or Toss. So then where is the payoff for zerg being signifcantly harder to play?
as a Toss you can make any number of simple errors that can stright up gg you, we've come to accept them as huge mistakes because they gg you but in fact they are rather small mistakes. This is even more so the case for zerg.
The number of ways you can straight up lose by very very small mistakes is mind blowing. So you have to wonder, then shouldn't there be a payoff for all those losses? Maybe not, I mean if perfect zerg play beats perfect non-zerg play isn't there a balance issue... yet if 90% terran or toss play beats 90% zerg play, isn't there a balance issue?
Maybe, maybe not... something to think about though.
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Phenomenal and well articulated post, OP. All of your points have been given several times before by several members of the community, but you did an excellent job of putting it all together.
I especially have to agree with this part, as I said this before a couploe of months back myself:
I want the game to feel like I definitely outclassed my opponent when I win outright or he definitely outclassed me when I lose outright.
That's exactly what feels wrong with Zerg, and it's an accumulation of all the things wrong with Zerg. When you win, you immediately feel like you've just won because of a series of mistakes by your opponent, and when you lose, very often you just have to play it down to minor mistakes by yourself, instead of actually saying that your opponent was better than you.
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On January 26 2011 00:44 heishe wrote:I especially have to agree with this part, as I said this before a couploe of months back myself: Show nested quote +
I want the game to feel like I definitely outclassed my opponent when I win outright or he definitely outclassed me when I lose outright.
That's exactly what feels wrong with Zerg, and it's an accumulation of all the things wrong with Zerg. When you win, you immediately feel like you've just won because of a series of mistakes by your opponent, and when you lose, very often you just have to play it down to minor mistakes by yourself, instead of actually saying that your opponent was better than you.
not quite true.
if a toss 4gates me, i now, that i can win it if i scout it. 1 saccing overloard at around 5-6 minutes and i know it. then i just gonna win: bo-win with 15hatch 15pool. there is no way, when i play decent, a toss can kill me with it.
same 4 some terran strats for example banshee: i get a 3rd queen anyways, so they are fendet of easily.
as zerg, u need to herrass ur opponent massively. more then a toss or terran needs to, and therefore zerg is the hardest race, but if u are better, u win.
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On January 25 2011 08:59 Akuemon wrote:
Good read. put a lot of effort into this one ^^. I especially agree on the topple effect, a protoss/terran on 4 base is usually gg for the zerg no matter what, but a zerg on 6 base can still lose easily because of the strength of 200/200 army.
And hidden tech is so hard ESPECIALLY when they bottom of the ramp wall off, making it impossible to scout. so many things need so many different responses (in ZvT at least) that scouting is crucial, and its impossible to scout if they just have something at the bottom of there ramp.
Why do people bash such well constructed opinions with stupid one-liners? >.>
One problem is that a 6 base zerg is not much stronger than a 4 base zerg. Since you cant have more than 90/80/ (or 70 lategame) drones, having way to many bases just give no extra income, and the extra gas will just stockpile since you dont get enough minerals to spend the gas.
But no siege units, or good ways to defend with low unit counts is my biggest concern for the future.
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Zerg isn't as bad as people make it sound at the moment, IdrA himself said that "Zerg is not a comeback race" and that is why he GG's so quickly. So I agree that one mistake can blow the game for a zerg and there is no epic comeback.
But hey, in a high quality game of Sc2, no matter what race you are one mistake can cost you the game, so it is not necessarily something that Zerg only faces.
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On January 26 2011 01:01 nehl wrote:
not quite true.
if a toss 4gates me, i now, that i can win it if i scout it. 1 saccing overloard at around 5-6 minutes and i know it. then i just gonna win: bo-win with 15hatch 15pool. there is no way, when i play decent, a toss can kill me with it.
same 4 some terran strats for example banshee: i get a 3rd queen anyways, so they are fendet of easily.
as zerg, u need to herrass ur opponent massively. more then a toss or terran needs to, and therefore zerg is the hardest race, but if u are better, u win.
I find this hard to believe on some maps, I'm a Protoss player, and I know that if my opponent scouts my 4 gate (which to be fair he shouldn't if I'm being clever with my stalkers), I can still win by playing around with destructible rocks, and abusing the choke to minimise the effect of lings. It's a very strong build and on some maps it feels very easy to do as toss, and at a higher level I think the effect is almost amplified.
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i actually read the original post
basically, it appears that you have misconceptions about the other races from playing only as zerg far too much. when you play against other races, you really notice their strengths far more than their weaknesses. i also imagine that you don't feel like you get "outclassed" even nearly every time you lose in ZvZ.
i won't disagree if you believe that zerg requires higher APM at lower levels of play successfully. this is not the same as believing zerg takes more skill, nor is it the same as saying that zerg needs immediate changes (especially to scouting... zerg is the most mobile/best able to scout of any race- no question).
play the other races extensively. you'll find yourself thinking that zerg is, in fact, overpowered and that you aren't getting "outclassed" when you lose to zerg. it's just that when you become so narrow-sighted on one race, you lose perspective. i imagine that most people, from reading your post, would realize that you simply haven't played the other races enough to familiarize yourself with their actual abilities/weaknesses.
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I can understand it might be frustrating that when you hold an attack, your response unlike t/p will be to macro in most cases and take the advantage further, rather than cut the head off. It is however just as effective, I mean for the most part, if a terran as an example lost his whole army in an attack, he has lost. Sure there might be a bit of death rattles via drops, but by the time the army is back up and running, the zerg will have a 300 army, not to mention most of the initial units being the "counter"(well combo combined to counter) the terran units.
Another annoying point is, unless you have foxer rine micro, blings used well will be cost efficient. A bit of micro along with well placed tank shots and most importantly, never fighting on creep can make them not cost effective. I mean 2 blings that make contact kill like 5-8 rines(a bit microed), so for cost of 100/50 you kill 250-400/0. You need to make around 50% of the blings not make it, for them not to be cost effective... It is not easy for either player and those are the defining moments of the MU, how many rines are left after the blings die(if none = terran looses his army + map presence, if many = zerg looses his army and 1-2 hatches). Ofcourse terran can trade minerals for z's gas, but tbh I haven't really seen much issue with it. It's a smart move for the terran, mostly stalling tech, but it doesn't to me seem to cause much issues for gameplay.
Scan is also a decent thing to have, but it's at the same place as the supply drop, its neat but ideally you don't want to use it. Maybe the other races need stuff like that, which isnt' beneficial to use for the most part, but in certain situations is worth it. Personally I envy zerg for their overlords though..
Sensor towers, another gimmicky structure. I often use it, but for a pro gamer I'd imagine all the information you gain from it are rather useless, since you should know what is coming anyway. I mean it's just the lazy man's scouting(not to mention it is easy to mindfuck a terran with it, such as once a z used slow overlords to go into it, I was sure it was his blords and got ready to engage but was way out of position for his blords attack).
In the end, the races are different and that's only positive. Terran gets their tech early, but is slow producing said tech, not to mention the units being not that great. Zerg gets their units late, but when they are out, they are very hard to deal with. Toss is a bit in the middle, they come earlier, you can deal with them, but they are still painful. As I see it, if you feel zerg is bad, switch race... I'm sure you will find the things you complained about not *just* as simple as you might've thought.
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:O I thoguht this was common knowledge
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Opening post was great to describe the frustrations, BUT I think it's a bit overblown, I'm a zerg myself. And most my losses are just out of my own damn fault, 90% of the games at least. And people complaining about the race should just play more games and analyze your game more. Since it wouldn't matter if we got a super duper buff on ex ultras, people would still complain that it takes to long to get.
And furthermore, there is a lot of frustrating things, but most of it I feel like is inability to early scout properly vs terran. And maps is a bit pain in the ass, but nothing that cant be overcomed by training and fixing faults in your own play.
Let the proffesionals mabey have their discussions about balance and races, we who aren't should be more focused on just getting better.
If people we're discussing this vividly about how to play and become better, or how to get e-sports bigger. We would have a god damn tv-channel by now.
And no I am not in silver league, for those who are going to point that out at sometime.
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@jaeds
I think you're missing the point here... Zerg is UP, else there would be 18 zergs in top 20. But there aren't... there would be 3 zergs and 1 terran on GSL... but there aren't =/
Saying Zerg is OP a bit off, you know. Proofs?
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On January 26 2011 01:30 Buffy wrote:
And furthermore, there is a lot of frustrating things, but most of it I feel like is inability to early scout properly vs terran. And maps is a bit pain in the ass, but nothing that cant be overcomed by training and fixing faults in your own play.
i agree with these two sentences. protoss and terran both have the exact same problems with early scouting other terran. however, unlike zerg (overlords) and terran (scans), protoss requires a robo bay+observer+moving observer cross map before even hoping to notice tech trees from any information other than what's available from the front door. however, noticing what's at the front door tells soooo much more than most lower skill players realize.
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On January 26 2011 01:34 Muun wrote:
@jaeds
I think you're missing the point here... Zerg is UP, else there would be 18 zergs in top 20. But there aren't... there would be 3 zergs and 1 terran on GSL... but there aren't =/
Saying Zerg is OP a bit off, you know. Proofs?
i didn't say zerg IS op. i said if you play other races, you will feel like the races that you aren't playing as FEEL op.
ie. if you play terran, you'll be 50x more likely to think zerg and protoss are op
if you play zerg, you'll be 50x more likely to think terran and protoss are op
if you play protoss, you'll be 50x more likely to think terran and zerg are op.
this is simply because you notice the strengths of those playing against you so much more while they're winning without noticing the little things/risks they have to do to make it work.
as far as citing GSL January as a determination for racial balance, that's just absurd. i think it's incredible that one of each race has won at least once in only 4 tournaments (this season terran is a forced win, as tvt). zerg has won twice, protoss once. if you want to cite GSL, cite all of it. the fact that zerg has won 2 times doesn't mean zerg is overpowered. just one race has had to win at least twice in 4 times.
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As a protoss player I find playing versus zerg is very hard. Why? A zerg can outmacro me almost any time of the day. Granted I'm not the best player in the world, but there is only one effective tactic I have versus zerg, that I feel is even remotely stable:
-First delay zergs hatch with scouting probe, then do 1gas 4gate push and throw all my weight behind it to make it look like an all-in. Just instead of actually making it all-in, continue making probes and expand during or right after the attack. Retreat with units, if zerg seems to be too strong. Hopefully I've dealt enough damage to zerg economy that I can keep up with him.
Now sure, people say ZvP is P favored, and I see GSL protoss do many different things versus zerg players, but my own level zerg players (diamond) give me incredibly hard time.
Perhaps it's my non-cheesy nature, perhaps it's my inability to play properly, but I feel that zerg as a race isn't in as bad position as players say it is. But then again, I'm not a pro player or even in masters, so I wouldn't know about it.
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On January 26 2011 01:37 jaeds wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2011 01:30 Buffy wrote:
And furthermore, there is a lot of frustrating things, but most of it I feel like is inability to early scout properly vs terran. And maps is a bit pain in the ass, but nothing that cant be overcomed by training and fixing faults in your own play. i agree with these two sentences. protoss and terran both have the exact same problems with early scouting other terran. however, unlike zerg (overlords) and terran (scans), protoss requires a robo bay+observer+moving observer cross map before even hoping to notice tech trees from any information other than what's available from the front door. however, noticing what's at the front door tells soooo much more than most lower skill players realize.
Not arguing with that, but when players are hiding everything except 1 marine in the middle of their base and gets your overlord with that marine when you're sacking the overlord it's still a guessing game and your down 8 food and 100 minerals and still has no real info to go on whats coming.
Thats the only real frustrating thing about it atm, wouldn't have a problem with wallins for terrans otherwise, but thats something that can give you a thorn in your side and stick with you for a while. 
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Good read, but I can't quite agree with you on the 'protoss having best scouting unit in the game'
Overlords w/ speed upgrade go faster than obs, get a base scout, and overseers are faster than obs and can get a base scout. Now even though they aren't cloaked, they don't cost gas, and if you get the overlord speed upgrade (less than a robo, mind you) you have 50 or 60 'scouts' waiting!
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Great article. There's so much things wrong with zerg in this game. I stopped playing SC2 for the exact same reason: it's just frustrating losing to players a lot worse than you. Now I can really see the garbage that Blizzard made. I am becoming each day more disapponted with this game =/
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On January 25 2011 09:12 Salv wrote:
To be honest, whenever there is a thread like this, is should really only apply to top players. I'm confident that very few masters, and no diamond or below ranked people are losing because of an imbalance. So many mistakes are made by players except the very top that it's an inefficient way to spend your time. Couple this with the subjective experience evidence, and this makes for a thread that is frankly unnecessary.
This is an extremely annoying logical fallacy. I don't get why people keep forwarding it.
Oh, players are losing because they make mistakes? Great. Pros make mistakes too. But guess what? Their opponent makes mistakes as well.
Take for instance, player 1 makes 20 mistakes. Player 2 makes 40 mistakes. Yet player 2 wins.
Now if you watch the replay you might point out the 20 mistakes player 1 made and say "oh, if you didn't make those mistakes you could have won. The game is balanced."
Yet, the other player made 40 mistakes. Why is he winning?
That's why this argument is retarded. It shouldn't take flawless play to beat another player who is far from flawless. So stop acting like "It's your mistakes that cost the loss" is a valid response to someone's discussions about balance. Perfect play is what makes it possible for a shitty underpowered race to win, because it exploits the player playing the imba race's mistakes.
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Toss used to complain about FFs being unbalanced. Get them right you win, make one mistake and you auto-lose.
Then Toss players just sucked it up and learned to FF, and the QQ sort of petered out.
I'm still with you though, zerg has two major difficulties: so many melee units, so few buildings. Terran has all ranged units and a heap of buildings... it's quite an advantage.
I think some new defensive structure for Zerg will appear in the expansions. Until then... 
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EPT
