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On May 10 2011 06:39 aksfjh wrote:
Even being a "reactionary" race shouldn't entitle you to win a game, or even just gain a large advantage, just by memorizing a response flow chart. It's not like SC2 is like BW in the sense that 90% of winning is in the execution. In SC2, execution is so easy that it has to be radically adjusted every 1-2 months.
You realize that if a zerg builds creep colonies proactively in order to be able to morph them reactively if need be, he's putting himself at a disadvantage against a greedy player? The idea behind these changes is to reduce the disadvantage you get from playing safe, right now "safe" is making 2-3 spines blind which is a ridiculous disadvantage against a player who doesn't attack them.
On May 10 2011 06:40 Chill wrote:
Has anyone brought up how this was different in BW? Were allins weaker? Did they come later? Did people just resign themselves to playing "standard"? Were builds solid enough to absorb all-ins?
Because Zergs in BW were dealing with the exact same problems and still did fine.
Actually, yes. All-in's in BW were weaker, because in SC2 they're accelerated and strengthened by Mules, Chrono, Larva Inject, Reactors and the shorter rush distance (don't quote me on the last one). It's something IdrA brought up on SotG, I believe, the idea that the aggression is stronger, but the scouting and reactivity for all three races are (arguably) weaker, or at least not scaled to match with the improved aggression.
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i prefer the idea of pre-nerf (used to be 50/50) overlord speed at hatch tech honestly.
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On May 10 2011 06:39 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 06:08 Beef Noodles wrote:Please someone who plays all three races explain this to me!I will be as unbiased as I possibly can (read: still a little zerg biased). I only play at master level zerg/toss  but it's just so clear to me that toss have to worry about maybe 2-3 things early game (all of which are easily scoutable if you know what you are looking for) Zerg have to worry about 5-6 things (but with zergs terrible scouting you can normally narrow it down to 2-3 each game). But that is still 2-3. You often have to react differently, so it forces zerg to guess. We are not calling zerg UP. We are calling zerg a race of coin flippers. If toss/terran is all-ining or being highly aggressive, and we (zergs) guess correct, toss/terran is often screwed. But that isn't good game design. We don't care if zergs are winning or losing, the point is we are guessing! That's stupid. My question to this thread: why would it be a bad thing to allow fast spine/spore build time so that zergs could be REACTIONARY instead of preemptively have to guess if they need defense? I'm completely fine for buffing protoss/terran offensive units *IF* the spine buff makes zerg defense too strong. It isn't about strong or not strong, its about eliminating guessing. Please someone explain to me why that would be a bad thing? Because it's not "guessing." Believe it or not, there are tells in the Protoss' play that you are not personally able to see. It may require scouting the workers in his natural with a sneaky overlord, running 5 lings into his wall to see what he kills you with, or simply sitting outside his base with a ling. Even then, though, there is a good deal of educated guessing in what he is doing. Every other race must deal with the same thing. Even being a "reactionary" race shouldn't entitle you to win a game, or even just gain a large advantage, just by memorizing a response flow chart. It's not like SC2 is like BW in the sense that 90% of winning is in the execution. In SC2, execution is so easy that it has to be radically adjusted every 1-2 months.
First of all, if the player is aware and he snipes your overlord (which is 80% of the time in my case), you're out of of luck. And yes, while you might be able to tell the build they are doing by sacking lings in, this won't tell you a lot of things. Secondly, Zerg are much more vulnerable to all-ins than Toss and Terran are. This is the problem. If you're Toss and Terran you at least have some measure of defense because you can wall off, whereas Zergs can't wall off and they need an early expansion to keep up economically. I don't even get where you get the idea that having a faster reactionary defense would "win us the game".
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If a build time reduction of Spine Crawlers would "break" ZvZ, couldn't Blizz simply change it so that you cannot build on enemy creep unless your own creep overlaps? This would alleviate the early pool + spine builds that people seem to be scared of.
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On May 10 2011 06:39 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 06:08 Beef Noodles wrote:Please someone who plays all three races explain this to me!I will be as unbiased as I possibly can (read: still a little zerg biased). I only play at master level zerg/toss but it's just so clear to me that toss have to worry about maybe 2-3 things early game (all of which are easily scoutable if you know what you are looking for) Zerg have to worry about 5-6 things (but with zergs terrible scouting you can normally narrow it down to 2-3 each game). But that is still 2-3. You often have to react differently, so it forces zerg to guess. We are not calling zerg UP. We are calling zerg a race of coin flippers. If toss/terran is all-ining or being highly aggressive, and we (zergs) guess correct, toss/terran is often screwed. But that isn't good game design. We don't care if zergs are winning or losing, the point is we are guessing! That's stupid. My question to this thread: why would it be a bad thing to allow fast spine/spore build time so that zergs could be REACTIONARY instead of preemptively have to guess if they need defense? I'm completely fine for buffing protoss/terran offensive units *IF* the spine buff makes zerg defense too strong. It isn't about strong or not strong, its about eliminating guessing. Please someone explain to me why that would be a bad thing? Because it's not "guessing." Believe it or not, there are tells in the Protoss' play that you are not personally able to see. It may require scouting the workers in his natural with a sneaky overlord, running 5 lings into his wall to see what he kills you with, or simply sitting outside his base with a ling. Even then, though, there is a good deal of educated guessing in what he is doing. Every other race must deal with the same thing. Even being a "reactionary" race shouldn't entitle you to win a game, or even just gain a large advantage, just by memorizing a response flow chart. It's not like SC2 is like BW in the sense that 90% of winning is in the execution. In SC2, execution is so easy that it has to be radically adjusted every 1-2 months.
Of course there is information you can gain from observing. The point is, that if your opponent is competent, you will not be able to completely narrow down the options no matter how good you are. IdrA says this, nestea says this, sheth says this. They know how to use limited information. If you could narrow it down to 2 options, and they both had the same response, that would be fine. But the truth is, toss and terran have tons of all-ins (many of which look the same from a zerg limited scouting perspective) and they all have different responses. There is no way to prepare for them all and not be significantly behind.
That is exactly what we are arguing. Faster defense build times wouldnt negate all all-ins, but it would make them less strong. All-ins are soooo strong in SC2. People have been saying this for a long time now. It just gets so boring watching zerg get all ined, play very well, and just get caught off guard and lose (even if they tried to scout). In BW, allins were cool because a lot of them were REALLY hard to pull off.
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On May 10 2011 06:43 Treemonkeys wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 05:49 Vetrocide wrote:On May 10 2011 05:32 Treemonkeys wrote:
Zerg scouting is actually really fucking good. Between overlord spread and creep spread zerg can have vision of nearly the entire map at times. What is the trade off for this, if not a weakened ability to scout *inside* the opponents base? Have you even read this thread? Its about EARLY game scouting, which is also when zerg is weak. Overlord spread is only possible once you got lair and even tho you have creep spread all over the map, you dont have time to react to it. I can have creep at a terrans ramp fWhen he moves out I dont have time to react to it because build time of defensive structures are way too long. And if I DO build lots of lings IN CASE he is going to attack, and he doesnt im far behind, and most times even if you do deal with the push with your lings, you end up behind aswell, overlords are useless aswell pre lair. so no, zerg scouting is not ''really fucking good'' As idrA stated about LosirA vs Scfou. He knew the push was coming and he made enough lings to deal with it easily, but because he had too many lings he ended up behind anyways. Well you have to trade off some things for others, I don't think they could change the overlord without making it too powerful late game. Zerg speedlings are also really good early game scouts, making it easy to control the towers, constantly check the ramp, and deny scouting. There are also ways to make use of "too many lings", it is not so cut and dry and figured out like some people think. When you add up zerg early game scouting options I think it is quite adequate: Float overlords on edges of base to check gas and buildings. Keep speedlings outside of ramp to know the instant opponent tries to move out or expo. Poke speedlings up ramp to spot as much tech and unit composition as possible. Steal gas to reduce the amount of options to worry about or prepare for. Sac an overlord or two around the 5:30 mark for a potential gold mine of information and enough time to react to it. This is really not enough? "It's not like BW" Yes, but zerg can still win. How is this unfair for zerg? What pushes are we talking about that are too difficult to scout? 4 gate nexus cancel?
Sacking overlords RARELY works. It only works if the Toss/Terran is not paying attention.
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On May 10 2011 06:40 Chill wrote:
Has anyone brought up how this was different in BW? Were allins weaker? Did they come later? Did people just resign themselves to playing "standard"? Were builds solid enough to absorb all-ins?
Because Zergs in BW were dealing with the exact same problems and still did fine.
Sunkens were much stronger than Spine Crawlers, that much is definitely true. Mostly because units like the Marauder which can vaporize buildings didn't exist. Also the ability to put up a relatively cheap Creep Colony and only morph it into a Sunken if you needed to gave an added bit of flexibility that uproot just doesn't provide.
On the flip-side I think with more time to develop the game (like what BW has had) that all-ins will be figured out and have a specific response in specific situations. The game is too young for that to be the case in SC2.
I think a good example of that is ZvZ is one of the only matchups/situations where I'm starting to see that level of refinement from tip-top level players. I.E. running a speedling in at the right time to see exactly what your opponent is spending his injects on: Drones or Lings. This lets you squeeze out an additional round of Drones or prepare yourself for an incoming all-in instead of it being a coinflip.
It will take a while for this type of scouting and game knowledge to be prevalent though.
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I feel like the overseer on hatch tier would be a fair and simple way to address the Zerg scouting difficulties without shaking things up too much. But allowing them to use corruption that fast wouldn't be good, the early game is too delicate to allow Zerg to be able to start blocking your production buildings. So maybe the overseer could be hatch tech, and it'd gain the corruption ability upon upgrade to lair at no added cost?
I think that'd make all-ins far less powerful (though I'd argue they've gotten significantly weaker in the past little while already). The trouble is that if Toss/Terran can't EVER hold the sword of Damocles over Zerg's head, well, Zerg is the strongest macro race. That's the strange thing about Zerg...it's both incredibly fragile and powerful, and one wrong move in balancing the race will lead to either total Zerg domination or extinction. Radically improving Zerg's weak static defenses might end up breaking the game, whereas I think the overseer change is small enough that it wouldn't be too bad for Toss and Terran but would really help struggling Zergs.
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On May 10 2011 04:51 MangoTango wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 04:49 R0YAL wrote:On May 10 2011 04:45 MangoTango wrote:
Creep tumors already took over the role of spreading creep. What would Creep Colonies do that's unique? Creep colonies morphed into either a sunken colony or spore colony. It made it so that you could throw down a few creep colonies and quickly morph them into sunkens when desired. It makes Zerg much more flexible, I miss my creep colonies I played Zerg in BW, thanks. Spine/Spores are better in SC2 than 1, and the ability to move them around is already really good.
This kinda defeats the purpose of the thread, the point isn't what is better (spines/spores, sunkens,spores) it's the flexibility that creep colonies gave zerg, so they didn't have to commit to building defensive structures that they may or may not have needed. Besides, you had no motivation to spread creep in BW.
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On May 10 2011 06:25 Drazzyo wrote:
idrA and day9 agreed there should be no all purpose build. idrA said that would also be bad game design.
lol
Marine/Tank TvZ anyone?
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On May 10 2011 06:40 Chill wrote:
Has anyone brought up how this was different in BW? Were allins weaker? Did they come later? Did people just resign themselves to playing "standard"? Were builds solid enough to absorb all-ins?
Because Zergs in BW were dealing with the exact same problems and still did fine.
I think it was a combination of the game being slower (more time to scout), the all-ins being slightly weaker, the all-ins being much less varied, and the fact that defenders advantage was much stronger in BW (there wasn't warp in, and units in general took longer to traverse the map).
I think this last one is the most important, because in BW the stupidest/easiest all-ins to execute were proxies.
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Calgary25991 Posts
On May 10 2011 06:49 Jermstuddog wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 06:25 Drazzyo wrote:
idrA and day9 agreed there should be no all purpose build. idrA said that would also be bad game design. lol Marine/Tank TvZ anyone?
Marine/Tank is a unit composition. The post you've quoted is explaining that there should not be one build order that is equal or stronger against every other build order.
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The creep colony I think would not solve the problem of spine crawlers not building fast enough. I just think that having the choice between the spine and the spore crawler wouldn't change much. If you are talking about halving the investment that might have an effect but I just don't think it would do enough. The main target area in my mind has to be scouting because responsive defenses just seems to bring a lot more baggage with them. For instance, if you make the static defense more responsive it would have to be responsive to each scenario yet not too good that zerg could never die. Scouting on the other hand while it could also be overpowered has a lot more room for error in the way players can respond with the use of mind games so it is easier to alter.
I like the idea of zergs having to pay for early scouting but there is definitely a balance to be struck. I wonder if anything could be done to the overseer as well.
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On May 10 2011 06:14 dave333 wrote:
The about of misinformation of this thread kind of disturbs me. Yes it is true that toss/terran scouting isn't significantly better than zergs in terms of getting into a base, but the difference is that they actually have builds that are safe to everything except for things they can obviously scout. Between wall ins and force fields, marines and stalkers and sentries, a terran and protoss can be safe against anything as long as they play conservatively. They do not need to do a significant amount of scouting.
This is not the case for zerg. There is no buffer for zerg (FFs or wallins and repairing scvs with bunkers, floating a CC out). Zergs also lack a unit like the marine or stalker that is pretty all around. Zerg requires difference responses to different attacks, and not knowing what is coming will get you killed. This is not the case for protoss and terran.
That is the essential crux of the issue when it comes to scouting. Zerg actually need the scouting because they don't have safe builds.
Ah, but here's the problem with playing "conservatively." If a Terran or Protoss play's completely conservatively against a Zerg, they lose the battle of economies. It's kind of the same trade off Zerg takes with something like the crap Spanishiwa pulls. The minute Zerg spots stationary defense going up or something similar, it's a huge neon sign that says "MAKE 14 DRONES!!!" If P or T keeps with the turtle, they just start slipping further behind.
As for the crap about "they don't need to do a significant amount of scouting." In my TvZ, I spend the first 6 minutes of the game constantly poking and prodding the Zerg, not only to apply pressure, but to also understand what it is the Zerg is doing. I lose up to 300 minerals at times doing this, but I know by the time I've lost all that what kind of game I'm getting into. Before I did this, I lost a LOT of TvZs because I didn't know what the Zerg was doing. If you're telling me that 300 minerals worth of overlords, lings, and/or drones isn't enough to give you a good enough idea what the hell P or T is doing, then I can't help you and no amount of buffing to Zerg scouting is going to help you.
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I've suggested having creep colonies ever since the beginning of beta. It was the only way to react properly (and efficiently) to early M&M pushes in BW. Having 3 pre-made creep colonies was a nice in-the-middle investment that was fair to both sides. I honestly don't know why Blizzard removed them in the first place.
I can't tell you how many games in BW where I see the Terran move out with M&M and I had my creep colonies morph into sunkens just in time + some zerglings. Now not only did they not have the in-the-middle cost removed, they also made marauders which just rapes spines too. This makes these early pushes that much harder to hold.
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Guys I think we're all forgetting something.
SCII Spines do 20(+5) damage per shot.
SCBW Sunkens do 40 damage per shot.
They both have roughly the same attack rate.
Maybe that's what makes a difference?
Pre-laid Creep Colonies are also a much better reactionary defense than the Spine Crawler, which takes almost a full minute to build.
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Sc2 macro (mules, queen, chrono) is really too strong from 1 base, you can produce way too many units just from 1 base, it's scary sometimes. add to that you have to respond perfectly to the unit mix because of the hard counter system.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
On May 10 2011 06:59 Tracedragon wrote:
Guys I think we're all forgetting something.
SCII Spines do 20(+5) damage per shot.
SCBW Sunkens do 40 damage per shot.
They both have roughly the same attack rate.
Maybe that's what makes a difference?
Pre-laid Creep Colonies are also a much better reactionary defense than the Spine Crawler, which takes almost a full minute to build.
Sunkens do 40 explosive damage, marines are small units, so it only deals 50% of the damage, which results in 20 damage.
Spines do 40 damage against armored, the equivalent of large units in SCII.
The damage system is still different though, but it has more to do with the fact that Rines are much stronger(more hp, etc) but that is for another time.
They are still not nearly the same, but what you said about damage is wrong.
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If either point is made to be true, then it's a sad day for sc2.
Basically you want to never lose to a player taking a risk. Risks exist in the majority of competitive sports, they make it exciting.
A player taking a risk is putting himself into a win/loss situation, that he didn't need to be in. It's a gamble, its exciting when it pays off, or when it doesn't.
If you want to have a game of no risk, I suggest you don't play any sport involving a ball for the rest of your life.
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On May 10 2011 06:55 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 06:14 dave333 wrote:
The about of misinformation of this thread kind of disturbs me. Yes it is true that toss/terran scouting isn't significantly better than zergs in terms of getting into a base, but the difference is that they actually have builds that are safe to everything except for things they can obviously scout. Between wall ins and force fields, marines and stalkers and sentries, a terran and protoss can be safe against anything as long as they play conservatively. They do not need to do a significant amount of scouting.
This is not the case for zerg. There is no buffer for zerg (FFs or wallins and repairing scvs with bunkers, floating a CC out). Zergs also lack a unit like the marine or stalker that is pretty all around. Zerg requires difference responses to different attacks, and not knowing what is coming will get you killed. This is not the case for protoss and terran.
That is the essential crux of the issue when it comes to scouting. Zerg actually need the scouting because they don't have safe builds. Ah, but here's the problem with playing "conservatively." If a Terran or Protoss play's completely conservatively against a Zerg, they lose the battle of economies. It's kind of the same trade off Zerg takes with something like the crap Spanishiwa pulls. The minute Zerg spots stationary defense going up or something similar, it's a huge neon sign that says "MAKE 14 DRONES!!!" If P or T keeps with the turtle, they just start slipping further behind. As for the crap about "they don't need to do a significant amount of scouting." In my TvZ, I spend the first 6 minutes of the game constantly poking and prodding the Zerg, not only to apply pressure, but to also understand what it is the Zerg is doing. I lose up to 300 minerals at times doing this, but I know by the time I've lost all that what kind of game I'm getting into. Before I did this, I lost a LOT of TvZs because I didn't know what the Zerg was doing. If you're telling me that 300 minerals worth of overlords, lings, and/or drones isn't enough to give you a good enough idea what the hell P or T is doing, then I can't help you and no amount of buffing to Zerg scouting is going to help you.
Sending slow overlords in rarely works. Please understand this. If Terran walls in, the amount of scouting that I can do as a Zerg is minimal UNLESS the player isn't paying attention and accidentally allows an overlord in.
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EPT
