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(I'm only seeing this from a zerg perspective but I have devoted my life to zerg and only hope that this post can help spark further consideration for all races)
I want to discuss 4 things over all in terms of starcraft balance
1.) No creative compensation for zerg's "permeant sacrifice" functionality
2.) No proper defining strength of "the swarm" which would have helped against ranged races on starting position "high to low ground" maps (which is most all) or terran in particular.
3.) No thematic utility elements for all the races which would have helped cover a missing element of zerg's options "legitimate aggression"
4.) Terran has both the best and worst concepts for esports, the tech lab (best) and the planetary fortress (worst) which justifies my argument for why all of the above should be addressed.
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1.) The issue with the permanent drone sacrifice could be observed when they took the cost of the extractor which was half of the cost of terran and protoss' gas buildings 50 100 100 and made it 1/3rd the cost 25/75/75
The exactor never got the 6 broodlings or any broodlings at all upon its destruction which made it appear to be classified with defense structures while everyone knows that it obviously is not.
Later, you could play a version of broodwar in the starcraft editor that some skilled people had created.... in their interpretation the extractor didn't cost any minerals at all.
This only has shown that there is "suppose" to always be something got out of sacrificing permanently for something, otherwise that something sacrificed for needs to both "do nothing" which the extractor does, cost nothing which the extractor was being pushed to, and last.... have no build time requirement (to prevent the gas trick glitching).
Of course, there are options there to work with and the issue, overall, hasn't been the real significant issue with the sacrifice in regard to defense structures.
Defense Structures and Classification Problems: When they implemented the 2 supply queen that wasn't produced from any larva at all it was a disgrace to the concept of "proper classification" when zerg has to sacrifice a drone for a defense structure that doesn't cost any supply at all you can see how the over all picture is truly broken.
If they were to remove both the supply and the capability of upgrading from the queen and apply it to the spine and spore crawler it would then make proper classification sense. Defense that upgrades I say? Yes... as classification breaking as it sounds in general, it makes proper sense for the fact of what zerg has to sacrifice for. Now... if they want spines and spores to produce linearly at the hatchery and the queen to cost a larva instead, then they would have to make the queen a heavy defense in the classification of the spine and spore as they are now and then make spines and spores cheap and weak. Either way, the picture of justice can be seen now.
Any zerg would tell you that they would rather have a supply costing spinecrawler that can upgrade as opposed to a supply costing queen that can.
2.) To properly define the strength of the swarm you don't say "1 zergling many" (many used to describe the many hit points of life pool, rather, you define the swarm by the phrase "Many zergling 1" that is, many zerglings with 1 hp left. This vision for proper definition of the swarm is illuminated in its uniqueness and difference from the other races using Hegel(the philosopher) concept of "thesis plus anti thesis equals synthesis" that in order to get a 3rd body of uniqueness you combine the opposing factors of the other two. The other two factors in this case are "charge" and "stim pack". Notice that these things are in opposition to each other because you don't want to sacrifice and charge at the enemy simultaneously. But when you combine the two for the sake of the zergling you could use a different application of "leap sacrifice" where the zergling can leap in and sacrifice all its life down to 1 hp, using the life sacrificed as damage to the opponent including the basic damage on the attack.
That is my explanation for how the swarm itself has failed in a defining strength.
3.) No thematic utility elements for the races, but mainly zerg and protoss.
If you notice how they took the shield battery out of the game for protoss and were wondering if it was a nerf compared to the fact that terran can build a bunker which can salvage. Then you were right. There are "thematic utility holes" now in the race designs of zerg and protoss. I will start with how it could have worked with zerg
The swarmwreather: Created by merging the overlord with the spinecrawler (the spinecrawler is unlocked by the pool and not evo, showing its intention to be a part of utility for zerg) This unit is fully mobile everywhere and generally fast. It has the combined hp pools of the spine crawler and overlord but has no natural amor defense to speak of all though it can have its armor upgraded. Ground unit. If the swarmwreather is attacked it releases broodlings per so much life lost. It has no other attack form of its own. Your own units can attack the swarmwreather. The enemy will recognize the swarmwreather as an enemy warrior (fire at it) if it is the only unit of type in the vicinity but as soon as other warriors come in to the vicinity they take the position of priority target.
The swarmwreather can burrow and detonate, however... it can only detonate if an enemy unit is close by and the command of detonation has been acted.
Protoss: Protoss is missing "Quality Utility" thematic. Protoss could have a certain type of building to replace the shield battery which is somewhere between a bunker and swarmwreather, therefore moving around the map in a blink cooldown style that is of substantially different parameter then the stalker blink. Any units inside of the radius of this building have their shields "spirit linked" (wc3 term) or "unitied" (diablo term) to represent the concept of "Semi Mobile Quality" as a differentiating from the other races.
And that leads me to paint the thematic schematic picture over all for all 3 races
Bunker (positional utility ability: salvage)
Swarm wreather (mobile utility quantity: broodling)
Shield Uniter (semi mobile utility quality: unified)
4.) I know I haven't said much in terms of what terran should have in regard to the above but terran does have the quick tech unlock with tech lab for esport value and the planetary fortress as a natural defense that can be mass repaired. But if I would say that terran hurts in design anywhere it is with the reactor that parallels the zerg queen and does nothing more at all, costs gas. etc. I will say that when they gave terran the tier 1 marauder that counters zerg's ultra to a decent degree, they might have needed to consider the queen as "strong" against the marauder. But the proper defining of the swarms strength may be sufficient.
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I slipped up and said that a few people should be fired at blizzard entertainment, but I felt like i was only iumping on the bandwagon with everyone else who was frustrated.
That was my 3rd strike and now I have been perma banned before getting the best expression of the biggest picture to the devs.
Choose to support it or don't... i'm not going to go on rambling about this and that... the OP is only meant to open eyes to a situation and to be used for a progressive thought consideration in a direction we haven't considered, that is all.
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I still don't understand how does this happen to people
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You say you want to discuss balance from a Zerg perspective, but you only talk about design and philosophy, which makes your point not very clear (do you think Zerg need a boost? a nerf? or is just that the way the race is designed bugs your logic but you think game is balanced?)
Cause as far as I'm concerned, I m not really appealed by teh swarwreather concept, nor by the queen costing larva concept...
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zerg has little options? lol? what about terrans?
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On September 09 2016 00:33 MiCroLiFe wrote:
zerg has little options? lol? what about terrans?
That's actually the point I could agree with in ZvT to be honest. You have some nice variety in the composition that you can play, but I feel that you have limited strategic variety of the usage of these units, and very few all-in or even just timings attack. Whatever the map or the opponent, usually the best strategy you have is to survive with a 4th base until you get ultralisk. Sure you can do this in different ways and with different composition, but it's rather limited.
ZvP seems (to me) much better in that regard.
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Combining an Overlord and a Spine crawler, amazing.
10/10, would dream again.
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Canada8989 Posts
I always said it, everything wrong is ZvT and ZvP come from the extractor, can't belive they didin't fix it.
The fact that the zerg can't broodling rush by stealling the gaz completly negate the early game offensive capacity of Zerg. Pls David come on.
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AtlasMecha, a well know troll from bnet made his way to teamliquid.
People who like to read a lot about nothing at all, rejoice!
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On September 09 2016 00:57 GGzerG wrote:
Combining an Overlord and a Spine crawler, amazing.
10/10, would dream again.
It has to do with the fact that the overlord occupies larva and the sense that the utility value of vision only, which only relates to the natural vision of the unit itself, is almost incomplete for having come from a larva.
the other two options with larva would have been drone or warrior. the overlord coming from a larva doesn't necessarily diminish anything economically but in terms of offensive aggression it slightly does.
So if it occupies larva, I ask.... why can't it represent an aim of "aggressive trap setting utility"
or have a positional sense of aggressiveness out on the field
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On September 09 2016 00:28 Gwavajuice wrote:
You say you want to discuss balance from a Zerg perspective, but you only talk about design and philosophy, which makes your point not very clear (do you think Zerg need a boost? a nerf? or is just that the way the race is designed bugs your logic but you think game is balanced?)
Cause as far as I'm concerned, I m not really appealed by teh swarwreather concept, nor by the queen costing larva concept...
I don't necessarily think the swarmwreather idea is appealing perse, but when trying to figure out a more legitimate way for zerg to have a sense of offensiveness or aggression, there isn't much else one can fathom so it ends up being Utility Concept at best.
I will still hold firm to the two simple points on
1) The gas extractor
2) The zergling missing a "leaping life sacrifice" ability (as the perquisite to the baneling that it is)
Think about a zerg unit that transforms in to another unit for no additional supply cost, such as the overseer
The overseer pretty much takes the concept of the overlord initially and enhances it.
From zergling to baneling was not really an enhancement of the concept of the zergling, which supports my "Many Zergling 1" theory.
It is also worth mentioning that on Liquipedia it states nothing about the strength of a marine against a zergling or vice versa, only that the zealot is strong against the ling.
With out the mention of the marines strength against the zergling, it leaves one to logically deduce that the zergling and the marine are more of a beak even.
And if they had been more of a break even, then it would have promoted more counter unit play,
I'm not sure what this means in terms of fairness of balance... Like, would there need to be the old fire bat again? Or would terran have the option to mech or bio with out barracks access? Not sure.
But I do know that the hellion does not cost any gas at all and gets plus 2 on its splash per upgrade.
I wouldn't even mind a hellion buff or advancement of hellion function such as a speed boost in to a sacrifice of movement(position hold) for attack range.
so long as the ling gets a chance for this "leaping sacrifice" ability
All I would like to personally see is for a good counter system be in place.
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I will say though that I once had the idea for the "glass harassing" queen as an air unit. what the queen could morph in to but have -1 armor.
It was only a consideration for a legitimate offensiveness
But it seems to just be more illegitimate then not apparently
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I find it almost bad taste that people actually respond with posts that provoke him to vomit more nonsense
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One point that seems worth considering though is how the barracks unlocks the bunker, which is a utility concept that functions with offense.... not particularly a defensive classification.
The gateway and spawning pool could unlock their own "utility" concepts in cooperation with offense.
I described protoss' in the op
But I have a theory that the reason why the spinecrawler is unlocked by the spawning pool and not the evo is possibly due to the intuition that it was ultimately meant to be of utility use.
Which is why I merged the overlord and the spinecrawler in to the swarmwreather
It had this sense as well that, what is more proper then risking a "supply unit" for the sake of "free units"
so to speak.
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Swarmreather has nothing on the Hydraroach.
Just sayin'
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On September 09 2016 00:33 MiCroLiFe wrote:
zerg has little options? lol? what about terrans?
I think your options are there but it has to do with viable options.
Terran are suppose to be the race that is able to do more with less with its special units
hence that is why you have a tech lab attachment for each
I think the question comes down to this...
What units in the tech classification are not really qualifying in terms of doing more with less?
The tank with its nerf perhaps?
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On September 09 2016 02:20 DinoMight wrote:
Swarmreather has nothing on the Hydraroach.
Just sayin'
what is the hydraroach?
The swarmwreather could do something for zerg's tier 2 in particular when used in combination with hydralisk.
It's possible to see zerg as more of a tier 2 race potentially
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On September 09 2016 01:33 Nakajin wrote:
I always said it, everything wrong is ZvT and ZvP come from the extractor, can't belive they didin't fix it.
The fact that the zerg can't broodling rush by stealling the gaz completly negate the early game offensive capacity of Zerg. Pls David come on.
There is something to it isn't there?
I guess it came down to the fact that a gas extractor that costs no minerals or time construction would break too many classification rules
As well as an extractor that releases broodlings.
It's a weak point in design but would we really say that it is game breaking?
If the mineral warriors (zerglings) are not fulfilling their part to the "swarm strength"
Then maybe it is viable to say that zerg is not complete on the gas side of the spectrum instead.
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I do have one last think to consider
It is a fact that if there are 3 or more larva at a hatchery, the hatchery will naturally stop producing larva
It could be possible that this has degraded zerg's potential philosophy of "reactive trap setter"
I know that some players in broodwar liked to leave 2 maybe 3 larva available for the sake of producing as much offense as possible at a particular time to get the most out of the surprise raid reactivity
People might not see the point at all in sc2 because hatchery will naturally recover its larva through out the span duration of a spawn larva.
But if you always wanted to leave 3 larva at your hatchery to be "at the ready" for the incoming enemy then it would start hurting your natural larva production.
So.... what's the point?
If there was a conclusion that it was proper to play zerg with at least 3 larva always at the ready then they would have to figure out a way for zerg to gain in some way relative to the loss.
Maybe that gain would have came in the form of queen energy regeneration... and with that energy regeneration what would the queen do with it?
This would have been the perfect reason for giving the queen ensnare, the aoe speed slowing spell that did nothing other then slow movement speed and reveal units. Maybe it is in the unit revealing of the spell that it would be over powered?
But it seems like the whole reason for having ensnare was lost in the fact that the hatchery recovers 3 larva during the span of spawn larva anyways and a potential philosophy of zerg play was forgotten
but maybe it just would have been one more thing that would have hurt the aim for "e-sport aggression"
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Vancouver14381 Posts
If you only look at it from one angle, it's not really about balance.
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EPT
