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Hot_bid (and others):
I couldn't really deduce from the article and this thread, but did you ever lose going 1-hatch into whatever in a serious game? And if so, what would you estimate your record was with that strat, like 35-0? With the other 15 games being offracing, general messing around etc.
Because if you never lost... then there must be something missing with the other races, yeah. Not that you guys "missed it", but Blizzard either needs to add something to help them keep up (I laugh to think of 20+ hydras coming in to break up a Protoss FE that early) or yeah, tone down inject larva.
It sounds like simply reducing it to 2 could work well, since it still more than makes up for the queen's 150 mineral cost, and it increases the value of hatcheries a bit more! Or maybe make it spawn 1 larva and have a short cooldown, to encourage you to go back to your base more often. Say like, 9 second cooldown, 1 larva spawn, make the mana cost free or like 5 energy. That'd keep you busy in your base, and probably would separate "pros" from lesser skilled players. It would also not hurt "as bad" for lesser skilled players not able to keep up with ti. It would be tedious, yeah, but so is managing several bases right now in SC without automining, etc. Maybe 1 would be too harsh though.  Just throwing ideas out there.
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Oh well, be prepared to have masses of zerg players when sc2 comes out =/ for those of us who were faithful z players in the old BW we're going to have to stick to zvz every game!
still beta is not even out yet, alpha stage is apparently not yet over thus there will still be a crapload of tweaking going on.
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I think it's natural to look at ways to nerf the queen herself (requiring gas, less larve, etc...), but I think there's some other interesting ways to balance her out. For instance, making Zerg Tier 1 units less cost-effective will put more pressure on Zerg to maintain unit count, or force them to have the better economy to stay even with the other races. Making drones even nominally more expensive could slow the curve a bit and give the other races a chance to keep up. I like the swarm nature of the Zerg and it'd be cool to find ways to maintain that OMG there's a million zerg on my doorstep feel.
I also think it's interesting that zerg economy and production becomes so centered around a relatively weak unit. I wonder if queen sniping will become a major focus of hit-and-run raids against the Zerg as SC2 progresses...
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What about that force field thingy to block lings? Wasn't that pretty low tier tech? FE Cannons into force field block? I guess then hydras comes? That's an awful lot of questionmarks. Oh well...
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Zurich15325 Posts
On September 04 2009 00:58 SoleSteeler wrote:
Hot_bid (and others):
I couldn't really deduce from the article and this thread, but did you ever lose going 1-hatch into whatever in a serious game? And if so, what would you estimate your record was with that strat, like 35-0? With the other 15 games being offracing, general messing around etc.
The only losses I remember were when the Zerg got too greedy and expanded early on pure drones and/or got his queen killed by early aggression. Basically if the Zerg fucked something up yeah, sure, they can also lose (Although I still won ZvP games doing the most stupid shit just because I could reproduce whatever huge numbers I lost in a second). I did not see a single game were a decent Zerg played a clean 1 hatch queen and lost.
To the guy suggesting to tech to DT: That does not work at all. DT tech is so expensive and so slow that Zerg can just run you over without detection if they want to, fuck those two DT trying to hack down 30 hydras with 20 more rallied.
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Sigh... Okay article. But all this just translates to the beta being delayed more, to me anyway. If Blizz thought Zerg was the weakest and a player who only tested for 2 days says they're the strongest... then wtf? What is happening with this game?!
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Where was this last blizzcon? This seems like an obvious imbalanced mechanic from what I've read. Queen being so cheap and being able to rapidly spawn larva sounds like something that more than one person would be able to figure out yet only hot_bid is able to figure this out and has to tell everyone? Isn't this common sense (150 min for a queen and spawns larva quicker than hatch, how is it not common sense to use this unit?) or maybe this a new build just for blizzcon?
It seems almost embarassing this hasn't been discovered until now and only by one person.
No one else made queens and realized this? It's the early game for christ's sake, the minerals would only exponentially increase late game... I'm just at a loss of words.
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On September 04 2009 02:35 PokePill wrote:
Where was this last blizzcon? This seems like an obvious imbalanced mechanic from what I've read. Queen being so cheap and being able to rapidly spawn larva sounds like something that more than one person would be able to figure out yet only hot_bid is able to figure this out and has to tell everyone? Isn't this common sense (150 min for a queen and spawns larva quicker than hatch, how is it not common sense to use this unit?) or maybe this a new build just for blizzcon?
It seems almost embarassing this hasn't been discovered until now and only by one person.
No one else made queens and realized this? It's the early game for christ's sake, the minerals would only exponentially increase late game... I'm just at a loss of words.
You have to keep in mind that there are other macro mechanics at work here. Who knows what David Kim is able to do with Proton Charge.
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On September 04 2009 02:20 GunSlinger wrote:
Sigh... Okay article. But all this just translates to the beta being delayed more, to me anyway. If Blizz thought Zerg was the weakest and a player who only tested for 2 days says they're the strongest... then wtf? What is happening with this game?!
This is how betas work too. Hell, i remember war3 beta where something would be found and change the entire meta literally overnight, like raider rushing or DH harass or frostwyrm rushing.
Of course War3 was pretty bad but the point stands
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On September 04 2009 02:35 PokePill wrote:
Where was this last blizzcon? This seems like an obvious imbalanced mechanic from what I've read. Queen being so cheap and being able to rapidly spawn larva sounds like something that more than one person would be able to figure out yet only hot_bid is able to figure this out and has to tell everyone? Isn't this common sense (150 min for a queen and spawns larva quicker than hatch, how is it not common sense to use this unit?) or maybe this a new build just for blizzcon?
It seems almost embarassing this hasn't been discovered until now and only by one person.
No one else made queens and realized this? It's the early game for christ's sake, the minerals would only exponentially increase late game... I'm just at a loss of words.
Plenty of other people figured it out, but they don't have the ability to post front page stories on TL about it. There aren't many opportunities for the public to play SC2 so it's not surprising that we're almost completely ignorant of build dynamics in whatever the current version of the game is. On top of that, Blizzard could have just been testing some tweaks out in the Blizzcon build and may have already adjusted this.
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SC2 beta (and the game) isn't being delayed due to balance issues. It's all the Bnet stuff, likely. Even in the beta, they could still change units completely, change tier tech, add/remove units etc. And they certainly will. Don't see the queen being (possibly) overpowered as the "reason" SC2 is being delayed.
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If some noob came on tl after playing a total 50 games of sc:bw, complaining about some matchup imbalance, what would be your response?
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On September 04 2009 03:24 hifriend wrote:
If some noob came on tl after playing a total 50 games of sc:bw, complaining about some matchup imbalance, what would be your response?
not really embarrassed for TL.net at all because there are many variables for why this wouldn't be noticed, like people are just playing for fun since the game will change in beta so there's no point in working on build orders and such
My gripe is with Blizzard, this seems like a momumental fuckup saying Zerg is the weakest and having this mechanic in the game and not being able to notice it. Seems completely incompetent and should be fairly obvious when they deisgned it.
Basically they are introducing these macro concepts into the game what seems like "just for fun" and to see "what happens" as if they put no thought or testing into them if glaring problems like this aren't realized.
Maybe I expect too much.
(Please, no one quote me and say the word beta, because the fact that it will be changed in the future is irrelevant to my point)
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Braavos36374 Posts
On September 04 2009 03:24 hifriend wrote:
If some noob came on tl after playing a total 50 games of sc:bw, complaining about some matchup imbalance, what would be your response?
well, we are going into SC2 with a far better understanding than noobs do into BW. we have a lot of experience already with BW-like RTS games. second, i'd say me, Chill, and Zatic, while by no means great players, are not exactly complete noobs making 3 pylons before gate.
and i didn't state things with 100% certainty in the article -- i said that we only had 50ish games to test and i wish we had more time. its still possible we were just completely missing things about P and T.
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On September 04 2009 03:24 hifriend wrote:
If some noob came on tl after playing a total 50 games of sc:bw, complaining about some matchup imbalance, what would be your response?
Point out why it isn't really an imbalance, complete with progamer vods to back up my statement (well, ideally. Most likely I'd be lazy and let someone else do that. But you get the idea).
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Braavos36374 Posts
Everyone needs to calm down with the overreactions to Blizzard not knowing whats going on or making an imbalanced game.
First, they probably are better than we are at playing this game. Second, they probably know exactly whats going on. If its imbalanced, they'll fix it. If it's not, then our first impressions were simply wrong. Remember, we didn't play that many games.
Ultimately, we really shouldn't react so wildly to just a few people's opinions.
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I'm curious how do you mass so many hydra's so early to overwhelm your opponent when Hydra's cost 100M/75G? Are you seriously suggesting that Zerg can outproduce Terran going 2Rax/Addon Marine into Medivac?
Terran can field 3-4 Marine for every Hydra.
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what if this idea just won't work at all? Maybe we just eliminate the queen or relegate it to another duty and have larvae spawn every 10 seconds?
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Awesome article, a prime example of what makes TL the best SC site on the net.
My thoughts on balancing it:
What if the inject created 2 larva at a hatchery, 3 at a lair and 4 at a hive?
And maybe make it so the queen cannot leave the creep so you would have to build a second one at the natural?
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On September 04 2009 02:35 PokePill wrote:
Where was this last blizzcon? This seems like an obvious imbalanced mechanic from what I've read. Queen being so cheap and being able to rapidly spawn larva sounds like something that more than one person would be able to figure out yet only hot_bid is able to figure this out and has to tell everyone? Isn't this common sense (150 min for a queen and spawns larva quicker than hatch, how is it not common sense to use this unit?) or maybe this a new build just for blizzcon?
It seems almost embarassing this hasn't been discovered until now and only by one person.
No one else made queens and realized this? It's the early game for christ's sake, the minerals would only exponentially increase late game... I'm just at a loss of words.
Unfortunately, you cant gather gas or minerals into queen, so you can't compare it with hatchery, but I think it should cost around 200 - 250. That would balance it a bit :}.
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EPT
