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[SC2] Zerg & Larvae Injection - Page 6

Forum Index > News
405 CommentsPost a Reply
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d(O.o)a
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
Canada5066 Posts
September 03 2009 03:33 GMT
#101
I'm curious, did you try a 1gate expand sort of build? or 2gate using zeals to force defense but never actually attacking or faking the attack and pulling back while adding an expo or something like that.
Hi.
ArvickHero
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
10387 Posts
September 03 2009 03:36 GMT
#102
On September 03 2009 12:08 Archerofaiur wrote:
I think this is kind of like if we were playing SC1 alpha and someone discovered that making workers all game was unbeatable. Of course you would have people saying making workers is overpowered.

to be honest, this was a really dumb analogy.
Writerptrk
Hot_Bid
Profile Blog Joined October 2003
Braavos36390 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-09-03 03:42:03
September 03 2009 03:41 GMT
#103
On September 03 2009 12:33 d(O.o)a wrote:
I'm curious, did you try a 1gate expand sort of build? or 2gate using zeals to force defense but never actually attacking or faking the attack and pulling back while adding an expo or something like that.

1 gate expand = instadeath to lings

1 gate into stalkers = might get ramp broken by lings

2 gate commit zeals to attack = death if the Zerg is decent

2 gate save zeals, get stalkers, pressure = maybe you win if you micro well vs hydras

FE = gigantic coinflip, if you guess right on defense you are probably even, if you guess wrong, you instadie
@Hot_Bid on Twitter - ESPORTS life since 2010 - http://i.imgur.com/U2psw.png
d_so
Profile Blog Joined December 2007
Korea (South)3262 Posts
September 03 2009 03:49 GMT
#104
thx for the writeup

maybe make this ability have diminishing returns in terms of cooldown: first time cool down is so and so, second time has an increased cd, etc. after a while it's so slow you have to make urself a new queen
manner
FabledIntegral
Profile Blog Joined November 2008
United States9232 Posts
September 03 2009 03:50 GMT
#105
On September 03 2009 11:13 tedster wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 03 2009 10:58 FabledIntegral wrote:
On September 03 2009 10:11 tedster wrote:
Everyone who feels that this could be fixed by simply making the Queen more expensive is missing the point - there is no choice when it comes to the Queen, and regardless of how much she costs Zerg still has to beeline straight to her, at which point they have a ridiculous economic advantage and unit production rate for the rest of the game.

This is stupid good on a number of levels, but Hot_Bid is the first reviewer to point out the craziest and most counter-intuitive issue - zerg now has the EASIEST time reaching mad drone saturation, instead of the hardest, and benefits from it more than any other race, since they can pretty easily reach infinite unit production rates (infinite larvae) with the smallest expenditure.


Not true - if you put the Queen later in the game, or the inject larvae at least, Zerg will be much more vulnerable early game to rushes, etc. It will also allow T/P to establish their positions on the field more. I heard a 2gate rush is quite hard to counter without the Queen. It will not only reestablish the entire concept of Zerg needing to go beyond 1 base play, but also force Zerg to play at a much slower gamepace, etc. T/P won't have to overcompensate on defenses as much either, and will have chances to throw in their own macro mechanics. Defending from rushes means less drone pumping and more unit pumping, which means they'll prob not be able to afford a queen as soon because all minerals will be spent on either units or more drones. Remember, spawn larvae only creates more larvae, you need minerals to actually buy the units.


If you move the queen to later game because it's too overpowered early game, you're basically saying zerg has to be as good early on (when it doesn't have a macro mechanic) as T or P when they do have their mechanic, which would probably throw the balance of power off even further as soon as the queen did come into play, all while making zerg easier to play. No matter where you put the queen in its current incarnation, it's going to create an imbalanced playing field unless the other races gain dramatic new macro mechanics.


How is that true? By what "rules" state that macro mechanics need to be introduced at the same part of the game to be balanced? It doesn't necessarily throw off the balance of power at all. Terran supposedly doesn't even use theirs too much early game, while Toss may have higher worker saturation by midgame thus increasing the yields even further with the mechanic.

I'm not arguing that it doesn't need to be tweaked, but you're overexaggerating the effects.
Hyde
Profile Blog Joined November 2007
Australia14568 Posts
September 03 2009 03:55 GMT
#106
This is a really nice write up, TL articles always are. There's a stark contrast between what you are saying in this article and what GamesReplay are saying, yesterday I was reading their article and thought "wow this sucks" because I didn't like the whole zerg are now a defensive race, I'm now still thinking "wow this sucks" because zerg are (particularly with this one build) too strong. It appears you are either equal in build or your are behind, you never actually have an advantage with the other two races no matter what strategy you take. Is the queen built really quickly? (what's the build time?) maybe sniping the queen early on may halt their production abilities early on?
Because when you left, Brood War was all spotlights and titans. Now, with the death of the big leagues, Brood War has moved to the basements and carparks. Now, Brood War is unlicensed brawls, lost teeth, and bloody fights for fistfulls of money - SirJolt
dcttr66
Profile Joined October 2003
United States555 Posts
September 03 2009 03:58 GMT
#107
On September 03 2009 08:36 toopham wrote:
good writeup. very interesting.

I am confuse about 1 part though.
In the Macro section you wrote:
"With Zerg you select your hatches, hit "S" to select all the larvae, and press "H" 10 times to make 10 hydralisks. Easy."

In BW you select the hatches, press S and it selects ALL the larvae. So why would you have to press H 10 times to make hydras?
Did they change it in SC2 where pressing H only use up 1 larvae?

my favorite reason for why they did this is that now you can select all and go like hhhhhzzzzz instead of selecting five, doing h and selecting 5 and doing z...it's a lot simpler and smoother this way.
Archerofaiur
Profile Joined August 2008
United States4101 Posts
September 03 2009 03:59 GMT
#108
On September 03 2009 12:36 ArvickHero wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 03 2009 12:08 Archerofaiur wrote:
I think this is kind of like if we were playing SC1 alpha and someone discovered that making workers all game was unbeatable. Of course you would have people saying making workers is overpowered.

to be honest, this was a really dumb analogy.


Why? The new macro mechanics are analogous to SC1's manual worker mining. Its something you want to do all game to increase your army size. If you tried playing SC1 without making any more workers I think youd have a tough time winning aswell.
http://sclegacy.com/news/28-scl/250-starcraftlegacy-macro-theorycrafting-contest-winners
Hot_Bid
Profile Blog Joined October 2003
Braavos36390 Posts
September 03 2009 04:02 GMT
#109
On September 03 2009 12:55 Hyde wrote:
This is a really nice write up, TL articles always are. There's a stark contrast between what you are saying in this article and what GamesReplay are saying, yesterday I was reading their article and thought "wow this sucks" because I didn't like the whole zerg are now a defensive race, I'm now still thinking "wow this sucks" because zerg are (particularly with this one build) too strong. It appears you are either equal in build or your are behind, you never actually have an advantage with the other two races no matter what strategy you take. Is the queen built really quickly? (what's the build time?) maybe sniping the queen early on may halt their production abilities early on?

Queen builds extremely fast and you usually have it out before your lings reach their base (that means the Queen has already spawned larvae and is ready if they rush you with zealots or marines. it also means that by the time 3 or 5 zealots get to your main, you have at least cycled through 3-4-5 regular larvae from hatch plus the queen's extra larvae which show up 25 seconds later.

rushing against 13-pool queen with Protoss is basically impossible, they make too many lings too fast. i guess it might work if you like proxy inside their main or something lol
@Hot_Bid on Twitter - ESPORTS life since 2010 - http://i.imgur.com/U2psw.png
Hot_Bid
Profile Blog Joined October 2003
Braavos36390 Posts
September 03 2009 04:06 GMT
#110
i remember a game where zatic went 3 rax marine, moved out, arrived at my base with 12 marines and i had 3 hydras and a queen, i pulled all my drones and they surround so well with the nicer AI, i lost half of the drones, all my hydras, but kept the queen alive and defended from the marines. made 7 drones immediately and then made hydras from 1 hatch and eventually won anyway, mainly because there was a back door path to bases that allowed me to walk in the back, snipe supply depots, walk out, then hit front when he went back to defend. shit was so imba since marines are slow.
@Hot_Bid on Twitter - ESPORTS life since 2010 - http://i.imgur.com/U2psw.png
Mystlord *
Profile Blog Joined July 2008
United States10264 Posts
September 03 2009 04:08 GMT
#111
Nice write-up. Never knew how powerful the Inject Larva ability was. Hopefully Blizzard fixes this or something.
It is impossible to be a citizen if you don't make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you're a nation of doods.
Hot_Bid
Profile Blog Joined October 2003
Braavos36390 Posts
September 03 2009 04:10 GMT
#112
On September 03 2009 13:08 Mystlord wrote:
Nice write-up. Never knew how powerful the Inject Larva ability was. Hopefully Blizzard fixes this or something.

There's still a chance we staff just completely overestimated it and missed something with T and P.
@Hot_Bid on Twitter - ESPORTS life since 2010 - http://i.imgur.com/U2psw.png
Nightmarjoo
Profile Blog Joined October 2006
United States3360 Posts
September 03 2009 04:12 GMT
#113
HAHAHA BEHOLD THE POWER OF MY ECONOMICS THEORY, only difference is that you get 4 larvae every 25 mana for 150 minerals instead of just 1 larva once for 150 minerals and 100 gas!
aka Lyra; My favourites: July, Stork, Draco, MistrZZZ, TheStc, LastShadow - www.broodwarmaps.net - for all your mapping needs; check my stream: high masters mech terran: twitch.tv/lyrathegreat
Plexa
Profile Blog Joined October 2005
Aotearoa39261 Posts
September 03 2009 04:17 GMT
#114
Why do I get the feeling Blizzard will "solve" this by putting hydras back at tier 2...
Administrator~ Spirit will set you free ~
ShadowDrgn
Profile Blog Joined July 2007
United States2497 Posts
September 03 2009 04:25 GMT
#115
Mazar raped me in ZvT and ZvP a lot with queen first builds into mass speedlings/banelings and roaches. I eventually got sick of it and started playing zerg. It's impossible to keep a scout alive on creep so I was really confused in that other thread when Chill said comsat isn't necessary in SC2. Maybe scouting with floating barracks is viable...

On September 03 2009 08:33 Hot_Bid wrote:
I mean, I'm not going to go up to David Kim and be like "yo Queen is imba" after playing 5 games with it. I know enough about StarCraft to know I'm not THAT good at it haha.


Mazar and I asked one of Blizzard's programmers about this and he thought David Kim got his queen a bit later. We tried to track down the SC2 bonjwa and get some insights, but we failed at finding him. Supposedly he spent a lot of time in the public SC2 area playing random people.
Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.
tedster
Profile Joined May 2009
984 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-09-03 04:29:16
September 03 2009 04:27 GMT
#116
On September 03 2009 12:50 FabledIntegral wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 03 2009 11:13 tedster wrote:
On September 03 2009 10:58 FabledIntegral wrote:
On September 03 2009 10:11 tedster wrote:
Everyone who feels that this could be fixed by simply making the Queen more expensive is missing the point - there is no choice when it comes to the Queen, and regardless of how much she costs Zerg still has to beeline straight to her, at which point they have a ridiculous economic advantage and unit production rate for the rest of the game.

This is stupid good on a number of levels, but Hot_Bid is the first reviewer to point out the craziest and most counter-intuitive issue - zerg now has the EASIEST time reaching mad drone saturation, instead of the hardest, and benefits from it more than any other race, since they can pretty easily reach infinite unit production rates (infinite larvae) with the smallest expenditure.


Not true - if you put the Queen later in the game, or the inject larvae at least, Zerg will be much more vulnerable early game to rushes, etc. It will also allow T/P to establish their positions on the field more. I heard a 2gate rush is quite hard to counter without the Queen. It will not only reestablish the entire concept of Zerg needing to go beyond 1 base play, but also force Zerg to play at a much slower gamepace, etc. T/P won't have to overcompensate on defenses as much either, and will have chances to throw in their own macro mechanics. Defending from rushes means less drone pumping and more unit pumping, which means they'll prob not be able to afford a queen as soon because all minerals will be spent on either units or more drones. Remember, spawn larvae only creates more larvae, you need minerals to actually buy the units.


If you move the queen to later game because it's too overpowered early game, you're basically saying zerg has to be as good early on (when it doesn't have a macro mechanic) as T or P when they do have their mechanic, which would probably throw the balance of power off even further as soon as the queen did come into play, all while making zerg easier to play. No matter where you put the queen in its current incarnation, it's going to create an imbalanced playing field unless the other races gain dramatic new macro mechanics.


How is that true? By what "rules" state that macro mechanics need to be introduced at the same part of the game to be balanced? It doesn't necessarily throw off the balance of power at all. Terran supposedly doesn't even use theirs too much early game, while Toss may have higher worker saturation by midgame thus increasing the yields even further with the mechanic.

I'm not arguing that it doesn't need to be tweaked, but you're overexaggerating the effects.



The basic idea that all 3 races should be viable at every point in the game is basic game balance. Obviously some races may have a slight advantage over others at specific timing windows, but the general balance should remain.

Testing of SC2 has shown that a player utilizing proper macro mechanics will absolutely slaughter a player who is not (similar to in SC!) On top of that, it's already been shown that Zerg suffers badly in the early game if they are not abusing Larvae Inject. Now, compound this fact with zerg being considered BY FAR the most limited race in options in the current build of SC2's early game, and you've got a situation where delaying the macro mechanic is simply impossible.

On top of all that, you're suggesting a significant delay to a mechanic that was added in because macro was considered too easy without it. Making zerg "good enough" to compete for a significant period of time without it removes the burden of macro and creates a very linear early game - which is part of what makes Warcraft 3 so boring to SC players.

Another enormous problem that you practically invite is how "Queen tech being delayed invites T and P to rush zerg early game before it comes out". I understand what you're trying to say (more play with zerg making units vs. drones instead of spamming both with larvae) but you're absolutely missing the point with respect to how this would destroy game depth. Admitting that spawn larvae is probably too strong and putting it at a higher tech with the intention that T and P should be rushing Z every game (in order to win before the queen comes out) and have an advantage in doing so is a horrible linear gameplay idea and would necessitate A.) Zerg being weaker than T and P in general for it to be fair and B.) T and P rushing Z every damn game. This is a bad solution and would result in a matchup far less interesting than the current ZvZ in SC1 that so many people seem to dislike.
the last wcs commissioner
Kennigit *
Profile Blog Joined October 2006
Canada19447 Posts
September 03 2009 04:29 GMT
#117
I think theres a lot of theory crafting going on in this thread that isn't relevant lol. Be cool dudes.
0neder
Profile Joined July 2009
United States3733 Posts
September 03 2009 04:32 GMT
#118
Interesting. It's nice that there will be multiple ways to balance it - cooldown time and the amount of larvae (maybe 3?)...
Pyrrhuloxia
Profile Blog Joined May 2008
United States6700 Posts
September 03 2009 04:36 GMT
#119
I'm pretty worried Blizzard will make the beta too short and not fix higher-level play. But we'll see. I don't get why it has to be 4 larvae, if they drop it to two or something that might help. It's just stupid that queen > expo for larvae.
tedster
Profile Joined May 2009
984 Posts
September 03 2009 04:38 GMT
#120
On September 03 2009 13:29 Kennigit wrote:
I think theres a lot of theory crafting going on in this thread that isn't relevant lol. Be cool dudes.


To be fair it is kind of a theorycrafting thread, and we're having fun =]
the last wcs commissioner
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