I played almost exclusively Zerg at Blizzcon. I'd estimate I played fifty games as Zerg and then about ten as Protoss trying to beat certain Zerg builds. Instead of getting a limited understanding of a lot of different units and races, I decided to focus on one race and one mechanic: the Zerg Queen's Inject Larvae ability
Note: It's officially called "Spawn Mutant Larvae" but I like the imagery of a syringe injecting steroids into a hatchery. That's basically what the queen does -- make Zerg macro seem like its on crack.
Why I Only Talk About Tier One
The TL Staff that played SC2 extensively at Blizzcon aren't experts at this game once it advances past tier one tech. Nobody is an expert at this stage in the game's development. We were not even 100% sure of what unit counters what unit. Focusing on tier one interaction is easier. There are fewer complex units and timings to sort through. I only had two days. We threw out all sorts of fast tech builds because we weren't sure if they were viable against rushes. We spent most of the time rushing each other. I did this because I don't want to make an observation about a unit I don't understand. For example, we all thought Ultralisks were too good on Day 1, and on Day 2 a Blizzard employee told us Marauders absolutely destroyed Ultras. I don't want to say something like "Ultras are too strong" without being fully informed about it.
Of course we knew in general that an Ultralisk can kill 10 marines by itself. But it's impossible to say an Ultralisk is overpowered against marines without understanding the dynamics of tier one TvZ. After all, StarCraft is a game about economy. Tiny advantages early on in the game can lead to huge swings later on. So the more important question for SC2 players is not about specific unit statistics and damage outputs, but rather whether tier one interaction between races is balanced.
Thus, this article will mostly cover why Zerg is so strong early game and how P and T must react to 1-hatch Queen -- currently the most powerful Zerg build.
Micro
Before we get into my thoughts on Larvae Injection, I'll just say a few words on Micro. Yes, the units are fast. Zerglings are speedy little things. But compared to BW, control is so much easier with Zerg. Surrounds are easy. Movement is easy. Hit and run is easy. The infinite unit selection and smarter AI really helped Zerg the most -- it's so, so easy to use mass groups of Zerglings now, especially in the field against lots of units.
That said, don't be afraid of the human player not being decisive in battles. Who wins the battle, especially with combinations of ranged units, is still decided largely by the human player. The smoother unit AI does make melee battles easier for newbies, but its still largely dependent on how you as a player control your units. However, the late game advantage of being able to control a 100 Zergling group really is quite huge (at least compared to SC).
I can't really speak about Terran or Protoss, other than that storm was incredibly hard to cast against fast moving units because it doesn't execute instantly. Against Zatic's mutas I must have lost 4+ Templars without even landing a storm (often dying before the animation finished). If you land one it deals a ton of damage, but its like a guessing game, I have to predict where he'll fly 1+ second in advance. It seemed near impossible to hit his muta flock, and Zatic is no Jaedong.
Macro
I'm sure all of you know how MBS and macro work in SC2. You can select multiple buildings and hit a hotkey multiple times to make units. For example, with Protoss I'd select five gates, hit "Z" five times, and that'd make five zealots, distributed in the five gates. With Zerg you select your hatches, hit "S" to select all the larvae, and press "H" 10 times to make 10 hydralisks. Easy.
Each of the three races has an ability that is supposed to make macro more complex (or at least add more actions for the player to do). Protoss have a pylon that costs 200 minerals that can cast a spell that increases mining efficiency. Terran can build something that can call down a super-SCV that returns more minerals per mining trip. Zerg has the Queen, a unit that can make a hatchery periodically spawn four extra larvae.
The Zerg Queen and Larvae Injection
First, let's get to know the Queen better.
It costs 150 minerals and 2 supply and can be made from any hatchery (requires Spawning Pool), and doesn't use a larvae
It has a ranged attack which is relatively weak, but can easily kill scouting workers.
It can hit air, but its not a very strong anti-air unit by itself
It moves fast on creep and extremely slow off creep
It has abilities other than larvae inject. It can heal stuff and make creep. To be honest I didn't use these abilities at all.
For 25 energy, it adds 4 extra larvae to your hatchery. These four larvae come out together after 25 seconds. Then you use the Queen's ability again.
The macro abilities for all three races do add additional tasks for the player. You have to manually go and perform them. But since Blizzard made their timing very convenient, each ability can be used consecutively. For instance, the Protoss Obelisk effect wears off just in time for it to be cast again. This makes larvae inject very, very easy to use. You see the larvae pop out, you inject with the Queen again. You will do this all game. Perhaps if Blizzard made the cost and duration of the macro abilities mismatch, it'd be harder to use. Right now its basically like sending your workers to mine, except a different ability. If its easy for me, it'll be like nothing for progamers.
For P and T there's some player choice -- you can choose to get an Obelisk or Mule later. The mineral cost for those things is significant. But for Zerg, you basically MUST get a Queen asap. There's no real other choice -- the Queen is that good. It would be worth it just for the larvae even if it didn't attack. But it has a ranged attack, so it is valuable in ZvZ (can kill scouting Overlord) and allows you to kill scouting workers more easily. This is a nice bonus, but 90% of its value is in the larvae it can make.
Why Larvae Inject Is Crazy Good
Basically, for 150 minerals, you get more than a hatchery's worth of extra larvae. That means off one hatchery, for 150 minerals and 2 supply, you can simulate a 2.5 hatchery production. Larvae inject is really easy to use and I had no problems remembering to do it every time. I had two fully saturated bases making hydras, and I only needed 2 hatcheries to keep up. Two hatches + 2 Queens = roughly 5 BW hatches. Yes, that's scary.
What's really strong about Larvae Inject is that its infinitely more flexible than the T and P macro abilities. I can use it to make drones or lings. Couple that with the better chase AI and ranged Queen attack, the enemy scout almost always dies before they can see what my extra 4 larvae spawn. That means I often have 6+ larvae available to make either speedlings or drones, and the opponent has no clue which I'm going to make. It often becomes that guessing game we are all too familiar with in BW -- is the Zerg rushing me? Except this time you have even less scouting worker information.
Larvae injection leads to more drones than P or T can make. I remember Chill and I just built workers for the first few minutes of the game (he went 14cc and I went 2 hatch + Queen) and the supply count was 60-40 in my favor.
Remember in BW when a Zerg would sacrifice eco for a large early army, win a battle, then make a round of drones? You can do the same thing in SC2 but its 7 larvae instead of 3. That means that everything is compounded. Zerg can choose to have an insanely strong early game army or choose to make a ridiculous number of drones or a combination of the two. That means if you lose a battle early with P or T against Zerg, expect to lose. There's no coming back -- either there are 14 lings hatching to finish you or the Zerg has another saturated base up already.
Why Did Blizzard Think Zerg Was Weak?
People kept saying how Blizzard thought Zerg was the weakest race. Either they didn't look at Larvae Inject very carefully or they didn't play against many 1-hatch builds, because 1-hatch speedling and 1-hatch hydra are ridiculously powerful. Like laughably powerful. I won most of my early games as Z against other TL players simply by abusing the Queen, mostly to my opponent saying stuff like "WTF LOL" when being attacked. Keep in mind these are not all-in builds like they would be in BW. Failed attack and low drone count does not equal death like it did in BW -- you will have enough defense and larvae to recover economically.
I remember talking to Chill about first impressions, and he said he thought Zerg sucked. He obviously didn't know how abusive larvae inject could be (most people didn't). So we played a Bo3 with money riding on each game, and he predictably died to 1-hatch allins, first ZvZ and then ZvT. It wasn't even close. If BW is your reference point, you just don't expect that many units that early. He quickly switched over to the "Zerg is insanely good" camp afterwards.
In fact, every staff member, after playing against a larvae inject abusing Zerg (usually me) felt Zerg was the strongest of all the three races -- the exact opposite of what the Blizzard employees supposedly thought.
How Does Larvae Inject Change The Matchups?
In general, 1-hatch Queen powered Zergling rushes are incredibly scary and easy to die to. If you move out too early, you're going to die. Unfortunately, because your scouting worker dies so fast, you have no idea as a T or P what the Z is doing. He could have 30 Zerglings or 2 Zerglings. You really don't know, and you can't scout it with a worker. The safest thing to do would be to produce a ball of units or get to tech that isn't afraid of a lot of Zerglings. The problem with this strategy obviously is if the Zerg chooses to power drones instead. Early on, the T and P players must play cautious and defensive -- you don't know what the larvae are being used for.
The biggest change is that Zerg no longer needs more bases. It doesn't even need two hatcheries. You can fight toe to toe with T and P off one saturated base and one hatchery with a Queen. Those early minerals normally spent on a second hatch go right into drones or units.
Zerg vs Zerg
Its basically the same as regular old Brood War. Of course the supply timings are all different because workers return 5 minerals instead of 8, and gas mining rate is obviously changed, but you basically go 1-hatch pool, gas, and get a Queen right away. Since your ovies can die to the Queen you don't have full scouting information like in BW. Its very, very hard to do anything other than mass Zergling. A two hatch or non-Queen build is suicidal, you'll be overrun instantly.
I've heard people say Roach > Ling > Hydra > Roach, but frankly games never last that long. They are decided at the Zergling stage of the game. The standard build is 13-pool, which is 10 drones (your supply cap is 10 off one hatchery+ovie) and then 3 more drones and a pool. Usually you get ling speed right away too, and a Queen right after the pool finishes. Once the Queen finishes and you inject larvae for the first time, you'll have 3 larvae + a few more + the 4 that the Queen made. That's a lot of potential Zerglings. If you continue to make only Zerglings off one hatchery, you are producing them at the BW equivalent of 2.5 hatcheries. Except off one hatch and at an earlier timing. It sounds unfair, but in ZvZ at least your opponent can do it too.
The defender really has an advantage because the Queen can be used to help your Zergling group, but if you manage to snipe his Queen early on, you are usually very ahead. After securing an early game advantage, you usually can make whatever higher tech unit you want to finish it.
What about T or P Fast Expand?
FE doesn't work because the Zerg can make so many Zerglings or Hydras off 1-hatch, it becomes a guessing game as to how many defensive structures to build. Again, scouting is harder because of improved chase AI and the Queen.
There are some funny stories of players trying to FE and then having a hilariously lopsided idea of how many units the Zerg was attempting to break with off 1-hatch. I don't know whether this is just weird, ingrained BW timing (2-3 cannons --> Nexus --> more cannons if needed for PvZ FE) or if its just impossible to FE. I'm leaning towards "impossible to FE" on maps with non-ramp naturals. Its just so easy as Z to hide your unit count and bust the front.
For instance, the first game Zatic FE'd PvZ, he had 3 cannons and 2 Zealots and was starting his core and warping more cannons when I attacked with 20+ Hydralisks. It's very, very easy to hydra break. That's why FE is bad.
Zerg vs Terran
12-hatch (13-hatch in SC2) really is too risky here, especially since 2-hatch isn't better production than 1-hatch+Queen anyway. It's not worth it to expose yourself to a rush risk. Two hatches isn't better than one, because the second hatch isn't worth 300 if you don't get a queen with it. I'd rather just make drones off my first hatch (since you have more larvae to use). If you get a Queen with your second hatch, you have way too much larvae for that stage of the game. Thus, every build was 1-hatch queen -- its the most flexible and you don't have idle larvae.
Zerglings early on aren't very good because Terran can wall very easily. But the threat of Zerglings will keep the T's marines in his base. The build I used was a 1-hatch hydra, which turned out to be ridiculously strong. Because Zerglings with speed are so good in the open terrain early on, the T can't really move out until they have a unit other than the Marine. By that time you will have Hydralisks. A lot of hydralisks. Even if they move out early with Marines, you can have Hydras in time to stop it, especially with the Queen to help defend.
Larvae inject allows you to reach the drone count necessary to support 1H + 1Q (~2.5 hatch production in BW) insanely early. You then just continuously inject and pump hydras. Most maps have a back door, so you either break that down or crush the first Terran attack and expand. It's kind of stupid how easy it is, especially when the hydras are faster than marines.
Yes, Hydras are bad against siege tanks. They are really, really bad against them. Games that go to late game are invariably won by massing a lot of tanks (which look really cool by the way). But the 1-hatch Hydra attack comes so insanely early that it really doesn't matter how fast the Terran techs. If he doesn't build a lot of marines and defense, he's going to die to 1-hatch Hydra (especially on maps with backdoor paths).
After dying the 10th straight time to 1-hatch hydra, we TL Staff were at a crossroads. We could go and test how the other Zerg units worked, or we could try to figure out how to beat the ridiculousness that was 1-hatch Queen Zerg. We chose the second option, and played a ton of games TvZ and PvZ against larvae injection abuse.
I know intrigue did the SC2 version of vulture into wraith, and many people tried mass marines and medivac, but I don't think we found a solid answer to what beats 1-hatch Hydra TvZ. You simply could not tech fast enough with T and at the same time hold such an attack. And you need those tech units to beat large groups of Hydras. We were stumped. When 1-hatch hydra can beat 3 or 4-rax marines... it might be time to concede larvae inject is too strong.
Zerg vs Protoss
The Zerg can go 2-hatch here if it wants to be super abusive, but its not necessary. 1-hatch Queen is more than enough to make drones or units early on. Zealot rushing doesn't work because the Queen can help defend, and rallying two gates to the Zerg base is just wasting money and delaying your tech. If you commit to a Zealot rush early, the Z will simply produce enough lings to kill your Zealots then make a billion drones because there's no more threat of attack. Even if the Zealot rush does a ton of damage, as long as the Zealots die and the Zerg stabilizes defensively (keeping the Queen alive), recovering drone count is easy and fast with the extra larvae.
But that does not mean you can skimp on zealots, because you need them to live and more importantly to force the Z to not spend all his larvae on drones. Larvae inject allows the Z to drone up far quicker than you'd expect, and you have to keep him at least conscious of a possible rush. Because of this, Zerg can expand much faster than the Protoss because the P cannot FE and handle hydras in time. Zealots are weak by themselves against Hydras, but Stalkers can fight them relatively evenly. The problem is you never have enough money to make enough Stalkers, expand, and tech at the same time. Storm and Colossus easily kill hydras, but you rarely ever reach that tech level without being severly behind in eco.
In PvZ, You simply don't have enough gas. You have two gas in your main, but the mining rate is quite reduced. You need gas for Stalkers, for your Citadel, for your Archives, and for your Templars and Storm research. Or you need gas for your Robo and the 300/200 Colossus. By the time you have enough of those units to safely move out and kill a Hydra group, the Zerg has expanded all over the map and saturated every base.
Usually this happens:
1. You make a lot of defensive stuff to expand or tech to anti hydraling units (Templars, Colossus, etc). The Zerg sees this, makes exclusively drones and expands. Larvae Inject allows him to achieve a ridiculous economy at exponentially fast rates. He has better upgrades, basically infinite larvae, and you get run over by whatever unit he decides to mass.
2. You make a lot of low tech attacking units to force the Zerg to make defense. Maybe he misjudges how much you have, and you win with a rush. If he's smart though, he makes just enough lings or hydras to defend, and your tech and expo are extremely late and he runs you over.
Conclusion
If you were to compare the three macro abilities, Larvae Inject is clearly far better than the Mule or the Obelisk. Far, far better. But is it too strong? I think so -- but I'm not sure. We only tested the game for two days, mainly trying to find holes in early game Zerg 1-hatch play. We didn't find many. Could Blizzard have completely overlooked how strong this ability is? If Korean Pros with far better mechanics than us were to use it, they'd never miss an inject timing and have even cleaner and more flexible Zerg macro. Maybe we were just playing T or P wrong. Maybe the maps were not balanced. Maybe the Zerg player was just better -- though I really doubt I'm any better than any TL Staff there.
Does Blizzard need to nerf it? Or is it one of those things that the players will have to self-balance? We'll see. On the second day towards the end of play, we felt we made some real progress PvZ against 1-hatch Queen. It still felt like you were climbing a mountain against Zerg though. If the this version stays as it is, you'll see just about every Zerg go 1-hatch Queen into some sort of low tech attack. Either that or fake it and make a million drones. Get ready for some coin flipping!
After Blizzcon 2009, I can safely say that because of Larvae Injection, the Zerg Queen was the single most important unit in StarCraft 2.
I barely used mutas or roaches, so I'm not very informed about them. I know mutas die very fast and don't harass well (at least against Terran).
I used almost exclusively Zerglings, Hydras, and Ultralisks. I only played against other TL members and staff. Most games were either me killing my opponent with some sort of 1-hatch attack, or crippling them so badly that I made 10 Ultralisks.
We spent 90% of the time trying to "solve" (ie not die to) a 1-hatch hydra attack with T or P. Obviously you could survive it if you built 10 cannons at your ramp, but then you just die 5-10 minutes later. It was very difficult to find a viable build and win without the Zerg screwing up badly somehow.
Our impression was once you got the hang of larvae injection, it was very easy to play as Zerg and very difficult to play against Zerg.
I don't think anyone survived the first 1-hatch hydra attack they faced, it was quite funny some of the reactions. We'd tell the person we're going 1-hatch hydra break and they'd still die.
how do developers fail to notice such obvious flaws? in almost every game i've played (or one that's been updated with a new patch), some glaring problems that would've been obvious in a few rounds of games show up and you wonder what they're doing in internal testing
hopefully you guys just overlooked something in terran and protoss, but then again, how are noobs supposed to counter that shit if it's not so obvious :3
On September 03 2009 08:22 paper wrote: how do developers fail to notice such obvious flaws? in almost every game i've played (or one that's been updated with a new patch), some glaring problems that would've been obvious in a few rounds of games show up and you wonder what they're doing in internal testing
hopefully you guys just overlooked something in terran and protoss, but then again, how are noobs supposed to counter that shit if it's not so obvious :3
I hope we missed something too, but it really doesn't seem that way :/
Even if we missed something, it really shouldn't be that easy to 1-hatch allin someone, and so extremely hard to defend against it without sacrificing all your eco/attack power.
As for noobs countering it, they're just going to build a lot of defense and die to ultras later. That or there will be maps with easily defensible back natural gases, but who wants turtle for 15 minute games? Not me.
Damn beat me to it. I am in the process of writing an article about this exact thing.
I remember having a conversation with Chill, and Kennigit. I cant remember if you were there or not hotbid.
I dont normally get in a ranty mood but I had 3 hours of sleep and had just witnessed a lot of zerg. I had zerg and larval spawn on the brain, give me a break.
My basic argument was that early mass seemed dominant over teching or expanding. (Chill quickly noted tvt which I had yet to witness at that point. You are totally right siege tanks totally own any marine mass up btw. I was stunned). These comments were directed at larval spawn and zerg in their various matchups.
My experiences were precisely the same. I agree wholeheartily with this article.
I remember talking to a random TLnetter about which race he thought was strongest, he said Zerg sucked, I said let me 1-hatch break you, he said OK, we sat down, he tried to tech to siege tank and got 1 out before dying to 20 hydras. I think there were at least a dozen other people watching going WTF.
On September 03 2009 08:25 azndsh wrote: no mention of the PvZ that I won? biased reporting imo...
The PvZ you won I didn't go 1-hatch Queen, I went 2-hatch and had about 60 extra larvae sitting around unused early game because I didn't have money to make drones hehe. Like I said, if P can get enough gas, the MU seems fine. Its just you can't defend and tech and expo all at the same time like normal BW PvZ and TvZ.
We played a few more games later where I used the more optimal build (I didn't mention those either lolol). Like I said, its really really hard to play PvZ or TvZ if the Zerg doesn't make some huge BO blunder or micro mistake early on.
The Zerg in me hates you for releasing this fact, but my objective self is thankful, so that everyone doesn't jump on the Zerg bandwagon just to win, and so that the games are not always one sided in anything with Zerg, that isn't ZvZ.
Great write up. Too bad you (probably?) didn't play any Blizzard developers/testers/David Kim with the 1-hatch builds. If this really was overlooked, I would have liked to see their thoughts on just how good zerg is after getting crushed by these strats.
I think the major issue is with normal Brood War PvZ and TvZ, you can saturate better than the Z because he has to use larvae to make units not workers. But in SC2 you can actually do it simultaneously -- keep up workers and build enough units -- all off 1 hatch.
And as for P and T FE's against Zerg, the reason they worked in BW was the ability of those two races to tech to units that beat Zerglings and Hydras early game while expanding. That won't fly in SC2, as your expo is just going to get broken.
On September 03 2009 08:30 beefhamburger wrote: Great write up. Too bad you (probably?) didn't play any Blizzard developers/testers/David Kim with the 1-hatch builds. If this really was overlooked, I would have liked to see their thoughts on just how good zerg is after getting crushed by these strats.
Well I wasn't sure if I was right or not until toward the end of Day 2.
I thought I was just missing something completely about T or P (heck, I still might be missing something). But as we played more games it seemed more and more like the Larvae Inject was overpowered.
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.
I have to say, I haven't been excited since the teaser trailer in 06 until right now. Cool stuff!
Also that writeup that someone posted in the SC2 forum from that other site? You made them look like they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. Hats off to ya!
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?
I imagine that Spawn Larvae is deliberately OP right now... Blizzard in the past has repeatedly said how they tend to make new abilities and units initially too powerful in order to encourage their use, and then pare them back over time as needed. Given this report and corroborating accounts, I can easily see Blizzard scaling back Spawn Larvae in terms of either mana cost, refresh time, or # of larvae produced after a few weeks of serious beta testing.
On September 03 2009 08:38 talismania wrote: I imagine that Spawn Larvae is deliberately OP right now... Blizzard in the past has repeatedly said how they tend to make new abilities and units initially too powerful in order to encourage their use, and then pare them back over time as needed. Given this report and corroborating accounts, I can easily see Blizzard scaling back Spawn Larvae in terms of either mana cost, refresh time, or # of larvae produced after a few weeks of serious beta testing.
In an earlier build i played in cologne the injection would just create 3 drones and even then it seemed overpowered. Apparently they did not see it back then, even further overpowering it at the later blizzcon build.
I still don't understand why they can't just either have the queen require gas to build, or have "inject larvae" as a tech to research at the hatchery (or even potentially lair). Thus the queen would still be viable to hold off rushes but the inject larvae ability would be more midgame, and you wouldn't have to worry so much about early game balance.
You should've challenged David Kim to a Bo5 with that build. I have extreme doubts that Blizzard even knows how overpowered 1 Hatch hydra is, and that most of them are even decent players themselves :l Maybe this is a sign they should hire new playtesters..
I agree whole heartedly. Larva inject was simply monstrous. If you had the presence of mind to do it on every hatch late game, you could be at 200/200 with like 70 larva on 6 hatches. You exchange armies, then you rebuild it 5 times faster than the enemy. It's destructive.
Lol I wish I could have seen the WTF LOL reactions to all the busts 5 min into the game. I for one know that even reading about it makes me laugh at the ridiculousness of expanding, putting down a bunker with 4 marines in it and watching 25+ hydraling stream into my base lol
Woah! Sweet writeup. If the early injection is too powerful then have you considered maybe blizzard making it upgradable or maybe changing the way it works? Either that or someone has to come up with builds from P and T that can counter it :/. Pretty damn interesting man, cant wait to play it!!
To add to this, i didn't play nearly as much as hotbid, zatic chill and intrigue but when i played hotbid's zerg it was ridiculous. In one game I tried expanding with T at what i felt was a safe timing based on the amount of maurader/marine that i had...hotbid flew some mutas in and they died pretty easily to turrets/marine...i thought i was safe, i even had a bunker sitting in front of my nat CC when all of a sudden 100 hydra's appeared and completely raped me. I remember typing "what the fuck is this shit" before leaving.
It's not that big a deal because obviously the numbers can be tweaked to balance it. What i found more interesting is everyone saying zerg is weak and then that Gamereplays article suggesting that Zerg is the defensive race...what? It's the complete opposite, T and P are completely in the dark and i had no idea how to react because i simply didn't know what zerg was doing.
well the good news is it seems simple to fix. What if blizzard just makes it spawn say 2-3 extra larva rather then 4. Then your basicly working off 2 hatch again right?
Wasn't mentioned so... disruptor impenetrable walls should make zerglings instantly useless on a FE... then tech straight to stalkers. Of course I wasn't there, but based on the battle reports, that was the strategy.
It seems so obvious that the overpowering of the queen is because you get her so early, wouldn't a 50-100 gas cost force a later queen and balance (at least a bit) this?
It seems like a lot of the problems arise from the queen being such an early game unit. It can be made from a spawning pool for crying out loud. Moving it back to lair tech would probably fix the issues of T and P being blind in the early game (delay the rush), and encourage the zerg to tech.
Thanks for this writeup! Personally, I think having 3 Larvaes pops out will be just fine but even that would be imba. I think the Queens should atleast get SOME gas before its reproduction or have it ability researched.
Exciting article. The zerg macro mechanic is really interesting since it's very different from that of the terran and protoss. Terran and protoss both receive a boost to their mining, meaning they should theoretically have more money than the zerg to work with, whereas zerg saves a ton of money on extra hatcheries.
The real trick for Blizzard here is to make make T/P's added income and zerg's money savers cancel each other out. Currently it sounds like zerg is saving way too much money and gaining way too much production for virtually nothing. T/P has to spend a lot of time and money building up production facilities whereas the zerg simply has this added production for the cost of 2 supply and 150 minerals.
I'm sure Blizzard kind of overpowered inject larva on purpose to see how people were going to abuse it (I think I remember reading somewhere that the ability originally spawned 3 larva) and will correct it in due time
Is it possible that Spawn Larva is supposed to be this powerful. From what ive heard the Obelisk can pretty much give protoss all the minerals they want. So you basically have unlimited unit production versus unlimited minerals.
Did the Protoss players you were playing against have an abundance of minerals? Were they using Proton Charge regularly? Or is Spawn Larva really that much better then Proton Charge?
I kind of had the same feeling as hot_bid when it comes to the queen. Maybe if they made her more frail or require a lair it would balance everything out. I don't really thing inject was TOO over powered but it definitely didn't seem like a T1 ability.
Possibly have a different macro option (that costs energy) for her (to keep up with P and T not over take them) and make the injection trainable at lair as to preserve the early defensive capabilities.
Wow.. just wow... Best news Ive read as of late, after reading all the negative stuff about zerg, especially reading gamereplay.org's review right before this one.
I know it was just 2 days of experiment, everything will be balanced by the game is on the market, but it just feels really really good and resfreshing to hear some awesome stuff about zerg for the first time.
On September 03 2009 09:49 Archerofaiur wrote: Is it possible that Spawn Larva is supposed to be this powerful. From what ive heard the Obelisk can pretty much give protoss all the minerals they want. So you basically have unlimited unit production versus unlimited minerals.
Did the Protoss players you were playing against have an abundance of minerals? Were they using Proton Charge regularly? Or is Spawn Larva really that much better then Proton Charge?
I didn't get to play with them but in my games i was using proton charge regularly the entire game and constantly had a mineral/gas imbalance. You simply don't get enough gas to tech any faster and against that many extra zerg units, 20% more zealots/cannons aren't going to matter.
On September 03 2009 09:57 yh93kim wrote: If Blizzard was informed of this, SC2 will be delayed until 2012.
It's a big problem with many viable solutions. Just to illustrate the things they could do:
1. Increase the mana cost. 2. Increase the length of the spell. 3. Make queens cost more (minerals, or maybe make them cost gas). 4. Put queens higher up the tech tree. 5. Make their spell researchable for gas. 6. Some other alternative, like producing a queen will make that hatchery not have any larva until the queen is produced, for example.
And you can obviously use any combination of the above to balance it. It's just a question of what path they choose and how well they playtest it.
What an awesome article. that's so damn funny that zerg has become so strong. My only regret is that I wasn't there to see it before any (at least if you guys are right) upcoming nerf.
Very nice write up. And I belive at this stage (from what I can see in OP post) zerg 1 Hat play is just too strong. And I belive it will be balanced thru some time. As SC:BW took it time to get where it is now I belive SC2 will be balanced more quickly just becouse its community and becouse Blizzard will (hopefully) invest more time from start to make it more balanced.
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.
Zerg can go Sauron right from the start, because they get a million drones and a million larvae without having to give anything up. This also means that harassing zerg workers will be worse than harassing every other worker type, because they can rebuild them in a single wave of larvae with only a 25 sec recovery time from virtually any harassment. That dumbs the game down tremendously and means that zerg can focus entirely on overrun tactics all over the map, expanding everywhere, and ignoring defense for the most part.
These are all really big problems and, while nothing says zerg has to have specific characteristics displayed in BW, the current required gameplan is linear and uninteresting, and it's because of spawn larvae.
Basically, where the T and P mechanics provide an economic advantage or a slightly better tool for what they already do, Queens make Z better at every conceivable avenue of gameplay, simultaneously.
The difficulty scouting zerg is just icing on the cake (coin flips rule)
On September 03 2009 10:05 ArvickHero wrote: So.. did the guys playing P try using Forcefeild to FE with? I think that would help a lot against super crazy ling rushes and hydra breaks
What a cool write up HB, I see how the "inject larvea" ability could be way too abusive.
Tell me, do you think that making the queen a melee unit (not able to kill scout/overlord fast) would make this ability less abusive?
Also, they could lower the injection count couldn't they? So that the Zerg player has to precariously balance their play and make sure they have exactly enough fighters to defend, while having a steady but not overpowered expansion/dronepump rate.
The game should be balanced so that a Zerg player doing this perfectly should have the same economic/industrial rate as a Protoss or Terran doing this perfectly.
The game would become more interesting because it would focus more on a Jaedong/Bisu/Flash style of play, either having just enough to defend while expanding or having just enough to trick/break the opponent. It would be all about economic management. The player who does this best wins.
This is also easily testable, 2 skillful testers could agree to share vision, see how many offensive units eachother has (or agree not to make any) and simply pump, they can now see who has more military power/pump power after this explosion of economy. If one pumps faster/better by doing the same thing it's imbalanced, and should be tweaked a little. After the game the players can check stats like resources/second and units/second and judge the comparative military power of both players.
On September 03 2009 08:06 Hot_Bid wrote: After Blizzcon 2009, I can safely say that because of Larvae Injection, the Zerg Queen was the single most important unit in StarCraft 2.
Jeez, after such a huge wall of text, we find out that the queen is still just as overpowered as it was in SC1...
Seriously though- very nice read, thanks for the writeup :D
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?
I was thinking about this too. Normal BW 9 hydras is 4sh5sh6sh=9 keys pressed. SC2 9 hydras would be 4shhhhhhhhh=11 keys pressed.
Must say it was a really nice and entertaining writeup. Hats off really.
On September 03 2009 10:11 Ideas wrote: how did you guys get to play it so much? I only got to play it like 10 times
Press pass.
Off-topic: Kennigit thanks for recommending "The Game" by Niel Strauss, it's a really interesting story and has sparked a huge interest in psychology for me. I read about 500 pages in the span of 24 hours
dont know why, but this larva injection kinda reminds me of the really early days of magic the gathering; there were crazy combos to get basically infinite mana, then you could cast some dmg dealing spell, which would kill the enemy instantly. Really nice catch hotbid, although how the ass did blizz not figure this out? seems so obvs. No joke, more then playing SC2, I am looking forward to playing an SC2 mod for BW.
On September 03 2009 10:48 vaderseven wrote: How much did map size and map layout effect this build of sc2?
Is it possible that we will see maps that allow for FE terran to work vs zerg or maps that are absolutely huge so that rush timings occur later?
I just have the blizzard sc1 maps in my head and how they really did NOT favor anything close to a macro game.
This won't matter with the current queen setup because the queen lets zerg build up a giant macro machine faster, too. Being able to sauron zerg right from the beginning is going to be crazy good regardless of map size =/
Sounds a lot like Starcraft 1.00-1.03, where the devs didn't understand just how fast zerg could grow so hatcheries spit out larvae at 1.5x their current speed and built in less time. Additionally, hydralisk build time was shorter and greater spire was faster to build. Sunken colonies were worthless, but you had so many units it didn't matter.
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.
I'm not arguing it's not imbalanced or some shit like that or that merely making it more expensive would be the solution. Personally I'd like to see "spawn larvae" continue to spawn something like 4 larvae for a very expensive mana cost, maybe significantly more than it does now. Also spawn larvae could be researchable for something like 100 gas, and a Queen spawns with 0 mana unlike most units that have some. If it costs the same to build, however, Queens can still be used in fending off rushes, etc.
EDIT: Note the post wasn't addressing the fact that it might be superior to P/T mechanics for hte rest of the game, rather rushing to queens would be just as viable, etc. It'd def help the early game and transition into midgame, which is the time that Zerg has Toss/Terran in the dark.
I remember in early versions of SC that the wraith had an upgrade that allowed it to even have a ground attack - maybe have that with the queen as well so it's harder to kill scouting units.
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.
I remember in an earlier build, hydras were at lair tech. Although the possibility of 1 hatch lings still exists, do you think moving hydras back to tier 2 would solve some of the current imbalances?
Woah, thanks for the article. After reading on others sites what they thought about Zerg, I was very sad.
But after reading your article, I think it's just a matter of how you play the races. People are playing SC2 with the BW mind and start making assumptions that aren't true.
If Zerg stays the way you said it is (mass units), I'm gonna be happy. And if it needs to be balanced, Blizzards' gonna do it, that's not an issue.
My only conclusion to this is if Blizzard doesnt attempt to tweak the Queen, T or P who managed to counter the 1-Hatch strategy would easily be crowned as bonjwa.
though I dont see how is that possible, 1-Hatch seem like a pretty solid strategy with no obvious weakness. Maybe Terran can float buildings to Z main as alternate way to get info since SCV would surely died to Queen.
What if the Queen's spawning ability wasn't as effective early game but gained effectiveness later on as you went higher in the tech tree. This would not only prevent such early advantages but allow the zerg to keep up as the game gets to late game.
Like start with only one or two larvae that can be spawned. And as you upgrade the ability you can get more larva per spawn. This would allow the zerg to still have this ability early game but not be able to use it to gain as large of an advantage as they would have with the origional ability. This would also keep the queen as Level one tech without eliminating the ability or the unit altogether.
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.
On September 03 2009 11:43 uglymoose89 wrote: What if the Queen's spawning ability wasn't as effective early game but gained effectiveness later on as you went higher in the tech tree. This would not only prevent such early advantages but allow the zerg to keep up as the game gets to late game.
Like start with only one or two larvae that can be spawned. And as you upgrade the ability you can get more larva per spawn. This would allow the zerg to still have this ability early game but not be able to use it to gain as large of an advantage as they would have with the origional ability. This would also keep the queen as Level one tech without eliminating the ability or the unit altogether.
I don't think this, increased costs or later tech are the proper solution. Maybe my take on it isn't accurate, but it sounds like Inject Larvae breaks the philosophy of Zerg itself, that is numerous/expansive bases and a critical choice between army and economy. Zerg outnumber their opponents, so it just makes no sense that Zerg should be able to play late game against P/T on just 2 bases. I don't think they'll take the route of increasing mana cost simply because they want it to be a new component to macro like the P/T equivalents. Casting it once every 150 energy instead of 25 energy is a huge difference in your econ management. Maybe a better solution would just be to reduce the amount of larvae added.
Also, thanks for the article HB, and I'm also impressed with your idea behind it. Instead of making a worthless complete summary of the race based purely off FUD *coughGameReplayscough*, you chose something very specific so that you could try to understand all the dimensions of it. Very smart move.
On September 03 2009 11:43 uglymoose89 wrote: What if the Queen's spawning ability wasn't as effective early game but gained effectiveness later on as you went higher in the tech tree. This would not only prevent such early advantages but allow the zerg to keep up as the game gets to late game.
Like start with only one or two larvae that can be spawned. And as you upgrade the ability you can get more larva per spawn. This would allow the zerg to still have this ability early game but not be able to use it to gain as large of an advantage as they would have with the origional ability. This would also keep the queen as Level one tech without eliminating the ability or the unit altogether.
I don't think this, increased costs or later tech are the proper solution. Maybe my take on it isn't accurate, but it sounds like Inject Larvae breaks the philosophy of Zerg itself, that is numerous/expansive bases and a critical choice between army and economy. Zerg outnumber their opponents, so it just makes no sense that Zerg should be able to play late game against P/T on just 2 bases. I don't think they'll take the route of increasing mana cost simply because they want it to be a new component to macro like the P/T equivalents. Casting it once every 150 energy instead of 25 energy is a huge difference in your econ management. Maybe a better solution would just be to reduce the amount of larvae added.
Also, thanks for the article HB, and I'm also impressed with your idea behind it. Instead of making a worthless complete summary of the race based purely off FUD *coughGameReplayscough*, you chose something very specific so that you could try to understand all the dimensions of it. Very smart move.
Or Individual Lava upgrades per queen? So you have the choice of waiting for like 150 energy to boost total amount of Lava up to a maximum of 4 (from 2 or something) or just keep shootin them out? That way when you get a new expo, you need to keep making the decisions. Just an idea though.
On September 03 2009 11:43 uglymoose89 wrote: What if the Queen's spawning ability wasn't as effective early game but gained effectiveness later on as you went higher in the tech tree. This would not only prevent such early advantages but allow the zerg to keep up as the game gets to late game.
Like start with only one or two larvae that can be spawned. And as you upgrade the ability you can get more larva per spawn. This would allow the zerg to still have this ability early game but not be able to use it to gain as large of an advantage as they would have with the origional ability. This would also keep the queen as Level one tech without eliminating the ability or the unit altogether.
I don't think this, increased costs or later tech are the proper solution. Maybe my take on it isn't accurate, but it sounds like Inject Larvae breaks the philosophy of Zerg itself, that is numerous/expansive bases and a critical choice between army and economy. Zerg outnumber their opponents, so it just makes no sense that Zerg should be able to play late game against P/T on just 2 bases. I don't think they'll take the route of increasing mana cost simply because they want it to be a new component to macro like the P/T equivalents. Casting it once every 150 energy instead of 25 energy is a huge difference in your econ management. Maybe a better solution would just be to reduce the amount of larvae added.
Also, thanks for the article HB, and I'm also impressed with your idea behind it. Instead of making a worthless complete summary of the race based purely off FUD *coughGameReplayscough*, you chose something very specific so that you could try to understand all the dimensions of it. Very smart move.
But my idea wasn't just later tech. The ability remains at the lower level just not as effective as it is right now. But higher in the tech tree the ability would gain potency. The upgrades to make more larvae per cast coupled with a higher energy cost would help alleviate the problem of zerg being able to power drones early on that easily.
On September 03 2009 11:43 uglymoose89 wrote: What if the Queen's spawning ability wasn't as effective early game but gained effectiveness later on as you went higher in the tech tree. This would not only prevent such early advantages but allow the zerg to keep up as the game gets to late game.
Like start with only one or two larvae that can be spawned. And as you upgrade the ability you can get more larva per spawn. This would allow the zerg to still have this ability early game but not be able to use it to gain as large of an advantage as they would have with the origional ability. This would also keep the queen as Level one tech without eliminating the ability or the unit altogether.
I don't think this, increased costs or later tech are the proper solution. Maybe my take on it isn't accurate, but it sounds like Inject Larvae breaks the philosophy of Zerg itself, that is numerous/expansive bases and a critical choice between army and economy. Zerg outnumber their opponents, so it just makes no sense that Zerg should be able to play late game against P/T on just 2 bases. I don't think they'll take the route of increasing mana cost simply because they want it to be a new component to macro like the P/T equivalents. Casting it once every 150 energy instead of 25 energy is a huge difference in your econ management. Maybe a better solution would just be to reduce the amount of larvae added.
Also, thanks for the article HB, and I'm also impressed with your idea behind it. Instead of making a worthless complete summary of the race based purely off FUD *coughGameReplayscough*, you chose something very specific so that you could try to understand all the dimensions of it. Very smart move.
But my idea wasn't just later tech. The ability remains at the lower level just not as effective as it is right now. But higher in the tech tree the ability would gain potency. The upgrades to make more larvae per cast coupled with a higher energy cost would help alleviate the problem of zerg being able to power drones early on that easily.
I know but you're still faced with the problem (and I do think it's a game design problem) of Zerg 2 basing. Now min/gas requirements might force them to get to 3/4 bases, but the unit production with that is still just off the charts, and within 30 seconds of that 3rd base going down, it can be fully drone saturated while the 1st hatchery works on other units.
I know that latter part is theorycraft, but for the people who played 1hatch builds extensively, do you think Zerg can hold their own lategame with 2 hatch (ignoring the ridiculous tier1 advantage they're currently getting)? I mean simply production wise.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
i think that Blizzard made all of the macro mechanics far too easy to use. if its easy for 120 apm noobs like me and zatic to use, its going to be NOTHING for Bisu to use the obelisk every time it reaches 25 energy. make the energy recharge and duration different so that its not so easy to use
i was just larvae inject, 25 seconds later use my extra 4 larvae and inject again, repeat all game.
On September 03 2009 12:59 Archerofaiur wrote: 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.
Making workers all game doesn't favor one race. Terran and Protoss can't 1-hatch queen, and their macro mechanics aren't nearly as strong as larva injection.
A more appropriate analogy would be how in the early builds of SC, all zerg buildings made larva for their respective unit types (e.g. you made zerglings with spawning pool larva, drones with hatchery larva, etc.)
Another idea could be that the injected larvae can only make drones so its is more for econ macro than unit macro (like the other two macro mechanics).
That's a good idea, because one of the main reasons larvae inject is so imbalanced is because its a macro mechanic that can be used to make fighting units not just workers. P and T mechanics are limited to only getting you minerals.
(Yes I understand all the mechanics have alternate abilities, like the Queen can heal some bio structure or something but 99% of the time we didn't use it)
On September 03 2009 13:43 MaTaAeRuKaNa wrote: so to sum it all up, z imba. right?
We think its far too easy to macro with 1-hatch and its much harder to play PvZ and TvZ. This doesn't mean its imba, just that at low levels its hard to play against Z. Just like in regular BW, rushes seem overpowered because noobs don't know how to properly micro to defend them. Of course we are better than average noobs, but I haven't eliminated the possibility that we were simply missing something about PvZ and TvZ. We did try a lot of things, and we played 50+ games.
Another idea could be that the injected larvae can only make drones so its is more for econ macro than unit macro (like the other two macro mechanics).
I think this is the only solution, though doing so will just make Z back to the title "Weakest"
On September 03 2009 13:43 Hot_Bid wrote: That's a good idea, because one of the main reasons larvae inject is so imbalanced is because its a macro mechanic that can be used to make fighting units not just workers. P and T mechanics are limited to only getting you minerals.
(Yes I understand all the mechanics have alternate abilities, like the Queen can heal some bio structure or something but 99% of the time we didn't use it)
Unfortunately this doesn't really work because you can just use all the normal larvae for units and the rest for drones. This would actually make your gameplay even MORE linear because all regular larvae = units, all injected = drone. Obviously you can't instantly make 14 zerglings from one hatch but with even a slight planning ahead you still have:
-way too easy drone saturation -econ that is super resistant to harass (back to full drone count in 25 secs after dropship lol) -tons of spare larvae for army -tons of spare drones to mine/build extra hatches which still give you access to tons of fighting units
While you'd be unable to whip out 20 hydras 5 mins into the game, you'd still be consistently outproducing once you got past the early game. Sauron zerg is really cool but probably shouldn't be the goal every single game. On top of that, the whole "rebuild after worker harass for free" might actually be even worse.
Seriously, think of how goofy responding to a siege drop by injecting 8 drones for 50 mana would be.
On September 03 2009 13:43 Hot_Bid wrote: That's a good idea, because one of the main reasons larvae inject is so imbalanced is because its a macro mechanic that can be used to make fighting units not just workers. P and T mechanics are limited to only getting you minerals.
(Yes I understand all the mechanics have alternate abilities, like the Queen can heal some bio structure or something but 99% of the time we didn't use it)
Unfortunately this doesn't really work because you can just use all the normal larvae for units and the rest for drones. This would actually make your gameplay even MORE linear because all regular larvae = units, all injected = drone. Obviously you can't instantly make 14 zerglings from one hatch but with even a slight planning ahead you still have:
-way too easy drone saturation -econ that is super resistant to harass (back to full drone count in 25 secs after dropship lol) -tons of spare larvae for army -tons of spare drones to mine/build extra hatches which still give you access to tons of fighting units
While you'd be unable to whip out 20 hydras 5 mins into the game, you'd still be consistently outproducing once you got past the early game. Sauron zerg is really cool but probably shouldn't be the goal every single game. On top of that, the whole "rebuild after worker harass for free" might actually be even worse.
Seriously, think of how goofy responding to a siege drop by injecting 8 drones for 50 mana would be.
how can you possibly arrive at a conclusion about a theoretical balance change on an issue that there isn't even a consensus yet about. we're like 3 levels of theorycraft removed and you're talking about it like its fact.
i mean, this is like saying oh hey if we create a race of super goats that solve the world's hunger problem because they can produce some type of special goat cheese, should we feed them regular grass or nutrient enhanced hay? and then you come in and say "well nutrient enhanced hay won't work because X. like X was super obvious, hello!?
I just wanted to add to that that the queen has been as powerful since the larvae injection thingy was introduced. The build I played at the Regional Finals in Cologne was a couple of months old and Zerg using early queen was just as strong there too. And that was before BR#3 and the interviews where they said Zerg is the weakest in Blizzard inhouse testing.
Btw Hydra were tier2 in that build and you would overrun your opponent with roach/ling. Everyone who suggests to put hydra back on tier2 completely misses the point why the queen is so strong.
On September 03 2009 13:43 Hot_Bid wrote: That's a good idea, because one of the main reasons larvae inject is so imbalanced is because its a macro mechanic that can be used to make fighting units not just workers. P and T mechanics are limited to only getting you minerals.
(Yes I understand all the mechanics have alternate abilities, like the Queen can heal some bio structure or something but 99% of the time we didn't use it)
Unfortunately this doesn't really work because you can just use all the normal larvae for units and the rest for drones. This would actually make your gameplay even MORE linear because all regular larvae = units, all injected = drone. Obviously you can't instantly make 14 zerglings from one hatch but with even a slight planning ahead you still have:
-way too easy drone saturation -econ that is super resistant to harass (back to full drone count in 25 secs after dropship lol) -tons of spare larvae for army -tons of spare drones to mine/build extra hatches which still give you access to tons of fighting units
While you'd be unable to whip out 20 hydras 5 mins into the game, you'd still be consistently outproducing once you got past the early game. Sauron zerg is really cool but probably shouldn't be the goal every single game. On top of that, the whole "rebuild after worker harass for free" might actually be even worse.
Seriously, think of how goofy responding to a siege drop by injecting 8 drones for 50 mana would be.
how can you possibly arrive at a conclusion about a theoretical balance change on an issue that there isn't even a consensus yet about. we're like 3 levels of theorycraft removed and you're talking about it like its fact.
i mean, this is like saying oh hey if we create a race of super goats that solve the world's hunger problem because they can produce some type of special goat cheese, should we feed them regular grass or nutrient enhanced hay? and then you come in and say "well nutrient enhanced hay won't work because X. like X was super obvious, hello!?
I know it's just theorycrafting, and I'm not really talking about the balance implications so much as whether it makes the game more or less linear. I strongly believe that any balance issues will be addressed over time and jumping on them now doesn't accomplish much at all. I'm more interested in how "open" the game is and how viable different options are.
Looking at mechanics like the T and P macro abilities, for example, you still gain a great deal from killing a worker. P in particular, they lose both the mine time and the "cracked out" mine time, so there's a proportionate loss in resources that even effects the macro mechanic. T can "recoup" some of the losses by skimping on scans, etc. and use a MULE to help make up for lost workers, but they still are behind in the overall worker framework and have to rebuild them, one at a time, and suffer proportionate loss in economy as time passes. Z, on the other hand, could (under the proposed injection policy) rapidly throw up 4-8 drones without slowing down unit production... which somewhat makes the "drones vs. army, especially when being harassed" decision-making process a lot less dynamic, in addition to making the decision to drop/harass the drones a lot less appealing. Will it still be viable? No way to tell, but I'm always going to be a little concerned about something that could possibly hard-counter an interesting and dynamic strategy (dropping to harass workers) when you're going to be making that potential counter every single game.
If you look at the last few posts I've made, most of my concern is over keeping the game from becoming too linear. I come from a War3 background first and SC second, and so I'm really used to seeing decisions that seem neat, are fun to play with, but ultimately sidestep the decision-making process because they are automatic decisions. I just don't want to see the same things happen in SC2 where possible.
also def. nutrient-enhanced grass, goats can totally eat anything
Surprised and relieved, this made my day. Im glad that Zurg isn't as bad as Blizzard said they were but I'm sure they will find a way to balance it out in the end.
Much of the conversation so far focused on the larve, but you touch on another element as well: scouting. In BW scouting and reacting to the other player is key (ex: hiding a 2nd scouting probe somewhere as P, scanners for T, etc.). It seems queens make it virtually impossible to scout vs. a z in SC2?
At Blizzcon this year I played SC2 for the entirety of both days, exclusively with the Zerg. Great article! I agree with the entire thing fully.
When I first arrived I was under the stigma from the developer and community chat that Zerg was the weakest and least developed race. I wanted to play them while they were weak so when they get buffed I would be ahead of curve. Early the first day, basically any time I went 2 -Hatch relatively early against a smart opponent, I would only win by really outplaying them (nydus worms ftw), but it was an uphill battle. I then focused on the queen mechanic for one hatch play... and oh man just as this article described.. it is NASTY.
It all clicked at this point, the power of keeping opponent in dark and then just rolling them over. Key words for this are flexibility and destruction. Great article again.
On September 03 2009 12:49 d_so wrote: 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
although that would work, it would not be very SC like. We just need to find a middle ground on how much she costs, how fast she moves /damage she does, how much mana/time is needed to cast it, how many larva can be created, etc.
The real problem is likely the cost and build time of the queen. The queen is only less vulnerable than a 2nd hatchery due to mobility and the ability to make a smaller base.
For 150 minerals, you get 1.5x the production. And a build time of 25 - a hatchery has a build time of 100. Any way you look at it, that is very imbalanced. If a queen only made 2 larva with each cast, I think it would be much more balanced, and a build time closer to 70 or 75. You could still get the queen much earlier than a second hatch, but due to the lower mineral cost rather than the insane build time, and it's production would be balanced with a hatchery's.
The queen makes 1 second slower than a zergling. (Just off the sc2armory's stats).
Compare to the BW build - after starting the 12 hatch, it takes 100 seconds for the 2nd hatchery to spawn, whereupon you get 1 larva immediately and 1 more larva every 13 seconds. So to get 3 larva takes 26 seconds initially, 39 aftewards. I haven't played SC2, but I assume this is the same?
The queen's cooldown for making 4 larva is 25 seconds. That's a larva every 6.25 seconds - less than half of what a hatchery in BW has.
And since the hatchery has 75 more build time, a queen first build gives you an additional 12 larva early game. If the zerg could power 12 more drones in any BW matchup that early, they would be immensely broken.
A queen having 175 hp doesn't really matter much because the point at which you could attack and kill her before the production kicks in is likely before a P or T player would even have combat units.
Also, denying early scouting workers is really a problem. Is she faster than scvs/probes/drones? If so, an additional tweak that would be very useful would be making her slower - notice that no group other than terran can deny scouting early game in BW, and terran are much weaker early game to make up for it, and in addition, marines are pretty useless against protoss for anything else. It should definitely not have a ranged attack. 200 + 150 = 350 , T needs 150 + 50, but that's a very different unit (40 hp marine that moves slowly and has 6 attack vs 175 hp queen with 8 attack).
On September 03 2009 13:25 ShadowDrgn wrote: 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.
holy fuck really? Shit I think I played him, some asian dude 2-1'd me in the tourney area what exactly does he look like? I think the guy had a greenish shirt and a nice watch.
Lings are fast enough on creep that they can deny early scouting pretty well anyway. Queens just also can stop flying scouts and assist vs other zerg units from what I've seen.
On September 03 2009 14:27 Nevuk wrote: The real problem is likely the cost and build time of the queen. The queen is only less vulnerable than a 2nd hatchery due to mobility and the ability to make a smaller base.
For 150 minerals, you get 1.5x the production. And a build time of 25 - a hatchery has a build time of 100. Any way you look at it, that is very imbalanced. If a queen only made 2 larva with each cast, I think it would be much more balanced, and a build time closer to 70 or 75. You could still get the queen much earlier than a second hatch, but due to the lower mineral cost rather than the insane build time, and it's production would be balanced with a hatchery's.
The queen makes 1 second slower than a zergling. (Just off the sc2armory's stats).
Compare to the BW build - after starting the 12 hatch, it takes 100 seconds for the 2nd hatchery to spawn, whereupon you get 1 larva immediately and 1 more larva every 13 seconds. So to get 3 larva takes 26 seconds initially, 39 aftewards. I haven't played SC2, but I assume this is the same?
The queen's cooldown for making 4 larva is 25 seconds. That's a larva every 6.25 seconds - less than half of what a hatchery in BW has.
And since the hatchery has 75 more build time, a queen first build gives you an additional 12 larva early game. If the zerg could power 12 more drones in any BW matchup that early, they would be immensely broken.
A queen having 175 hp doesn't really matter much because the point at which you could attack and kill her before the production kicks in is likely before a P or T player would even have combat units.
Also, denying early scouting workers is really a problem. Is she faster than scvs/probes/drones? If so, an additional tweak that would be very useful would be making her slower - notice that no group other than terran can deny scouting early game in BW, and terran are much weaker early game to make up for it, and in addition, marines are pretty useless against protoss for anything else. It should definitely not have a ranged attack. 200 + 150 = 350 , T needs 150 + 50, but that's a very different unit (40 hp marine that moves slowly and has 6 attack vs 175 hp queen with 8 attack).
I read the whole thread, and other than the mod posting and a few others who played the game this is the best post in the thread. thanks for the numbers and breakdown.
On September 03 2009 14:29 CharlieMurphy wrote: holy fuck really? Shit I think I played him, some asian dude 2-1'd me in the tourney area what exactly does he look like? I think the guy had a greenish shirt and a nice watch.
Short Asian with glasses doesn't really narrow it down, unfortunately. I wasn't exactly stalking the guy.
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
What about forcefield?? Did any P try to FE with forcefield?
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
What about forcefield?? Did any P try to FE with forcefield?
Well to make an obelisk you need a pylon first for power, then make the dark pylon (which all together cost 300 and lots of time). Like even shield batteries build super fast and cheap and that strat sucks in BW. How would it be good in sc2 with more lings and queen?
On September 03 2009 14:27 Nevuk wrote: The real problem is likely the cost and build time of the queen. The queen is only less vulnerable than a 2nd hatchery due to mobility and the ability to make a smaller base.
For 150 minerals, you get 1.5x the production. And a build time of 25 - a hatchery has a build time of 100. Any way you look at it, that is very imbalanced. If a queen only made 2 larva with each cast, I think it would be much more balanced, and a build time closer to 70 or 75. You could still get the queen much earlier than a second hatch, but due to the lower mineral cost rather than the insane build time, and it's production would be balanced with a hatchery's.
The queen makes 1 second slower than a zergling. (Just off the sc2armory's stats).
Compare to the BW build - after starting the 12 hatch, it takes 100 seconds for the 2nd hatchery to spawn, whereupon you get 1 larva immediately and 1 more larva every 13 seconds. So to get 3 larva takes 26 seconds initially, 39 aftewards. I haven't played SC2, but I assume this is the same?
The queen's cooldown for making 4 larva is 25 seconds. That's a larva every 6.25 seconds - less than half of what a hatchery in BW has.
And since the hatchery has 75 more build time, a queen first build gives you an additional 12 larva early game. If the zerg could power 12 more drones in any BW matchup that early, they would be immensely broken.
A queen having 175 hp doesn't really matter much because the point at which you could attack and kill her before the production kicks in is likely before a P or T player would even have combat units.
Also, denying early scouting workers is really a problem. Is she faster than scvs/probes/drones? If so, an additional tweak that would be very useful would be making her slower - notice that no group other than terran can deny scouting early game in BW, and terran are much weaker early game to make up for it, and in addition, marines are pretty useless against protoss for anything else. It should definitely not have a ranged attack. 200 + 150 = 350 , T needs 150 + 50, but that's a very different unit (40 hp marine that moves slowly and has 6 attack vs 175 hp queen with 8 attack).
I read the whole thread, and other than the mod posting and a few others who played the game this is the best post in the thread. thanks for the numbers and breakdown.
Some numbers on what would happen with the changes : if the queen spawned 2 larva every use, it would be 1 larva every 12.5 seconds, which would be better than a hatchery but not noticeably except at very high level of play.
If you slowed it down to 75 build time you would have at the minimum 3 more larva, more likely 5 more larva than a hatchery (because of the additional time to get 150 extra minerals). However, this advantage would rapidly erode after early game as the 2nd hatch would have greater larva production. So going queen first would indicate an early rush build if 12 hatch was feasible on the map.
On September 03 2009 14:27 Nevuk wrote: The real problem is likely the cost and build time of the queen. The queen is only less vulnerable than a 2nd hatchery due to mobility and the ability to make a smaller base.
For 150 minerals, you get 1.5x the production. And a build time of 25 - a hatchery has a build time of 100. Any way you look at it, that is very imbalanced. If a queen only made 2 larva with each cast, I think it would be much more balanced, and a build time closer to 70 or 75. You could still get the queen much earlier than a second hatch, but due to the lower mineral cost rather than the insane build time, and it's production would be balanced with a hatchery's.
The queen makes 1 second slower than a zergling. (Just off the sc2armory's stats).
Compare to the BW build - after starting the 12 hatch, it takes 100 seconds for the 2nd hatchery to spawn, whereupon you get 1 larva immediately and 1 more larva every 13 seconds. So to get 3 larva takes 26 seconds initially, 39 aftewards. I haven't played SC2, but I assume this is the same?
The queen's cooldown for making 4 larva is 25 seconds. That's a larva every 6.25 seconds - less than half of what a hatchery in BW has.
And since the hatchery has 75 more build time, a queen first build gives you an additional 12 larva early game. If the zerg could power 12 more drones in any BW matchup that early, they would be immensely broken.
A queen having 175 hp doesn't really matter much because the point at which you could attack and kill her before the production kicks in is likely before a P or T player would even have combat units.
Also, denying early scouting workers is really a problem. Is she faster than scvs/probes/drones? If so, an additional tweak that would be very useful would be making her slower - notice that no group other than terran can deny scouting early game in BW, and terran are much weaker early game to make up for it, and in addition, marines are pretty useless against protoss for anything else. It should definitely not have a ranged attack. 200 + 150 = 350 , T needs 150 + 50, but that's a very different unit (40 hp marine that moves slowly and has 6 attack vs 175 hp queen with 8 attack).
I read the whole thread, and other than the mod posting and a few others who played the game this is the best post in the thread. thanks for the numbers and breakdown.
Some numbers on what would happen with the changes : if the queen spawned 2 larva every use, it would be 1 larva every 12.5 seconds, which would be better than a hatchery but not noticeably except at very high level of play.
If you slowed it down to 75 build time you would have at the minimum 3 more larva, more likely 5 more larva than a hatchery (because of the additional time to get 150 extra minerals). However, this advantage would rapidly erode after early game as the 2nd hatch would have greater larva production. So going queen first would indicate an early rush build if 12 hatch was feasible on the map.
I dunno if that would work though, 2 gate zeal was extremely good if you didn't have a queen.
On September 03 2009 14:27 Nevuk wrote: The real problem is likely the cost and build time of the queen. The queen is only less vulnerable than a 2nd hatchery due to mobility and the ability to make a smaller base.
For 150 minerals, you get 1.5x the production. And a build time of 25 - a hatchery has a build time of 100. Any way you look at it, that is very imbalanced. If a queen only made 2 larva with each cast, I think it would be much more balanced, and a build time closer to 70 or 75. You could still get the queen much earlier than a second hatch, but due to the lower mineral cost rather than the insane build time, and it's production would be balanced with a hatchery's.
The queen makes 1 second slower than a zergling. (Just off the sc2armory's stats).
Compare to the BW build - after starting the 12 hatch, it takes 100 seconds for the 2nd hatchery to spawn, whereupon you get 1 larva immediately and 1 more larva every 13 seconds. So to get 3 larva takes 26 seconds initially, 39 aftewards. I haven't played SC2, but I assume this is the same?
The queen's cooldown for making 4 larva is 25 seconds. That's a larva every 6.25 seconds - less than half of what a hatchery in BW has.
And since the hatchery has 75 more build time, a queen first build gives you an additional 12 larva early game. If the zerg could power 12 more drones in any BW matchup that early, they would be immensely broken.
A queen having 175 hp doesn't really matter much because the point at which you could attack and kill her before the production kicks in is likely before a P or T player would even have combat units.
Also, denying early scouting workers is really a problem. Is she faster than scvs/probes/drones? If so, an additional tweak that would be very useful would be making her slower - notice that no group other than terran can deny scouting early game in BW, and terran are much weaker early game to make up for it, and in addition, marines are pretty useless against protoss for anything else. It should definitely not have a ranged attack. 200 + 150 = 350 , T needs 150 + 50, but that's a very different unit (40 hp marine that moves slowly and has 6 attack vs 175 hp queen with 8 attack).
I read the whole thread, and other than the mod posting and a few others who played the game this is the best post in the thread. thanks for the numbers and breakdown.
Some numbers on what would happen with the changes : if the queen spawned 2 larva every use, it would be 1 larva every 12.5 seconds, which would be better than a hatchery but not noticeably except at very high level of play.
If you slowed it down to 75 build time you would have at the minimum 3 more larva, more likely 5 more larva than a hatchery (because of the additional time to get 150 extra minerals). However, this advantage would rapidly erode after early game as the 2nd hatch would have greater larva production. So going queen first would indicate an early rush build if 12 hatch was feasible on the map.
I dunno if that would work though, 2 gate zeal was extremely good if you didn't have a queen.
Yeah you'd have to alter the build around a bit or change maps. (2 gate zeal was also really good on almost every blizzard map ever in BW, especially Lost Temple on certain positions).
Getting a queen at the same time as you do in the current build likely wouldn't be too bad if it were 2 instead of 4, but still wouldn't be ideal.
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.
Your analogy is dumb because first of all, making workers all game was a logical step in thinking, and not overpowered. Its like someone discovering that more buildings lead to bigger armies and then some other guy saying its overpowered, when they can simply keep up by doing the same thing.
The problem here now is that everyone is abusing their macro mechanics to the very fullest, but when the Zerg really abuses their macro mechanic, it just leads to a seemingly broken larvae production rate that just gives you complete control over the entire game. So even if T or P maximizes their macro production with their respective mechanics, it won't matter because Zerg benefits so much from the mechanic that they can engage in fights and afford to lose their armies because they can respawn the entire thing very quickly with Spawn Larvae, while the T or P absolutely cannot afford to lose the first fight, otherwise, they'll be sure to lose the game, thanks to the larvae mechanic. Hot Bid is on the fence about this being imba, but I'm rather certain that 1 hatch Queen build is too powerful in the hands of a smart player.
A slightly better analogy is playing a normal game in BW, with the constant building workers thing and etc, but the Zerg uses the hack that kills larvae for minerals, or a hack that doubles or triples the larvae production rate of each hatchery.
Amazing, but you MUST have overlooked sg. Good players at blizzard tested this game for several months now, and because the new macro mechanics are maybe the most important feature of the sc2 I must think they really toroughly analyzed at least this part.
My logic: 1. Zerg is historically a race which has a lots of early-game strategies, aiming to break the P(T) early wit lings or hydras 2. The Zerg macro improvement is the only one which can be used to produce units, not just for helping the economy
From this 2 point, to me at least, it's obvious that new early-pressure options are avaialble, so they must be tested. Now, Blizz said Z is the WEAKest and i'm sure as hell they knew what larvaes are good for.
What i have in mind is that sg directly counters that stuff. You said this denies FE, ok, fair enough, i accept it, but i've got 2 ideas which could work with P. 1. Because (as far as i understood) Overlords arent detectors from the start 1 DT stops the attack pretty much. You say it's hard to tech but i can't believe the game it's so imba that it's easier to bring out 15 hydras than 1 DT out of one base if you focus on it. 2. The classic 1 base, block the ramp mass zela. As far as i saw lings do not directly counter Zealots, nor do hydras, actually zealots work decently well against both. Idk how accecible the P macro-boost is but 1 base mass zela attack might be viable. No?
And these are just some ideas i came up with while reading the writeup.
S1 who played this game could answer to my theories?
On September 03 2009 15:29 Geo.Rion wrote: Amazing, but you MUST have overlooked sg. Good players at blizzard tested this game for several months now, and because the new macro mechanics are maybe the most important feature of the sc2 I must think they really toroughly analyzed at least this part.
My logic: 1. Zerg is historically a race which has a lots of early-game strategies, aiming to break the P(T) early wit lings or hydras 2. The Zerg macro improvement is the only one which can be used to produce units, not just for helping the economy
From this 2 point, to me at least, it's obvious that new early-pressure options are avaialble, so they must be tested. Now, Blizz said Z is the WEAKest and i'm sure as hell they knew what larvaes are good for.
What i have in mind is that sg directly counters that stuff. You said this denies FE, ok, fair enough, i accept it, but i've got 2 ideas which could work with P. 1. Because (as far as i understood) Overlords arent detectors from the start 1 DT stops the attack pretty much. You say it's hard to tech but i can't believe the game it's so imba that it's easier to bring out 15 hydras than 1 DT out of one base if you focus on it. 2. The classic 1 base, block the ramp mass zela. As far as i saw lings do not directly counter Zealots, nor do hydras, actually zealots work decently well against both. Idk how accecible the P macro-boost is but 1 base mass zela attack might be viable. No?
And these are just some ideas i came up with while reading the writeup.
S1 who played this game could answer to my theories?
On September 03 2009 15:29 Geo.Rion wrote: Amazing, but you MUST have overlooked sg. Good players at blizzard tested this game for several months now, and because the new macro mechanics are maybe the most important feature of the sc2 I must think they really toroughly analyzed at least this part.
My logic: 1. Zerg is historically a race which has a lots of early-game strategies, aiming to break the P(T) early wit lings or hydras 2. The Zerg macro improvement is the only one which can be used to produce units, not just for helping the economy
From this 2 point, to me at least, it's obvious that new early-pressure options are avaialble, so they must be tested. Now, Blizz said Z is the WEAKest and i'm sure as hell they knew what larvaes are good for.
What i have in mind is that sg directly counters that stuff. You said this denies FE, ok, fair enough, i accept it, but i've got 2 ideas which could work with P. 1. Because (as far as i understood) Overlords arent detectors from the start 1 DT stops the attack pretty much. You say it's hard to tech but i can't believe the game it's so imba that it's easier to bring out 15 hydras than 1 DT out of one base if you focus on it. 2. The classic 1 base, block the ramp mass zela. As far as i saw lings do not directly counter Zealots, nor do hydras, actually zealots work decently well against both. Idk how accecible the P macro-boost is but 1 base mass zela attack might be viable. No?
And these are just some ideas i came up with while reading the writeup.
S1 who played this game could answer to my theories?
DTs are much higher on the tech tree iirc.
how higher? You need 1 citadel, 1 archives, 1 DT. That's like 400 gas, isnt it? Remember you tech straightly without exping
On September 03 2009 15:29 Geo.Rion wrote: Amazing, but you MUST have overlooked sg. Good players at blizzard tested this game for several months now, and because the new macro mechanics are maybe the most important feature of the sc2 I must think they really toroughly analyzed at least this part.
My logic: 1. Zerg is historically a race which has a lots of early-game strategies, aiming to break the P(T) early wit lings or hydras 2. The Zerg macro improvement is the only one which can be used to produce units, not just for helping the economy
From this 2 point, to me at least, it's obvious that new early-pressure options are avaialble, so they must be tested. Now, Blizz said Z is the WEAKest and i'm sure as hell they knew what larvaes are good for.
What i have in mind is that sg directly counters that stuff. You said this denies FE, ok, fair enough, i accept it, but i've got 2 ideas which could work with P. 1. Because (as far as i understood) Overlords arent detectors from the start 1 DT stops the attack pretty much. You say it's hard to tech but i can't believe the game it's so imba that it's easier to bring out 15 hydras than 1 DT out of one base if you focus on it. 2. The classic 1 base, block the ramp mass zela. As far as i saw lings do not directly counter Zealots, nor do hydras, actually zealots work decently well against both. Idk how accecible the P macro-boost is but 1 base mass zela attack might be viable. No?
And these are just some ideas i came up with while reading the writeup.
S1 who played this game could answer to my theories?
DTs are much higher on the tech tree iirc.
how higher? You need 1 citadel, 1 archives, 1 DT. That's like 400 gas, isnt it? Remember you tech straightly without exping
the zerg watches you do this and injects for drones instead while expoing. now what?
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.
I disagree with a lot of what you're saying. Just delaying the macro mechanic wouldn't mean that they are imbalanced in any way. Just as Zerg 3 base vs Toss 2 base is relatively considered balanced in SC1, having a macro mechanic later than others could be balanced in SC2. Not only would it be easier to balance (as you remove many early game factors), but the Queen would still exist to fend off early rushes, which without is what people are saying Zerg suffers early on (they say that if you try to play vs rushes without Queen you are screwed).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Terran macro mechanic comes significantly later than the Toss one? I would guess by the time you actually get mules would be around the time spawn larvae would be viable. As it is currently, Toss/Zerg get their macro mechanic significantly before Terran (I think, as said I have NOT played yet). So wouldn't this completely break your theory?
It still wouldn't invite rushing because I clarified that only the spawn larvae tech could be delayed to lair, thus the queen would still be used to fend off rushes, have whatever hp infusion ability, etc. In SC, as it is, the games already ended up with P + T rushing Z everygame, with 2gate as the standard build from toss and marine/medic from Terran, if not a bunker rush! So what are you talking about there??
It doesn't necessitate Zerg be weaker in any way. As said it would create Zerg macro mechanic be more on par with the timing of the Terran mechanic, and the Protoss mechanic affects all probes at once, thus as the game progresses the mechanic becomes more and more powerful. Also as the game progresses I'd assume the Queen would be easier to snipe with flying units, etc.
Your argument of saying it removes the burden of macro is also questionable... I mean as it is at lower levels it's already significantly easier to play Protoss than Zerg... Zerg will still have more units to manage than Toss and all you need to do is click once or something to activate an obelisk, while you have to actually inject the larvae and mutate them with Zerg.
Something I think could be interesting to experiment with (this would definitely not solve the problem itself) could be increasing the time it takes for units to spawn from mutated larvae compared to regular larvae. You'd definitely notice the difference early game, but by the mid/late game phases it would probably hardly be noticeable.
You also need a dark shrine, twilight council and cyber core I think. Build times 100, 50 and 50 respectively. (Instead of a citadel and temp archives)
(400 minerals, 350 gas and 200 build time). A dt has 55 build time and 125/125 cost. (25 more vespene than in SC1, but since they can make twilight archons it makes sense to me). So 525 minerals / 475 gas and 255 build time for this.
In this time the Z will have gotten an additional 10 rounds of larva production - 40 extra larva on one hatch from one queen. In SC1, one hatchery would have produced 19.6 larva in this same time frame - you have to add this amount onto what the Z is getting from his queen.
More realistically, in SC1 the zerg would have 2 hatcheries while you're teching like this. (Maybe 3). They would get 39.2 larva with 2, probably something like 50 larva with 3 (I think the 3rd hatch doesn't go down before the cyber core starts, and definitely wouldn't finish before it).
But then consider that a Z will almost definitely expand and get another hatch at some point in SC2 if you're going a full tech route, which is pretty noticeable (run one ling up the ramp go "oh there's only 2 zealots"), and in the same scenario be able to get out another queen and have 2 hatches with constant larva spawn going- which is 8 larva from the queens and 6 larva from the hatches... I don't want to do the math anymore. Suffice it to say, that they could have something like 90-100 larva instead of the 70 the 1 base Z would get. These are just random guesses for the sc2 #'s , but they're within the realm of what is possible.
The problem is that this is an exponential flaw - the longer the game goes on, the more useful it becomes to use the queen. This isn't true of mules at all, and the photon charge doesn't scale nearly the same way. The exponential nature of SC economics also greatly factors into this.
On September 03 2009 16:35 Nevuk wrote: You also need a dark shrine, twilight council and cyber core I think. Build times 100, 50 and 50 respectively. (Instead of a citadel and temp archives)
(400 minerals, 350 gas and 200 build time). A dt has 55 build time and 125/125 cost. (25 more vespene than in SC1, but since they can make twilight archons it makes sense to me). So 525 minerals / 475 gas and 255 build time for this.
In this time the Z will have gotten an additional 10 rounds of larva production - 40 extra larva on one hatch from one queen. In SC1, one hatchery would have produced 19.6 larva in this same time frame - you have to add this amount onto what the Z is getting from his queen.
More realistically, in SC1 the zerg would have 2 hatcheries while you're teching like this. (Maybe 3). They would get 39.2 larva with 2, probably something like 50 larva with 3 (I think the 3rd hatch doesn't go down before the cyber core starts, and definitely wouldn't finish before it).
But then consider that a Z will almost definitely expand and get another hatch at some point in SC2 if you're going a full tech route, which is pretty noticeable (run one ling up the ramp go "oh there's only 2 zealots"), and in the same scenario be able to get out another queen and have 2 hatches with constant larva spawn going- which is 8 larva from the queens and 6 larva from the hatches... I don't want to do the math anymore. Suffice it to say, that they could have something like 90-100 larva instead of the 70 the 1 base Z would get. These are just random guesses for the sc2 #'s , but they're within the realm of what is possible.
The problem is that this is an exponential flaw - the longer the game goes on, the more useful it becomes to use the queen. This isn't true of mules at all, and the photon charge doesn't scale nearly the same way. The exponential nature of SC economics also greatly factors into this.
Although I agree about the exponential nature, you still must remember all those larvae still cost minerals/gas to transform into units! (yeah yeah, I know you'll have a better econ as a result, etc.)
hmmm. if this hasnt been playtested at blizzard, they seriously need to rethink their playtesting approach. they seem to be doing similar intuitive builds in all their battle reports, and not trying out unintuitive but possible builds like this. i dunno. no judgment until official word from them i guess.
On September 03 2009 16:35 Nevuk wrote: You also need a dark shrine, twilight council and cyber core I think. Build times 100, 50 and 50 respectively. (Instead of a citadel and temp archives)
(400 minerals, 350 gas and 200 build time). A dt has 55 build time and 125/125 cost. (25 more vespene than in SC1, but since they can make twilight archons it makes sense to me). So 525 minerals / 475 gas and 255 build time for this.
In this time the Z will have gotten an additional 10 rounds of larva production - 40 extra larva on one hatch from one queen. In SC1, one hatchery would have produced 19.6 larva in this same time frame - you have to add this amount onto what the Z is getting from his queen.
More realistically, in SC1 the zerg would have 2 hatcheries while you're teching like this. (Maybe 3). They would get 39.2 larva with 2, probably something like 50 larva with 3 (I think the 3rd hatch doesn't go down before the cyber core starts, and definitely wouldn't finish before it).
But then consider that a Z will almost definitely expand and get another hatch at some point in SC2 if you're going a full tech route, which is pretty noticeable (run one ling up the ramp go "oh there's only 2 zealots"), and in the same scenario be able to get out another queen and have 2 hatches with constant larva spawn going- which is 8 larva from the queens and 6 larva from the hatches... I don't want to do the math anymore. Suffice it to say, that they could have something like 90-100 larva instead of the 70 the 1 base Z would get. These are just random guesses for the sc2 #'s , but they're within the realm of what is possible.
The problem is that this is an exponential flaw - the longer the game goes on, the more useful it becomes to use the queen. This isn't true of mules at all, and the photon charge doesn't scale nearly the same way. The exponential nature of SC economics also greatly factors into this.
Although I agree about the exponential nature, you still must remember all those larvae still cost minerals/gas to transform into units! (yeah yeah, I know you'll have a better econ as a result, etc.)
Yeah, but no one ever complained that you had to pay minerals to make hydralisks and drones before before
THE QUEEN: Not just a unit for Jaedong to BM FBH anymore!
BLIZZARD PLAYTESTERS: Need help. Hire me. Hell, I'll work for free for a week. Think OUTSIDE THE BOX, this isn't SC1 folks.
Very solid article, and very interesting information. It's interesting how Blizzard and Gamereplays are saying one thing, while this article states the exact opposite O_O
- Inject 3 instead of 4 larvae for 40 energy instead of 25? - Have the queen cost gas to build and make it move slower so it can't chase scouts? - Don't inject larvae for "free" (energy), but let the queen build a temporary nest building for resources which spawns extra larvae and then dies?
A solution must be found that makes the queen inferior to a hatchery for pure production purposes. The choice should be between a hatchery for economy and and a queen for a bit less production but added flexibility.
This 1 hat queen build is so damn scary.,... especially me being a P player.
The thing that scares me most is not just the power zerg has early on, but the fact that they have the ability to saturate their mining bases like P/T and yet expand much more than the other races due to Z's superior mobility.
PS: whatever happened to the nullifiers David Kim used in battle report 3? If they're not gone, I could see these as a good counter to most early ling rushes or even hydra rushes.
So P and T macro specialities dont counter (help against) the Zerg one ? Sounds wierd that zerg can 1base so easy and P or T dont have enough resourses from 1base.
Could inject be scalable with tiers? By this I mean either the number of larvae or the cycle time could scale (possibly with a tier 2 and 3 tech). This would reduce the presure of the 1 hatch queen builds but leave late game play relatively unaffected (presumably if this is a case of something being overlooked, mid to late game has already been balanced)
Remove these gimmicky stupid increased production capabilities. If your saying it's overpowered, i would agree. Even then, whats the point of having them? its pointless. I would rather keep the "expand" and defend expansion, kill expansion that bw had, starcraft 2 seems like a battle to take out your opponents army till you can move into his main, not an expansion war, which is more strategic.
Expanding came with risks, for example a terran double expanding with 1 fac (Lol flash anyone?) versus a protoss who goes like 2base arbiters or carriers, or a PvZ where the protoss goes unity heavy instead of getting a quick third. This made the game more complex and forced the player to compromise and take risks. With these gimmicky ways to get more minerals, its pointless, its like giving everyone a min only in their main, what's the point?
Seems so dumb even if they slightly nerf it.. who wants to see every game open 1 hatch queen and watch T/P turtle tech or rush? Part of why SC is so interesting is because it encourages NOT one basing in almost every match up but at the same time, 1 base play is also viable.
If SC2 ends up being an "ok game" that just plays out like so many other RTS's I'm gonna be so bummed .
Hopefully they are really listening to us here and understand why SC1 was so good.
imo the point of this article was to coin the phrase "larvae injection" so that one day when sc2 is the biggest competetive e-sport in the world hot_bid can look back and say "yeah I was first.." thus gaining massive e-peen.
Seriously though this doesn't sound too good. If they miss something like this who knows what else they're missing.. On the other hand rts' just aren't balanced before a few months of beta testing.
A simple solution, rather than moving around units to different tiers, would be simply to INCREASE the cooldown from 25 seconds to something higher that seems more reasonable vs P and T openings. Really not THAT worried about this as the real balance-phase hasn't even begun yet.
Like another person in this thread said, it feels like it should be an enhancement to the macro, not SUPERIOR to a normal hatch but an improvement to it.
It IS good that it's get brought up like this though, hopefully it gets through to some Blizzard devs.
I'm all for the Zerg being able to take over the map and make thousands of units... just balance the units. Having a dozen marines cost as much and be about as good as 50 zerglings would be sweet. Let the Zerg be The Swarm, just allow T and P to handle them better.
It'll be fixed, clearly none of the blizzard in house testers have abused spawn larvae. It'll probably end up requiring more energy / will spawn less larvae/ will be replaced with another mechanic.
After reading I saw a flashing light and blizzard is about to nerf down ZERG so hard it will be impossible to play zerg. Now I just hope players can figure out how to beat this build and zerg has to struggle without any nerfing.
What I'd like to see happen is just have all the zerg units have really lowered HP. That way, the Zerg would still be able to get tons of attacking units and super drone it, but when it comes down to a batlle, the zerg will have to send swarms and swarms of units to take down a smaller sized terran and protoss force.
Interesting ability, I do agree that this would unbalance the game in a way. Maybe a higher casting cost, less larvae or certain amount of times "Inject Larvae" can be casted.
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.
Your analogy is dumb because first of all, making workers all game was a logical step in thinking, and not overpowered. Its like someone discovering that more buildings lead to bigger armies and then some other guy saying its overpowered, when they can simply keep up by doing the same thing.
The problem here now is that everyone is abusing their macro mechanics to the very fullest, but when the Zerg really abuses their macro mechanic, it just leads to a seemingly broken larvae production rate that just gives you complete control over the entire game. So even if T or P maximizes their macro production with their respective mechanics, it won't matter because Zerg benefits so much from the mechanic that they can engage in fights and afford to lose their armies because they can respawn the entire thing very quickly with Spawn Larvae, while the T or P absolutely cannot afford to lose the first fight, otherwise, they'll be sure to lose the game, thanks to the larvae mechanic. Hot Bid is on the fence about this being imba, but I'm rather certain that 1 hatch Queen build is too powerful in the hands of a smart player.
A slightly better analogy is playing a normal game in BW, with the constant building workers thing and etc, but the Zerg uses the hack that kills larvae for minerals, or a hack that doubles or triples the larvae production rate of each hatchery.
If the other races macro mechanics are brough up to par (assuming they are not already) then it is the equivalant macro advantage of making workers. You say players are abusing a mechanic that you are supposed to use all the time. Thats like saying players are abusing workers. I am not saying that T and P mechanics are equivalent now but if brought to the same level than these mechanics come to resemble the value of making workers. Its not inherently imbalanced to be able to increase your army.
It will be interesting seeing how Blizzard will address this issue. Will Queen remain the same while T & P gain buffs to bring them up to speed? Or will the Queen simply just be nerfed?
On September 03 2009 15:29 Geo.Rion wrote: Amazing, but you MUST have overlooked sg. Good players at blizzard tested this game for several months now, and because the new macro mechanics are maybe the most important feature of the sc2 I must think they really toroughly analyzed at least this part.
My logic: 1. Zerg is historically a race which has a lots of early-game strategies, aiming to break the P(T) early wit lings or hydras 2. The Zerg macro improvement is the only one which can be used to produce units, not just for helping the economy
From this 2 point, to me at least, it's obvious that new early-pressure options are avaialble, so they must be tested. Now, Blizz said Z is the WEAKest and i'm sure as hell they knew what larvaes are good for.
What i have in mind is that sg directly counters that stuff. You said this denies FE, ok, fair enough, i accept it, but i've got 2 ideas which could work with P. 1. Because (as far as i understood) Overlords arent detectors from the start 1 DT stops the attack pretty much. You say it's hard to tech but i can't believe the game it's so imba that it's easier to bring out 15 hydras than 1 DT out of one base if you focus on it. 2. The classic 1 base, block the ramp mass zela. As far as i saw lings do not directly counter Zealots, nor do hydras, actually zealots work decently well against both. Idk how accecible the P macro-boost is but 1 base mass zela attack might be viable. No?
And these are just some ideas i came up with while reading the writeup.
S1 who played this game could answer to my theories?
DTs are much higher on the tech tree iirc.
how higher? You need 1 citadel, 1 archives, 1 DT. That's like 400 gas, isnt it? Remember you tech straightly without exping
the zerg watches you do this and injects for drones instead while expoing. now what?
I did not play the game, but i guess P can hide it from the ovie as well. 1 goon could be produced really early if you go 1 base, and does not set you back in tech. I guess it's similar with the stalker, but i'm not sure, only guessing.
Countering 1 hat hydra/lings sounds like a task for The Emperor
How about adding gas cost to queens + reducing the larvae spawn and maybe even altering the hatching time? just reducing larvae amount or add gas cost wouldnt really save the protoss and terr players.
Interestingly if you look back at scbw throughout history there have been numerous builds for ALL races that at first seemed almost impossible to counter. However, people eventually will adapt and suddenly some other build seem way imbalanced.
Now with sc2 and this particular build, as opposed to scbw, most of us don't even have the facts at hand to argue OR the game itself for testing counters, so imo all we can do is wait and see. Either this is a fundamental balance flaw that's somehow been overlooked thus far or we simply don't have sufficient information to assess what might be a viable counter for P & T.
Nice writeup, but are we really at the stage where we need to focus on single abilities and see whether they're balanced? Stuff like this will come up in the beta. It's easy to turn the 4 larva into 2 and see if it's still so unbalanced.
It's think it's more important to discuss whether every ability has a use at all, and look at the complete spectrum of abilities and counters to them. Of course, you can't see those two totally separately, but I'd be more interested in the counters for each type of unit or attack and the availability on the tech tree rather than the amounts exactly.
Sounds like Blizzard was right initially by making the queen unique. Maybe if they drop it to 3 eggs per inject and make the queen unique again it will work -.-" I really like the injection idea and I hope they can find a way to balance it. I don't want to see it removed. Massing is what the Zerg should be doing.
Makes sense: Dustin Browder himself said that there were probably lots of overpowered things in SC2 that hadn't been identified, merely because no one had properly exploited them yet. This especially seems to be true with the SC2 Zerg, whose new mechanics are probably the most powerful in the game (spawn larva, creep drop, nydus worm, and creep speed bonus)--but whose units aren't that strong or "gimmicky" compared to the Protoss or Terran ones. Without the use of these mechanics, they're a little weak when compared to the other races--but with proper use of them, they're probably totally overpowered, as you've shown. But, heck--weak units and powerful mechanics are what the Zerg are all about! So I think Blizzard's on the right track with them. Toning it down a little bit wouldn't hurt, though.
Really, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason the Queen's this powerful in that build is just to encourage people to actually use her, and the other macro mechanics--once she becomes popular, and they head into beta, they'll crank her down a bit. Of course, once we do go into beta, I'm sure TL will find another half-dozen imbalanced ways to exploit various units and abilities--so its all good.
On September 03 2009 20:37 Socio wrote: What I'd like to see happen is just have all the zerg units have really lowered HP. That way, the Zerg would still be able to get tons of attacking units and super drone it, but when it comes down to a batlle, the zerg will have to send swarms and swarms of units to take down a smaller sized terran and protoss force.
C'mon, that'd be fun as hell to see.
This! XD Just for tier 1 units though, and increased cost for non tier 1 and drones.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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?!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
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).
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.
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?
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?
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 :}.
@Hot_Bid: Has anyone tried some queen-sniping strategies out? I believe that getting her at the right moment can stall one hatch queen strategies for enough time for the other player to catch up, am I right? I know this sounds a bit stupid since most PvZ and TvZ games would turn into "Queen Hunt" but that's what it looks like from your report.
my grin was wider than a Mr.Jack defiler's mouth when reading this article. Good to know my favorite race is still made of ownage, and that battle reports only show suckage.
I'm pretty skeptical how you can mass a unit that costs 100m/75g so much that you even have a chance to have double the amount of units that cost much less. On top of that even have upgraded speed....
I'm pretty sure that Toss should be able to get charge on their zealots by the time you get speed upgrade and have such a mass. Zealots also cost less and from other reports dark pylon is the most powerful economic macro booster.
I guess we'll find out when Beta is released, just really curious how can you really get double the units of your opponent especially when that unit cost 100M/75G meaning that at most you can only get 66 hydra's off one base.
I am not sure if anybody else has realized this, but there's one aspect of larva selection that makes it really really tough on a scout. Previously, if you see three larvae morphing into eggs simultaneously, you only need to look at one to know what's in the pipeline. But now, the user can go zhdhzdoqmm and create a bunch of units near simultaneously that'll all need to be looked at individually by a scout. Does this mean that scouting the zerg is much tougher now, even if you manage to somehow get a scout into the base and keep it alive in the first place? I think this makes it even more OP than just having the ability to spawn extra larvae, because scouting is not only tough, it also needs a lot more APM for the probes and SCVs.
On September 04 2009 05:10 WWJDD wrote: I am not sure if anybody else has realized this, but there's one aspect of larva selection that makes it really really tough on a scout. Previously, if you see three larvae morphing into eggs simultaneously, you only need to look at one to know what's in the pipeline. But now, the user can go zhdhzdoqmm and create a bunch of units near simultaneously that'll all need to be looked at individually by a scout. Does this mean that scouting the zerg is much tougher now, even if you manage to somehow get a scout into the base and keep it alive in the first place? I think this makes it even more OP than just having the ability to spawn extra larvae, because scouting is not only tough, it also needs a lot more APM for the probes and SCVs.
...ummm...you are not able to see what are in opponent eggs in starcraft or starcraft 2. Only in replays.
The Powda guy seems very angry at your article haha. Seems like he's a SClegacy guy who hates TL lol.
After reading the SCLegacy forums they have a thread like this about how Zerg is underpowered. Interesting how two sc communities can be polar opposite on something like this.
On September 04 2009 04:45 Aegraen wrote: I'm pretty sure that Toss should be able to get charge on their zealots by the time you get speed upgrade
Not even remotely close. Like this is so wrong it's actually incomprehensible that you could be pretty sure about it.
I guess we'll find out when Beta is released, just really curious how can you really get double the units of your opponent especially when that unit cost 100M/75G meaning that at most you can only get 66 hydra's off one base.
On September 04 2009 04:45 Aegraen wrote: I'm pretty skeptical how you can mass a unit that costs 100m/75g so much that you even have a chance to have double the amount of units that cost much less. On top of that even have upgraded speed....
I'm pretty sure that Toss should be able to get charge on their zealots by the time you get speed upgrade and have such a mass. Zealots also cost less and from other reports dark pylon is the most powerful economic macro booster.
I guess we'll find out when Beta is released, just really curious how can you really get double the units of your opponent especially when that unit cost 100M/75G meaning that at most you can only get 66 hydra's off one base.
I'm not 100% sure how accurate this is but after reading your post I was curious to how you could mass hydras as hot_bid suggested while they were so expensive, so I did some digging and found this site: http://www.starcraft-source.com/unitdatabase/.
If some one could confirm this is accurate I think we can see how it'd be much easier to mass hydras if they are only 75 mins and 25 gas.
I guess we'll find out when Beta is released, just really curious how can you really get double the units of your opponent especially when that unit cost 100M/75G meaning that at most you can only get 66 hydra's off one base.
lol he's so mad at us -- would've loved to see what he said if we actually played him. whereas i freely admit that we could be completely missing things and aren't experts, he's going off on how he's some sc2 superpro -- nobody at this stage in game development can be that great at a game when people are coming to completely opposite conclusions about it.
the larger point from my post is not that Zerg can always win with 1 hatch hydra. its that because your dead scout can't see what the Z is doing, its impossible to tell what he's spending the extra larvae on. among tier 1 units, Zerg dominates. this allows them to gain a ridiculous advantage if the T or P doesn't "guess" correctly (whether the Z is powering, attacking, or doing a combination of both). Of course it'd be easy to win if you knew exactly how many hydras the Z was making.
it mean it makes sense intuitively -- more larvae = more extreme unit or worker production swings. you can either make a lot more lings for an all in or make a lot more drones, or a combination of. there are already a lot of problems with all-in "guesses" against Zerg in BW, the extra larvae just exasperate the problem.
The queen is sun-tzu's wet dream with a winning lottery ticket on the side.
Personally i think this might be an ability blizzard should think about scrapping:
-The concept of larvae injection is the absolute ideal for a war... better resourcing and by doing it you can also create misinformation and a larger army? how can you make an ability even close to that without it being exactly that? the p and t bonuses are only to minerals, which as hot_bid mentioned, are quite quickly useless without gas // drones can expand or mine gas or minerals).
-If you bring it into the game at a later tech tier, the concept behind larvae injection is entirely impossible for p or t to match. for 150 minerals you have (from what i've read) a feasible mobile (moves around your base like greased lightning) scout denying, misinforming, and (every 25 seconds) 4 x barracks/factory/gateway/stargate/starport/robo/worker producer.
-Even if you were to nerf it down to 1 larvae/skill use it's a production bonus that p and t cannot possibly compete with... in BW how many gates/barracks do you need to keep up with a 3 base 5 hatch zerg? 6 or 7? so... even if it's just 1 larvae bonus... 5 hatch would be roughly 7 hatch now, for the cost of an extra overlord or 2(so you can build the queens)?
-The cost? 150 is 25 less than a sunken in BW, and only as much as a gate/barracks, but this one is a super producer, can hide, shoots air and can chase down scouts (if my info on the queen is still correct... can you still get burrow for it?).
-I don't see how a 20%(?) bonus to minerals (for p and t) can be equal to a 25%(?) potential production bonus (hatcheries produce 4 larvae now right?) + expo defender(?) + scouting denier.
-The only way i could see it evening out would be if zerg wasn't the strongest army supply for supply like it is in BW... but that would rely on games making it to max supply counts so people would have to weigh having an extra ultra or 2 queens, but of course, if you have those queens you can just reinforce that much faster than your opponent can... yeah I don't see any way you can make this mechanically fair. if you increase the mana cost, what's the loss? there's nothing you could add that would be more worthwhile without being even more imbalanced... you could just end up with the original BW queen, a quirky POS that occasionally makes an entertaining appearance.
-If you're already going to give mineral only bonuses to two of the three races why wouldn't you just throw your hands up and make it easy on yourself by giving it to all three? conceptually isn't this impossible to balance without making it into some kind of equally capped eco boost like the p and t ones are? it plays too much on the original unique benefit that zerg has and eliminates what i've heard zerg players say is the real definition of skill for zerg: choosing between resources, technology, or army strength
I hope i'm not repeating what everyone else is saying so far... honestly i feel like i'm rambling a bit because i have no hands on experience with the game... and i think my first sentence+paragraph sums up the whole post if you think critically about it.
Of course, i haven't played the alpha, and this is all on whatever most likely outdated information I have about sc2, and whatever details, or schemes i could gleam from the article without actually hearing/seeing the games and players..
I guess we'll find out when Beta is released, just really curious how can you really get double the units of your opponent especially when that unit cost 100M/75G meaning that at most you can only get 66 hydra's off one base.
On September 04 2009 06:14 Hot_Bid wrote: lol he's so mad at us -- would've loved to see what he said if we actually played him. whereas i freely admit that we could be completely missing things and aren't experts, he's going off on how he's some sc2 superpro -- nobody at this stage in game development can be that great at a game when people are coming to completely opposite conclusions about it.
This is why I love putting out those articles, makes half the world rage. I played 2 days more Starcraft2 than him, by his logic I must be super uber pro right? Oh yeah and Oakhill surely still knows how to troll haha.
EDIT: Edited the bulk of my happy post:: It seems that its trying to force zerg to play with mass units a lot more which suits the concept of the race but it also sounds like if zerg doesn't mass and win early then they will find it very hard against later tech of T & P i.e. collosus & seige tanks. Inject will surely get nerfed if it proves to strong to balance it.
Protoss Observer's not needing an obs building was something I cringed at but as lurkers are all the way away now that doesn't matter as much but infestors might have a hard time.
Can infestors take control of Observers or how about take over a Mothership? :D Also what was the regen time like if you ever got to tinker with the infestors, I'm guessing it'll be similar to Spawn Broodling used to be on Queens in Brood War which was handy to a degree but a bit of a hassle though with smart casting maybe its viable to turning the tide in a battle with a good number of infestors.
I'm curious as to whether the improved pathing AI hurts zerg as well as now units will clump as a group so Psi storm would sound more powerful as trying to spread units will cost a lot more apm as it'll be more necessary when it used to be sort of easy to move hydras left and right a bit and they would spread into a line due to the pathing AI being worse.
LOL this ridiculous difference in opinions is hilarious. HotBid and this Bnet guy must play each other at some point. I'd pay good money to see that. Also thanks for the great article.
I, for one, think the fact that people feel so strongly about this issue is proof of how good this article is. When i think about it though, when we're talking about proton charge vs. spawn larvae, we really are talking apples and oranges. PC really is an immediate econ booster which increases your already saturated min patches. Toss players will see an immediate jump in their min count, but you would still need an explosion of gateways/etc. to make use of that extra minerals, and that takes time. Most pro games we see, the explosion of gateways doesn't happen until the mid game. It's true that fully saturated 1 base toss will gather more resources with PC than a fully saturated 1 base z. What we're talking about in this thread though, is the ability for the zerg to first make many more drones than in BW off of one hatch, a fast, but albeit delayed econ boost, then mass units very early while p or t is still building production buildings.
What we'll have to see is that both p and t adapt to the possibility of that early hydra break with something. Personally i think it might have to be early pressure of their own. Remember, it's still in that t can bunker jump, salvaging for 100% cost, and zealots in numbers overcome large numbers of lings, so early pressure vs. z might be necessary to force the z out of his 1 hatch queen build. Until we can really get our hands on the game and are able to technically parse food/mineral/gas count and such, we won't really know.
As far as the blizz dev's are concerned, i believe Dustin Browder has already said that there are imba mechanics in the game, they are just waiting for the beta testers to break/perfect them. Besides, what else would we have to talk about while our fingers are itching to get a hold of that beta??? =P
On September 04 2009 04:33 Manit0u wrote: @Hot_Bid: Has anyone tried some queen-sniping strategies out? I believe that getting her at the right moment can stall one hatch queen strategies for enough time for the other player to catch up, am I right? I know this sounds a bit stupid since most PvZ and TvZ games would turn into "Queen Hunt" but that's what it looks like from your report.
Jon from SC2Forums.org. I'm the guy whom HotBid "made look like he knows nothing." Sometimes the ridiculousness you guys post makes it into my inbox and then I just have to respond. Feel free to read (and inevitably downplay) my review here. And in contrast to HotBid's two days (maximum 20 hours) of playtime I've logged almost 60 hours on StarCraft 2.
Look, I respect quite a few guys from TL. There are some very capable people on staff. I had a pretty good discussion with a TL member who had commented on the article I wrote, and while he had some valid points I think we straightened out some issues he wasn't understanding with StarCraft 2. Alas, I'm never going to understand the horses in the header, but that's not the point.
Unfortunately, it's damaging to the development of the game and the credibility of TL when someone posts an article like this one. It's so narrow and focused (at the author's repeated admittance) that it's like measuring the safety of a vehicle solely by the type of tires it has. You can't look at StarCraft 2 through such a narrow scope and decide that you've found an issue.
What's interesting is that the refutations to this article are all over the place and yet they're shot down by so many TL backers (most, if not all of whom have never played the game) because those refutations are made by "random peons" (I believe that's the popular term).
In any case, let's get down to business on this one. The Queen is weaker than she was in previous builds. The only thing she's got going for her is the Larvae Spawn ability. Don't get me wrong, this ability is far and beyond the main mechanic keeping the Zerg in the game at this time (I disagree with saying that Zerg is weak, I just think they need new mechanics like the proposed Roach movement while burrowed). But that doesn't mean they're suddenly ruling the battlefield.
Yes, the Zergling pathing has improved immensely. Yes, the Zergling is generally more deadly in combat, but so is the Zealot. Even with the speed upgrade Zealots are able to stack more effectively as well which means they're better able to kill Zerglings. In addition the fact that cliff vision is so dampened in StarCraft 2 makes it incredibly easy to hold a ramp against Zerglings. The only race at a disadvantage in Tier 1 is Terran and even then a Terran can have an effective wall up by 1:40 by using an additional SCV for the second supply depot.
As far as macro is concerned (and to refute the idea that a 1-Hatch Zergling build is somehow "invincible") the race with the most powerful macro element is Protoss. The new Obelisk ability is absolutely ridiculous. Even utilizing the Queen's larvae ability, it's still a challenge for the Zerg to keep up economically. I think this is a fundamental mistake made in this article. HotBid failed to take into account the fact that while the Zerg has the option to either produce extra units or opt for saturation of their expansions, the Protoss also has the ability to mass produce these same tier 1 units. It's likely that HotBid's opponents weren't utilizing this mechanic to its full potential.
I'd also like to point to the fact that the Queen has only 175 HP and only does 8 damage, half that of the Zealot. A single zealot could easily kill a Queen as she's fairly slow even on Creep. This makes the Queen incredibly easy to kill and is a big, fat, juicy target. It is a viable strategy to kill your opponent's Queen instead of going for their drones. She's the cost equivalent of three drones and also has the potential to create many more.
Next I feel I just have to address what I can only describe as a laughable description of "20+" Hydralisks at only 5-6 minutes in (from HotBid's description it seems like even less time). I find it hilarious that he suggests he had produced this many before a Terran opponent was able to tech Siege Tanks. Absolutely ridiculous. I'd also like to point out that the Terran Hellion is so mass producible (I will describe a perfect counter build shortly) and so devastating to Hydralisks that as a Zerg player I would be very reluctant to mass produce Hydralisks against a Terran opponent. Roaches would be much more appropriate. Lurkers even more so. I could go into the fact that there is no real acceptable tier 2 "tank" unit for the Zerg like the Lurker was in BW but that's not for this discussion.
In essence what I'm saying is that while the Queen's macro ability is certainly powerful, it is not in any capacity a game ending mechanic. I played against a couple decent Zerg players and an easy and effective counter as Terran is as follows:
This is easily enough to eliminate any threat made by Zerglings. You're simply not going to take a ramp with Zerglings against a Terran build like that. You need more firepower. The Terran's next step is to tech a factory, swap out their second barracks for a reactor on the factory, and begin producing Hellions en masse. The Hellion (with Marine support) is more than a match for Hydralisks even in a decent group. Their speed also makes it all but impossible for the Zerg to flee to battlefield as they're as fast as speedlings. As if it needed a third reason, the Hellion is also massively produceable at 100 minerals and has splash damage.
Another option would be to go for Marauders which massed with Marines (saying a 4 rax Terran is unable to keep up with Zergling production is just ridiculous) would be enough to counter Hydralisks as well. You'd still need some Hellions but you wouldn't need the factory reactor.
Anyway, a second factory is then used to tech Siege Tanks and grab a couple Thors (to decimate Mutalisks as well as destroy Hatcheries in just a couple shots).
I could go on forever, but frankly I think HotBid should have focused more on Zerg's inability to counter Terran Tier 2 than their supposed ability to conquer all during Tier 1.
On September 04 2009 11:05 Joneagle_X wrote: Oh, and ease up on Legacy. TL is not the be-all end-all of StarCraft.
But I'll take a 1v1 challenge for SC2.
Not to mention that the SC:L poster doesn't represent SC:L - so please don't judge the site or its community by one person's ranting. The bashing is not appreciated.
As to the article - it is well written - but beta will be the true indicator of its success. I tend to agree with Joneagle that there's more to it.
Hydralisk 100/75 surely thats completely wrong? Isn't it 75/25 like in BW? Does cheaper price make the mass hydra v terrain workable?
20x 100m = 2000m 20x 75g = 1500g
20x 75m = 1500m 20x 25g = 500g
The gas difference is huge thats for sure. If zerg can survive with as few lings as needed based on BW the cheaper amounts of gas & minerals weren't very hard to achieve but the larger gas price would be hard to get to.
Whats the major gas mechanic change exactly? Less gas gathered wasn't it?
Well its all very interesting to see how things will work out in beta.
Sometimes the ridiculousness you guys post makes it into my inbox and then I just have to respond.p
Yeah, way to endear yourself to the community right off the bat. Your entire post is belittling, full of exageration, and the TL post openly admitted it was nothing but a couple days experimentation. I didn't see anything methodical about your column, it was just one mans subjective opinion with little context as to how you drew your conclusions.
You are one guy who has played 60 hours. TL is made up of a dozen staff members who have been to all three blizzcons, two WWIs, and all the Blizzard invite events at Irvine. They also worked as a team at Blizzcon, rather than playing WoW scrubs by themselves.
If you are new here, you should show the same manner a TL staff member would show on your site.
And LoA, why does SCL seem to get so defensive with TL lately when all we have done is help you (promoting CGI, getting PP done). I don't think anyone worthwhile believes some bnet forum retard represents your site. Nobody here said anything bad about your site.
edit - and www.starcraft2forum guy, I think people were talking about the gamereplays article, not yours. But go ahead and get defensive anyway.
You may act professionally. However, the "teams" you send to these events for the most part do not meet that requirement. The only hostility my post suggests is towards the trolling that occurs on your forums. The rest of my post was meant to refute an argument posted as an article on your site.
There is no exaggeration, and I have also attended those same events. Except in my case the same staff attended all the events instead of the smattering of representatives from TL. Furthermore, while I rarely post on TL I've had an account for a long time. Perhaps the reason I don't post more is that when I refute any position held by TL staff another admin attempts to berate me :D
Lastly, it's not my job to "endear" myself to your community. My job is to keep the interpretation fair and balanced. If you have an issue with constructive criticism and discussion of articles posted by your staff members then I would suggest you not allow posts based on "experimentation" to be written.
NOW I remember you, you are the guy whose opinion of TL was
Who could possibly not like drooling over Korean pros all day?
That is right. You also said that TL was stuck on SC and your site was more focused on SC2, and
You can keep the old school, I'll take the new book, thanks.
I knew you were familiar. Your job may not be to endear yourself to the community, but if you want people to take you seriously, insulting them first is probably not the right way to go.
Yes, I did say those things. And I stand behind them. Taken out of context, but still true. :D
And replying to your edit... I said "your community" which apparently consists mostly of attacking positions held by other credible sites and the Blizzard development team themselves. As far as the StarCraft 2 community as a whole, I'd like to think I've tried to bring a decent update as far as the game's progress from these events without speculating to the extent that this article does.
Yes, I did. A unit intended solely too boost the macro of Zerg? Terrible abilities otherwise. Might as well give it to a building.
EDIT: I'm not going to flame with you. I take back what I said about your acting professionally. Clearly I had you confused with another TL staff member. Have a good night.
On September 04 2009 12:07 Joneagle_X wrote: Yes, I did. A unit intended solely too boost the macro of Zerg? Terrible abilities otherwise. Might as well give it to a building.
EDIT: I'm not going to flame with you. Have a good night.
I don't think I ever spoke like I knew everything or that this was the be-all-end-all of SC2 imbalance. It was just our staff's initial impression of the game. As I said, we could be wrong. We probably are at least partly wrong.
But that doesn't suddenly make everything we've said illegitimate -- while I readily concede that your arguments might even be right, you seem almost irrationally sure that your thoughts on these issues that nobody other than Blizzard employees are experts in. How can you be so certain that you're the authority on this? Llike the statement in your article about the Queen being really bad... that's just flat wrong.
Also, its not a good idea to just come into a community, talk down to everyone with an egotistical and condescending tone, then when someone points it out in an unoffensive manner, you get on a high horse and cry about us berating and flaming you. Your conduct in these last few posts plus your hostile posting history -- why would anyone want to visit your site when the people that post articles on there act like you?
On September 04 2009 12:07 Manifesto7 wrote: Apparently this is the SC2 superduperfunsite admin build order.
- Insult an entire website by telling them they are drooling over players who are very good at a game they enjoy.
- Come back 5 months later because you think someone was talking about your column, but no one was.
- Call everyone ridiculous and unprofessional.
- Compare 60 hours of game play by one person to hundreds by many as being superior.
- Then try to make a point about the game and a column, now that you have pissed everyone off.
- Get run over by 1 hatch hydras.
Sound accurate?
Because I don't act like this.
I never implied that I was somehow the only person to understand StarCraft 2, but posting an article that is this in-depth and so limited in scope with so little playtime was a mistake.
Thirdly, I stand behind the grade I gave the Queen. She's been extremely weakened. Then again, you might not know that without the reference of previous builds to rely on.
Also, I never said you were COMPLETELY wrong. Your observations about Fast Expand strategies are correct.
It's a bit difficult to form a cohesive argument into a forum posting. Especially when you made as many points as you did.
I think your analysis was well intentioned but far too limited in scope. That's why you missed what you did.
There are benefits to taking a wider view of the game as well as using a selective approach. But drawing the conclusions you did from such a limited build test made your opinion more into a nit-picking session.
On September 04 2009 12:07 Manifesto7 wrote: Apparently this is the SC2 superduperfunsite admin build order.
- Insult an entire website by telling them they are drooling over players who are very good at a game they enjoy.
- Come back 5 months later because you think someone was talking about your column, but no one was.
- Call everyone ridiculous and unprofessional.
- Compare 60 hours of game play by one person to hundreds by many as being superior.
- Then try to make a point about the game and a column, now that you have pissed everyone off.
- Get run over by 1 hatch hydras.
Sound accurate?
Because I don't act like this.
I never implied that I was somehow the only person to understand StarCraft 2, but posting an article that is this in-depth and so limited in scope with so little playtime was a mistake.
Thirdly, I stand behind the grade I gave the Queen. She's been extremely weakened. Then again, you might not know that without the reference of previous builds to rely on.
Did you actually read the posts you made on this site? You are hostile, condescending, you overreact to what I wrote, and you have a post history of bad mouthing TL. Is it really that strange that our admins would respond negatively toward this type of behavior? Have some common sense. Its fine if you disagree just don't be a jerk when you do.
Can't we all just get along? This is SC2. A game where we all will treasure in the coming years. Ever since day 1, I have seen communities constantly attacking one another. Even though I believe Joneagle_X was a bit too aggressive in his tone, he does have a valid point.
A lot of members on here do constantly attack other fansites and degrade them. Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean you should degrade them. I have seen many posts prasing Hot_Bid like there is no tomorrow while on the other hand, attacking gamereplayers just because he says Zerg isn't good. Is that really neccessary? Why don't we discuss it in a civil way without attacking each other? How would you guys feel if another big fansite such as SCLEGACY has members that attack teamliquiders just because of different opinions. You guys wouldn't be too happy about it also right? Just like when that random battlenet guy attacked Hot_Bid's strategy a bit earlier.
All in all, why don't we just all get along without degrading one another? Is it really that hard to do?
On September 04 2009 12:21 Joneagle_X wrote: Also, I never said you were COMPLETELY wrong. Your observations about Fast Expand strategies are correct.
It's a bit difficult to form a cohesive argument into a forum posting. Especially when you made as many points as you did.
I think your analysis was well intentioned but far too limited in scope. That's why you missed what you did.
There are benefits to taking a wider view of the game as well as using a selective approach. But drawing the conclusions you did from such a limited build test made your opinion more into a nit-picking session.
I don't understand... you say on the one hand that the analysis is too limited and should take a "wider view" of the game. In your review, you cover about 10x the ground I cover in this article. But doesn't it make less sense to cover so much ground? Because you only have two days, you can't even properly review how so many units interact let alone grade them.
There's two ways to review. You can generalize about units and compare damage and numerical counters, or you can actually playtest and figure out which builds work and which don't. I'm not saying I'm 100% right about this Queen thing. But I strongly believe our approach toward play testing and reviewing is far superior than spending 10 minutes on each unit comparing damage outputs from the previous version of the game.
On September 04 2009 12:26 TheBigOne wrote: Can't we all just get along? This is SC2. A game where we all will treasure in the coming years. Ever since day 1, I have seen communities constantly attacking one another. Even though I believe Joneagle_X was a bit too aggressive in his tone, he does have a valid point.
A lot of members on here do constantly attack other fansites and degrade them. Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean you should degrade them. I have seen many posts prasing Hot_Bid like there is no tomorrow while on the other hand, attacking gamereplayers just because he says Zerg isn't good. Is that really neccessary? Why don't we discuss it in a civil way without attacking each other? How would you guys feel if another big fansite such as SCLEGACY has members that attack teamliquiders just because of different opinions. You guys wouldn't be too happy about it also right? Just like when that random battlenet guy attacked Hot_Bid's strategy a bit earlier.
All in all, why don't we just all get along without degrading one another? Is it really that hard to do?
Just to be clear, we do not endorse flaming other sites and people from TL that do aren't endorsed by us and don't speak for our staff or our site.
I even posted in this thread telling people to calm down and not overreact so much. I said several times that I may not be correct, in fact I know for certain I'm not 100% right. I don't think any fan site review can be very accurate given that we didn't have very much time to play the game. But again, I believe our approach (TL's) to reviewing the game is the best for our users and site (oriented toward competitive play).
I agree there's no need for hostility, and maybe this guy is just responding to our users that acted out, but I don't think I was overly hostile even a little bit in any of my posts.
I think your approach is correct and I commend you for that. In fact I had no issue with your article other than I felt that the overall assumption that any of the 1-Hatch builds are invincible is incorrect.
I just think you focused far too much on the tier 1 tech and you were focusing on defending a strategy rather than reacting to it.
You basically discounted all the other mechanics of the Protoss and Terran races. However, I think you were correct in your ZvZ analysis because I have major issues in that matchup no matter what I tried. I couldn't find a decent option to bring the game into Tier 2.
But I try not to generalize based on stats either. When I play I make notes about unit interactions and build orders, not the HP or damage of each unit. That consideration comes later. That's why when someone says "Hydralisk" I immediately counter with Hellion because I utilized it firsthand.
P.S. - I thought this was a little hostile LOL No hard feelings. I can take my lickinz
On September 04 2009 12:02 Hot_Bid wrote: This is the guy that rated the queen the worst out of all the SC2 units right? lolol
On September 04 2009 12:32 Joneagle_X wrote: I think your approach is correct and I commend you for that. In fact I had no issue with your article other than I felt that the overall assumption that any of the 1-Hatch builds are invincible is incorrect.
I never said 1-hatch builds are invincible, just that they are very difficult to play against. How could I possibly think that a simplistic build developed in 2 days is in any way "invincible." I even conceded its possible we completely missed things.
I just think you focused far too much on the tier 1 tech and you were focusing on defending a strategy rather than reacting to it.
Tier 1 dictates what happens in the rest of the game. It's a huge snowball effect and knowing what kind of advantage you can get in early game is critical for late game. Tier 1 is actually far more important to determining mid game and late game than actual Tier 2 and Tier 3 units. Anyone that watches competitive RTS can tell you that.
We played a lot of games and very carefully looked at Tier 1. Its the simplest to analyze and far less complex than trying to come up with some theory about the unit interaction later in the game. Most other sites do these broad sweeping reviews that look at every unit.
It would be like reviewing BW and saying "well tanks rape ultralisks, i grade ultralisk a C-" when we all know this statement is worthless to an assessment of competitive TvZ. Each matchup is far more complex and has far more dynamics than a simple straightforward grade. You can't possibly think that two days of playing and one fluff paragraph about a 3rd-tier unit is somehow better? How to get to that unit and the early game dynamic is far more determinative of the usefulness of a 3rd tier unit than just briefly looking at it. You'd need weeks to fully understand if a hive unit is overpowered, and 99% of the time you'd spend on builds, not the unit itself.
You basically discounted all the other mechanics of the Protoss and Terran races. However, I think you were correct in your ZvZ analysis because I have major issues in that matchup no matter what I tried. I couldn't find a decent option to bring the game into Tier 2.
But I try not to generalize based on stats either. When I play I make notes about unit interactions and build orders, not the HP or damage of each unit. That consideration comes later. That's why when someone says "Hydralisk" I immediately counter with Hellion because I utilized it firsthand.
I don't think anyone from any other site talked about scouting and the problem of overly powerful Zerg allins. Killing scouts and making it a guessing game for your opponent (are you powering drones or making units) is even harder in SC2 with the extra larvae from the Queen. Nobody but someone familiar with the BW competitive scene really understands this.
It's incredibly important and fragile a situation when you have to guess what your opponent is doing. Its easier to scout in BW and its immensely easy to turn the game into a coinflip with Zerg. Of course it's easy to say "i counter your hydras with my X" when you know how many units and when the Zerg will attack.
The real issue with larvae inject is that given how easy it is to deny scouting now, the Queen magnifies the Zerg's ability to all-in attack or super-power economy, and if the P or T guesses wrong, they either die or are very behind.
On September 04 2009 12:02 Hot_Bid wrote: This is the guy that rated the queen the worst out of all the SC2 units right? lolol
You really don't consider this to be condescending?
I said I was not hostile at all before you made your posts in this thread. I don't think what I said in the article (especially with the concessions I made and non-confrontational tone in posts after) justified what you posted. In fact, right now we're discussing it fine. If you go back and re-read what you said and your post history on TL, can you honestly say you haven't changed your tone? You're far less condescending and hostile now than in your first few posts in this thread.
And no I don't think that post is that bad -- and you must admit its funny that we thought the queen was the most important unit in the game and you rated it a "D".
At my worst I made witty remarks based on posts made earlier in the thread.
I'm just going to quote this and let it speak for itself lol
Let's agree to disagree on the fundamentals of reviewing the game.
I've tried the micromanagement style of the review and it just doesn't work. The build changes so often and you have so little time that it's really difficult to understand an issue in depth. It's inevitable that you're going to miss something if you're not looking higher up the tier.
I disagree with it being any more difficult to scout in SC2. I agree that Zerg can easily change from drones to troops in a flash but I don't think that makes them any more dangerous than they were in BW. In fact I feel they might have to be less aggressive because of the achille's heel that the Queen represents. Take her out and the entire Zerg macro is crippled. Unless they have another they're in really deep trouble. Especially when they're trying a 1-Hatch build like you're suggesting. In addition she's incredibly easy to kill which only makes this worse.
If you think about it it's also incredibly difficult to scout Terran. Marines + walling makes it incredibly hard to guess what they're going to do and with the addition of the Reaper and Viking you could make an argument that it's actually more dangerous to not know what the Terran is doing than the Zerg.
The bottom line is that clearly scouting has become imperative to the player in StarCraft 2. However, I don't think it's going to be any tougher, just different. Perhaps scouting will just become a more aggressive affair than the simple suicide worker.
I do think it's funny that we disagree on the Queen but I think it's because you're assuming I'm just giving the Queen an overall "D."
The grade I gave her is based on her change from the previous build. I'm rating the change in the Queen from one build to the other as a "D."
Does that make sense?
And I'm mostly hostile because I have to expect that I'm not going to receive a response that is genuine and isn't simply bashing. That's all I've ever experienced on here. I read quite a bit of the posts here and I find some of the posts to be almost as tasteless as those on the Battle.net forums.
Refreshing to find someone who wants to discuss the game and not just bash someone else's view.
On September 04 2009 12:07 Manifesto7 wrote: Apparently this is the SC2 superduperfunsite admin build order.
- Insult an entire website by telling them they are drooling over players who are very good at a game they enjoy.
- Come back 5 months later because you think someone was talking about your column, but no one was.
- Call everyone ridiculous and unprofessional.
- Compare 60 hours of game play by one person to hundreds by many as being superior.
- Then try to make a point about the game and a column, now that you have pissed everyone off.
- Get run over by 1 hatch hydras.
Sound accurate?
Because I don't act like this.
o rly?
Who could possibly not like drooling over Korean pros all day?
Jon from SC2Forums.org. I'm the guy whom HotBid "made look like he knows nothing." Sometimes the ridiculousness you guys post makes it into my inbox and then I just have to respond.
(nobody was talking about it)
Sometimes the ridiculousness you guys post makes it into my inbox and then I just have to respond...
...You may act professionally. However, the "teams" you send to these events for the most part do not meet that requirement.
There is no exaggeration, and I have also attended those same events. Except in my case the same staff attended all the events instead of the smattering of representatives from TL...
...And in contrast to HotBid's two days (maximum 20 hours) of playtime I've logged almost 60 hours on StarCraft 2...
If you have an issue with constructive criticism and discussion of articles posted by your staff members then I would suggest you not allow posts based on "experimentation" to be written.
Yes, because experimentation is bad. And... your criticism was constructive. I'll refer back to the "ridiculous" and "laughable" adjectives you used.
All that is left is for you to lose a game. 1v1 iccup right now?
On September 04 2009 12:50 Joneagle_X wrote: Let's agree to disagree on the fundamentals of reviewing the game.
I've tried the micromanagement style of the review and it just doesn't work. The build changes so often and you have so little time that it's really difficult to understand an issue in depth. It's inevitable that you're going to miss something if you're not looking higher up the tier.
This supports my point that assessing builds past Tier 2 is too complex, and supports the idea that doing a review that has a few sentences on every unit is basically useless aside from aesthetic stuff like hit points and damage. There just isn't enough time to fully test what builds are viable.
I disagree with it being any more difficult to scout in SC2. I agree that Zerg can easily change from drones to troops in a flash but I don't think that makes them any more dangerous than they were in BW.
Have you ever played competitive Brood War? Because its far, far, far easier to keep your scouting worker alive in BW than in SC2. How can you possibly say that scouting "isn't more difficult in SC2" when Zerg has an early game ranged unit and the pathing AI is like 3x better? The difference is huge.
In fact I feel they might have to be less aggressive because of the achille's heel that the Queen represents. Take her out and the entire Zerg macro is crippled. Unless they have another they're in really deep trouble. Especially when they're trying a 1-Hatch build like you're suggesting. In addition she's incredibly easy to kill which only makes this worse.
The Queen is NOT incredibly easy to kill. I don't know what else to say about this other than if you can walk into a Zerg base with Zealots or Marines and snipe a Queen you are playing a horrible Zerg player. There's no way with overlords and 2 early lings will you get close enough to a Zerg base to snipe a Queen early in the game without the Zerg being fully prepared for you.
Also, how can you say that extra larvae doesn't make Zerg more dangerous? Choosing to make units or workers together was the strength of Zerg macro in BW -- you weren't sure what the Z was doing. In SC2 you know even less because your scout dies fast and they have more larvae to exponentially increase their eco or army early game. What conclusion can you draw from that other than that it makes early game all-ins / eco powering more dangerous?
The bottom line is that clearly scouting has become imperative to the player in StarCraft 2. However, I don't think it's going to be any tougher, just different. Perhaps scouting will just become a more aggressive affair than the simple suicide worker.
There's no basis to this statement, it's 100% conjecture and the opposite of how we believe things work in RTS games. It's not going to be tougher to scout!? It's just going to be "different and more aggressive than suiciding a worker?!"
That statement leads me to believe you really don't understand how scouting and adaptive builds work, and that you've never kept your scouting worker alive in an opponents base in BW for longer than 10 seconds after their Tier 1 units spawn.
Zerg having a ranged unit that can easily kill scouting workers plus better AI for chasing lings is absolutely huge.
On September 04 2009 12:50 Joneagle_X wrote: Let's agree to disagree on the fundamentals of reviewing the game.
I've tried the micromanagement style of the review and it just doesn't work. The build changes so often and you have so little time that it's really difficult to understand an issue in depth. It's inevitable that you're going to miss something if you're not looking higher up the tier.
I disagree with it being any more difficult to scout in SC2. I agree that Zerg can easily change from drones to troops in a flash but I don't think that makes them any more dangerous than they were in BW. In fact I feel they might have to be less aggressive because of the achille's heel that the Queen represents. Take her out and the entire Zerg macro is crippled. Unless they have another they're in really deep trouble. Especially when they're trying a 1-Hatch build like you're suggesting. In addition she's incredibly easy to kill which only makes this worse.
If you think about it it's also incredibly difficult to scout Terran. Marines + walling makes it incredibly hard to guess what they're going to do and with the addition of the Reaper and Viking you could make an argument that it's actually more dangerous to not know what the Terran is doing than the Zerg.
The bottom line is that clearly scouting has become imperative to the player in StarCraft 2. However, I don't think it's going to be any tougher, just different. Perhaps scouting will just become a more aggressive affair than the simple suicide worker.
i dont want to be a jerk and come out of no where but your posts reek like you have no idea what you're talking about. while sc2 is obviously a different game the mechanics of sc meta game remains largely intact. while you berate the 1 hatch queen build for being short sighted you present a terran turtle build complete with supply count that is a fancy version of "2 rax 1 base and then tech, leaving the zerg map control so i can die later".
saying things like "it's hard to scout the terran because he has a ramp with rines" is utterly ridiculous when even a D- player can tell you that sac'ing an ovie is the correct thing to do. as far as i know hydras do 10 normal damage in sc2 as opposed to 10 concussive damage in sc and though they are a tier higher in sc2 they will pretty much destroy rines for cost until medievac and given that you essentially start with 2 hatches with a queen you can reach tier two that much faster in sc2. though i wont go into this since i havent logged 60 hours like you.
On September 04 2009 12:57 Joneagle_X wrote: I do think it's funny that we disagree on the Queen but I think it's because you're assuming I'm just giving the Queen an overall "D."
The grade I gave her is based on her change from the previous build. I'm rating the change in the Queen from one build to the other as a "D."
Does that make sense?
And I'm mostly hostile because I have to expect that I'm not going to receive a response that is genuine and isn't simply bashing. That's all I've ever experienced on here. I read quite a bit of the posts here and I find some of the posts to be almost as tasteless as those on the Battle.net forums.
Refreshing to find someone who wants to discuss the game and not just bash someone else's view.
Let me get this straight, you come to our forum, bad mouth everyone here, put the entire community down, and justify it because you "expected" us to act hostile?? And when someone posts civilly and that doesn't fit your idea that we're all "hostile flaming bashers" you give some ridiculous backhanded "compliment" and in your mind that somehow is an acceptable post?
I'm closer to banning you than continuing to discuss this with you.
On September 04 2009 12:57 Joneagle_X wrote: And I'm mostly hostile because I have to expect that I'm not going to receive a response that is genuine and isn't simply bashing. That's all I've ever experienced on here.
You have insulted this site and its members every time you have posted here. And... you are surprised that people are hostile.
Dude, the Queen only does 8 damage. Even though she's ranged she doesn't move very quickly. If you stay outside the Creep you can dodge her all day. And even if she does hit you a probe's shields will regenerate.
I was referring to your mid-game scouting in that you'd need to suicide a worker to get any useful information. Add in the queued commands and scouting isn't tough at all.
The last comment I'm going to make (this isn't going anywhere) is that the Queen is worth killing with any attack force. If you have some Zealots and you're pushing the attack that you described in your original article I'd go for her instead of workers. That would put the Zerg player back into the stone age.
@ Manifesto,
Like that will validate your behavior? I don't like to play SCBW anymore. Played last week and the older AI pathing just disgusts me. I'll gladly play you during SC2 beta.
Yeah, this isn't going anywhere. I was just trying to complete your sweet build order, but obviously you are too good at a game that isn't out to play the game that it is based upon.
edit - nvm, a lack of rts fundamentals means we are speaking a different language.
On September 04 2009 13:10 Joneagle_X wrote: Dude, the Queen only does 8 damage. Even though she's ranged she doesn't move very quickly. If you stay outside the Creep you can dodge her all day. And even if she does hit you a probe's shields will regenerate.
You have clearly never ever tried to keep a probe alive in a Zerg base against lings (which spawn before the Q is out) and a Queen.
I was referring to your mid-game scouting in that you'd need to suicide a worker to get any useful information. Add in the queued commands and scouting isn't tough at all.
This is just wrong. You can't get a worker into the Zerg base once the first one dies. You thinking scouting "isn't tough at all" just shows how ignorant you are about it :/
The last comment I'm going to make (this isn't going anywhere) is that the Queen is worth killing with any attack force. If you have some Zealots and you're pushing the attack that you described in your original article I'd go for her instead of workers. That would put the Zerg player back into the stone age.
At what point in Tier 1 will you be able to move out with P or T units and get into the Zerg base without them being completely ready to kill that group? The idea of doing what you're suggesting is just ridiculous, it doesn't work in a normal game.
Whoa whoa guys guys guys guys calm down. Seriously we dont need this kind of interwebsite conflict. Its not good for the game, its not good for the respective websites and most importantly its not good for the fans. Seriously lets please try and keep this as non-personal as possible and just discuss the issues. I think the crux of the issue is this
On September 04 2009 11:03 Joneagle_X wrote: As far as macro is concerned (and to refute the idea that a 1-Hatch Zergling build is somehow "invincible") the race with the most powerful macro element is Protoss. The new Obelisk ability is absolutely ridiculous. Even utilizing the Queen's larvae ability, it's still a challenge for the Zerg to keep up economically. I think this is a fundamental mistake made in this article. HotBid failed to take into account the fact that while the Zerg has the option to either produce extra units or opt for saturation of their expansions, the Protoss also has the ability to mass produce these same tier 1 units. It's likely that HotBid's opponents weren't utilizing this mechanic to its full potential.
The question of how the Obelisk compares with the queen has been brought up multiple times but not really addressed.
Hot Bid, Did anyone compare Spawn Larva with Proton Charge?
For anyone reading this who is familiar with BW, imagine if Zerg had a ranged unit that can move on creep faster than workers can, and Zergling chase AI is vastly improved so you don't even have to micro to kill the worker, just a+move on it. Its hard enough to keep your worker alive in BW without these two additional aspects.
But hey its "not tough at all" for you, so we all must be missing something super special about the probe.
edit: Regardless Blizzard is probably going to tweak the macro concepts before Beta is out anyway so we're arguing uselessly anyway.
Hot Bid, I respect you and your opinion but I cant tell if you just dont want to answer this question (which is ok just say so) or if you just havnt noticed it (I know your busy with Jon).
Did the Protoss players you played against use Proton Charge correctly? How much did it help them compared to Spawn Larva?
On September 04 2009 13:10 Joneagle_X wrote: I don't like to play SCBW anymore. Played last week and the older AI pathing just disgusts me.
Oh man, you must really be dying for the SC2 beta.
Archerofaiur, I'm not sure where Hot_Bid is getting "personal"? You have to consider that he's fighting the uphill battle of trying to have a serious conversation with a guy who evidently has little idea what he is talking about.
On September 04 2009 13:10 Joneagle_X wrote: I don't like to play SCBW anymore. Played last week and the older AI pathing just disgusts me.
How can you possibly say this and then argue about comparissons between SC1/2 like whether scouting is easer?....why are you even in this thread? no one was talking about you..at all lol.
On September 04 2009 13:10 Joneagle_X wrote: I don't like to play SCBW anymore. Played last week and the older AI pathing just disgusts me.
Oh man, you must really be dying for the SC2 beta.
Archerofaiur, I'm not sure where Hot_Bid is getting "personal"? You have to consider that he's fighting the uphill battle of trying to have a serious conversation with a guy who evidently has little idea what he is talking about.
Yah I know that. But I think the truth of the matter is that regardless of who wronged who, what the SC2 fans really want to know is "Is Spawn Larva too powerful right now?"
And to make some judgement on that we need to hear what your guys opinion of Proton Charge vs Spawn Larva was.
On September 04 2009 13:10 Joneagle_X wrote: I don't like to play SCBW anymore. Played last week and the older AI pathing just disgusts me.
Oh man, you must really be dying for the SC2 beta.
Archerofaiur, I'm not sure where Hot_Bid is getting "personal"? You have to consider that he's fighting the uphill battle of trying to have a serious conversation with a guy who evidently has little idea what he is talking about.
Yah I know that. But I think the truth of the matter is that regardless of who wronged who, what the SC2 fans really want to know is "Is Spawn Larva too powerful right now?"
And to make some judgement on that we need to here what your guys opinion of Proton Charge vs Spawn Larva was.
I feel sorry for you Archerofaiur. You're trying hard to find the answer only to have other people just answer some other post rather than get back on topic. so the question is: And to make some judgement on that we need to here what your guys opinion of Proton Charge vs Spawn Larva was.
I felt the Spawn Larvae was a mechanic that matched the Proton Charge only when used en masse. If you use it completely as an economic advantage yes, it's equivalent to Proton Charge. But if you opt to go for increased unit production your economic advantage is lost.
I think the spawn larvae mechanic is a great addition to the Zerg but the Queen needs to have some more use than just being a macro mechanic.
However, you also have to take into account that spawning more drones is a liability and costs more supply whereas the Proton Charge simply increases the efficiency of existing workers.
And no, I don't think spawn larvae is too powerful. Just another mechanic.
On September 04 2009 14:06 Joneagle_X wrote: I felt the Spawn Larvae was a mechanic that matched the Proton Charge only when used en masse. If you use it completely as an economic advantage yes, it's equivalent to Proton Charge. But if you opt to go for increased unit production your economic advantage is lost.
I think the spawn larvae mechanic is a great addition to the Zerg but the Queen needs to have some more use than just being a macro mechanic.
However, you also have to take into account that spawning more drones is a liability and costs more supply whereas the Proton Charge simply increases the efficiency of existing workers.
And no, I don't think spawn larvae is too powerful. Just another mechanic.
I would like to inject my own opinion into this argument here. Not about SC2, but about personal conduct on forums.
Even if someone comes here and badmouths everyone associated with TL, I believe that, if no one else, the admins should remain civil towards him. They represent the site, and I think while it may be perfectly justifiable to counter attack a hostile poster, it would be way more mature to be nice towards him. If he continues to be an ass, warn him, then ban him. I don't really enjoy seeing the TL admins getting personal towards this guy; it makes them look bad, and gives this thread a rather childish flavor. Also, it would make relations with other sites easier, and just in general make everyone's life easier.
I thought the proton charge was a ton easier to use than the larvae mechanic. You could use it with a simple click and walk away. The Zerg you've got to plan ahead (takes about 30-40 seconds for your mutant larvae to mature, I think), decide what you're going to build, and then make a choice.
Your economic macro is effectively tied to your production. You have to do one or the other. Meanwhile the proton charge is totally separate from production for the Protoss (and it has defensive abilities since it acts as a shield battery).
The MULE is simple and effective. I don't really see an advantage here over the Protoss though except that the MULE is free in supply and only costs energy. Again, I feel like it's an attempt to catch up to the Protoss' ability. The call down is easy and with one Orbital Command you can call down MULEs to any of your expansions. You can probably afford to bring in My preference was to expand using liftoff and loading 5 SCVs to a protected natural and then make that CC into a planetary fortress (takes quite a commitment by the opponent to take one down) and then use my Orbital Command to bring in MULEs as needed.
Oh and the OC's ability to call in extra supplies is fun too.
i think you're totally missing the point of this article. i dont know how high the proton charge is in the tech tree but when you are starting out a zerg who can hatch 5 drones at a time while you are stuck making one probe at a time the definitely holds the economic advantage.
when you get beyond that yes a fully saturated mineral line of probes + dark pylon may have larger returns but that would be much later in the game which opens up another can of worms.
There's more to it, but basically it works like this:
The Mule is good at the start because it isn't affect by worker numbers. Proton Charge is good later because its affect gets larger with more workers. Inject Larvae is the best because it can be used for both workers and production.
It's a bigger issue than that, but that's the gist of it. You can't "compare" them directly. It's like comparing hatcheries to gateways, which one is better? Well, it's not exactly like that because in this case the queen is just better. lol >_<
On September 04 2009 14:25 Archerofaiur wrote: Why was he banned when he was giving pertinent SC2 information and not fighting people anymore?
15/17 posts over the course of his life cycle were some kind of attack or defense about his site or something we wrote. Disagreeing without any backing, admits he doesn't play SC and justifies opinion with the number of hours he has played....would you like information from bnet pubs? Plenty of people around here who played the blizzcon build. Ill make hotbid answer you when he wakes up.
On September 04 2009 14:14 milikan wrote: I would like to inject my own opinion into this argument here. Not about SC2, but about personal conduct on forums.
Even if someone comes here and badmouths everyone associated with TL, I believe that, if no one else, the admins should remain civil towards him. They represent the site, and I think while it may be perfectly justifiable to counter attack a hostile poster, it would be way more mature to be nice towards him. If he continues to be an ass, warn him, then ban him. I don't really enjoy seeing the TL admins getting personal towards this guy; it makes them look bad, and gives this thread a rather childish flavor. Also, it would make relations with other sites easier, and just in general make everyone's life easier.
In other words: LESS QQ PLZ.
I really don't see what I posted in this thread that made me look bad and childish, but I guess that's just your opinion. I know this is the internet but you don't go onto a forum and act like a condescending asshole by insulting everyone and the site.
On September 04 2009 14:25 Archerofaiur wrote: Why was he banned when he was giving pertinent SC2 information and not fighting people anymore?
Its a tough judgment call on the ban. On the one hand we were having a discussion, on the other hand we don't tolerate people coming into "our house" and just blanket insulting everyone. Frankly he should've been banned for the first one or two posts but we felt that the thread probably would benefit more from discussion with him, despite the frustration.
Providing SC2 information != free pass to be an asshole.
Chill answered your question about comparing mechanics -- I'd like to add that we aren't sure of the exact numbers of how they compare, but its clear that the Zerg one is the most flexible in that you can make units with the extra larvae not just workers.
On September 04 2009 04:14 Hot_Bid wrote: 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.
i really like how you handle this topic, great work as always. Also thanks for answering to my DT theory, altough i had another one, with 1 base mass zela (+possibly macro boost trick if it's accecible)
Chill answered your question about comparing mechanics -- I'd like to add that we aren't sure of the exact numbers of how they compare, but its clear that the Zerg one is the most flexible in that you can make units with the extra larvae not just workers.
Thanks for the responce. Just to clarify. You were playing against Protoss players using Proton Charge constantly and correctly? And the extra minerals was still not enough to keep up with spawn larva?
We just want to be sure that zerg wasnt out producing everyone because Protoss wasnt using their own macro mechaincs.
Awesome thread, lolz at the thread drama later in, love reading the impressions, thoughts on the current build etc.
Stupid question, but will there be another blizzcon thread about the other races/general mechanics, perhaps not as indepth as this current one, but one all the same, or was the primary focus of most of the TL guys who went the zerg.
On September 04 2009 15:03 Hot_Bid wrote: Chill answered your question about comparing mechanics -- I'd like to add that we aren't sure of the exact numbers of how they compare, but its clear that the Zerg one is the most flexible in that you can make units with the extra larvae not just workers.
Thanks for the responce. Just to clarify. You were playing against Protoss players using Proton Charge constantly and correctly? And the extra minerals was still not enough to keep up with spawn larva?
We just want to be sure that zerg wasnt out producing everyone because Protoss wasnt using their own macro mechaincs.
A lot of us played P and T as well and yes of course we were using their macro mechanics. We had a lot of TvZ and PvZ games where we painfully tried to play as cleanly as possible, but it was incredibly hard to match Zerg production. As HotBid wrote towards the end of the second day we specifically tried to figure out the 1hatch queen builds trying different T and P builds with different macro mechanic timings.
On September 04 2009 16:16 Wedge wrote: Stupid question, but will there be another blizzcon thread about the other races/general mechanics, perhaps not as indepth as this current one, but one all the same, or was the primary focus of most of the TL guys who went the zerg.
Yes we will be releasing more stuff no worries. We were just kind of forced to deal with Zerg so much due to HotBid raping our asses with 1hatch builds :-)
lolol i didn't even get an obelisk the game i won PvZ...
the way i see it, 1-hatch hydra all-in is in many ways similar to 4 pool in sc when the game first came out. sure basically the only way to defend against it without really being good at the game is 6gate or 6rax. blizzard had to make the spawning pool 200 (and even now a 5 pool from a good zerg is difficult to play against)
in this case though, a number of factors did conspire to make 1-hatch hydra really effective: - queen means being able to pump off 1 hatch - creep speed bonus means shutting down scouting early - small map size and rush distances (and backdoors) of blizzcon maps makes all-in much more effective - hydras being massively buffed (from 10/7.5/5 dmg to heavy/medium/light to 12/8 dmg to armored/light) makes them so much more powerful
I don't think 1-hatch hydra is unbeatable, but it's maybe something that requires balancing
Guys come on. Ok 1,5 hatch now costs 150 minerals (- 2 supply + many other bonuses. Actually it may be considered even free of charge. You can build an early goon which cannot leave your base but does not cost gas and requires only pool tech. Wouldn't you pay 150 minerals for it in SC just to get rid of a scouter? I would. And the 1,5 hatch is just a bonus. Niiice). Doesn't anyone smell imballance? It will be fixed so fast I don't see the point of spending so much time to dabate over this point.
P.S. There are crucial factors that keep SC balanced. In SC2 THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALTERED HEAVILY. They have proven to be correct by the years of progaming. Is larva spawn rate a crucial factor? Yes. How badly was it increased? More than doubled. What did you expect really? What will happen if in SC you will increase larva spawn rate 2 times? Will you wonder how to stop tier 1 all-ins from zerg?
On September 04 2009 13:21 Archerofaiur wrote: Whoa whoa guys guys guys guys calm down. Seriously we dont need this kind of interwebsite conflict. Its not good for the game, its not good for the respective websites and most importantly its not good for the fans. Seriously lets please try and keep this as non-personal as possible and just discuss the issues. I think the crux of the issue is this
On September 04 2009 11:03 Joneagle_X wrote: As far as macro is concerned (and to refute the idea that a 1-Hatch Zergling build is somehow "invincible") the race with the most powerful macro element is Protoss. The new Obelisk ability is absolutely ridiculous. Even utilizing the Queen's larvae ability, it's still a challenge for the Zerg to keep up economically. I think this is a fundamental mistake made in this article. HotBid failed to take into account the fact that while the Zerg has the option to either produce extra units or opt for saturation of their expansions, the Protoss also has the ability to mass produce these same tier 1 units. It's likely that HotBid's opponents weren't utilizing this mechanic to its full potential.
The question of how the Obelisk compares with the queen has been brought up multiple times but not really addressed.
Hot Bid, Did anyone compare Spawn Larva with Proton Charge?
no way thread got like 10x better when that guy starting posting crap and hotbid/manifesto started refuting him lol
So it sounds like the best thing for protoss to do against Zerg 1 hatch is go on the defensive till Proton Charge ramps up. Making additional obelisks for shield/energy recharge should help you hold key positions.
Cool article. I really like how you experimented with a specific build in testing. I think that's the best way of testing with the time that you had. Hopefully your results are of use to Blizzard for tweaking if nothing else.
I'm not going to join the debate about bashing SC sites except to say stop it. It isn't helpful when someone with a couple posts says, "Stop bashing other SC sites, TL. You guys are dicks." That post itself generalizes the members of TL, makes us take offence, and reciprocate dislike for that website. It also happens the other way around. We all need to remember that lone posters are not representitives of the website, and most likely not staff, so don't generalize.
On September 04 2009 18:50 Cheerio wrote: Guys come on. Ok 1,5 hatch now costs 150 minerals (- 2 supply + many other bonuses. Actually it may be considered even free of charge. You can build an early goon which cannot leave your base but does not cost gas and requires only pool tech. Wouldn't you pay 150 minerals for it in SC just to get rid of a scouter? I would. And the 1,5 hatch is just a bonus. Niiice). Doesn't anyone smell imballance? It will be fixed so fast I don't see the point of spending so much time to dabate over this point.
P.S. There are crucial factors that keep SC balanced. In SC2 THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALTERED HEAVILY. They have proven to be correct by the years of progaming. Is larva spawn rate a crucial factor? Yes. How badly was it increased? More than doubled. What did you expect really? What will happen if in SC you will increase larva spawn rate 2 times? Will you wonder how to stop tier 1 all-ins from zerg?
Lets look at the other side of Queen. Queen is extremely slow on non-creep ground, so basically it can't help you on your attacks. Also Queen is not a hatchery, you cant compare them. Yes, you can get 1.5x larvae, but then you cant secure the expansion and the drones mine slower if they are all in 1 base. Also, everything you gonna make out of larvae's is gonna cost minerals AND supply whereas photon charge doesn't require it. I think it's balanced pretty good, the only thing now is to figure out for other races, what counters this kind of 1 base play. What about scouting, if you scout and see he hasn't got expo in his nat, it's 1 hatch queen play. What about denying scouting, as protoss you can get 2 zealots and block your ramp. Those zealots will also be used in attacks while queen wont. As terran you can deny scouting by walling even easier (smaller building gaps) which is absolutely free. I think it's all balanced pretty well and when sc2 will be released, we will see some strategies which can be played against 1 hatch queen for sure. No worries for now ;]. 1 Hatch queen in SC2 kinda reminds me 2 gate toss PvZ in SC:BW. Possible early aggression with scouting denying, with possible early expanding(10/12 gates mostly leads to early expanding). What I'm saying, the direct counter may not exist, but using certain builds can get you the advantage over 1 hatch queen play.
- queens extra drones are grant a better eco-advantage than obelisk/mule at start, but beome worse, because of oversaturation
- when queen produces no more workers, it becomes a 1,5 hatch, which can be compared to 2 gateways > 300min
The way i see it that, because of the queen the zerg player starts with the best economy, but falls behind as the game progresses, because of possible oversaturation.
So far so fair, but the queen, after providing early eco advantage over T and P, transmutes into 2 free gateways, worth 300min.
The Zerg starts with a lead vs P and T in exchange for crappy economy efficiency. Around t2 you need 1 extra base and around t3 2 extra bases to match P/T mining efficiency.
Still, if you bunker too much t1, zerg expands over the map > you lose If you dont bunker enough you just die early on. Looks like if you just bunker enough to defend you should be in the lead since mining efficiency should push you ahead from this point on.
Regarding scouting, if you can just scout if zerg is expanding, this should be enough until you get comsat/sair, because as long as z is on 1 base like you, you just need to survive until mule/obelisk kick in. Ofc if zerg i super agressive, you will want to not have a greedy build, like against 4 pool in bw.
I'll be interested to see how or where this goes. I'm sure there was something you guys were missing. As it seemed, you were trying to stick mainly with BW units. From the sounds of it.
Maybe you guys needed to do ____. Who knows right? Who can really say until we all are playing.
Does anybody know why what Joneagle mentioned does not counter Hot_Bid's build? I haven't seen anyone address that.
I would love to know why too. Too bad, all hell broke lose with Jon and the admins as they can't keep a civil discussion.
From what I have seen, Jon degraded TL and the admins didn't appreciate his actions. Afterwords, I believe Jon calmed down and started discussing the mechanics but everyone else including the admins were calling Jon a noob and doesn't know any RTS background. Based from what I read, both Hot_Bid and Jon have their views. I don't think neither is better then the other. It's why I don't understand why everyone was calling Jon a noob.
Jon has no rights coming in here degrading TL like that. As admins, I think it's unprofessional to go into a flame war when some trolls are coming in here looking for a fight.Resort to calling others a noob just makes the flavor of this forum extremely unprofessional and unreadable when SC2 fans like me are coming here to read up info. Either BAN his ass or give him a warning about his behavior. No need to start up a huge flame war.
Well in the past two days I missed the beginnings of a nicely thought out article get mired in a very heated and stupid discussion. This didn't have to get out of hand as it did because when you guys were talking about Tier 1/2 interactions sometimes the statements meshed but both admins got butthurt and let their emotions get in the way of hashing out their perspectives.
I really appreciate the work you put into your article Hotbid but there was one thing missing from the article that makes it from being a good one.
You explained what you did but barely explained what your opponents did once they've experienced your usage of the Queen. I was hoping towards the end you or somone would insert a minireport giving a basic gist of the timings used but it wasn't there.
I could tell you had some difficulty with Terran but I could never tell if they went Orbital Command for the Mule econ advantage or the Planetary Fortress for the high scv/low army econ advantage. From the way people generally talk about the PF on the internet I know most don't recognize it as an econ improvement building like the OC is but I was hoping you at least attempted to use it because what had you to lose after trying a dozen OC timings.
I expect PFs to die easily to zerg/baneling swarms, yet I have a hard time believing your mass hydras would break PFs when so many reviews for awhile stated mass zealots and stalkers died to them (and hydras aren't that much different from Stalkers when it comes to taking down buildings). If you didn't test PF that might've been the type of thing that creates a coin toss uncertainty in your build since you implied mass zerglings have trouble with walled in Terran in general.
Lets look at the other side of Queen. Queen is extremely slow on non-creep ground, so basically it can't help you on your attacks.
Don't think of it as a unit, think of it as a defensive structure which can move in your base shoot both air and ground and has other usefull abilities even if you take spawn larva out. It costs 150 minerals even without spawn larva ability.
On September 05 2009 06:36 ProoM wrote: Also Queen is not a hatchery, you cant compare them. Yes, you can get 1.5x larvae, but then you cant secure the expansion and the drones mine slower if they are all in 1 base.
Yes you can't load gathered resourses into a queen but how many hatches do you need for that in SC? Only a few. All the others are for larva. Consider the queen as a substitute for those others. It does make it a little bit less valueble compared to hatches but only a little.
On September 05 2009 06:36 ProoM wrote: What about scouting, if you scout and see he hasn't got expo in his nat, it's 1 hatch queen play.
Is this all the information you need from scouting? How many bases your opponent is on?
On September 05 2009 06:36 ProoM wrote: What about denying scouting, as protoss you can get 2 zealots and block your ramp.
2 zealots denying a zerg scouting... What???
On September 05 2009 06:36 ProoM wrote: I think it's all balanced pretty well and when sc2 will be released, we will see some strategies which can be played against 1 hatch queen for sure. No worries for now ;].
This is a perfect argument against imballance worries, you can use it against anything at all.
Does anybody know why what Joneagle mentioned does not counter Hot_Bid's build? I haven't seen anyone address that.
I would love to know why too. Too bad, all hell broke lose with Jon and the admins as they can't keep a civil discussion. [1]
From what I have seen, Jon degraded TL and the admins didn't appreciate his actions. Afterwords, I believe Jon calmed down and started discussing the mechanics but everyone else including the admins were calling Jon a noob and doesn't know any RTS background. [2]
Based from what I read, both Hot_Bid and Jon have their views. I don't think neither is better then the other. It's why I don't understand why everyone was calling Jon a noob. [3]
Jon has no rights coming in here degrading TL like that. As admins, I think it's unprofessional to go into a flame war when some trolls are coming in here looking for a fight. [4]
Resort to calling others a noob just makes the flavor of this forum extremely unprofessional and unreadable when SC2 fans like me are coming here to read up info. Either BAN his ass or give him a warning about his behavior. No need to start up a huge flame war. [5]
[1] It's a bit difficult to keep a civil discussion with someone so defensive. Every argument (civil or not) against his position is taken as a personal attack on him. It can be clearly seen from his posts.
[2] It's pretty apparent that the guy is short on knowledge about RTS. To answer WWJDD's question (which was already actually answered earlier), Jon's 'counter' was to wall-in hardcore at his base, tech up to something meaningful, and then somehow not have a ridiculous economic disadvantage. If you sit in your base and turtle against a Zerg that is capable of quad speed larva production per hatchery, you might as well just concede the game at the beginning.
[3] Jon's knowledge is just not as extensive as Hot_Bid's or many other TL staff on the subject. He speaks in general concepts which do not necessarily apply in practice. A build in something like Starcraft goes far beyond general concepts. His argument that scouting will somehow be easier is just plain wrong. Two zerglings will shut down any scout in a matter of seconds with the speed increase on creep. Trying to scout with a worker is basically like wasting 50 minerals + mining time. It's the creep and improved pathing that makes it difficult - that is what Hot_Bid is trying to say.
Also, he's said some pretty silly stuff. Particularly his comment on unit counters. "You use this unit, I use that unit. Not because of numbers, but because of my instinct from playing so many hours of Starcraft 2." That is a very naive view of unit counters. First off, the numerical aspect of it is more useful than experience from playtime. It's not like the numbers are hidden. They are clearly there. What really comes into play with unit countering is timing, timing, and more timing.
[4] These guys are not suits in charge of an operation. They consider it their personal website, and they've done a hell of a job. Being professional has nothing to do with it.
[5] I think it's perfectly valid to call out someone on their lack of knowledge, especially if you are intending to have a meaningful discussion. In fact, the 'flaming' that's going on is informative to other people that lack knowledge as well.
--- I honestly feel for this guy. He wrote up something that he obviously cares about on his website, and he feels that someone disagreed with him and in a rude manner. I might respond to something like that too. But the fact is, no one was referring to him at all in the first place. Also, you can't take everything so personally and lash out and attack others just for having a different viewpoint. If he really thinks the community is made of nothing but trolls, he should show some class and not respond to them. He should just address the points here as intelligently as he can and shrug off the responses of those he considers trolls.
I think this discussion is completely noteworthy, and I wish more people had something to say other than automatically agreeing with one side or the other. Surely there are some guys out there with their own home-baked opinions that could give more insight than what's already been given.
On September 05 2009 06:45 WWJDD wrote: BTW, does anybody know why what Joneagle mentioned does not counter Hot_Bid's build? I haven't seen anyone address that.
He mentioned a lot of things. What specifically?
On September 05 2009 07:54 TheBigOne wrote: I would love to know why too. Too bad, all hell broke lose with Jon and the admins as they can't keep a civil discussion.
[... ] but everyone else including the admins were calling Jon a noob and doesn't know any RTS background. Based from what I read, both Hot_Bid and Jon have their views. I don't think neither is better then the other. It's why I don't understand why everyone was calling Jon a noob.
Read his first post. Why would anyone want to start a civil discussion after this? You will notice as soon as he slowed down everyone else did too.
He is called new because his reasoning shows he knows little about RTS. His article makes it appear he played mostly Protoss, and not against competent opponents. He "rated" the most powerful units in the game down. It does not help that he keeps telling people he played 50+ hours of Starcraft2 when there are people on this site who have played a lot more. The Terran build he posted even is wrong (8 supply?) and surely does not counter any 1 hatch queen build.
Oh why am I even typing, thanks DefMatrixUltra that answers everything.
You do bring up a lot of good points. Very indepth and well put. However, I personally just don't see the need of flaming someone that is just coming over here looking for trouble. Why steep to their level? I personally just hate watching two sides of people ranting over each others idea calling them noobs and not knowing what they are talking about especially when it's an admin that represents the website. If the other person wants to come over here looking for trouble, BAN HIS ASS. Steeping down to their level just makes the community in a whole looks worse.
Hot_Bid was actually very professional when handling this situation. But not so much with the others as they let their emotions got in their way which quite frankly, I would have understood since Joneagle was the one coming over here degrading the TL community in the first place. Joneagle and Hot_Bid actually has a civil argument going along later on but the other admins started to intervene. Little did I know, just when Joneagle was answering questions that people were asking, he was banned. Personally, I think he should have been banned long before all the flame war started off.
But hey, what do I know? I actually like this community a lot as a whole. Lots of wonderful info about SC2 and SC1. When I came to this forum, I just came to read good reports like Hot_Bids. Not to see flame wars especially with admins involved in them. I know that I have no rights to rant about the admins and it is their website and they can do whatever they want. But I'm sure that there are alot of people out that that are like me, who doesn't post much or doesn't even have an account, and browse TL everyday. And I'm sure a majority of them doesn't like to see a bunch of flame wars going on in a extremely good report like this one.
On September 05 2009 06:45 WWJDD wrote: BTW, Does anybody know why what Joneagle mentioned does not counter Hot_Bid's build? I haven't seen anyone address that.
If you read the whole thread you would see why. They already went over stuff like that. I'll answer it again below if you're still wondering.
On September 05 2009 07:13 Teejing wrote: Love the drama!
The way i see it is:
- queens extra drones are grant a better eco-advantage than obelisk/mule at start, but beome worse, because of oversaturation
- when queen produces no more workers, it becomes a 1,5 hatch, which can be compared to 2 gateways > 300min
The way i see it that, because of the queen the zerg player starts with the best economy, but falls behind as the game progresses, because of possible oversaturation.
So far so fair, but the queen, after providing early eco advantage over T and P, transmutes into 2 free gateways, worth 300min.
The Zerg starts with a lead vs P and T in exchange for crappy economy efficiency. Around t2 you need 1 extra base and around t3 2 extra bases to match P/T mining efficiency.
Still, if you bunker too much t1, zerg expands over the map > you lose If you dont bunker enough you just die early on. Looks like if you just bunker enough to defend you should be in the lead since mining efficiency should push you ahead from this point on.
Regarding scouting, if you can just scout if zerg is expanding, this should be enough until you get comsat/sair, because as long as z is on 1 base like you, you just need to survive until mule/obelisk kick in. Ofc if zerg i super agressive, you will want to not have a greedy build, like against 4 pool in bw.
just my 2 cents
No.
Remember, it's compounding interest. Terran and Protoss are stuck with producing 1 worker a time. Zerg, with a 1.5 hatches at 1/2 of the price essentially gets a HUGE increase in production early instead of having to lay down more hatches.
Someone already calculated it out to about 9 extra larva by the time 12 hatch would normally pop. So you have 9 extra drones (or military units) early game before you would normally get a 2nd hatch in BW. Yes, you have to pay for these units, but remember you have extra minerals from NOT putting down a second hatch PLUS you have the extra mining of drones everytime you invest. It's compounding.
Do you see why now this is imbalanced?
Before supersaturation of your main you can plop down an extra couple hatches in expos. If terran/toss is 1base tech/turtle such as what joneagle is suggesting they lose map control and end up at a huge economic disadvantage. If they fast expand, they will get crippled by early game zerg supersaturated mineral line doing a hydra/ling all in before any of their macro mechanics can kick in.
Since they can't scout well what the zerg is doing (producing workers or military units), it's very difficult to know exactly what the zerg is doing and how to respond. Hence, the coinflip prediction of getting it correct.
You guys need to read the whole thread. All of these points have been addressed before I'm just repeating what others have said.
Does anybody know why what Joneagle mentioned does not counter Hot_Bid's build? I haven't seen anyone address that.
I would love to know why too. Too bad, all hell broke lose with Jon and the admins as they can't keep a civil discussion.
From what I have seen, Jon degraded TL and the admins didn't appreciate his actions. Afterwords, I believe Jon calmed down and started discussing the mechanics but everyone else including the admins were calling Jon a noob and doesn't know any RTS background. Based from what I read, both Hot_Bid and Jon have their views. I don't think neither is better then the other. It's why I don't understand why everyone was calling Jon a noob.
Jon has no rights coming in here degrading TL like that. As admins, I think it's unprofessional to go into a flame war when some trolls are coming in here looking for a fight.Resort to calling others a noob just makes the flavor of this forum extremely unprofessional and unreadable when SC2 fans like me are coming here to read up info. Either BAN his ass or give him a warning about his behavior. No need to start up a huge flame war.
No offense buddy, but did you read the thread? This is the second time this guy has come onto our site and been a dick. In addition, he also badmouths TL on his on site repeatedly. After he came in with his condescending essay I gave him a pretty clear warning to not be a dick. There is a certain way to behave when you are a guest. He continued to be a dick, and only at that point did I flame him. Pretty mildly too.
People throw around the word unprofessional, well guess what, this isn't a business. This site is a group of like-minded friends who like to sit around online and shoot the shit about starcraft. Until we start drawing a paycheck, it is going to stay that way. Our friend Jon wouldn't walk into a real life conversation swinging his dick like that and pissing people off, so I am not sure why he thinks it is ok to do here.
Admins help maintain this site, but we are also members of the community as well. We are not soulless emotionless robots. TL would be a worse place if we were.
Sorry if you don't like it. If you want to see what happens to forums that are run like a business, check out the battle.net forums and all their outstanding qualities. If you want a forum which is built around a society, then you go to TL.
On September 05 2009 08:01 mutantmagnet wrote:I expect PFs to die easily to zerg/baneling swarms, yet I have a hard time believing your mass hydras would break PFs when so many reviews for awhile stated mass zealots and stalkers died to them (and hydras aren't that much different from Stalkers when it comes to taking down buildings). If you didn't test PF that might've been the type of thing that creates a coin toss uncertainty in your build since you implied mass zerglings have trouble with walled in Terran in general.
yea I would also like to know if you guys tried some sort of PF fast expand build
On September 05 2009 08:01 mutantmagnet wrote:I expect PFs to die easily to zerg/baneling swarms, yet I have a hard time believing your mass hydras would break PFs when so many reviews for awhile stated mass zealots and stalkers died to them (and hydras aren't that much different from Stalkers when it comes to taking down buildings). If you didn't test PF that might've been the type of thing that creates a coin toss uncertainty in your build since you implied mass zerglings have trouble with walled in Terran in general.
yea I would also like to know if you guys tried some sort of PF fast expand build
Yes, we tried over and over and over. I know you are reading articles on other sites where people say it's no problem to pylon forge....if you play games vs scrubs who make 5 spawning pools and complain that theres no button to make zerglings then yes you can fe pretty easily. At least with us you have some gauge of where we are coming from as players - my biggest gripe is someone saying they dont even play starcraft but have successfully mastered some build or counter to what was being demonstrated in this article.
hi first I'd like to say i am new and i enjoyed reading Hot_Bid's article. My under standing of it is that the other race do not have the ability to properly scout out what the opposing Zerg is doing with their extra larva or have an effective way of getting rid of the queen. So i was wondering if making the creep speed bonus a upgrade would help solve this.
On September 05 2009 15:15 wwsmks wrote: hi first I'd like to say i am new and i enjoyed reading Hot_Bid's article. My under standing of it is that the other race do not have the ability to properly scout out what the opposing Zerg is doing with their extra larva or have an effective way of getting rid of the queen. So i was wondering if making the creep speed bonus a upgrade would help solve this.
Hi, welcome. Reducing her speed on the creep would help with the initial scouting I would imagine. The problem still comes from the exponential growth of zerg, rather than the linear growth of terran and protoss. BW managed to balance that with the three larvae system, but it seems the extra larva really stress that balance.
I think that decreasing the larva count to 3 or increase the spawn larva's cooldown to like 40 second would balance out the ability. I think as of now, the Queen's larva ability seems to be too useful. Having a lot of Hatcheries was actually one of the theme for the Zergs in SC1 and with the introduction of the Queen, it doesn't feel like that anymore.
I still like the feel of having a lot of Hatcheries for the Zerg. Nerfing the spawn larva ability will probably do it. However, this is all subjected to change during beta. I'm sure we will see some dramatic changes once beta hits.
Wouldn't a slow queen be easier to kill. If you kill the queen once or twice that would negate the minerals saved by not making a hatchery and disrupt spawn larva ability. The queen only has 150 heaths so it could be a safer investment to get a second hatchery with 1250 instead.
So this means that zerg can fight effectively 1base vs 1 base ? In SC1 no one 1 bases as zerg unless its some extreme cheese/all - in . I think its a good addition to the zerg race . If i want to play 1 base as zerg i don't want to be at a disadvantage against the other races , but if its imbalanced it should be nerfed a bit .
On September 05 2009 08:01 mutantmagnet wrote:I expect PFs to die easily to zerg/baneling swarms, yet I have a hard time believing your mass hydras would break PFs when so many reviews for awhile stated mass zealots and stalkers died to them (and hydras aren't that much different from Stalkers when it comes to taking down buildings). If you didn't test PF that might've been the type of thing that creates a coin toss uncertainty in your build since you implied mass zerglings have trouble with walled in Terran in general.
yea I would also like to know if you guys tried some sort of PF fast expand build
Yes, we tried over and over and over. I know you are reading articles on other sites where people say it's no problem to pylon forge....if you play games vs scrubs who make 5 spawning pools and complain that theres no button to make zerglings then yes you can fe pretty easily. At least with us you have some gauge of where we are coming from as players - my biggest gripe is someone saying they dont even play starcraft but have successfully mastered some build or counter to what was being demonstrated in this article.
On September 05 2009 08:01 mutantmagnet wrote:I expect PFs to die easily to zerg/baneling swarms, yet I have a hard time believing your mass hydras would break PFs when so many reviews for awhile stated mass zealots and stalkers died to them (and hydras aren't that much different from Stalkers when it comes to taking down buildings). If you didn't test PF that might've been the type of thing that creates a coin toss uncertainty in your build since you implied mass zerglings have trouble with walled in Terran in general.
I could see this working on some maps. A lot of the Blizzcon maps had back entrances so there no PF at the front will help you. Also, runbys are probably effective too.
The larger problem of course is if Zerg sees you making a CC they will expand and whore drones at a rate your 2 CC will never be able to match. Also you won't have the MULE on your nat and very little SCV, so you won't even benefit that much from the expansion.
It's an interesting thought though, maybe you can build a decent midgame army like this and hit the Zerg before hive but I doubt it will work against a smart Zerg player that keeps tabs on your build.
On September 05 2009 21:28 zatic wrote: I could see this working on some maps. A lot of the Blizzcon maps had back entrances so there no PF at the front will help you. Also, runbys are probably effective too.
The larger problem of course is if Zerg sees you making a CC they will expand and whore drones at a rate your 2 CC will never be able to match. Also you won't have the MULE on your nat and very little SCV, so you won't even benefit that much from the expansion.
It's an interesting thought though, maybe you can build a decent midgame army like this and hit the Zerg before hive but I doubt it will work against a smart Zerg player that keeps tabs on your build.
I think that this could turn into a little guessing game on both sides if scouting is denied:
zerg sees CC, can decide to attack or expand - if zerg atttacks, terran can defend with PF - if zerg expos, terran can use comsat (sry forgot the name) to be able to run MULEs on 2 bases, allowing them to build a teched up army more easily
IMO one way that Blizzard could balance out 1-hatch queen play vs 2-hatch play would be to move roaches to tier 1, allowing zerg to defend its nat from early game toss/terran pressure.
If we tweak and balance out the Queen and Roach abilities, the zerg player could be left with an interesting choice: should I go pool first or hatch/roach den first?
Also that could be a way to diversify ZvZ: imagine agressive 1-hatch queen w/ lings/mutas versus defensive 2-hatch roaches/hydras.
After reading the thread, it seems like it's more or less agreed that Zerg controls early game. However, it also seems to be an agreement that T2 Zerg isn't all that great. Would there ever be a point at which once the T/P player reached T2 that they would be able to move out and take back the advantage the Queen gave? Or is Z too far ahead at that point for that to happen? Is it possible that once a strategy (if one exists) to get around the advantage the queen gives, that Z won't have a strong enough economy to stay ahead in T2, and would fall behind?
The problem is that Zerg can stay at T1 and use the advantage that Queens give long-term and ultimately overrun even higher tier units from enemies simply because of the army regeneration rate and the fact that sticking to T1 units means you will never be low on gas, and thus can get dual upgrades, further cementing your advantage. The problem with letting the Zerg sit as you turtle and tech to T2 is that the Queen advantage compounds, especially when Zerg can just inject larvae nonstop without having to worry about pressuring you or receiving pressure. Zerg will outexpand you, then outproduce you, and if you choose to go for an economic advantage, Zerg will counter that by injecting larva and massing drones. Zerg is simply better at making armies, bolstering eco, etc. etc. because of this one mechanic.
Hot_Bid, zatic, Chill: Did you guys get the impression that it takes 8 lings to kill one zealot in SC2? That's what the guy who wrote the gamereplays article thinks, and Psyonic_Reaver seconds that opinion- and this does not assume advantageous positioning for the zealot or the zealot being one attack upgrade ahead of the zerglings' armor upgrades; just a straight fight between a bunch of lings vs. 1 zealot in open ground, no upgrades for either side.
I found it very difficult to believe this, so I'd love to hear your impressions on this issue.
From my experience, one zealot does not pose more of a threat than it did in SC1. 4 lings should be sufficient to kill 1 zeal. And like Hot_Bid said, with surround, when there are higher amount of zealots against proportionally greater zerglings, the zealots less effective than they were in SC1 in the hands of a complete amateur.
Did any of you guys try using the nullifiers? they do great damage to lings and they can create walls. Which is really important when going FE or just fighting swarms of lings in general.
Nullifiers are interesting but I found that I couldn't get them fast enough when FEing (if I go forge nexus gate) to withstand any real ling pressure, and dras would still be a nuisance.
Sometimes the ridiculousness you guys post makes it into my inbox and then I just have to respond.p
Yeah, way to endear yourself to the community right off the bat. Your entire post is belittling, full of exageration, and the TL post openly admitted it was nothing but a couple days experimentation. I didn't see anything methodical about your column, it was just one mans subjective opinion with little context as to how you drew your conclusions.
You are one guy who has played 60 hours. TL is made up of a dozen staff members who have been to all three blizzcons, two WWIs, and all the Blizzard invite events at Irvine. They also worked as a team at Blizzcon, rather than playing WoW scrubs by themselves.
If you are new here, you should show the same manner a TL staff member would show on your site.
And LoA, why does SCL seem to get so defensive with TL lately when all we have done is help you (promoting CGI, getting PP done). I don't think anyone worthwhile believes some bnet forum retard represents your site. Nobody here said anything bad about your site.
edit - and www.starcraft2forum guy, I think people were talking about the gamereplays article, not yours. But go ahead and get defensive anyway.
I can only hope to aspire to your sophistication when dealing with posts like this....
On September 05 2009 08:01 mutantmagnet wrote:I expect PFs to die easily to zerg/baneling swarms, yet I have a hard time believing your mass hydras would break PFs when so many reviews for awhile stated mass zealots and stalkers died to them (and hydras aren't that much different from Stalkers when it comes to taking down buildings). If you didn't test PF that might've been the type of thing that creates a coin toss uncertainty in your build since you implied mass zerglings have trouble with walled in Terran in general.
yea I would also like to know if you guys tried some sort of PF fast expand build
Yes, we tried over and over and over. I know you are reading articles on other sites where people say it's no problem to pylon forge....if you play games vs scrubs who make 5 spawning pools and complain that theres no button to make zerglings then yes you can fe pretty easily. At least with us you have some gauge of where we are coming from as players - my biggest gripe is someone saying they dont even play starcraft but have successfully mastered some build or counter to what was being demonstrated in this article.
PF means Planetary Fortress <font size="1"> ...... you idiot</font>
I thought only the singleplayer campaign was playable at PAX.
Blizzard Entertainment will once again be representing in full force at the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, taking place this weekend, September 4-6 in Seattle, Washington. PAX attendees will have access to playable versions of Diablo III (including the recently announced Monk class), the earth-shattering World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion, and the engrossing StarCraft II single-player campaign. Community managers will also be in attendance to chat with attendees about the past, present, and future of Blizzard Entertainment games. We hope to see you there!
So to the people that actually attended, was multiplayer actually playable?
On September 06 2009 12:04 Grendor wrote: Thank you for this article. I used this build to win against a Blizzard employee at PAX today and won a beta key for my efforts :-D
Ok so if this is true then Blizzard doesnt realize how powerful Spawn Larva is. It would be one thing if they did know and left it in for gameplay reasons but this suggest they really dont know. Or he was bad at macro.
Again one issolated incident. But taken together with TLs feedback paints a picture.
Ok so if this is true then Blizzard doesnt realize how powerful Spawn Larva is. It would be one thing if they did know and left it in for gameplay reasons but this suggest they really dont know. Or he was bad at macro.
Again one issolated incident. But taken together with TLs feedback paints a picture.
I don't think they know, because one of the (very well known) employees said I would be behind in economy by going queen first. It was ZvZ and he double hatched in his base. I just totally overwhelmed them with the one hatch. Larvae to spare.
On September 06 2009 12:10 TheBigOne wrote: Wait a minute.
I thought only the singleplayer campaign was playable at PAX.
So to the people that actually attended, was multiplayer actually playable?
The first day was single player only, 20 minute limit where you could play a skirmish or single-player. Today they had 3/4s of the computers setup for 1v1. I hope there's multi tomorrow as well.
I don't think they know, because one of the (very well known) employees said I would be behind in economy by going queen first. It was ZvZ and he double hatched in his base. I just totally overwhelmed them with the one hatch. Larvae to spare.
We need to make sure that Blizzard sees this thread and realizes how powerful spawn larvae is. If they decide to balance it before before releasing beta it might delay beta/release even more though.
From what I've heard of Zerg so far... If you can't beat your opponent or get a significant advantage in the first 20 minutes you're screwed since the Zerg late game is really lacking.
Ok so if this is true then Blizzard doesnt realize how powerful Spawn Larva is. It would be one thing if they did know and left it in for gameplay reasons but this suggest they really dont know. Or he was bad at macro.
Again one issolated incident. But taken together with TLs feedback paints a picture.
I don't think they know, because one of the (very well known) employees
I don't think they know, because one of the (very well known) employees said I would be behind in economy by going queen first. It was ZvZ and he double hatched in his base. I just totally overwhelmed them with the one hatch. Larvae to spare.
We need to make sure that Blizzard sees this thread and realizes how powerful spawn larvae is. If they decide to balance it before before releasing beta it might delay beta/release even more though.
From what I've heard of Zerg so far... If you can't beat your opponent or get a significant advantage in the first 20 minutes you're screwed since the Zerg late game is really lacking.
Ok so if this is true then Blizzard doesnt realize how powerful Spawn Larva is. It would be one thing if they did know and left it in for gameplay reasons but this suggest they really dont know. Or he was bad at macro.
Again one issolated incident. But taken together with TLs feedback paints a picture.
I don't think they know, because one of the (very well known) employees said I would be behind in economy by going queen first. It was ZvZ and he double hatched in his base. I just totally overwhelmed them with the one hatch. Larvae to spare.
haha thats exactly what happened when people went 2 hatch against me ZvZ, you have like double their lings with the Queen
I don't want to put words into the mouth of people that have probably been working non-stop since Blizzcon, and I could also be wrong or misinterpreted them. However, I can say that after two days of playing Starcraft 2 with the build (10 games only) that the spawn larvae is overpowered and will probably get nerfed. It's just hella strong.
I don't want to put words into the mouth of people that have probably been working non-stop since Blizzcon, and I could also be wrong or misinterpreted them. However, I can say that after two days of playing Starcraft 2 with the build (10 games only) that the spawn larvae is overpowered and will probably get nerfed. It's just hella strong.
How about this idea: all units created by injected larva have a life span, are created much faster, take 0 supply, and have some sort of visual identifier, like an aura. Temporary workers give the same linear resource boost that mules and pylons do, temporary attack units work as emergency static base defense or increase your numbers if you're going for a huge push. However, the visual aura would let pros micro around them.
Just something I'm throwing out there for people to poke a million holes in.
Based on my experiences with BW and from what I've read in this thread, all build orders should go through 1 hatch-queen. It's superior in both economy and military. What happens afterward depends on scouting information and enemy capabilities, but 1-base hydra sure sounds strong against Terran.
First of all, the primary reason Zerg expanded so quickly in BW was to get down the second hatch for larva. The fact that the Zerg often occupied its natural with the hatch was an added bonus (and sometimes an added liability). The SC II queen offers more than a hatchery's worth of larva at a lower cost and helps defend the base and eliminates enemy scouters. In additional since the queen is on the natural tech path for military units, getting to it doesn't delay military production in any way either. This is almost too good to be true.
As for comparisons against other races in SC II, I can't judge that at all. But Hot Bid's idea that economic advantages gained early on in tier 1 compounds as the game goes on is correct. In fact having large economic advantages often translates into a military advantage that stops the opponent from growing economy altogether.
The Blizzard employee that thought that one-hatch queen would be an inferior opening than 2-hatch just puzzles me. The only time the second hatch comes into play is when the starting mineral patches are completely saturated or when the zerg needs the second gas. But by then the 1-hatch-queen player should have been able to build a second hatchery and then power if necessary to saturate the natural expansion.
There are some ways to balance 1. Make it a separate branch of the tech tree. 2. Make the number of larva depend on the hatchery level: 2 for simple hatchery, 3 for lair, 4 for hive 3. Tweek the cool down rates and casting costs.
On September 05 2009 08:01 mutantmagnet wrote:I expect PFs to die easily to zerg/baneling swarms, yet I have a hard time believing your mass hydras would break PFs when so many reviews for awhile stated mass zealots and stalkers died to them (and hydras aren't that much different from Stalkers when it comes to taking down buildings). If you didn't test PF that might've been the type of thing that creates a coin toss uncertainty in your build since you implied mass zerglings have trouble with walled in Terran in general.
yea I would also like to know if you guys tried some sort of PF fast expand build
Yes, we tried over and over and over. I know you are reading articles on other sites where people say it's no problem to pylon forge....if you play games vs scrubs who make 5 spawning pools and complain that theres no button to make zerglings then yes you can fe pretty easily. At least with us you have some gauge of where we are coming from as players - my biggest gripe is someone saying they dont even play starcraft but have successfully mastered some build or counter to what was being demonstrated in this article.
Heard pax was having sc2 multiplayer demos today so I borrowed a friend's pass and went down around 11. There was a beta key contest to play one of the devs (Karune and 2-3 others I'd never heard of) 1v1. You win, you get a key. After 4 hours at pax, most of it spent standing in line for this contest, 2 people had won a key, myself and another TL reader who discussed the supposed strength of 1 hatch queen builds with me beforehand.
We both won with 1hatQ play against a zerg dev who did 2 hatch expo and 1 hatch tech builds, neither involving an early queen. Neither of us had ever played a sc2 match before. I had a quick chat with Karune after the match and the relevant info was that Blizzard feels the game is fairly close in balance but still think Zerg are the weakest. He also confirmed beta's projected Nov/Dev release.
I left around 3:30 and handed the Pax pass off to a friend so he could try to get a match against the devs as well. I suggested he 1hatQ regardless of the matchup, and I heard back a little after 5 that he had obtained a beta key as well.
As much as I'd like to claim an affinity to sc2, in reality I played terribly and made some huge early game mistakes such as psi-locking myself at the point where I should have gotten the queen and 6 lings out, letting him 12 hatch at his nat while causing no economic damage at all, and losing 2 scouting drones early to surrounds. (No more mineral walk through enemy units) It really was just the power of the queen providing more larve than a hatch-first build and completley denying enemy overlord scouting while I was constantly aware of his ling count and tech.
Oh fuck, I'd almost forgotten workers no longer glitched through everything when ordered to mine. That's gonna make keeping your scout worker alive SOOOOOOOOOOOOO hard
This is allittle off topic but could anyone who went to Blizzcon draw us the changling? The creature has been around for months and we still have no idea what it looks like.
On September 07 2009 10:25 Archerofaiur wrote: This is allittle off topic but could anyone who went to Blizzcon draw us the changling? The creature has been around for months and we still have no idea what it looks like.
I made one, not even knowing what it was. It dropped out of an overlord or overseer, I can't remember which. Basically it looked like those guys in hell in diablo2 that drag their torsos on the ground and walk with their arms. They also carry a sack of orange liquid if I remember correctly. Speed seemed similar to an unupgraded zergling.
On September 07 2009 09:28 Hot_Bid wrote: nice! i'm happy to know that even if im wrong in this article i at least helped a few TL'ers win beta keys by abusing a 1-hatch Queen build lol
One more reporting in!
I got pretty lucky and ended up fighting Cydra (I think) on Zerg who is apparently not as good as Karune. I had played 4 or 5 skirmishes vs the computer and one vs a human where I used the 1hat queen build so I was getting comfortable with the game. I'm not great at BW; I hover around D+/C- with 150-175 apm for reference.
I did a 12 or 13 pool, gas, got 6 lings to block my ramp to deny a drone scout, and positioned my queen to kill an incoming overlord. I rallied future lings to an area in my base that I didn't think his overlord would spot. Then I goofed and actually lost my own scouting overlord to his queen which sent me into a panic; I was going to lose my beta key! But I caught back up in overlords and by the time speed finished I had about 18 lings. Moving out I encountered 6-8 lings of his which I easily surrounded and just moved into his base for an easy win. Turned out he laired right after killing my overlord and was planning to do a quick 1hat+queen muta build. Anticlimactic.
I was the third person in line and the first person to use the build, and expected the people after me to have a tougher time winning with it. But as evidenced by posts here and elsewhere, a few still found success.
That said, having watched Karune play and having discussed it with him (and a couple other folks, some TLers) in detail it doesn't seem as overpowered as once thought. In ZvP if the protoss walls with gateways and doesn't mismicro his zealot block, I can't see it ever winning. I didn't get to see it used in ZvT but speaking with Karune he felt confident he could survive it with a wall + repair micro, and marauders if the zerg does a hydra switch. ZvZ it is apparently the dominant build and it is purportedly being worked on.
It's definitely strong, maybe imbalanced, but very far from unbeatable.
After reading through the continuing repost (great job goatrope and CauthonLuck) I'm just a little worries about the narrowness of the early game. As I assumed, there is something that is safe from this build, but hopefully the game is not locked into that and is a bit more dynamic. It would suck to know you have to do a very similar opening every time in a certain matchup.
On September 07 2009 10:25 Archerofaiur wrote: This is allittle off topic but could anyone who went to Blizzcon draw us the changling? The creature has been around for months and we still have no idea what it looks like.
I made one, not even knowing what it was. It dropped out of an overlord or overseer, I can't remember which. Basically it looked like those guys in hell in diablo2 that drag their torsos on the ground and walk with their arms. They also carry a sack of orange liquid if I remember correctly. Speed seemed similar to an unupgraded zergling.
It looked like these guys?
On September 07 2009 22:08 Manifesto7 wrote: After reading through the continuing repost (great job goatrope and CauthonLuck) I'm just a little worries about the narrowness of the early game. As I assumed, there is something that is safe from this build, but hopefully the game is not locked into that and is a bit more dynamic. It would suck to know you have to do a very similar opening every time in a certain matchup.
How quickly the game opens up probably depends on allot of things. Instead of thinking about the macro mechanics as strategic choices it might be better to think of them as the backbone of the game. For instance, the player is supposed to make drones. No one ever looks at drones and says "man I wish it was possible to do a build that didnt include making drones first." Well except for rushes but that should still apply to the queen. The point is that making the queen is as much of a certainty as making drones. This doesn mean that there cant be variation in the opening builds.
What is/was the actual build order you guys are using (HB and the people who helped write/research article)? How many initial lings are you making? How many of the initial inject larva go towards drones and/or lings/hydras?
The one thing I've seen a lot of times is without a clear precise build order there's going to be differences in drone/military count which may or may not affect the ability to mass produce. Some people may be making too much military too early, not enough drones overall, too many drones, etc.
As Mani said though... if 1H Q is THE dominant build in a matchup then there's not going to be much variation in the early game which is bad for competitive games.
On September 07 2009 20:44 goatrope wrote: That said, having watched Karune play and having discussed it with him (and a couple other folks, some TLers) in detail it doesn't seem as overpowered as once thought. In ZvP if the protoss walls with gateways and doesn't mismicro his zealot block, I can't see it ever winning. I didn't get to see it used in ZvT but speaking with Karune he felt confident he could survive it with a wall + repair micro, and marauders if the zerg does a hydra switch. ZvZ it is apparently the dominant build and it is purportedly being worked on.
It's definitely strong, maybe imbalanced, but very far from unbeatable.
I think if the protoss were 100% sure that a Zerg was going to ling up and then do a hydra switch, the protoss would be able to fend off the early attack without falling behind. But it's entirely possible for the zerg to power to tier 3 and come at the protoss with an overwhelming economic attack while the P over built tier 1 defenses. The part of denying the scouting information is to keep the opponent guessing on what the Zerg can and will do.
On September 07 2009 20:44 goatrope wrote: That said, having watched Karune play and having discussed it with him (and a couple other folks, some TLers) in detail it doesn't seem as overpowered as once thought. In ZvP if the protoss walls with gateways and doesn't mismicro his zealot block, I can't see it ever winning. I didn't get to see it used in ZvT but speaking with Karune he felt confident he could survive it with a wall + repair micro, and marauders if the zerg does a hydra switch. ZvZ it is apparently the dominant build and it is purportedly being worked on.
It's definitely strong, maybe imbalanced, but very far from unbeatable.
I think if the protoss were 100% sure that a Zerg was going to ling up and then do a hydra switch, the protoss would be able to fend off the early attack without falling behind. But it's entirely possible for the zerg to power to tier 3 and come at the protoss with an overwhelming economic attack while the P over built tier 1 defenses. The part of denying the scouting information is to keep the opponent guessing on what the Zerg can and will do.
On September 07 2009 20:44 goatrope wrote: That said, having watched Karune play and having discussed it with him (and a couple other folks, some TLers) in detail it doesn't seem as overpowered as once thought. In ZvP if the protoss walls with gateways and doesn't mismicro his zealot block, I can't see it ever winning. I didn't get to see it used in ZvT but speaking with Karune he felt confident he could survive it with a wall + repair micro, and marauders if the zerg does a hydra switch. ZvZ it is apparently the dominant build and it is purportedly being worked on.
It's definitely strong, maybe imbalanced, but very far from unbeatable.
I think if the protoss were 100% sure that a Zerg was going to ling up and then do a hydra switch, the protoss would be able to fend off the early attack without falling behind. But it's entirely possible for the zerg to power to tier 3 and come at the protoss with an overwhelming economic attack while the P over built tier 1 defenses. The part of denying the scouting information is to keep the opponent guessing on what the Zerg can and will do.
"Additionally, the 1hatch queen build is strong, but relatively easy to stop if you know this is a potential strategy on the field.
These are just a few strategies I use and by no means the only strategies I've seen used:
With Terran, you will naturally want to block your choke point. This in itself will easily stop fast Zerglings, as you can use Marines to fire upon enemies from a cliff (since they don't have LoS, just make sure you keep those pesky Overlords at bay, which is relatively easy as well). SCVs do an excellent job of repairing much faster than Zerglings can do damage at this early of a stage. Hydralisks on the other hand pose a bit more problems, but can still be handled by a group of Marines behind supply depots or even a bunker if it is needed. Terran choke points are quite difficult to break at the moment and while your enemy expends resources determined to break it, I would hope you would be teching either to Banshees or Reapers for harassment, then putting them into the defensive and taking you into the mid-game, where arguably at the moment Zerg is forced to be at a defensive if they did do the 1hatch queen strategy (key point being the 1 hatch or late expand).
With Protoss, the proposed Zerg strategy is a bit more viable and it takes a little more skill to defend against it. For me, I often block my choke point with 2 gateways or 1 gateway/1 cybernetics core (if I am teching), leaving one cell open for an easy single Zealot block. Breaking that choke point for a single Zergling hitting that Zealot at a time, is an easy block, and quite cost effective for the Protoss player. For a determined Zerg player, they would either start attacking the gateways or tech to Banelings to take out the Zealot(s).
Timing-wise, you will be able to get your second Zealot out in time well before the Gateway is even at half health, which is usually enough to push off those initial Zerglings. When your Cybernetics Core is up, this opens up Nullifiers, which is a must used unit in my opinion against Zerg. At this time if the Zerg player has converted to Hydralisks (or even straight teched to Hydralisks), you should have at least one Nullifier up, which are excellent at both killing Hydralisks (with even 1 Zealot tanking) or even better, cutting a Zerg force in half while they push up the ramp, easily allowing your Zealot to hold the choke while your ranged units like Nullifiers and Stalkers annihilate half the force with ease, putting the Zerg on the defensive now, and opening up mid-game options.
Of course both strategies require micro, which is intentional - with an Overlord scouting and giving LoS, Hydralisks can be very potent. The 1 hatch queen strategy is quite capable, but not overpowering.
Hope this was useful - though you can expect lots of things to still change and be changed throughout beta.
Zerg's were mentioned as the 'weaker' race in a developer interview not because of their early game, but their mid game. In current builds, it is much more balanced with recent changes to make Zerg a bit more threatening in mid-game, such as Roaches moving while burrowed as one example. "
this is all nice and good but it assumes you know for certain that the Z is doing a 1-hatch queen attack. probe and SCV scouts still die insanely early and you are completely in the dark as to whether the Z is powering drones or units. again, 1-hatch hydra attack is easy to stop if you know the Z is definitely doing that. if they do the opposite or a mix, it's not so simple or easy at all.
the main thing that enables larvae injection abuse is information denial -- and nobody really has addressed this, except maybe some theorycrafting newbies who simply say "oh scout more" when its basically impossible to see what the Z does past the first three larvae when his pool finishes.
I would've thought the viewpoints discussed by the author of the TL post would have put some of these fears to rest about the 1-Hatch build but I don't think that's going to be the case.
Surely Karune's opinion has some weight to you? There's plenty of scouting options beyond the reasons I've stated previously in this thread. Not only can you scout with workers (which I still assert can be done even with pathing improvements and the Queen's ranged attack) but you can utilize the Orbital Scanner, etc... Yes, the Overlord scout is an issue but it's not something that ends the game. Both players equally have the same disadvantage.
It's not a simple match of check and mate anymore. And Karune has stated (and I've said it previously here) that the ZvZ matchup is a problem. So they're aware of it and are working on it. Perhaps the new Roach ability to move underground will shift the table a bit.
Urgh, I dont like how this will be like Jaedong play style.. Just micro like crazy.. I much prefer the sAviOr playstyle.. Queens sound awesome, but if the result is that you have to play with Jaedongs playstyle, then I refuse to play zerg.. Maybe switch to protoss like sAviOr. Nice write up though
On September 11 2009 19:32 Joneagle_X wrote: I would've thought the viewpoints discussed by the author of the TL post would have put some of these fears to rest about the 1-Hatch build but I don't think that's going to be the case.
Surely Karune's opinion has some weight to you? There's plenty of scouting options beyond the reasons I've stated previously in this thread. Not only can you scout with workers (which I still assert can be done even with pathing improvements and the Queen's ranged attack) but you can utilize the Orbital Scanner, etc... Yes, the Overlord scout is an issue but it's not something that ends the game. Both players equally have the same disadvantage.
It's not a simple match of check and mate anymore. And Karune has stated (and I've said it previously here) that the ZvZ matchup is a problem. So they're aware of it and are working on it. Perhaps the new Roach ability to move underground will shift the table a bit.
First of all, Karune did not address the point of HB article. He talked about how to defend against a rush. That is not the point here.
How can you assert that workers can scout vs a ranged unit and zerglings? Like, how would you do it exactly? You can't do it in BW with "horrible path finding" so how can you do it in SC2 with better path finding?
Also, don't you think that using the scan early will hurt your economy?
Finally, how exactly would burrowed roaches affect zvz? It is a nice thought, but how would it change the matchup?
Scanning costs only 25 mana, the MULE costs 25 as well. You can afford to spare one scan. And it's available so early...
And the probe's movement speed is slightly faster than that of the Zergling un-upgraded so it's possible to dodge unless they've blocked the choke.
Furthermore, the Queen does only 8 damage (4x2) and moves incredibly slowly off Creep (and slower than a probe even when on Creep). Early game so long as you stay out of range and off the Creep she can't hurt your worker. At least not like Hot_Bid has suggested. You might have a hard time harassing with that worker, but it's not tough to scout.
Only when you get Speedlings does scouting become an issue and by then you have other options including the Observer (or Orbital Scanner) which, as Karune stated, you can achieve in tier 2 because it doesn't require an observatory. As a Zerg player you also have the option of morphing to an Overseer at lair for 50/100 which gives you the speed boost and detection as well as a food boost of 6 (not sure of that number).
The burrowed movement and super-regen (from discussing this build change with Dustin Browder I'm under the impression that the Roaches regen while burrowed just like the last build) Roaches could help the ZvZ matchup by completely negating the presence of Zerglings. A Zerg player could opt for an early tech to Roaches while holding his choke, researching burrow, and then being effectively invincible to Zerglings by moving underground and popping up only to attack. The Roach is already a counter for the Zergling but now it has a way to avoid Zergling surrounds just like the Stalker's Blink. It would be very similar to a Dark Templar strategy against Zerg where you'd need to police Overseers with Corruptors/Mutas, etc.
This would make the Roach (with the burrow movement ability) an even more solid counter to the Zergling and even give it a chance against the Hydralisk (while remaining vulnerable to air in true ZvZ ground v air fashion). Essentially what I'm saying is that it would make the ZvZ matchup into a Roach v Roach option rather than Zergling v Zergling. And by forcing that tech jump you're opening the matchup into the higher tiers which makes it far more interesting than the traditional ZvZ mass muta/ling strategies we see in SC:1.
Also, I know everyone is upset about the Mutalisk stacking issue but I'd like to add that I think this could be a good thing down the road for competitive play. The hold order attack while moving is great and while it's pretty tough to stack (it can be done during movement, just not while attacking) it's really fun to use the stop and move attack commands now. :D
On September 12 2009 13:00 Joneagle_X wrote: And the probe's movement speed is slightly faster than that of the Zergling un-upgraded so it's possible to dodge unless they've blocked the choke.
Maybe this is the source of all the confusion. Zerglings kill workers easily even off creep a-moving, they are sightly faster. As far as I know creep does not even affect Zergling speed.
On September 11 2009 19:32 Joneagle_X wrote: I would've thought the viewpoints discussed by the author of the TL post would have put some of these fears to rest about the 1-Hatch build but I don't think that's going to be the case.
Surely Karune's opinion has some weight to you? There's plenty of scouting options beyond the reasons I've stated previously in this thread. Not only can you scout with workers (which I still assert can be done even with pathing improvements and the Queen's ranged attack) but you can utilize the Orbital Scanner, etc... Yes, the Overlord scout is an issue but it's not something that ends the game. Both players equally have the same disadvantage.
It's not a simple match of check and mate anymore. And Karune has stated (and I've said it previously here) that the ZvZ matchup is a problem. So they're aware of it and are working on it. Perhaps the new Roach ability to move underground will shift the table a bit.
First of all, Karune did not address the point of HB article. He talked about how to defend against a rush. That is not the point here.
How can you assert that workers can scout vs a ranged unit and zerglings? Like, how would you do it exactly? You can't do it in BW with "horrible path finding" so how can you do it in SC2 with better path finding?
Also, don't you think that using the scan early will hurt your economy?
Finally, how exactly would burrowed roaches affect zvz? It is a nice thought, but how would it change the matchup?
To be fair, I can easily see how he'd perceive that as the point of HBs post, as he mentioned how everyone died to 1 hatch hydra builds.
Of course, that's not all he talked about but I can see why that would be his response.
In the last build all Zerg units increased movement by ~30% on creep according to Blizzard. Zerglings without the speed upgrade were slightly slower than a probe. Moving in a straight line Zerglings were unable to catch a probe. If you've played the game and were catching probes off Creep I don't know what to tell you. Either your opponent was letting you catch the probe by not giving it commands or you were intercepting it... On Creep, however, they can easily catch them.
The Queen, however, has a larger difference in speed movement when she is on/off Creep. I'd estimate it (visually) to be around 50% faster when on Creep. She's a sloth off Creep.
Almost all the problems you're posing as unsolvable would be solvable with better play.
Like oh well I can't know what he's doing, because he has a queen at his base to kill my scout. Well congratulations, you now know what zergs have been dealing with in starcraft for 12 years, you're now playing somewhat in the dark. You can still scout on 9 and go take a look, but after 30 seconds you're going to have a marine kill you and from there the terran player can do any kind of gay deviation he wants.
I mean, you're talking about LOL IM ABLE TO 1 HATCH ALL IN GUYS THAT ARE FAST EXPANDING WITHOUT ANY KNOWLEDGE OF WHETHER OR NOT FAST EXPANDING EVEN MAKES SENSE IN THIS NEW GAME.
Your friends were dumb for trying to FE with terran/protoss in the first place, they should've been playing one base builds just like you were, and defending their ramp with whatever units counter hydraling. In SC1 it was always the case that 1 base P/T was better than 1 base zerg and thusfar we have no reason to believe otherwise. I don't know, if zerg really is imbalanced as you claim, it'll undoubtedly get fixed before the release date, but I doubt it's as bad as you claim.
Better play in of itself isn't the solution, because the problem is not just the difficulty in scouting, but the fact that this aforementioned difficulty in scouting multiplies the effect that a crapload of larva will have. The base of the problem is that (given that SC2 is an RTS with imperfect information) Zerg simply has too much flexibility with the option to make a ton of workers, or a ton of units, or *both* to a certain extent (which is something they couldn't do in BW) without really sacrificing anything.
The problem seems to be the queen, more specifically her ability to be a mobile scout killer and a larva factory at the same time. The advantages of having a cheaper and more productive unit (Queen vs. second hatch) are great and they come without the risks of investing in a 2 hatch. I think it would be an interesting addition to gameplay if larva injection was only available to queens if they permanently incorporated themselves into a hatchery. This mutation would make them a part of the building, giving it energy and the larva injection ability. The goal of this in balancing would be to give players the choice of a base defender/expander/healer or increased production in the early game. In order to have both, one would have to invest the same amount of minerals as it would take to get a second hatch. It would also make a hatch with a queen attached a larger investment (450 minerals).