I respect your effort and everything, but I don't think this article was necessary. If the queen is so obviously broken, they will patch it after the first few beta days to, say, make 3 larvae every 35 seconds instead. No problem at all, that's what beta is for. I'm sure there's a dozen other glaring imbalances which will swiftly be found and eliminated once a broad public gets to play the game on a large scale. In short: no need to cry over presumed imbalances before the beta even hits.

That said, here's an idea to theorize over: What if inject larvae were a channeling spell? (That means the queen can't do anything else while injecting, like for example the archmage's blizzard spell in Warcraft 3) The result is that the queen can't chase scouts with her ranged attack while injecting. The opponent gets to keep his scout alive unless the zerg player foregoes injecting larvae for some time to go scout hunting. Would this help? If it doesn't, what if the queen's ground attack were melee? The effect is essentially the same, the scout lives longer and the opponent can adapt properly to what the zerg does.

JiYan

United States3668 Posts

September 11 2009 22:39 GMT

#46

great article

stenole

Norway868 Posts

September 11 2009 22:40 GMT

#47

They could make drone eggs look different than ling/hydra eggs. That would at least make the first wave of larva easier to deal with. Or is it hard to even get a look at the eggs at that point of the game?

What I get as the main message of this article is that Blizzard need to assume that the game needs to be balanced (or balancable) at the highest level of play where both players use all factors of the game to their maximal potential, otherwise the game will fail.

Tweeking the different races' macro mechanics will be a great challenge because of how it inevitably affects every other aspect of the game.

Osmoses

Sweden5302 Posts

September 11 2009 22:43 GMT

#48

I suck at math, and those graphs are completely indecipherable to me. On another note, great article, the lack of choice is apparent and the proposed soutions are convincing.

Sharp-eYe

Canada642 Posts

September 11 2009 22:49 GMT

#49

This has tons more credibility because of your skills Chill. Anyway, I agree with all the points. Here is just something to chew on. In sc1, nukes are rarely used, same with scouts, and with zerg infested terrans are never used. Maybe this isnt a valid argument, but imo the expensiveness of of the nukes just kills the entire tech tree, and MAYBE this is related with the no-scans idea. But thena gain, I did not play sc2 to fully understand what your saying.

Either way great article.

Strayline

United States330 Posts

September 11 2009 22:53 GMT

#50

Hmm... I've always thought the ability to quickly do surprise tech switches and be a little harder to "read" by just scouting was a cool part of playing Zerg. I hope the maco mechanic can be balanced while still allowing it to emphasize that aspect of the race.

Furthermore, I think Zergs will get easier to read as time goes on and builds are a little more well-defined. People will count hatcheries and expansions and the timing of dens and such after the optimal paths for reaching certain timing windows with the maximum amount of units are discovered. Like: protoss knows what the signs of 5 hat hydra are but the signs that it's probably going to be hydras instead of mutas are kinda subtle...

JWD

United States12607 Posts

September 11 2009 23:01 GMT

#51

On September 12 2009 07:39 Scorch wrote:
I respect your effort and everything, but I don't think this article was necessary.

If this is true, you really need to visit other community sites / the B.net forums more often.

ghostWriter

United States3302 Posts

September 11 2009 23:07 GMT

#52

Very interesting, thanks for the update.

QQplay

United States229 Posts

September 11 2009 23:15 GMT

#53

Nice writeup and banner.

I hope SC2 is as balanced as SC:BW.

drivec

United States354 Posts

September 11 2009 23:16 GMT

#54

great write up. i cant believe ppl dont understand what u wrote.

but then again i bet the ppl that dont understand dont ready it all ether.. or havnt read hot_bids post

freelander

Hungary4707 Posts

September 11 2009 23:22 GMT

#55

Hey chill

nice article.

Could you run your excel stuff with 2 or 3 larvae ? (I mean injection)

Pufftrees

2449 Posts

September 11 2009 23:27 GMT

#56

Thank you for a great article. As your last line says, the problem will be fixed in beta most likely but it is quite interesting. Something else for Blizzard to chew on.

Chill

Calgary25980 Posts

September 11 2009 23:31 GMT

#57

On September 12 2009 08:22 freelander wrote:
Hey chill

nice article.

Could you run your excel stuff with 2 or 3 larvae ? (I mean injection)

Sure, brb.

2 drone inject:

3 drone inject:

tedster

984 Posts

September 11 2009 23:37 GMT

#58

Chill, I love you, since this was almost exactly what I was arguing in the comments for Hot_bid's writeup (and had a little squabble with him over over =[

Gives a lot more weight to the argument - i.e. how linear it seems to make the decision-making process and how there's virtually no choice, and it would take a pretty major change to inject choice back into the macro.

One thing your graphs aren't taking into account, however, is how many troops P or T might be able to produce in the meantime. Those drone counts assume no other troops whatsoever, and while that is viable for a long period of time (since zerg can respond to 5 marines hitting their base by producing 10 lings at once) both T and P have excess minerals in your model they would be using for other production, and this could negatively effect Z's economy. It's obviously impossible to simulate this, but finding out how many marines T could produce before Z hits max saturation might be pretty important as well.

d3_crescentia

United States4054 Posts

September 11 2009 23:37 GMT

#59

On September 12 2009 07:39 Scorch wrote:That said, here's an idea to theorize over: What if inject larvae were a channeling spell? (That means the queen can't do anything else while injecting, like for example the archmage's blizzard spell in Warcraft 3) The result is that the queen can't chase scouts with her ranged attack while injecting. The opponent gets to keep his scout alive unless the zerg player foregoes injecting larvae for some time to go scout hunting. Would this help? If it doesn't, what if the queen's ground attack were melee? The effect is essentially the same, the scout lives longer and the opponent can adapt properly to what the zerg does.

it might help, but the pathfinding in SC2 is so far superior that you can just a-move with your first set of 6 lings and they'll kill the probe

tedster

984 Posts

September 11 2009 23:40 GMT

#60

^^^ yeah people are missing the part where lings on creep will always kill the probes with the speed boost they are getting right now

I still don't think simply forcing Z to choose their "injection troop" in advance will change much, however, since Z is looking to have an enormous scouting advantage over other races. With 25 seconds to spare, you could easily continue pumping drone larvae until the last possible second before dropping 5-7 eggs worth of lings as the opponent starts to get close.

Not only that, the opponent is going to have to spend time near Z's base early game to "force zerg to play defensive", except that Z can produce an enormous quantity of lings out of nowhere and that spells death in an open field against a handful of troops. Problems, problems.