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Can we be honest about the swarm host? Everyone's applauding it that it "feel zergy" but is it really?
It's basically a stationary brood lord, and we all know how much fun brood lords are to watch.
Just as we all applauded how fun Brood Lords looked, they are not that fun at all. They lower micro because of path blocking and all you really need to do is move them around.
Lets to honest to ourselves now, what does Swarm Host offer to SC2?
Drop play - No. Lurkers have lots of AoE spike damage, which made drop play with them very fun. Swarm hosts on the other hand, you drop them, and they burrow. A good pro player would instantly withdraw all his forces and move the probes. That's it. You don't have any crazy ability to do anything since Swarm Hosts are designed to be a slow, constantly attacking unit rather than a sneaky AoE unit.
Map control - Not necessarily, at least by itself. A single Lurker could control a ramp, a few hold lurkers could decimate bio. What can the swarm host do? Again, they don't do AoE and if you tell them to hold, if a Terran ball comes, basically the swarm host will spawn 6-10 little swarmlings, and have at it.
Does it add to the army composition - Yes, that's about the only thing it does add, is to change the Zerg "death ball" around. Add a new unit to make things look a little differently. It allows Zerg to force the enemy into engaging when they are not ready.
So what does the swarm host really do?
a) It takes away micro from the game yet again. You plop them down, and watch.
b) Projectiles are so slow that they are basically useless by themselves.
c) It requires at least 4-5 swarm hosts to be effective, meaning 12-15 food gone into swarm hosts.
Going back to QXC's blog about unit design, the reason why the brood lord is not that fun is because it's greatest weakness is boring. It's just slow.
With the lurker, it did massive AOE line damage, it was the only unit that could attack while burrowed (which in essense is basically invisible, so dark templar level tech) but it had a HUGE weakness - it had to be immobile to attack and had no attack when moving.
Going to look at the swarm host - it's strengths aren't really that great. It's long range, blocks pathing, adds HP and DPS to your army. Major weaknesses are the same as lurker, and even more so that its projectiles themselves are targetable, meaning it potentially could be a completely useless unit by itself.
This kind of "somewhat useful in certain areas whilst useless it others" bothers me. As the lurker was never useless ever. It could always dish out damage. In fact, I've seen pro games where lurkers rush siege tank lines and still do well.
Furthermore, none of the Zerg line seems to make much sense or feel natural.
To go up the tech tree, you do this:
Zerglings -> Infestors -> Ultras and broods
Or if you look at it a different way
Zerglings -> Heavy armored roach (what is the purpose of this unit again?) or lightly armored hydra -> infestors and swarm hosts and corruptors / muta -> ultras and broods
None of this even feels any way natural. It feels haphazard and completely arbitrary. It's like the designers created a system, and had to mold the zerg race around it, rather than creating a zerg race first.
In the original BW, zerglings, melee ground units, naturally moves towards ranged all rounder hydras, which could be supplanted with mutas which naturally became either heavy anti-air or heavy anti-ground.
Furthermore, ultras felt like a natural progression of zerglings. This felt way more natural. Simplicity became complexity, weak became strong. The overall design philosophy felt right.
SC2 Zerg is like, here we have zerglings and hydras 'cause we had to copy them over from SC1. Now we add in roaches, is completely out of place, but we need them because they have a lot of HP and soak up damage. Now we just boost damage across the board on other races to counter these roaches. Mutas are in, because, again we needed to copy something from SC1, but mutas don't do anythign anymore, even though they "mutate" by their name. No, create an arbitrary unit called the corruptor to counter yet another system we put in, and then make them turn into broodlords, and abritrary unit that has really no role in the game until people figured out infestor broods.
I really don't understand what Blizzard's mentality is towards Zerg. The race itself just feels broken in a poorly designed way (not in a balance way). Sure people have gotten used to this poor design, but step back and look again, why things are there?
Blizzard seems to be very happy at where Zerg is headed, I tend to differ on that opinion.
The main reason is that, this kind of haphazard design only lasts until all options made up by designers are used up and gameplay stagnates. If the design isn't natural, it naturally will move towards a stale mechanism because the system itself was created to solve the few game design issues that the designers themselves made up.
What are people's opinions on this matter?
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I think the swarm host is a shitty lurker. I don't know what else to say. I agree with you about it.
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Samezies, but I hate movement blocking units too, all your points are completely valid too.
I like your view on the Muta too, where's the mutating !?
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Burrowed infestor spamming infested terran = better swarm host
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I would laugh if they put lurkers back in this game. Do you know how bad they would be? The only reason lurkers were good is because of the horrid AI in sc1. In sc2 they would run all the marines right in the middle and annihilate your lurkers. Not to mention with medivacs being the heal instead of an on the ground heal you have much more drop play. Drops > lurkers. Healing from the air > lurkers. Sc2 AI > lurkers. Lurkers would be horrendous in this game. Get it out of your head that they're good.
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I think you're overlooking some of the micro aspects. The Siege tank could probably be substituted in your complaint about how the unit micro works (move and siege, blocks paths). However, I'd argue that units that add decision making really help the game. Knowing when to burrow/unburrow and move (and where to) as well as how to position your army are all things good things.
However, the same could be accomplished with the Lurker.
I like the "burrowed siege unit" idea. I greatly dislike the "free zerg units" idea that already takes place with Infested Terrans and Broodlings. One of the big aspects of Zerg play is deciding when and how to spend larva. Being able to so greatly increase your army value with minimal larva takes away a lot of decision making. (I'm actually gonna think more about that and the current state of Zerg.)
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The swarm host can be incredible based on usage. It has one thing the lurker never had: the ability to siege a position at a long range. My god is this invaluable. If you get even a small lead in the early game due to some micro or a build order advantage, doing a swarm host timing of 7-8 swarm hosts puts serious pressure on your opponent in the same way a tank push does. It gives Zerg a way to end games in the mid-game if the opponent is behind but being very defensive. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only really good thing about them. In terms of a weird siege tank, it's fantastic for offense and so far I've found fairly miserable for defense. They are also pretty damn poor in the late-game when lots of splash is in play, making them a liability and thus not a great idea for a longer game unless you plan to win with them. Because of this binary usage I find myself only ever making them in ZvT in the late midgame against mech, or against Protoss taking a fast third. The swarm host is also annoying in the sense that you have to build them like Mutalisk, 7-8 for a timing or you go all in and just go for mass swarm host for the kill.
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Drop play - No. Lurkers have lots of AoE spike damage, which made drop play with them very fun. Swarm hosts on the other hand, you drop them, and they burrow. A good pro player would instantly withdraw all his forces and move the probes. That's it. You don't have any crazy ability to do anything since Swarm Hosts are designed to be a slow, constantly attacking unit rather than a sneaky AoE unit.
LOL... logic fail. How would lurker be different from swarm host? "A good pro player would instantly withdraw all his forces and move the probes." This argument holds for lurkers. There is no "crazy ability" to do anything as well.
One can even argue swarm host is better because you can control its "projectile" to attack further from where swarm host is.
but the part on zoning will be more applicable. As lurker projectile cannot be removed but can be avoided, lurker attack is always a danger whereas locusts can be focused down and the cd on the pop takes a while.
No mention of main dynamics of BW zerg i.e. defiler consume and dark swarm which is the reason why lurker's utility does not diminish even when faced with BW tanks.
Anyway, towards the end, seems like you are just rambling about zerg... maybe you should structure the title better? Your OP seems to be going in many different directions to really facilitate discussion cause I am confused on what you are actually thinking of discussing.....
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I feel like this OP is largely inspired by qxc's emotionally charged arguments. He's a good public speaker, but it's far too easy to say "Blizzard is doing a shitty job".
You've got a lot of writing here, but it's an oversimplified and emotional argument. You've gotta be pretty egocentric to think the entire game is balanced around the race you play (i.e. roaches are highly armoured, therefore other races damage are buffed to deal with them).
A lot of people like to talk about bad game design. A very small portion of them actually know what they're talking about when they use the term.
OP, what exactly do you mean by "natural design". It's clear you feel passionate about this so maybe you could offer some specific suggestions for improvement.
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Russian Federation221 Posts
On November 28 2012 18:59 wankey wrote:
Can we be honest about the swarm host? Everyone's applauding it that it "feel zergy" but is it really?
What are people's opinions on this matter?
I wouldn’t even agree that it feels zergy.
Imho it looks like big fungus.
But I agree with the rest of your post. I don't like how SC2 is designed in general.
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Bad unit for the game, nothing else to add.
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swarmhost and lurker have completely different roles. but a lurkerlike unit is needed for zerg to have a chance vs MMM (i dont say its imba but you need BLs to trade cost efficient enough once T hits 10+ medivacs that outheal fungal) play and have a sustainable AoE unit (banelings explode, fungal is energybased and outhealed).
adding the lurker would also make the SH a non-allin unit like it is now. you need at least 15 to do anything and by that time tanks/colossus/storm is out. adding lurker would mean you could build 3 lurker and 4 SHs and pressure the opponent (not kill) while not having to commit that hard.
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I don't like to give "ad hominem" arguments, but people that think that Swarm Host is a "bad copy" of a Lurker don't understand this game at all...
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Lets be honest about the swarm host...
Its not a lurker,
but is still a really fun unit imo.
And to actually answer your point about
a) You say it takes away micro-this argument is ridiculous. people can still try to flank etc. the low firing speed means that if you send you troops the wrong way you can die. The other day i was playing and a guy hallucinated an army to draw my locust out of position and then swept in from the side and killed all my swarm hosts. It just encourages creative thinking.
b) You say either the projectiles are so slow they are basically useless-they are pretty useful.try burrowing a bunch of them outside a turtling terrans base and they will slowly but surely break down his defenses. you can also use them to stall pushes by burrowing-send out locusts-unburrow-retreat-repeat. Ive also had success with swarmhost hydra because the locusts work like an eternally respawning meatsheild. Once again it just require some creative thinking.
c) Yes it requires a sacrifice to get useful number of them. If it didn't then there would be no point in not getting them lategame. Just makes it a decision not a no-brainer.
Your argument about how the zerg line doesn't feel natural, seems to me to basically be saying we should eliminate all variation and just make tier 2 a bigger version of tier one and tier three a bigger version of tier two.
You say that the strengths aren't that great-The units that you laud when talking about natural/boring design have a only a few of those strengths. Ultras just add HP and a little DPS and hydras add DPS and a little HP.
Also you complain that the projectile are targetable and therefore useless. However EVERY SINGLE UNIT IN THE ENTIRE GAME IS TARGETABLE. Even by getting shot the locusts serve the purpose of not letting other units get shot. also this is saying that one swarmhost vs an entire army, yeah its not gonna work very well because the locusts will get shot without doing any damage, same goes for every other unit in the game.
I don't really understand what your saying in the conclusion but other than that i think i covered everything
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My biggest problem with the Swarm Host is that it is yet again a unit for Zerg which produces "free units". This is totally against the "Zerg have to constantly reproduce their units" racial specific, which is the justification for Inject Larva and the ability to stockpile them to large amounts. So it is a terrible concept which might even potentially be overpowered if too many Swarm Hosts are massed.
The long lifespan of the free units makes them really bad, because they can be used without risking the Swarm Host itself. Every unit should have to take risks while being used, but since it isnt the case for the Swarm Host it is a terribly overpowered concept.
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At first I agreed it looked hella boring, then I realized seige tanks and collosus are boring too. If you look at it from the perspective that it is a seige unit (which it is), then you will understand. It is also more microable than seige tanks.
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On November 28 2012 21:35 mango_destroyer wrote:
At first I agreed it looked hella boring, then I realized seige tanks and collosus are boring too. If you look at it from the perspective that it is a seige unit (which it is), then you will understand. It is also more microable than seige tanks.
It is also basically invulnerable ... which is a terrible concept for any RTS, which is present for Broodlords (invulnerable due to the screen of Broodlings which prevent ground units from getting close enough to shoot), Tempests (22 Range ... seriously?), Forcefield (blocking a ramp in your opponents base is BAD), Fungal (well its not really making the Infestor invulnerable, but the range of 9 is longer than any infantry can shoot) and now the Swarm Host ...
Why "potential invulnerability" should be acceptable in SC2 is beyond me.
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The Swarm Host is a bad unit in the sense that Zerg is aiming for Hive to be stable (at the very least) in the lategame. Why would someone make slow, cumbersome units that
a. Cant deal with drop harrass (unlike lurkers)
b. Cant contain in the broodwar sense (hi warpgate, medivacs etc)
c. Considerably slows down hive tech.
What they should have done is give Zerg lurkers (with their splash damage) and make infestors only deal slow but in a larger radius and no damage. Zerg midgame at the moment is terribad which is countered by their absurd late game.
So in other words, give Zerg a strong mid game, complemented by extra support in the late game, rather than roflstomp infestor/broodlord combo.
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It seems many people would like a SC Broodwar HD and not an evolution of the game which is SC2. Every game evolves and when new units come in the game everybody just cant accept them.
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the more i play with the swarm host the less i like it.
It's mostly just a dull siege unit that you sort of have to mass. Arguably there can be some cool things going on with trying to kill swarm hosts by blinking over the locusts, flanking them, attacking in between waves etc but overall it's still just dull.
Even more silly is that it actually doesn't help much for what it was designed for. It's good for pushing if you have an advantage, ie it allows zerg to end the game earlier without having to go to broodlords always.. However it actually doesn't work against terran where you need this because siege tanks stop the locusts way before they hit... In ZvZ you can already push without hosts and in PvZ you often can to and if you can't it's not likely that the hosts will help since colossi can counter them a bit too...
Zerg still has no map control unit nor does it have a fun splash unit except the baneling. I'm not saying the lurker is needed but it would fit so damn well in what zerg needs to round it off and give it more options.. Splash that's not fungal, map control and a way to push. Sure it wouldn't work against siege tanks but I don't think anything in the game should work to push against siege tanks except air.
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EPT
