Well, seeing how many people seem to be rather disappointed with this race, I though I'll give it a shot and present to you an idea of how the race and its mechanics could be enhanced to make it more interesting/challenging. First of all, one of the arguments was that the Zerg like some uniqueness. That is true, check out this vid:
Burrow movement, banelings, ultralisks and more. Delivered in better graphics and much cooler form. But it's not about all that.
What I want to talk about here is the idea that DoW2 implemented from the tabletop WH40K. I know that most of you are now raging and thinking that SC2 is not WH40K and this entire thread is pointless. I'd like to disagree. The Zerg seem very similar to the Tyranids and some of the mechanics included in their game by Relic could, in my opinion, be also applied to SC2 in a slightly different form. This entire thing is about synapse creatures.
So, on to the main course:
What is it all about and how does it work?
The definition provided by Lexicanum will serve as a good basis for this:
Synapse Creatures are some of the larger, more intelligent Tyranid organisms that act as psychic conduits or nodal relays through which a portion of the iron will of the Hive Mind flows to other lesser members of the hive. It is through Synapse that the swarms natural Instinctive Behaviour is overridden to the will of the Hive Mind.
In tabletop it was represented by the sole fact that you had control over your units when they were in the vicinity of a synapse creature (otherwise they reverted to their instinctive behaviour and acted according to it, which could often screw your entire battleplan). In DoW2 (and that's the kind of idea I'd like to talk about) synapse creatures provide a form of aura that enhances nearby basic creatures, the enhancment effect grows more powerful when you advance to higher tiers in tech. When a synapse creature dies it sends a psychic shockwave and all lesser organisms nearby are damaged and knocked down for a brief while (although implementing such thing in SC2 would be strategically both challenging and interesting I don't think it would fit well into large scale and fast pace of the game Blizzard wishes to achieve). The enhancement effects are truly amazing, it turns your most basic organisms into a force to be reckoned with (imagine standard lings and cracklings).
How could it be translated into SC2?
First of all, the synapse creatures as I see them in SC2:
- Overlord - Queen - Broodlord - Infestor
(please remind me if I missed any that could fit into this category)
The basic idea of more intelligent creatures controlling more basic forms is simple enough. It could be done in 2 ways as I see it:
1. DoW style
Each non-synapse creature (note that synapse effects don't work on any synapse creatures) has a set of 'upgrades' that are automatically activated when they're around a synapse creature. It's nice as it lets all of the units have unique features and leaves a lot of flexibility when choosing synapse creatures as each one of them provides exactly the same benefits to a certain type of lesser organisms. The down side of it is that not all of the synapse creatures are going to be utilised if all of them share the same value for other creatures.
2. Proposed SC2 style
Each synapse creature would provide a set of unique bonuses to the creatures surrounding it. Some examples could include: Queen - stays near the hive and all creatures around her become hyperactive and their organisms react well to the pheromones. at t1: all units near the queen regenerate faster at t2: bonus movement speed (seeing as queen mostly stays in base it would work primarily for drones, increasing their gathering speed) at t3: increased attack speed, faster unit hatching from eggs etc. didn't really think that far, I just deliver the basic concept.
Why would it be great?
It would be great because it would not only give you a better 'swarm feeling' with all the important creatures making lesser ones more frenzied or whatever, it would also provide a nice strategic options to the Zerg players (shall I send my lings as they are or maybe include an ovie there, or maybe infestor's aura would work better against the stuff I'm facing?) and their opponents (shoot the big ones first and give some free hits to the rest?).
Anyway, I feel it is overall a great idea that could fit nicely into SC2. What do you guys think?
On February 27 2010 06:02 Zabestrial wrote: Sounds good my man u got my vote!
P.S. did you really just use dawn of war to describe SC2? wow T__T
-Zabestrial
Perhaps I wouldn't use DoW2 if Blizzard got something into SC2 that wouldn't already be in DoW2... Tyranids there are done a lot better than Zerg in SC2 if you ask me. Better concepts, better implementation etc.
These sorts of buffs are nice, but in SC2 they are already present in the form of spellcasting support units, unit specific upgrades, and evolution chamber upgrades. What you might be suggesting is to remove upgrades entirely and to instead implement specially tiered units that emulate the same effects on units within a certain radius.
On February 27 2010 06:19 LunarC wrote: These sorts of buffs are nice, but in SC2 they are already present in the form of spellcasting support units, unit specific upgrades, and evolution chamber upgrades. What you might be suggesting is to remove upgrades entirely and to instead implement specially tiered units that emulate the same effects on units within a certain radius.
Yeah, I forgot to mention this possibility. Imagine in BW if instead of researching say adrenaline glands for lings you would get them automatically with hive tech and ovie being nearby. It would render most of the ZvP lategame 'lings overrunning an expo' a bit trickier as you would have to send an ovie with them too, the P could in turn snipe the ovie and have more time to deal with lings before they obliterate his exp.
It's a simple idea and yet it opens a lot of possibilities.
Edit: And it also makes all of the spellcasters (like infestor for example) a lot more viable since you could include them in your strike force and move them burrowed with your main army to spread out the love, and mix different synapse creatures to achieve certain effects (giving enemy even more headaches over which unit to target first).
I don't like it. I have a friend who played a lot of WH40k and he said Zerg were originally based off of Tyranids... So, I think it's easy to understand why we look at Dow2 to see what ideas there are; but, honestly, I don't want to see the Zerg become more Tyranid like. Sc1 Zerg had so many better creatively designed units with more interesting abilities than dow2 nids. I can't put my finger on it, but I just think their racial characterizations are different.
Also, Nids were horribly imbalanced in Dow2 iirc, or at least they were. Their synapses stacked to create horrible balls of death. One of the complaints against sc2 seems to be that you just create army blobs. Introducing a synapse-like mechanic would reinforce that, which isn't what we want and would hurt Zerg strategically; your ability to do, or threaten, multi-pronged attacks is gone if your enemy knows you have to keep your units blobbed up for synapse.
There's already a lot of things in Starcraft 2 that are intended to make things cooler, but adding things in for the cool factor neglects looking at the repercussions of implementing those mechanics.
On February 27 2010 07:43 mucker wrote: You think those graphics are better??
SC2:
DoW2:
SC2:
DoW2:
As a matter of fact, I do.
Edit: I know the SC2 sshots aren't very representative, but I was unable to find any more suitable which would show the units close-up. The level of detail and general design in this two games is clearly visible though.
idk why people hate so much on zerg. been playing beta and in my opinion They play out better then zerg in bw. They mass incredibly fast, the queen helps with this alot. it just seems more real.