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On August 03 2010 19:09 Raevin wrote:
The races are not balanced, there is nothing here to discuss you are merely trying to take attention from Terrans to the maps, its the exact same way WoW Arena was ruined when players refused to admit the imbalances and screwed the developers minds up, saying "healing was too high".
They "fixed" this by increasing damage to insane mounts in WotLK and killed the pro scene.
The problem is clear and its right infront of us, derailing it would be bad for this game, stop trying to protect your own interests and be honest, its the only proper way forward.
Except that, you know, Raelcun is Zerg. XDDDDD
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On August 03 2010 10:43 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 10:31 Ryuu314 wrote:On August 03 2010 10:24 Bibdy wrote:On August 03 2010 10:12 Rabiator wrote:
Terrans are the ones which suffer most from unsafe expansions, because they dont even have a cheap (~100 minerals) static defense to help defend against ground forces. Thus they are REQUIRED to sacrifice part of their army as base defense OR spend huge amounts of cash on a Planetary Fortresses which dont cover a whole lot of ground. The range of a PF is rather short with 7 (if you decide to upgrade) and that covers only slightly more ground (due to the size) than a Protoss / Zerg static ground defense IF the range is counted from the edge of the model and not the center! If you're expanding, you've either got your army standing in front of it, ready to defend, or you're applying pressure and preventing him from putting pressure on you. The idea of 'poor mistreated terrans' having to plop some bunkers down is nonsense. Bunkers mean you can expand easily by investing some minerals (temporarily, thanks to Salvage) to protect what would be a weak bio force and repair the things when you do get attacked. You can completely crush a much stronger force, just by building some bunkers. Nobody is busting in there without the big guns like Immortals or a full-blown all-in gateway/baneling bust. Meanwhile, a Protoss or Zerg who invests a bunch of minerals on Cannons or Spine Crawlers can get easily stomped by a bog-standard bio ball. Those things aren't cheap and they really do suck if they're not positioned on high-ground where they can get some free shots off. But, then you just COMSAT and rape the thing with your range 5/6 units anyway. The joys of not depending on melee units. Not to mention that Terrans can lift their buildings to reposition them for a better wall. And they got seige tanks. Suuure ... and Terrans can always put the Tech Labs and Reactors on the inside of the wall of buildings and once you built these it is totally ok to lift off the main building just to make a wall somewhere else. @Bibdy (the quote from Ryuu) Bunkers are NOT FREE or only a temporary investment, because you always need to defend your bases / entrances. There is always the possibility of harrass. Saying that they are only a temporary investment is kidding yourself. That statement is only true for the "advancing with bunkers" strategy, but defensive structures at your base need to stay. Saying you dont need them when you move out is just plain stupid, because there is ALWAYS more than one way to get to your base and if your army is out you have no defenses. One or two units could sneak in and wreak havoc in your mineral line for almost no cost. If you have no troops at your front a turret wont help you defending against some sneaky burrowing Roaches or cloaked Dark Templars heading into your base.
Do you have any idea how many Photon Cannons it takes to build around your Nexus to prevent a single Medivac full of troops Stimming and raping the thing?
You have Sensor towers to spot harass attempts with ease and get your army in position. We have to plant Observers on your army and be paying attention at all times so we can position an army in its path. If the things unload, goodbye Nexus.
You're utterly blind if you can't see how easy Terrans have it.
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AT Rabiator and the others, the difference between a marauder drop and a warp prism warpin and nydus worms is the 4 marauder stim drop is CHEAP. It's comprised of units you have already and you don't have to spend anything extra except for APM to send it into your opponents base while they're distracted.
A protoss has to spend the money on a warp prism + the cost of the units to warp them in and if they're currently producing colossi that's lost time on another colossi.
A zerg has to spend 300/300 mins/gas for one nydus worm the marauder drop is powerful because it can be anywhere at any time and you can't be forewarned that it's coming unless you have observers/overlords all over the map. If you scout the nydus network or scout the warp prism coming out of the robo facility you know the other two are coming. This is why I'm saying HUGE main bases while they can favor the other races tends to be more terran favored. And by Huge I mean lategame having 10+ barracks and still not being full and having empty parts of your base that you have no vision on. It's a bit silly how large some of the main bases are and by shrinking that a bit it would help out protoss and zerg very slightly in lategame against terran which is what we're trying to figure out.
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One of the problems i've noticed is the hard to protect naturals for every race on most maps. It is probably the easiest for zerg since they don't mind large open natural chokes as much as T and P. The only problem they have is the cliffs that right next to a lot of naturals. This leaves the natural vulnerable to all types of harass.
For T and P, speedling is just ridicolous to deal with unless you put 3-5 buildings to wall off the natural. But when you do that, most of the time the zerg just takes a 3rd and be up 1 base. Basically T and P just can't put an expansion up on the fly w/o dealing with speedlings. Terran can deal with this a bit easier if they just put down 2-3 bunker until they have a large enough army to push out off 2 bases. Toss can't do that since 2-3 cannons wont stop speedlings from running by that well.
This is also part of the reason why many games end off 1 base pushes. IMO more maps should have safer naturals. This allows for more late game play. A good model would be LT w/o the natural cliffs.
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I agree with you.... that maps are part of the problem...
but I would say that the MAIN problem of TvX is Hellions and Tanks. Hellions are just TOOOOOOOOO good at taking the mineral line out. You need to be SUPER DOOPER on your guard not to let one in. Cause only 1 hellion is devastating now imagine the usual 4. You really need to go out of your way to be sure they're not getting in yuor base as zerg. Than tanks... I would perosnaly say that mutas are the answer.... but.... Thors is just SUCH A GOOD counter against them and let's be honest... as soon as the terran scouts (erhh scans) and see a spire you randomly see LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of thors spawning (3-4)... Leaving zergs with no proper answer to tanks.
Than I would say that the lack of zerg early air defense (please don't tell me that spamming queen is valid as it is valid till a CERTAIN point) makes it vulnerable to most air cheese/drops but I guess that it's only a small part to add to the big picture.
So yah...
Maps and the lack of early answers to tanks and hellions and finaly early air disadvantage.... makes the TvZ almost unfun to play. I've had great games with terrans that played the game without hellions and cheep strats(hellions/clocked banshee/drop hellion....) and those were actualy fun games where I lost some and won some but lets face it... almost no terrans are playing that way.
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On August 04 2010 05:02 Konsume wrote:
Than I would say that the lack of zerg early air defense (please don't tell me that spamming queen is valid as it is valid till a CERTAIN point) makes it vulnerable to most air cheese/drops but I guess that it's only a small part to add to the big picture.
4 + queens can defend most any early(you said early) air pushes, especially when coupled with spore colonies.
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Some weird map making ideas to follow, maybe some will have use.
1. Xel'Naga watch tower that will not allow tank use. How? Make it on a tiny cliff that is too skinny to walk/drop a tank on. Make outerspace (abyss?)/unwalkable terrain surrounding the cliff in a way so that tanks can't siege right next to it with a friendly spotter.
2. Better scouting early. I mentioned this ages ago, but here it goes again. Xel'Naga towers near main base to help scout for tech and/or worker count. Use in conjunction with #1 to avoid siege harass... also might be able to avoid stalker/reaper harass if done right. Put it on higher higher ground (level 2 cliffs?) to avoid it getting sniped by defending units maybe. Although floating building + siege tank = deny.
2.5 #2 would also allow for easier stalker and warp-in harass.
3. Worse scouting early. Nah... idea scrapped. I can't imagine worse worker scouting could lead to anything good.
4. Anti-creep ground. Does it exist? Would obviously be worse for zerg if it existed.
5. More starting mineral spots or 4 gas starts. Who would it benefit? The guy with more workers I'd guess, which would mean Protoss in the early stages and Zerg in the mid stages.
6. Gold mineral starts. Who would it benefit? At first I'd say the guy with more workers... but perhaps more importantly the guy who benefits more from early minerals. I'd guess all rax/marine/bunker into expo or zerg hatch/queen/spine/ling into expo or FE into defense mode would benefit.
Other observations:
- I think destructible rock expos favor zerg since zerglings are the safest high damage per cost unit to move out and kill rocks with. Think about it... do you feel safe moving out 12 speedlings to kill a rock or 4 zealots/6 marines early game?
- Chokes (small early game, medium-large OK mid-game plus) are probably needed PvZ, but chokes often hurt PvT and ZvT. How do you balance this? Long alternate paths (with destructible rocks?)? Chokes that start small and become larger by killing rocks?
- Lower ground start spots would allow for stalker blink (whoa, if I typed blinker anywhere else in the post I mean stalker+blink) harass with no spotter (leave a probe or stalker on high ground for escape). Would also allow for better reaper and siege harass.
- Start spots/expos in the middle of a map, on higher ground, but surrounded by ground and not water/space would allow for more reaper, stalker blink, and siege harass. Note if ground escape routes are reduced then stalkers especially and reapers are much less effective. Compare reaper harass on Desert Oasis to Steppes.
- It seems closer start spots (Steppes of War) favor P over Z early. Easier dual gate harass to slow the Z expo. While the bigger choke at the natural favors Z due to speedlings and baneling busts.
AND
those same bigger natural chokes favor hellion harass TvZ.
EDIT BELOW
Oh, and one more
- Extra xel'naga towers to help spot drops/mutas would seemingly benefit Protoss since they don't have overlords or sensor towers. Kulas Ravine would almost be a good example but not sure.
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I wouldn't say terran is OP so much as zerg feels UP and with the way blizzard wants the maps to be designed they really didn't allow zerg to give itself a chance to become overpowered.
Another issue is that back doors come into play way too early. Think about a back door with 2, or 3 times the amount of HP to punch through. Late game it could seem like a cool add since it's not messing with how this game is designed to go in the same steps every time for expo.
I'd say a zerg favoring map has a safe third with one entrance with two gas no matter what the mineral count, yellow or blue, as long as it is to have the gas its worth going for. A natural with a small entrance so spines can be used super effectively. A short distance between the player start and the natural so one does not have to do more than 1-2 jumps with creep to get to the nat.
Flat open areas for that wide arc. with at least one side to pincer the enemy from.
Also minerals very close to a cliff side naturally help muta.
Rock expos where lings can get a 360 on the rocks good. Blocked off rocks, not so good.
If a map has flavor beyond a middle with interesting wide ramps something cheesey kills the map.
Zerg mobility issues?
Drop upgrade takes forever and the gas cost is pretty high too. To be useful it requires ovie speed. So that's pretty late.
And nydus is more like a super weapon than a mechanic that should be for attacking a couple of angles or flanking and awareness (*cough other dustin browder game cough*) in order to get around some of that whole 1 shot where are my lings stuff.
It's radical to say but I think zerg needs a cliff walker to not get totally screwed by tanks sitting on cliffs and that cliff walking should come from a combo of unit speed, AND burrow
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You go to war with the maps you've got. The game needs to be balanced around what we have, not what we had in BW.
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On August 04 2010 06:31 brain_ wrote:
You go to war with the maps you've got. The game needs to be balanced around what we have, not what we had in BW.
Except soon we'll have whatever we want.
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On August 03 2010 18:23 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
This part is at too many people to list, if you think this OP is whining read it again.
The thing with your argumentation which always ticks me off is that you only list one side of the argument to a certain topic and that is incomplete argumentation similar to whining. If you really thought about it for a long time you should be able to list all sides of the medal and thus not list some arguments. By not giving both sides of the argument you are implying that "doing it the other way round is the solution" which it isnt ... and that makes it seem whinish like the other threads I mentioned above.
Example:
Unsafe expansions which have multiple entrances make it hard for zerg and protoss to expand quickly against terrans.
Unsafe expansions also offer possibilities for harrass to Zerg, thus Terran / Protoss do not want to expand out in the open either.
Another one:
Large main bases many times with a lot of area for reapers to jump up in are good for terrans as well.
Sure the early reapers are an annoyance, but (1) a large base offers the possibility of harrass for all races (2) both other races actually need to build a lot of buildings and cant just get all tech on one screen.
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On August 04 2010 04:05 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
AT Rabiator and the others, the difference between a marauder drop and a warp prism warpin and nydus worms is the 4 marauder stim drop is CHEAP. It's comprised of units you have already and you don't have to spend anything extra except for APM to send it into your opponents base while they're distracted.
A protoss has to spend the money on a warp prism + the cost of the units to warp them in and if they're currently producing colossi that's lost time on another colossi.
A zerg has to spend 300/300 mins/gas for one nydus worm the marauder drop is powerful because it can be anywhere at any time and you can't be forewarned that it's coming unless you have observers/overlords all over the map. If you scout the nydus network or scout the warp prism coming out of the robo facility you know the other two are coming. This is why I'm saying HUGE main bases while they can favor the other races tends to be more terran favored. And by Huge I mean lategame having 10+ barracks and still not being full and having empty parts of your base that you have no vision on. It's a bit silly how large some of the main bases are and by shrinking that a bit it would help out protoss and zerg very slightly in lategame against terran which is what we're trying to figure out.
I am sorry, but you cant really compare the Marauder drop with a Warp Prism or Nydus worm. The Protoss and Zerg versions are both "reinforcable" and thus offer the possibility of a basewipe if the defending forces take too long. The Nydus worm especially offers the possibility to retreat instantly and not lose anything except the worm. Protoss might get several rounds of warp-ins if they manage to find a hidden corner in a large base and get a pretty sizeable force going and if you intercept the warp-prism before it can do the drop the Protoss only loses the warp-prism.
Adding the cost for the base Nydus worm is just bad argumenting and for Terrans / Protoss you should add the cost for the Starport/-gate to the drop cost. If you argue like that you just want to build one worm over the time of the match and that is just bad tactics. If you get a tech you need to use it and threatening the backsides of an opponents base is simply unnerving and will be ever more effective the more the opponent is spread out (see your own "large main base argument" and think about this) the more dangerous this becomes. This is especially true for Terrans with their largely immobile army which needs to move around all theose tons of buildings (or stop producing and lifting them?). Just watch Day[9] daily #157 and agree with him that there are TONS of opportunities lost for the Zerg to attack the turlting terran with Nydus worms and keep his units from the front. The cost is the usual argument for Zerg players to not build anything, but 100/100 is not that much for a possibility to harrass. If you use Ultralisks you dont even need a lot of units to wreck a Command Center in seconds. In the beginning of the beta every player on Metalopolis was disciplined enough to plant a building behind the smokescreen, but recently that discipline has been lacking ... but at the same time Zerg have stopped (never really started) to use the Nydus worm. Dont blame the Terrans or the maps for lost opportunities (as the Day[9] daily should show).
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On August 04 2010 00:24 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 10:43 Rabiator wrote:On August 03 2010 10:31 Ryuu314 wrote:On August 03 2010 10:24 Bibdy wrote:On August 03 2010 10:12 Rabiator wrote:
Terrans are the ones which suffer most from unsafe expansions, because they dont even have a cheap (~100 minerals) static defense to help defend against ground forces. Thus they are REQUIRED to sacrifice part of their army as base defense OR spend huge amounts of cash on a Planetary Fortresses which dont cover a whole lot of ground. The range of a PF is rather short with 7 (if you decide to upgrade) and that covers only slightly more ground (due to the size) than a Protoss / Zerg static ground defense IF the range is counted from the edge of the model and not the center! If you're expanding, you've either got your army standing in front of it, ready to defend, or you're applying pressure and preventing him from putting pressure on you. The idea of 'poor mistreated terrans' having to plop some bunkers down is nonsense. Bunkers mean you can expand easily by investing some minerals (temporarily, thanks to Salvage) to protect what would be a weak bio force and repair the things when you do get attacked. You can completely crush a much stronger force, just by building some bunkers. Nobody is busting in there without the big guns like Immortals or a full-blown all-in gateway/baneling bust. Meanwhile, a Protoss or Zerg who invests a bunch of minerals on Cannons or Spine Crawlers can get easily stomped by a bog-standard bio ball. Those things aren't cheap and they really do suck if they're not positioned on high-ground where they can get some free shots off. But, then you just COMSAT and rape the thing with your range 5/6 units anyway. The joys of not depending on melee units. Not to mention that Terrans can lift their buildings to reposition them for a better wall. And they got seige tanks. Suuure ... and Terrans can always put the Tech Labs and Reactors on the inside of the wall of buildings and once you built these it is totally ok to lift off the main building just to make a wall somewhere else. @Bibdy (the quote from Ryuu) Bunkers are NOT FREE or only a temporary investment, because you always need to defend your bases / entrances. There is always the possibility of harrass. Saying that they are only a temporary investment is kidding yourself. That statement is only true for the "advancing with bunkers" strategy, but defensive structures at your base need to stay. Saying you dont need them when you move out is just plain stupid, because there is ALWAYS more than one way to get to your base and if your army is out you have no defenses. One or two units could sneak in and wreak havoc in your mineral line for almost no cost. If you have no troops at your front a turret wont help you defending against some sneaky burrowing Roaches or cloaked Dark Templars heading into your base. Do you have any idea how many Photon Cannons it takes to build around your Nexus to prevent a single Medivac full of troops Stimming and raping the thing? You have Sensor towers to spot harass attempts with ease and get your army in position. We have to plant Observers on your army and be paying attention at all times so we can position an army in its path. If the things unload, goodbye Nexus. You're utterly blind if you can't see how easy Terrans have it.
1. At least Protoss CAN cover their base in static defenses which shoot ground. Terrans can not.
2. I fail to see what your "drop argument" has to do with my "bunkers are necessary at the entrance to a base argument". One Medivac of stimmed troops doing a drop and raping everything? Well you sound as if I had said that static defenses are there to kill harrassing units on their own and survive the job. Well they arent, but they are needed to slow down the destruction of the base until you can get some troops there and Protoss can warp in reinforcements pretty fast. At 100 minerals I would not consider Photon cannons to be very expensive, just think of them as a hp boost for your other buildings. You need them against Terran anyways in order to defend against cloaked Banshees (Observer costs GAS and is wayy more expensive), so why complain about it?
3. Since you agree with me that Sensor towers are good you might agree with me that Raelcun's argument about the Xel'Naga towers in the middle of the map make it easy for Terrans is a bit flawed? For Terrans it is NOT the spotting of enemies which is the problem, but rather the "getting the army in postion" and both Zerg and Protoss fail to abuse that atm, because in most matches I see it is only the Terrans who do any kind of harrass at the backside of a base at all. Nydus worms especially offer the ability to retreat with all surviving units for a rather low cost of 100/100. Even if you only kill one terran Factory and retreat instantly you have gained more than you invested, because you took out a chunk of his production capacity for a time (well unless the Factory is unused).
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On August 04 2010 14:05 Rabiator wrote:
At 100 minerals I would not consider Photon cannons to be very expensive
They cost 150 minerals.
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On August 04 2010 12:06 UniversalSnip wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 06:31 brain_ wrote:
You go to war with the maps you've got. The game needs to be balanced around what we have, not what we had in BW. Except soon we'll have whatever we want.
In ladder that remains to be seen.
I have seen some very nice map concepts on these forums (notably large macro maps that still had some good terrain). Xel Naga towers in the middle of an open space I think are a good idea, they cause fewer problems with tanks when the tanks need to be far from chokes to use them.
What I am really hoping for is that Blizzard will a) accept user made maps slowly and add the best ones to the ladder pool and b) put in some form of ladder rotation so the maps aren't always the same but cycle in and out.
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Zerg is freaking hard to play in the current map pool. Oh my god. I have two accounts, I play zerg as my main, did throughout the beta. And i'm higher ranked on my protoss and terran account. Dealing with all these obnoxious builds terran and protoss have would be much easier if the maps were designed with zerg in mind. Zerg really needs help right now.
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I dont agree its the maps fault as well - siege mode smart ai and 13 range and aoe dmg ,isnt map imbalance - just saying -
also asking for the imposible wont rly help , is much easier to buff overlord speed for example to make scouting much easier for zerg than changing the whole map system
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The cliff walking unit idea for Zerg seems pretty fair actually, considering the other 2 races have one. Say it's because they have Nydus Worm, but that thing goes down so fast...
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Absolutely agree with the OP. Blizzard chose not to acknowledge years of good Starcraft mapmaking principles as established by the Korean mapmaking groups and we're all worse off for it. There are still major balance issues above and beyond the maps, but if ladder is to have any significance, the maps have to be fixed!
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OP is basically right, some of the open as hell expos are ridiculous.
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EPT
