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On May 07 2011 00:53 Severedevil wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2011 00:45 WhiteDog wrote:On May 07 2011 00:33 Kich wrote:
And I genuinely feel that Tasteless' argument was a bad one, I fully understand where it came from, I wasn't addressing that. What I was saying is that in the history of SC:BW in it's entirety, the "Terran's only will attack with X or Y so their options were limited" was not fundamentally true from day 0 until today, that there was a great deal of shifts in the metagame until NOW, at this point in time, Terran only attacks with those two styles because, as Day9 inferred, after 13 years--those strategies are believed/proven to currently be the best strategies.
To say that "In some other game that's been out for 13 years, you only have to worry about these 2 strategies, and in this game that's been publicly released for less than a year and is still undergoing volatile shifts in the metagame you have to deal with all kinds of things because no one's figured out what the best strategies are yet, so Zerg has less options" is an argument that lacks actual substance.
The point is that over time, those strategies will be hammered out and it's way too early to say that Zerg's underpowered as a race right now because it's fundamentally unable to be proven. If SC2 had been out for as long as BW has been out and the same problems still arose, then a clear issue in balance could be discussed: because there is insurmountable evidence that it is the case.
So you have to ask yourself: do you believe that zerg is underpowered? Or can you provide overwhelming evidence that zerg is underpowered and that you are compelled, by a logical analysis of both the observations and evidence provided, to conclude that zerg is underpowered?
Or have you just lost games to cheese like everyone else and feel you're entitled to buffs because of it? I only use my own personnal experience, but I never thought that zerg were underpower, might even be overpower mid/late game in ZvT. My point is that zerg as a whole has a flawed design and lack a certain defensive units (the lurker in BW), because of that things seems even in ZvT. Overall, that flawed design makes most zerg player resort to guessing / chancy kind of play, and it's actually not good for the game because the one who win never feel like he should have or deserved it (at least for ZvP). Because I explain IdrA's argument does not mean I'm 100% behind it. For exemple, the colossi is bad designed as well, and poor if you compare it to the reaver, but I never thought it was imbalanced. Zerg has solid defense in the Queen, the Spine Crawler, and Creep.
You did not understand a thing. The problem is not the queen the spine and creep, the problem is that you need a way to defend yourself without having to commit too much in it so that you don't loose too much maccro wise. Spine crawler cannot be made in reaction because they're too slow to build: you need to make them even if your opponent is not gonna attack, and that's not good maccro wise.
Same for Queen, and they can't be offensiv because of their slow.
You have no cost efficient way to defend yourself against anything, you always need to mass units / spine / queen preemptively while a Terran can put down 3-4 bunker and sell them back, loosing only 100 mineral post patch, can also use tanks to defend and use them in attack afterwards, and protoss have sentries and wall in: you can tech and defend yourself, while zerg cannot because you need to mass units (or you just take the risk and tech, and loose to some random cheese once in a while, like a boss).
The best way is still to make units, but they suck in offense.
Having 1 units like the lurker will also give zerg a way to defend bases with a minimal commitment, and would make game a lot more dynamic.
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This discussion was entirely about the early game though--lurkers are mid game at best since Hydralisks are not a tier 1.5 unit, you need to get a lair before you get a Hydralisk Den, and when you get a lair you can get overseers, which let you scout, which is what zerg's feel they can't do early enough...
If anything, being able to salvage bunkers is more of an issue than zerg having to build units to defend themselves.
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On May 07 2011 00:55 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2011 00:45 hugman wrote:On May 07 2011 00:41 Treehead wrote:
I was curious as to why it was that everyone on the show (including Greg, which is weird) seemed to agree that warp prisms died too easily when they only have 10 less health and 1 less armor than a medivac? It takes 10 stalker shots to kill a Warp Prism and 12 to kill a medivac. What gives with the double standard? Terran has much better anti-air than Protoss Eh, I guess I'm just saying - if the real issue is that stalkers aren't as effective at against air as marines, queens or hydras, why claim that warp prisms are "made of paper" instead of just saying drop play is better against toss because stalkers' dps is terrible?
Well, they actually have 50 less health man, I didn't see that you said 10 in your post the first time.
The armor actually makes a big difference too since most anti-air is rapid fire.
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Prism: 40shields, 100hp
Medivac: 150hp, 1 armor.
10 less health, 1 less armor.
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For those asking earlier, I lost respect for Day9 because he basically baited IdrA into having a balance "discussion" and then respond with literally 0 content. I mean IdrA started off by saying he didn't want to discuss it because Day9 would dismiss everything he says. What does Day9 do? Dismisses everything IdrA says. He provided no real response to IdrAs early game scouting business. There was literally no content in anything Day9 said.
And IdrA wasn't making huge blanket statements.
He basically said early game all-ins/aggression are very powerful against zerg (as zerg have no walls, weaker defensive units and no AA units until much later than the other races) and the other races have many options in this respect (especially terrans with drops, hellions, blue flame, banshees etc.). This leads to zerg either needing to be able to defend against all of them or being able to have some way of figuring out what the opponent is doing to respond appropriately (early game scouting). If you can't do either, you're basically guessing.
Now he didn't say he has a problem with a guessing game. As long as both sides have to guess equally. But he did say it is bad for esports, which it most definately is. It is clearly not as bad for terrans/protoss to figure out what their opponents are doing (terrans should never complain, reapers are awesome scouts, hellions can get into a zergs base and if you're desperate you can scan). Toss has some early game issues, but as soon as hallucination comes out, or a sentry, you have scouting the rest of the game whenever you want it for free. And scouting isn't as important in the early game for toss as they are very very strong defensively (walling + sentry FFs).
Basically IdrA doesn't want a guessing game. It is bad for esports and really makes it so that the best player doesn't necessarily win (which is dumb in a game that is supposed to test skill). I mean this wasn't a balance discussion as much as it was a poor game design discussion. You can't argue against zerg having poor early game scouting... it is a fact. And you can't argue that zerg is most susceptible to early game all-ins... it is also a fact.
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Except that 40 of their health can regenerate, and will if you don't leave your transports sitting around waiting to get killed.
And they cost no gas, which is always in short supply for a good Protoss.
And the tech path for a warp prism is the same tech path for scouting, for immortals, and for the collosus.
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On May 06 2011 23:26 Yaotzin wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2011 23:18 redux46 wrote:On May 06 2011 23:09 Yaotzin wrote:On May 06 2011 22:52 redux46 wrote:
Getting an observer is far faster than a zerg getting OL speed or an overseer. The fact that anti-air units come later for zerg also means banshee all-ins are far more effective against zerg than protoss. Lair after speed & queen is a similar timing to Protoss rushing straight to obs. That may or may not be viable, but it's certainly not far slower than obs rushing.
When zergs were complaining about these issues most simply deemed it as whining, yet here we are and the fact is they were right.
Uh, no. People have been calling Terran on steppes and close positions bullshit since forever. They're just as bullshit there for Protoss FYI. Are you factoring in research time for the OL speed? Yeah, but subtracting travel time. Assuming the ovie is at their base already vs obs having to fly all the way over. (losing to cloakshees cos your obs is midmap is so fucking annoying) Show nested quote +
In any case, investing that much minerals and gas to simply scout means you cut back on drones, and you will be way behind.
Way behind for getting a 150/100 research (that you want at some point anyways) + overseer? Really? That is not a huge cost. What do you think a reasonable cost for gaining that information should be? I assume you agree it should come at a cost - rushing obs/getting hallu is hardly free either!
The cost is determined by when you get it. 150/100 is not a lot if you already made a healthy amount of drones, which means your not getting the lair upgrade right away. If your rushing to get lair your cutting back on drones and you've sacrificed getting the early expo.
Now lets say your overseer scouts an all-in. Well, you there's no way your going to have the economy to survive that and if you scout he's doing a safe eco build you're behind. If you could get the overseer or OL speed faster (maybe not needing lair tech) than you have a decent enough time to adequately respond.
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On May 07 2011 01:10 zarepath wrote:
Except that 40 of their health can regenerate, and will if you don't leave your transports sitting around waiting to get killed.
And they cost no gas, which is always in short supply for a good Protoss.
And the tech path for a warp prism is the same tech path for scouting, for immortals, and for the collosus.
True; however, it uses precious production time prefered to be used on immortals or collosus when medivacs not only are useful for drop but heal bio units for terran or overlords for Zerg are required for supply. Yes the drop + speed upgrade cost 300/300, but speed is nearly mandatory to scout or evade enemy units when you use Overlords to extend your map vision.
So one could say Warp prism aren't in the average protoss unit composition unlike medivacs or overlords.
edit: so are we back to saying skinnier mains with cliff will make Zerg scouting easier and maps are how to balance the current game play trends?
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On May 07 2011 01:13 redux46 wrote:
The cost is determined by when you get it. 150/100 is not a lot if you already made a healthy amount of drones, which means your not getting the lair upgrade right away. If your rushing to get lair your cutting back on drones and you've sacrificed getting the early expo.
You can get the expo and hardly cut drones....
Now lets say your overseer scouts an all-in. Well, you there's no way your going to have the economy to survive that and if you scout he's doing a safe eco build you're behind. If you could get the overseer or OL speed faster (maybe not needing lair tech) than you have a decent enough time to adequately respond.
How is the issue speed? You can get an overseer before an observer. If the issue is that this rushing costs too much, then I say again: what do you think a reasonable cost is, and which allin will this difference in cost save you from?
I find it absurd so say that rushing to overlords is crippling economically. You hardly stop drone production at all. Is anything at all that stops drone spamming for even a moment "crippling"?
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On May 06 2011 08:50 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2011 08:15 ch4ppi wrote:
I just want to applaud Idra. I think his thought process about the fast buildtime of Spines would really improve the game, because ás a Zerg u could react to attacks. I dont think it would tip the balance in any way, because it would just make timing attacks easier to parry. I think one of the issues related to shortening spine crawler build time would be that it would make crawler rushes too hard to counter in ZvZ. You'd would have to pull off more drones to block it and every ZvZ would become early pool-first.
ZvZ is already stupid in this way, I don't know if 7 pool spine rush wouldn't be defensible with a 14/14, but it might be. The thing that people who didn't play BW didn't understand, from start to finish to build a sunken vs spine it took the same amount of time, but there was an intermediate building which gave you the ability to build either a sunken or a spore colony from it (it also gave you creep, but zerg gets tumors now and creep matters a lot more).
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On May 07 2011 01:17 NPF wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2011 01:10 zarepath wrote:
Except that 40 of their health can regenerate, and will if you don't leave your transports sitting around waiting to get killed.
And they cost no gas, which is always in short supply for a good Protoss.
And the tech path for a warp prism is the same tech path for scouting, for immortals, and for the collosus.
True; however, it uses precious production time prefered to be used on immortals or collosus when medivacs not only are useful for drop but heal bio units for terran or overlords for Zerg are required for supply. Yes the drop + speed upgrade cost 300/300, but speed is nearly mandatory to scout or evade enemy units when you use Overlords to extend your map vision. So one could say Warp prism aren't in the average protoss unit composition unlike medivacs or overlords. edit: so are we back to saying skinnier mains with cliff will make Zerg scouting easier and maps are how to balance the current game play trends?
One could say what you did, yes. But that isn't the reason they're giving. I'm wondering what the reasoning is behind "Warp Prisms are made of paper".
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Day9 made me rage so hard in this SOTG
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On May 07 2011 01:10 DoomsVille wrote:
For those asking earlier, I lost respect for Day9 because he basically baited IdrA into having a balance "discussion" and then respond with literally 0 content. I mean IdrA started off by saying he didn't want to discuss it because Day9 would dismiss everything he says. What does Day9 do? Dismisses everything IdrA says. He provided no real response to IdrAs early game scouting business. There was literally no content in anything Day9 said.
And IdrA wasn't making huge blanket statements.
He basically said early game all-ins/aggression are very powerful against zerg (as zerg have no walls, weaker defensive units and no AA units until much later than the other races) and the other races have many options in this respect (especially terrans with drops, hellions, blue flame, banshees etc.). This leads to zerg either needing to be able to defend against all of them or being able to have some way of figuring out what the opponent is doing to respond appropriately (early game scouting). If you can't do either, you're basically guessing.
Now he didn't say he has a problem with a guessing game. As long as both sides have to guess equally. But he did say it is bad for esports, which it most definately is. It is clearly not as bad for terrans/protoss to figure out what their opponents are doing (terrans should never complain, reapers are awesome scouts, hellions can get into a zergs base and if you're desperate you can scan). Toss has some early game issues, but as soon as hallucination comes out, or a sentry, you have scouting the rest of the game whenever you want it for free. And scouting isn't as important in the early game for toss as they are very very strong defensively (walling + sentry FFs).
Basically IdrA doesn't want a guessing game. It is bad for esports and really makes it so that the best player doesn't necessarily win (which is dumb in a game that is supposed to test skill). I mean this wasn't a balance discussion as much as it was a poor game design discussion. You can't argue against zerg having poor early game scouting... it is a fact. And you can't argue that zerg is most susceptible to early game all-ins... it is also a fact.
Starcraft is far too varied of a game with many chance elements for it ever to be a game where the best player always wins.
Flash is clearly the best BW player but he "only" wins about 80% of his games. Would you argue that's bad for BW e-sports?
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I don't think you guys understand Day[9]'s point of view.
So here's a question for you, and it's basically the same question that TeamLiquid is moderated on.
What does complaining about balance accomplish?
Blizzard doesn't pay very much attention to those complaints, especially after Idra just won a major tournament, are there some problems at the most basic levels of Zerg gameplay? Probably, but the only way we can demonstrate that is to play games and let Blizzard see for themselves.
You guys are ignorant if you actually think it will get to the point where no one plays Zerg, that is something Blizzard pays attention to and won't allow it to happen that way.
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Replacing lurkers with banelings was probably the worst thing ever. Banelings have basically no defensive value because they have to be constantly replaced. Lurkers could hold a position practically indefinitely, and it would either force a raven, or force used scans.
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Day[9]'s point seems to be that given infinite time methods to handle the inherent problems of zergs design will come about.
But ppl are playing in tourneys today, ppl's gaming careers are being made and busted by the problems with zerg. Lesser skilled players can beat better players with relatively easy techniques and that isn't balance or fair. Skill should match skill, if something is really easy to execute and wins a lot it should be made equally skillful to counter that.
Given infinite time maybe the standard ways to deal with everything will come about but you have to realise games are solved at the fastest rate in history due to our ability to communicate with hundreds of thousands of ppl all the time.
I think subtle changes can be made but there is a lot of basic problems that are rarely dealt with, I think due to the nature of maps and such base overlord speed should be increased. Also redundant upgrades like hydra range could be removed and hydras given there full range from the start.
Also skill additions should be added to races i.e. cooldown on mules, chrono.
The way things feel is that nothing will change about the early guessing games situations that arise all to often and the fact that some unit counters just don't work well as too many compositions for T & P are all round powerful and they are not punished for allin's/cheeses economically as hard as zerg seems to be.
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On May 07 2011 01:44 War Horse wrote:
Replacing lurkers with banelings was probably the worst thing ever. Banelings have basically no defensive value because they have to be constantly replaced. Lurkers could hold a position practically indefinitely, and it would either force a raven, or force used scans.
Banelings can force Raven/scan. It's called Burrow, and it's available earlier and cheaper than Lurker Aspect ever was.
Fungal Growth is probably a better go-to for chokes.
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On May 07 2011 01:35 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2011 01:17 NPF wrote:On May 07 2011 01:10 zarepath wrote:
Except that 40 of their health can regenerate, and will if you don't leave your transports sitting around waiting to get killed.
And they cost no gas, which is always in short supply for a good Protoss.
And the tech path for a warp prism is the same tech path for scouting, for immortals, and for the collosus.
True; however, it uses precious production time prefered to be used on immortals or collosus when medivacs not only are useful for drop but heal bio units for terran or overlords for Zerg are required for supply. Yes the drop + speed upgrade cost 300/300, but speed is nearly mandatory to scout or evade enemy units when you use Overlords to extend your map vision. So one could say Warp prism aren't in the average protoss unit composition unlike medivacs or overlords. edit: so are we back to saying skinnier mains with cliff will make Zerg scouting easier and maps are how to balance the current game play trends? One could say what you did, yes. But that isn't the reason they're giving. I'm wondering what the reasoning is behind "Warp Prisms are made of paper".
It was about Protoss vs. mass Thors and having a warp prism pick up the units that are targeted by the Thor's Strike Cannon spell. That battlefield just feels like an unhealthy environment for Warp Prisms.
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This isn't really a balance issue, because all of the upgrades are pretty good, but why is it that all zerg units are completely terrible without their unit-specific upgrades. Yes, stalkers are a lot better with blink and collosus are obviously a lot better with range, same with hellions.
In fact, here's a quick list out of curiosity (probably biased, but maybe not):
Zerg:
Metabolic Boost - "You built 40 lings and never got speed, LOL"
Roach Speed - "You build 15 roaches and never got speed, LOL"
Hydra Range - "You built 10 hydras and never got range, LOL"
Baneling Speed - "You built 20 banes and never got speed, LOL"
Infestor Energy - "You built more than 3 infestors and never got energy, LOL"
(I get that with the exception of hydra range and maybe infestor energy, the units would be totally OP at the time they come out if they started with those upgrades).
Terran:
Preignitor - "You built 10 hellions and never got blue flame, that was slightly silly"
Siege - "You built 5 tanks and never got siege, LOL"
Combat Shield - "You built 20 marines and never got combat shield, that was a small mistake"
Stim - "You never got stim, well, it's common to delay that until the 12 minute mark nowadays anyway"
Concussive Shell - "This is a pretty good upgrade, but not getting it won't cause you to lose the game, get it next time you build marauders"
Banshees - "You made a reasonable decision to build banshees and not get cloak"
Protoss:
Charge - "You built 20 zealots and never got charge, well that wasn't as important with your composition"
Blink - "You built 30 stalkers and never got blink, well, that's an actual decision you can make with that composition"
Colossus Range - "You built 4 collosus and never got range, that's stupid as it's a really good upgrade, but they're still a pretty good unit"
Templar Storm - "You built 4 high templars and never got storm, LOL"
Templar Energy - "Sorry, this entry is a troll, LOL"
I know I left out some other ones (Ultralisks, observer speed, adrenal glands, warp prism speed, thor 250mm cannons, etc.)
So almost all the zerg units are terrible offensively without the upgrades, and some aren't even very good defensively. And the thing is that some of the other upgrades for the other races improve their units a lot too, but the unit is not useless offensively without it.
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On May 07 2011 01:05 Yaotzin wrote:
Prism: 40shields, 100hp
Medivac: 150hp, 1 armor.
10 less health, 1 less armor.
xD
You're right
I'm dumb
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EPT
