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+ Show Spoiler +On April 08 2011 04:18 Swarmed wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 04:08 Lomak wrote:
In ZvP it just FEELS like the corrupter is lackluster at its job. They have a short range, cost quite a bit of resources, and do less damage (even with corruption) than their terran counterparts (the viking). I'm not saying it should be turned into a viking or vice versa , I'm just confused as to why there is such a large disparity between 2 units that vs. Protoss fulfill pretty much the same part. Have you ever entertained the thought that once you are successful in killing all or most of the colossi, whatever corruptors you have left become by and large useless in ground battles and that might be why they feel like a bad solution to colossi? Vikings can actually go harass worker lines or take part in ground battles if that's all there is left. It's kind of counterintuitive. But it's a unit that IF it does its job, becomes bad. You're really supposed to time your Hive / Gspire so that they can turn into Broodlords shortly after, but usually when you're worried about stopping that giant deathball and a large number of colossi are still present, you don't have resources or time to throw around Hive + Gspire.
Yes I agree that factors into them feeling like a hit and miss type unit. It's really difficult to strike a balance in how many corrupters you can get to handle his colossus without getting TOO many. Maybe a change as simple as lowering corrupter gas cost by 25 , raising broodlord morph cost by 25 gas could go a long way. But thats just my simple diamond level mind way of thinking.
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On April 08 2011 04:23 Falling wrote:
The point is to leave imba complaints behind- it hinders creative thought. Try new methods of thinking because that's what gamers do.
Like suggesting IdrA should use Infestors more right after they got a buff?
Gee, aren't I glad we have Day[9] to help with Zerg creativity...
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I'm really tired of this discussion anyway. Nony your analogy was super smart and shit and I <3 you, GL in TSL and NASL.
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On April 08 2011 02:39 Liquid`Tyler wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 08 2011 01:51 Swarmed wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 01:43 Barrin wrote:
Well, if you ask me (and apparently Day[9]), hell the fuck NO. But I do understand the factors that could lead a reasonable person to believe that most of them have been tested thoroughly. It only seems that way. You are normal for believing that if you do. But you are wrong. I do not need to support this claim with evidence, because time will do it for me (which is how I'm sure Day[9] feels which is why he is happy to just laugh it off). Which is precisely why Day[9] is so obnoxious on the subject and should just refrain from participating if he is against balance discussion in itself. You "don't need evidence" because "it happened in BW" (and so it will again evidently), so we have to believe. Hence my first post on this thread comparing him to a religious zealot. For Day[9] and others on the same position, it's a matter of dogma and faith. Which doesn't sit well with the idea of just having an open discussion about the "state of the game". Here's an analogy: You are regularly presented with a set of 5 doors. The only way you ever get food is by opening the doors. Every time that you opened 5 doors, you got food from at least one of them. You've currently opened 2 doors, but can't figure out how to open any more. Are you going to spend your time trying to open a 3rd door, or are you gonna ponder whether opening all 5 doors guarantees food? How much time will you spend trying to open the 3rd door, and how much time will you spend checking the two opened doors again and again? Day[9] thinks StarCraft players' only job is to open doors. There is nothing else. Perhaps on your lunch break you can engage in some idle conversation about the metaphysics of the doors and the morality of opening them. But it's just idle conversation. 99% of the time it's just this: open doors, open doors, open doors. The real argument that would happen between Day[9] and IdrA is about whether or not all 5 doors have been opened. Day[9] thinks they're not all opened. He can see them. Maybe one is cracked, and no one is sure whether food can be smelt on the other side, but it's certainly not open and clear to everyone. This isn't faith or belief or any kind of "balance zealotry." Perhaps people have interacted with the closed doors, but they haven't picked the lock and turned the handle and swung it wide open. Faith comes in if he says "I know you guys worked your asses off to open 4 doors only to be disappointed. And you've spent months trying to open the 5th door. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT rebel against your circumstances!!! TRUST me. Keep working on opening the last door. When you do, you will get food." Such opinions would certainly constitute faith of a sort. But like we've said at the start, every time that all the doors have been opened, food was in at least one. There's just never been a way to prove that food is guaranteed. Faith would also come in when Day[9] says "Hey, there's definitely a 6th door out there somewhere. It's nowhere in sight, but let's try all sorts of crazy things and see if we come upon it." IdrA would say he's opened all the doors, or at least inspected the unopen ones well enough to know there's no food behind them. Or he's gonna say how it's easier for his Protoss friend to open his doors. That's the gist of things. And we can't very well be experts on things that aren't in the open and clear. So that's all Day[9] can say is "hey try getting a ton of infestors in this specific way and see how that works" and I can say "hey, balance your resources toward gas as heavily as possible without dying and see how that works" because those kinds of things are unopened doors to us. And IdrA would have to spend many hours of practice to open them and perhaps find no food behind them, which would be doubly frustrating when that was his suspicion the whole time. But damn it, that's StarCraft. Opening doors is what we do. Being the first to find food is the greatest pleasure a player can have!
I won't claim to have any insightful comments on actual balance, but actually the most uncomfortable I've ever been about ZvP balance was when Day[9] kept suggesting different styles of play that are completely untested. I won't claim to know whether or not these styles are any good, but something about the way he talked about it suggested that he thinks the current metagame strongly favors protoss in PvZ. Is that a given?
Is the current opinion that anybody playing "standard" ZvP should lose the game? Because the last time I remember that theme being common was when ZvT was broken and every forum thread was "try nydus". I actually think a lot of protoss players play unsafe in PvZ, but it's just guessing at the timing you need to commit to the all-in to make it show.
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On April 08 2011 04:23 Falling wrote:I think this is more the case that 2 of the most whiny prominent foreign BW players chose Zerg. I love those 2, but Idra-Artosis complained in BW and they complained in SC2. They set the tone for low-level Zerg players and as a consequence, the forums have been over-run by complaining fans. It may be harder for Zerg, but the tone was set.
It's silly to suggest that Zerg playes only complain because of IdrA and Artosis. All the balance talk is just a continuation of the balance talk during the beta, and the reasons Zerg players complain the most is probably because it's easier to make a tiny mistake and die early on as Zerg, and since release it's generally been the race suffering the most from abusive builds.
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The thing about it all though with the opening door analogy is that zerg isn't struggling because they can't beat certain strategies or whatever. That's usually what people complain about at the moment, but eventually they seem to get solved out at least somewhat reasonably. But despite this, Zerg doesn't feel any better. For every step forward Zerg takes so do T/P and Zerg ends up in the same place they were before.
2-Gate transitions were hard to handle, Zerg finally starts to figure them out (+ help with zealot/roach changes) and Protoss starts pylon blocking/cannoning. Zerg responds by getting used to gas openings while P refines 3-gate expand and macro compositions. Zerg starts to step up mid-game pressure and P players get better with ambiguous openings, force fields, and mid game defenses, Zerg starts to do well with larger armies and Protoss players start using blink more heavily to boost their cost efficiency. And so on. At every step Zerg players fight to refine and safely adopt new styles to bring themselves up even with Protoss players and every time it feels like P just takes one more step forward to stay ahead. (Same with T in different ways kinda).
Now I'm not saying this means imbalance, but it's essentially why it feels so shitty to play Zerg sometimes. Zerg players make adaptations, mostly through cutting corners and exposing weaknesses to out of favor strategies or cheese, and they quickly just get outpaced by improvements in the Protoss play.
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Canada11535 Posts
On April 08 2011 04:28 Swarmed wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 04:23 Falling wrote:
The point is to leave imba complaints behind- it hinders creative thought. Try new methods of thinking because that's what gamers do. Like suggesting IdrA should use Infestors more right after they got a buff? Gee, aren't I glad we have Day[9] to help with Zerg creativity...
You seem to be really stuck on this. No. Because you're stuck in the buff/nerf mentality, that's the only thing you can think that can be experimented. it was a suggestion thrown out, but absolutely everything. Timing attacks, variants on July's non-step aggression, whatever.
It's the entire mindset of helplessness until Blizzard comes riding in to the rescue vs knuckling down to constantly innovate and refine. And yes you can do both, but I'm convinced the helpless buff/nerf mentality will limit both your play (rage quitting to hallucinated units) and creativity.
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On April 08 2011 02:44 Dommk wrote:
Pretty silly to talk about balance, especially after the nomination show today.
Kyrix said Protoss is Zergs easiest to beat Race when he was chosen by XXXXXX. Check/Losira both said they preferred to play Protoss over Terran (well Losira said he was going to choose Protoss). John + Doa said that the general census among top Korean Zergs (during the broadcast) is that they would rather play against a Protoss than Terran.
If Protoss is "broken" you wouldn't get people like Kyrix, Losira and Check preferring to play against Protoss than Terran.Something over there is changing, time will tell.
I just want to highlight this again. I really thought this post was going to put this debate out of its misery (assuming of course that the way it was paraphrased is accurate).
Idra, Dimaga, and whoever else people are quoting might feel that the game is clearly broken. Many top zergs over in Korea apparently do not feel that way. There is no consensus among all top zergs over whether ZvP is balanced.
Some feel it is. Some feel it is not. Believe who you like, but no one side can prove their case definitively. If any one side claims they can, they're lying.
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8751 Posts
On April 08 2011 04:07 Swarmed wrote:
Tyler beat IdrA in showmatches and is clearly a great player whom I really like listening to when he talks about Protoss. I just wonder how much he actually understands about playing Zerg and I have my doubts there. There may or may not be a reason why most Zerg pros feel something is lacking. Maybe they're just all whiny by nature. Maybe Tyler understands the metagame better than all of them combined. Or maybe not. IT'S A MYSTERY.
I can see mistakes that zergs make every time they lose. That's all a player needs is to know their mistakes and fix them. I never see a zerg player play perfectly and lose.
And I see weaknesses in the way I play pvz that zerg hardly ever take advantage of but obviously I'm not gonna shout from the tops of mountains about how to beat me.
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Is playing perfectly even humanly possible?
If the only way to win for one race is to play perfectly, I would think that's imbalance in itself.
Not that I could possibly say that's the case of course, since I'm just a nublet. But if it is the case, I wouldn't call that a good thing.
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I think Day9 has a valid point. Too often people will look for some balance reason of why they lost over looking at their strategy/play style and skill/decision making. You play the game as it at that current patch and adapt as best you can. If your style isn't working you change it up try something new. Do something wacky see it if has any merit. Too often people try to repeat the same formula and don't try other things to see if they might work now or in some capacity be viable.
I'm not saying Idra is wrong but you have to remeber Idra wants to play a certain way with zerg and his whole thinking is based around that. Also Idra doesn't really need massive improvements to his mechanical, decision making, control and so on like most of the zergs in the world do. So in some ways you have to take a professionals comments with a grain of salt. They are talking about tiny errors and skill differences that make a huge difference in their games. In your average players game it is much easier to overcome these issues by improving your own play. Then if a patch hits that fixes something you are already ahead of curve as you are open to new ideas and have been working on your fundementals.
Odly in Korea TvZ is considered harder atm than ZvP from what I heard last night. That alone should make people sit back and go hmm why is that. Over just assuming that there is a definative OP answer to always be had.
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Canada11535 Posts
On April 08 2011 04:34 hugman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 04:23 Falling wrote:I think this is more the case that 2 of the most whiny prominent foreign BW players chose Zerg. I love those 2, but Idra-Artosis complained in BW and they complained in SC2. They set the tone for low-level Zerg players and as a consequence, the forums have been over-run by complaining fans. It may be harder for Zerg, but the tone was set. It's silly to suggest that Zerg playes only complain because of IdrA and Artosis. All the balance talk is just a continuation of the balance talk during the beta, and the reasons Zerg players complain the most is probably because it's easier to make a tiny mistake and die early on as Zerg, and since release it's generally been the race suffering the most from abusive builds.
I'm not suggesting Zerg's would never complain or find it hard without them. But I am saying having such prominent players so early in the games development gave people license to speak like that and build up culture of complaining. It could easily have developed without the best foreign Zerg and a GSL commentator reminding us of how everything is imba for Zerg.
However, it does have an impact on the community. I never posted in BW strategy for the longest time because it was very intimidating and I could find all my answers via searching. However, if this sort mentality was ever displayed the Strategy section people were told to shut up or laughed out. That was the culture of BW.
Because it's entirely possible at this point that it is imba. But what difference does it make? No-one but Blizzard can change it. And the most vocal imba complainers on the forums are not Artosis or Idra, but legions of players ranging from crappy to decent, but all have a ton to improve, to experiment, and to refine before balance needs to be considered. Because if there is imba, it's not so great right now that better play cannot over-come at anywhere but the top level.
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On April 08 2011 04:45 TedJustice wrote:
Is playing perfectly even humanly possible?
If the only way to win for one race is to play perfectly, I would think that's imbalance in itself.
Not that I could possibly say that's the case of course, since I'm just a nublet. But if it is the case, I wouldn't call that a good thing.
I don't think anyone is using the term literally, obviously even the best of the best will make SOME mistakes, it's the nature of fast paced RTS.
But you can play so perfectly that the only mistakes anyone can notice are so tiny they're hard to find, that means all decision making is more or less spot on, macro isn't slipping and the same for micro. Imagine a perfectly executed 4gate all in (cut probes version), then imagine that level of execution throughout the whole game.
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On April 08 2011 04:41 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 04:07 Swarmed wrote:
Tyler beat IdrA in showmatches and is clearly a great player whom I really like listening to when he talks about Protoss. I just wonder how much he actually understands about playing Zerg and I have my doubts there. There may or may not be a reason why most Zerg pros feel something is lacking. Maybe they're just all whiny by nature. Maybe Tyler understands the metagame better than all of them combined. Or maybe not. IT'S A MYSTERY. I can see mistakes that zergs make every time they lose. That's all a player needs is to know their mistakes and fix them. I never see a zerg player play perfectly and lose. And I see weaknesses in the way I play pvz that zerg hardly ever take advantage of but obviously I'm not gonna shout from the tops of mountains about how to beat me.
I'm pretty sure there are flaw in every type of play and there will be always room for improvement, nobody ever thought that a perfect zerg would still loose against a good protoss.
It's about the amount of mystakes a zerg can make and the amount of mystake a protoss can make in the ZvP mu / the amount of flaws the zerg style has and the amount of flaw protoss has.
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On April 08 2011 04:36 Logo wrote:
The thing about it all though with the opening door analogy is that zerg isn't struggling because they can't beat certain strategies or whatever. That's usually what people complain about at the moment, but eventually they seem to get solved out at least somewhat reasonably. But despite this, Zerg doesn't feel any better. For every step forward Zerg takes so do T/P and Zerg ends up in the same place they were before.
2-Gate transitions were hard to handle, Zerg finally starts to figure them out (+ help with zealot/roach changes) and Protoss starts pylon blocking/cannoning. Zerg responds by getting used to gas openings while P refines 3-gate expand and macro compositions. Zerg starts to step up mid-game pressure and P players get better with ambiguous openings, force fields, and mid game defenses, Zerg starts to do well with larger armies and Protoss players start using blink more heavily to boost their cost efficiency. And so on. At every step Zerg players fight to refine and safely adopt new styles to bring themselves up even with Protoss players and every time it feels like P just takes one more step forward to stay ahead. (Same with T in different ways kinda).
Now I'm not saying this means imbalance, but it's essentially why it feels so shitty to play Zerg sometimes. Zerg players make adaptations, mostly through cutting corners and exposing weaknesses to out of favor strategies or cheese, and they quickly just get outpaced by improvements in the Protoss play.
That seems to me like how the game should evolve. One side gets an advantage and then the other side finds a way to beat it to get an advantage. True Protoss are doing it faster atm, but remember the days of the muta ball vs P being "OP"? People keep referencing the Protoss seemingly being UP in BW for years until the Bisu Build, it seems like Zerg is going through that right now. Does that mean there is a solution? I don't know, but we're still seeing innovation, even from IdrA at the last MLG, so saying that all the options have been explored seems disingenuous to me.
I'm not saying patches aren't needed, but it seems to me that players like IdrA have a very, very defeatist attitude going into games, and it seems like expecting to lose all the time (despite taking 7th at MLG) would slow your ability or desire to try new things.
Disclaimer: I'm NOT saying I know more than IdrA, am better than him or the other top Zergs that are frustrated, or that they don't have reasons to BE frustrated. I'm simply stating that the game is still evolving at a rapid pace and there could easily be a shift in the near future where Z's start rolfstomping P's.
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On April 08 2011 03:46 Essentia wrote:
Idra has outperformed Tyler in SC2 with results and obv is a better player than Day9 and yet people are taking Tyler/Day9's side? Sorry, but I am going to listen to Idra on this one since he is clearly the best player in the discussion.
I disagree, I think Tyler is better than Idra. If only there were some kind of bo7 showmatch that could show us which of us is correct...
To be serious, though, I do not think it is clear whether Idra or Tyler is better. I think Idra has been more active overall in terms of tournaments for SC2, but that does not say anything about who carries more weight when it comes to discussing the best approach to the game.
I'm pretty sure there are flaw in every type of play and there will be always room for improvement, nobody ever thought that a perfect zerg would still loose against a good protoss.
It's about the amount of mystakes a zerg can make and the amount of mystake a protoss can make in the ZvP mu / the amount of flaws the zerg style has and the amount of flaw protoss has.
Well, I am pretty sure the amount of mistakes top-level Protosses can make is somewhere between zero and one, depending on which build they do and the severity of the mistake(s).
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i agree with the 5 gates i mean 5 doors analogy (jks),
i remember idra losing to some zerg a while back (on his stream) to some guy that went infestor hydra. he harassed enough with 1st couple of infestors to buy enough time to get out hydras. late game he just fungled and out ranged roaches with hydra-deadly combo
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Just because IdrA has better mechanics than most players does not make him a better player. Starcraft 2 is not as heavily focus on mechanics as BW as the mechanics are a lot easier so being better mechanically doesn't give you as much of an advantage as it used to.
Plus IdrA has consistently lost games he could easily have won due to terrible unit control or simply engaging in a horrible position or at a horrible timing. ie: waiting for Protoss to max out on only 2-3 bases while IdrA maxes out on 4-5 bases with 100+ drones occupying all his supply.
IdrA is obviously a good player but I still find it strange that out of the blue Toss became overpowered when they've be consistently receiving nerfs and us Terrans are no longer OP against Zerg after being nerfed to the point where a lot of Terrans seem to be griping about toss now as well.
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On April 08 2011 03:46 Essentia wrote:
Idra has outperformed Tyler in SC2 with results and obv is a better player than Day9 and yet people are taking Tyler/Day9's side? Sorry, but I am going to listen to Idra on this one since he is clearly the best player in the discussion.
He's also a notorious whiner while both Tyler and Day have proven in the past and recently to be very rational people.
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On April 08 2011 04:23 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 04:07 Swarmed wrote:
Tyler beat IdrA in showmatches and is clearly a great player whom I really like listening to when he talks about Protoss. I just wonder how much he actually understands about playing Zerg and I have my doubts there. There may or may not be a reason why most Zerg pros feel something is lacking. Maybe they're just all whiny by nature. Maybe Tyler understands the metagame better than all of them combined. Or maybe not. IT'S A MYSTERY. I think this is more the case that 2 of the most whiny prominent foreign BW players chose Zerg. I love those 2, but Idra-Artosis complained in BW and they complained in SC2. They set the tone for low-level Zerg players and as a consequence, the forums have been over-run by complaining fans. It may be harder for Zerg, but the tone was set..
I really don't want to get involved in a balance discussion here, but just thought I'd mention that (to the best of my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong), since Artosis switched to protoss, he hasn't been complaining nearly as much.
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