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On April 08 2011 05:16 WhiteDog wrote:
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.
Absolutely. From a spectator's point of view, normally it's the toss sitting in his/her base and safely macro up while the zerg scouting all over the map and trying to make something happen (or not happen). Not sure what you mean by "a perfect zerg" (or a "perfect toss" for that matter) but if zerg stays home and "safely" macro up like toss does, usually one of the two will happen - 1) Die to warp gate timing attack, 2) Die to the deathball. Alternatively Z can simply die to Pheonix/void-rays before it can have anything meaningful to fight them off if it did not scout in time (or even after the scout).
Now, many will assume that this post is written from a whiny zerg but I am not. I play protoss in my free time (tried/been trying to learn zerg), but I like watching pro games more. And it looks quite clear to me which side is fighting an uphill battle as the game begins - I think most will agree with this diagnosis, though many will differ on why (maybe Z players simply suck, who knows). But obviously the point what Z's want to make is there are imbalances, and I think there might be as well, and we can discuss them as Z's bring them up. (hint to Idra: Taking the talking point up front by declaring "Zerg is broken" will not help your cause)
But what I don't believe in is being in denial and I fully agree with "swarmed" (?) on this matter. Turning a blind eye and resorting to an irrational belief (irrational in a sense that it's not based on evidence other than that Broodwar somehow worked out in 2006, or there are "doors" waiting to be opened - sounds religious and kinda creepy) are not the answer. I don't want to watch every PvZ match with a dreaded feeling that the inevitable is going to occur or the Z might pull some rabbit out of hat. I want to see all 3 races fighting on even footing at every point in game. (Don't we all?)
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On April 08 2011 05:28 Dystisis wrote:Show nested quote +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. Show nested quote +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).
You always make mistakes, not being fast enough, not scouting at the exact right moment... that's just how the game is. Perfection is not human btw, and that's for the better.
Protoss is wayyyyyy safer than zerg. Look at July and how fragile his style is, try it on ladder you will see.
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I like the analogy. I won't try to extend it too much, cause simplicity rules.
I do think that in certain situations there is opportunity to go back to something that has previously 'failed' and change it in a very subtle way. In fact, many Z players are going to have to come to grips with the idea that they may have had some good strats all along, but they were terribly executed. At the core of this belief for me is individual unit control. Without understanding it fully, I can still see the impact it has in almost every game. Every time a Z player watches as 20 banes are killed in 2 - 3 tank shots, shouldn't they be thinking how to make that 4 - 5 lost banes instead of all of them? Wondering where to put that extra 200 APM? Stop spamming and start microing the shit out of your army. Spread out more, multitask within the battle and make a composition that seemed impossible totally invincible.
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damnit tyler you're making me hungry D:
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I think zerg should have extra supply amount so they can have more bases and have more drones late game without gimping their army numbers... like maybe 230 supply cap for zerg, would make zerg truly zerg late game without messing up the early/mid game at all.
5 base zerg = around 22-24 drones per base (110-120 drones) + 5 queens (10 supply) = 120-130 supply just in workers/queens... which gives you a 100-110 supply army which seems fair late game.
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On April 08 2011 06:27 Snyper945 wrote:
I think zerg should have extra supply amount so they can have more bases and have more drones late game without gimping their army numbers... like maybe 230 supply cap for zerg, would make zerg truly zerg late game without messing up the early/mid game at all.
5 base zerg = around 22-24 drones per base (110-120 drones) + 5 queens (10 supply) = 120-130 supply just in workers/queens... which gives you a 100-110 supply army which seems fair late game.
you dont need full saturation at all your bases as zerg...
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On April 08 2011 02:39 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
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.
I love you Tyler but I don't love the analogy. You're right, 99% of the time it's open doors, open doors, open doors. That's what Idra does. Throughout MLG alone I saw him execute hydra timing attacks, burrow roach timings, speedling bane style etc. in addition to his typical huge macro style. Idra is opening as many doors as he possibly can. The problem with the analogy is that sotg IS two hours set aside every week to ponder whether opening all 5 doors guarantees food. That's what the show is for. If you want to see Idra opening doors, watch his stream or see what he comes up with in his matches. SOTG isn't a zerg strategy hour. He's definitely opening doors like he should be. To have him on the show and then slam him for pondering on the meta-door situation is just silly.
It all boils down to this: the game is balanced or it isn't. If it is, zergs should be opening as many doors as they can. If it isn't, zergs should be raising awareness to get blizzard's attention while still opening as many doors as they can. That's why I kind of see this meta discussion about balance discussion as useless; top zergs ARE opening doors whether the game is balanced or not. I wish everyone would stop arguing like zergs are inherently less capable of solving problems than everyone else.
I posted similar to this earlier but nobody addressed it:
There are two reasons to have the opinion that zergs just haven't opened enough doors:
1. You think the game is balanced
2. You've simply accepted that the game is what it is and balance isn't our concern
Reason 1 is fine, and I completely respect that opinion (while disagreeing). That's because you wouldn't have this opinion for this reason if you thought the game was imbalanced.
Reason 2 is not OK in my book because your opinion won't change if the game is imbalanced or not. If you fall into this category, your reasoning is completely arbitrary.
For example, would it be ok to declare terran underpowered if marines spawned with 5 hp? You could still say, "Have you tried walling off with a bunker and going 3rax reaper marauder with lots of turrets and concussive shells? You just need to open more doors." That might be a viable strategy and there may actually even be other doors to open. Saying that to a terran in that situation, though, and adding that complaining is useless would be belittling and insulting because the game in that case would actually be completely broken.
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On April 08 2011 06:22 riboflavin wrote:
I do think that in certain situations there is opportunity to go back to something that has previously 'failed' and change it in a very subtle way. In fact, many Z players are going to have to come to grips with the idea that they may have had some good strats all along, but they were terribly executed. At the core of this belief for me is individual unit control. Without understanding it fully, I can still see the impact it has in almost every game. Every time a Z player watches as 20 banes are killed in 2 - 3 tank shots, shouldn't they be thinking how to make that 4 - 5 lost banes instead of all of them? Wondering where to put that extra 200 APM? Stop spamming and start microing the shit out of your army. Spread out more, multitask within the battle and make a composition that seemed impossible totally invincible.
I agree with this. So many times I see Z loses precious units (banelings, infestors, etc.) with bad controls. It hurts my eyes every time I see Z with all his/her units in one control group and a-moving infestors to death.
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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...
Day9 was promoting infestors for a long time
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Day9 may have a big point about the game not being 100% figured out or shaped.
But he must realize how quarky he sounds when he is seriously asking someone who playes fulltime that he should go mass Infestors.
Anyone can see the idea behind what Day9 is suggesting but even a bronzeplayer would realize that a person like MC would kill any zerg before they got a "critical mass" of infestors.
Also did anyone else notice how Day9 said the word "Like" about a gazillion times? And after he did everyone else started to aswell.
I swear they say "like" above two thousand times that episode... couldn't stop getting irritated about it after I noticed...
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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.
This kind of reminds me previous SoTG when they talked about Idra's reactiveness. A lot of Zergs seemed to play very reactive games and if you do so, you will have periods of massive losses in such a young game as the metagame is shifting pretty quickly. Maybe less reactive play would help(I am not saying that is the case, I am wondering if maybe that is the case).
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On April 08 2011 06:41 usethis2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 06:22 riboflavin wrote:
I do think that in certain situations there is opportunity to go back to something that has previously 'failed' and change it in a very subtle way. In fact, many Z players are going to have to come to grips with the idea that they may have had some good strats all along, but they were terribly executed. At the core of this belief for me is individual unit control. Without understanding it fully, I can still see the impact it has in almost every game. Every time a Z player watches as 20 banes are killed in 2 - 3 tank shots, shouldn't they be thinking how to make that 4 - 5 lost banes instead of all of them? Wondering where to put that extra 200 APM? Stop spamming and start microing the shit out of your army. Spread out more, multitask within the battle and make a composition that seemed impossible totally invincible. I agree with this. So many times I see Z loses precious units (banelings, infestors, etc.) with bad controls. It hurts my eyes every time I see Z with all his/her units in one control group and a-moving infestors to death.
Yeah, I noticed the same in a lot of pro games in SC2 (not just with Zerg). It's weird, it's like a lot of ex BW players somehow got lazier when SC2 came out.
That's indeed another big point towards the fact that we can't make solid conclusions about the game yet, as the level of execution is still relatively low. Players are not pushing the human limits in SC2 the way top progamers did (and still do) in BW. Rise in the skill level can naturally solve some of the problems that couldn't be solved strategically.
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Not to kindle even more flames, but it's really interesting that PvZ gets talked about 90% of the time on shows such as this, when statistically TvP is worse in terms of balance (Source (Spoiler tag in OP)).
Obviously it's more useful to draw conclusions from actual ingame examples than from pure stats alone, but the fact that there's no discussion at all on either of the other matchups is a bit strange.
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On April 08 2011 06:32 IShowUMagic wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 02:39 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
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.
I love you Tyler but I don't love the analogy. You're right, 99% of the time it's open doors, open doors, open doors. That's what Idra does. Throughout MLG alone I saw him execute hydra timing attacks, burrow roach timings, speedling bane style etc. in addition to his typical huge macro style. Idra is opening as many doors as he possibly can. The problem with the analogy is that sotg IS two hours set aside every week to ponder whether opening all 5 doors guarantees food. That's what the show is for. If you want to see Idra opening doors, watch his stream or see what he comes up with in his matches. SOTG isn't a zerg strategy hour. He's definitely opening doors like he should be. To have him on the show and then slam him for pondering on the meta-door situation is just silly. It all boils down to this: the game is balanced or it isn't. If it is, zergs should be opening as many doors as they can. If it isn't, zergs should be raising awareness to get blizzard's attention while still opening as many doors as they can. That's why I kind of see this meta discussion about balance discussion as useless; top zergs ARE opening doors whether the game is balanced or not. I wish everyone would stop arguing like zergs are inherently less capable of solving problems than everyone else. I posted similar to this earlier but nobody addressed it: There are two reasons to have the opinion that zergs just haven't opened enough doors: 1. You think the game is balanced 2. You've simply accepted that the game is what it is and balance isn't our concern Reason 1 is fine, and I completely respect that opinion (while disagreeing). That's because you wouldn't have this opinion for this reason if you thought the game was imbalanced. Reason 2 is not OK in my book because your opinion won't change if the game is imbalanced or not. If you fall into this category, your reasoning is completely arbitrary. For example, would it be ok to declare terran underpowered if marines spawned with 5 hp? You could still say, "Have you tried walling off with a bunker and going 3rax reaper marauder with lots of turrets and concussive shells? You just need to open more doors." That might be a viable strategy and there may actually even be other doors to open. Saying that to a terran in that situation, though, and adding that complaining is useless would be belittling and insulting because the game in that case would actually be completely broken.
Funny that I (and I think most of the people) do not fall into neither of your two categories that you decried to be mutually exclusive and containing everyone who thinks that zergs did not open enough doors. What about 3rd category : Zergs did not open enough doors, because they did not have enough time to do that ? What about subcategory of 3 : Because Zerg is harder race to play (which some may call imbalance, but that is matter of definition) and so they will need more time than other races ? Or 4th : Just bad luck, maybe zergs started opening doors in the wrong place and now are stuck in local maximum and cannot move to higher local maximum without temporary losing a lot because of the switch. And then there is 5,6,7,...
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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.
I fail to understand your point here? You're saying that every time zerg players adapt to protoss builds, protoss should just keep using the same builds and lose? Zerg will win for a while and Protoss will adapt to this new style and start winning and it will flip back. How is that imbalanced?
Look at TvP at the moment, a lot of Terrans are struggling because they haven't had to adapt their play style vs Protoss since the beta. Now, Protoss have finally figured out how to play PvT and its only natural that they're going to win more often - once Terran players start to adapt it will flip back around.
Thats the natural order of a strategy game, as the metagame becomes established players come up with new ways to counter it by changing their play style.
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Tyler, the big problem with your analogy and the reason why it doesnt prove or have any relevance at all, is that even if the game was imbalanced (presuming it isn't now), your arguments would still make sense, so what you're saying is always valid, but the game might be really imbalanced and in the end it really does not matter.
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On April 08 2011 07:30 debasers wrote:
Tyler, the big problem with your analogy and the reason why it doesnt prove or have any relevance at all, is that even if the game was imbalanced (presuming it isn't now), your arguments would still make sense, so what you're saying is always valid, but the game might be really imbalanced and in the end it really does not matter.
You got things reversed; his argument is that the game could be imbalanced on a mechanical level, but it is not what is relevant considering that the playstyles and build orders have not been fleshed out enough to explore the full depth (relatively speaking) of the game. It could be mechanically imbalanced, but the perceived imbalance right now is more than likely something which can and will shift based on the development of playstyles.
Compare the SC2 situation for Zerg now to SC:BW where it took Protoss players a long while to figure out what to do against the perceived "superiority" of Z against P, until they started playing a completely new build (which was unorthodox at the time) which was more effective.
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To anyone suggesting that zerg players need more creative or unorthodox builds, I want you to look at the tournament results between IdrA (who most would say is mechanically amazing but plays the same style usually) and CatZ (who most would say is extremely creative and unorthodox, trying all sorts of crazy shit). I love CatZ (despite my name) and all but... I think the results speak for themselves, don't they? I mean if CatZ figured out an unorthodox but extremely bad ass way of playing zerg, wouldn't IdrA be smart to just copy that and use it + his amazing mechanics to rape protoss faces?
If you combine the two it seems like you might get someone like July, with amazing mechanics and a slightly insane playstyle.. but, lest my memory deceives me, he still got pretty roflstomped by MC?
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To anyone suggesting that zerg players need more creative or unorthodox builds, I want you to look at the tournament results between IdrA (who most would say is mechanically amazing but plays the same style usually) and CatZ (who most would say is extremely creative and unorthodox, trying all sorts of crazy shit). I love CatZ (despite my name) and all but... I think the results speak for themselves, don't they? I mean if CatZ figured out an unorthodox but extremely bad ass way of playing zerg, wouldn't IdrA be smart to just copy that and use it + his amazing mechanics to rape protoss faces?
I just needed to step in here. I think that it's a ridiculous assertion that Idra plays the same style. Look at his play vs huk. He used a 2 base roach build, a 2 base hydra timing push, in his games in the TSL he utilized some absolutely absurd multipronged attacks using hydralisks, drops etc. I'm not claiming he's right on every balance issue, but saying he doesnt have variety in his play is just flat out incorrect.
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Forget the names in that post, it wasn't my point. Just replace the name idra with Mechanotron and the name CatZ with Creativilisk.
I think it's an insult to most pro zergs to say that they haven't tried all sorts of shit to make the MU less frustrating.
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EPT
