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On April 14 2011 00:44 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2011 00:32 loveeholicce wrote:On April 13 2011 23:59 The KY wrote:On April 13 2011 23:49 Nakas wrote:On April 13 2011 23:37 karpo wrote:On April 13 2011 23:33 Nakas wrote:On April 13 2011 23:18 The KY wrote:
I don't understand what people want them to say in regards to balance. Do you want them to say 'Oh yeah I think Protoss is imbalanced right now.' Where would they go with that discussion? Why do you want to hear it? Will it make you feel better? What, basically, do you want.
And as a player, where do you go from there? Do you go into every ZvP thinking 'well this match up is fucking dumb, looks like I'm gonna lose'. Because that's what IdrA does and it costs him games. It costs him tournaments.
I think Inc put it best when he said 'If you think the game is totally broken, switch to Protoss, I'm sorry.'
I'm just confused because I just got to the bit where they're talking about balance, and people in this thread were acting like they just said 'use nydus l2p noobs'. They're talking about it in genuine detail, outlining their position, but I guess fucking balance whiners are deaf and blind. It's frustrating. I want them to just STFU about zerg when there is no zerg on the show. Listening to a one-sided argument about how PvZ is fine for 40 minutes, from protoss players with only a superficial understanding of zerg, was terribly obnoxious. I would have been fine if they had the discussion last week with Idra there, I might have even learned something, instead I got "build 3 control groups of infestors!" and "lolnydus". As a zerg player, the whole discussion was terribly insulting. D9 played zerg in BW and plays random in SC2. It's not like he has no clue on how high level zerg play works. BW is a different game, BW zerg is a different race than SC2 zerg. Does the fact that I played Orcs in WC1 mean I understand Protoss? And yes, I would argue that Day9's understanding of zerg is as superficial as that of the other hosts on last night. They need a zerg player that has actually tried all the crap they they've been theorycrafting about, so they don't have such a dumb one-sided argument again. What podcast did you listen to? I already said, for 40 minutes they weren't theorycrafting about zerg. They were talking about balance, mentality, and the structure of the game itself. Their reasoning for why ZvP was fine was basically "lol 20 infestors" and "lol nydus everywhere", and then a completely retarded comparison to TvZ dropships / scourge. And about how Zerg doesn't play like Terran or Protoss in the respect that you can just mass a ball and roll the other guy's ball of units. I think you missed their points. And how it's all about multi-tasking and multi-pronged attacks, and anyone who's seen Sen rape Naniwa in the GCPL finals game three, or IdrA own Cruncher in the one TSL game he won knows exactly what we're talking about. That's how Zerg is supposed to be played. Same with + Show Spoiler +Sheth vs. Artosis recently. Constant, relentless poking and dropping and nydusing and not allowing your opponent to do anything. They can't use their QQ-imba ball of death/ FFs/ colossi/ thor/ bio/ whatever because you're keeping them on their back foot the whole game. The analogy to TvZ in SC1 was that a great player is able to make all of these aggressive tactics work, regardless of how futile you think it may be (scourge easily cancel out dropship play, unless you have skill and balls). In SC2, nydus worms and drops are fantastic ways to abuse Zergs mobility and win games. And if you're hesitant to do them because they could hypothetically be stopped... tough. Anything could be stopped. Do it anyway, and make it work. Zerg isn't meant to be played the way Protoss or Terran is. That means that if you're playing Zerg with the expectation to win with the same mindset or strategies of a Protoss or Terran player (and vice-versa), then you're going to have a tough time... and probably lose. That doesn't mean that Zerg is underpowered or Protoss is OP or anything like that. Heck, the statistics of the games (both all across the board and also just in the top tier) show that all the match-ups have been relatively close to stable and balanced for quite some time now. It just means that some people are obviously uncertain as to how the underlying mechanics of each race work.
And then games like Idra vs Cruncher game 1 show how fuckign difficult that style is. The game isn't demanding on protoss when they get that 3rd base, its just sit and make a maxed army. Idra vastly outclassed Cruncher, and Sheth vastly outclassed artosis, you can't reference those games for anything. The whole keeping them on the back foot thing sounds nice in theory but in practice protoss has no problem actually being on the backfoot until they get a big army and its so damn hard to do anything when range 9 collosus and forcefields are so good defensively. Yes you can run around with zerglings or mutas and be gay but it still doesn't change the fact that at some point theres a massive army you have to deal with.
The reason I was saying the TvZ dropship comparison was stupid was because the TvZ dropship had so much more potential. Yes landing a dropship was quite tough, but it was all worth it because the damage a single dropship filled with 7 marines 1 medic could do to a zerg player was ridiculous. marine DPS was so high you could literally kill an endless amount of zerglings if you positioned your marines well and microed them to keep running from burrowed lurkers. There were so many games were zerg was on 3 base or 4 (hyuns infamous for this in ZvT) and got completely owned and thrown off by 1 dropship.
I don't see a nydus in sc2 having the same potential. Zerg units individually are so weak a constant stream of stuff from a nydus worm is just cannon fodder that gets raped once a protoss army reaches it without doing any damage. So yes, maybe tyler is right in saying that a dropship in sc1 TvZ was just as hard to land as a nydus, but the reason players aren't pursuing it is because the potential of a nydus to do real damage is so much lower than the potential of 7 marines and 1 medic in sc1.
Don't get me wrong I still feel nydus is something that can be utilized in the lategame, and in some situations it can work quite well but its still not some end all strategy that consistently gives zergs a way to fight lategame toss.
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Btw two more things:
1. Tyler you should ignore all the stupid people telling you you're overly critical of other players. Your critiques were all insightful and among the most interesting things on the show.
2. Idra should be a staple of SotG 
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To everyone who's unsatisfied with the "balance" discussions on SOTG, Artosis and Idra do a show called IMBALANCED. It's the one instance of "or someone else will" that comes to mind, but you can definitely find the discussion you want there. Don't keep banging your head against the wall trying to make day9/tyler/incontrol talk about zerg being UP when their stance has always been "imbalance arguments don't make you better at starcraft".
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On April 14 2011 04:27 Nakas wrote:
Gotta love the logic here: zerg needs to try crazy and unpredictable things that have pretty much no hope of working, but if you try them and lose you're a quitter. And people wonder why zergs are telling em to stfu.
Cmon dude, don't be ridiculous. The context of the situation and the logic behind the decision to 6 pool matters. It's like someone telling you to fold more in poker (in general) so then you open fold Kings and get mad at the person for telling you to fold more. At that point you're being blinded by frustration/rage.
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Tyler, keep being critical of play, it increases the overall knowledge level of those who listen, and increases their skill somewhat as well when they learn safe builds and good counters!
Thanks for your analysis!
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On April 14 2011 05:15 jmbthirteen wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2011 05:07 the9thdude wrote:
I look at Nydus worms like highways; they're infrastructure for the zerg army. They allow fast transport of units not just from base to enemy, but base to base, which is their real strength. Take a map like Shakuras Plateau, where it takes a long time to go from one side of the map to the other. Normally, it would take forever to get a drone across the map to take an expo, but using Nydus worms wherever you have sight, you can just load up a single drone and get it there within 5 seconds.
Let's take another example; zerg player has half the map and has 5-6 bases. Enemy hits base 2 and then the zerg counters and saves it. However, the enemy is hitting base 6 as well, on the other side of the map. Hop into the Nydus network and create a nydus worm at an entrance/choke point; now you've cut off reinforcements and can kill that attack. After you deal with that, you hop back in the worm to the frontlines to push into the main.
All of this can be done on creep. No one says Nydus Worms have to be for drops, which is why we have Overlords with drop capabilities. View the Nydus as a form of fast transport and army hiding. Your enemy will never know when and where your army will appear, which will make them reluctant to push into creep. agreed, even using nydus for defense of your bases would be a good idea. just have one at each of your expansions and you can defend easier
I dont really know if defending spread out bases is really an issue for zerg at all. Maby against dropship harass a nydus could be usefull on silly big maps, but usually creep between bases is enough, or a couple of spinecrawlers do the job better.
In BW you used it for defending your spead out bases from harass etc, but sc2 plays totally differently.
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There is one comment I haven't seen mentioned or talked about anywhere...
Lets assume that SOTG is right and it takes alot of time to figure out the game, how to play the matchups, the correct compositions/responses, etc. I don't think SC2 will have the time necessary to figure/try everything out before the next expansion hits and changes everything again, in addition to patches coming out fairly regularly changing things again. So SCII will be in constant change and never have time for things to settle down. How does this constant change affect balance and the overall state of the game?
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Just putting this out there. Too lazy to make a full thread on this and we're kind of on the subject already. Using nydus as a retreat method is pretty awesome. I liked to drop into protoss main. Nydus while you are doing so for retreat. Second nydus goes next to protoss third then snipe the third -> retreat. Rinse and repeat until you sac enough units and bought enough time to get brood lords.
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On April 14 2011 05:30 Leviwtf wrote:
There is one comment I haven't seen mentioned or talked about anywhere...
Lets assume that SOTG is right and it takes alot of time to figure out the game, how to play the matchups, the correct compositions/responses, etc. I don't think SC2 will have the time necessary to figure/try everything out before the next expansion hits and changes everything again, in addition to patches coming out fairly regularly changing things again. So SCII will be in constant change and never have time for things to settle down. How does this constant change affect balance and the overall state of the game?
There's nothing to assume.. look at how long it took for protoss to become anything but a Terran sniper race in Proleague, a game as complex as SC1/SC2 takes a loooooooong time to figure out. Patches and so forth won't change the outcome of people experimenting - atleast it shouldn't. The way Blizzard reacts to balance remarks is by tweaking some of the most nagged topics (i.ex warpgate times, stim/bunker and so forth), not the unused parts of the game (and if they do, it leads to people trying out the buffed units) - either way, the matchups evolve as time goes
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I definitely agree that people are too dependent on balance and Blizzard patching the game to make it balanced. I think that blizzard should just step back for a while, don't change ANYTHING balance-oriented and just let the players figure out ways to beat the death ball strategy. Players have to be open to more ideas, and be more innovative themselves, not just relying on patches to balance the game. Sure, players have most likely tried to do different things to go against the death ball, but how hard have they actually tried to beat it? I didn't see very many zergs trying to flank or nydus or drop etc. Drops are now starting to become more popular, and you can see in Game 2 of Idra vs Cruncher during the TSL3, that drops CAN work very well against the deathball approach by Protoss. We're definitely seeing more drops utilized and it's great that they are working well. Hopefully, Zergs won't be so self-defeating in facing against Protoss. Geoff said it best when Idra's mentality going into the games is wrong. It shouldn't be "omg I'm playing against a good protoss, this is going to be an impossible match because protoss is too hard to beat" it should be "I'm playing against a good player, and I should try to find their weaknesses and exploit them" There is no strategy that is unbeatable, because if there were the game would be so boring.
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I just want to applaud you guys on turning the latest SotG around from a complete sadgasm to an informative and sobering realization that many SC2 players need to hear, and don't understand from the Brood War days or the nature of Starcraft in general.
Everything Tyler and Sean said about the player mentality in SC2 with relation to balance and 'winning scenarios' resonated so strongly with me and I hope with a lot of other people. A lot of players have been looking at SC2 the wrong way and I think it would help us out as a community to show more resolve and restraint with regard to imbalance. It's necessary to be said by higher level players and a lot of people need to hear it, instead of just taking everything certain top level players (who tend to only complain) as gospel. Anyway, thanks for the podcast, keep up the great work!
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On April 14 2011 04:28 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I think Day[9] is skipping a step when he is saying "get a ton of infestors etc" when the etc includes a bunch of stuff that also costs significant amounts of gas. It'd be easier to start with my suggestion of getting 7th and 8th gas up ASAP and seeing how it shifts your composition naturally, having that 33% extra gas. It's absolutely true that fully saturating a 4th base is of questionable helpfulness due to supply cap but saturating more gases hasn't been explored enough.
Finding out efficient ways to dump the units that don't fit into your 200/200 composition is important as well. I don't mind zergs sticking to a roach heavy composition on their way to getting their 8th gas and 200/200, but they ought to drop or nydus the roaches into a somewhat effective, econ attacking or time buying maneuver, when it's time for those roaches to die to free up supply. We Protoss had to do this a ton in SC1, usually getting a ton of zealots at some point out of absolute necessity, but knowing we would die if we hit 200/200 and sat at 200/200 for more than 30 seconds with a zealot heavy composition. So we dumped them the best way we could. Sometimes in really inefficient ways... but hopefully if they died without killing anything, they were at least buying time.
I think it's rather telling that in the last page people have spent the last page arguing about whether nydus, and the suggestion of nydus, is stupid, rather than discussing this thought by Tyler. It seems like day9 is trying to suggest that without midgame units (except queens), you can delay or repel any early pushes. I can't imagine how you would deal with long range units like tanks in the midgame, though - before you can get brood lords. It's funday monday, so it should be fun to watch at least, but I believe Tyler's suggestion is more sensible in terms of overall gameplay (admittedly, Day9's suggestion would lead to more silly-looking games).
Is it possible Day believes Brood Lords are reachable before tanks can kill you? Or was the mass infestor/queen shenanigans something specifically for PvZ?
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The speed the Nydus puts units out is so slow that from your main to your 4th on Shakuras, it would actually be faster to just walk (specially if you have zerlings, and specially if you have creep spread).
And Nydus are too fragile to be spreading them all over the place. Using them as shield to avoid reinforcements? Lol, I think a group of 5 marines reinforcing could kill it before you unload 10 zerglings...
If you put a nydus in each base it could just be easily targeted by any drop, it costs 100min 100gas and has almost as much HP as a Queen.
//tx
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Was odd to see Tyler pretty much lack any emotion or opinion after reading things he said after Dreamhack Idra vs MC.
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On April 14 2011 05:13 Thetan wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2011 03:04 hugman wrote:
What bothers me a bit about this balance debate is how arbitrary it feels when we've "just" come off of (can you say that?) the beta. The argument the SotG hosts make could be made regardless of how "balanced" the game actually is (what balanced even means is subject onto its own). What if you reverted all the Zerg nerfs, make Roaches 1 supply, 2 armor, reduce Burrow research time to its old 50 secs and on and on? Zergs would start owning Protosses, but the argument you're using now wasn't made in the beta. Reverse the roles the other direction, what if Protoss were killing Zergs during the beta the way they are now, do you think Blizzard wouldn't patch it? Or why weren't you you saying "you should keep dropping his main and killing the Roach Warren so he can't get any Roaches" or something like that during the beta?
Do you see how arbitrary it is now? Why even patch anything? Just throw the units in and be done. Leave it all for the players to figure out, and if one year later they haven't, well then I guess you wasted a year of people's time.
If you refuse to evaluate balance based on the current metagame then how can you say that the current SC2 release is better than any random beta version? Blizzard were patching every week! There was no time to truly explore the balance. Again, my point is, what if you undo every single nerf to the Roach and Zergs start owning everyone, how could you justify nerfing it? Why not try to adapt for 6 months or more? What is the definition of "balance"? From listening to the discussion on SotG, you'll know that having "un-winnable" situations doesn't not imply "imbalance". It is only "imbalanced" if you could not do anything to prevent the "un-winnable" situation from occuring. The old roach, old mass reaper builds against zerg, those were "imbalanced": they created un-winnable situations so *early* in the game that it was clear that there was nothing that could be done to prevent those un-winnable situations from occurring (or that the only things that could be done led to an un-winnable situation against any other strategy). Whereas, the "un-winnable situation" talk right now focuses mostly on *lategame* compositions. Until you can show that it is impossible to prevent that un-winnable situation, you cannot claim "imbalance". And that has not yet been shown, as the possibilities of reactions grows exponentially as time increases. You can say that zergs have tried everything vs. the 5-rax reaper rush, and that nothing worked. Because by that time so early in the game, there's only a handful of possible strategies to try. You cannot say that zergs have tried everything vs. late-game protoss/terran. Because by that time, there's millions of strategies that you could've tried to prevent that un-winnable lategame situation.
That's a lot of absolute statements all of a sudden. You say the old Roaches were imbalanced like it's a fact. In the first month of the beta Force Field usage was nowhere near as developed as it is today (also don't forget Roaches only had 3 range), and the problem with Roaches was actually when you got a huge amount of them with Organic Carapace (which required Hive).
Still, Brood Lords were hit by the nerfbat in the beta too, and they are a very late game unit. I wasn't even talking about unwinnable situations anyway, my point was that we don't know if Roaches were imbalanced any more than we know if P is overpowered. Maybe you could deal with them, maybe you couldn't.
Either you try to balance the game or you don't. You can't argue that it's okay to discuss balance, and then arbitrarily switch over to "practice more"-mode. In the beta everyone was constantly discussing what should be changed, but as soon as the game hit retail it's like nothing should be changed. Sure, the stakes are higher with so many tournaments, but Blizzard releasing the game at a date set months in advance doesn't mean that the balancing was mostly done at that point.
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On April 14 2011 05:29 Pekkz wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2011 05:15 jmbthirteen wrote:On April 14 2011 05:07 the9thdude wrote:
I look at Nydus worms like highways; they're infrastructure for the zerg army. They allow fast transport of units not just from base to enemy, but base to base, which is their real strength. Take a map like Shakuras Plateau, where it takes a long time to go from one side of the map to the other. Normally, it would take forever to get a drone across the map to take an expo, but using Nydus worms wherever you have sight, you can just load up a single drone and get it there within 5 seconds.
Let's take another example; zerg player has half the map and has 5-6 bases. Enemy hits base 2 and then the zerg counters and saves it. However, the enemy is hitting base 6 as well, on the other side of the map. Hop into the Nydus network and create a nydus worm at an entrance/choke point; now you've cut off reinforcements and can kill that attack. After you deal with that, you hop back in the worm to the frontlines to push into the main.
All of this can be done on creep. No one says Nydus Worms have to be for drops, which is why we have Overlords with drop capabilities. View the Nydus as a form of fast transport and army hiding. Your enemy will never know when and where your army will appear, which will make them reluctant to push into creep. agreed, even using nydus for defense of your bases would be a good idea. just have one at each of your expansions and you can defend easier I dont really know if defending spread out bases is really an issue for zerg at all. Maby against dropship harass a nydus could be usefull on silly big maps, but usually creep between bases is enough, or a couple of spinecrawlers do the job better. In BW you used it for defending your spead out bases from harass etc, but sc2 plays totally differently.
It's a little more than just defending. If a good player invests in a good Nydus infrastructure (2-3 Nydus Networks) as a means of defense, they can lure an enemy army onto creep, fall into Nydus networks, drop 3 Nydus worms behind their enemies' army and crush it using flanks. If you incorporate your rally point from all of your bases into the Nydus system, you don't have to worry about your reinforcements being cut off because they're all available with your army as soon as they spawn.
I'll just bulletpoint the pros and cons of Nydus Networks:
Pros
-Allow fast regrouping and quick transport across the map without worrying about unit speeds or out int the open rally points.
-Effectively hides your army composition if you rally all of your ground units to a Nydus point.
-Can allow for creative combat maneuvers to surround and crush opposition.
-May be used (but not recommended) for hitting an enemies' mineral line or base attack. This should only be done with a drop to distract your opponent while your Worms spawn.
Cons
-Only really works on large maps
-Expensive investment in midgame, best used after 150 food and 3+ bases
-Loud and announced. This may not be such a problem if you keep it on creep, but will alert your opponent to Nydus tech.
-Requires a brain to use effectively
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Tyler. i'm sorry but you really should be practicing!!! love from your fans
+ Show Spoiler +I just want to applaud you guys on turning the latest SotG around from a complete sadgasm to an informative and sobering realization that many SC2 players need to hear, and don't understand from the Brood War days or the nature of Starcraft in general.
Everything Tyler and Sean said about the player mentality in SC2 with relation to balance and 'winning scenarios' resonated so strongly with me and I hope with a lot of other people. A lot of players have been looking at SC2 the wrong way and I think it would help us out as a community to show more resolve and restraint with regard to imbalance. It's necessary to be said by higher level players and a lot of people need to hear it, instead of just taking everything certain top level players (who tend to only complain) as gospel. Anyway, thanks for the podcast, keep up the great work!
I totally agree 251. I think you said it better than i ever could
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On April 14 2011 05:39 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2011 04:28 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I think Day[9] is skipping a step when he is saying "get a ton of infestors etc" when the etc includes a bunch of stuff that also costs significant amounts of gas. It'd be easier to start with my suggestion of getting 7th and 8th gas up ASAP and seeing how it shifts your composition naturally, having that 33% extra gas. It's absolutely true that fully saturating a 4th base is of questionable helpfulness due to supply cap but saturating more gases hasn't been explored enough.
Finding out efficient ways to dump the units that don't fit into your 200/200 composition is important as well. I don't mind zergs sticking to a roach heavy composition on their way to getting their 8th gas and 200/200, but they ought to drop or nydus the roaches into a somewhat effective, econ attacking or time buying maneuver, when it's time for those roaches to die to free up supply. We Protoss had to do this a ton in SC1, usually getting a ton of zealots at some point out of absolute necessity, but knowing we would die if we hit 200/200 and sat at 200/200 for more than 30 seconds with a zealot heavy composition. So we dumped them the best way we could. Sometimes in really inefficient ways... but hopefully if they died without killing anything, they were at least buying time. I think it's rather telling that in the last page people have spent the last page arguing about whether nydus, and the suggestion of nydus, is stupid, rather than discussing this thought by Tyler. It seems like day9 is trying to suggest that without midgame units (except queens), you can delay or repel any early pushes. I can't imagine how you would deal with long range units like tanks in the midgame, though - before you can get brood lords. It's funday monday, so it should be fun to watch at least, but I believe Tyler's suggestion is more sensible in terms of overall gameplay (admittedly, Day9's suggestion would lead to more silly-looking games). Is it possible Day believes Brood Lords are reachable before tanks can kill you? Or was the mass infestor/queen shenanigans something specifically for PvZ?
He's just trying to get people to use the units they don't use... more... Its not that complicated. You can start by goofing around and having fun (its a game) or you could be serious and just get your army then tech switch. It doesn't matter how you do it, only that you do it a lot and get good at it. Eventually you will find a way to win (who likes losing) and thats a good place to start. I think the issue people have with zerg is it feels like you have 4 different units all game. Ling/Roach/Hydra/AA done. Most people live and die by those units. The more people find clever ways to incorporate the other units into their builds the more other people will use them and people will be forced to react.
One Perfect example someone pointed out in this thread (not on purpose cause he is a troll) Protoss players almost always have plyons around the edge of their base. Hrm I wonder why? Could it be because people used nydus worms in the Beta and Protoss players quickly learned, or watched Beta tournys (like day9's) where it was obvious that they needed to put pylons everywhere to stop nydus worms. Casters even were even pointing it out. Sure it helps you warp in units in some locations, but honestly its dangerous to put your pylons around the edge of your base. If your opponent goes air they are easily picked off and ground armies with sight love to pick off Terran and Protoss structures around the edge of bases.
Edit: Lolz at post above me. *Cracks whip at Nony* From the Fans... With love.
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People used Nydus in the beta when they had half the build time, and everyone stopped using them after it was changed.
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I don't get why the Nydus making a noise is bad. I mean if you use it as a sort of highway from one place to another and not in the opponents base the opponent will still hear the noise and immediately freak out looking for the Nydus when in reality your just using it to connect two cross map positions or something or to just instantly transport units to the front of his base. The point being it freaks him out and distracts him which is obviously good.
People forget the mindset of players and always focus on numbers. Like a lot of people think drops are bad because they'll probably just be killed and not be cost effective. BUT your distracting his attention. Allowing yourself to gain something elsewhere on the map, if your multitasking is up to the challenge.
I mean it's probably been brought up more than it should considering some circumstances but the Mondragon game vs Zeerax just seemed so smart and I think that kind of Super Aggressive yet still macro focused style can be built upon so much and evolved with so many different unit compositions.
I mean also look at IdrA vs CruncheR in TSL, the one game he switches it up and goes super drop and aggressive type play he pretty much owned CruncheR like he was some nooblet. I think Zerg should just get ridiculously gimmicky and also counter attack constantly.
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EPT
