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United States7166 Posts
On September 14 2010 07:18 LaLuSh wrote:
Perfection is very hard to achieve when the matchup involves such a high degree of guessing for zerg. Even when you scout a certain tech path from the terran, you still cannot be sure what is coming. Yesterday for example (one out of a thousand examples), I scouted a very fast tech starport tech lab switch from brat_ok in a tournament game, and I began making spore crawlers and queens while massing drones. I was sure I was going to come out far ahead. What happens next? He only uses the starport to build 1 banshee. Switches his strat around instantly, builds 1 medivac and 1 thor, drops it on my cliff, completely shuts down mining and easily takes out my expansion hatchery.
There is no way a zerg can account for all these possibilities at the same time. Every terran is unique. Every terran has got their own specialized (and often retarded) transition. Banshee doesn't have to mean banshee. 2 rax doesn't have to mean aggressive infantry build. It might as well mean a nonsensical delayed 2 or 1 port banshee with cloak.
You have all these idiot terrans scoring easy instant wins vs zergs everywhere, because even if you scout their production buildings, half of the time you've still got no fucking clue what they're doing. You scout a barrack constantly producing marines and a starport without addons? Maybe he'll use it for 1 viking and then medivacs. Maybe he'll use it for a fast medivac dropping 8 marines straight into your base. Maybe he's the kind of terran that built another rax in his base and waits for 2 medivacs before dropping you. Maybe he's the kind of retarded terran that waits for so long, that eventually you start making drones again, and in flies 3medivacs fully loaded with units. Sometimes they make a medivac and don't even use it for anything, they just expand and pretend it's a logical strategy.
You make drones and go for the early spire vs the 1 medivac 8 marine drop? You'll take sick damage. You start making units too late vs the 2 medivac drop and even hint at making the spire? You die. You start making units too early vs the 3 medivac drop instead of making the spire, and then suddenly think the coast is clear and proceed into making a round of drones because the drop never seems to come? You die.
You make too many units vs the nonsensical terran that went a 1-1-1 build into an 11-minute mark expand with medivacs and lots of marines before expanding but didn't even drop you ? You die from mining 600 less minerals per minute every subsequent minute.
Even when watching Sen's stream - who I consider to be 20x better than me and a complete monster ZvT - you see him losing instantly to noob terrans after overdroning vs a 3rax or 2rax/hellion all-in, or making too many units vs a faked aggression into fast expand build, or upgrading ling speed before lair and subsequently dying to 2port banshee without even having a fighting chance.
The main reason you see so many zergs getting eliminated so early, is because you have to have sick amount of LUCK to beat 5-6 terrans in a row. It doesn't matter how good and how skilled you are. Beating that many terrans in a row will require more luck than it will require skill.
The point is, there is too much of an element of randomness for zerg in the matchup depending on which tech path they opt for. And it cannot be fixed by simply "scouting better". The difference in win rate from playing a terran ranked #60 as opposed to a terran ranked #5 isn't that great. There's still the ~20% of games where you instantly lose due to a build order/tech path loss, no matter how good/bad your terran opponent is.
Then there are the truly good terrans. The ones of equal skill to you. The ones who'll win at least 50% of the games that reach beyond the "zerg guesses wrong instantly loses" phase.
The win ratio against those terrans won't ever be 50% for zergs. Much like the scrub terrans, the good terrans too will instantly win about ~20% of their games on pure build order errors from zerg. If they win half of the rest of games that puts them at 60% vs the zergs.
For a good terran facing a scrub zerg. There's perhaps a 1% chance of a build order loss. Again, number pulled out of my ass, but I should really think it's single digit, and amongst the lower single digits. You don't see morrow, brat_ok or demuslim losing to scrub zergs, EVER.
TvP, they might lose a higher percentage of games against no name protosses. But not nearly as high as zergs vs terran and protoss.
So what you end up with (poker analogy) is top zergs having to fight their way through 5-6 top pocket pair vs lower pocket pair preflop all-ins without getting drawn out one single time! And of course a couple of other key hands that actually reach the flop, turn and river (normal games where the zerg had some influence on the outcome and didn't instantly lose).
This post was written as a rant from start from finish. Forgive me if it's very incoherent.
This post articulatess exactly what makes ZvT so difficult (aside from the underlying issues between how strong a ridiculous variety of units/unit compositions are and how much zergs struggle with dealing with all of it. then there's other things like how effective planetary fortress/turrets are, how insanely good mules are, etc)
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seems kinda misleading being outside of korea and all.
whatever nice work!
edit: by all i mean:
- no number of zerg entrants relative to zerg winners
- only counts tournaments outside of korea
- what half said and the other guy about percentages
- morrow is imba!
I still think terran is imba by the way. Just not to the degree of the OP.
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I think you also need to include the % of race entry to make this more meaningful.
example: if 75% terran entries gave 75% terran winners, then it's pretty "balanced".
This....this data is completely meaningless unless you factor in the amount of entrants for each race. I'm sure it still would support the hypothesis "Zerg is underpowered", but not nearly to the degree the OP implies.
That being said Z needs a buff ofc, but how?
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Is this some sort of stealth thread about Terran being OP again?
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On September 14 2010 08:26 WarChimp wrote:
Is this some sort of stealth thread about Terran being OP again?
Yes.
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On September 14 2010 08:19 Half wrote:Show nested quote +
I think you also need to include the % of race entry to make this more meaningful.
example: if 75% terran entries gave 75% terran winners, then it's pretty "balanced".
This....this data is completely meaningless unless you factor in the amount of entrants for each race. I'm sure it still would support the hypothesis "Zerg is underpowered", but not nearly to the degree the OP implies. That being said Z needs a buff ofc, but how?
You have to ask your self WHY 75% of the ppl are playing terran if that was the case.
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On September 14 2010 08:32 SuperGnu wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2010 08:19 Half wrote:
I think you also need to include the % of race entry to make this more meaningful.
example: if 75% terran entries gave 75% terran winners, then it's pretty "balanced".
This....this data is completely meaningless unless you factor in the amount of entrants for each race. I'm sure it still would support the hypothesis "Zerg is underpowered", but not nearly to the degree the OP implies. That being said Z needs a buff ofc, but how? You have to ask your self WHY 75% of the ppl are playing terran if that was the case.
Because they think it gives them the best chance to compete. Key word. Think.
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On September 14 2010 07:30 Fitz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2010 07:18 LaLuSh wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Perfection is very hard to achieve when the matchup involves such a high degree of guessing for zerg. Even when you scout a certain tech path from the terran, you still cannot be sure what is coming. Yesterday for example (one out of a thousand examples), I scouted a very fast tech starport tech lab switch from brat_ok in a tournament game, and I began making spore crawlers and queens while massing drones. I was sure I was going to come out far ahead. What happens next? He only uses the starport to build 1 banshee. Switches his strat around instantly, builds 1 medivac and 1 thor, drops it on my cliff, completely shuts down mining and easily takes out my expansion hatchery.
There is no way a zerg can account for all these possibilities at the same time. Every terran is unique. Every terran has got their own specialized (and often retarded) transition. Banshee doesn't have to mean banshee. 2 rax doesn't have to mean aggressive infantry build. It might as well mean a nonsensical delayed 2 or 1 port banshee with cloak.
You have all these idiot terrans scoring easy instant wins vs zergs everywhere, because even if you scout their production buildings, half of the time you've still got no fucking clue what they're doing. You scout a barrack constantly producing marines and a starport without addons? Maybe he'll use it for 1 viking and then medivacs. Maybe he'll use it for a fast medivac dropping 8 marines straight into your base. Maybe he's the kind of terran that built another rax in his base and waits for 2 medivacs before dropping you. Maybe he's the kind of retarded terran that waits for so long, that eventually you start making drones again, and in flies 3medivacs fully loaded with units. Sometimes they make a medivac and don't even use it for anything, they just expand and pretend it's a logical strategy.
You make drones and go for the early spire vs the 1 medivac 8 marine drop? You'll take sick damage. You start making units too late vs the 2 medivac drop and even hint at making the spire? You die. You start making units too early vs the 3 medivac drop instead of making the spire, and then suddenly think the coast is clear and proceed into making a round of drones because the drop never seems to come? You die.
You make too many units vs the nonsensical terran that went a 1-1-1 build into an 11-minute mark expand with medivacs and lots of marines before expanding but didn't even drop you ? You die from mining 600 less minerals per minute every subsequent minute.
Even when watching Sen's stream - who I consider to be 20x better than me and a complete monster ZvT - you see him losing instantly to noob terrans after overdroning vs a 3rax or 2rax/hellion all-in, or making too many units vs a faked aggression into fast expand build, or upgrading ling speed before lair and subsequently dying to 2port banshee without even having a fighting chance.
The main reason you see so many zergs getting eliminated so early, is because you have to have sick amount of LUCK to beat 5-6 terrans in a row. It doesn't matter how good and how skilled you are. Beating that many terrans in a row will require more luck than it will require skill.
The point is, there is too much of an element of randomness for zerg in the matchup depending on which tech path they opt for. And it cannot be fixed by simply "scouting better". The difference in win rate from playing a terran ranked #60 as opposed to a terran ranked #5 isn't that great. There's still the ~20% of games where you instantly lose due to a build order/tech path loss, no matter how good/bad your terran opponent is.
Then there are the truly good terrans. The ones of equal skill to you. The ones who'll win at least 50% of the games that reach beyond the "zerg guesses wrong instantly loses" phase.
The win ratio against those terrans won't ever be 50% for zergs. Much like the scrub terrans, the good terrans too will instantly win about ~20% of their games on pure build order errors from zerg. If they win half of the rest of games that puts them at 60% vs the zergs.
For a good terran facing a scrub zerg. There's perhaps a 1% chance of a build order loss. Again, number pulled out of my ass, but I should really think it's single digit, and amongst the lower single digits. You don't see morrow, brat_ok or demuslim losing to scrub zergs, EVER.
TvP, they might lose a higher percentage of games against no name protosses. But not nearly as high as zergs vs terran and protoss.
So what you end up with (poker analogy) is top zergs having to fight their way through 5-6 top pocket pair vs lower pocket pair preflop all-ins without getting drawn out one single time! And of course a couple of other key hands that actually reach the flop, turn and river (normal games where the zerg had some influence on the outcome and didn't instantly lose).
This post was written as a rant from start from finish. Forgive me if it's very incoherent.
I think it was very coherent and worth the read. The only think I'd like you to take the time to think is how could that change ? It seem to me like the problem you're describing is deeper than a 5 second additionnal reaper build time. Every now and then terrans will tell you that the scouting answer is to sacc. an ovie or even two (ovie pincer, whoever came up with this idea) at a very low food count, which is very weakening for a zerg to do. Just to hope you get the general idea of what the T is doing behind his walls. Ive read your other thread and your suggestions, but none of them (I think) address this issue.
I personally think the macro mechanics are to blame for most of what's "wrong" in SC2. You often hear korean bw-coaches dismiss SC2 by saying "it is too fast paced", which is somewhat of a strange remark seeing how fast paced of a game BW is considered to be, but nonetheless I agree with them. The macro mechanics make you reach saturation on one base so fast that there's not enough of a discrepancy between a "normal" build and an "all-in" build. You're simply not forced to enough of an economic trade off for cheesing or opting for an aggressive build.
In SC1, going 4gate would actually mean something significant. Scouting someone going 4gate was significant. You'd have to sacrifice economy and saturation to even do a 4gate. In SC2, saturation on 1base is reached so fast, rushes are boosted so much, attack timings are so fast forwarded, that it forces everyone into conformity. There don't exist no fast shuttle (warp prism) drops with reaver (colossus) no more, because if you are to choose such a tech path, you'll have 8 zealots, 10 stalkers, and 4 sentries knocking at your doorstep by the 6th minute in the game. There is simply no way in hell you can defend that with 1colossus 3 stalker and 1 zealot and 1 sentry or whatever low unit number composition you'll have after spending so much on tech.
Macro mechanics are like the fourth race of Starcraft. At least as much detail that was spent on balancing the races by Blizzard should have been spent on balancing the macro mechanics. They need to have a reasonable strength level. One that allows for a wider strategic diversity, rather than forcing everyone to "at least make 3 gate every game or else I'll die".
It's for the exact same reason that DT rush is a rock paper scissors build in SC2. While TT1 might have made that thread advocating DT play in PvP out of good reasons, I don't think he or anyone else really understood why DT play is so bad in SC2. In SC1, if you wanted to have observers out in time to defend against DTs, you'd have to sacrifice building more gateways for a quicker robo. In SC2, everything's boosted to such a degree you can easily have 3-4 gates and still get the robo up in time to defend DTs.
What you end up with is a situation where if the DT rush fails (i.e. if the opponent went for any strategy involving detection at all). He'll have about 12 more units participating in the counterattack against your base than in the analogous situation in Broodwar. As such there exists no transition from opening DTs. Either you win the game instantly, or you lose horribly to the counterattack. There is no inbetween. Even if they were to buff DTs by lowering the build time for the dark shrine, it would have no other effect than making DT openings instantly win a higher percentage of the time. It would still instantly lose the rest of the time where the other protoss opted for fast enough detection.
This is a perfect example in my opinion, of balance changes being unable to introduce strategic diversity to the game. And this is what Blizzard have been dabbling with all beta long. They've been nerfing the crap out of pretty much everything, because shit just kept dying too fast and too easily against other shit produced in bulk.
I'm not arguing for the macro mechanics to be removed though. It's a unique aspect of SC2 that distinguishes it from SC1 and introduces a whole new aspect of play. It should definitely stay in game. But for the HotS beta test, they seriously need to consider rebalancing macro mechanics. I'll eventually post a thread about it as I usually do, when I'm finished theorycrafting around the subject. Though, I don't feel as if I've got a good enough solution to present as of yet.
Right now I'm leaning towards suggesting a scaling method of sorts for macro mechanics. 2larva per inject on tier 1, 3 on tier 2 (lair tech) etc. Same sort of scaling effect for chrono boost and MULE. In order to slow down the early game somewhat. In my mind it makes sense, as it would remove alot of the random elements in the game and give players a proper chance to actually adapt to scouting information, as opposed to being hit by a 4warpgate all-in merely ~40 seconds after scouting it.
I think the game would benefit greatly from having technical strategies like warp prism colossus drops with gravitic drive upgrades become viable. And they would, as long as Blizzard just slows down the early game somewhat. As long as teching becomes a viable game path as opposed to everyone having to conform to the "Gotta produce as much shit as possible off of 1base as fast as humanly possible"-syndrome that's plaguing the game and will continue to plague it as long as the macro mechanics are designed the way they are and are as strong as they are right now.
No small unit tweak balance changes are ever going to change that you're going to have to defend a 4warp gate all-in in 90% of your games vsP on the ladder. Small unit tweaks aren't magically going to introduce more "strategic diversity" in SC2, as long as players aren't given enough time to adapt to scouting information.
Current state of zerg is pretty much: Either start the necessary upgrade/building before scouting or run the very real risk that the upgrade/building you started after scouting won't be complete by the time you get all-inned/cliff dropped/cloak bansheed/whatever. The "you just gotta learn to scout better"-horde on TL are really annoying in this aspect. By the time you scout it, half of the time there isn't enough time to adapt anyway!
All Blizzard's balance changes have achieved thus far when it comes to zerg is either making them die faster/easier or sustain more damage early game, or making them survive easier early game and thus automatically be broken against Protoss mid and lategame.
And in my opinion macro mechanics are more to blame for any of this than any unit being over- or underpowered.
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On September 14 2010 07:36 teamsolid wrote:
Very good read, pretty much summarizes one of the major faults in the ZvT matchup. What is most interesting to me is that these issues have existed since the beta was first out, BUT Zergs were still winning their fair share of tournaments in early beta regardless of the inherent randomness of the matchup. Even though any top level Z could just randomly drop a game to any T, the sheer power of late game Z could carry them through to tournament wins. Whether this was because people hadn't developed the other races enough, and Z was just figured out faster since there are less units/combinations, I can't say for certain though. And then came the nerfs... and more nerfs, followed by more nerfs.
So ideally in order to balance the matchup, you'd have to fix these underlying guessing issues, BUT if you gave Zergs enough actual buffs (especially in the early-mid game) they might still be able to overcome this even with their flaws.
Zerg was better off in beta because they had 2 armor roaches that cost 1 supply, which meant terran had to actually worry about dying early and a maxed zerg army was a lot scarier.
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Tournament wins by race:
Terran - 51
Protoss - 22
Zerg - 4
lololol - thats really, really sad.
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LaLuSh's posts are a joy to read. You've articulated a feeling I've had since early on: builds are limited due to the rapidity at which things can happen. Scouting, more often than not, has to happen well before the threat is even reasonable(i.e., you need to see the Stargate warping in otherwise the Voids will be in your base so damn fast).
Well done.
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Canada11261 Posts
On September 14 2010 08:05 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:I want it to be clear this is something i feel is a weakness of zerg that needs to be addressed. It's important to make that clarification or things like 'look how many terrans win these bumblefuck tournaments' look like they have more weight than they should  (For anyone who cares, the fix I have in mind is moving overlord speed to hatchery but it requires spawning pool. pool timing very important! ^_^)
Actually, changing overlord speed to that time, could probably work. It would increase the survivability of the early scouting (which past the early game, sacking overlords does not gain much info because of all the ranged units.) And if you had to sack ovies, you'd at least get some decent info out of it.
I don't really see how it would unbalance it other ways as losing ovies hurts supply and SC2 allows people to go air much more often.
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The data is incorrect.
-_-...
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8748 Posts
On September 14 2010 08:43 LaLuSh wrote:
It's for the exact same reason that DT rush is a rock paper scissors build in SC2. While TT1 might have made that thread advocating DT play in PvP out of good reasons, I don't think he or anyone else really understood why DT play is so bad in SC2. In SC1, if you wanted to have observers out in time to defend against DTs, you'd have to sacrifice building more gateways for a quicker robo. In SC2, everything's boosted to such a degree you can easily have 3-4 gates and still get the robo up in time to defend DTs.
What you end up with is a situation where if the DT rush fails (i.e. if the opponent went for any strategy involving detection at all). He'll have about 12 more units participating in the counterattack against your base than in the analogous situation in Broodwar. As such there exists no transition from opening DTs. Either you win the game instantly, or you lose horribly to the counterattack. There is no inbetween. Even if they were to buff DTs by lowering the build time for the dark shrine, it would have no other effect than making DT openings instantly win a higher percentage of the time. It would still instantly lose the rest of the time where the other protoss opted for fast enough detection.
The problems are Thermal Lance Colossi and Blink Stalkers. In BW, at the moment when Reavers can get on offense, the DT player can have enough Psionic Storm to repel the attack. That is not possible against Colossi in SC2. Even if Psionic Storm is available in time, it is not powerful enough against Colossi to matter. And there is nothing like Blink Stalkers in BW but in SC2 they make Photon Cannons useless. The only thing that is somewhat similar is the elevator strategy where one Shuttle moves an entire army into the opponent's main base but of course a Warp Prism is even better than a Shuttle so the SC2 DT strategy is more difficult there as well.
Economy isn't an issue in the analogy. The issue is when each build can get things and how effective those things are against each other. If SC2 reverted to SC:BW's mining AI and Chrono Boost was removed, DT's would still be ineffective in PvP.
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@ LaLush, great follow up post regarding macro mechanics. I was reading your first post and thinking: "Well, I wonder what he suggests to fix it? We can't get rid of them.."
The scaling idea is interesting, not because its scaling, but because you came up with the idea based upon the objective. The objective needs to be: slow down the early game a little, not a lot, but a little. Just enough such that IF you play very very aggressive, then your economy would be distinguishably inferior to someone who didn't.
A very insightful objective and one that I feel should be examined more closely.
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Is it dissapointing that SC2 isent balanced at the moment?
No, its a new game, we knew this would happen, chances of Blizzard getting it just right at the start are slim to none, it needs work, BW needed work too
Is it dissapointing that all these Terran players are winning and topping rankings everywhere?
No, you cant blame the players for anything, they all put alot of effort into their builds and strats, they are just doing the best they can with the tools given to them.
Is it dissapointing that the SC2 community has gained some "WoW arena" esque players who are only interested in protecting their own playstyle while insulting others in the process and trying to defend something which...lets face it, cant be defended anymore?
Yes.
There is a clear cut problem in the game currently, this was predicted by many people on TL in beta aswell as many pro players such as Tester that Terran would dominate. than US has in the top etc
This....this data is completely meaningless unless you factor in the amount of entrants for each race. I'm sure it still would support the hypothesis "Zerg is underpowered", but not nearly to the degree the OP implies.
False, players in these tournaments usually need to qualify. Nobody is going to make a tournament of say 24 players and include top 8 of each race thus inviting some Zerg ranked 49th or something just to fill the Z number out.
The point of the tournament is to invite the top players, because that is what will make the games the most exciting, nobody wants to watch Select stomp some 95th Zerg in a blow out match, they (and i even) rather watch him in a close TvT game
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On September 14 2010 07:18 LaLuSh wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Perfection is very hard to achieve when the matchup involves such a high degree of guessing for zerg. Even when you scout a certain tech path from the terran, you still cannot be sure what is coming. Yesterday for example (one out of a thousand examples), I scouted a very fast tech starport tech lab switch from brat_ok in a tournament game, and I began making spore crawlers and queens while massing drones. I was sure I was going to come out far ahead. What happens next? He only uses the starport to build 1 banshee. Switches his strat around instantly, builds 1 medivac and 1 thor, drops it on my cliff, completely shuts down mining and easily takes out my expansion hatchery.
There is no way a zerg can account for all these possibilities at the same time. Every terran is unique. Every terran has got their own specialized (and often retarded) transition. Banshee doesn't have to mean banshee. 2 rax doesn't have to mean aggressive infantry build. It might as well mean a nonsensical delayed 2 or 1 port banshee with cloak.
You have all these idiot terrans scoring easy instant wins vs zergs everywhere, because even if you scout their production buildings, half of the time you've still got no fucking clue what they're doing. You scout a barrack constantly producing marines and a starport without addons? Maybe he'll use it for 1 viking and then medivacs. Maybe he'll use it for a fast medivac dropping 8 marines straight into your base. Maybe he's the kind of terran that built another rax in his base and waits for 2 medivacs before dropping you. Maybe he's the kind of retarded terran that waits for so long, that eventually you start making drones again, and in flies 3medivacs fully loaded with units. Sometimes they make a medivac and don't even use it for anything, they just expand and pretend it's a logical strategy.
You make drones and go for the early spire vs the 1 medivac 8 marine drop? You'll take sick damage. You start making units too late vs the 2 medivac drop and even hint at making the spire? You die. You start making units too early vs the 3 medivac drop instead of making the spire, and then suddenly think the coast is clear and proceed into making a round of drones because the drop never seems to come? You die.
You make too many units vs the nonsensical terran that went a 1-1-1 build into an 11-minute mark expand with medivacs and lots of marines before expanding but didn't even drop you ? You die from mining 600 less minerals per minute every subsequent minute.
Even when watching Sen's stream - who I consider to be 20x better than me and a complete monster ZvT - you see him losing instantly to noob terrans after overdroning vs a 3rax or 2rax/hellion all-in, or making too many units vs a faked aggression into fast expand build, or upgrading ling speed before lair and subsequently dying to 2port banshee without even having a fighting chance.
The main reason you see so many zergs getting eliminated so early, is because you have to have sick amount of LUCK to beat 5-6 terrans in a row. It doesn't matter how good and how skilled you are. Beating that many terrans in a row will require more luck than it will require skill.
The point is, there is too much of an element of randomness for zerg in the matchup depending on which tech path they opt for. And it cannot be fixed by simply "scouting better". The difference in win rate from playing a terran ranked #60 as opposed to a terran ranked #5 isn't that great. There's still the ~20% of games where you instantly lose due to a build order/tech path loss, no matter how good/bad your terran opponent is.
Then there are the truly good terrans. The ones of equal skill to you. The ones who'll win at least 50% of the games that reach beyond the "zerg guesses wrong instantly loses" phase.
The win ratio against those terrans won't ever be 50% for zergs. Much like the scrub terrans, the good terrans too will instantly win about ~20% of their games on pure build order errors from zerg. If they win half of the rest of games that puts them at 60% vs the zergs.
For a good terran facing a scrub zerg. There's perhaps a 1% chance of a build order loss. Again, number pulled out of my ass, but I should really think it's single digit, and amongst the lower single digits. You don't see morrow, brat_ok or demuslim losing to scrub zergs, EVER.
TvP, they might lose a higher percentage of games against no name protosses. But not nearly as high as zergs vs terran and protoss.
So what you end up with (poker analogy) is top zergs having to fight their way through 5-6 top pocket pair vs lower pocket pair preflop all-ins without getting drawn out one single time! And of course a couple of other key hands that actually reach the flop, turn and river (normal games where the zerg had some influence on the outcome and didn't instantly lose).
This post was written as a rant from start from finish. Forgive me if it's very incoherent.
It's actually super-coherent, and I completely agree  .
Blizzard said that one of the challenges they fear in adding new units in expansion packs is that players will have too many options and it'll become too hard to tell what a player's doing based on scouting information.
As it is, it feels like Terrans are already there  . So much of what you said in that post hit home with me, because I make errors in judgment like that all the time. At the IEM, even Morrow was surprised that Tarson could get Banshees so quickly after getting Hellions early on.
I would really like to see Terrans need to make more of commitment to pursue certain tech paths. Zerg could really use more telling signs of certain tech =/.
I have to say though, Idra is by far the best Zerg I have seen in StarCraft 2. He always seems to know exactly what Terran is doing, even based on extremely limited scouting information. The amount of gamesense it takes to do that just boggles my mind. That's the kind of thing that you can only do when you play with the kind of regimen that Idra does. Unfortunately, not every Zerg can have that kind of time, and even Idra, who makes Zerg look overpowered, feels that it's unfair on Zergs that they should have to work so hard to beat a Terran who may not even have as much experience or skill as the Zerg they're fighting against =/.
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Probably 70-80% of the ZvT problems are covered by two things: the 2 supply roach and 12s neural parasite. 2 supply roach means zerg can't field a solid earlygame army, so there's no viable 1base "assault" build - baneling bust is allin and stopped by mere simcity, 5RR can be stopped by a bunker. 1 supply roach allowed zerg to actually field a solid earlygame army that could punish super-cutesy harass builds, but you just can't do that anymore. Roach was never op at 1 supply and it needs to be reverted before zerg stands a chance.
Second is NP, which was zerg's only cost-effective thor counter. Take that out, thor is ridiculously effective against essentially all zerg units. NP needs to be infinite (or have at minimum a 30 second real-time duration).
Also echoing that lalush's post is dead-on, as usual.
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I love reading your posts LaLuSh. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with the community.
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On September 14 2010 09:02 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2010 08:43 LaLuSh wrote:
It's for the exact same reason that DT rush is a rock paper scissors build in SC2. While TT1 might have made that thread advocating DT play in PvP out of good reasons, I don't think he or anyone else really understood why DT play is so bad in SC2. In SC1, if you wanted to have observers out in time to defend against DTs, you'd have to sacrifice building more gateways for a quicker robo. In SC2, everything's boosted to such a degree you can easily have 3-4 gates and still get the robo up in time to defend DTs.
What you end up with is a situation where if the DT rush fails (i.e. if the opponent went for any strategy involving detection at all). He'll have about 12 more units participating in the counterattack against your base than in the analogous situation in Broodwar. As such there exists no transition from opening DTs. Either you win the game instantly, or you lose horribly to the counterattack. There is no inbetween. Even if they were to buff DTs by lowering the build time for the dark shrine, it would have no other effect than making DT openings instantly win a higher percentage of the time. It would still instantly lose the rest of the time where the other protoss opted for fast enough detection.
The problems are Thermal Lance Colossi and Blink Stalkers. In BW, at the moment when Reavers can get on offense, the DT player can have enough Psionic Storm to repel the attack. That is not possible against Colossi in SC2. Even if Psionic Storm is available in time, it is not powerful enough against Colossi to matter. And there is nothing like Blink Stalkers in BW but in SC2 they make Photon Cannons useless. The only thing that is somewhat similar is the elevator strategy where one Shuttle moves an entire army into the opponent's main base but of course a Warp Prism is even better than a Shuttle so the SC2 DT strategy is more difficult there as well. Economy isn't an issue in the analogy. The issue is when each build can get things and how effective those things are against each other. If SC2 reverted to SC:BW's mining AI and Chrono Boost was removed, DT's would still be ineffective in PvP.
Well, while I agree with the basic premise of what you wrote (thermal lance colossi and blink stalker being harder to defend against than their bw counterparts), I do ask you to reconsider if economy truly isn't an issue in the analogy. 1 Colossus isn't to much use if you haven't got alot of units to protect it.
A weaker chrono boost early game would delay reaching saturation greatly. It would potentially cut into probe production if you wanted to get up the robotics in time. It would lower the amount of gateways you could support. I'm pretty sure it would delay the timing of the colossus, robotics support bay and thermal lance upgrade (If colossus was counted as tier 2, or whatever arbitrary value we assign to determine the strength of chrono boost in different stages of the game, weakened chrono boost would DIRECTLY cut into the timings, not only economically).
Think about it for a second. You'd have to churn out a robotics facility (150 minerals 100 gas). Then an observer instantly (50 minerals 100 gas) plus a robotics support bay (200 minerals 200 gas). Then a colossus (300 minerals 200 gas) PLUS the thermal lance upgrade (200 minerals 200 gas). With a weakened economy and chrono boost!
I think the cut in economy would significantly delay the timing for colossus, maybe even to such an extent that the DT-rushing player would have enough time for his expansion to kick in and enable him to outproduce the other P. While I can't really argue your main point that thermal colossi is just simply too strong against any normal composition, I still think the change would allow for the chance of greater strategic diversity. 1 Colossus isn't of much use if it hasn't got many units supporting it. And even if it turns out to be too strong (which by the way I think alot of units will turn out to be if you're gonna make such a major change to the game), the unit could be nerfed or changed.
Although I can really see your point on maps like Kulas and Steppes, where you could just stand from far aback with the colossus and stop the other protoss from mining his expo.
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