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Creep is the new nydus worm I guess. The irony is that the second a zerg gets good creep spread the opponent is criticized for not killing tumors, rightfully so since killing them is about ten times easier than actually laying them.
I'll agree that playing without creep is like playing without upgrades, and I'll agree that getting upgrades is much easier to do. It's too bad it's never that simple, it's rarely in the hands of zerg where creep is allowed to progress. On short distance spawns or maps its much easier, but there's no taking the entire map with tumors that start from your nat, you have to do some queen wizardry to get any meaningful creep spread on a big map. Even more irony is that generally zerg fares better on large maps and playing against close distances makes you want to take a rusty blade to your forearms.
Degree of difficulty aside the mechanic while interesting conceptually sucks in practice and is painfully limiting
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On September 24 2010 05:22 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Nobody still has a clue about learning curves of the races. It's hard enough to find balance in RTS but to control the learning curves of 3 different games (races) this complicated to be similar is pretty much impossible. How hard is basic control for tank/marauder, now compare it to how hard it is to control the correct counter ling/infestor. Clearly Zerg needs more time to reach its max than Terran does.
You can, scientifically, count the amount of early options for Z vs T - and count the amount of seconds each of them has vision of each others strategic areas.
If you don't come up with numbers heavily in favor of T there, then I will be really surprised.
That and every Zerg out there still doesn't creep properly. You see top level Zergs not getting multiple tumors at all times in the game, not getting overlord speed. Why complain about unit strength when you aren't getting the number one upgrade for your units (creep) in the whole game. This is just puzzling.
Players like Cool, Idra, etc, who get their monthly paycheck from playing Zerg, know very well that they can't count on the fragile creep as a buff when an important fight goes down.
Creep is easy and fast to take it down, and it requires work and time to get it back up. It's like running uphill.
Sure there are things to be done here, but if you take a look at what Terrans could improve in the current state? I mean Terrans haven't really been under pressure in SC2 so far, except in TvT, where gameplay is drastically different with for instance more scans, more harassment, more economy.
When "most Terrans" start aggressively expanding and more multifront harassment of various sorts (see Cool's post), that's when we will see how strong Terran really are in the current state.
To blame a pressured race for the imbalance, a game where players spend every waking hour trying to find openings, seems ridicoulus and short-sighted to me.
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On September 24 2010 05:36 blabber wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2010 05:33 Disastorm wrote:On September 24 2010 05:28 Mearis wrote:
Nazgul, look at it this way - a zerg player at a certain point on a learning curve should compare favorably to a terran player at a similar point of the learning curve.
If you take a really good zerg like Idra or Sen, they would crush a mid-diamond terran player, but that's hardly meaningful - Idra or Sen are much better players and have a lot investement in the game in terms of man-hours. Unless you assume there is a plateau beyond which skill cannot improve you any further, if zerg require more 'learning' to hit a particular level of effectiveness, zerg will always be inferior, unless at a particularly high level of skill that nobody has even approached, zerg become very easy to improve with.
Second - most zerg players play really really well, and have their core mechanics down. A 1200+ zerg player is by no means a pro, but if you watch his replays, he usually has solid APM, good micro, a good sense of timing/strategic flexibility. I don't really think most high end zergs are terrible at all. I think if you look at a similarly rated terran, you are often astonished at just how completely awful they are - I beat a 1100 rated terran about ~3 weeks ago who forgot to wall off against me, and I simply sent wave after wave of speedlings into his base. This is a fact 100%, any 1200 point zerg player has incredibly good game sense about timings, build orders, counters, micro, macro, apm, strategy, everything. I've played 1400 or 1500 terrans which are garbage, even have seen 1400 elo rank 1 diamond terran who just goes 5 racks mass marines with reactors as their entire build and get owned by speed banelings. I don't think anyone can argue that many Terrans who are high diamond/near the top of ladder have no actual skill and are only there because they play Terran :/
watch Sjow vs madfrog from last nights go4sc2. Sjow has 3 blueflame helions when madfrog has 1 sunken and instead of running by Sjow flashes his hellions allowing MF know theyre there and then waits for a dropship. Coincidently at the same time MF gets queens and a shitton of zerglings shutting down Sjow's harrass. I was facepalming so hard, how can such a highly rated terran have 0 clue about timings and general way to play.
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Gief zerg cliff-abusing unit ;>
But I really feel sad seeing that to players feel like this. I am just about to start out in 1v1 after securing diamond random 2v2 and 3v3, yet I am filled with a sense of trepidation.
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On September 24 2010 05:22 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
There may or may not be balance issues, but let's start with these things. It's like Terrans forgetting concussive shells and siege mode every game they play. Creep spread is simply a lot harder to pull off than just pressing an upgrade button, but that brings us back to not knowing the learning curves of each race, which is not the same as imbalance.
Well such blatant learning curve differences pretty much spells imbalance to me.
Perhaps the fact that zerg is so dependant on creep is actually a problem?
The required APM and awareness to keep spreading creep from multiple queens/tumors while spamming larva on cooldown is pretty much a killer itself when compared to chrono boost+MULE spam.
This means Zerg are pretty much inferior without even comparing units?
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I can't understand why anyone expected different. Balancing a game like this at competitive levels is incredibly difficult and will take a long time. I don't think that blizzard is doing a terrible job. I know they're not shitting gold, but they're not incompetent. It makes sense to make small incremental changes and check your progress after each change to make sure that you're still headed in the right direction.
On the other hand this type of balancing cannot be done before retail. You need too large community play testing it. I hope that brood war at least stays strong long enough to keep the competitive starcraft scene alive while the game is balanced but it is going to take a while. Vanilla SC1 to the last patch of BW is the only strong analogy we have to work with and that was a very long. People freaking out about a starcraft game being imbalanced after it has been out for what, two months? You're fucking kidding yourselves.
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On September 24 2010 02:29 Carl_Sagan wrote:
Nail in the coffin for me. Blizzard needs to act very soon if the recent changes do not open up more options for zerg. A terran said it best (I forget which?): "It takes me about 150 apm to do a couple of drops, and my opponent 500 apm to stop them adequately."
Someone either needs to discover a new way to play zerg, or the race needs to be retooled.
It was Drewbie and what he actually said was "the zerg player needs 500 apm to deal with it and any terran can do it"
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On September 24 2010 05:48 Sfydjklm wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2010 05:36 blabber wrote:On September 24 2010 05:33 Disastorm wrote:On September 24 2010 05:28 Mearis wrote:
Nazgul, look at it this way - a zerg player at a certain point on a learning curve should compare favorably to a terran player at a similar point of the learning curve.
If you take a really good zerg like Idra or Sen, they would crush a mid-diamond terran player, but that's hardly meaningful - Idra or Sen are much better players and have a lot investement in the game in terms of man-hours. Unless you assume there is a plateau beyond which skill cannot improve you any further, if zerg require more 'learning' to hit a particular level of effectiveness, zerg will always be inferior, unless at a particularly high level of skill that nobody has even approached, zerg become very easy to improve with.
Second - most zerg players play really really well, and have their core mechanics down. A 1200+ zerg player is by no means a pro, but if you watch his replays, he usually has solid APM, good micro, a good sense of timing/strategic flexibility. I don't really think most high end zergs are terrible at all. I think if you look at a similarly rated terran, you are often astonished at just how completely awful they are - I beat a 1100 rated terran about ~3 weeks ago who forgot to wall off against me, and I simply sent wave after wave of speedlings into his base. This is a fact 100%, any 1200 point zerg player has incredibly good game sense about timings, build orders, counters, micro, macro, apm, strategy, everything. I've played 1400 or 1500 terrans which are garbage, even have seen 1400 elo rank 1 diamond terran who just goes 5 racks mass marines with reactors as their entire build and get owned by speed banelings. I don't think anyone can argue that many Terrans who are high diamond/near the top of ladder have no actual skill and are only there because they play Terran :/ watch Sjow vs madfrog from last nights go4sc2. Sjow has 3 blueflame helions when madfrog has 1 sunken and instead of running by Sjow flashes his hellions allowing MF know theyre there and then waits for a dropship. Coincidently at the same time MF gets queens and a shitton of zerglings shutting down Sjow's harrass. I was facepalming so hard, how can such a highly rated terran have 0 clue about timings and general way to play.
Sjow is a 90 apm terran, who was only decent at wc3. Now his winning multiple tournaments in sc2. Can someone tell me why him, why do Sjow win more tournaments then any other zerg, why is he better, more skilled, smarter?
Give me example of a zerg with no high ranking in sc bw / wc3 , who has less then 100 apm, and has made it even to a quarter final of any tournament. GL finding one.
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Time to make the leviathan an in game unit.
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On September 24 2010 05:22 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Nobody still has a clue about learning curves of the races. It's hard enough to find balance in RTS but to control the learning curves of 3 different games (races) this complicated to be similar is pretty much impossible. How hard is basic control for tank/marauder, now compare it to how hard it is to control the correct counter ling/infestor. Clearly Zerg needs more time to reach its max than Terran does.
That and every Zerg out there still doesn't creep properly. You see top level Zergs not getting multiple tumors at all times in the game, not getting overlord speed. Why complain about unit strength when you aren't getting the number one upgrade for your units (creep) in the whole game. This is just puzzling.
There may or may not be balance issues, but let's start with these things. It's like Terrans forgetting concussive shells and siege mode every game they play. Creep spread is simply a lot harder to pull off than just pressing an upgrade button, but that brings us back to not knowing the learning curves of each race, which is not the same as imbalance.
If top korean pro Zergs and top eu/us pro Zergs both say that the game is imbalanced, chances are they are right. Anyway, if there's no pro Zerg anymore, there won't be any revolutionnary build or higher lever Zerg play.
The only point is : will they really switch ?
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On September 24 2010 02:55 snowdrift wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2010 02:54 SeaSmoke wrote:
Nooooooo fruitseller...! One of our finest generals...
I agree dropships are a pain in the ass to handle. But how would you fix that? Make them more expensive? Nerf healing? How about nerf capacity? Add scourge. With marauders, Terran drops are even more dangerous than in bw. So one of Terran's many options has become more lethal, and yet Zerg's most efficient counter has been removed. Doesn't make sense.
Scourge were also a caster and spectator favorite in BW, don't know why they aren't in SC2 yet. Three dropships approaching the opponent's base, the zerg notices it and sends some scourge to intercept the dropships, ooh are the scourge going to get to the dropships in time? Boom!!!!
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On September 24 2010 02:33 aaav34 wrote:
The problem for Blizz is that at this stage it's hard to tell whether supposed "imbalances" are genuine race weaknesses/strengthes, or the result of the game being so young and not all strategies explored.
Something is wrong with T and Z.... but it's hard to tell exactly what. That's why Blizzard is so conservative with their patches.
it's not rocket science
zvt is pretty balanced in broodwar
everything about terran is better in sc2 than it was in bw
everything about zerg is worse in sc2 than it was in bw
User was warned for this post
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i wonder if idra is planning on changing races too XD
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On September 24 2010 05:58 Zog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2010 05:22 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Nobody still has a clue about learning curves of the races. It's hard enough to find balance in RTS but to control the learning curves of 3 different games (races) this complicated to be similar is pretty much impossible. How hard is basic control for tank/marauder, now compare it to how hard it is to control the correct counter ling/infestor. Clearly Zerg needs more time to reach its max than Terran does.
That and every Zerg out there still doesn't creep properly. You see top level Zergs not getting multiple tumors at all times in the game, not getting overlord speed. Why complain about unit strength when you aren't getting the number one upgrade for your units (creep) in the whole game. This is just puzzling.
There may or may not be balance issues, but let's start with these things. It's like Terrans forgetting concussive shells and siege mode every game they play. Creep spread is simply a lot harder to pull off than just pressing an upgrade button, but that brings us back to not knowing the learning curves of each race, which is not the same as imbalance. If top korean pro Zergs and top eu/us pro Zergs both say that the game is imbalanced, chances are they are right. Anyway, if there's no pro Zerg anymore, there won't be any revolutionnary build or higher lever Zerg play. The only point is : will they really switch ?
yea also this. I would think an ex-zerg pro gamer who played like 2k games since release alone would know a thing or two about learning curves.
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Alright I'm not complaining at the moment about any given thing, just complaining about complaints. When I've got a problem I grew up with "okay, how do you propose to fix it? if you don't have something better don't cry about it"
Problem: This sh** is broke, it's imbalanced because of x y and z reasons.
Solution: This is how I would fix it, for x y z reasons.
What are the top korean(or anyone in the world for that matter) zerg's proposals to fix ZvP, ZvT and just Z in general? All I hear is "it's broke, it's imbalanced, no matter how much practice you do you have to wait for them to make a mistake to have a chance to win" etc.
Do you fix damage types and armor types(light/armored)
Do you tweak/adjust unit costs (remove gas, add gas to other units)
Do you adjust supply details?
Do you tweak numbers like damage/health/armor?
Do you give bonuses to the race (who only has 2 +dmg bonuses)
Do you tweak details about the race (larva spawn faster innately)
Do you adjust abilities?
Do you adjust creep and do not penalize for being off of it? make it easier to spread?
Out the window are adjusting units in tier position and adding/removing units. They're here to stay, unfortunately, until Heart of the Swarm - if anyone cares about SC2 until then.
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It makes me sad that there will be a lot, lot more TvT's at the next GSL.
I can't blame them for switching though. They do this for a living and of course they'll switch to the race that gives them the chance to win the most.
I wish them luck but I hope they come back to the swarm when Blizzard implements some real changes and not 1.1 garbage.
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This isn't the BW era of gaming. If Blizz take their sweet time balancing Zerg, a lot of people will lose interest in SC2 as a game and E-Sport.
It's ridiculous for Blizz to wait until HoTS to fully flesh out Zerg because by that time, only a small fraction of people that bought SC2 will still be interested in the game.
Expansion packs have never expanded the audience of the original game, so if Blizz continue on their current path, SC2 will basically be dead by the time HoTS comes out.
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On September 24 2010 05:49 Recidivist should have written:
Give Zerg a cliff-abusing unit.
I second this notion. Just give lings the T1 upgrade 'webbing', allowing them to use their crippled winglike things to jump up and down cliffs. Maybe you could choose to morph lings to weblings instead of speedlings then.
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Without creep, units like Hydralisk are substantially worse. Killing creep tumors is a joke. You should be able to somehow fortify the creep so it's much harder to extinguish.
Then again, Zerg needs more than just creep improvements to fix their current state.
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On September 24 2010 06:02 MrGrieves- wrote:
It makes me sad that there will be a lot, lot more TvT's at the next GSL.
I can't blame them for switching though. They do this for a living and of course they'll switch to the race that gives them the chance to win the most.
I wish them luck but I hope they come back to the swarm when Blizzard implements some real changes and not 1.1 garbage.
Why is everyone talking about terran. Theres been alot of PvP in GSL aswell, and if you ask me, i think ZvP is harder then ZvT.
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EPT
