EPTTerrans Have Highest Skill Ceiling - Page 11
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tarath
United States377 Posts
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Redunzl
862 Posts
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FinestHour
United States18466 Posts
Good work! | ||
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Hugoboss21
France346 Posts
On November 30 2010 11:00 QQmonster wrote: Why can't terran chrono boost their tanks, or choose to make 10 scvs at once? If anything, zerg has the best flexibility, they can make an entire army from scratch in 1 production cycle to deflect whatever their opponent is doing. Your post is completely wrong, and looks like a streamline of QQ terran OP. That's called a mule. | ||
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FLuE
United States1012 Posts
I find it hard how anybody who's actually read the OP would bring up OP/UP into this discussion, this is a thread about being creative with each of the races and the options that each race has to them. Whether a race is over powered or underpowered can easily be affected by a switch of the numbers. Making one unit deal one more damage or give it a range boost (roach) can go a long way towards changing balance but does very little to change creative/strategic/tactical play (range change does affect this though) This needs to be posted again. As any discussion seems to just digress into this balance/op/up L2P instead of staying anywhere near what is a rather interesting topic. I took the OP to basically be saying the following.. The Terran race seems to be more complete in all aspects of gameplay than the other 2 races. They have all the bells and whistles in place already, and a lot of the features of the terran race are still being figured out and explored. The depth of Terran seems to be there, while the other races don't seem to have that yet. It isn't a "skill ceiling" it is simply that Terran has more units, more upgrades, more building features, and that leads to a ton more gameplay options. I made a post on the first page of this thread basically saying that I felt this was true, and a lot had to do with the fact that the game was released centered around Terran so it was important to polish Terran as much as possible, because they "could get around to the other races" with the next patches/expansions. I think the single player could have been a lot weaker if effort wasn't put in to make sure Terran had these features, be it with units, spells, building features, etc. The single player experience wouldn't have been as fulfilling. I love to use the command center as an example. What a complete, and unique entity in this game. It seems to me like they put SO much though into the creation of the command center, how it would work within the Terran race, and all the features and details. I mean to count the number of times I had a Terran on the ropes, and he was able to pull out a close win because of what the command center offers. Flying to an island, mass repair on a PF, loading up SCVs... And it should do all those things. It is THE command center for the race, air force one and the pentagon all rolled into one building. But then you look at the nexus.. and the hatchery. I mean the hatchery isn't bad but it is basically a carry over from SC1 with the queen that is good. But then you look at the Nexus and its like um.. was everyone sick on the day they developed the nexus? I'm hoping the expansion will add some bells and whistles, and more of a "complete" feel to all the races but specifically Toss and Zerg which I feel seem incomplete at the moment. Just my thoughts in regards to the OP. | ||
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pure.Wasted
Canada4701 Posts
On November 30 2010 14:39 DoubleReed wrote: Well certainly warp prism and warp gate have natural synergy. One warps units into a power field, and the other puts a power field anywhere. That's about as natural as you can get. Saying "but that's just what its supposed to do" isn't fair. MULEs can repair, so obviously dropping them to repair in a Thor Drop is something they're supposed to do. I will give you Warp Prisms as an example of otherwise lacking Protoss synergy, but I won't give you MULE repair being intentional. :p The repair itself, certainly, but not this bizarro combination that players have been taking advantage of -- Thor's power, MULEs' teleport, and repair. I do think Nydus Worms have tons of application in a ton of situations. There's 101 ways to use them, honestly, and not all of them are straightforward. Similarly, Infested Terran can actually be used to do all sorts of things that you wouldn't necessarily think of. Screwing up Tanks, granting sight, forming a wall... Whatever happened to not bringing unit micro into the discussion? ?: ( | ||
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pedduck
Thailand468 Posts
Another point of OP saying that Terran have more room for strategy innovation is still debatable. Some of Terran building seems to be more useful and have multipurpose than Zerg but i couldn't see why Terran strategy will develop faster or further than those Protoss and Zerg. As a race, Terran make use of their building the most. just like zerg is using their ability to easier expand while Protoss will make use of their ability to proxy or whatever they have. These are nature of each race, not a flaw of a design or anything. I am not saying the game has perfect balance but I don't see synergy problem that you mentioned. | ||
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rackdude
United States882 Posts
On November 30 2010 14:56 pedduck wrote: just like zerg is using their ability to easier expand while Protoss will make use of their ability to proxy or whatever they have. "Or whatever they have." I think that's the problem OP is trying to address  . | ||
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Rassy
Netherlands2308 Posts
I'm not saying that the Protoss has no options to influence the flow of the game and has no tactical decisions to make. He does. But I'm saying that his options are clear-cut, already available. The options for Terrans however will take time to discover Its the same for protoss, it just takes more time to discover some unexpected synergys then it took for terran What are all thoose not straight forward synergys for terran btw? Beside the mule repair (wich feels more like a gimmicky trick to me) i dont see anny other mentioned Protoss also has at least one not straight forward synergy discovered so far and that is using an halucination to scout and maybe in future manny more interesting strategys involving halucinations will be evolved the posibilities of the mothership are also barely explored | ||
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Al Bundy
7257 Posts
You have successfully deciphered Starcraft 2's gameplay, that's no small feat. Thanks to this thread I'm now aware that Terran is too dynamic, while Zerg & Protoss are too unidimensional. It must be bad news for all these Z and P progamers trying to develop BOs and strats. We got to tell them that their efforts are pointless and that they must switch to T. But hold on, I also learned that all that stuff doesn't matter because "come expansion time, big changes are coming." I can stop playing sc2 and watching games until the release of Heart of the Swarm. | ||
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TheDominator
New Zealand336 Posts
Sure the game is diverse and there is already huge amounts of depths, but things such as this can add alot more. Thanks for this analysis. | ||
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pure.Wasted
Canada4701 Posts
 On November 30 2010 15:04 Rassy wrote:What are all thoose not straight forward synergys for terran btw? Beside the mule repair (wich feels more like a gimmicky trick to me) i dont see anny other mentioned Supply Depots built around resource line. There was a reason I devoted a whole visual aid to it!  Building that's vulnerable to harass just begs to be placed where it can be most easily defended -- next to the 3 MTs protecting your SCVs. With any other building that'd be a bitch, but lookee here, when they're submerged, they don't get in the way one bit AND they can be raised to keep lings at bay. All that from an ability designed for walling in. | ||
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Dox
Australia1199 Posts
There was a game in the Ro32 lastnight - Fruit Dealer's first game on Xel'Naga Caverns where FD delayed his oppponent's push by sending a large wave of Zerglings around the edges of the map and into the Terran base. His opponent was forced to send his entire (huge) army of Marines home to prevent his production facilities from being destroyed, and I was just thinking to myself the entire time: - What if FD had 1 Infestor with that group of Zerglings, and used Fungal Growth on that HUGE clump of Marines as they approached the ramp? He could have delayed the Terran army from getting inside for much longer, and perhaps even killed a nice clump of Marines. - What if FD morphed 4 of those Zerglings into Banelings, and burrowed them on the Terran ramp? There was a perfect opportunity of clumping where he could have killed at least half of the Terran army with a handful of Banelings on that ramp. Sure, it's easy to look back in retrospect and think, "Wow, imagine that." Of course it's much more difficult to execute in real-time, but the point I'm trying to make is that we have yet to see these kinds of mechanics introduced to the game. Another example I can give, was a ladder game I played yesterday where I randomed P vs a Zerg player on Jungle Basin. We each had 3+ bases and had been playing very Gate+Robo heavy. Air was not an option for me at the time, as my opponent had a frighteningly large army of Ultra + Hydra. At one point during the game, I baited my opponent to defend his 3'o'clock expansion by sending a pair of Zealots to attack it. Little did he know, there were 4 DT's on hold position at the top of the ramp, with another 4 nearby at the bottom. I waited until he sent his army up the ramp to kill my Zealots, then sealed the gap at the bottom of the ramp - trapping 5 Ultralisks and several Hydralisks to be torn apart by the DT's. By the time the Overseer arrived, he'd lost more than 50 food - allowing me to move in and finish off the few units that escaped with the bulk of my army. Now of course this is nothing breathtaking, but it's mechanics like these that aren't being considered widely. Most players would have just made Immortals, Zealots and HT or Colossi and brute forced their way into that Zerg army, win or lose. ![[image loading]](http://img574.imageshack.us/img574/485/dtwall.jpg) EDIT: Screenshot example In closing, I'll point out that we have only *just* seen our first Carrier produced in the entire GSL lastnight, and I'm pretty damn certain that we've yet to see a single Warp Prism. Protoss players are still playing very gate-heavy games, not capitalising on their ability to follow up on a drop by warping in additional units. We're not seeing Colossus (as an alternative to Reaver) drops or Storm drops like we would commonly see in Brood War. I look forward to the day when the game evolves to the point where non-Terrans really expand their horizons beyond what we're seeing at the moment. | ||
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Zoltan
United States656 Posts
Zerg: Quantity Terran: Versatility Protoss: Quality Zerg has more than merely quantity; and you do see the "quantity" aspect of their nature in their buildings as well as their units. Queens are a quasi-building/unit, as are spore and spine crawlers. The creep mechanic is indeed shallow, but there are creative ways to use it. Having faster units and vision over large areas of the map is a huge strategic superiority piece. Nydus worms used to connect bases means the zerg ground army is effectively everywhere. The skill ceiling too and "lack of synergy" in zerg bases? I'm not so sure I buy into that. I will say that addon synergy has really not been fully explored and 1-1-1 / BFBP openings using different addon combinations will certainly find interesting timing pushes, but I will guarantee that zerg macro play has also not been fully explored. As for protoss, the ability to warp in units to any base seems pretty synergistic... and the ability to speed up production when you need it... well thats ridiculous. Nothing underpowered about it. Blunt, absolutely, but amazingly powerful. Who's to say that you wont see people 2nexusing for extra chrono boosts at some point for some crazy build? Still; a cool post. | ||
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attackfighter
Canada308 Posts
he's talking more about "race potential" in regards to strategies, or something. and he only brings up minor stuff like floating CC's and depots. those aren't the things that foster real strategy they just make Terran better at the sim city aspect of the game. weak argument OP, I don't care how much you write your argument is poorly supported. | ||
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pure.Wasted
Canada4701 Posts
On November 30 2010 15:28 Zoltan wrote:Zerg has more than merely quantity; and you do see the "quantity" aspect of their nature in their buildings as well as their units. Queens are a quasi-building/unit, as are spore and spine crawlers. The creep mechanic is indeed shallow, but there are creative ways to use it. I wonder... do you think the average TvZ sees more Queens and Crawlers built, or more Bunkers + MTs + Sensor Towers + Add-ons? (+ PFs, if it's TLO playing :p ) Because, for it to reflect on Zerg identity, I imagine that Zerg would have to come out disproportionally on top, now, wouldn't they? | ||
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yrag89
Malaysia315 Posts
On November 30 2010 15:33 attackfighter wrote: OP's post has nothing to do with "skill" cieling... this is a joke... he's talking more about "race potential" in regards to strategies, or something. and he only brings up minor stuff like floating CC's and depots. those aren't the things that foster real strategy they just make Terran better at the sim city aspect of the game. weak argument OP, I don't care how much you write your argument is poorly supported. We can have a zerg who have 1000 apm to spread creep, produce larva, macro, harass, which is indeed great skill. However the limitation of the zerg race is only stuck there, thus the zerg's 'service ceiling' is definately high, but the 'absolute ceiling(maximum potential)' is not that really far from it. Same goes with the Protoss. Terran on the other hand, have a high 'absolute ceiling' with all the tech and macro they can do. You can lift the barracks to be exchanged with the starport or with the factory or another barracks with the...............list goes on and this is only the touching the building switching. Thus "race potential" very high and with potential comes skill needed to achieve those 'potentials' hence the 'higher skill ceiling' Heck you can even make a factory in your base float it to somewhere else, build a techlab, float it again to the enemy base and make a reactor, yeah it makes no sense but that still can be categories as 'potential' which again put the terran's 'skill ceiling' higher. In other words, let's say all the tricks in the game for each race has already been discovered and disregarding the basics macro,micro, which race do you think will have more 'tricks' in their sleeves, and the skill to utilize those tricks. I'm bad in explaining tho. Hope I shed some light. | ||
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kochujang
Germany1226 Posts
On November 30 2010 14:55 pure.Wasted wrote: I will give you Warp Prisms as an example of otherwise lacking Protoss synergy, but I won't give you MULE repair being intentional. :p The repair itself, certainly, but not this bizarro combination that players have been taking advantage of -- Thor's power, MULEs' teleport, and repair. Whatever happened to not bringing unit micro into the discussion? ?: ( If you don't want unit micro discussion, we cannot talk about repair either. | ||
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attackfighter
Canada308 Posts
On November 30 2010 16:11 yrag89 wrote: We can have a zerg who have 1000 apm to spread creep, produce larva, macro, harass, which is indeed great skill. However the limitation of the zerg race is only stuck there, thus the zerg's 'service ceiling' is definately high, but the 'absolute ceiling(maximum potential)' is not that really far from it. Same goes with the Protoss. Terran on the other hand, have a high 'absolute ceiling' with all the tech and macro they can do. You can lift the barracks to be exchanged with the starport or with the factory or another barracks with the...............list goes on and this is only the touching the building switching. Thus "race potential" very high and with potential comes skill needed to achieve those 'potentials' hence the 'higher skill ceiling' Heck you can even make a factory in your base float it to somewhere else, build a techlab, float it again to the enemy base and make a reactor, yeah it makes no sense but that still can be categories as 'potential' which again put the terran's 'skill ceiling' higher. In other words, let's say all the tricks in the game for each race has already been discovered and disregarding the basics macro,micro, which race do you think will have more 'tricks' in their sleeves, and the skill to utilize those tricks. I'm bad in explaining tho. Hope I shed some light. this makes no sense... swapping add-ons is easymode, a baby could probably do it, it has an exremely insignificant impact on the game's skill cieling. and you said so yourself, your examples are nonsensical, so I don't know where you're trying to go with them. you, like the OP, seem to have skill cieling confused with strategic potential. and also like OP you're reasoning behind Terran having more is very weak. | ||
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pure.Wasted
Canada4701 Posts
On November 30 2010 16:22 kochujang wrote: If you don't want unit micro discussion, we cannot talk about repair either. Perhaps I should clarify what I mean when I say that unit micro doesn't belong in this discussion. Terrans have 13 standard units, counting SCVs. Zerg have 13 standard units, counting Drones, Queens, and Overlords. Protoss have 15. All very close, and the units of each race offer micro possibilities (shoot and skoot vs. fungal + flank vs. blink stalkers, and so on). It isn't really possible to figure out which race offers more such possibilities, especially as there are still many abilities that don't see a lot of use, that inevitably will -- Seeker Missile, Infested Terrans, anything on the Mothership, etc. We just don't know which race has more... so, seeing as how they're very close in number, I decided to just call it even. Let's assume for the sake of argument that all races' unit micro is even across the board, even including things that are not yet discovered. We do this because micro possibilities, and especially how difficult they are to pull off, are incredibly subjective. That Terrans have access to the superfluous yet useful Sensor Tower while Protoss don't is not subjective. This is why I feel the question of whether or not Infestors, or Overseers, or whatever, have tricks yet to be discovered is not one that should interest us. Whatever tricks the Infestors or Overseers may or may not have may or may not perfectly cancel out other tricks that Terrans have, ie. Ravens' spells, Ghosts' spells, and so on. MULEs are not a standard unit, however; moreover, their Repair ability which is the focus of our analysis is a meta-ability, a racial mechanic -- despite the fact that it is on a single unit. I admitted that Baneling mines are a perfect example of synergy between units and mechanics, and that's because Burrow, like Repair, is a racial mechanic. That it also happens to be on the unit in question (Baneling) is irrelevant. The moment a Zerg player figures out how to use Infested Terrans in combination with Burrow to gather resources, I will start paying attention. For now I can't possibly see that happening, so my focus remains elsewhere. On November 30 2010 16:58 attackfighter wrote: this makes no sense... swapping add-ons is easymode, a baby could probably do it, it has an exremely insignificant impact on the game's skill cieling. and you said so yourself, your examples are nonsensical, so I don't know where you're trying to go with them. you, like the OP, seem to have skill cieling confused with strategic potential. and also like OP you're reasoning behind Terran having more is very weak. I appreciate the concern, but there's no confusion -- from my side, at least. I explain in my bolded and underlined second paragraph that for the purposes of this thread I am using an unorthodox definition of skill ceiling. That you can't let go of concepts external to this thread when I've explicitly pointed out what I am taking that word to mean in this thread is no fault of mine. I'm not trying to trick people by using 'skill ceiling' two different ways. It still means exactly the same thing in my last paragraph that it does in my first. How easy strategies are to pull off and how much skill the race takes to place are completely irrelevant questions here. | ||
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