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I AM NOT TRYING TO IMPLY ANY MATCH-UPS ARE IMBALANCED WITH THE TEXT
I originally wanted to post this in blogs, but could not find the 'create topic' button. I guess it fits here as well.
Introduction (skip if in a hurry/lazy)
I'm a 2500 zerg, who isn't really improving as fast as I'd like to (aside from the misleading rating inflation caused by bonus pool). Puzzled about this, I started seaking for flaws in my game. Missing larva injects? Nope. I have plenty of games up in the 40 minutes, where I do not miss a single larva inject, I can post those if requested. Actually, I tend to not lose macro wars at all, this is especially apparent in ZvZs where the opponent has the same artillery and it really boils down to not missing larva injects, taking bases when possible, composing your army (usually roach + infestor), micro (although not very important because the units seem to do most of it for you) and experience. I know, for example, that hydralisks beat ultralisks pretty bad - some people don't, or tend to just not really think about it and go ultras 'because they are good (which I'd argue as well)'. A general trend I have seen lately is people opening with roaches early in ZvZ, mostly used defensively to block the ramp (the typical 3 roach ramp block), and a little bit later adding a few more to prevent a ling/bling all-in busting through regardless. As I open slings every game, I find myself having a very big advantage over roach openings, as I can get my 2nd hatch up faster and most early roach pressure is destroyed by pure slings, whereas I can go roaches slightly later with a much better economy. Protoss isn't that much of a problem either, typically, because sling + roach usually rapes the earliest of pushes (or just pure slings depending on their zealot/sentry count) anyway. Terran? Not much of a problem either, and muta harass seems to destroy them later on, allowing me to take multiple bases and kill them when they eventually move out.
So if I seem to not really have any problems in the games I play... why do I keep losing so fucking much? Digging in my memory, I could not find very many games (while I have in fact played very very many games) that I have lost because my opponent was better. This was according to my opinion, which is very obviously prone to bias and individual interpretation. Trying to be as objective as possible, I decided I would record my next x amount of losses and wins, and thoroughly analyze what went wrong and right in both games. I soon encountered the problem.
The problem
The games that I lose, I do not consider to be very worthwhile. I remember dismissing the first 4 losses or so to, and I quote myself, "gay random bullshit". My first game that I lost was a ZvZ - the match-up I consider my best (map: Xel'Naga Caverns). Why did I lose? My opponent rushed me with +1 roaches off 1 base, whereas I did not have enough roaches and slings. Ironically, I actually did send an overlord in, which only told me that he was getting a fairly quick lair and that he had already taking his 2nd gas. I did not get to see the evolution chamber or the rest of his roaches, which I did not see either when I ran a few lings up his ramp (I saw 5 to 7, can't remember). I followed with a lair of myself and made an extra queen at my 2nd and I get all-in'd. I lose. I tell my opponent he is awful and leave the game. I got the same opponent the next game, where he tried to do a fairly fast 1 base muta, faking a roach build. This time, I manage to scout his spire because he was noob and let a zergling through. I obviously counter it and beat him very convincingly. He ggs, but I apparently felt the need to restate that he is awful.
Second game I lost was a ZvP (Lost Temple). He 4-gated me (or at least I thought he did that until I watched the replay) on close positions and I die, even though I have 2 spines up. Turns out he did a very aggressive 3-gate push with almost all of his chrono on his gateways and c-core not taking his 2nd gas, seriously cutting probes. I did see him chronoboost his c-core twice, which he used in the wall-off, so I assumed he was doing a pretty harsh 4gate. Compared to a normal 4gate push, there were way more units, I barely hold off his initial attack but it costs me too much and I die to his second attack.
Third game I lost was ironically a ZvT (Shakuras, when it was still in ladder), making for a loss in all match-ups. I see a fast tech lab and a marauder and react accordingly, but he hid 2 starports and attacked me with 3 banshees. My queen gets caught out of position. My spire just finished, so I did not lose the game immediately, but I was behind so much it didn't really matter and I lost pretty convincingly after that. Upon rewatching the replay I was down 20 workers after that banshee attack.
Fourth game I lost was another ZvT (blistering sands, even). The guy drops blue flame hellions in my base while my army is at my natural and I lose everything. I did spot the starport right next to the factory being built, while the tech lab was on the factory so I assumed a timing push or banshees. Wrong.
Fifth game I lost was a ZvP, Delta Quadrant cross positions. I have absolutely no idea what to expect and can't get intel, so I decide to do a fairly general build that's kind of good against everything (main things I worried about were void ray and 4gate), while semi-expecting him to take down his back rocks to get a nexus up. He went blink stalkers and my roaches/spines were useless, I lose the game.
Is it really my fault?
Now I could make a topic about this on a forum (be it this forum, a clan forum or any other sc2-related forum), but I find the advice to be worthless in 99% of the cases, especially when 'scouting' is their """advice""", which is funny when I use every way of scouting possible (zerglings running up the ramp multiple times, sacrificing an overlord and sending in an overseer as soon as lair finishes) in a single game and still lose to something because I did not scout it. Another piece of useless advice could be 'mass slings would have beaten that'. I know what would have beaten that, but I also know that virtually every other opening would have beaten mass slings and I did not know he was doing that particular opening that requires mass slings. Aside from the advice being generally worthless, most people who give advice also tend to be either very stupid or fucking assholes (or worse: a combination). On all forums I visit, even the battle.net blizzard forums (aka crying bronze noob haven), hinting at imbalance is always met with animosity and on some forums (i.e. this one) even against the rules. Another common response is 'just wait until the game is more figured out and the apparent randomness will disappear', which really doesn't help me much at all now does it lol? -_- Another problem I find to have is that if I play too safe (i.e. making a lot of military units), I find myself to be fairly far behind if my opponent doesn't do an early attack.
Trying to find an answer, I summoned a 3k (at the time of writing this) zerg friend. This friend is much better than I am. To further increase the skill disparity, I would be playing my worst race (terran, whereas zerg is my best race) while he would be playing his main (zerg). We play a series of games, from which I shall post one game (he asked me not to post the others + I am not interested in hearing your 'advice' on 'what could have been done differently', while it really couldn't have been done differently, or comment on little irrelevant things like a worker being idle for 5 seconds as if you are claiming that that is the reason why I lost the game, while my opponent had 1 worker idle for 2 minutes and still had 50 marines in my base).
Game 1: Scrap station, TvZ. I open the same way as the Terran I lost to on shakuras (with the exception of also getting cloak and doing 11gas 13rax instead of the more usual 12rax 13gas), making sure he sees my marauder. I move in with 3 banshees, catch his queen out of position and manage to take down the spire before it is completed. He loses the game.
Game 2: Xel'Naga, TvZ. I wall in at the bottom of my ramp with a depot and a barracks. I don't know about you, but when I see this as a Z I usually expect a 2rax build. Instead, I tried to trick him by doing a banshee build again. He rushes me with roaches and I am unable to defend the bottom wall-in and then my base. I lose the game.
Game 3: Xel'Naga, TvZ. I open 11 gas 13 rax. He sees the reactor and factory building, then steals my gas. I do make hellions but try to go banshee as fast as possible off 1 gas. I got about 40 hp off of his 2nd queen with the hellions, as well as maybe 2 drone kills, before I lost everything to speedlings (he was obviously expecting it). My banshee and follow-up banshees kill him, he complains and leaves the game.
Game 4: Xel'Naga (yes, we got lazy with different maps), TvZ. I blatantly proxy 2 barracks a bit behind the back path to his natural, while he did hatch first. He sends out his scout at 11 (extrac trick build), but it's too late and he loses.
Game 5: Lost Temple, close air positions. I load up 2 medivacs with marines and drop them in his main. He loses the game.
Game 6: Xel'Naga, TvZ. I wall off the bottom of my ramp with a 12 rax 12 gas. I open with a quick reaper and get 5 drone kills, as he was doing an aggressive roach push again and was still chasing my scout (successfully) out of his base with 2 lings. I spot his warren with my reaper, too, so I bunker in front of my rax and make marauders, after his roach push fails he quits.
Game 7: Lost Temple, close air positions. I do a regular 2 rax, he holds it off and kills me. I lose.
Game 8 is the one I am going to post. It is also on Lost Temple, we are close positions. Here is the replay:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/120113-1v1-terran-zerg-lost-temple
Now I am actually going to walk you through this replay, so I would like it if you would watch this replay (perhaps in window mode?) while having the following text ready, with the timings:
2:20 - he sees 2 barracks going down
2:45 - he sees I have not taken my right gas yet
3:10 - he sees I do not have my left gas yet
3:14 - he checks the other gas again to see if i have maybe taken it, he now knows I have not taken my gas yet, which indicates that I'll most likely be making either a lot of marines or a command center
3:15 - he takes my gas to get the SCV off the drone's tail, then cancels it and scouts the front again
3:33 - he sees 1 marine and still 2 barracks
3:43 - go to his 2nd base (his natural), you'll see he has 3 drones there prematurely and then moves them out a bit to check for SCVs or bunkers. Right now, he's afraid, because he has to decide between making drones and zerglings. Remember: he only saw 1 marine and 2 raxes,
if he makes a lot of zerglings and I, instead, make only 1 more marine or so and then a command center, he is pretty far behind. He plays it safe and makes 4 zerglings at 3.56 (open up the production tab in left corner)
3:59 - he makes another set of zerglings (6 total)
4:08 - another set of zerglings (8 total), shortly after he makes ANOTHER set of zerglings. If I had thrown down a command center right then...
4:11 - made a spine crawler (again, imagine if I had gone CC)
4:30 - I want you to pause the game and compare the worker count. Even though I'm doing an extremely aggressive strategy, I'm ahead. Once again, keep in mind what would have happened had I thrown down a CC.
5:15 - he held off the attack, which is to be expected because he prepared for it.
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Now, the second guessing game begins. What do I do? If I'm going for banshees, he will need to get lair up in case of cloak, and then an overseer. If I'm just going to do a second all-in, he needs a bling nest and speed researched, unless I am retarded and engage on a long creep road. Or am I now throwing down a command center? Had I perhaps already thrown it down? Should he powerdrone? Put units on gas? Have I taken my gas? Will I make banshees? Biopush? Will I add marauders? Hellions? He doesn't know, so he is going to try and find out. Meanwhile, he makes a few drones (and barely catches up, with only 1 or 2 drones ahead).
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5:27 - he wants to run up my ramp to scout, but is met by 5 marines. So essentially he scouted that I have at least 5 marines there. He plays it safe and runs back, expecting more to come.
6:00 - he realizes that nothing is probably coming and proceeds to take the watch tower for a brief second to be sure
6:08 - takes watch tower, sees nothing
6:09 - moves to my ramp
6:12 - he makes 2 drones, because there is no immediate threat + he has a spine crawler up
6:22 - he runs up the ramp to see if perhaps I was a fucking newb and placed buildings in a place where he could scout it. He sees no additional marines except the ones he saw at 5:27, so he (wrongly) assumes I am doing something that is not another marine all-in. He has just begun mining gas. spending everything on minerals and drones so far (he is 1 worker ahead).
7:12 - he sees me moving out. This is the fastest he could have seen me move out (save perhaps 1 or 2 seconds earlier if he had decided to run up my ramp again at that exact time). I kill him. """"good"""" game.
Game 9, Metalopolis close position. He agreed on playing 1 final game, even though he said (in-game as well) that game 7 would be his last. I proxy a barracks on the high ground at his mensk statue, he went 14 pool and I manage to get 2 bunkers up at the bottom of his ramp. He immediately throws down a spine crawler, but is unable to stop me from taking it down even with queen support. I decide to throw up a cc and switch into marauders as soon as I have the resources, but he already GGs.
How am I able to get 7-2 vs. a player who is 1. much more skilled than I am, indicated both by ladder points, tournament results and personal experience and 2. is playing his main race against my worst race? Not to forget, all games were fairly short, the majority under 10 minutes. Also, this is just an example with T, I'm sure the same concept can be applied with PvZ, and I'm sure that zerg has a few options as well (although obviously way less options because they are forced to build on creep and cannot block their ramp as early and effectively as T or P).
The issue: bad maps?
I think the issue is mostly the maps - the distances are too close, allowing for less reaction time. In other words, you already need to have a set amount of units out in order to counter all of the possibilities that you are unable to scout. I'm not saying everything is unscoutable - if for example I see his first barracks not having a tech lab, sure... he could have a barracks in the back with a tech lab, but I know I'm not going to face a stim biopush as early as x:xx, because that would literally be impossible due to his first barracks not having a tech lab.
If the distances were bigger, this would open the option of more macro-oriented builds but most importantly, give you less randomness and guesswork. I find that if I'm up against a toss on metalopolis in cross position, I can usually wait with making units until the very latest when he moves out of his base. He will usually grab a watch tower first, further delaying his push. I find that I can -usually- spend my round of larvae on army and be in time to fend off his attack (or not fend off, depending on skill and insight - not so much on randomness and incorrect guesswork). Ideally, the distances should be even bigger (because if I just made a round of drones I'm still fucked).
Even though this is mostly a zerg issue, the same concept applies, in some way, to TvP/PvP/TvT. The reason as to why it only applies slightly to these match-ups is because they are less easy to break and do not necessarily need a quick early second base. Protoss has sentries with forcefield, Terran has a bunker with repairing ability which is virtually impossible to break unless you have so much army and he has so little that it is hardly an 'issue', more like totally being misguided about the game and deserving to lose. Not to forget, you'll usually have a few units out and are gradually adding to that pile of units, simply due to the mechanics of the T and P race. With Z, you cannot really decide to make 1 or 2 drones with your round of army. I've tried it and have discussed it with very good zergs, it simply loses you the game and every pro not playing this style kind of reinforces that thought in my head.
With bigger maps (both air and ground distance), I feel like SC2 would be much much much better, and cancel a lot of build order wins and guessing games. What do you guys think?
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I think many people would agree that Blizzard maps are way to small, the rush distances are quite small as well.
Which is why I was glad for maps like Shakuras and tbh Desert Oasis ( which itself presented some pretty cool strategies you could do.) Unfortunately Blizzard does not like these maps lol.
Sc2 is largely a game of countering and sometimes blindly due to the short distances giving little time for reaction.
I'm not saying scouting is impossible, but sometimes it does feel frustrating due to the short rush distance, it doesn't feel like you have adequate time to prepare and might be the reason why certain strategies are oriented towards ending the game in an earlier stage as opposed to large macro games we see in Sc1.
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lol this is like the tenth or so thread about the bad Blizzard maps lately, and I see map complaints everywhere... yet it doesn't seem like anything will change: Please SC2 Community, unite and DO something!
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On December 26 2010 01:09 Ragoo wrote:
lol this is like the tenth or so thread about the bad Blizzard maps lately, and I see map complaints everywhere... yet it doesn't seem like anything will change: Please SC2 Community, unite and DO something!
Believe me dude we've been trying since the day beta patch 9 hit. Blizzard hasn't given thr mapmaking community a lot to go on here t.t
If you're looking for better matches and you have practice partners, search "iccup" on battle.net 
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well, there is a map-related forum thread on the US battle.net forum posted by iccup people. No blue responses... I wish a similar thread was posted in the european forums as well.
And why didn't people bring this up in Q&A at blizzcon?
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while I agree with your sentiment there is a problem; blizzard is convinced they know what they are doing to such a degree that they are not particularly interested unless its going to lead to some sort of mass exodus that will ruin their not yet revealed monetization plans.
watching steppes of war in the gsl would be like watching the dreamhack 1.6 finals start out on fy_iceworld. now that GSL isnt open, I dont see why they should use the ladder maps.
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Very good write up. Points out many of the factual issues that these tiny maps present.
Honestly, the iCCup maps rape Blizzard's map in all holes at once. prodiG and his team have made some awesome, awesome, awesome maps.
The real reason people hate on Blizz maps is because they are the ones being used in tournies. This was NEVER the case in BW. KeSPA had their own maps for each league, which is something the Gretech and the folks at GOMtv need to get on in the new year. Just use the iCCup maps tbh, they are really really good.
Check out the maps they have, and play on some of them, your opinion of what SC2 can be will change drastically. They make it hard to play on the shitty Blizzard maps because of thoughts like, "This map is fucking small, why can't I expo more?" and such. Once the community embraces prodiG and his team, we will all be soooooo much happier.
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I'm not saying there isn't an issue with the current map pool but you didn't really prove anything.
Do you really feel that your friend actually played well? The replay did not look very convincing - especially when compared to some of his play in ESL... Also, if you truly intended to show an issue with current ladder maps why not play a map you thought was actually good? Show us him winning on a 8 player large map or something? You also played Xel'naga twice (implying it's a bad map: most players think it's a very balanced map).
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On December 26 2010 01:23 prodiG wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 01:09 Ragoo wrote:
lol this is like the tenth or so thread about the bad Blizzard maps lately, and I see map complaints everywhere... yet it doesn't seem like anything will change: Please SC2 Community, unite and DO something! ... If you're looking for better matches and you have practice partners, search "iccup" on battle.net
I don't believe practice partners would be thrilled to play on maps which aren't used in many tourneys and therefore it's almost "not worth" playing on them. Sure, you can play few games for fun, but majority of the games played would still be on ladder maps.
As long as major tournaments use ladder map pool, there won't be many people playing other maps. And since major tours won't use custom maps, because it might be unfair for players without teams, we won't probably see the rise of alternative maps any time soon.
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Post I made in another thread
"I think the current map pool is rubbish and is one reason that SC2 is less interesting to watch and easier to play. Look at blistering sands, then look at fighting spirit, blistering sands' ground distance from base to base was still smaller than fighting spirit. The ground distances of SC2 maps are all steppes of war compared to SC1, this leads to stronger 1 base play, stronger all ins, stronger proxies, basically stronger gimmicks. Not only are gimmicks buffed by the tiny size of the maps, but mid and late game are all made easier because each expansion progression has a direct path on every map, and expansions are too close to each other. This means 1. no REAL multi pronged attacks, 2. no multi tasking from the players, 3. expansions are less strategic (think about expansions in SC1, you could take an expansion far from your forces and their forces, and when your opponent tried to attack it, you could counter attack) and 4. AOE and splash units are severely buffed because a large amount of forces can't move anywhere without being clumped up (metalopolis comes to mind)"
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i think the size of maps is absolutely a problem with the map pool the rush distances are to close and sometimes there is just not enough space for a long game. i also have a problem with all the extra space around the edge of the map where you can fly units or buildings i think that both of these things need to be changed in the new maps
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All-ins are definitely extremely strong because of the map sizes, but with Warp Gates I feel like changing the sizes of maps would make a difference in ZvT but not any of the P matchups...
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Finding custom games on custom maps and getting your maps tested will be a lot easier with Chat channels, so this next patch should be good.
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10387 Posts
I believe Idra went something like 4-2 or 5-2 vs some no-name Terran? Shouldn't happen, but it does due to the maps and probably flaws in the game design : P
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On December 26 2010 02:30 Noev wrote:
i think the size of maps is absolutely a problem with the map pool the rush distances are to close and sometimes there is just not enough space for a long game. i also have a problem with all the extra space around the edge of the map where you can fly units or buildings i think that both of these things need to be changed in the new maps
I don't think map edges (and the ability to harass mineral lines with air) are bad. All races can take advantage of this.
The biggest map/balance issue I see is that zerg have no way to use ledges. Toss have blink and colossi, terrans have tank and thors, zerg don't really have any unit that can take advantage of an opponent's natural having a ledge behind it.
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On December 26 2010 01:28 ParasitJonte wrote:
And why didn't people bring this up in Q&A at blizzcon?
Because people were too busy asking how to tank drop on lost temple >,<
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On December 26 2010 03:37 DrBoo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 01:28 ParasitJonte wrote:
And why didn't people bring this up in Q&A at blizzcon? Because people were too busy asking how to tank drop on lost temple >,<
actually im sure they talked about it
blizzard want variety in ladder mappool to test shit out (balance etc) and encourages tournament organizators to pick their own custom maps if they want to.
the problem is the tournament organizators say they don't want to use custom maps because people cant practise them (on ladder).
i believe once chat channels are out there, there can't be ANY problems finding suitable opponents for practise, therefore i'd love to if any tournament indeed picked iccup maps and started using them
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On December 26 2010 02:57 synapse wrote:
All-ins are definitely extremely strong because of the map sizes, but with Warp Gates I feel like changing the sizes of maps would make a difference in ZvT but not any of the P matchups...
and i feel that changing map sizes will kill terran.... or at least will change play style to super defensive however knowing late game terran power it's still feel like a bad choice.
P obviously dont really care that much about that as they can reinforce instantly to the battle.
while zerg have creep which is like stimmed units without additional attack rate.
Its just mean that zerg will get that creep bonus will be a HUGE factor on bigger maps + safer expos and queens will create and imbalance here....
people really forget about queens then they make a comparison to broodwar.
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Atm I feel Zerg is too weak just because of the small maps. With some bigger maps Zerg wouldn't die to inferior players who do nothing but all-inning other people all the time.
Bigger maps would not favor Zerg, but they would force late game.
@QQers: Zerg is NOT overpoweder late game, the only reason why terrans think that is because their plan for the entire game ends after 2 bases. It really is like that: They sit on 2 bases forever, watch the Zerg taking the map, try to all-in, Zerg barely holds it and Terran thinks he still might win because he almost crushed Zerg and he got some MULEs back home, the game takes a few more minutes, Zerg got plenty of drones and is able to reproduce and crushes Terran. Terran goes to TL and QQs about Zerg being op late game. I personally think that Terran is overpowered late game, because Terran mech is ridiculously strong. And you can't really abuse its immobility due to the small maps.
With bigger maps the game would be WAY more balanced. Zerg is still weak and dies high rewarding easy to pull off cheese strategies all the time. Watch GSL3 Fruitdealer, NesTea and IdrA's stream if you don't believe me.
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On December 26 2010 04:30 kYem wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 02:57 synapse wrote:
All-ins are definitely extremely strong because of the map sizes, but with Warp Gates I feel like changing the sizes of maps would make a difference in ZvT but not any of the P matchups... and i feel that changing map sizes will kill terran.... or at least will change play style to super defensive however knowing late game terran power it's still feel like a bad choice. P obviously dont really care that much about that as they can reinforce instantly to the battle. while zerg have creep which is like stimmed units without additional attack rate. Its just mean that zerg will get that creep bonus will be a HUGE factor on bigger maps + safer expos and queens will create and imbalance here.... people really forget about queens then they make a comparison to broodwar.
I honestly can't see why people harbour the perception that T lategame is weak. Okay, it maybe weak if you compare it to protoss lategame, but protoss lategame, storms/ colossi/ voidray is just imba anyways. Whether zerg is strong relative to terran in the lategame would have to depend completely on what happened during the midgame, and with that the early game. If Terran failed a timing push that is designed to cripple zerg in the midgame then of course terran will be vastly behind, since that means he will have less bases and tech as he put everything into that push. If terrans early game rush fails, same story. If terrans fails these, zerg can drone up unhindered and have a large advantage. But if terran plays with a macro mindset, splitting the map while steadily building up that tank count, terran is perfectly able to compete with zerg in macro games. Remeber that although theoretically zerg can make nothing but drones if terran dont push, no zerg on earth would do that as it is a stupidly risky thing to do since the smallest amount of pressure kills you. A larger map would definitely not disbalance the tvz matchup, and in fact would make it more balanced as zergs dont autolose on x maps. Remember, terran's lategame is still more cost-efficient than zerg's (Ultras?), and any discrepency would arise only due to base counts, which terran in sc2 can easily hold and secure due to new mechanics like planetary fortresses. Dropship harass is also far more effective than sc1 due to lack of scourges, and dropship play in sc1 is already ridiculously powerful
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On December 26 2010 04:40 decaf wrote:
Atm I feel Zerg is too weak just because of the small maps. With some bigger maps Zerg wouldn't die to inferior players who do nothing but all-inning other people all the time.
Bigger maps would not favor Zerg, but they would force late game.
@QQers: Zerg is NOT overpoweder late game, the only reason why terrans think that is because their plan for the entire game ends after 2 bases. It really is like that: They sit on 2 bases forever, watch the Zerg taking the map, try to all-in, Zerg barely holds it and Terran thinks he still might win because he almost crushed Zerg and he got some MULEs back home, the game takes a few more minutes, Zerg got plenty of drones and is able to reproduce and crushes Terran. Terran goes to TL and QQs about Zerg being op late game. I personally think that Terran is overpowered late game, because Terran mech is ridiculously strong. And you can't really abuse its immobility due to the small maps.
With bigger maps the game would be WAY more balanced. Zerg is still weak and dies high rewarding easy to pull off cheese strategies all the time. Watch GSL3 Fruitdealer, NesTea and IdrA's stream if you don't believe me.
Why is it that there is a need to post balance issues and address stuff that hasn't been said in the thread in a thread that's not about balance issues and TvZ. Although the OP's deeply flawed analysis ("i offrace with terran and win against zerg ezpz durrr") concerns using terran he said that the same principles can be applied to PvZ and he explicitly said he's not talking about race imbalances.
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What a great post! Thank you!
This is pretty much exactly what I think about the maps. But I have to add that map balance is really hard to get, too big and open : zerg will be too favored, etc... But Blizzard should atleast try some new things.
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Having the feeling that you never win against people that are better to you is not a biased opinion, it's pretty much what every Zerg out there that tries to play a macro game will tell you. I switched from Terran to Zerg, and I often had the feeling that the all-ins I could do as Terran gave me wins against players that I would've never been able to defeat in a 'standard' game. Now after about 400 games with Z (2.6k, practicing with ppl on average 300 pts higher though), I can tell you that almost every single opponent I lose to on ladder is a worse player than me doing some stupid map abuse / all-in. I watch a huge amount of replays and I've also played Protoss in beta so I have a fairly broad knowledge of how the different races compare and how skilled the player I am watching is.
I don't know if it's Zerg's lack of early scouting, the maps or just race imbalance in general. As such I (and a lot of pro-gamers) feel that all-ins are just way too strong at this point in time. I would definitely look forward to bigger maps, but as long as Blizzard can enjoy their stupid 50% statistics that seem to be the only thing they really care about and look closely at, I doubt something like this will happen (like removing Shakuras without explanation and introducing Jungle Basin the last patch).
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Having the feeling that you never win against people that are better to you is not a biased opinion, it's pretty much what every Zerg out there that tries to play a macro game will tell you. I switched from Terran to Zerg, and I often had the feeling that the all-ins I could do as Terran gave me wins against players that I would've never been able to defeat in a 'standard' game. Now after about 400 games with Z (2.6k, practicing with ppl on average 300 pts higher though), I can tell you that almost every single opponent I lose to on ladder is a worse player than me doing some stupid map abuse / all-in. I watch a huge amount of replays and I've also played Protoss in beta so I have a fairly broad knowledge of how the different races compare and how skilled the player I am watching is.
I don't know if it's Zerg's lack of early scouting, the maps or just race imbalance in general. As such I (and a lot of pro-gamers) feel that all-ins are just way too strong at this point in time. I would definitely look forward to bigger maps, but as long as Blizzard can enjoy their stupid 50% statistics that seem to be the only thing they really care about and look closely at, I doubt something like this will happen (like removing Shakuras without explanation and introducing Jungle Basin the last patch).
This post is now diamonds!
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This thread basically summarizes all the frustration I feel while playing Zerg. I wish that some time soon larger maps are incorporated into the pool and I'll actually start playing more again.
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Really well put OP. While i was reading the first paragraph first thought that came into my mind was "Welcome to playing Zerg".
But yeah, everything youve said is quite true although one issue i believe you missed is the fact that the new "macro mechanics" also play a huge part by being pretty much "steroids" for their respective races giving even more power to cheese/all ins.
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Does anyone remember NaDa's mech into bio based macro-god play on Shakuras in GSL 2? Who doesn't want to see more games like that? How could anyone think that watching/doing a 2rax all-in could even compare to that style of play?
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On December 26 2010 06:34 Cheeznuklz wrote:
Does anyone remember NaDa's mech into bio based macro-god play on Shakuras in GSL 2? Who doesn't want to see more games like that? How could anyone think that watching/doing a 2rax all-in could even compare to that style of play?
Blizzard doesn't.
The maps are terrible, everyone sane knows this, and there isn't anything anyone can really do about it in terms of ladder/mainstream play because Blizzard are the gatekeepers of everything.
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I think they could in general be somewhat bigger, but i think sc2 fits this quick aggressive style of play over the old.
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yep, build order losses are insanely common due to the small maps
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Maybe blizzard wants these maps for the ladder, because they think about all league, and want the game playable for everyone. They favor one or 2 base play.
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ?
I hope so tournament will promote other maps than the official map pool.
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On December 26 2010 06:34 Cheeznuklz wrote:
Does anyone remember NaDa's mech into bio based macro-god play on Shakuras in GSL 2? Who doesn't want to see more games like that? How could anyone think that watching/doing a 2rax all-in could even compare to that style of play?
You mean the game he got picked apart by an inferior opponent's Mutas and only won because he killed like a dozen drones early game?
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On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ?
The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it.
So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps.
Discuss....
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I think they should be a little bigger but not too big or then Zerg is going to be an overwhelming race. The fact is though zerg is the race that wants to macro and sit back relax and Protoss and terran don't want them to do that and have to have some advantage to catch them off guard but not to just completely steamroll the zerg with 4 gate every game. In other words though zerg players need to have better game sense and expect something. "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best"
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On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss....
Ok, thanks for you answer. Sorry i didn't knew it.
I remember, that official tournaments with prize pool, needed some kind of declaration at blizzard.
Do they force other tournaments with prize pool to use official maps too ?
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Great Post! It really shows the weak resuls Zergs have still (and i believe the MUs are not broken with the actual strategies), and is a great, in-depth analysis why bigger maps are more than necessary.
The funniest things i know are maps like DQ, where i (on 2,5k Diamond) TELL the enemy Zergs, i am going 4/5-Gate, even let Zerglings slip in, and i STILL win. Honestly: This is a map where you can feel the imbalance. Normally on bigger maps, if i'm going 4Gate, i get crushed so bad because i can't play a decent 4Gate versus Zerg. ^^
And to the Terrans: I also believe, Terran is really strong lategame, just play Jinro-Style. Oh wait: You die to All-Ins from other Terrans, Zergs and Protosses ...
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On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss....
Why? whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?
I seriously don't understand, how does blizzard benefit from the ladder maps being used in gsl?
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On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss....
What's your source on this? Know you're not making it up, just want confirmation.
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Blizzard probably would like the maps to be very similar in size becase otherwise it becomes a nightmare to balance.
If the map size grows super large terran sucks on offense since it lacks Nydus and warp in reinforcement. If its is too large zergs will run wild with their macro mechanics.
The way they have built the game so far is tailored to the smaller maps currently in use and its going to be tough to overhaul that now.
Or it could be if very large maps got popular in GSL then the pros and the rest would be playing a very different game, possibly dropping interest for the more casual player/spectator.
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I've stopped playing since mid-GSL3 until the map pool is changed dramatically.
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On December 26 2010 07:44 UniversalSnip wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss.... Why? whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? I seriously don't understand, how does blizzard benefit from the ladder maps being used in gsl?
I don't either. Besides that: How could we player punish Blizzard for it? I mean, Blizz wants HotS to be bought and it is no big deal to let the community introduce map to the map pool. So what are they after?
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Map size is a massive problem, but it is not actually the chief issue with allins being strong. It has a large effect on zerg simply because of the way their race works, but allins are just as OP in TvP.
It's also not just a scouting issue, though that certainly plays a role. It's not just enough to know they're going to allin. You have to know exactly what the allin is, and you have to react 100% perfectly to defend it.
The level of BO-luck and allin-dominance will not change dramatically with map size, though map size will help a lot in dealing with some specific rushes, reducing the guessing that needs to be done on defense. The problem is inherent in game design and is just going to take a lot more effort to fix than Blizzard wants to put forth. We literally won't see any change until HotS and only then if it's like Warcraft III ROC --> TFT. The game needs a massive overhaul.
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On December 26 2010 07:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss.... What's your source on this? Know you're not making it up, just want confirmation.
For what Junkka said, it's on the gomtv site on their forums, I'm pretty sure when there was that whole map rigging controversy (where Junkka explained the box he made). As for my other sources, well that's plain not public, but I never came out and said anything until Junkka did.
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On December 26 2010 08:27 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 07:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss.... What's your source on this? Know you're not making it up, just want confirmation. For what Junkka said, it's on the gomtv site on their forums, I'm pretty sure when there was that whole map rigging controversy (where Junkka explained the box he made). As for my other sources, well that's plain not public, but I never came out and said anything until Junkka did.
Alright, thanks for the heads-up.
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On December 26 2010 08:27 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 07:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss.... What's your source on this? Know you're not making it up, just want confirmation. For what Junkka said, it's on the gomtv site on their forums, I'm pretty sure when there was that whole map rigging controversy (where Junkka explained the box he made). As for my other sources, well that's plain not public, but I never came out and said anything until Junkka did.
Are 100% sure about this? I remember Blizz saying that they have no problem with tournaments being run with other maps and what the GOM people said is that they dont want to use other maps because they want GSL to be an open tournament where everyone has the same chances of getting in. (Ladder maps can be played by everyone and they can train on the ladder)
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On December 26 2010 09:44 skindzer wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 08:27 iCCup.Diamond wrote:On December 26 2010 07:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss.... What's your source on this? Know you're not making it up, just want confirmation. For what Junkka said, it's on the gomtv site on their forums, I'm pretty sure when there was that whole map rigging controversy (where Junkka explained the box he made). As for my other sources, well that's plain not public, but I never came out and said anything until Junkka did. Are 100% sure about this? I remember Blizz saying that they have no problem with tournaments being run with other maps and what the GOM people said is that they dont want to use other maps because they want GSL to be an open tournament where everyone has the same chances of getting in. (Ladder maps can be played by everyone and they can train on the ladder)
No I'm not 100% sure, it's just what I hear. Which I just dismissed as rumor until John made that post, which states that yes custom maps did not work for the open events, and Blizzard would probably not even let them. While that logic 100% works for the Open GSL's, it's a little different now that but for Code S the logic doesn't hold.
I don't have John's post link but it should be somewhere here on TL.
So I am not 100% sure at all and it's just speculation. So take it what it is, just a curious situation based on Blizz's past statements.
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The worst thing is people that play terran/protoss and says "oh no, if all maps are big zerg will be OP!". How about we get bigger maps, then if it turns out zerg is too strong on big maps blizzard can rebalance it, because let's face it, macro games are way more fun and if you don't think so it's probably because you're a weak player, no offence.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES50118 Posts
On December 26 2010 08:27 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 07:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:On December 26 2010 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:On December 26 2010 07:16 beridoxy wrote:
So, for me, why do not tournament like GSL take place on iccup map or other maps ? The reason I have been told (by multiple people multiple times) and now Junkka has came out in public and said is Blizzard won't allow it. So they say they want maps to be different then ladder maps, but won't allow the largest tournament in the world to use custom maps. Discuss.... What's your source on this? Know you're not making it up, just want confirmation. For what Junkka said, it's on the gomtv site on their forums, I'm pretty sure when there was that whole map rigging controversy (where Junkka explained the box he made). As for my other sources, well that's plain not public, but I never came out and said anything until Junkka did.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=173210
here's the link to that post.
2) Why not use custom maps? Because GSL is open tournament and people without team can only practice on ladder. Of course it is possible to distribute custom maps through homepage but sadly not all SC2 players watch GSL. I do not think Blizzard will approve it anyway.
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Thing is, its pretty hard to find good maps due to the way we have to join custom games. Once a map gets published, its sent to the bottom of the list iirc and it will take forever for anyone to find it. Chat Channels would probably fix this allowing players to just make pick up games for certain maps and what not.
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The main issue is that Starcraft 2 can't be balanced for a too wide variety of maps.
The current balance of the game entirely revolves around timing pushes.
Instead of complaining about them, you have to think about the deep reasons behind them and accept the fact that they aren't the same than in Starcraft 1. In Starcraft 1 people who all-in do it to catch their opponents offguard or because they're not confident to play a late macro game against someone.
The reason we can assume that is because it has been proven (empirically) countless time that each race has a fair chance to win in the lategame.
People just need to wake up and realize that it is not the same for Starcraft 2.
Starcraft 2 late-game is not balanced. I know some people like to claim it is until they manage to convince everyone including themselves, but this is simply not the case.
A lot of so called "cheesers" are just realist people who know that they will have a hard time in the later stages of the game, thus their best shot is to all-in.
Zerg macro is not balanced, it can be proven mathematically, empirically... Terran can't beat a lategame protoss army... etc... These are issues that need to be adressed right now, because I've a hard time believing that the expansion will strenghten Terran/Protoss late game macro, or that a new Terran unit will be designed to counter Protoss late-game army.
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A certain amount of randomness is not only acceptable it's in the game by design. I don't think the goal should be to minimize randomness in all matches (if you disagree, imagine the game without fog of war, there would be 0 'unlucky' losses but also the game would be a whole lot less fun). The goal should be to find the right balance of randomness/skill. So the fact that you lost certain games because you got unlucky isn't saying much to me. You should argue why the current level of randomness is too high compared to what you feel is the ideal level.
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On December 26 2010 01:55 red_b wrote:
watching steppes of war in the gsl would be like watching the dreamhack 1.6 finals start out on fy_iceworld. now that GSL isnt open,
Oh man. This is totally going into my sig.
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I think it also has to do with pure BO losses that this game has, when compared to BW. Sure there are some, but in SC2 it seems like there are MANY just pure straight up BO losses that all the micro and macro in the world would not take you out of, and your opponent could be terrible at the game but knows how to do that 1 strategy, and you're going to lose...
I started out playing SC2, but it seems I play BW more and more now...
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On December 26 2010 13:19 Djeez wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 01:55 red_b wrote:
watching steppes of war in the gsl would be like watching the dreamhack 1.6 finals start out on fy_iceworld. now that GSL isnt open, Oh man. This is totally going into my sig.
lol, and they start with all the guns laying on the ground too!
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I would love to see larger maps in tournaments. Every time I see a pro pull SCVs, I just wanna facepalm so hard. I don't get this thing about Terran being weak lategame. Quite obviously people forget how pants-wettingly scary siege tanks are. I feel like as a whole Starcraft should be rewarding greedy economic plays instead of greedily aggressive plays. To be honest, since I'm Zerg, maybe I'm biased towards macro heavy games, but I think we can all agree that those are definitely th thing we should expect out of people who play on a professional level. After all, I get all-in'd enough and I've come dangerously close to smashing something valuable. I don't think I need to see any more of that stuff if I'm to remain mentally sound.
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On December 26 2010 07:22 DashedHopes wrote:
I think they should be a little bigger but not too big or then Zerg is going to be an overwhelming race. The fact is though zerg is the race that wants to macro and sit back relax and Protoss and terran don't want them to do that and have to have some advantage to catch them off guard but not to just completely steamroll the zerg with 4 gate every game. In other words though zerg players need to have better game sense and expect something. "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best"
The reason I'm replying to this, is because this is the biggest misconception I keep seeing more and more. Can anyone tell me how Zerg, with whatever army composition, is going to beat mass 3/3 battlecruiser with yamato cannon and ravens? How about some Thors mixed in?
Zerg's macro strength is only visibly in early-midgame to midgame, in lategame a bigger map would be more advantageous towards T and especially P.
I'd argue zerg has more problems regarding scouting (flying my first 4-5 muta into phoenixes I could have impossibly scouted), but this is not a racial balance thread - it is mostly about maps.
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the "terran is weak lategame" is bullshit, with good opening, good harass, good scouting and GOOD MAP (not many on blizz ladder mappool) to take 3rd and 4th base, terran 200/200 can hit really strong, obviously it depends on circumstances in each game, how well you harassed etc
that arguement comes from terrans who can't change from their beloved 2rax marine scv allin or mass marauder ball, and no, that you tried 10 games macro style doesn't matter because it takes practise, i play macro for months and still lose to silly all ins etc.
now to the matter of BO wins, guess what, if your opponent on steppes of war goes stim MM scv allin and you scout him go down his ramp you can't fucking even put up spine crawlers or moprh banelings because he is in your nat in 5 seconds so, for the love of god and the game, start using custom maps.
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On December 26 2010 12:17 TeWy wrote:
A lot of so called "cheesers" are just realist people who know that they will have a hard time in the later stages of the game, thus their best shot is to all-in.
Sorry, but your argument is bullshit. The all-in / cheese players aren't people with a deep understanding of the game, able to flawlessly macro 5 bases while microing simultaneous drops. It's, like PredY said, someone looking for easy wins, and as long as the game allows for such a playstyle to reliably work, you cannot really blame them. Terrans' and Protoss' maxed army combined with their incredibly strong defensive potential makes them incredibly scary late-game. I should know, I did only Protoss all-ins during beta and then continued doing similiar stuff as Terran in retail. When I started going up to 2 and 3 bases later in my Terran 'career' I noticed how devoid of skill I was compared to those that tried to play a macro-game and had to learn everything from ground up, even more so when I switched to Zerg which just doesn't allow for such bull-shit all-in play as a viable choice of playstyle.
If the maps were increased 2 to 3 times in size you would see the ridiculous potential of mid and late-game Terran and Protoss armies. If you just keep QQing about how impossible it is to play macro against Zerg or Protoss, you will inevitably be stuck at a low level of both skill and understanding of the game.
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The degree to which everyone on TL fetishizes "big macro" games is kind of repulsive. I don't know what game you guys are playing, but terran do not have "incredibly strong defensive potential." Once a zerg gets a critical mass of mutas, no amount of turrets will hold them off, and you essentially have to stay in your base or try to march out right then with mutas in your base to try and kill the zerg. With bigger maps, this problem will only be exacerbated as the mobility of mutas and the relative immobility of anything but pure bio can easily be abused. It seems like mostly zerg players on here whining about how people are "bullshitting" their way to wins instead of going for the 5 base vs 5 base games that these zergs want. For shame that those zergs' opponents are trying to get "easy wins" by pulling scvs. We should definitely let the zergs do whatever they want until they are at 5 bases and can collect their "easy" macro win.
tl;dr - Stop fetishizing macro games. SotG podcast people talk about playing the game to win as it currently exists, and I think that's the right attitude to adopt here.
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On December 27 2010 01:25 IgnE wrote:
The degree to which everyone on TL fetishizes "big macro" games is kind of repulsive. I don't know what game you guys are playing, but terran do not have "incredibly strong defensive potential." Once a zerg gets a critical mass of mutas, no amount of turrets will hold them off, and you essentially have to stay in your base or try to march out right then with mutas in your base to try and kill the zerg. With bigger maps, this problem will only be exacerbated as the mobility of mutas and the relative immobility of anything but pure bio can easily be abused. It seems like mostly zerg players on here whining about how people are "bullshitting" their way to wins instead of going for the 5 base vs 5 base games that these zergs want. For shame that those zergs' opponents are trying to get "easy wins" by pulling scvs. We should definitely let the zergs do whatever they want until they are at 5 bases and can collect their "easy" macro win.
tl;dr - Stop fetishizing macro games. SotG podcast people talk about playing the game to win as it currently exists, and I think that's the right attitude to adopt here.
1st of all, if a zerg is on 5base vs 5base he is probably in a very bad shape
2nd of all, i guess you haven't seen many broodwar games (guessing from your post count) but i can assure you that long macro games are much better for entertaining value than short allin games (sure, in a boX series all styles are welcomed) and in longer games usually the better player wins and the whole skillset of a player is shown. i don't think we'd be watching BW for 10 years if there weren't such good and fun macro games.
and 3rd, terran has indeed have a strong defensive potential with PF, siege tanks and sensor towers. and no mass muta is not imba, on 5base you can probably even afford seeker missiles to counter them
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There's a reason why Terrans pop up in these conversations and complain about late game. Mostly, it has to do with Terrans having a difficult time getting past 2 base against zerg. Zerg has the advantage in mobility in protecting their expansions. There isn't a unit below 3 speed on creep, which is incredibly fast. So, zerg can use their money on building forces and droning, using creep to facilitate defense for their expos. Meanwhile, a terran has to place down 1000 minerals worth of static defense to "scare" off muta harass and banelings, because they can't reach an expo in time to stop it from going down.
As for the OP, you're asking for the ability to win every game, regardless of the opponent's strat. When your race has the distinct ability to create a 40 food army in less than 40 seconds, a larger map gives you a huge advantage. For T and P to take the same advantage, they'd have to run off 2-3x more production structures than they do now.
I agree that macro games are a BLAST to watch and play, but I honestly don't think the game is fleshed out enough, both game design and player skill, to allow that to happen as much as we would all like.
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On December 26 2010 01:28 ParasitJonte wrote:
well, there is a map-related forum thread on the US battle.net forum posted by iccup people. No blue responses... I wish a similar thread was posted in the european forums as well.
And why didn't people bring this up in Q&A at blizzcon?
I believe the official Blizz response was that large BW style maps weren't noob-friendly enough and were too "skill-demanding" for their ladder map pool. They also threw out some bs about "implementing community maps" if they're good and once they've been "conformed to Blizzard's standards."
In other words, they're stubborn as **** and probably won't do anything about it.
EDIT @ Igne:
Go watch some BW games first and then tell me we have no reason to "fetishize long macro games." Yes, winning is winning no matter how you do it. The occasional cheese and quick rush build and short 15-20 minute games are fun to watch and play. However, the longer, much more strategic and skill-demanding macro games are not only more entertaining, but they also are better measures of skill and talent. Trust me, BW would not have survived half as long as it did if all its games were short games the duration and complexity of current SC2 games.
Also, just because there are bigger, macro-oriented maps does NOT in ANY way mean that ALL games will be long macro games. Not at all. There will still be plenty of opportunities to do some quick timing push to end games quickly or to even just cheese. Want proof? Go search Jaedong's 4pool against Flash. Cheesiest of cheesy plays on a big fat macro map. It can still work.
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Fortified terran positions are incredibly strong as long as you got osme SVCs mining there ready for some repairing action, if there aren't any left it's not worth destroying, so it's always good. The only way to take out PFs with turrets effeciently is broodlords. You cannot basetrade against terrans, it's just not possible. And let's be honest at no point in time a terran won't have any marines, who are fast as fuck with stims. Terran got such a strong late game, I ain't never seen terrans thinking out some late game builds like thor banshee battlecruiser and some other units, their plan for the whole game usually ends after an all-in at the very beginning or a 2-base all-in. You can't sit on two bases the entire game and complain that Zerg late game is overpowered.
Watch NesTea vs MakaPrime on Xel Naga Caverns, taht was such a great game from Maka (NesTea won though (he's the better player..)) he even prepared for the broodlords to come out and the ultra transition that's gonna come. You can plan that out, you don't h ave to QQ about Zergs imbaness while watching him taking the whole map.
Big maps favor no races at all, they just don't harm the Zerg players, who really die to inferior players all the time.
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For all the feedback it receives, and I don't just mean QQs from forums, but real feedback from players, Activision Blizzard is just obnoxious at dealing with this feedback. They dismiss it, or say it is bollocks, or if they do accept, they wait way way too long.
If the community wants to check out ICCUP maps, why don't you make an official 1v1 playlist besides the Blizzard map playlist? If you are so scared of saying the ICCUP maps and other community voted maps will kill all our newer players, why not create another playlist? Saying its in the custom games is not enough because of just the way the custom works. You can't find that many people on the custom ladder, where you would find people on official ladders. Having another official playlist, legitimizes the worth of the community maps.
Even then, couldn't you just rotate and put in new maps as in a special weekend map pool only for the weekends, or even on just one day? You could even create like a double ratings event, where if you play in this playlist for a day and check out the new maps, you get more points for winning or something.
What is really frustrating is that Blizzard seems to want to protect their maps like their business model depended on it. It doesn't. And Blizzard really didn't care about their maps in BW (or as it seems to me), so why do they care so much about THEIR maps now, at the expense of the community?
The point of this is for community maps to get MASS EXPOSURE. Ladder rankings be damned. I want better games, and better maps. Right now, people still are not familiar with IC CUP maps and other great map pools out there.
I whole heartedly agree with the OP. It is way too easy to create early pushes because maps are just too small. The expansion locations are just too much favored towards more aggression. So people become better and better at these sorts of cheeses, but then lack the ability to play in the long game.
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you know to all the people saying big maps will favor zerg.
artosis said in one of his new videos that zerg has been losing like before their recent big patch. if that is actually true, maybe that's a good thing?
p.s. if we had bigger maps we might see less two and one basing and with 6+ gas and a reasonable distance between your stuff and your opponent's stuff we might see some more carriers, which I think would be awesome.
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The only late game, multi base matches I have seen that feature a terran winning involve a protoss or zerg player who has fallen seriously behind in macro. When I watch replays where my tvz games go into 3-4 bases and I actually come out on top, I am always disappointed to see that the real reason I won is that my zerg opponent was sitting on 3k minerals with no gas and didn't take more bases/make more lings/roaches to stop me. tvz and tvp right now are incredibly difficult to win late game unless the opponent simply doesn't know how to spend his lategame resources effectively. Losing all your supply depots/production structures to a pack of 24 mutalisks and then pushing out only to lose 80% of your army to mutas/blings/slings/infestors means that you have lost the game since you can't rebuild your army in order to stop the next wave of units. A zerg on 5 bases can rebuild from anywhere, but Terrans are stuck rebuilding armies wherever they invested money in supply depots/production buildings. No amount of turrets is cost effective against a muta ball in the late game. If you want to give terrans an upgrade that give some thor-size splash for turrets in the engineering bay that would go a long way towards making macro games more viable. But as it is, terran on 3-4 bases are at a distinct defender's disadvantage against zerg.
I'm sitting at about 2700 points on the NA ladder.
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On December 27 2010 03:56 IgnE wrote:
The only late game, multi base matches I have seen that feature a terran winning involve a protoss or zerg player who has fallen seriously behind in macro. When I watch replays where my tvz games go into 3-4 bases and I actually come out on top, I am always disappointed to see that the real reason I won is that my zerg opponent was sitting on 3k minerals with no gas and didn't take more bases/make more lings/roaches to stop me. tvz and tvp right now are incredibly difficult to win late game unless the opponent simply doesn't know how to spend his lategame resources effectively. Losing all your supply depots/production structures to a pack of 24 mutalisks and then pushing out only to lose 80% of your army to mutas/blings/slings/infestors means that you have lost the game since you can't rebuild your army in order to stop the next wave of units. A zerg on 5 bases can rebuild from anywhere, but Terrans are stuck rebuilding armies wherever they invested money in supply depots/production buildings. No amount of turrets is cost effective against a muta ball in the late game. If you want to give terrans an upgrade that give some thor-size splash for turrets in the engineering bay that would go a long way towards making macro games more viable. But as it is, terran on 3-4 bases are at a distinct defender's disadvantage against zerg.
I'm sitting at about 2700 points on the NA ladder.
Zerg always wants to stay ahead at least one mining base, so you gotta deny that: You could either expand yourself faster or kill his expansions. Multi-pronged drops with a (fake-)push coming in are a pain in the ass to deal with.
Turrets are almost always cost effective agianst mutas, since they don't even cost any gas. You can also leave one thor in your mineral line, which will drive those muta balls away. If he still decides to engage autorepair will do the rest for you. Your turret splash idea is utterly retarted..
You said that rebuilding depots is consuming a lot of minerals. To me it seems like you didn't understand what the MULE does. It only harvests minerals faster and not more! MULEs are bad late game, they will make you mined out a lot faster, whereas supply calldowns actually give you money. Late game you should be getting up to no MULEs at all in my opinion.
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Summary of p00n's OP: "short rush distances hurt zerg"
now...
On December 26 2010 18:42 the p00n wrote:
Zerg's macro strength is only visibly in early-midgame to midgame, in lategame a bigger map would be more advantageous towards T and especially P.
How is a larger map going to help the SLOWEST t3 armies? Zerg's mobility is what makes them so powerful mid to late game, T and P would NOT become more powerful having their army half way across the map when zerg harasses.
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On December 27 2010 08:21 decaf wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2010 03:56 IgnE wrote:
The only late game, multi base matches I have seen that feature a terran winning involve a protoss or zerg player who has fallen seriously behind in macro. When I watch replays where my tvz games go into 3-4 bases and I actually come out on top, I am always disappointed to see that the real reason I won is that my zerg opponent was sitting on 3k minerals with no gas and didn't take more bases/make more lings/roaches to stop me. tvz and tvp right now are incredibly difficult to win late game unless the opponent simply doesn't know how to spend his lategame resources effectively. Losing all your supply depots/production structures to a pack of 24 mutalisks and then pushing out only to lose 80% of your army to mutas/blings/slings/infestors means that you have lost the game since you can't rebuild your army in order to stop the next wave of units. A zerg on 5 bases can rebuild from anywhere, but Terrans are stuck rebuilding armies wherever they invested money in supply depots/production buildings. No amount of turrets is cost effective against a muta ball in the late game. If you want to give terrans an upgrade that give some thor-size splash for turrets in the engineering bay that would go a long way towards making macro games more viable. But as it is, terran on 3-4 bases are at a distinct defender's disadvantage against zerg.
I'm sitting at about 2700 points on the NA ladder. Zerg always wants to stay ahead at least one mining base, so you gotta deny that: You could either expand yourself faster or kill his expansions. Multi-pronged drops with a (fake-)push coming in are a pain in the ass to deal with. Turrets are almost always cost effective agianst mutas, since they don't even cost any gas. You can also leave one thor in your mineral line, which will drive those muta balls away. If he still decides to engage autorepair will do the rest for you. Your turret splash idea is utterly retarted.. You said that rebuilding depots is consuming a lot of minerals. To me it seems like you didn't understand what the MULE does. It only harvests minerals faster and not more! MULEs are bad late game, they will make you mined out a lot faster, whereas supply calldowns actually give you money. Late game you should be getting up to no MULEs at all in my opinion.
Turrets are not cost effective against mutas late game when mutas can just snipe them in 1-2 shots.
Critical masses of mutas kill thors and any repairing scvs laughably easily. No one is complaining about midgame when the zerg is running around with 8-10 mutas. I am talking about late game when the zerg has 30 mutas. The only way to stop the harrass is to hit the zerg's base with whatever army you have up, or to prevent the zerg from getting there in the first place with early all-innish attacks.
Try leaving 1 thor (which will still die to the mutas quite easily) in each of your 3-4 bases. You are now down 18-24 supply that is not with your army.
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Well it seems like blizzard didn't intend to balance big map size of big maps .
Big maps are unbalanced for a numer of reasons :
1 The Zerg become way to mobile when creep has spreaded and as manny of the toss / terran players allready know it is really difficult to beat a 200/200 zerg army on creep since in open spaces like shakuras it could get such perfect roach / hydra surrounds on ur army which was roughly 140/200 at the time u hit . I don't play terran but I imagine the same problem ( terran also can't warp in units at all places where energy is , unlike protoss )
2 Protoss all ins will still remain strong , it will only really nerf immortal pushes ( maybe with warp prism as well , but currently warp prism is to weak to actually use besides collosus / immortal drops and dropship play , unload and load trick ) . Void Ray rushes won't be nerfed since if u see suddenly 3 void rays in ur base with a 4th coming in and u only have 2-3 queens with a hydralisk den allmost done, u allready lost .
3 Overall I think micro was 1 of the major keys involved in the balancing process of starcraft BW and also in war 3 . Micro is allmost non existant in Starcraft 2 , here I am talking mostly about the big battles with 200 food army vs 200 food army . You can only let ur units attack the other units which they are good against doing anything else will result most likely in a massive overkill and thus putting u at a disadventage to the person who just clicked attack .
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is it just me or does it feel like we rehash old ideas/posts, maybe so we have something to talk about between those odd breakthrough posts?
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The biggest map/balance issue I see is that zerg have no way to use ledges. Toss have blink and colossi, terrans have tank and thors, zerg don't really have any unit that can take advantage of an opponent's natural having a ledge behind it.
Um, Zerg can drop any kind of ranged unit just like Terran. Especially Infestors.
and i feel that changing map sizes will kill terran.... or at least will change play style to super defensive however knowing late game terran power it's still feel like a bad choice.
P obviously dont really care that much about that as they can reinforce instantly to the battle.
while zerg have creep which is like stimmed units without additional attack rate.
Its just mean that zerg will get that creep bonus will be a HUGE factor on bigger maps + safer expos and queens will create and imbalance here....
people really forget about queens then they make a comparison to broodwar.
This makes no sense. Bigger maps will lessen the effect of the Queens+Creep because each creep tumor and each creep spreading Overlord will cover less of the entire map. So you would need to spend more time spreading creep. Hence, smaller maps help Zerg mobility, not bigger maps.
Also, why another thread like this? And sorry OP but your OP is very disorganized, sounds like a rant, and... unclear.
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Seriously OP, another QQ thread about ZvT early game?
If you want to raise a legitimate argument about map size, please make sure you explore every matchup and possibility of all-ins, not just Zerg trying to defend and drone themselves up.
Your overall point; On December 26 2010 00:44 the p00n wrote:
I think the issue is mostly the maps - the distances are too close, allowing for less reaction time.
You claim "less" reaction time, less than what? Some other maps? Small maps are a part of the game, players need to learn to deal with it.
The only map issue i really agree with is playing on 4person maps with skewed spawns (LT, metal), where the distance between bases depends on spawns.
If anyone can really make an argument that doesn't complain about Zerg getting rushed or losing due to missed units in favor of maps, then i'm all for it. You can't simply increase size, why don't you just give them even more of a lategame advantage?
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On December 27 2010 09:21 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +The biggest map/balance issue I see is that zerg have no way to use ledges. Toss have blink and colossi, terrans have tank and thors, zerg don't really have any unit that can take advantage of an opponent's natural having a ledge behind it. Um, Zerg can drop any kind of ranged unit just like Terran. Especially Infestors.
That guy has obviously never used a nydus worm with hydras. I thoroughly hate that shit. Nydus on ledge on LT vs P is dumb.
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I would really, really like iccup maps becoming the standard on the ladder and in tournaments.
I got a new mouse for christmas (Razer Deathadder) and to break it in as well as introduce a friend to SC2 (he got a better computer) we decided to play some custom games and ended up playing about 3 on LT, and 10 more on iccups maps, mostly Europa, Vahalla and Enigma.
The games we played on the iccup maps were among my favourite experiences with SC2 to date, even when the games were a touch one sided, and my hands were getting used to my mouse, the games were more fun. Concerned that I just thought the games were more fun because I smashed a guy who until recently used me as a BW punching bag, I replayed the maps with a practice partner closer to my skill level. In both of our opinions the games were more competive, closer, and more fun than we'd ever had before.
Fact: the iccup maps are simply better, encourage stronger machanics, a better understanding of strategy and unit positioning, and are a more enjoyable experiance than what Blizzard currently offers on their ladder.
Other possible explanations, opposed to "the iccup maps are better": Since it was my first time playing on new maps, I might have felt a feeling of novelty. Also possible, but less likely was I enjoyed the feeling of my new mouse, although since we played a couple agmes on LT, I don't think this is the case.
New Questions: Why can't Blizzard design maps for their own game? You would think they would be the best at it, or at least have the resources to hire the iccup map designers.
Conclusion: Sadly, in the latest SotG episode, Kennigit was asked (or rather, Kennigit intercepted) a question regarding Blizzard maps, and he said he was told by Blizzard that "it's not a concern for us right now".
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Why cant people understand that during late game, the problem isnt that the terran 200/200 army is weaker than the zerg army. Hell, the terran army might be stronger. The problem is that Zerg and replenish that 200/200 army in 30 seconds while Terran cannot... make it a 200/200 vs 300~400 army. Get it?
And this isnt SC1. We cannot have very large maps for 1v1 in SC2. Imagine the immobility issues for Terran.
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On December 27 2010 14:05 shynee wrote:
Why cant people understand that during late game, the problem isnt that the terran 200/200 army is weaker than the zerg army. Hell, the terran army might be stronger. The problem is that Zerg and replenish that 200/200 army in 30 seconds while Terran cannot... make it a 200/200 vs 300~400 army. Get it?
And this isnt SC1. We cannot have very large maps for 1v1 in SC2. Imagine the immobility issues for Terran.
Zerg units are less cost-effective; it balances out.
Also, have you ever tried moving a maxed terran mech army across the map in SC1? You really think the mobility issues are WORSE in SC2?
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On December 27 2010 14:05 shynee wrote:
Why cant people understand that during late game, the problem isnt that the terran 200/200 army is weaker than the zerg army. Hell, the terran army might be stronger. The problem is that Zerg and replenish that 200/200 army in 30 seconds while Terran cannot... make it a 200/200 vs 300~400 army. Get it?
And this isnt SC1. We cannot have very large maps for 1v1 in SC2. Imagine the immobility issues for Terran.
I disagree with you and im a terran player If the game gets to where both players are 200/200 Then u have to build enough Barracks where you can keep up with the Zerg larva. On two bases Terran can have up to 10 Barracks or more, on 3rd you can have 15+ Barracks that is enough to replenish back to 200/200 in 1-2 mins you always have to keep using factory and starport to get your supply up.
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thats interesting and all, but is T really your weakest race? maybe your innately good at T and ZvT is his worst match up
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I think the OP makes a lot of valid points.
Adding bigger maps will not miraculously solve everything overnight, but I think it would push the evolution of the game in the right direction. Will bigger maps be imbalanced at first? Of course they will, that's the whole point.
Most of the balance changes we have seen so far have been addressing issues within the first 10 minutes of the game. If we start playing on bigger maps and new imbalances are discovered then we can start addressing those issues and creating some real balance, rather than go around in circles arguing about whether Bronze player #1 can hold off Bronze player #2's Zealot rush and whether it needs to be fixed.
The end goal should be to move towards a state of gameplay which is hopefully as exciting and varied as BW. But we're never gonna find out anything if 8/10 games end on 2 bases vs 2 bases before the 15 minute mark =/
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ALLEYCAT BLUES50118 Posts
larger maps will have new strats to counter the old style of all-in/rush/cheese plays because of the rush distances.
for example against protoss...you know that because of the rush distances he would have to make some forward pylons to cut that distance.When you absolutely know that he has to make those pylons its pointless for him to even try doing something like a 4gate rush and instead just 3gate expand.
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Terran cant match Z production? Partly true, but i could play without queens and just make more hatcheries like in BW, the reason why Z needs to replenish his army faster its because it relies in number BECAUSE ITS FUCKING WEAK. Of course if you keep playing with the same 4 barracks till the 20 minutes mark you are going to get overrun.
Also, its not like Z can just easily trample your bases while you are regrouping, you still have defenders advantage, + PF + Bunker + Siege + Repair + the upgrade on building armor + PDD + Zerg has no Dark Swarm.
Zerg Mobility, First of, if you let Z get the map covered in creep tumors, you suck, as simply as that, Z should only have creep between his bases on late game, and theres a good reason for this: THERE ARE NO SCOURGES, NO DARK SWARM, and NO LURKERS, so zerg needs to be actively taking care of all of his hatcheries. Try sending 1 medivac to each hatchery and see how easy is for zerg to split his forces.
But anyways, i suppose Bunker Rush into Banshee is all there is to ZvT.
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Sounds like Terran isn't your worst race
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Zerg won 2 of the GSLs - the maps can't be that bad.
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On December 27 2010 17:02 TERRANLOL wrote:
Zerg won 2 of the GSLs - the maps can't be that bad.
That doesn't count. The first two GSLs were won by much better players (who coincidentally played Zerg). There are no Zerg favored maps, only maps on that you can't abuse cliffs or short rush distances and don't get easy wins. But what does count is that the very same two players (FD and NesTea) got beaten by inferior players in the GSL3, who abused those small maps.
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On December 27 2010 19:34 decaf wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2010 17:02 TERRANLOL wrote:
Zerg won 2 of the GSLs - the maps can't be that bad. That doesn't count. The first two GSLs were won by much better players (who coincidentally played Zerg). There are no Zerg favored maps, only maps on that you can't abuse cliffs or short rush distances and don't get easy wins. But what does count is that the very same two players (FD and NesTea) got beaten by inferior players in the GSL3, who abused those small maps.
I just want to point out that FD was the on being insanely all in and cheesy in his play vs hong un. He straight up refused to play macro games against him and instead decided to try and cheesy rushes even though it clearly was NOT working.
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What has your +1 roach attack example has to do with maps? Or do you think Xel naga is too small lol?
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I think you need to improve your scouting. I am no pro, but there are certain times when you scout to find out/rule out what the other player is doing and change your play accordingly. Even little things like a ling outside their base, or an overlord over their nearest choke to find out when they are pushing. Try doing these rush/1 base plays yourself and I think you will understand the game better.
Although I can see why you are trying to blame the maps for tour loses, I feel this is really a case of sour grapes. You lost, you were outplayed. Just because someone won by rushing instead of an hour long macro game does not mean they are an inferior player. We play to win and the OP has clearly demonstrated that you are not capable of altering your build for early aggression. Stop complaining and just think how you can improve instead of trying someone else to blame. Yes the maps are smaller than BW, but if they were any bigger, terran would be so underpowered compared to the other races, this would ruin the game. (Protoss have warpgate, zerg have fast units anyway)
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ALLEYCAT BLUES50118 Posts
people who claim that Terran can't beat zerg in a straight up macro game are sorely mistaken.
a 200/200 army can beat at least a wave or two of a typical Zerg 300/300 army with good army placement.And a 5base T is stronger than a 5base Z.
Zerg army is useless when its forced to be split.If a terran tries harassing 2 bases on two opposite ends the main army can easily cut through the middle.
with protoss....proxy pylons become too obvious due to large rush distances.if you scount a 4gate rush then you know that you have to find the proxy pylon since the protoss would never want to walk their entire army across the whole map.
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Before you harshly criticize my response, I do agree certain builds are too abusive to zerg because of lack of scouting, and will at times result in a unnecessary loss.
If you over commit to an attack, (which your friend brought every drone except 2), you should be punished and shouldnt have the ability to recover. Your friend made a huge mistake and lost 3 minutes later. If he played perfectly, he probably still would of lost but you cant use that replay as a representation of how zerg struggles early game.
If blizzard chooses to increase every map, zerg will have this false sense of security and could abuse their macro mechanics. Blizzard needs to find the balance, and I feel like big maps aren't the answer. The 2 stable metalopolis positions should be the standard of distances for long/short.
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something people calling for larger maps are missing: army size compared to broodwar is WAY smaller
200 limit is barely enough for these small maps, what are u going to fight with when u are on 5 mining bases as a colossi/thor/ultra using player? there is clumping making armies look, feel and act small and there is the simple fact that units cost way more supply now
it wouldnt be as ridiculous as warcraft 3, with the million expos hand in hand with high upkeep (lol) but if u think bigger maps will solve all problems i believe u are going to find out u are very much mistaken
bigger maps are step1 towards discovering what else is horribly wrong with sc2, such that after religiously watching every gsl game and every "amazing" casted game for months, i hit up a random proleague series and never looked back
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Good point, taguchi.
I have thought about it and I would indeed like to see more food (maybe 300/300?), but I chose not to post before because people on TL generally do not receive such things well.
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Toss is benefited the most by large maps because of warp gates allowing them to attack anywhere with zero travel time penalties, while at the same time their opponents cannot attack back without travel time.
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On December 29 2010 21:21 link0 wrote:
Toss is benefited the most by large maps because of warp gates allowing them to attack anywhere with zero travel time penalties, while at the same time their opponents cannot attack back without travel time.
Yes, but intelligently-placed Xel'Naga towers and general scouting should be able to catch -most- proxy pylons or probes moving out. You cannot be attentive all the time and catch everything every game no matter how good you are, but I think with nice maps (good Xel'Naga towers etc.), the problem won't be as big as people would think.
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It seems a large portion of the SC2 community hate rushes and prefer to sit back and play the gentlemens game of building up and attacking when ready. If you know you won't be able to win a game that goes for 30mins why not end it in 7mins? Rushing is a valid strategy...
The beauty of an RTS like SC2 is the ability to rush, turtle or do something in between. Admittedly there are at times where a map does feel small, but hey, that is because it is a small map designed for 1v1. If people want a large map to macro on, they should play a large map?
Perhaps if the match making 'map preference' system had a bit more depth (ability to choose large maps for 1v1) then some of these complaints could be nullified.
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It's not the maps. It's the zerg race. Everyone is dancing around this fact, like it's some sort of shocking revelation. Zerg is bad, broken, fucked, weak, worthless. Everyone knows this, it's been this way for months.
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iam not sure why everyone wants to complain about races and maps, this is a process to get to a final complete game. The maps are all different to see what happens for future maps to be made. Complaining isnt the answer its about adopting and thinking outside the box to get advantages. so suck it up gamers and enjoy wat u have to play with cuz u must have faith its all gonna come together eventually.
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On morrows stream he's been playing and obsing people playing a BW map he remade (don't know name sorry..) and the games played very different, they played quite similar to BW games imo. Lots of positional play, mass expanding, harass. I do like the variety of the map pool (besides delta quadrant and jungle basin.. ugh) but I do wish there were a few larger maps.. has anyone looked at the 3v3 maps for 1v1 games? too big? too badly designed?
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On December 30 2010 07:04 Quagmire wrote:
iam not sure why everyone wants to complain about races and maps, this is a process to get to a final complete game. The maps are all different to see what happens for future maps to be made. Complaining isnt the answer its about adopting and thinking outside the box to get advantages. so suck it up gamers and enjoy wat u have to play with cuz u must have faith its all gonna come together eventually.
If your claim is true then we should see that:
a) vastly different maps in the current map pool
b) new maps being tried out when a map is shown definitively to be bad
However, we see neither of these things.
a) All of the maps are tiny. If you think there is a map that isn't tiny go play on the Match Point conversion. That map is appropriately sized and if you watch the pros play on it the games are always 10x more exciting than games played on some of the current maps.
b) Steppes of War is such a bad map that top level zergs are drone rushing ever TvZ. There was a map in BW that was so bad that everyone would worker rush; does anyone remember that? It was seriously tiny with really square unnatural looking bases. I think it was used for 2v2 format.
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Well first of all, people are to way over zealous that their particular race is broken or weak, or that some other race is to strong or whatever for the map discussion to be taken seriously. I read more whining and ranting then i do anything constructive in this thread.
That being said from a mostly random players point of view, ive been playing the same maps since beta and its really getting old. Some of the maps are definitely way to small, and some of the free expos like delta and basin probably sounded cool in design but really makes some match ups ridiculous. But blizzard balances the game off these maps, so it would take some effort from their end to move on to a newer larger map pool. They are the ones in the end that will take the data from whatever maps they decide to use and base game balance off of.
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On December 30 2010 07:30 uSnAmplified wrote:
Well first of all, people are to way over zealous that their particular race is broken or weak, or that some other race is to strong or whatever for the map discussion to be taken seriously. I read more whining and ranting then i do anything constructive in this thread.
That being said from a mostly random players point of view, ive been playing the same maps since beta and its really getting old. Some of the maps are definitely way to small, and some of the free expos like delta and basin probably sounded cool in design but really makes some match ups ridiculous. But blizzard balances the game off these maps, so it would take some effort from their end to move on to a newer larger map pool. They are the ones in the end that will take the data from whatever maps they decide to use and base game balance off of.
The reason that there's so much whining and ranting is that the game is not balanced. It's not close to balanced. The fact that everyone wants to pretend that it's balanced is idiocy. It's like denying the sky is blue. I've completely stopped laddering at this point, and I regret my choice of race.
I understand that people don't want to face up to the fact that they're victories and losses are mostly a factor of mistakes in game design at this point, but that's the reality. All this bullshit about maps is just that. Drastic balance changes are necessary, they're not happening, and the racial composition of players is changing drastically as a result. It's going to keep getting worse. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more random players than zerg by spring,
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I played the iCCup map 'Enigma' many times in 1v1 now (it's a big map) and I have to say it is not much more balanced than a blizzard map. Terran cannot counter muta harass because the bases are 1. so far apart and 2. so plentiful, and Zerg cannot counter Protoss because air/coloss or air/templar deathball > rest.
So right now it is either losing to people hiding their units in their base and then pushing out with you having no time to react, or losing to an invincible deathball that you absolutely cannot seem to prevent with an early timing push.
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On January 01 2011 02:41 the p00n wrote:
I played the iCCup map 'Enigma' many times in 1v1 now (it's a big map) and I have to say it is not much more balanced than a blizzard map. Terran cannot counter muta harass because the bases are 1. so far apart and 2. so plentiful, and Zerg cannot counter Protoss because air/coloss or air/templar deathball > rest.
So right now it is either losing to people hiding their units in their base and then pushing out with you having no time to react, or losing to an invincible deathball that you absolutely cannot seem to prevent with an early timing push.
Enigma was cut from the map pool, probably for that very reason. I'd say that the remaining ICCUP maps are more balanced than it, and certainly better than Blizzard maps.
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On December 26 2010 01:09 Ragoo wrote:
lol this is like the tenth or so thread about the bad Blizzard maps lately, and I see map complaints everywhere... yet it doesn't seem like anything will change: Please SC2 Community, unite and DO something!
map threads are so common now please do something, there mmust be a representative af blizz on TL?
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On January 01 2011 02:41 the p00n wrote:
I played the iCCup map 'Enigma' many times in 1v1 now (it's a big map) and I have to say it is not much more balanced than a blizzard map. Terran cannot counter muta harass because the bases are 1. so far apart and 2. so plentiful, and Zerg cannot counter Protoss because air/coloss or air/templar deathball > rest.
So right now it is either losing to people hiding their units in their base and then pushing out with you having no time to react, or losing to an invincible deathball that you absolutely cannot seem to prevent with an early timing push.
death balls you can fight by throwing a 200/200 army at it and then when they show up at your base defeat them with another 200/200 army. Or abuse the immobility, depending on if you want to play with brute force or brains.
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On December 30 2010 07:14 Dental Floss wrote:
b) Steppes of War is such a bad map that top level zergs are drone rushing ever TvZ. There was a map in BW that was so bad that everyone would worker rush; does anyone remember that? It was seriously tiny with really square unnatural looking bases. I think it was used for 2v2 format.
You are talking about Blood Bath. Sadly it was one of Blizzard's 'better' maps, which doesn't say much. It was a lot of fun to play though from time to time if you had good players, but most of the time it would be BBS builds with scvs :o
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On December 26 2010 04:48 5unrise wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2010 04:30 kYem wrote:On December 26 2010 02:57 synapse wrote:
All-ins are definitely extremely strong because of the map sizes, but with Warp Gates I feel like changing the sizes of maps would make a difference in ZvT but not any of the P matchups... and i feel that changing map sizes will kill terran.... or at least will change play style to super defensive however knowing late game terran power it's still feel like a bad choice. P obviously dont really care that much about that as they can reinforce instantly to the battle. while zerg have creep which is like stimmed units without additional attack rate. Its just mean that zerg will get that creep bonus will be a HUGE factor on bigger maps + safer expos and queens will create and imbalance here.... people really forget about queens then they make a comparison to broodwar. I honestly can't see why people harbour the perception that T lategame is weak. Okay, it maybe weak if you compare it to protoss lategame, but protoss lategame, storms/ colossi/ voidray is just imba anyways. Whether zerg is strong relative to terran in the lategame would have to depend completely on what happened during the midgame, and with that the early game. If Terran failed a timing push that is designed to cripple zerg in the midgame then of course terran will be vastly behind, since that means he will have less bases and tech as he put everything into that push. If terrans early game rush fails, same story. If terrans fails these, zerg can drone up unhindered and have a large advantage. But if terran plays with a macro mindset, splitting the map while steadily building up that tank count, terran is perfectly able to compete with zerg in macro games. Remeber that although theoretically zerg can make nothing but drones if terran dont push, no zerg on earth would do that as it is a stupidly risky thing to do since the smallest amount of pressure kills you. A larger map would definitely not disbalance the tvz matchup, and in fact would make it more balanced as zergs dont autolose on x maps. Remember, terran's lategame is still more cost-efficient than zerg's (Ultras?), and any discrepency would arise only due to base counts, which terran in sc2 can easily hold and secure due to new mechanics like planetary fortresses. Dropship harass is also far more effective than sc1 due to lack of scourges, and dropship play in sc1 is already ridiculously powerful
@5unrise
i couldnt agree more as a high ranked random diamond player. everytime i see a terran QQ about late game tvz i shake my head. usualy T think they are underpowered late game because like u said. they all in without doing enough damage then enter late game to far behind. with a macro mindset terran can keep up with zerg no problem late game. quick tech switches can fuck terran pretty good. if for example its a 200 army swap and the terran planned ahaead and built extra production buildings they can tech switch damn fast too though. i find late game terran requires much more apm then zerg does though. and is a little harder to play (i think this is just me though) . i was watching gisado KOTH lastnight and i watched all 3 days. it amazed me how much one base play i seen from terran. some games the terran wouldnt expand till he ran out of minerals at his main. against a toss who played better contained better and still lost even though he expanded 5 minutes before the terran. i had to give my head a shake. end score was something like 60k for the terran vs 80k for the toss and the terran still won. been thinking about maining as terran. one base play is funner if u average 100-150 apm. compared to late game 250 apm. bigger maps would increase the skill cap for the pro's and be better for everyone!!!! way more "wow" moments
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@Jayrod (post below this one)
although i agree with you about how he needs to improve his zerg play doesnt change the fact if the maps were better it would make for much more entertaining play. as well as a much higher skill cap.
nothing funner to watch then a late game TvZ where the terrran goes mass raven... so funny watching the zerg mutas splatter all over the place and turrets owning mineral lines. so awesome.
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Do you not understand how easy it is to 1a crush any attack that you know is coming with ample time? If they make all the maps like cross positions metalopolis i dont see zerg as able to lose at all... even at low levels.
You need to understand that attacking at all is a gigantic risk. I think the real reason you are not improving is you have hit your plateau... I can say this with conviction based on the tone of your post. Do you really think not missing a larva inject for 40 minutes should entitle you to a win every game? Do you think that your perceived subtlety of using hydra against ultralisk means you should be a 3k diamond player?
Forget the maps... believe it or not, there are other zergs playing on the same maps with higher points than you... how about you concern yourself with how they are doing better than you on the same exact maps your are subjected to? Find out how they are finding success in the same map pool.
It seems to me that you are the type of guy to get on these forums here and getting into an argument about whether its more efficient to build the hatch at 13 or 14... To that I say, who cares? What you lack is either game sense or micro... At about 2500 diamond is when there aren't severe gaps in macro between players... you will get the most out of it. You are missing out on the little things... its not the maps, its you.
While they may not all be great maps for zergs.. your steppes of war is my scrap station. Ive taken to just trying random shit on scrap against zerg because the game is theirs to lose. The difference is, im not sitting here complaining about how impossible it is to pressure a zerg on that map and how easy it is for them to just drone up. I know it is, and since id rather grow as a player than complain or 4 gate every single game, im going to keep trying new things... things extricated from having solid macro.
Honestly solid macro is the first thing you would be expected to master as a zerg... there are so many fewer variables in zerg macro than the other two races. Those few variables are maybe more important, at least in the very early game, but there is alot less to think about.. .Its how many drones can i build and still not die... thats in a nutshell what it means to play zerg up until the 6 minute mark. Theres nothing clever about it and the only complicated question is, did i make enough units... and based on what i scouted could i have reasonably known. game sense game sense game sense.... a sense that true gamers have. Game sense can carry you to your level with less than perfect macro. Perfect macro can also carry you to your level.... if you combined both of those things you get to the next highest level. Just accept like the rest of us that you're just not that fucking good quite yet and work to improve without being so vindictive
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On January 01 2011 03:08 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2010 07:14 Dental Floss wrote:
b) Steppes of War is such a bad map that top level zergs are drone rushing ever TvZ. There was a map in BW that was so bad that everyone would worker rush; does anyone remember that? It was seriously tiny with really square unnatural looking bases. I think it was used for 2v2 format. You are talking about Blood Bath. Sadly it was one of Blizzard's 'better' maps, which doesn't say much. It was a lot of fun to play though from time to time if you had good players, but most of the time it would be BBS builds with scvs :o
worker rushing and 2v2? I'm pretty sure he's talking about DMZ.
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Maps and balance aside, I truly doubt that a 2,5k Zerg off racing as Terran can beat a 3000+ Zerg player 7-2 until I see it with my own eyes. Basically the difference in your skill should be so huge that if he somehow survives the 10min. mark - even through excessive turtling - you're screwed.
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I have a hard time believing people who say claim imbalance based on something so general as map size. If you struggle on a certain map here is what you can do. Firstly you can obviously thumbs it down and play it less.
Secondly, if there is actual imbalance, you will see it being exploited almost universally by professionals with great success, even lower tier professionals being higher tier professionals using the same exploit.
Looking at Steppes of War in comments, player sentiment, and casting etc. Currently when listening to amateur and mid-high level players talk about Steppes, the same thing is repeated over and over again, Zerg is so disadvantaged on Steppes of War its going to be sooo easy for X race player to win. Yet in Steppes of War replay listings Zerg wins on Steppes more often than not. My advice is to watch the replays of Zerg winning on the map only, copy what their early game build order was, and how they reacted to what they scouted. Timing attacks, unit positioning etc.
Even when taking to account the "achievement factor" where Steppes of War Zerg wins would be more posted. If imbalance was actually discovered yet there should be far fewer Zerg wins. And watching the games where Zerg wins/loss, a wide array of strategies are used against Zerg, rather than some dominating single strategy on the same map that would support a closer look on the balance of the map.
These kinds of threads are starting to get really annoying for top players to read or even post anything to. I know this sounds cruel but please leave balance discussions for people who actually play on a level where imbalance can be found. Complaining that in US Diamond 1v1 if Protoss Warps in a Void Ray between the 5:10 and 6:40 minute mark they have a 65% chance of winning is stupid because it doesn't say anything about real balance.
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EPT
