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On January 19 2011 18:11 Frugalicious wrote:Show nested quote +[B]On January 19 2011 18:02 jamesmax wrote:
If your sc name is the same as this your stats are enough to discredit yourself, please move on before commenting anymore. You have posted nothing but your subjective opinion and false information along with poorly articulated arguments. Why do you even bother to post? Also, you are derailing the topic due to your pettiness and ignorance. On Topic: Zerg have the insane mobility to take advantage of the vast spaces in these new maps and the limited early harassment options affected by the new maps will only further push it into a passive macro game. Though it seems Zerg favored, perhaps the GSL is trying to balance the overall results? If there exist T favored maps and P favored maps, perhaps there should be a balance of more Z favored maps? A compilation of neutral maps and race favored maps is perhaps their aim? Though without a counter-pick system, it doesn't seem as strategic and more luck based when it comes to the map selections for the GSL. If I recall correctly, didn't some of the BW leagues create race favored maps to balance the results of the match-ups?
Couldn't care less if they nerfed zerg bring on larger maps. Not that I think any of the races are largely imba I don't care for balance at all I just want better maps. All my information is not false why don't you learn to play?
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This is the kind of incorrect reasoning which leads to crappy balance/maps in the first place. I cannot disagree with the OP enough on this issue.
OP: You say that zerg can pump drones all day in response to attacks and that these maps are zerg imbalanced. I'm going to show that that's completely 100% incorrect.
First and foremost:
-Your assumptions rest on the fact that zerg will outeco and outmacro T and P.
-You believe that Z automatically wins in larger macro games where T and P cannot be super aggressive early
-Your argument is entirely based on the idea that if T and P are aggressive that Z will have enough time to drone up to crush the attack.
Lets tackle these 1 by 1 shall we:
Zerg will outeco and outmacro T and P. WRONG!
While zerg does have the ability to make large amounts of drones, it does not do so very well until 2 hatch/2 queen are out. In addition, zerg production is bursty, so while it seems like they can drone up a ton at once, in reality they're not droning up any more than a 5 hatch hydra build in BW would allow them to, it's just in large batches. Sure, perhaps if zerg made nothing but drones until 200 supply they'd get there way faster than T or P, but what good would that do them?
Try something as P. Open nexus first and chrono nothing but probes constantly while setting up for whatever midgame play you have in mind. Go check at 10 minutes how many probes you have vs zerg's dronecount. This is what you can do as P on GSL maps, and you won't see zerg be vastly ahead from it.
Here's another fact to consider. Zerg mines less minerals per base than T or P. Test it for yourself if you don't believe me, but a fully saturated Z base yields about 60-100 mineral per minutes less than protoss, and due to mule supersaturation terran 2 base is nearly even with Z 3 base. Once T gets a high yield 3rd, T economy soars to unmatchable heights!
But, lets say that players eco really hard for fear of over-committing to an attack and losing an army needlessly. Zerg expands and gets as much tech as possible. T expands and builds up a massive tank count. P expands and techs up while building up caster energy. What happens next?
Zerg automatically wins macro games vs T and P. WRONG!
Zerg armies suck. This isn't anything new. Zerg is designed to be a swarm race of less efficient units, right? Wait... hold on! You're saying that lurkers being able to kill 10x their supply/cost in bio is inefficient? Defilers making a single ling capable of breaking a terran push is inefficient? Scourge being able to trade 25/75 for almost any air unit in the game is inefficient?
People are not yet used to the fact that zerg lategame sucks. They are horribly inefficient and only rely on the enemy being unprepared. Every single zerg unit is awful at large scale engagements, and every single zerg unit is too costly for what it does, even at hive tech.
This means zerg needs "more army" to go head to head with T and P. Lets look at the supply costs of zerg units though: Hydras, roach, mutas, infestors - all 2 food. Ultralisks and broodlords are 6 food a piece! Only zerglings and banelings are .5 food and are therefore reasonably food-efficient. Have you ever seen ling/bling do anything to mass tank or mass colossus? Storms and blue flame hellions? What about air? Zerg can't win games off ling/bling alone, but any other unit makes their maxed armies even weaker!
What does this mean? In any engagement lategame, zerg has to have the bigger army, but a bigger economy to reinforce faster. How? You can't do it. Zerg will automatically lose every single engagement if he tries to play with an 80 food army to get 120 drones to outmacro a terran with 70 scvs and 4 OCs spamming mules. What if zerg cuts drones to open up space for army. Well, then you have 150 food of zerg army and 50 drones. P and T might trade armies or even lose the first engagement, but you certainly won't have the money to instantly remake a 150 food army. Add that with zerg's inefficiency when attacking and you'll never beat a T or P who has some good backup defense (cannons/PFs/warpin/turrets) and some good production.
The truth is that Protoss will never ever ever lose a lategame vs a zerg. All you have to do is get a brutal combo of archon/storm, gateway units, immortals, and voidrays. Heck, you can go for the allkill and get a mothership too, they work great! How is Z ever supposed to crack that ball, especially since you're basically running into neverending storms and zealots with warpin. P can instantly remax nonstop until he's at your main.
Zerg can drone up to crush any midgame timing attacks by T or P. Perhaps this one is true.
I will say that there is good reasoning which states that zerg should be able to handle any early/midgame aggression by T or P as long as they prepare right. Of course, isn't that ok? What makes T and P have to attack? Why would they attack? Could they not expand and play for lategame instead?
Say you have a nice marine/tank midgame ball, and zerg is starting to drone his 3rd. How would you deal with this as a terran? You could opt to attack and try to kill him. You see that very often in GSL games, bnet games, games from all skill levels. It seems like a logical thing to do, and in some cases it might still be a good option. However, what if instead you used that army to secure map control, and took a nice juicy high yield base, just like Jinro did vs Idra on Jungle Basin. Now suddenly zerg is playing from behind again and either has to continue expanding to take the lead, eventually hitting the stage where they have too much eco to ever win a direct fight, or they have to attack, and attacking into PFs/siege tanks is nearly impossible. You're forcing zerg into a lose/lose by not attacking, but instead forcing army in case you do attack, and then using that map control to take more bases.
It was ok for zerg to play the expand and eco game in BW because they had good lategame options, even borderline overpowered options. Plague, swarm, ultralisks, cracklings, superior mobility with ultraling, mass doom drops with swarm. Zerg lategame was the scariest thing for anyone to deal with in BW, not because they had so many units, but because their units were frighteningly strong. In SC2 when I see a hive, I just start making voidrays from 3 stargates and laugh my way to victory. There's nothing zerg can do lategame that scares me.
So in the end, who benefits the most from these GSL maps? Is zerg truly overpowered because of spawn larva? I don't believe so. I think zerg is forced to play allins and aggression by their very nature, and I don't believe these larger maps help zerg do that. In fact, I would argue that Protoss is completely broken on these large maps, and terran plays perhaps a bit differently, but retains a lot of its strengths.
Warpin is the only ability which ignores map distance. In effect, if you have pylons somewhere, you have an army there. Once lategame hits P can have upwards 12-20 or more warpgates. Sure, you saw that all the time in BW PvT, but remember that protoss had to walk those units across the map, and vs a T mech army they weren't very efficient either. With warpin storm how can gateway armies be thought of as weak? Zealot/templar is one of the scariest combos to deal with and you can stream it endlessly from any point on the map. Warpin also allows protoss to deal with any harass to far away expansions without dedicating units there. In effect, they don't need map control to defend harassment. In BW you had to spam cannons like crazy in order to avoid losing expansions, and even then, tanks and dark swarm meant you still needed map control.
What about terran? Tanks are still the most fearsome unit in ground to ground combat. In large enough numbers, tanklines are virtually impenetrable by anything other than mass immortals. Tanks are immobile though, but PFs are not. PFs+turrets+ supply depot walls around said PFs offer an antiharassment power which is unrivaled. Terran can simply expand and use stationary defense to keep his expansions alive vs small attacks, and use his large tank-based army to deal with the larger army. Perhaps against protoss this isn't such a bad thing. After all, protoss has carriers, immortals, colossi, and can actually go head to head with the tank ball. What does zerg do? Nothing really. Broodlords in theory, but 1 viking and those broodlords will do nothing. How hard is it to park some vikings over a turret line?
I haven't made a decision as to TvP on GSL maps. People seem to feel that protoss is too strong, and certainly I'm inclined to believe that, at least in lategame. However, T drop play is very strong on larger maps and as the expansion count rises so does the power of drop play.
With 100% certainty I can conclude that PvZ is broken beyond fixing. TvZ is also very bad, though maybe not quite as bad as PvZ. Zerg lategame doesn't have the efficiency and flexibility it needs to.
My ending comment will be that the GSL maps are the best thing that could happen to SC2. They show us the limitations and flaws in game design that the bad Blizzard maps were hiding since early beta. Because Blizzard chose awful maps to balance on, they have achieved awful balance on other maps. You cannot treat these two pillars separately. Maps and balance go hand in hand, and Blizzard chose to ignore that simple fact. At least this is a wake up call for them to fix SC2 for HotS.
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The fact is, that this is just a theory.
Just like how zerg's have been playing on Delta/Steppes/Close Pos. Meta/Lost temple, and have adapted the best they could, Terran and Protoss must go through the same trial of oversized maps to see really how its effects the match ups and trends. Just like we have done with the maps previously listed, from our extended period of time playing them, I think everyone can agree that those maps are Imbalanced.
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God damnit, these maps are really fun. Me and my protoss friend played on these maps and only thing we concluded that they are a lot more fun then the current maps. We didn't notice any difference for us more then that we had to bind all controll groups to be able to play efficent.
These maps should go in I think, some of them are really better then most maps in the map pool. And just look back in sc/bw, large maps didn't hinder a mech army back then on large maps. (Yeah different game I know, but mech was slow back then, mech is slow right now. Just pointing out that to make an example.)
So dont see how a slow mech army as off back in the days/compared to now are going to make everything super imbalanced all off a sudden ? Seeing on shakuras as a balanced map. Even Jinro said himself that on close pos it's a terran favored, and cross pos it's even game. (Correct me if I'm wrong). And that is the largest map at the moment so.
Just my thoughts.
EDIT:Let's just see how it plays out, if it turns out to be so out of balanced it's amazingly bad, then so be it. But this could very well be the thing that makes a really freaking good game, into something perfect as in sc/bw had it. Once again, just my thoughts.
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Nice post [Eternal]Phoenix.
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I don't see how larger maps gives Zerg any advantage unless all the terran and protoss players know how to do is 2 rax pressure bunker and 4 gate warp even if that u can still warp units in anywhere just hide your plyon. Now with these maps 3rd/4th exps are much closer so protoss / terran can exp safer then lets say any blizzard map which. and drops/plyons at far exps can still cause problems for any zerg player. I don't want to say the game is imba for any race until there are better maps. and people actually learn how to counter armies i feel like we get caught up in saying oh this is imba blah blah blah I personally would like to see plyon wall and bunker wall removed from the game
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On January 19 2011 12:36 mytent wrote:
It's true.
I beat a diamond player on one of teh GSL maps. I was playing zerg (I rarely play them) P.S I'm in GOLD.
These maps need to be balanced a bit better. They're FAR TOO large.
case closed.
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On January 19 2011 20:29 danl9rm wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 12:36 mytent wrote:
It's true.
I beat a diamond player on one of teh GSL maps. I was playing zerg (I rarely play them) P.S I'm in GOLD.
These maps need to be balanced a bit better. They're FAR TOO large. case closed.
Thats actually pretty compelling by hte Gold player.
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Behold my awesome Mspaint skills.
![[image loading]](http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/3184/junglebassin3.th.jpg)
To the left, we have the current jungle bassin.
To the right, we have a larger map. Still jungle bassin. Stil the same numbers of expansions.
Still the same rush distance, still the same size for chokes, and so on.
But by being wider, the map is no longer made up completely of chokepoints.
Opens up a lot of interesting options.
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sry op but you put no effort in your post. you just claim certain things and consider them as true. thats not the way to go.
put some more effort in this. backup it up with data and replays.
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Larger maps makes Mutalisks, Phoenixes and warp-ins 10 times stronger
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On January 19 2011 20:39 debasers wrote:
Larger maps makes Mutalisks, Phoenixes and warp-ins 10 times stronger
10 times is too much, but they will have a better synergy with the map. Slow units will become less useful on larger maps. You cant retreat and defend so easily.
Abuse of immobility will be more the key to success.
Ever got speedlings in your base, at the early stages of the game and had to watch how your units sneaked slowly to catch even one ling ?
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On January 19 2011 20:37 TehForce wrote:
sry op but you put no effort in your post. you just claim certain things and consider them as true. thats not the way to go.
put some more effort in this. backup it up with data and replays.
The OP is one of the smartest foreign map makers out there atm. This is his opinion based on experience and intelligence. I would say you should take his post a bit more seriously. Even if you don't like what he has to say.
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On January 19 2011 20:39 debasers wrote:
Larger maps makes Mutalisks, Phoenixes and warp-ins 10 times stronger
u forgot drop play from terran :/
if you have more bases you can be more easily be dropped...
really before anybody can conclude any balance issues on bigger maps they should be played in tournaments like gsl.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES50118 Posts
On January 19 2011 20:31 morimacil wrote:Behold my awesome Mspaint skills. To the left, we have the current jungle bassin. To the right, we have a larger map. Still jungle bassin. Stil the same numbers of expansions. Still the same rush distance, still the same size for chokes, and so on. But by being wider, the map is no longer made up completely of chokepoints. Opens up a lot of interesting options.
move the spawns to 3 and 9 and you have a spitting image of heartbreak ridge.lol
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Larger maps will see a growth in the use of Nydus Worms. As a protoss I am always so afraid of getting my 3rd and 4th nydus'd because of the relative immobility of a toss deathball. But yes, I still welcome that, it's gonna give zerg a better chance to play to a macro game, and force people like me to start thinking of safeguards against new zerg strats.
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I think its too early to make such a judgement call. You present sound arguments, but we'll have to wait for next season of GSL to get proper sample size&quality.
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Win 
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Because of spawn larvae, Z is going to be quite OP on larger maps. Of course T and P could develop builds to punish the zerg, but the fact that Z can stack larvae makes them far more superior late-game than T or P. Macro Terrans an Protosses are gonna have a hard time firghting a macro Zerg on maps bigger than LT or Shakuras.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://img651.imageshack.us/i/junglebassin3.jpg/)
![[image loading]](http://i1046.photobucket.com/albums/b461/ImSkeptical/Mapsarebalanced.jpg)
