|
On July 22 2012 14:54 Lagcraft wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2012 11:25 HobitSeducer wrote:
Racial mechanics does not give Terrans enough reward for having alot of bases / alot of income
Problem: The mechanics for Zerg and Protoss translate well into the late-game. For Protoss the ability to warp-in gives the ability to instantly reinforce their army anywhere on the map, combine this with chrono boost and a Protoss player has an acceptable way of quickly converting their bank (early game advantage) into an army (late game advantage). The Zerg can pool larvae, combine this with the ability to build (almost) any unit from these larvae and a competent Zerg player has a great mechanic that translates their advantage in bases into an advantage in army.
Don't get me wrong, an advantage in bases is always preferable - no matter which race you play - and yes, Terran can of course build more production buildings. My personal feeling is that there should be an easy mechanic that rewards a player with good economy. Good play should be rewarded and as I see it the mechanics in place for Zerg and Protoss accomplishes this by also extending well into the late game.
Solution: Some new mechanic that kicks in at 200/200. My first idea was drop-pods but I would prefer it to be someting "unique" to Terran. My suggestion at this time is to give Terran the ability to pre-build. Basicly Terran production buildings would be able to produce even when the terran is maxed. The unit wouldn't emerge until there is enough supply for it but when the supply does get available it would emerge instantaneously.
I have no idea how good or bad this mechanic would be and, yes, it is a variation on "warp-in" (any units, not any place). Hopefully it would at least feel different. This is just an idea, there are probably more creative solutions that would be more fun and fit better into the game. The important thing is not this specific solution but the problem.
Side Effects: Terran will get a stronger late-game, I am quite honestly not qualified to speculate on whether it would be OP or UP.
Edit: Changed the name from "over-cue" to "pre-build" because it made more sense. Well. Let's get back to the post at hand, because it's pointless to argue with people like Ziggitz. By refusing to acknowledge a problem with the overall structure of the game, people like him "stagnate the evolution of the game", as said by OP. Gas banking is not the problem. It's an imperfection, just like the way that toss and zerg both bank way too many minerals in the late game. Improper macro and micro mechanics are always going to be around. You can't be perfect. Anyway, this idea I do believe has some viability. It would definitely need to be tested. This kind of buff reminds me of a post I saw on this site somewhere. The poster's belief was that instead of nerfing something that caused an advantage, instead buff everything else so that everything has that advantage. This type of development would make the game much more interesting than, say, getting rid of larva / warpgates to make it more of a fair playing field. Some may say that then people could make tons of starports and pre-build tons of battlecruisers or something. But honestly, protoss can do the same by making tons of warpgates and zerg can do that by stacking tons of larva. The only real problem with this idea would be getting the overall community, as well as blizzard, to see the logic in it.
The issues of terran's starports tech are
1, raven is insider joke within terran's community; 2, bc needs either range or speed and esp immunity to Neural Parasite to work; 3, the only decent non-fancy-toys: viking and medivac doesn't need tons of starports, the brutal reality we learned is that you will die if you build too many of these two kinds
|
On July 22 2012 12:26 Shiori wrote:
I actually can't believe people are trying to debate that the different between Taeja winning and losing is taking guys off gas in the lategame.
They're getting pretty desperate, aren't they? Guess "build more Ravens" went out of style. Then again, after Losira suicided his 200/200 broodlord/infestor army and was 10k down in units lost, this Ziggitz guy said that it was fine for him to win anyway, cause Zerg doesn't have cost-effective units and it makes sense for them to lose more compared to a Terran. Who also had 4k gas, which could've been minerals if he just pulled workers out of geysers! So Ziggitz probably plays some different game, and only happened upon the SC2 forum by accident.
|
I find it amazing that marauders can balance at all, considering their bulk, top-heaviness and tendancy to do drugs while running at top speed across alien surfaces.
Those freaks are acrobats. Super balance right there...
|
Quick question, I'm new to this forum and since this thread seemed like the proper place I posted some thoughts I've had on balance and mechanics (here) with the hopes that it might spark some discussion.
It seems, however, that this thread might not be the right place as most of the past 3-4 pages have been dedicated to discussing a single game. Would it be okay to open a separate thread on this subject or are balance discussions / ideas strictly to be kept here?
Edit: changed URL to proper link
|
On July 22 2012 21:07 HobitSeducer wrote:Quick question, I'm new to this forum and since this thread seemed like the proper place I posted some thoughts I've had on balance and mechanics ( here) with the hopes that it might spark some discussion. It seems, however, that this thread might not be the right place as most of the past 3-4 pages have been dedicated to discussing a single game. Would it be okay to open a separate thread on this subject or are balance discussions / ideas strictly to be kept here? Edit: changed URL to proper link
You have to keep them here. Any other thread will be closed if it is about balance or ideas for the game.
|
On July 22 2012 14:19 Chaggi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2012 13:54 imBLIND wrote:
Why are people arguing about resource management when it's hopeless for a Terran to even try and match the production capabilities of the larvae mechanic? Trading bits of your army, as a Terran, is not favorable for the Terran past a certain point, and so both sides will start putting resources in the bank eventually. So all this lategame bullshit about banking gas instead of minerals is retarded because it's going to happen anyways. And unless you're Jesus, you can't turn gas into minerals.
The fact is that Terrans need to start trading with something more expensive, but that period of time to transition towards a higher-tech army, say, battlecruisers, is too long for the Terrans to do without sacrificing something extremely critical and the timing in-game is way too small to do it anyways. Plus, you're trading units that are time-inefficient because of the larvae mechanic.
And then the theory counter to this would be that zergs would just overmake corruptors, kill the BC's, make broodlords, and we're back at square one. Take any Terran tech path, and the counter is always something the zerg "over makes" in order to get back to some broodlord/infestor/ultra/whatever composition they want. And there is absolutely nothing capable of stopping the zerg from over producing units.
Hence, terrans are sort of in a safety rut where experimenting is basically futile and they are just trying to outplay the zerg before they get comfortable. Blaming this on "well they have a lot of gas" is retarded and pointing the finger at the wrong culprit. There aren't any new and reliable timings that have been discovered as of yet, so until then, Zerg is going to have a generally easier time in ZvT.
Because people feel like that if they address points where pros make a mistake in a game, they can justify why a pro lost rather than see how strong / imba zerg is.
This seems to be the mindset of every Terran here. Major macro mistake, no problem, lost because Zerg is sick inbalanced.
Why could Losira afford lose 10k more resources? Because Taeja let him mine those minerals.
Taeja also didn't lose because of the army comp. Mass marine vs ultrabanelinginfestor. Fucking imba shit, marines didn't win!!!
|
On July 22 2012 21:48 Pinna wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2012 14:19 Chaggi wrote:On July 22 2012 13:54 imBLIND wrote:
Why are people arguing about resource management when it's hopeless for a Terran to even try and match the production capabilities of the larvae mechanic? Trading bits of your army, as a Terran, is not favorable for the Terran past a certain point, and so both sides will start putting resources in the bank eventually. So all this lategame bullshit about banking gas instead of minerals is retarded because it's going to happen anyways. And unless you're Jesus, you can't turn gas into minerals.
The fact is that Terrans need to start trading with something more expensive, but that period of time to transition towards a higher-tech army, say, battlecruisers, is too long for the Terrans to do without sacrificing something extremely critical and the timing in-game is way too small to do it anyways. Plus, you're trading units that are time-inefficient because of the larvae mechanic.
And then the theory counter to this would be that zergs would just overmake corruptors, kill the BC's, make broodlords, and we're back at square one. Take any Terran tech path, and the counter is always something the zerg "over makes" in order to get back to some broodlord/infestor/ultra/whatever composition they want. And there is absolutely nothing capable of stopping the zerg from over producing units.
Hence, terrans are sort of in a safety rut where experimenting is basically futile and they are just trying to outplay the zerg before they get comfortable. Blaming this on "well they have a lot of gas" is retarded and pointing the finger at the wrong culprit. There aren't any new and reliable timings that have been discovered as of yet, so until then, Zerg is going to have a generally easier time in ZvT.
Because people feel like that if they address points where pros make a mistake in a game, they can justify why a pro lost rather than see how strong / imba zerg is. This seems to be the mindset of every Terran here. Major macro mistake, no problem, lost because Zerg is sick inbalanced. Why could Losira afford lose 10k more resources? Because Taeja let him mine those minerals. Taeja also didn't lose because of the army comp. Mass marine vs ultrabanelinginfestor. Fucking imba shit, marines didn't win!!!
Two basic problems with what you're saying:
1) Zerg is given a free pass into midgame/lategame now because all 2base pressure is easily deflected by the mass Queen build. So no, Taeja didn't have any option but to let Losira mine those minerals. He had no choice but to open passively if he wanted to play a macro game.
2) There's really no Terran army comp that is good against a Zerg with that kind of economy.
|
On July 21 2012 21:51 Coffee Zombie wrote:Reverting the Queen buff probably wouldn't make people all-in more often. If the buff is reverted, Zerg players have to invest something into defense again - some gas (Roaches), lots of larvae (Lings) or attention and time (Crawler reroots), so they end up playing fair instead of broken - the whole point of the Hellion expand was to force us to play fair - and make no mistake, unhindered Zerg economy is broken. It was ok beforehand because you needed to outplay the opponent to access it. That isn't the case anymore when Queens are better in combat than Roaches, cost no gas or Larvae and don't need that much micro. And then you get mass creep to nerf midgame pushes. It's easy and standardizes hilariously outrageous greed. I remember when insane creep spread was impressive. I remember being impressed by very greedy Lair and Hive timings. Not anymore. Because all that shit is safe and boring. What the hell is going on if you need an all-in to punish completely ludicrous greed? Not good games, of that I'm sure.* Buffing the Terran lategame a bit is a good idea, but for goodness' sake don't leave it at that. The game is already horrible to watch because it's so binary - as Jinro put it in a comment about toss, you choose to be a rabid monkey on speed or a sedated sloth. The middleground is evaporating because noncommittal pressure has been nerfed to hell and back. And it makes for some terribly dull games. So, if you want to keep Zerg a bit safer? (Unnecessary IMHO, there never was a problem, but anyway  Revert the Queen buff, perhaps revert some Terran early game nerfs. And then help those Zerg investments in defense work better in some way. The key is just thatb defending slows the Zerg economy back to sanity and that the defense investment allows Z to fend off the Terran harassment on equal terms. *Addendum: More than an SC2 enthusiast, I'm an MtG player. I like combo because hey, broken things feel fun. One thing I've noticed over the years is that straight up broken shit stays fun only for a while - when you're still amazed that omfg how is this even allowed. Then it becomes so very dull. The one deck I've stayed with over the years is a concoction that can occasionally do hilariously broken things, but usually ends up playing fair in an attempt to stay alive and then sneak the brokenness in somewhere as a finishing blow or as a calculated risk. This keeps the temptation and fun of brokenness (in SC2, the unhindered Zerg economy) but delivers actual games. Plus doing ridiculous things feels like an accomplishment. As another way to think about it, imagine if Marines automatically did the MKP thing and beat banelings? They can do that already, but it requires good calls and micro to do it. It's a ridiculous thing as a reward of great play. Standardizing antibling splits would just make that boring and stupid-feeling instead of amazing and the feeling of greatness would just wear off in short order.
Great post this! I gues the biggest problem of SC2 is that games are very predictable, relatively speaking, and thus borring.
EDIT: and i blame Blizzard for this with their way of patching the game. Wander how the game would have looked if we had half decent maps in BETA, when most of the changes took place.
|
On July 22 2012 11:33 Iron_ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2012 11:21 Ziggitz wrote:On July 22 2012 11:10 Iron_ wrote:On July 22 2012 10:54 Ziggitz wrote:On July 22 2012 10:05 sieksdekciw wrote:On July 22 2012 09:50 Ziggitz wrote:
When it comes to late game Terrans are still in the stone age in terms of strategy and mechanics. Yep, terran mechanics are famous for being bad. After all, it is very easy to split, stim stutter, drop on 3 places at once, split vikings, focus fire with siege tanks, split split split. It is very easy indeed compared to a move, press t multiple times. I don't really know how zergs can do that. SO mechanically demanding. Stephano is GOD. By the way: USA and ROOT gaming AHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA Mechanics involves actually knowing what you're supposed to be doing. Banking thousands of gas you're never going to spend is bad mechanics. If you have 6 scv's mining gas you don't need for the roughly ten minutes it takes to bank that kind of gas, you could have expanded and mined more minerals for a bigger bio comp or actually spent on high quality units. Have you been watching the summer arena? Every TvZ set the Terran is banking 2000+ gas at least once. This is something every high level Terran is doing right now. Taeja just lost a game to Losira after banking 4000 fucking gas and he is considered an incredibly good TvZ player. Do you think perhaps if he had been able to max out and engage several minutes earlier by mining more minerals and less gas he might have won? Or perhaps he could have remaxed faster if he had 2 extra factories an extra starport and a few more barracks that he could have easily afforded and still have the bank to produce from them if he had had 3000 more minerals instead of gas. Yeah I'm going to point out that Terrans haven't mastered the basics of resource allocation late game because they haven't. OK, I finally chimed into this thread a few posts back (mentioned the really silly win Lorisa just had vs Taeja on entombed after sacrificing his maxed tier 3 army), and one of the things I was talking about is how zergs are trying for this argument that Terrans don't know how to play. Here above is what we need to curtail somehow. We have a bunch of average ladder zerg players that have the audacity to say that professional Terrans do not know the basics of how to play this game. Lets think about that for a second. Average players (see above, what I quoted), inexplicably stating that PRO TERRANS have no idea how to play. This is their argument. This is how they are trying to prove that zerg is perfectly balanced and it is simply the fact that Terran pro's are idiots and refuse to learn mechanics and learn proper unit comp. You know what I find incredibly ironic about this? In the early days of this game, it was a common thought process that balancing this game is really hard because of the Terran skill cap, and how *better skilled terran players* are yucking things up for the regular Terran players. But sure, lets just pretend that all those Terran players are trained chimps now. They are not playing for their own livelihood or anything like that. Good plan. Zerg is balanced. Sold. Are you fucking dense? What master plan did Taeja have banking 4k gas? Are you not sold on the basic premise that gathering resource you cannot spend is fucking stupid? Is it lost on you that there were SCV's mining gas that could have been mining usable minerals instead for a long fucking time? Did it occur to you that by watching a few replays it's incredibly easy to see where the gas bank starts to grow and figure out when to stop adding on more gas geysers in order to max out minutes faster than you can if you didn't waste all that mining time? I fucking give up on this thread. Dear average ladder zerg player who likes to call Terran pro's noobs who don't know how to play to justify his races current state of balance: 1) Once you have 16-20 SCVS on any one mineral patch, it is useless to put more on there because you gain no benefit, and it is *better to have extra gas than zero extra minerals*. His mineral patches were saturated. He could not gain extra bases because of ling runbys. I am fairly sure he is a tiny bit better than you and understands the game at least close to as well as you do (although I am not certain, I am quickly learning in this thread that average zerg ladder players are actually masters of Terran mechanics and intelligence). 2) In SC2, when a race is maxed, it banks minerals and gas because you can not spend it. (Although admittedly, I do not play zerg so I am not privy to some possible ways to spend thousands of minerals and gas on smart things while I am not allowed to build units, I will ask my local average zerg ladder player for advice on that). 3) Lorisa had plenty of minerals and gas banked also. What does this tell us? Clearly nothing, because as a zerg player his brain receptors fire at a higher rate than us trained chimp terrans, and he had a perfectly clear plan to spend all of that in a perfectly efficient manner. I am sorry I ever mentioned this. 4) Please think about what you are saying. Seriously, just read through your posts slowly and read them. You are calling out professional gamers and saying they do not understand the game. I have joked around a lot here, but please do think about that for a minute. It is like you saying Payton Manning sucks at football. It's just silly.
I'm not (totally) agreeing with ziggitz but you're wrong just as well.
1) You do gain benefits. Just a wild suggestion: Planetaries at your expands, extra orbitals in main or at a safe place, destroy extra scv's, get larger army, make bunkers, make production buildings at the front (another 'wall-in'),.... So many things to try, perhaps they've been tried, I don't know.
2) buildings
3) he's maxed obviously he's banking because zerg doesn't have to invest into production facilities. Zergs can spend minerals through making spines and remaking the drones (late game) when maxed. I'm assuming he had enough spines or didn't think he'd need more. Haven't watched the game. Gas banking is great for zerg for that instant remax.
It's an inherent mechanic of the race. You can nerf it, but stop complaining about zerg having the option.
4) You think professional gamers know everything? They're just people. There's a reason the 'metagame' (or w/e it's called) switches. If I went back in time and told programers of the metagame of today, they probably would have told me to fuck off, but I would have been right. An argument from authority isn't always true, you can hold respect to it, but don't assume it's always right. BW's metagame switched constantly even though no nerfs or buffs happened for years. Progamers don't know everything.
PS: To reiterate, I'm not supporting ziggitz' opinion.
And why were people telling me 10 pages ago that BC, raven can beat infestor broodlord corruptor 'just fine'. Then you have people telling me BC, raven is worthless. Then you have people telling me it's just a problem of getting out the units. Apparently Taeja is stacking 4 k gas towards the end game. Is it really impossible to make 3 starports, some tech labs and a fusion core during the mid game. Perhaps play more passively? Zerg isn't ending the game before broodlord infestor anyways which comes out around 17 minutes at the earliest.
Can someone inform me a bit why these options are 'impossible'?
I'm all for some small buffs to terran late game. It would be pretty sweat to see ravens and battlecruisers in action imo. What are your opinions on reverting the battlecruisers attack back to the way it was in BW? This would make them a lot better versus corruptors. Or giving ravens some sort of buff.
Terrans can still do damage in the early game or am I watching the wrong games? Marines, hellions, banshees can still do all kinds of damage. That reaper opening might have some future. Not enough damage?
Perhaps the openings should be able to do a bit more damage and somehow buff late game of terran.
|
On July 22 2012 22:07 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On July 21 2012 21:51 Coffee Zombie wrote:Reverting the Queen buff probably wouldn't make people all-in more often. If the buff is reverted, Zerg players have to invest something into defense again - some gas (Roaches), lots of larvae (Lings) or attention and time (Crawler reroots), so they end up playing fair instead of broken - the whole point of the Hellion expand was to force us to play fair - and make no mistake, unhindered Zerg economy is broken. It was ok beforehand because you needed to outplay the opponent to access it. That isn't the case anymore when Queens are better in combat than Roaches, cost no gas or Larvae and don't need that much micro. And then you get mass creep to nerf midgame pushes. It's easy and standardizes hilariously outrageous greed. I remember when insane creep spread was impressive. I remember being impressed by very greedy Lair and Hive timings. Not anymore. Because all that shit is safe and boring. What the hell is going on if you need an all-in to punish completely ludicrous greed? Not good games, of that I'm sure.* Buffing the Terran lategame a bit is a good idea, but for goodness' sake don't leave it at that. The game is already horrible to watch because it's so binary - as Jinro put it in a comment about toss, you choose to be a rabid monkey on speed or a sedated sloth. The middleground is evaporating because noncommittal pressure has been nerfed to hell and back. And it makes for some terribly dull games. So, if you want to keep Zerg a bit safer? (Unnecessary IMHO, there never was a problem, but anyway Revert the Queen buff, perhaps revert some Terran early game nerfs. And then help those Zerg investments in defense work better in some way. The key is just thatb defending slows the Zerg economy back to sanity and that the defense investment allows Z to fend off the Terran harassment on equal terms. *Addendum: More than an SC2 enthusiast, I'm an MtG player. I like combo because hey, broken things feel fun. One thing I've noticed over the years is that straight up broken shit stays fun only for a while - when you're still amazed that omfg how is this even allowed. Then it becomes so very dull. The one deck I've stayed with over the years is a concoction that can occasionally do hilariously broken things, but usually ends up playing fair in an attempt to stay alive and then sneak the brokenness in somewhere as a finishing blow or as a calculated risk. This keeps the temptation and fun of brokenness (in SC2, the unhindered Zerg economy) but delivers actual games. Plus doing ridiculous things feels like an accomplishment. As another way to think about it, imagine if Marines automatically did the MKP thing and beat banelings? They can do that already, but it requires good calls and micro to do it. It's a ridiculous thing as a reward of great play. Standardizing antibling splits would just make that boring and stupid-feeling instead of amazing and the feeling of greatness would just wear off in short order. Great post this! I gues the biggest problem of SC2 is that games are very predictable, relatively speaking, and thus borring. EDIT: and i blame Blizzard for this with their way of patching the game. Wander how the game would have looked if we had half decent maps in BETA, when most of the changes took place.
I actually blame Zerg players (well, the ones who complain about it, pros included) for the current state of the game. With pre-nerf Terran, even though they were overpowered, it was all on Blizzard and their bad decisions, and terrible maps. While with current Zerg, I really feel like this is what they wanted all along. Just read this thread, and a bunch of others, you'll see tons of Zerg players saying how much more fun ZvT is for them after the Queen buff. This is what they wanted all along.
Also, from a Protoss perspective, remember that one PTR where Blizzard wanted to significantly increase WG research time, and reduce unit build times out of gateways to compensate? Wouldn't that have made Protoss early game a lot more stable and interesting, in every matchup? But alas, without ever playing on the PTR, every Zerg (spearheaded by Idra) suddenly knew that 2 gate pressure was going to be impossible to defend. Thus, only Sentry build time was reduced, and Warpgates only got an additional 20 seconds to their research time.
Or VR speed, that one was pretty funny. Don't know why they even wanted to remove it, since it didn't feature in any high-level games (you could put it back in today and not much would change), but they did. So, as compensation, Fungal was supposed to not hit air. Alas, a few days of Zerg whine on b.net forums later, the Fungal nerf was retracted. VR speed was still removed. Guess Protosses didn't complain enough.
So yeah, I do feel like Zerg player managed to gain some form of influence over Blizzard's balancing process (if only by convincing them that anything which interferes with droning needs to go), and are partially responsible for the sorry state of vZ matchups we are currently experiencing.
|
|
|
On July 22 2012 23:00 Toadvine wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2012 22:07 Sapphire.lux wrote:On July 21 2012 21:51 Coffee Zombie wrote:Reverting the Queen buff probably wouldn't make people all-in more often. If the buff is reverted, Zerg players have to invest something into defense again - some gas (Roaches), lots of larvae (Lings) or attention and time (Crawler reroots), so they end up playing fair instead of broken - the whole point of the Hellion expand was to force us to play fair - and make no mistake, unhindered Zerg economy is broken. It was ok beforehand because you needed to outplay the opponent to access it. That isn't the case anymore when Queens are better in combat than Roaches, cost no gas or Larvae and don't need that much micro. And then you get mass creep to nerf midgame pushes. It's easy and standardizes hilariously outrageous greed. I remember when insane creep spread was impressive. I remember being impressed by very greedy Lair and Hive timings. Not anymore. Because all that shit is safe and boring. What the hell is going on if you need an all-in to punish completely ludicrous greed? Not good games, of that I'm sure.* Buffing the Terran lategame a bit is a good idea, but for goodness' sake don't leave it at that. The game is already horrible to watch because it's so binary - as Jinro put it in a comment about toss, you choose to be a rabid monkey on speed or a sedated sloth. The middleground is evaporating because noncommittal pressure has been nerfed to hell and back. And it makes for some terribly dull games. So, if you want to keep Zerg a bit safer? (Unnecessary IMHO, there never was a problem, but anyway Revert the Queen buff, perhaps revert some Terran early game nerfs. And then help those Zerg investments in defense work better in some way. The key is just thatb defending slows the Zerg economy back to sanity and that the defense investment allows Z to fend off the Terran harassment on equal terms. *Addendum: More than an SC2 enthusiast, I'm an MtG player. I like combo because hey, broken things feel fun. One thing I've noticed over the years is that straight up broken shit stays fun only for a while - when you're still amazed that omfg how is this even allowed. Then it becomes so very dull. The one deck I've stayed with over the years is a concoction that can occasionally do hilariously broken things, but usually ends up playing fair in an attempt to stay alive and then sneak the brokenness in somewhere as a finishing blow or as a calculated risk. This keeps the temptation and fun of brokenness (in SC2, the unhindered Zerg economy) but delivers actual games. Plus doing ridiculous things feels like an accomplishment. As another way to think about it, imagine if Marines automatically did the MKP thing and beat banelings? They can do that already, but it requires good calls and micro to do it. It's a ridiculous thing as a reward of great play. Standardizing antibling splits would just make that boring and stupid-feeling instead of amazing and the feeling of greatness would just wear off in short order. Great post this! I gues the biggest problem of SC2 is that games are very predictable, relatively speaking, and thus borring. EDIT: and i blame Blizzard for this with their way of patching the game. Wander how the game would have looked if we had half decent maps in BETA, when most of the changes took place. I actually blame Zerg players (well, the ones who complain about it, pros included) for the current state of the game. With pre-nerf Terran, even though they were overpowered, it was all on Blizzard and their bad decisions, and terrible maps. While with current Zerg, I really feel like this is what they wanted all along. Just read this thread, and a bunch of others, you'll see tons of Zerg players saying how much more fun ZvT is for them after the Queen buff. This is what they wanted all along. Also, from a Protoss perspective, remember that one PTR where Blizzard wanted to significantly increase WG research time, and reduce unit build times out of gateways to compensate? Wouldn't that have made Protoss early game a lot more stable and interesting, in every matchup? But alas, without ever playing on the PTR, every Zerg (spearheaded by Idra) suddenly knew that 2 gate pressure was going to be impossible to defend. Thus, only Sentry build time was reduced, and Warpgates only got an additional 20 seconds to their research time.
That was not only because of PvZ, it was also because of PvP, where 2gate is (and always was) significantly stronger than against Zerg. And it's not like noone has played it. The build time was like that in the beta and the early days, and PvP and PvZ degenerated to proxy rushing more than not. It was not even about 2gate pressure. It was about 2gate proxy allin.
Wether this would have been solved or not I can't tell, but there are still quite a lot of people mixing in 1-2proxy gate rushes in PvP, which seem to work quite well as they are.
On July 22 2012 23:00 Toadvine wrote:
Or VR speed, that one was pretty funny. Don't know why they even wanted to remove it, since it didn't feature in any high-level games (you could put it back in today and not much would change), but they did. So, as compensation, Fungal was supposed to not hit air. Alas, a few days of Zerg whine on b.net forums later, the Fungal nerf was retracted. VR speed was still removed. Guess Protosses didn't complain enough.
I have heard some highlevel Protoss talk about it, though I can't remember who. Maybe White Ra (just a guess), that mass speed void ray in the lategame PvZ was nearly unstoppable - prefungal patch that was.
That fungal does not hit air is due to ZvZ. Give zerg something to defend against mutalisks and then fungal could be reworked.
On July 22 2012 23:00 Toadvine wrote:
So yeah, I do feel like Zerg player managed to gain some form of influence over Blizzard's balancing process (if only by convincing them that anything which interferes with droning needs to go), and are partially responsible for the sorry state of vZ matchups we are currently experiencing.
Is this the place to tell funny stories? OK; so I met this girl one day, and she was really cute and then... lol
But maybe that's why they nerfed Neural Parasite. So that they can get out of the zergs control.
|
2 gate proxy all-ins in PvP aren't OP, and they wouldn't be OP if you buffed build times because the defender would be able to get units out faster. I'm not sure how anyone could say that buffing build times only helps offensive players. That's like saying the observer build time buff only helps people doing blink Obs builds but not people who are defending against DTs.
Fungal shouldn't work as it currently does against air because it ruins TvZ and PvZ. I really don't like hearing about mirror matchup reasons to keep something the way it is when it makes two non-mirror matchups pretty retarded. I mean, at least in the mirror matchup you have the option to also go Mutalisks, just like in PvP you have the option to also go Colossus. Sure, it's not very interesting, but it's definitely balanced.
|
On July 23 2012 00:24 Big J wrote:
But maybe that's why they nerfed Neural Parasite. So that they can get out of the zergs control.
Funny that you mention this, because zergs whined about the NP nerf too and it got changed into a different nerf.
|
On July 22 2012 23:00 Toadvine wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2012 22:07 Sapphire.lux wrote:On July 21 2012 21:51 Coffee Zombie wrote:Reverting the Queen buff probably wouldn't make people all-in more often. If the buff is reverted, Zerg players have to invest something into defense again - some gas (Roaches), lots of larvae (Lings) or attention and time (Crawler reroots), so they end up playing fair instead of broken - the whole point of the Hellion expand was to force us to play fair - and make no mistake, unhindered Zerg economy is broken. It was ok beforehand because you needed to outplay the opponent to access it. That isn't the case anymore when Queens are better in combat than Roaches, cost no gas or Larvae and don't need that much micro. And then you get mass creep to nerf midgame pushes. It's easy and standardizes hilariously outrageous greed. I remember when insane creep spread was impressive. I remember being impressed by very greedy Lair and Hive timings. Not anymore. Because all that shit is safe and boring. What the hell is going on if you need an all-in to punish completely ludicrous greed? Not good games, of that I'm sure.* Buffing the Terran lategame a bit is a good idea, but for goodness' sake don't leave it at that. The game is already horrible to watch because it's so binary - as Jinro put it in a comment about toss, you choose to be a rabid monkey on speed or a sedated sloth. The middleground is evaporating because noncommittal pressure has been nerfed to hell and back. And it makes for some terribly dull games. So, if you want to keep Zerg a bit safer? (Unnecessary IMHO, there never was a problem, but anyway Revert the Queen buff, perhaps revert some Terran early game nerfs. And then help those Zerg investments in defense work better in some way. The key is just thatb defending slows the Zerg economy back to sanity and that the defense investment allows Z to fend off the Terran harassment on equal terms. *Addendum: More than an SC2 enthusiast, I'm an MtG player. I like combo because hey, broken things feel fun. One thing I've noticed over the years is that straight up broken shit stays fun only for a while - when you're still amazed that omfg how is this even allowed. Then it becomes so very dull. The one deck I've stayed with over the years is a concoction that can occasionally do hilariously broken things, but usually ends up playing fair in an attempt to stay alive and then sneak the brokenness in somewhere as a finishing blow or as a calculated risk. This keeps the temptation and fun of brokenness (in SC2, the unhindered Zerg economy) but delivers actual games. Plus doing ridiculous things feels like an accomplishment. As another way to think about it, imagine if Marines automatically did the MKP thing and beat banelings? They can do that already, but it requires good calls and micro to do it. It's a ridiculous thing as a reward of great play. Standardizing antibling splits would just make that boring and stupid-feeling instead of amazing and the feeling of greatness would just wear off in short order. Great post this! I gues the biggest problem of SC2 is that games are very predictable, relatively speaking, and thus borring. EDIT: and i blame Blizzard for this with their way of patching the game. Wander how the game would have looked if we had half decent maps in BETA, when most of the changes took place. I actually blame Zerg players (well, the ones who complain about it, pros included) for the current state of the game. With pre-nerf Terran, even though they were overpowered, it was all on Blizzard and their bad decisions, and terrible maps. While with current Zerg, I really feel like this is what they wanted all along. Just read this thread, and a bunch of others, you'll see tons of Zerg players saying how much more fun ZvT is for them after the Queen buff. This is what they wanted all along. Also, from a Protoss perspective, remember that one PTR where Blizzard wanted to significantly increase WG research time, and reduce unit build times out of gateways to compensate? Wouldn't that have made Protoss early game a lot more stable and interesting, in every matchup? But alas, without ever playing on the PTR, every Zerg (spearheaded by Idra) suddenly knew that 2 gate pressure was going to be impossible to defend. Thus, only Sentry build time was reduced, and Warpgates only got an additional 20 seconds to their research time. Or VR speed, that one was pretty funny. Don't know why they even wanted to remove it, since it didn't feature in any high-level games (you could put it back in today and not much would change), but they did. So, as compensation, Fungal was supposed to not hit air. Alas, a few days of Zerg whine on b.net forums later, the Fungal nerf was retracted. VR speed was still removed. Guess Protosses didn't complain enough. So yeah, I do feel like Zerg player managed to gain some form of influence over Blizzard's balancing process (if only by convincing them that anything which interferes with droning needs to go), and are partially responsible for the sorry state of vZ matchups we are currently experiencing.
I know what you mean, but i'd like to believe qq'ing didn't influence Blizzards balance decisions, just their relative incompetence. I don't like Idra because IMO, he was a major contributing factor in making SC2 forums unberable for a long time.
As far as how the game is, just look at some Dustin B interviews, he didn't know about the Mothership Infestor garbage in PvZ, he talks about breaking the Terran death ball, Tanks being to strong...there's nothing more to say, really. Don't get me started on the HOTS mechanical Marauders 
|
United Kingdom12022 Posts
I was thinking last night, is it really the extra range that made queens so strong?
The thing is, early in Starcraft 2's history people would build like one queen per hatchery. Then slowly people added on an extra queen for creep spread and even that wasn't really a problem, but now the fact is people are building like 6 queens off of 3 bases or something and that's why they're so strong. I don't really see the queen range as that much of a buff, I think zergs because of the buff have realised how easy it is to spread loads and loads of creep if you just add more queens. The problem with TvZ right now is the creep. It makes it so hard to push anywhere and it's so hard to control against a good zerg.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's more the fact zergs are just building more queens that's changed the balance of the matchup rather than the queen range.
|
On July 23 2012 00:37 Qikz wrote:
I was thinking last night, is it really the extra range that made queens so strong?
The thing is, early in Starcraft 2's history people would build like one queen per hatchery. Then slowly people added on an extra queen for creep spread and even that wasn't really a problem, but now the fact is people are building like 6 queens off of 3 bases or something and that's why they're so strong. I don't really see the queen range as that much of a buff, I think zergs because of the buff have realised how easy it is to spread loads and loads of creep if you just add more queens. The problem with TvZ right now is the creep. It makes it so hard to push anywhere and it's so hard to control against a good zerg.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's more the fact zergs are just building more queens that's changed the balance of the matchup rather than the queen range.
Zergs were doing those 4-5queen builds for quite some time, but they eventually switched back to 2-3queens+speed because the only way to get that many queens was to skip on gas, which made you predictable while hellions inside of your base were extremly hard to catch. You could block the ramp, but you could not defend the natural properly.
I think Artosis was talking about this several times after every Code S Zerg seemed to go for a faster speed and lesser queens.
|
On July 23 2012 00:37 Qikz wrote:
I was thinking last night, is it really the extra range that made queens so strong?
The thing is, early in Starcraft 2's history people would build like one queen per hatchery. Then slowly people added on an extra queen for creep spread and even that wasn't really a problem, but now the fact is people are building like 6 queens off of 3 bases or something and that's why they're so strong. I don't really see the queen range as that much of a buff, I think zergs because of the buff have realised how easy it is to spread loads and loads of creep if you just add more queens. The problem with TvZ right now is the creep. It makes it so hard to push anywhere and it's so hard to control against a good zerg.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's more the fact zergs are just building more queens that's changed the balance of the matchup rather than the queen range.
The queen has always been a great unit. Before the range upgrade, hellions could kite them, so they couldn't go out to spread creep at will. They've been turned from strictly defensive units in, sort of, map control units.
|
|
|
I think even if you revert the Queen buff, the mass Queen style will still be too powerful because even with kiting, 4 Hellions don't take on more than 2 Queens.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
