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Platinum Terran player here, with my input.
Terran is bloody frustrating. Down right maschistic to play, at least for me. Yet I keep doing it because a race switch would feel like giving up, and I simply cannot do that. I am betting a lot of terrans didn't have my inibitions though, resulting in many terrans race-trading or simply quiting.
Mentally, terran is hard. What I mean is, every patch they get nerfed (often times deservedly I suppose) and that makes it FEEL harder, even if it isn't. Seeing other races getting buffs at the same time can make each loss feel like the game is just plain out to get you.
From a micro standpoint, terran is pretty demanding. Both the other races have superior AOE skills, meaning terran constantly has to spread their units, but spread too much and you get picked off one by one. On top of that positioning, especially of tanks, is a constant requirement. A mistake in positioning or spread will result in a very dead terran army.
Looking at the macro side, terran feels like its at a disadvantage. No chronobost to speed out the heavy hitters, no warp ins or mass spawns to ensure you have a standing force, the need to build numerous production facilities and micro-manage the builders...all while watching protoss hit "w" after building a dozen gateways with a single probe or zerg just puking out larvae like there is nothing to it...frustrating.
However, I do recognize that Terran has a very high skill ceiling and the potential to be very, very good. Hence why you see so few terrans: for someone dedicating themselves to winning in SC2 terran is a good choice. For a more casual gamer, terran is going to be a big turn off, at least in my opinon. Of course, there are still the stubborn fools like myself providing a smattering of Terrans across the lower leagues, but ultimately I think if the trend continues you will see more and more terrans vanishing. Of course, the ones that remain will be bloody good players, so maybe its a good thing (darwinian style good).
Anyway...I'll stop with the rambling now.
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Constant nerfing has this effect on your brain that you need to stop playing the race. Dont get me wrong, pretty much every nerf terrans have had was needed and we haven't stopped winning after them. Things have just gotten a bit harder every patch. But when you go and nerf one race systematicly from the beta to the latest patch, ppl will stop playing it and try another race. Then add the "terran op" bitching that mods look trough their fingers for soo long and here we are.
Haven't touched the game for 3weeks now, but last time I played (diamond eu) I had 6 terrans an 15-20 zerg / 15-20 protoss. Im told its the plat/diamond ladder that only has this big cap, I guess so?
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On March 11 2012 14:33 Tektos wrote: Blizzard balance the game around top professional level.
The top Korean pro terrans are just flat out better players than most (not all, just most) so the entire race gets nerfed to compensate? Hence why since release Terran has been consistently nerfed every patch while the other two races receive buffs to compensate for nerfs they get.
Just my theory but really who knows, it could be any reason at all. Blizzard keep making changes way too often to know the true reason. Pretty sure Dustin Browder said in multiple interviews that they are trying to balance the games at all levels
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On March 11 2012 11:17 Severus_ wrote:All the terrans are in GM thats why  Wrong. About 20% of players are in bronze, 20% in silver, etc up to diamond. 2% of the top players in diamond go to Masters, and 200 of those go to GM. Some players from platinum go to diamond to fill that space, then players from gold to to fill in platinum spaces, etc until the 5 main leagues are even in players again. At least, from what I recall that's correct. Also, there are not as many Terrans as Protoss or Zerg in GM in the first place.
Also, this:
On March 11 2012 14:03 Shasta37 wrote: I'm not sure that these stats mean there are less terran players total. It does look like terran is the least played race at the moment probably for the reasons that have already been mentioned about high skill ceiling and late game issues with the race (reliance on tier 1 units and awful reinforce capabilities). I still think there is a large portion of the playerbase who play terran but I do believe they haven't been playing the game recently.
I'm a masters terran and I know I haven't been playing the 1v1 ladder near as much as I have pre 1.4.3. I'm sure there are many terrans that are doing the same by either switching race for the moment or playing other games until the game changes. The current state of the game has made Starcraft 2 frustrating and annoying to play for terran right now.
It's been said before that its expected that terran do all these tricks and somersaults in the early game and mid game to get far enough ahead of their opponents to just overwhelm them in stuff. While having the ability to do early game pressure is nice, the game shouldn't demand you to play that way to be balanced. A lot of the time, terrans who have very good macro mechanics and would like to play longer games with zerg and protoss sell themselves short on purpose because they understand that if the other player has the same caliber of mechanics they are at a disadvantage. We see this especially in the TvP matchup.
Unfortunately, this makes for uninteresting (and frankly unfun) games for Terran to play, where each game the Terran player is wondering "Well, let's see if he knows how to hold this all-in or not". And so we have an entire race of players more or less playing games that really just depend on if their opponent makes some early game fatal mistakes. This can be fun occasionally (for the lulz) but gets stale pretty quick and doesn't make laddering to improve compelling.
TL;DR
Anyways, I didn't mean for this to be long but I think the race distribution is still quite healthy but you won't find the % of Terrans increasing anytime soon until Blizzard gives them a reason to want to play Starcraft 2 and not AllinCraft 2. This is pretty much what terrans have to do these days: Try kill the P/Z before 4base/hive and pray they won't hold the inevitable all-in.
The second option is to go into late-game, where you have to have insane APM, Multitasking, Micro, and Gamesense to win, especially in TvZ where you have to go marine/marauder/tank/medivac with mass drop OR every unit except the BC, Reaper, Hellion, and Banshee.
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On March 11 2012 14:56 Blasterion wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2012 14:33 Tektos wrote: Blizzard balance the game around top professional level.
The top Korean pro terrans are just flat out better players than most (not all, just most) so the entire race gets nerfed to compensate? Hence why since release Terran has been consistently nerfed every patch while the other two races receive buffs to compensate for nerfs they get.
Just my theory but really who knows, it could be any reason at all. Blizzard keep making changes way too often to know the true reason. Pretty sure Dustin Browder said in multiple interviews that they are trying to balance the games at all levels It doesn't really matter what he says, the thing is that they are doing an extremely bad job with it, at least imo. eg. The ghost nerf could have been done so much better and also, just look at what they plan on doing in HOTS. Oh yeah, and that phoenix range buff is really pretty useless, and stupid.
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Assuming my opponent plays correctly against what I'm doing and doesn't do insane/greedy/stupid stuff then ZvT is not the hardest matchup, ZvP is. ZvT can take a lot of multitask and good micro (I play infestor/ling ). ZvZ takes good scouting and decision making. ZvP is just.... fuck.
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I mean if you actually go through the trouble to add up the numbers provided in the link that you provided, you see that there are about 171k toss, 160k terran, and 143k zerg... soooooo uhhhh....
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On March 11 2012 15:09 RoninShogun wrote: I mean if you actually go through the trouble to add up the numbers provided in the link that you provided, you see that there are about 171k toss, 160k terran, and 143k zerg... soooooo uhhhh....
Whats your point? The majority of those terrans are in bronze-gold
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I have about theory of this. As a zerg player, I really like terran. I find their units to be very well designed and their micro to be very fun. However, when I try to play terran, I drop many more leagues in skill than i do when I try to play protoss. It sometimes seems to be all the terrans go zerg when they race change and all the zergs go toss when they race change. Clearly a generalization, but not too far off. I think the problem is noone is switching into terran. The best way to deal with this (and to encourage playing different races in general) is seperate league ranks for different races.
edit:spelling/grammar
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All the races are frustrating.
There were fewer terrans on NA from the start, and it's possible that the few that chose terran have grown tired of the game to a larger extent than protoss and zerg players.
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On March 11 2012 15:09 Shebuha wrote: Assuming my opponent plays correctly against what I'm doing and doesn't do insane/greedy/stupid stuff then ZvT is not the hardest matchup, ZvP is. ZvT can take a lot of multitask and good micro (I play infestor/ling ). ZvZ takes good scouting and decision making. ZvP is just.... fuck. tell me about it. i love TvZ cause its so dynamic and clearly the better player wins. Same for ZvZ.
But everytime ZvP comes along. 2 play styles. 1) Turtle 3 base and hit a timing with HT colossus before broods come out 2) 2 base play. DENY all scouting with overlords and choose which build u want. +1 zealot void ray. blink stalker all in. double stargate . or just the straightforward 7 gate all in.
All p needs to do is check if the third is up or not. The rest is easy peasy and mind you all the builds on 2 base requires the zerg to prepare in different ways. How the hell are we supposed to prepare if we get zero info. The only way for Z to win is to get a good scout in and prepare accordingly. Most of the time when the timing attack fails, its GG for protoss or its GG zerg.
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I like playing terran. Being aggresive is my thing but when I play someone on the ladder and they BM from the start there is something wrong, and all these nerfs makes me want to switch to zerg. Not toss since they are boring
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I played Terran since BW, through sc2 beta, and into the launch of sc2. After awhile though I just lost my touch for them and switched over to Zerg. I can definitely say i'm a lot happier since I made the switch but that's all there really is to it for me :/ I just simply switched over.
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Russian Federation748 Posts
I don't agree at all. I'm playing at diamond level and meet mostly Zergs and Terrans. Protoss are scarce. It must be the region.
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Russian Federation142 Posts
Idk what this thread is for. There is no mystery. I chose terran because I wanted to play mech instead of herp derp 1a. Blizzard removed mech by a retarded nerf to raven, two horrid nerfs to tanks, and a painful nerf to hellions.
Terran became: herp derp bio stim 1a. Terran players who wanted to mech quit.
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as a terran who has stopped playing the game almost entirely, it really feels like you play the clock, either you try to quickly win with a gimmicky allin or you try to play lategame which is a retarded tight rope walk of crawling tanks across the map scanning everywhere and killing off small amounts of marines to be replaced as ghosts, well at least pre 1.4.3 that was. That seemed like the only way for Terran to win a long game against zerg was to have enough ghosts to smash the bl's and then smash the ultras right after or guess when hes tech swapping which is stupidly risky because there's no actual way to know unless you keep constant scans to see if he has corruptors or ultras popping and even then its not really ever enough time to get a proper response.
TvP became a terribly unfun matchup after it became apparant to protoss that you can mix collosus and archons into a ball that can only die by a terribly gross mismicro on the part of the protoss, even if they are terribly far behind on bases/probes. Add into that the fact that warpgate tech is such a gigantic advantage in the late game then you have a brew for tons of allins.
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TvP isn't fun in the least. The dynamics of the matchup point to terrible game design by Blizzard. If Protoss was removed from the game, I would be happy. BTW, I played Protoss in SC1.
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Wait, Zerg mostly saying ZvP is the hardest? o.O Didn't see that one coming.
For me, PvZ is by far the hardest as Toss, TvZ hardest as Terran, and the Zerg matchups are about even.
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Meh, i run into terrans often enough in masters.
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