Larva disappearing Glitch in 1.5 (not about 20th larva)
UPDATE August 2012 Patch 1.5 DID NOT fix this glitch. Patch 1.5 experiment result updated below.
4 larvae from injects in animation. About 10 % chance 1 larva is disappearing now.
Introduction
What is so unique about Zerg in SC2 or as a race in any RTS for that matter? Yes, it is the larvae mechanics. Everything, with the exception of Queen, is morphed from a larva that spawns from Hatchery. Unlike Terran and Protoss, Zerg doesn’t need any production buildings other than Hatchery. I’m a Zerg player, so I know that we Zerg desperately need those larvae. I know how that “Where are my laaaaaaarvaeeeeee? I have 1000 mineral I can’t spend!” feels like. Now, what if those larvae were disappearing without us knowing about it? Doesn’t it sound scary? This is a long read(about 10 pages in A4) about seemingly super trivial feature of the game, but this could potentially increase the number of larvae for ALL Zerg players in the world.
Conclusion: When the timing of larva spontaneously generated by Hatchery coincides with 4 larvae spawn from Queen’s Spawn Larva ability, that 1 larva from spontaneous generation never appears and is lost forever.
This seems to be the case unfortunately for Zerg players. I consider this a glitch that ever so slightly favors Terran and Protoss, and needs to be fixed ASAP by Blizzard. If you are a Zerg player, read through and spread words so that Blizzard takes it seriously and patch. Now, some of you might think that nothing is wrong with the aforementioned case because those 4 larvae prevent additional larva generation, but that’s not what I mean. It is so much more complicated than you might think at this point. I couldn’t find better English sentence than the one above to make my point short and clear, so bear with me and let me explain in detail below.
On March 25 2012 12:01 lpunatic wrote: And a ton of people havent read the OP
Scenario 1: larva pops before spawn larva animation, no problem Scenario 2: larva would pop after spawn larva animation, pops as soon as excess larva is spent, no problem Scenario 3: larva that should pop during spawn larva animation doesn't pop, not even when excess larva is spent. Bug.
Edit: scenario 3 only applies to the single larva that should have spawned when the excess larva was spent.
It took me a really long time to figure out what the OP was saying. I think an easier way of explaining it might be:
1. hatchery larvae generation is on a time counter 2. when the hatchery has 3 or more larvae this timer is paused 3. for some odd reason if the spawn larvae pops at the same time as the larvae generation then the timer is reset, when it should actually pop the larvae as soon and there are fewer than 3 larvae remaining, hence robbing the z player of a larvae they should have
First of all, I need to list some basic statistics/mechanics about larvae production to make a common ground to start. 1. At 0min00sec, you start the game with 3 larvae.
2. Once larvae count becomes less than 3 at any point of the game, namely 0, 1, 2, larva(e), Hatchery starts spontaneous larva generation. It takes exactly 15sec for one larva to appear at south side of Hatchery. If total 3 larvae count is not reached, generation continues every 15sec.
3. Hatchery stops generating any more larva when 3 or more larvae exist at the particular Hatchery. Therefore, state with more than 3 larvae can be reached only by Spawn Larva ability from Queen that will be explained below. In terms of competitive game play, this no spontaneous larva generation means your larva production is wasted.
4. Queen has Spawn Larva ability. It costs 25 energy to “inject” Hatchery. 4 larvae spawn from the injected Hatchery at the same time after exactly 40 seconds later. You cannot stack injects. Injected Hatchery still generates larvae just like normal Hatchery, following the same rule above.
5. Queen has initial 25 energy ready to inject. Energy regeneration rate is 0.5625 energy/sec. Therefore, in order for the queen to regenerate next 25 energy, it takes 25/0.5625=44.4444 seconds. Yes, it takes around 45 seconds for next inject, NOT 40seconds contrary to some popular false belief. In perfect world, Queen always has to wait for about 5sec to inject again, not immediately after 40sec Spawn Larva at Hatchery ends.
6. 19 is the maximum number of larvae one Hatchery can hold. Any additional larvae are killed immediately. Therefore, Queen injects are nothing more than waste of 25 energy and your precious APM when Hatchery already has 19 larvae.
7. SC2 engine recognizes less than 1 sec time period. For example, 6min45.2sec is 0.5seconds earlier than 6min45.7sec. This does not directly come into play in this topic, but you need to be aware of this fact when watching replay and writing down the exact timings for similar research.
8. When 40sec Spawn Larva period finish, we don’t get those 4 larvae immediately. It takes about 1-1.5sec for the animation to finish and larvae land on the ground, at which point we can finally use them. 4 larvae don’t even land on the ground at the same time. If you look closely, 4 larvae land one after another with 0.2sec or so apart from each other. So, it is possible that you may only get 1-3 of those if you do famous SDDDDDD a bit too early.
9. For some reason, Unit tab in replay shows larvae count slightly earlier than actual larvae count at Hatchery command card at bottom right.
10. Your APM is limited, so spending 4 larvae from Queen Spawn Larvae takes some time. It is impossible to spend all with no time lag even in the hands of a pro, it was usually 2-5sec for me, so let me assume it takes 4 sec including the animation that I mentioned above to use those 4 larvae. Blue cells in Table A&B below signify this.
11. IMPORTANT: The progress of spontaneous larva generation doesn’t reset when 4 larvae from Spawn Larva pop up. Progress merely pauses. The progress is not obvious to players, yet SC2 engine definitely retains the progress. For example, assume Hatchery generated a larva 10 seconds ago. If 4 larvae spawn at that point, imaginary larva generation progress bar pauses at 10/15. After using those 4 larvae, you only need to wait for the rest of 5 sec to see the next larva generated by Hatchery, not another 15sec to start all over again.
All of the above can be easily tested by anyone who has SC2, so those Rules need no further proof.
Now, with all those Rules in mind, imagine some hypothetical cases in game.
5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min45sec Hatchery generates 1 larva “Calling this larva Larva X. This particular Larva X is the center of this topic.” use 1 larva 7min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Nothing interesting for this no Queen example so far.
With Queen, 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min05sec Queen Injects AROUND this time 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min45sec…
How do you think larvae count changes in this case after 6min45sec? With the Rules above, 4 larvae should spawn at 6min45sec, which is exactly 40sec later from the injection. Also, Larva X should appear from spontaneous generation at 6min45sec, which is exactly 15sec later from the last generation. Do we all agree that 5 larva appear at 6min45sec? Is it really what happens? To answer this question, that suspicious “AROUND” 6min05sec injection needs to be addressed. There are 3 different scenarios to this. I classify them as Case E for “E”arlier Larva X than 4 larvae, Case L for “L”ater Larva X than 4 larvae, and finally Case “N” for “N”o Larva X which I consider a glitch.
Case E 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min06sec Queen injects 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min45sec Hatchery generates 1 larva = Larva X 6min46sec 4 larvae spawn use 5 larva 7min04sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Total 9 larvae so far
In Case E, generation of Larva X is slightly earlier than 40sec Spawn Larva finish. So, it gets generated and 4 larvae subsequently spawn, making larvae count 5. Then, since larvae count is currently higher than 3 for 4 sec (check Rule 10), next larva generation gets delayed by 4 sec compared to no Queen case. Therefore, 7min04sec with 9 larvae is the result.
Case L 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min03sec Queen injects 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min43sec 4 larvae spawn use 4 larvae 6min49sec Hatchery generates 1 larva = Larva X use 1 larva 7min04sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Total 9 larvae so far
In this variation, Spawn Larva finishes earlier than Larva X generation. According to Rule 11, progress of the generation pauses at 6min43sec – 6min30sec = 13sec, leaving 2 more seconds to go. 4 larvae get used after 4sec (Rule 10) so at 6min43sec +4sec = 6min47sec, the progress resumes. 6min47sec + 2sec =6min49sec is the time when Larva X appears. Next larva is exactly 15sec later, so 7min04.0sec. Doesn’t this 9 larvae at 7min04.0sec sound familiar? Yes, Case E and Case L results are virtually the same in the end. The tricky part lies in the next Case N.
Case N 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min05sec Queen injects 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min45sec 4 larvae spawn use 4 larvae No Larva X generated during this time 7min04.0sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Total 8 larvae so far
Do you see the difference? For Case N, 4 larvae spawning timing is exactly the same as Larva X generation timing. However, unlike Case E and L, no larva gets generated before nor after the 4 larvae spawn. Since larva generation progress only pause, NOT RESET when there are 3 or more larvae (Rule 11), there is no reason why there shouldn’t be any larva until next 7min04sec generation. Case N only produces 8 larvae in total, which is 1 less than Case E and L. Inject timings are L<N<E in chronological order. When Case L and Case E have 9 larvae in total, Case N, whose inject timing is right in between them should also have 9 larvae, shouldn’t it?
My hypothesis is that SC2 engine does calculate and generate the Larva X internally and resets the generation progress bar, which we will never get to see, yet fails to reflect the calculation result of Larva X progress into actual game display. Maybe it is because of the animation it takes for those 4 larvae to land on ground and become available to players (Rule 8). Larva X probably gets mixed into those 4 larvae and lost in void forever. As a matter of fact, Larva X generation timing doesn’t necessarily exactly coincide with 4 larvae spawning timing. As long as Larva X generation timing is less than about 1.0-1.5sec after 4 larvae spawn, then Larva X never appear. Whenever the animation is on at the point when Larva X is supposed to come out, no Larva X comes out according to my observation. Or, as Rule 9 says, there are 2 different larvae count at a particular time during this very short yet sensitive period. Spontaneous larva generation and Spawn Larva ability could be using those 2 different ones to calculate. Whatever the case, this is not how it should work and how Blizzard intended this game to work.
Experiment starts at 4min00sec and ends at 14min07sec. In this experiment, I made drones only from spontaneously generated larvae and overlords only from larvae from Spawn Larvae. I kept both at left side of the base. Ignore the number of drones mining and overlords on the right side as they are the ones produced before 4min00sec. Here are the results in tables. Table A is what happened in this experiment and Table B is what I consider should have happened. + Show Spoiler +
Spawn Larvae finishing at 6min07sec, 6min55sec and 11min31sec results in Case N where Larva X gets lost (Green in table). Spawn Larvae finishing at 5min23sec and 10min46sec results in Case E (Pink). Spawn Larvae finishing at 7min41sec results in Case L (Orange). Blue color in table shows 2-5 delay to spend 4 larvae to keep Hatchery larvae count lower than 3. (check Rule 10) Yellow color in table shows what I call a glitch. More than 30seconds from last spontaneous larva generation means one larva, which I named Larva X, is skipped. At the very end of the experiment, I ended up with 34 dornes and 48 overlords on the left. The fact that I didn’t get 37 drones as in Table B, which is what should have happened and how Blizzard needs to patch, confirms that 3 larvae are definitely lost forever because of the unfortunate larva generation timing. I was very unfortunate, or maybe fortunate in this case to prove my point, to lose 3 larvae in 12 injects. Considering 15sec generation interval and 1.5sec or so for possible glitch period, 1.5/15=10% would be my fair guess for the frequency. So lucky(?) to see 25% chance for the experiment intended to find this out.
Spawn Larvae finishing at 12min48sec and 16min31sec results in Case N where Larva X gets lost (green in table). This proves that patch 1.5 DID NOT address this issue. The glitch still exists in game.
The following Chart E shows Larva X timings for all Cases explained above. Note that in previous sections, Spawn Larva timings varied, but in this Chart E, Spawn Larva timing is set and instead Larva X timings are variables so that it is clear what “early” and “late” Larva X means.
For those of you who don’t believe from a replay of me vs computer at off-line setting and think that it’s only my computers problem, I have examples in professional game replays. In order to add authenticity, I chose 3 important matches of this and last month with easy access to replays. Game 5 of Stephano vs Polt on Korhal Compound at Assembly Winter 2012 Final Game 6 of DRG vs MKP on Antiga Shipyard at MLG Winter Arena Championship I chose both of those because those were the very last matches of the Final in respective tournaments. I also chose another short one. Game 2 of DRG vs MKP on Daybreak at MLG Winter Arena Championship You may download replays from websites below. Assembly http://tournaments.peliliiga.fi/winter12/tournaments/view/asus-rog-starcraft-ii-tournament MLG Winter Arena http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/news/vod-and-replays-from-winter-arena-now-available-to-all
Stephano vs Polt Macro hatchery at main 12min24sec larva generation 12min38sec 4 larvae 12min58sec next larva generation Larva X is missing at 12min43sec
DRG vs MKP on Antiga Shipyard Main hatchery 9min08sec larva generation 9min22sec 4 larvae 9min42sec larva generation Larva X is missing at 9min27sec
3rd Hatchery 11min50sec larva generation 12min05sec 4 larvae 12min27sec larva generation Larva X is missing at 12min12sec
Also, Case E where Larva X barely managed to appear earlier happens at 5min35sec at main hatchery in this replay. Case L where Larva X appears slightly after 4 larvae are used happens at 12min39sec at main, too.
DRG vs MKP on Daybreak Natual Hatchery 8min34sec larva generation 8min48sec 4 larvae 9min07sec larva generation Larva X is missing at 8min52sec.
These are the first 3 replays I analyzed and although not too many, all of these replays contained missing Larva X at least once. Did it matter for the game results? I would say absolutely not. Even one of the best players in the world like DRG and Stephano sits with more than 3 larvae at a hatchery quite often after mid game, so I highly doubt this missing 1 or 2 larvae in 10min+ games mattered for anything. I’m sure they don’t know the problem exists either. In fact, I could well be the only one who is aware of this problem in the entire world at the time or writing, or is it too bold of a statement.
Ironically, this problem would matter the most in ZvZ. In ZvZ, larvae count is super important as we all know. Imagine 2 players doing the exact same build. If player A was very unlucky and managed to lose 2 Larva X in a row from his first 2 injects while player B didn’t, with everything else being equal, 2 less larvae would be 2 less drones or 4 less lings, provided enough mineral is available. At that early stage of the game, 2 less drones means 5-10 % of total economy. With linear engagement without neither side having good concave, 14lings win vs 10lings any day of the week. However rare it may sound, I find this potentially game-breaking. Even with 400APM and stellar timing awareness, it is practically impossible to intentionally avoid this unfortunate timing. Starcraft is a great game because everything is deterministic so to say. A roach does 16 damage, not 14-18 where there is 20% chance to get 14,15,16,17 or 18 damage respectively depending on your luck as in some other games. I like SC2 high ground advantage over Broodwar one because there is no 50% chance gamble in SC2. However, with this problem in place, luck could come into play. The chance of losing Larva X is probably 10% or less, but we already know that 25% chance is possible with my unlucky me vs computer game on Scrap Station.
If patch hits, ZvP and ZvT balance would shift in favor of Z ever so slightly by something like 0.0000001% or so. With current trend of macro play, number of games where this glitch matters is very small in the first place. I would say this glitch could matter vs prolonged rather successful 2 rax and 4 gate because these happen around the time your first inject finishes and having extra 2 lings does make a difference in killing a bunker or getting last hit against stalker. Having 2 less lings could prevent you from breaking 2 rax repaired bunker contain. It would be painful to think your luck prevented you from killing the bunker by hair’s breadth and see red life bunker getting repaired back to full life, killing your natural. Vs 4 gate, a Stalker, with 1 life remaining due to 2 less lings, that comes back with full shield 1 min later cannot help Zerg either. Having listed those particular situations, these games are fairly rare and this glitch itself is rare enough to change the balance significantly, though it certainly does.
Zerg winrate in ZvZ is apparently 100%, but patch would matter the most in ZvZ. In ZvZ, unit battles happen earlier and first inject finish just in time for 14gas14pool ling speed upgrade research is done. I’m sure many of you have done or being done 15 drones no-more-drones mass ling attack right when speed finishes at least once in your career. (or every game if you are a ZvZ hater and go quick & easy coin flip with this build ^^) In this scenario, you usually have 20 “or so” lings running at enemy base. I haven’t done enough research on this one, but I’m sure having 2 less lings would matter a lot at less than 6 min into the game. Therefore, the patch would favor actual good player and make ZvZ less about luck. ZvZ is coinflippy enough without this glitch after all, so why keep it? :D
Interesting feedback on balance change
On March 25 2012 21:33 Zandar wrote: I remember when I did 7 roach rush a long time ago and spammed that strategy a lot, trying to stay as close to the same build order and timing as I could. Sometimes I ended up with only 6 roaches and I was so confused about what I did differently compared to previous games. Could this explain that?
Delaying 1 roach for potentially 15sec sounds the biggest balance concern so far. I’m lazy to explore this for now and prefer to do other researches, but I might dig into this if patch doesn’t hit for a long time, in order to force Blizzard to realize potential big problem.
“What? Making Larva X appear as in Table B by reprogramming is the only way to patch this. There is no need to discuss how it should be patched.” I don’t blame you for thinking that way. I had thought so as well until I read the following feedback. + Show Spoiler +
On March 26 2012 00:11 -_- wrote: Orek:
You seem convinced that the larva "disappearance" you describe is a bug. However, this depends on your assumption that the 15 second larva "countdown" should stall, rather than reset, upon reaching the larva limit.
In other words, what if this scenario is the "bug."
Case L 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min03sec Queen injects 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min43sec 4 larvae spawn use 4 larvae 6min49sec Hatchery generates 1 larva = Larva X use 1 larva 7min04sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Total 9 larvae so far
I've certainly never heard blizzard state a firm intention on what larva spawning should be. So, perhaps Protoss and Terran players should be complaining about Zerg having an extra larva?
This alternative solution caught my attention. Many might say it’s just a QQ against Zerg, but that last part is not what is interesting about this post. Interesting concept is that when there are 2 rules that contradicts each other and there is a need to fix one of them to have 1 universal rule that applies to all situations, this post suggests that the majority rule is the one that needs to be fixed and minority rule must be applied. Fixing 90% so that 10% rules all sounds so weird. Bill Clinton wins 50% popular vote, Ralph Nader wins 1% popular vote, then now we should have Ralph Nader as our President!!! That’s how it sounds like. However, if fixing the glitch was the sole purpose, this approach works, too. Inspired by this post, I recalculated everything in my me vs computer experiment on scrap station and simulated what WOULD it be like if larva generation timer reset instead of pause when 3+ is available at Hatchery. Take a look at Table C below. + Show Spoiler +
When larva generation progress reset every time 4 larvae pop from Spawn Larva, I would have ended up with 29 drones, which is 5 larvae shorter than current state. The key is that generating 3 larvae takes 15sec*3+(2~5sec)=47~50sec while minimum Spawn Larvae interval is 44.4sec. Due to the shorter Spawn Larvae interval, only 2 larvae gets generated between 2 injects and 3rd larva’s progress is almost always lost at 13/15. Now, then what if I just timed injects so that 3 larvae always appear between 2 injects? Table D shows this scenario. I would have ended up with 37 drones, which is 37-29=8 more larvae than when inject timing is not timed well as in Table C.
Coincidentally, this 37 larvae is exactly the same as in Table B, which is how I originally considered the only way to patch. Can this be alternative way to patch? For pure game logic reason, I would say yes. However, in terms of practical game play, I must say absolutely not. More natural patch as in Table B is so much more flexible regarding the inject timings. Making injects 1sec earlier or later has almost no impact overall. On the other hand, alternative patch as in Table C&D punishes 1sec earlier injects so severely that as much as 8 larvae can get lost in 10 min time. Terran equivalent of this would be dropping MULE 1 sec too “early,” not late, somehow gives you less resource despite better play by dropping mule on time. Protoss equivalent of this would be chronoboosting Nexus 1 sec too “early,” not late, somehow gives you less probes despite better play by doing it early. Had this rule implemented, keeping track of your inject timings and intentionally delaying it would become the #1 priority in Zerg play, and even DRG level player would have to stare at his hatcheries like some bronze players. Whoever thinks alternative patch is viable even after reading this section must be a true Zerg hater.
Those who hang around at Zerg Strategy Chat.Channel for some advice/opinion, especialy Pikacho for finding right terms. VoirDire for post that inspired me for this work [D] Finding the optimal macro ZvP opening MLG/Assembly Organizing for releasing awesome professional game replays Blizzard for patching it. No matter when it might be, thank you in advance. All of you who are reading this part. I assume you read it all. Thank you!! Spread the words if you think this needs to be patched. Feedback is much appreciated.
If you want to clarify anything in the battle.net forums, you can and should post there, PM me here on teamliquid if you want me to edit anything I wrote there. Thanks again for your finding.
That aside, You should probably not have the introduction in a spoiler, since off the bat there is a single image and a bunch of spoilers, and the explanation for the thread is not directly visible.
If this is true, thats a cool find. I don't play Zerg so I don't know how the mechanic truly truly works in terms of a missing larva X but GJ for taking the time to put this together.
Remove intro from the spoiler though or create a simple abstract so people know what they are getting into when they open up the thread
Ok so what will happen if those larva are not missing? The game is now pretty good balanced, if zerg gets extra larva it will make the game less balanced. Solution? Fix it, so what is the point?
On March 25 2012 07:03 topschutter wrote: Ok so what will happen if those larva are not missing? The game is now pretty good balanced, if zerg gets extra larva it will make the game less balanced. Solution? Fix it, so what is the point?
No.. this does clearly hurt the zerg pretty obviously... it isn't a question of balance, it's a question of how the game is supposed to function.
No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
I must be misunderstanding something. Can someone explain to me how this is different from a larva attempting to be spawned (and thus not getting spawned) in between when the 4 larvae pop and you spend them?
On March 25 2012 07:00 ZeromuS wrote: If this is true, thats a cool find. I don't play Zerg so I don't know how the mechanic truly truly works in terms of a missing larva X but GJ for taking the time to put this together.
Remove intro from the spoiler though or create a simple abstract so people know what they are getting into when they open up the thread
Thank you for the advice. I just did.
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
I am very well aware of 3+ larvae situation. If you dont mind, please read on. I think I made it clear enough with enough evidence. Thank you.
Hope it will be fixed soon. Almost any Zerg should have been in situations where you just have 1 or 2 less units to win a battle and this could be because of this problem.
Very nice find! Since it just makes for more randomness/luck it should be fixed imo. But its an insignificant problem in the grand scheme of things so im not sure wer gonna see blizzard act on it any time soon.
On March 25 2012 07:37 Areon wrote: 1.0-1.5 seconds is a very, very, very small window of time. That said, you've done your research and have made a sound argument. Good find.
tecnically speaking, the total time window relevant is 15 seconds, the time between spawned larvae.
1.0-1.5 seconds out of 15 seconds is 7-10% of the time.
10% is a lot, so much that statistically this "larva X disappeareance" should happen once every 10 injects.
i dont wanna complain but seriously drg just maxed out 200/200 with 3 base on tal'darim with full roach at 12 minutes.. with 4 larvas it would be faster .. adding another bar to see when hatch gonna pop another auto-larva is better in my opinion then just putting pause on auto larvae pop . also it would make game harder
This isn't a glitch because blizzard did this on purpose to make sure that zerg has to continue to inject and if it were constantly building larvae zerg would never have to inject thus the race is imbalanced and to easy.
Say you have 4 larvae at a hatchery sitting there for a while. Then you spend them all at once. Do you immediately get a new larva? If not, then I don't think there is a bug in the engine because it is supposed to reset. It starts the timer as soon as there are strictly less than 3 larvae.
On March 25 2012 09:05 xsnac wrote: i dont wanna complain but seriously drg just maxed out 200/200 with 3 base on tal'darim with full roach at 12 minutes.. with 4 larvas it would be faster .. i think they should fix the " visual bug "
yea one player is doing good with the race, let's just keep that glitch around...
e: awesome analysis by OP. your work is appreciated.
So if I understand this correctly you should be able negate this from happening by lining up your injects correctly so this shouldn't be a problem but actually separates the good from the very best players. If this is true it should absolutely stay in the game. It's the same for managing your mules.
On March 25 2012 09:23 Baum wrote: So if I understand this correctly you should be able negate this from happening by lining up your injects correctly so this shouldn't be a problem but actually separates the good from the very best players. If this is true it should absolutely stay in the game. It's the same for managing your mules.
it's not. because it's not visible. If you don't stare at your hatch all the time, you can't determine, when your last larva was generating. Thus, this is, in fact, nothing a player can influence.
On March 25 2012 09:23 Baum wrote: So if I understand this correctly you should be able negate this from happening by lining up your injects correctly so this shouldn't be a problem but actually separates the good from the very best players. If this is true it should absolutely stay in the game. It's the same for managing your mules.
it's not. because it's not visible. If you don't stare at your hatch all the time, you can't determine, when your last larva was generating. Thus, this is, in fact, nothing a player can influence.
I wanted to find some error in your post, but haven't found one yet. Clever, and a great catch. Really surprised it's taken someone this long to notice that, but I guess the right people just weren't paying attention. I hope this issue is addressed, or we'll have to adjust our injects to hit so we don't lose a larva. Great post, well thought out, presents hypothesis, predicted observation, experiment and observation. Glad this was brought to light, and in such a well-constructed manner, and I hope something is done to address it soon.
Edit: also wanted to say when I first opened this thread I thought it was similar to when larva would "suicide" when spawned near cliffs. Turns out it was much more exciting than that.
Good god, I have brought this up in conversation before but have never been able to pinpoint where the missing larva has went to.
Thanks for doing the research and finding it. I'm able to reproduce the bug and hopefully I can avoid it by staying away from that +5s window... This should really be patched out of the game. It's a hidden chance-based production statistic that Blizzard has never mentioned, and probably didn't intend to happen.
The larva timer should only pause, never reset. Fix this, and ship it.
Absolutely amazing analysis. I'm really curious to see if any changes are gonna be made as this would be a very subtile zerg buff in a time a lot of people complain about zerg. Blizzard has shown to be quite active when it comes to bugs though. (The drone atk delay fix e.g)
On March 25 2012 09:12 sTrike17 wrote: This isn't a glitch because blizzard did this on purpose to make sure that zerg has to continue to inject and if it were constantly building larvae zerg would never have to inject thus the race is imbalanced and to easy.
Pretty obviously you have not read a single word of the awesome OP.
On March 25 2012 09:23 Baum wrote: So if I understand this correctly you should be able negate this from happening by lining up your injects correctly so this shouldn't be a problem but actually separates the good from the very best players. If this is true it should absolutely stay in the game. It's the same for managing your mules.
I hope this is a joke and not one of the most idiotic versions of pseudo elitism I have ever heard of.
On March 25 2012 09:23 Baum wrote: So if I understand this correctly you should be able negate this from happening by lining up your injects correctly so this shouldn't be a problem but actually separates the good from the very best players. If this is true it should absolutely stay in the game. It's the same for managing your mules.
I hope this is a joke and not one of the most idiotic versions of pseudo elitism I have ever heard of.
Why? Things like this make a difference and they hardly matter in mid master or below. So far there hasn't been a single argument in this thread why this should be removed when you can prevent it from happening.
Nice find and it should definitively be patched since this should not change the balance of the game anyway (if the bugs occurs approximatively for 10% of injects, it means around 1 more larva every 6 minutes, not really game breaking...)
So if I understand this correctly, 1 in every 15 injects will cause a larva to not spawn because the popping larva will correspond with the spawning larva?
Since larva spawns every 15 second, if the clock ticks are 1 second, then 1/15 or 6.66% chance of losing a larva.
Still a huge find 2 years into the game.... larva is key.
Thanks for your effort, spent time and important finding!
Did you report it to Blizzard already? Link please, so I can like it. They do read here more often than some think, but they read their bug report forums even more regularly so if you don't post it there soon I will have to infringe copyright of your effort and let them know myself.
Thanks for this, it seems small but it might actually make a difference in some games so it's definitelly important to lower the random events in this game ^^'
An excellent find, sir! I applaud you for following this up with so much research on the mechanics and rules of larvae and injects. I'm very impressed with our community, and you.
On March 25 2012 09:23 Baum wrote: So if I understand this correctly you should be able negate this from happening by lining up your injects correctly so this shouldn't be a problem but actually separates the good from the very best players. If this is true it should absolutely stay in the game. It's the same for managing your mules.
I hope this is a joke and not one of the most idiotic versions of pseudo elitism I have ever heard of.
Why? Things like this make a difference and they hardly matter in mid master or below. So far there hasn't been a single argument in this thread why this should be removed when you can prevent it from happening.
Because it's literally impossible to accurately count seconds in your head?
Congrats on the great find. Hopefully blizz will do something about this. Don't pay attention to the people that didn't read the entire op, they are just tools commenting on something they don't understand.
I'm not sure if I understand this bug exactly, but am I wrong if I say the larve only disappears if you have 2 larve, with the 3rd natural larve about to be generated from the hatch, at the same time ur 4 spawn larve, larve appear?
On March 25 2012 11:38 Filter wrote: Really cool find, but so far away from game breaking.
The people that are saying it should only pause.. that would be a huge buff.
It is already pausing, according to OP. Impressive work, thank you for you time/effort to make sc2 mechanically better(Even though I don't play zergs)<3!
Many lost ZvZ would have been won had i had that extra larva, and I used to pride myself on hitting those larva injects exactly when the larva popped from the hatch :/
hmm quiet interesting read. guess i am spending my larva early game pretty effectively then, checked 3 replays and had no loss yay. But finding an injection timing that will negate this, might be pretty cool. Just like knowing your mule timings, so they don't die when carrying 30 minerals.
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
Because a ton of you seemed to have not read the first page. This isn't a bug, it's working as intended. I'm going to assume if the animation for the auto-spawn larva starts before the inject larva animation, then it will indeed spawn.
Scenario 1: larva pops before spawn larva animation, no problem Scenario 2: larva would pop after spawn larva animation, pops as soon as excess larva is spent, no problem Scenario 3: larva that should pop during spawn larva animation doesn't pop, not even when excess larva is spent. Bug.
Edit: scenario 3 only applies to the single larva that should have spawned when the excess larva was spent.
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
Because a ton of you seemed to have not read the first page. This isn't a bug, it's working as intended. I'm going to assume if the animation for the auto-spawn larva starts before the inject larva animation, then it will indeed spawn.
You did not understand the OP The OP says that if a "natural" larva spans during the animation of the "queen" larvas, then this larva disappear. This is not the same as the fact that the hatchery larva timer is paused when there is 4+ larva at the hatchery.
If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
Because a ton of you seemed to have not read the first page. This isn't a bug, it's working as intended. I'm going to assume if the animation for the auto-spawn larva starts before the inject larva animation, then it will indeed spawn.
You did not understand the OP The OP says that if a "natural" larva spans during the animation of the "queen" larvas, then this larva disappear. This is not the same as the fact that the hatchery larva timer is paused when there is 4+ larva at the hatchery.
I'm having a hard time noticing where you draw the distinction between larva in animation to pop, and larva already on the ground. Are you saying you think the "count" of the larva shouldn't be effective till the animation is completed, because this would arbitrarily change nothing but an extremely tiny buff given to zergs all because it "should" be that way?
I assure you blizzard does balance around hypothetical potential larva counts that generate at a certain speed. This doesn't all of the sudden throw a wrench into the balance of the game, like it was just an unseen hindrance. If anything it's another opportunity to get better at the game.
1 in every 15 injects, each inject is 4 larvae, so on average the biggest difference, discounting natural larvae generation, is 60 to 61 larvae = about 1.6% difference. This is much too small to be relevant in a game; I don't think anyone can say they lost because they were down 1 worker at 60 workers, or their 60 roach army was missing another roach.
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
Because a ton of you seemed to have not read the first page. This isn't a bug, it's working as intended. I'm going to assume if the animation for the auto-spawn larva starts before the inject larva animation, then it will indeed spawn.
You did not understand the OP The OP says that if a "natural" larva spans during the animation of the "queen" larvas, then this larva disappear. This is not the same as the fact that the hatchery larva timer is paused when there is 4+ larva at the hatchery.
I'm having a hard time noticing where you draw the distinction between larva in animation to pop, and larva already on the ground. Are you saying you think the "count" of the larva shouldn't be effective till the animation is completed, because this would arbitrarily change nothing but an extremely tiny buff given to zergs all because it "should" be that way?
I assure you blizzard does balance around hypothetical potential larva counts that generate at a certain speed. This doesn't all of the sudden throw a wrench into the balance of the game, like it was just an unseen hindrance. If anything it's another opportunity to get better at the game.
Ok let's see it this way: during the time it takes for the larvas injected by the queen to spawn, the hatchery naturally generates 4 larvaes. So (assuming you consume them all) after the larva spawn you have used 8 larvas in total. The 9th will appear 15s later. Well there is a bug where sometimes only 7 larvas have spawned rather than 8. The 8th (which should have been the 9th) will appear 15s later, so there is really a lost larva.
If you want to clarify anything in the battle.net forums, you can and should post there, PM me here on teamliquid if you want me to edit anything I wrote there. Thanks again for your finding.
Im sure terran and protoss players would love having a miscellaneous percentage of units not pop out of their production facilities after unit completion (with no loss of resources at the start of production).
This would be the non-zerg equivalent.
As it stands it can actually benefit a zerg player to inject larvae at a later time to avoid this glitch (Case L) so there is no real balance reason that it shouldn't be fixed.
The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
EDIT:
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
No, what the OP posted about is a real bug. The mule thing isn't a bug in any sense of the word. If you micro properly you can have the mule not waste those 30 minerals or I believe if they are on a close enough patch they will be able to return it.
It took me a really long time to figure out what the OP was saying. I think an easier way of explaining it might be:
1. hatchery larvae generation is on a time counter 2. when the hatchery has 3 or more larvae this timer is paused 3. for some odd reason if the spawn larvae pops at the same time as the larvae generation then the timer is reset, when it should actually pop the larvae as soon and there are fewer than 3 larvae remaining, hence robbing the z player of a larvae they should have
On March 25 2012 13:59 JoeBot wrote: Nice bug find.
Im sure terran and protoss players would love having a miscellaneous percentage of units not pop out of their production facilities after unit completion (with no loss of resources at the start of production).
This would be the non-zerg equivalent.
As it stands it can actually benefit a zerg player to inject larvae at a later time to avoid this glitch (Case L) so there is no real balance reason that it shouldn't be fixed.
Yes, one every 6 minutes for every base they have up, and it's always a worker. This is hardly noticeable. While it should be patched for the sake of consistency, this is not even remotely a balance issue. Zerg players always build their more expensive units first, so this will be almost entirely limited to Zerglings and Drones. One less Drone or pair of Zerglings per base for every six minutes is NOT going to make a noticeable difference, and any Zerg players saying so don't understand the game.
On March 25 2012 13:59 JoeBot wrote: Nice bug find.
Im sure terran and protoss players would love having a miscellaneous percentage of units not pop out of their production facilities after unit completion (with no loss of resources at the start of production).
This would be the non-zerg equivalent.
As it stands it can actually benefit a zerg player to inject larvae at a later time to avoid this glitch (Case L) so there is no real balance reason that it shouldn't be fixed.
Yes, one every 6 minutes for every base they have up, and it's always a worker. This is hardly noticeable. While it should be patched for the sake of consistency, this is not even remotely a balance issue. Zerg players always build their more expensive units first, so this will be almost entirely limited to Zerglings and Drones. One less Drone or pair of Zerglings per base for every six minutes is NOT going to make a noticeable difference, and any Zerg players saying so don't understand the game.
It is more inclined to effect lower cost units, yes. Since this is the most common instance where all larvae is depleted. But it is possible to run out of larvae on higher cost units (where each unit has a bigger impact). And it also can effect the requirement of macro hatcheries.
But overall the change is indeed insignificant (otherwise it would have been noticed sooner).
On March 25 2012 13:59 JoeBot wrote: Nice bug find.
Im sure terran and protoss players would love having a miscellaneous percentage of units not pop out of their production facilities after unit completion (with no loss of resources at the start of production).
This would be the non-zerg equivalent.
As it stands it can actually benefit a zerg player to inject larvae at a later time to avoid this glitch (Case L) so there is no real balance reason that it shouldn't be fixed.
Yes, one every 6 minutes for every base they have up, and it's always a worker. This is hardly noticeable. While it should be patched for the sake of consistency, this is not even remotely a balance issue. Zerg players always build their more expensive units first, so this will be almost entirely limited to Zerglings and Drones. One less Drone or pair of Zerglings per base for every six minutes is NOT going to make a noticeable difference, and any Zerg players saying so don't understand the game.
It is more inclined to effect lower cost units, yes. Since this is the most common instance where all larvae is depleted. But it is possible to run out of larvae on higher cost units (where each unit has a bigger impact). And it also can effect the requirement of macro hatcheries.
But overall the change is indeed insignificant (otherwise it would have been noticed sooner).
By the time you're making those high-cost units, you ought to have enough Hatcheries that you SHOULDN'T be able to deplete your larvae with them. At least, if you've been macroing properly, which turns this into a macro issue and not a balance issue. The most expensive units I see this ever being a problem with are Mutas, and one Muta more or less in the midgame is not going to be absolutely gamechanging. The only time this could EVER have a significant effect on the game is the 7RR.
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand this line of argumentation. You equate this inconsistency with the MULE mining inconsistency, but the MULE is grounded in a clear and present mechanic, that is, lasting for exactly 90 seconds. No matter what you do, the MULE will without fail last for this amount of time regardless of what it's carrying. All other limitations are derivatives of this time-constraint -- the MULE death condition isn't "270 minerals returned" (even though I think it should be -- but that's irrelevant to the argument at hand).
This bug, on the other hand, is not at all clear nor present. We could argue the empirical truth of this just based on the fact that it took an incredibly observant player two years to figure it out, but even still, it totally contradicts the two clear and present mechanics of the Zerg production cycle, that is:
1) a Hatchery with < 3 larvae will spawn a larvae every 15 seconds until it reaches a maximum of 3; 2) a Hatchery will spawn 4 larvae 45 seconds after a Queen inject.
If you want to argue that there's a third condition that's as clear and present as the first two --
3) a Hatchery with < 3 larvae will not spawn a larvae in accordance with the cycle described in mechanic 1 if and only if it coincides with the larvae spawn of an inject
-- well, lol. Nowhere is that mechanic limited to a definite constraint as with the MULE's 90 second lifetime; you'd have a pretty hard time arguing for it.
As to the onus of mitigating the inconsistency being on the player...well, OK. There are a million ways to make the game arbitrarily harder. You could add the condition "if you Chronoboost a probe when it's exactly 3.5 seconds done, the probe explodes when it finishes" to the game because it adds "depth" (which it does) and requires "skill" (which it also does) to mitigate.
Hell, this inconsistency is even harder to deal with than that simply because there's no way to determine where the natural larva cycle is. If you're managing 2+ hatcheries, do you honestly think that any human player would be able to micromanage when each falls below three larvae AND time each individual inject accordingly? What about when hatcheries are grouped together? Micromanagement of the larvae isn't even possible at that point, no matter how good you are.
tl; dr: it's not clear at all that this should be an intended mechanic, and there are infinite ways to make the game "require more skill"
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
If you lose four larva you are not playing perfectly. If you want to maximize your larva you wait those two seconds. It's so much easier to tab through your hatcheries and spam spawn larva as soon as you got the energy than to time it perfectly every time. I am just saying this is something that makes the game deeper and it doesn't affect master and below at all so why shouldn't we keep it.
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
When larva injects become stackable like how MULEs don't have a cooldown, then I'll glady let this glitch remain in the game.
This is probably the most overblown "glitch" thread I have ever seen. It has as much ramifications as, if not fewer than, stacking workers on close minerals or larva spawning opposite of mineral patches.
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
EDIT:
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
If you lose four larva you are not playing perfectly. If you want to maximize your larva you wait those two seconds. It's so much easier to tab through your hatcheries and spam spawn larva as soon as you got the energy than to time it perfectly every time. I am just saying this is something that makes the game deeper and it doesn't affect master and below at all so why shouldn't we keep it.
bro, delaying every inject by 2 seconds isn't going to help a pro maximize his chance at winning
why would anyone WANT to do that ?
while this isn't game breaking necessarily, it's definitely a glitch with 0 benefits to keeping it in the game
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
EDIT:
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
If you lose four larva you are not playing perfectly. If you want to maximize your larva you wait those two seconds. It's so much easier to tab through your hatcheries and spam spawn larva as soon as you got the energy than to time it perfectly every time. I am just saying this is something that makes the game deeper and it doesn't affect master and below at all so why shouldn't we keep it.
bro, delaying every inject by 2 seconds isn't going to help a pro maximize his chance at winning
why would anyone WANT to do that ?
while this isn't game breaking necessarily, it's definitely a glitch with 0 benefits to keeping it in the game
just to reiterate, injecting SLOWER is BAD
Pretty much this. Anyone trying to argue that this remaining in the game is a way to separate the pros from the average players is just delusional.
in effect, the times when a larvae dissappear the inject larvae mechanic produces not 4, but 3 larvae, the time frame for this to happen is 1.5 seconds out of 15 seconds, aka 10% of the time.
best case: no larvae is lost, 1 hatchery produces (on average) 66.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (6 minutes 40 seconds) (100% larvae production, 0% lost)
worst case: 1 larvae per inject is lost, 1 hatchery produces 57.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (85% larvae production, 15% lost)
average case: 1 in 10 larvae is lost per inject, 1 hatchery produces 65.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (98.5% larvae production, 1.5% lost)
the thing people is complaining about here is clearly not the fact that a tiny amount of larvae is lost on average, its that a very significant amount of larvae is lost in the worst case.
I would say that 15% of you larvae is enough to decide the outcome of a game, but most importantly, this is a random factor.
there is no way to control whether the bug occurs or not except staring at your hatchery at all times of the game.
obviously, staring at your hatchery and expecting to win is simply not feasible, and thus, this is in fact, a random factor and random factors are discouraged and should be patched out.
yes, I have done the math, I know that for 3 bases to have continuous worst case scenario in 3 consecutive minutes that is the following chance: 1 / 1.000.000.000
do note that losing 15% of larvae for 3 minutes is probably an autoloss though.
for shits and giggles: 3 bases for 9 minutes: 1 / 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000
but all that is necessary to lose a game is 1 or 2 lost larvae at a critical time, and that is just 1/ 10 and 1 / 100 respectively.
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
EDIT:
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
If you lose four larva you are not playing perfectly. If you want to maximize your larva you wait those two seconds. It's so much easier to tab through your hatcheries and spam spawn larva as soon as you got the energy than to time it perfectly every time. I am just saying this is something that makes the game deeper and it doesn't affect master and below at all so why shouldn't we keep it.
bro, delaying every inject by 2 seconds isn't going to help a pro maximize his chance at winning
why would anyone WANT to do that ?
while this isn't game breaking necessarily, it's definitely a glitch with 0 benefits to keeping it in the game
just to reiterate, injecting SLOWER is BAD
Pretty much this. Anyone trying to argue that this remaining in the game is a way to separate the pros from the average players is just delusional.
Anyone that is making stupid posts about mules being stackable and injects being not is even more delusional. I made an argument for keeping this because it let's a player maximize their larva by exceptional larva management while it has no impact at all for low level players. So far there hasn't been one single post that convinced me that this is a bad idea. Most Zergs aren't even injecting in time anyway. But hey if most people dislike this I don't care if it gets removed.
The inject timings when you have 3 larvae waiting are:
Drone at 25/40 completion of inject - normal larvae appears right before inject larvae completes. Drone at 26/40 or 27/40 completion of inject - normal larvae appears 15 seconds after inject larvae completes. Drone at 28/40 completion of inject - normal larvae appears right after inject larvae completes.
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
EDIT:
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
If you lose four larva you are not playing perfectly. If you want to maximize your larva you wait those two seconds. It's so much easier to tab through your hatcheries and spam spawn larva as soon as you got the energy than to time it perfectly every time. I am just saying this is something that makes the game deeper and it doesn't affect master and below at all so why shouldn't we keep it.
bro, delaying every inject by 2 seconds isn't going to help a pro maximize his chance at winning
why would anyone WANT to do that ?
while this isn't game breaking necessarily, it's definitely a glitch with 0 benefits to keeping it in the game
just to reiterate, injecting SLOWER is BAD
Pretty much this. Anyone trying to argue that this remaining in the game is a way to separate the pros from the average players is just delusional.
Anyone that is making stupid posts about mules being stackable and injects being not is even more delusional. I made an argument for keeping this because it let's a player maximize their larva by exceptional larva management while it has no impact at all for low level players. So far there hasn't been one single post that convinced me that this is a bad idea. Most Zergs aren't even injecting in time anyway. But hey if most people dislike this I don't care if it gets removed.
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand this line of argumentation. You equate this inconsistency with the MULE mining inconsistency, but the MULE is grounded in a clear and present mechanic, that is, lasting for exactly 90 seconds. No matter what you do, the MULE will without fail last for this amount of time regardless of what it's carrying. All other limitations are derivatives of this time-constraint -- the MULE death condition isn't "270 minerals returned" (even though I think it should be -- but that's irrelevant to the argument at hand).
This bug, on the other hand, is not at all clear nor present. We could argue the empirical truth of this just based on the fact that it took an incredibly observant player two years to figure it out, but even still, it totally contradicts the two clear and present mechanics of the Zerg production cycle, that is:
1) a Hatchery with < 3 larvae will spawn a larvae every 15 seconds until it reaches a maximum of 3; 2) a Hatchery will spawn 4 larvae 45 seconds after a Queen inject.
If you want to argue that there's a third condition that's as clear and present as the first two --
3) a Hatchery with < 3 larvae will not spawn a larvae in accordance with the cycle described in mechanic 1 if and only if it coincides with the larvae spawn of an inject
-- well, lol. Nowhere is that mechanic limited to a definite constraint as with the MULE's 90 second lifetime; you'd have a pretty hard time arguing for it.
As to the onus of mitigating the inconsistency being on the player...well, OK. There are a million ways to make the game arbitrarily harder. You could add the condition "if you Chronoboost a probe when it's exactly 3.5 seconds done, the probe explodes when it finishes" to the game because it adds "depth" (which it does) and requires "skill" (which it also does) to mitigate.
Hell, this inconsistency is even harder to deal with than that simply because there's no way to determine where the natural larva cycle is. If you're managing 2+ hatcheries, do you honestly think that any human player would be able to micromanage when each falls below three larvae AND time each individual inject accordingly? What about when hatcheries are grouped together? Micromanagement of the larvae isn't even possible at that point, no matter how good you are.
tl; dr: it's not clear at all that this should be an intended mechanic, and there are infinite ways to make the game "require more skill"
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
EDIT:
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
If you lose four larva you are not playing perfectly. If you want to maximize your larva you wait those two seconds. It's so much easier to tab through your hatcheries and spam spawn larva as soon as you got the energy than to time it perfectly every time. I am just saying this is something that makes the game deeper and it doesn't affect master and below at all so why shouldn't we keep it.
bro, delaying every inject by 2 seconds isn't going to help a pro maximize his chance at winning
why would anyone WANT to do that ?
while this isn't game breaking necessarily, it's definitely a glitch with 0 benefits to keeping it in the game
just to reiterate, injecting SLOWER is BAD
Pretty much this. Anyone trying to argue that this remaining in the game is a way to separate the pros from the average players is just delusional.
Anyone that is making stupid posts about mules being stackable and injects being not is even more delusional. I made an argument for keeping this because it let's a player maximize their larva by exceptional larva management while it has no impact at all for low level players. So far there hasn't been one single post that convinced me that this is a bad idea. Most Zergs aren't even injecting in time anyway.
It was obviously just a joke. I don't think that injects should be stackable. I was saying how you saying that since MULEs can lose minerals on trips back on the last second as an "argument" to why this glitch should stay is completely irrevalent. No zerg can watch all the hatcheries and make sure they're not injecting on that 15th second. However, for the MULE, you just drop the MULE on a far patch and you're completely fine. There's not even an indicator on when a larva will spawn. This "larva management" is impossible for any player to keep track of over the course of the game. There hasn't been a single post to convince me why this is a good idea to keep either.
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
EDIT:
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
If you lose four larva you are not playing perfectly. If you want to maximize your larva you wait those two seconds. It's so much easier to tab through your hatcheries and spam spawn larva as soon as you got the energy than to time it perfectly every time. I am just saying this is something that makes the game deeper and it doesn't affect master and below at all so why shouldn't we keep it.
bro, delaying every inject by 2 seconds isn't going to help a pro maximize his chance at winning
why would anyone WANT to do that ?
while this isn't game breaking necessarily, it's definitely a glitch with 0 benefits to keeping it in the game
just to reiterate, injecting SLOWER is BAD
Pretty much this. Anyone trying to argue that this remaining in the game is a way to separate the pros from the average players is just delusional.
Anyone that is making stupid posts about mules being stackable and injects being not is even more delusional. I made an argument for keeping this because it let's a player maximize their larva by exceptional larva management while it has no impact at all for low level players. So far there hasn't been one single post that convinced me that this is a bad idea. Most Zergs aren't even injecting in time anyway. But hey if most people dislike this I don't care if it gets removed.
Ok, let's introduce a mechanic where unit production out of your building is halted for 15 seconds if you queue them up at a certain time interval. Because that exemplifies player skill and truly separates the pros and the casuals. Fair, right?
On March 25 2012 12:03 VictorJones wrote: If you wait like 1.6 seconds after your larva pop before injecting again, you get slightly higher larva output. This isn't a problem. It separates the great zergs from the slightly greater zergs
EDIT: Yeah okay, it's been said. I suppose they should change the hatchery animation for the sake of consistency if it really matters.. lol
Actually, If you're going to make players wait a few seconds before every inject then it doesn't sound like you're encouraging better play. An amazing zerg player is one that can keep up with the injects everytime it pops. This glitch, if anything, rewards players who can't keep up with zerg macro because they get the extra larvae and not the better player(the one who is spot on with injects). In my eyes, it'd be harder to keep up perfectly with the injects rather than keeping the glitch and giving the player a 2 second leeway to get around to it since it'd be "better" to do anyway. So even though this glitch isn't balance breaking, this only really hurts the better player since they should be on top of their macro and the lesser player gets rewarded.
Again, it should be about perfect spot on play and not oh just take your time to do it since you actually get a bonus for being the slower player
EDIT:
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand how people keep relating these topics. They are nothing similar. You're essentially making the zerg player wait 2 seconds per inject. That makes the injects slower on all hatcheries. Which makes all units coming from the larvae injecting come out slower. You're basically saying if you want an extra larva(per hatch) you must be slower at what you do and let your queens build up some energy. If there is 4 hatches and the player is playing perfectly, they will lose 4 larvae. But if they are not playing perfectly, then they can end up with 4 more larvae.
The closest you can compare is like every warp-in, you must wait 2 seconds before warping things in again after the cooldown. If you don't, one of your gates won't work for a cycle of warp-in.
If you lose four larva you are not playing perfectly. If you want to maximize your larva you wait those two seconds. It's so much easier to tab through your hatcheries and spam spawn larva as soon as you got the energy than to time it perfectly every time. I am just saying this is something that makes the game deeper and it doesn't affect master and below at all so why shouldn't we keep it.
bro, delaying every inject by 2 seconds isn't going to help a pro maximize his chance at winning
why would anyone WANT to do that ?
while this isn't game breaking necessarily, it's definitely a glitch with 0 benefits to keeping it in the game
just to reiterate, injecting SLOWER is BAD
Pretty much this. Anyone trying to argue that this remaining in the game is a way to separate the pros from the average players is just delusional.
Anyone that is making stupid posts about mules being stackable and injects being not is even more delusional. I made an argument for keeping this because it let's a player maximize their larva by exceptional larva management while it has no impact at all for low level players. So far there hasn't been one single post that convinced me that this is a bad idea. Most Zergs aren't even injecting in time anyway. But hey if most people dislike this I don't care if it gets removed.
It's not a matter of figuring out a pattern and following it every game and eluding the bug. In order to prevent this bug from effecting your larva count, you would have to monitor every single inject. You would have to stare at the larva and make sure you don't inject in that narrow window. Every single time. And it's not a simple matter of finding a pattern and injecting according to it. Not only is every game different with numerous strategies and scenarios that could disrupt that pattern, but the method that you create units isn't instant. When you hold down 'D' to make drones, you have to hold it down for a little while to get all the larva. Over time this alone would fuck up any pattern you were following to elude the bug.
As it stands, it's literally just a small chance at having the occasional lost larva that probably won't effect anything but potentionally could over the course of a game. That is, if the odds aren't in your favor. And historically, that makes for bad gameplay.
Crazy find, I can't believe someone actually spotted this. Though not game breaking in any way I believe it should be fixed as it's just based on bad luck of timing. However, for the sake of further discussion, how do we know that the 15 second timer is supposed to pause if an inject interrupts it's count? Is this in fact how it is intended to operate? Why would injecting above 3 larva not reset the timer, which then restarts it's 15 second countdown when under 3? Perhaps this is a bug which in turn causes this other situation to occur at all.
Baum obviously has an IQ in the single digits and hasn't bothered to read any material in the OP or any other comments, This is obviously an unintentional bug in the game.
I really hope this gets fixed in an upcoming patch, or even a hotfix. I do agree with people saying that this has very little effect in a multi-base 30 minutes ++ macrogame, but it absolutely can effect the outcome of any early onebase play. Please post if you get any response from the blizzardforum!
On March 25 2012 16:52 Galvanox wrote: Baum obviously has an IQ in the single digits and hasn't bothered to read any material in the OP or any other comments, This is obviously an unintentional bug in the game.
this couldn't be made unintentional, they could have also moved the larva animation to the last seconds of the injection period, to add the larva count as the timer finishes. So the larva count for the respawn and the larva count of useable larva is always the same. But they decided that the larva is there but not usable for the duration of the animation. (by no means does someone count the same thing two times unintentionally). For the game flow the way they have done it is probably the best and least random.
I wonder if people complaining about this also leave every game if they spawn on a position with the minerals being north, while the opponent has them south. Horrible for ZvZ, I wonder if in zvz anyone spawning north ever won on xel naga caverns, where the natural is the same as the main.
Blizzard followed a line with the game mechanics and didn't made many exceptions to how certain things run ingame, that helps the gameflow as you don't have to think about the 100 special rules every unit has. Which increases intuitive play, something that is really important for an rts where you have to control many units.
Something like this is part of the game, just like having different maps, where a spawn position might put you in a suboptimal position. Otherwise there would be only one race and one map.
On March 25 2012 15:15 aksfjh wrote: This is probably the most overblown "glitch" thread I have ever seen. It has as much ramifications as, if not fewer than, stacking workers on close minerals or larva spawning opposite of mineral patches.
In ZvZ stacking workers on close minerals or larva spawning on opposite of mineral patches has a significant effect. If you have your workers travelling farther to start mining, you have to play defensive based on where you spawn in ZvZ at the highest level. If you don't stack workers at the beginning, you can delay all of your timings by a few seconds here and there, making ling baneling timing attacks all that stronger against you. If you don't believe me, Stephano has talked about this on his stream before, and it does make a difference.
On March 25 2012 16:52 Galvanox wrote: Baum obviously has an IQ in the single digits and hasn't bothered to read any material in the OP or any other comments, This is obviously an unintentional bug in the game.
this couldn't be made unintentional, they could have also moved the larva animation to the last seconds of the injection period, to add the larva count as the timer finishes. So the larva count for the respawn and the larva count of useable larva is always the same. But they decided that the larva is there but not usable for the duration of the animation. (by no means does someone count the same thing two times unintentionally). For the game flow the way they have done it is probably the best and least random.
I wonder if people complaining about this also leave every game if they spawn on a position with the minerals being north, while the opponent has them south. Horrible for ZvZ, I wonder if in zvz anyone spawning north ever won on xel naga caverns, where the natural is the same as the main.
Blizzard followed a line with the game mechanics and didn't made many exceptions to how certain things run ingame, that helps the gameflow as you don't have to think about the 100 special rules every unit has. Which increases intuitive play, something that is really important for an rts where you have to control many units.
Something like this is part of the game, just like having different maps, where a spawn position might put you in a suboptimal position. Otherwise there would be only one race and one map.
Obviously intentional, just like how you could once avoid drone damage and only drone damage completely with proper control, right? Right?
On March 25 2012 16:52 Galvanox wrote: Baum obviously has an IQ in the single digits and hasn't bothered to read any material in the OP or any other comments, This is obviously an unintentional bug in the game.
this couldn't be made unintentional, they could have also moved the larva animation to the last seconds of the injection period, to add the larva count as the timer finishes. So the larva count for the respawn and the larva count of useable larva is always the same. But they decided that the larva is there but not usable for the duration of the animation. (by no means does someone count the same thing two times unintentionally). For the game flow the way they have done it is probably the best and least random.
I wonder if people complaining about this also leave every game if they spawn on a position with the minerals being north, while the opponent has them south. Horrible for ZvZ, I wonder if in zvz anyone spawning north ever won on xel naga caverns, where the natural is the same as the main.
Blizzard followed a line with the game mechanics and didn't made many exceptions to how certain things run ingame, that helps the gameflow as you don't have to think about the 100 special rules every unit has. Which increases intuitive play, something that is really important for an rts where you have to control many units.
Something like this is part of the game, just like having different maps, where a spawn position might put you in a suboptimal position. Otherwise there would be only one race and one map.
how much experience do you have with programming?
by your reasoning I would say none.
it is very easy to do things unintentionally, they are called bugs, have you heard of them?
besides, you seem to be arguing against yourself:
"Blizzard followed a line with the game mechanics and didn't made many exceptions to how certain things run ingame, that helps the gameflow as you don't have to think about the 100 special rules every unit has. Which increases intuitive play, something that is really important for an rts where you have to control many units."
the rule "if spawn larvae goes off cooldown just as a natural larvae is to be spawned, then the natural larvae will not spawn" seems like a very special and non-intuitive rule, thus, as you say, blizzard should not have intended to implement it.
People don't seem to realize the game has been balanced around this very glitch. And that fixing it could possibly (If it has as much effect as some are saying it does) cause things to become more unbalanced.
On March 25 2012 18:46 Uncultured wrote: People don't seem to realize the game has been balanced around this very glitch. And that fixing it could possibly (If it has as much effect as some are saying it does) cause things to become more unbalanced.
It's not true, because it doesn't happen often. But when it happens, especially early game zvz with 2 equal level zergs, 1 player is 1 drone behind without making any mistake. And in such a coin flip matchup that can mean a lot.
On March 25 2012 18:46 Uncultured wrote: People don't seem to realize the game has been balanced around this very glitch. And that fixing it could possibly (If it has as much effect as some are saying it does) cause things to become more unbalanced.
it is literally impossible to balance something around a random factor, which this is.
On March 25 2012 18:46 Uncultured wrote: People don't seem to realize the game has been balanced around this very glitch. And that fixing it could possibly (If it has as much effect as some are saying it does) cause things to become more unbalanced.
it is literally impossible to balance something around a random factor, which this is.
Have you heard about the thing called lottery? Expected value
From what I understand; The bug is that the spawn timer is reset without any larvae spawning. Shouldn't be hard to fix.But is it necessary? Don't think so.
On March 25 2012 18:46 Uncultured wrote: People don't seem to realize the game has been balanced around this very glitch. And that fixing it could possibly (If it has as much effect as some are saying it does) cause things to become more unbalanced.
it is literally impossible to balance something around a random factor, which this is.
Have you heard about the thing called lottery? Expected value
From what I understand; The bug is that the spawn timer is reset without any larvae spawning. Shouldn't be hard to fix.But is it necessary? Don't think so.
I have never heard of a proffessional lottery player. tell me if you know of one.
I have heard of proffessional poker players, but in that game the random factor is the same for everyone and is accepted byall players.
SC2 is not a gambling game, it is not a game of risk, it is a game of strategy, and in strategic games you need to have predictable results.
On March 25 2012 18:46 Uncultured wrote: People don't seem to realize the game has been balanced around this very glitch. And that fixing it could possibly (If it has as much effect as some are saying it does) cause things to become more unbalanced.
it is literally impossible to balance something around a random factor, which this is.
Have you heard about the thing called lottery? Expected value
From what I understand; The bug is that the spawn timer is reset without any larvae spawning. Shouldn't be hard to fix.But is it necessary? Don't think so.
I have never heard of a proffessional lottery player. tell me if you know of one.
I have heard of proffessional poker players, but in that game the random factor is the same for everyone and is accepted byall players.
SC2 is not a gambling game, it is not a game of risk, it is a game of strategy, and in strategic games you need to have predictable results.
Yeah, sorry. I was only pointing out that it is possible to work with randomness.
The game should in no way be random. (They need to fix the SCV building walk!) But this isn't really that random. You can predict it from in-game information. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be fixed
Hi, this is OP here. OMG. Never expected this many replies as this was my first post on TL. So far, there are about 100 feedbacks here. Though I cannot respond individually to all, thank every one of you for taking your time to read and reply! It is sad and mind-boggling to find several people post obviously without reading the content, but if you read it all and still have questions, it’s my fault for not making things clear enough. So, any counter argument is welcome. Let me pick up some of the interesting feedbacks to respond.
On March 25 2012 12:01 lpunatic wrote: And a ton of people havent read the OP
Scenario 1: larva pops before spawn larva animation, no problem Scenario 2: larva would pop after spawn larva animation, pops as soon as excess larva is spent, no problem Scenario 3: larva that should pop during spawn larva animation doesn't pop, not even when excess larva is spent. Bug.
Edit: scenario 3 only applies to the single larva that should have spawned when the excess larva was spent.
It took me a really long time to figure out what the OP was saying. I think an easier way of explaining it might be:
1. hatchery larvae generation is on a time counter 2. when the hatchery has 3 or more larvae this timer is paused 3. for some odd reason if the spawn larvae pops at the same time as the larvae generation then the timer is reset, when it should actually pop the larvae as soon and there are fewer than 3 larvae remaining, hence robbing the z player of a larvae they should have
If you want to clarify anything in the battle.net forums, you can and should post there, PM me here on teamliquid if you want me to edit anything I wrote there. Thanks again for your finding.
Reading all replies, I found 2 different groups as to how Blizzard should approach this problem. This pretty much summarizes argument that is going on in this thread. Group A Blizzard needs to patch this and fix it because this is a bug. I am on this side, and so seems 90% or more of the community. Group B Blizzard shouldn’t patch this because this adds more depth into the game.
Although Group B is minority and I disagree with their opinion, they have a point, too. 2 notable people in Group B + Show Spoiler +
On March 25 2012 09:23 Baum wrote: So if I understand this correctly you should be able negate this from happening by lining up your injects correctly so this shouldn't be a problem but actually separates the good from the very best players. If this is true it should absolutely stay in the game. It's the same for managing your mules.
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
On March 25 2012 16:52 Galvanox wrote: Baum obviously has an IQ in the single digits and hasn't bothered to read any material in the OP or any other comments, This is obviously an unintentional bug in the game.
this couldn't be made unintentional, they could have also moved the larva animation to the last seconds of the injection period, to add the larva count as the timer finishes. So the larva count for the respawn and the larva count of useable larva is always the same. But they decided that the larva is there but not usable for the duration of the animation. (by no means does someone count the same thing two times unintentionally). For the game flow the way they have done it is probably the best and least random.
I wonder if people complaining about this also leave every game if they spawn on a position with the minerals being north, while the opponent has them south. Horrible for ZvZ, I wonder if in zvz anyone spawning north ever won on xel naga caverns, where the natural is the same as the main.
Blizzard followed a line with the game mechanics and didn't made many exceptions to how certain things run ingame, that helps the gameflow as you don't have to think about the 100 special rules every unit has. Which increases intuitive play, something that is really important for an rts where you have to control many units.
Something like this is part of the game, just like having different maps, where a spawn position might put you in a suboptimal position. Otherwise there would be only one race and one map.
I need to commend these 2 for being honest and taking all the disagreement comments from the rest of the community. The MULE argument from Baum was something I had never thought of.
There are so many attacks from Group A against B. While attacking one’s logic is great for the argument’s sake, some seem to attack one’s personality and I want to keep that to minimum. Some of the good posts from Group A against Group B. + Show Spoiler +
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand this line of argumentation. You equate this inconsistency with the MULE mining inconsistency, but the MULE is grounded in a clear and present mechanic, that is, lasting for exactly 90 seconds. No matter what you do, the MULE will without fail last for this amount of time regardless of what it's carrying. All other limitations are derivatives of this time-constraint -- the MULE death condition isn't "270 minerals returned" (even though I think it should be -- but that's irrelevant to the argument at hand).
This bug, on the other hand, is not at all clear nor present. We could argue the empirical truth of this just based on the fact that it took an incredibly observant player two years to figure it out, but even still, it totally contradicts the two clear and present mechanics of the Zerg production cycle, that is:
1) a Hatchery with < 3 larvae will spawn a larvae every 15 seconds until it reaches a maximum of 3; 2) a Hatchery will spawn 4 larvae 45 seconds after a Queen inject.
If you want to argue that there's a third condition that's as clear and present as the first two --
3) a Hatchery with < 3 larvae will not spawn a larvae in accordance with the cycle described in mechanic 1 if and only if it coincides with the larvae spawn of an inject
-- well, lol. Nowhere is that mechanic limited to a definite constraint as with the MULE's 90 second lifetime; you'd have a pretty hard time arguing for it.
As to the onus of mitigating the inconsistency being on the player...well, OK. There are a million ways to make the game arbitrarily harder. You could add the condition "if you Chronoboost a probe when it's exactly 3.5 seconds done, the probe explodes when it finishes" to the game because it adds "depth" (which it does) and requires "skill" (which it also does) to mitigate.
Hell, this inconsistency is even harder to deal with than that simply because there's no way to determine where the natural larva cycle is. If you're managing 2+ hatcheries, do you honestly think that any human player would be able to micromanage when each falls below three larvae AND time each individual inject accordingly? What about when hatcheries are grouped together? Micromanagement of the larvae isn't even possible at that point, no matter how good you are.
tl; dr: it's not clear at all that this should be an intended mechanic, and there are infinite ways to make the game "require more skill"
On March 25 2012 15:28 Roblin wrote: some quick math:
in effect, the times when a larvae dissappear the inject larvae mechanic produces not 4, but 3 larvae, the time frame for this to happen is 1.5 seconds out of 15 seconds, aka 10% of the time.
best case: no larvae is lost, 1 hatchery produces (on average) 66.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (6 minutes 40 seconds) (100% larvae production, 0% lost)
worst case: 1 larvae per inject is lost, 1 hatchery produces 57.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (85% larvae production, 15% lost)
average case: 1 in 10 larvae is lost per inject, 1 hatchery produces 65.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (98.5% larvae production, 1.5% lost)
the thing people is complaining about here is clearly not the fact that a tiny amount of larvae is lost on average, its that a very significant amount of larvae is lost in the worst case.
I would say that 15% of you larvae is enough to decide the outcome of a game, but most importantly, this is a random factor.
there is no way to control whether the bug occurs or not except staring at your hatchery at all times of the game.
obviously, staring at your hatchery and expecting to win is simply not feasible, and thus, this is in fact, a random factor and random factors are discouraged and should be patched out.
yes, I have done the math, I know that for 3 bases to have continuous worst case scenario in 3 consecutive minutes that is the following chance: 1 / 1.000.000.000
do note that losing 15% of larvae for 3 minutes is probably an autoloss though.
for shits and giggles: 3 bases for 9 minutes: 1 / 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000
but all that is necessary to lose a game is 1 or 2 lost larvae at a critical time, and that is just 1/ 10 and 1 / 100 respectively.
One person in Group B not for depth in game but, interestingly, for game balance reason. + Show Spoiler +
On March 25 2012 18:46 Uncultured wrote: People don't seem to realize the game has been balanced around this very glitch. And that fixing it could possibly (If it has as much effect as some are saying it does) cause things to become more unbalanced.
Balance Concern If patch hits, ZvP and ZvT balance would shift in favor of Z ever so slightly by something like 0.0000001% or so. With current trend in favor of macro play, number of games where this glitch matters is very small in the first place. I would say this glitch could matter vs 2 rax and 4 gate because these happen around the time your first inject finishes and having extra 2 lings does make a difference in such a short micro oriented game. Zerg winrate in ZvZ is apparently 100%, but patch would matter more in ZvZ than the other 2. ZvZ battle happen earlier and first inject finish just in time for 14gas14pool ling speed upgrade research is done. I’m sure many of you have done or being done 15 drones no-more-drones mass ling attack right when speed finishes at least once in your career. In this scenario, you usually have 20 “or so” lings running at enemy base. I haven’t done enough research on this one, but I’m sure having 2 more or less lings would matter a lot in this case. Therefore, the patch would favor actual good player and less about luck in ZvZ.
If people think I need to add these into original post, I might do it later on. Tell me what you think.
Also, for those saying "Blizzard balanced around this bugged mechanic", remember that a significant portion of Blizzard's balancing is done in spreadsheets and theory, as well as in testing.
I imagine what probably happens is that they make spreadsheets saying - by X time, zerg has 3 + (15X) + (4 * Y) = Z larvae - therefore they have however many larvae to hold this particular timing attack, which should be enough
Then they probably play some test games with their imperfect mechanics, and think "close enough, it probably just comes down to micro". But they probably haven't even noticed that in 1 in 6 games, Zerg is down a larva and maybe that's why they're winning or losing - to RNG, not because of skill.
I remember when I did 7 roach rush a long time ago and spammed that strategy a lot, trying to stay as close to the same build order and timing as I could. Sometimes I ended up with only 6 roaches and I was so confused about what I did differently compared to previous games. Could this explain that?
Pretty nice find. It's a very niche scenario, since you have to time the queen inject perfectly for this bug to happen, but it's clearly a bug nontheless. I hope it gets fixed in the next patch!
Also, maybe you should edit those 3 points into your OP to make the whole topic clear, your in depth analysis is a good explanation of the bug but making the point more clear will probably maintain the thread more civil.
On March 25 2012 20:45 Orek wrote: Hi, this is OP here. OMG. Never expected this many replies as this was my first post on TL. So far, there are about 100 feedbacks here. Though I cannot respond individually to all, thank every one of you for taking your time to read and reply! It is sad and mind-boggling to find several people post obviously without reading the content, but if you read it all and still have questions, it’s my fault for not making things clear enough. So, any counter argument is welcome. Let me pick up some of the interesting feedbacks to respond.
On March 25 2012 12:01 lpunatic wrote: And a ton of people havent read the OP
Scenario 1: larva pops before spawn larva animation, no problem Scenario 2: larva would pop after spawn larva animation, pops as soon as excess larva is spent, no problem Scenario 3: larva that should pop during spawn larva animation doesn't pop, not even when excess larva is spent. Bug.
Edit: scenario 3 only applies to the single larva that should have spawned when the excess larva was spent.
It took me a really long time to figure out what the OP was saying. I think an easier way of explaining it might be:
1. hatchery larvae generation is on a time counter 2. when the hatchery has 3 or more larvae this timer is paused 3. for some odd reason if the spawn larvae pops at the same time as the larvae generation then the timer is reset, when it should actually pop the larvae as soon and there are fewer than 3 larvae remaining, hence robbing the z player of a larvae they should have
If you want to clarify anything in the battle.net forums, you can and should post there, PM me here on teamliquid if you want me to edit anything I wrote there. Thanks again for your finding.
Reading all replies, I found 2 different groups as to how Blizzard should approach this problem. This pretty much summarizes argument that is going on in this thread. Group A Blizzard needs to patch this and fix it because this is a bug. I am on this side, and so seems 90% or more of the community. Group B Blizzard shouldn’t patch this because this adds more depth into the game.
Although Group B is minority and I disagree with their opinion, they have a point, too. 2 notable people in Group B + Show Spoiler +
On March 25 2012 09:23 Baum wrote: So if I understand this correctly you should be able negate this from happening by lining up your injects correctly so this shouldn't be a problem but actually separates the good from the very best players. If this is true it should absolutely stay in the game. It's the same for managing your mules.
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
On March 25 2012 16:52 Galvanox wrote: Baum obviously has an IQ in the single digits and hasn't bothered to read any material in the OP or any other comments, This is obviously an unintentional bug in the game.
this couldn't be made unintentional, they could have also moved the larva animation to the last seconds of the injection period, to add the larva count as the timer finishes. So the larva count for the respawn and the larva count of useable larva is always the same. But they decided that the larva is there but not usable for the duration of the animation. (by no means does someone count the same thing two times unintentionally). For the game flow the way they have done it is probably the best and least random.
I wonder if people complaining about this also leave every game if they spawn on a position with the minerals being north, while the opponent has them south. Horrible for ZvZ, I wonder if in zvz anyone spawning north ever won on xel naga caverns, where the natural is the same as the main.
Blizzard followed a line with the game mechanics and didn't made many exceptions to how certain things run ingame, that helps the gameflow as you don't have to think about the 100 special rules every unit has. Which increases intuitive play, something that is really important for an rts where you have to control many units.
Something like this is part of the game, just like having different maps, where a spawn position might put you in a suboptimal position. Otherwise there would be only one race and one map.
I need to commend these 2 for being honest and taking all the disagreement comments from the rest of the community. The MULE argument from Baum was something I had never thought of.
There are so many attacks from Group A against B. While attacking one’s logic is great for the argument’s sake, some seem to attack one’s personality and I want to keep that to minimum. Some of the good posts from Group A against Group B. + Show Spoiler +
On March 25 2012 14:10 Baum wrote: The non-zerg equivalent is Mules mining and waisting 30 minerals when they don't return their last trip. You can avoid that by pulling them away before that just like you can time your inject correctly. As said things like this only make the game deeper and they don't matter at all at the level most of us are playing at. In fact there should be more things like this.
I don't understand this line of argumentation. You equate this inconsistency with the MULE mining inconsistency, but the MULE is grounded in a clear and present mechanic, that is, lasting for exactly 90 seconds. No matter what you do, the MULE will without fail last for this amount of time regardless of what it's carrying. All other limitations are derivatives of this time-constraint -- the MULE death condition isn't "270 minerals returned" (even though I think it should be -- but that's irrelevant to the argument at hand).
This bug, on the other hand, is not at all clear nor present. We could argue the empirical truth of this just based on the fact that it took an incredibly observant player two years to figure it out, but even still, it totally contradicts the two clear and present mechanics of the Zerg production cycle, that is:
1) a Hatchery with < 3 larvae will spawn a larvae every 15 seconds until it reaches a maximum of 3; 2) a Hatchery will spawn 4 larvae 45 seconds after a Queen inject.
If you want to argue that there's a third condition that's as clear and present as the first two --
3) a Hatchery with < 3 larvae will not spawn a larvae in accordance with the cycle described in mechanic 1 if and only if it coincides with the larvae spawn of an inject
-- well, lol. Nowhere is that mechanic limited to a definite constraint as with the MULE's 90 second lifetime; you'd have a pretty hard time arguing for it.
As to the onus of mitigating the inconsistency being on the player...well, OK. There are a million ways to make the game arbitrarily harder. You could add the condition "if you Chronoboost a probe when it's exactly 3.5 seconds done, the probe explodes when it finishes" to the game because it adds "depth" (which it does) and requires "skill" (which it also does) to mitigate.
Hell, this inconsistency is even harder to deal with than that simply because there's no way to determine where the natural larva cycle is. If you're managing 2+ hatcheries, do you honestly think that any human player would be able to micromanage when each falls below three larvae AND time each individual inject accordingly? What about when hatcheries are grouped together? Micromanagement of the larvae isn't even possible at that point, no matter how good you are.
tl; dr: it's not clear at all that this should be an intended mechanic, and there are infinite ways to make the game "require more skill"
On March 25 2012 15:28 Roblin wrote: some quick math:
in effect, the times when a larvae dissappear the inject larvae mechanic produces not 4, but 3 larvae, the time frame for this to happen is 1.5 seconds out of 15 seconds, aka 10% of the time.
best case: no larvae is lost, 1 hatchery produces (on average) 66.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (6 minutes 40 seconds) (100% larvae production, 0% lost)
worst case: 1 larvae per inject is lost, 1 hatchery produces 57.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (85% larvae production, 15% lost)
average case: 1 in 10 larvae is lost per inject, 1 hatchery produces 65.66667 larvae per 400 seconds (98.5% larvae production, 1.5% lost)
the thing people is complaining about here is clearly not the fact that a tiny amount of larvae is lost on average, its that a very significant amount of larvae is lost in the worst case.
I would say that 15% of you larvae is enough to decide the outcome of a game, but most importantly, this is a random factor.
there is no way to control whether the bug occurs or not except staring at your hatchery at all times of the game.
obviously, staring at your hatchery and expecting to win is simply not feasible, and thus, this is in fact, a random factor and random factors are discouraged and should be patched out.
yes, I have done the math, I know that for 3 bases to have continuous worst case scenario in 3 consecutive minutes that is the following chance: 1 / 1.000.000.000
do note that losing 15% of larvae for 3 minutes is probably an autoloss though.
for shits and giggles: 3 bases for 9 minutes: 1 / 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000
but all that is necessary to lose a game is 1 or 2 lost larvae at a critical time, and that is just 1/ 10 and 1 / 100 respectively.
One person in Group B not for depth in game but, interestingly, for game balance reason. + Show Spoiler +
On March 25 2012 18:46 Uncultured wrote: People don't seem to realize the game has been balanced around this very glitch. And that fixing it could possibly (If it has as much effect as some are saying it does) cause things to become more unbalanced.
Balance Concern If patch hits, ZvP and ZvT balance would shift in favor of Z ever so slightly by something like 0.0000001% or so. With current trend in favor of macro play, number of games where this glitch matters is very small in the first place. I would say this glitch could matter vs 2 rax and 4 gate because these happen around the time your first inject finishes and having extra 2 lings does make a difference in such a short micro oriented game. Zerg winrate in ZvZ is apparently 100%, but patch would matter more in ZvZ than the other 2. ZvZ battle happen earlier and first inject finish just in time for 14gas14pool ling speed upgrade research is done. I’m sure many of you have done or being done 15 drones no-more-drones mass ling attack right when speed finishes at least once in your career. In this scenario, you usually have 20 “or so” lings running at enemy base. I haven’t done enough research on this one, but I’m sure having 2 more or less lings would matter a lot in this case. Therefore, the patch would favor actual good player and less about luck in ZvZ.
If people think I need to add these into original post, I might do it later on. Tell me what you think.
*claps*
this, people, is how to deal with an arguement. you win the internet.
This might already have been mentioned, but I see some people trying to downplay the importance of this bug saying it is only a 10% chance to happen and that means 1 larva every 6 minutes which is not a big deal, that is not really how something works. If you have a 1% chance explode all your scvs explode every per game minutes, that is not many scvs lost per game, but when it happens it can mean a lot (obviously a slightly more extreme example.) If this happens to a few of your first injects, then this can easily mess up your early game.
I guess a good thing is that inject larva cooldown does not line up with the larva spawn, where you could risk to have it happen on every larva spawn you do if you line it up perfectly. Should still be fixed though.
Glad someone found this bug , until blizzard does something about this , I'll just blame all my losses against 1 base all ins on this.
Seriously though , I can see this being a huge problem when playing ZvZ against 1 base all ins or an even bigger problem when you are the one carrying out the 1base all in .
You seem convinced that the larva "disappearance" you describe is a bug. However, this depends on your assumption that the 15 second larva "countdown" should stall, rather than reset, upon reaching the larva limit.
In other words, what if this scenario is the "bug."
Case L 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min03sec Queen injects 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min43sec 4 larvae spawn use 4 larvae 6min49sec Hatchery generates 1 larva = Larva X use 1 larva 7min04sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Total 9 larvae so far
I've certainly never heard blizzard state a firm intention on what larva spawning should be. So, perhaps Protoss and Terran players should be complaining about Zerg having an extra larva?
You seem convinced that the larva "disappearance" you describe is a bug. However, this depends on your assumption that the 15 second larva "countdown" should stall, rather than reset, upon reaching the larva limit.
In other words, what if this scenario is the "bug."
Case L 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min03sec Queen injects 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min43sec 4 larvae spawn use 4 larvae 6min49sec Hatchery generates 1 larva = Larva X use 1 larva 7min04sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Total 9 larvae so far
I've certainly never heard blizzard state a firm intention on what larva spawning should be. So, perhaps Protoss and Terran players should be complaining about Zerg having an extra larva?
As long as there is one working design, the developers will balance the game around it. However, how can you balance around a random bug? A bug exists regardless and Blizzard will fix it somehow and then design the balance around it, that's fine.
We aren't asking for a buff, nor a nerf, but for consistency.
Excellent first post. I'm sorry (though not surprised) that so many people missed the point of it, but I am on the other hand pleasantly surprised that most seem to have understood it. You laid it out very well.
Yeah, on average this won't make a difference. But once in a while it will, and that shouldn't happen.
So I've been (re)thinking about this from a programming perspective. This is probably how Blizzard's code currently looks in logical terms:
if [larva count] < 3, start [larva timer]
when [larva timer] ends, spawn 1 larva and add 1 to [larva count] if any only if [larva count] < 3
when [queen inject timer] ends, spawn 4 larvae and add 4 to [larva count]
What happens is that if the queen inject timer ends before the third larva spawns, the larva count raises to above three, so even if the natural larva timer is in progression, a larva won't spawn. This makes sense: if you've been at two larvae for ten seconds and get 4 larvae from a queen inject spawn, the larva which would have otherwise spawned in five seconds doesn't spawn even if the natural larva timer counts down to zero because you're already at 6 larvae.
The problem arises when the injection timer ends at an infinitesmially short time before the natural larva timer ends, e.g.
larva count = 2 and larva timer = 0.00...001; queen inject adds 4 to larva count, and the natural larva consequently gets lost.
So this is in some regard working as intended: Blizz doesn't want the natural larva timer adding a larva to a hatchery that already has 6 larva.
That is to say: as long as there is < 3 larvae and an inject finishes, there will always be a lost larva whose natural timer was counting down, be it at 5 seconds into the timer or 14.99999999999 seconds into the timer. What we perceive as larva "getting lost" is actually the larva count increasing beyond three just before the natural larva timer finishes.
What does this mean in terms of "solutions"? Well, a consistency fix could be
if [larva timer] has < 1 second left, spawn the goddamned larva anyway
but there would still be the issue of arbitrariness between the player who injects the larva at 0.99...9 seconds and the player who injects larva at 1.00...01 seconds in relation to the larva timer, that is, the former losing the larva and the latter having it.
The only way to do it which I think is absolutely "fair" is to let each natural larva timer produce a larva, which would break the current mechanic of no larva being able to spawn past 3.
I can't say whether this solution is "good" or "bad", but it's the only one that would remove what we perceive as an inconsistency.
tl; dr: There is no way to argue that this is a "bug" in the sense that the programmers are somehow at fault for designing a faulty mechanic; rather, the issue is one of consistency and...hate to say it, balance.
On March 25 2012 07:00 ZeromuS wrote: If this is true, thats a cool find. I don't play Zerg so I don't know how the mechanic truly truly works in terms of a missing larva X but GJ for taking the time to put this together.
Remove intro from the spoiler though or create a simple abstract so people know what they are getting into when they open up the thread
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
I am very well aware of 3+ larvae situation. If you dont mind, please read on. I think I made it clear enough with enough evidence. Thank you.
perhaps you should just build another hatchery? this bug you talk of will most likely happen once or twice per game max and will effect the gameplay very little. it is the same kind of 'bug' as mules mining 30 more minerals then dieing without being able to return them. its not game breaking unless the 2 players that are playing are literally perfect players.
Great work, OP, thank you. As for the solution, they should just treat the N case as either E or L case, regardless, the result would be basically the same. My bet is they didn't notice and thought it works as L case. (I myself assumed it works that way and never checked so thoroughly to find the disappearing larva during animation in ~10% of the cases)
On March 25 2012 07:00 ZeromuS wrote: If this is true, thats a cool find. I don't play Zerg so I don't know how the mechanic truly truly works in terms of a missing larva X but GJ for taking the time to put this together.
Remove intro from the spoiler though or create a simple abstract so people know what they are getting into when they open up the thread
Thank you for the advice. I just did.
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
I am very well aware of 3+ larvae situation. If you dont mind, please read on. I think I made it clear enough with enough evidence. Thank you.
perhaps you should just build another hatchery? this bug you talk of will most likely happen once or twice per game max and will effect the gameplay very little. it is the same kind of 'bug' as mules mining 30 more minerals then dieing without being able to return them. its not game breaking unless the 2 players that are playing are literally perfect players.
Mules' behavior is deterministic though, not random. Depends on the distance between the particular mineral patch and the command center. A player can control this consciously.
Here we have a truly random behavior, based on invisible timer against which you throw a dice each time you inject. It is not within player's control and it could lead to streaks of unlucky or lucky outcomes in a row, completely randomly.
For those confused: What OP is saying is if you have an inject pop at 6:43 and the hatch would have generated a larva at 6:45, if you then use those 4 larvae that popped at 6:45, the larva that would have been generated in 2 more seconds will then be generated at 6:47 (2 seconds later) because you've used all the larvae.
However, if a pop occurs exactly when regular larva generation would have occrured (6:45), the larva that would have been naturally generated is now skipped, and when you use the larvae from the inject the next larva won't generate for 15 more seconds, resarting generation instead of generating that larva as soon as the inject's larvae are used.
On March 25 2012 23:53 kurrysauce wrote: Glad someone found this bug , until blizzard does something about this , I'll just blame all my losses against 1 base all ins on this.
Seriously though , I can see this being a huge problem when playing ZvZ against 1 base all ins or an even bigger problem when you are the one carrying out the 1base all in .
A huge problem? A 1/50 chance that you'll lose 1 larva is a huge problem? I mean c'mon what allins are you talking about. If it's 1 base roach make spines and your own units and 1 larva won't matter. If it's a baneling allin. Well 1 baneling can kill like 10 larva worth of zerglings. So I highly doubt 1 larva is going to matter. If anything it'd matter more if your trying to macro and you lose 1 larva early when your droning, then overall you'd lose like a few hundred minerals if the game lasted a long time. And that's only if you and your enemy are droning at the same time.
Don't get me wrong I agree this needs to be fixed. But a HUGE problem is a HUGE overstatement.
You seem convinced that the larva "disappearance" you describe is a bug. However, this depends on your assumption that the 15 second larva "countdown" should stall, rather than reset, upon reaching the larva limit.
In other words, what if this scenario is the "bug."
Case L 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min03sec Queen injects 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min43sec 4 larvae spawn use 4 larvae 6min49sec Hatchery generates 1 larva = Larva X use 1 larva 7min04sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Total 9 larvae so far
I've certainly never heard blizzard state a firm intention on what larva spawning should be. So, perhaps Protoss and Terran players should be complaining about Zerg having an extra larva?
Hi, OP here. Inspired by this feedback, I added another section in original post.
EDIT The way Blizzard needs to patch “What? Making Larva X appear as in Table B by reprogramming is the only way to patch this. There is no need to discuss how it should be patched.” I don’t blame you for thinking that way. I had thought so as well until I read the following feedback. + Show Spoiler +
On March 26 2012 00:11 -_- wrote: Orek:
You seem convinced that the larva "disappearance" you describe is a bug. However, this depends on your assumption that the 15 second larva "countdown" should stall, rather than reset, upon reaching the larva limit.
In other words, what if this scenario is the "bug."
Case L 5min59sec Hatchery has 0 larva 6min00sec Hatchery generates 1 larva 6min03sec Queen injects 6min15sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 2 larvae 6min30sec Hatchery generates 1 larva use 1 larva 6min43sec 4 larvae spawn use 4 larvae 6min49sec Hatchery generates 1 larva = Larva X use 1 larva 7min04sec Hatchery generates 1 larva Total 9 larvae so far
I've certainly never heard blizzard state a firm intention on what larva spawning should be. So, perhaps Protoss and Terran players should be complaining about Zerg having an extra larva?
This alternative solution caught my attention. Many might say it’s just a QQ against Zerg, but that last part is not what is interesting about this post. Interesting concept is that when there are 2 rules that contradicts each other and there is a need to fix one of them to have 1 universal rule that applies to all situations, this post suggests that the majority rule is the one that needs to be fixed and minority rule must be applied. Fixing 90% so that 10% rules all sounds so weird. Bill Clinton wins 50% popular vote, Ralph Nader wins 1% popular vote, then now we should have Ralph Nader as our President!!! That’s how it sounds like. However, if fixing the glitch was the sole purpose, this approach works, too. Inspired by this post, I recalculated everything in my me vs computer experiment on scrap station and simulated what WOULD it be like if larva generation timer reset instead of pause when 3+ is available at Hatchery. Take a look at Table C below. + Show Spoiler +
When larva generation progress reset every time 4 larvae pop from Spawn Larva, I would have ended up with 29 drones, which is 5 larvae shorter than current state. The key is that generating 3 larvae takes 15sec*3+(2~5sec)=47~50sec while minimum Spawn Larvae interval is 44.4sec. Due to the shorter Spawn Larvae interval, only 2 larvae gets generated between 2 injects and 3rd larva’s progress is almost always lost at 13/15. Now, then what if I just timed injects so that 3 larvae always appear between 2 injects? Table D shows this scenario. I would have ended up with 37 drones, which is 37-29=8 more larvae than when inject timing is not timed well as in Table C.
Coincidentally, this 37 larvae is exactly the same as in Table B, which is how I originally considered the only way to patch. Can this be alternative way to patch? For pure game logic reason, I would say yes. However, in terms of practical game play, I must say absolutely not. More natural patch as in Table B is so much more flexible regarding the inject timings. Making injects 1sec earlier or later has almost no impact overall. On the other hand, alternative patch as in Table C&D punishes 1sec earlier injects so severely that as much as 8 larvae can get lost in 10 min time. Terran equivalent of this would be dropping MULE 1 sec too “early,” not late, somehow gives you less resource despite better play by dropping mule on time. Protoss equivalent of this would be chronoboosting Nexus 1 sec too “early,” not late, somehow gives you less probes despite better play by doing it early. Had this rule implemented, keeping track of your inject timings and intentionally delaying it would become the #1 priority in Zerg play, and even DRG level player would have to stare at his hatcheries like some bronze players. Whoever thinks alternative patch is viable even after reading this section must be a true Zerg hater.
If you are a Terran: Imagine your barracks having 10% chance for a marine to take twice its usual production time. If you are a Protoss: Imagine your warpgate having 10% chance for its cooldown to be doubled.
Try to justify such kind of erratic behavior as intentional or insignificant.
On March 26 2012 12:11 figq wrote: If you are a Terran: Imagine your barracks having 10% chance for a marine to take twice its usual production time. If you are a Protoss: Imagine your warpgate having 10% chance for its cooldown to be doubled.
Try to justify such kind of erratic behavior as intentional or insignificant.
10% chance? You mean 2% chance right? As it's close to 1/50 that it'll happen and if it didn't happen meanwhile your injecting perfectly it isn't going to happen anyway. Second of all, you can't compare the other races to the Zergs extreme production capability.
Like I said before I agree it is bad and needs to be patched. But why are you exaggerating it so much. It very rarely happens and when it does it's so unnoticeable that it has almost zero effect on actual gameplay. The most effect in ZvZ where it's an equal chance for both players and still has almost zero effect. Like I said before the chance is ridiculously low, and has almost no effect with the Zerg production capabilities anyway. Seeing as nobody has noticed this for this long it clearly isn't too big a deal.
On March 26 2012 09:45 poeticEnnui wrote: So I've been (re)thinking about this from a programming perspective. This is probably how Blizzard's code currently looks in logical terms:
if [larva count] < 3, start [larva timer]
when [larva timer] ends, spawn 1 larva and add 1 to [larva count] if any only if [larva count] < 3
when [queen inject timer] ends, spawn 4 larvae and add 4 to [larva count]
What happens is that if the queen inject timer ends before the third larva spawns, the larva count raises to above three, so even if the natural larva timer is in progression, a larva won't spawn. This makes sense: if you've been at two larvae for ten seconds and get 4 larvae from a queen inject spawn, the larva which would have otherwise spawned in five seconds doesn't spawn even if the natural larva timer counts down to zero because you're already at 6 larvae.
The problem arises when the injection timer ends at an infinitesmially short time before the natural larva timer ends, e.g.
larva count = 2 and larva timer = 0.00...001; queen inject adds 4 to larva count, and the natural larva consequently gets lost.
So this is in some regard working as intended: Blizz doesn't want the natural larva timer adding a larva to a hatchery that already has 6 larva.
That is to say: as long as there is < 3 larvae and an inject finishes, there will always be a lost larva whose natural timer was counting down, be it at 5 seconds into the timer or 14.99999999999 seconds into the timer. What we perceive as larva "getting lost" is actually the larva count increasing beyond three just before the natural larva timer finishes.
What does this mean in terms of "solutions"? Well, a consistency fix could be
if [larva timer] has < 1 second left, spawn the goddamned larva anyway
but there would still be the issue of arbitrariness between the player who injects the larva at 0.99...9 seconds and the player who injects larva at 1.00...01 seconds in relation to the larva timer, that is, the former losing the larva and the latter having it.
The only way to do it which I think is absolutely "fair" is to let each natural larva timer produce a larva, which would break the current mechanic of no larva being able to spawn past 3.
I can't say whether this solution is "good" or "bad", but it's the only one that would remove what we perceive as an inconsistency.
tl; dr: There is no way to argue that this is a "bug" in the sense that the programmers are somehow at fault for designing a faulty mechanic; rather, the issue is one of consistency and...hate to say it, balance.
This is incorrect, because the issue is the timer is not supposed to reset according to their own programming-see OP. When the hatch begins larva spawn immediately because the 15 sec counter is at 0. The counter should be at 0 in this missing larva exception, so that once the larva are spent 1 larva immediately spawns and the counter continues. The point of the OP is that the game is programmed to have a coninuous timer on the hatches. What is actually lost is 15 seconds of spawn larva time. 15 seconds equates perfectly with 1 larva, hence the larva disappearing glitch being a better name than "I want my 15 seconds back."
On March 26 2012 12:11 figq wrote: If you are a Terran: Imagine your barracks having 10% chance for a marine to take twice its usual production time. If you are a Protoss: Imagine your warpgate having 10% chance for its cooldown to be doubled.
Try to justify such kind of erratic behavior as intentional or insignificant.
10% chance? You mean 2% chance right? As it's close to 1/50 that it'll happen and if it didn't happen meanwhile your injecting perfectly it isn't going to happen anyway. Second of all, you can't compare the other races to the Zergs extreme production capability.
Like I said before I agree it is bad and needs to be patched. But why are you exaggerating it so much. It very rarely happens and when it does it's so unnoticeable that it has almost zero effect on actual gameplay. The most effect in ZvZ where it's an equal chance for both players and still has almost zero effect. Like I said before the chance is ridiculously low, and has almost no effect with the Zerg production capabilities anyway. Seeing as nobody has noticed this for this long it clearly isn't too big a deal.
Hi, OP here. Thank you for your feedback, although I have to say the chance is more like 10% rather than 2%. 1.5 glitch period from my observation (could be closer to 1.0, could be closer to 2.0) and 15sec larva generation interval means 1.5/15=10% or so. Whether you think 10% is a big deal or not is all up to you. As you said, millions of games have been played in the last 2 years including beta period, and until a couple days ago when I started this research, no one in the world seemed to have noticed it. You have a point in that some pros must have noticed it way before me if this were a super significant deal. I just wanted to clarify that it is about 10%, not 2% for sure as you could see from my experiment. Thank you again for agreeing that this needs to be patched regardless. Some Terran and Protoss insisted that this obvious bug should stay for balance reasons. That, I cannot agree with.
not to rain on the parade and suggest that bugs should be overlooked or ignored, but the game has been balanced up untill this point with game mechanics as they currently stand.
With mechanics as complicated as the zerg lavae spawn rates and queens, im sure blizzard would have spent lengthy periods of time balancing out the spawn rate and injection timers pre-release in alpha testing of the game, since then any short coming of the race has been balanced out by altering structure health/armour and units similarly.
probably not a great analogy but ill try it anyway - lets say someone discovers that zealots infact dont run as fast as they're supposed to - zealots are not inherantly any weaker a unit relative to the other races because there health/armour/damage/etc has been balanced around that unrealised short coming.
On March 26 2012 12:11 figq wrote: If you are a Terran: Imagine your barracks having 10% chance for a marine to take twice its usual production time. If you are a Protoss: Imagine your warpgate having 10% chance for its cooldown to be doubled.
Try to justify such kind of erratic behavior as intentional or insignificant.
10% chance? You mean 2% chance right? As it's close to 1/50 that it'll happen and if it didn't happen meanwhile your injecting perfectly it isn't going to happen anyway. Second of all, you can't compare the other races to the Zergs extreme production capability.
Like I said before I agree it is bad and needs to be patched. But why are you exaggerating it so much. It very rarely happens and when it does it's so unnoticeable that it has almost zero effect on actual gameplay. The most effect in ZvZ where it's an equal chance for both players and still has almost zero effect. Like I said before the chance is ridiculously low, and has almost no effect with the Zerg production capabilities anyway. Seeing as nobody has noticed this for this long it clearly isn't too big a deal.
Hi, OP here. Thank you for your feedback, although I have to say the chance is more like 10% rather than 2%. 1.5 glitch period from my observation (could be closer to 1.0, could be closer to 2.0) and 15sec larva generation interval means 1.5/15=10% or so. Whether you think 10% is a big deal or not is all up to you. As you said, millions of games have been played in the last 2 years including beta period, and until a couple days ago when I started this research, no one in the world seemed to have noticed it. You have a point in that some pros must have noticed it way before me if this were a super significant deal. I just wanted to clarify that it is about 10%, not 2% for sure as you could see from my experiment. Thank you again for agreeing that this needs to be patched regardless. Some Terran and Protoss insisted that this obvious bug should stay for balance reasons. That, I cannot agree with.
Ah good point, I was thinking about the larva inject time of 45 seconds which is why I was thinking about 1/50. But that makes sense I didn't think about the fact that the interval will happen 3 times per inject. Well that definitely means it should be patched haha. Anyway good find man.
On March 26 2012 13:43 tsango wrote: not to rain on the parade and suggest that bugs should be overlooked or ignored, but the game has been balanced up untill this point with game mechanics as they currently stand.
With mechanics as complicated as the zerg lavae spawn rates and queens, im sure blizzard would have spent lengthy periods of time balancing out the spawn rate and injection timers pre-release in alpha testing of the game, since then any short coming of the race has been balanced out by altering structure health/armour and units similarly.
probably not a great analogy but ill try it anyway - lets say someone discovers that zealots infact dont run as fast as they're supposed to - zealots are not inherantly any weaker a unit relative to the other races because there health/armour/damage/etc has been balanced around that unrealised short coming.
The problem with that analogy is that it would be the same for everyone. In this case, their is an amount of random chance in the game where someone could have less zerglings or less drones in a very tight early game situation in one situation and more in another. The game, instead of coming down to practiced skill, would come down to if you luckily managed to avoid losing one larva for no difference. In most cases it won't matter but there have been plenty of very close games where the outcome could have been different with an earlier roach, two more zerglings or another drone.
On March 26 2012 14:18 RaiKageRyu wrote: It sucks. But hey Mules on far mineral patches die during the last cargo as well. It's not that game breaking.
Don't put them on far mineral patches then, your own problem if you do. There is nothing we can do about this.
Once again great job by the OP in identifying and researching this glitch so in depth.
I have also been attempting to figure out how exactly the glitch does occur from a programming perspective and how it would be fixed. I went and conducted my own tests just to see for myself. It took me until 15:00 game time to finally record the glitch, but I attribute that to my attempts to reproduce it by timing my injects and missing by the slightest margins. However, while doing this and watching the replay of it I noticed a few interesting things.
Things I noticed: 1. Larva from queens appear in the unit counter before they appear as usable at the hatchery. On the other hand, naturally spawned larva appear in both the unit counter and at their hatchery at the same time. 2. Larva from queens increment in the unit counter and at the hatchery in the same manner and at the same rate (at least as I perceive). They are counted 1, 2, 3, 4 and the same happens at the hatchery a second or two later. 3. Natural larva will still appear at the hatchery at any time up until the unit counter says the hatch has 3 larva. This was observed at a point when a natural larva appeared when the first larva from the queen spawn was already in the counting station.
My assumption (untested and not very easy to test) is that the critical window when the larva will be lost is the time between when the unit counting station hits 3 and when the third larva hits the ground at the hatch. Using one of my larva injects as a test I observed that this span is over the space of parts of three separate seconds and is therefore greater than a full second. This means that if I am correct, then the window is also greater than 1 second and the OP is correct in saying that 10% of game time lies within the window.
Now looking at this from a programming standpoint (I am a junior computer engineer at university so there are others more qualified, but I believe I am more qualified than most), I would think that the reason this larva is lost is based on how the natural larva timer works and what its triggers are for pausing and generating larva. As I said, larva appear in the unit counting station immediately after spawn larva completes. These larva are not usable for an obvious reason - they are in mid-air and it makes no sense to create eggs in mid-air; it would just look weird and not really work physically.
My hypothesis is based on the triggers for both larva generation and timer pausing. My guess is that there is a trigger that says that no more larva are generated once there are more than 3 larva assigned to that particular hatch. I also believe that there is a separate trigger for pausing the larva generation timer based on the number of larva on the ground. Note that based on #1 and #2 above, these variables are not the same. Normally this is not a problem since with normal larva generation there is no inconsistency between the two variables. However, with spawn larva there is a window where the two variables are not the same and this is when a larva is lost.
well i guess ist another thing you have to be good at: "work on your spawn larva timing, so that this doesn't happens":D just like pulling off the MULE if it's about to die and won't deliver the minerals
On March 25 2012 07:00 ZeromuS wrote: If this is true, thats a cool find. I don't play Zerg so I don't know how the mechanic truly truly works in terms of a missing larva X but GJ for taking the time to put this together.
Remove intro from the spoiler though or create a simple abstract so people know what they are getting into when they open up the thread
Thank you for the advice. I just did.
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
I am very well aware of 3+ larvae situation. If you dont mind, please read on. I think I made it clear enough with enough evidence. Thank you.
perhaps you should just build another hatchery? this bug you talk of will most likely happen once or twice per game max and will effect the gameplay very little. it is the same kind of 'bug' as mules mining 30 more minerals then dieing without being able to return them. its not game breaking unless the 2 players that are playing are literally perfect players.
Its in no way shape or form the same kind of bug. If you drop a mule on the close patch, it will consistently lose 30 minerals on its way back, each and every time. If you constantly keep injecting your hatchery, you wont consistently lose a larva here and there, you might lose one every time, or you might not lose one the whole game.
Furthermore, the analogy is terrible anyways. Its a bug where in 10% of the inject cases, you lose 1 larva, which translates to a unit. It might be a drone, or an ultralisk, its just gone, you cant build it. So the analogy should be more along the lines of a battlecruiser suddenly not appearing out of the starport.
The larva problem is a definitive bug, while the mule issue is a feature. If you dont send it on the close patch, it wont expire half way back.
Honestly, inject larva is so strong that this is insignificant. Missing one larva 7% of the time doesn't matter especially when zergs don't always use their extra larva consistently from either resources or busy managing elsewhere. It may be like this by design to begin with. Whether it is changed or not won't make much of a difference.
On March 31 2012 04:55 gh0un wrote: Furthermore, the analogy is terrible anyways. Its a bug where in 10% of the inject cases, you lose 1 larva, which translates to a unit. It might be a drone, or an ultralisk, its just gone, you cant build it. So the analogy should be more along the lines of a battlecruiser suddenly not appearing out of the starport.
No, your analogy is terrible. The battlecruiser is paid for before coming out whereas the larva is something free and didn't cost money to make.
On March 25 2012 07:00 ZeromuS wrote: If this is true, thats a cool find. I don't play Zerg so I don't know how the mechanic truly truly works in terms of a missing larva X but GJ for taking the time to put this together.
Remove intro from the spoiler though or create a simple abstract so people know what they are getting into when they open up the thread
Thank you for the advice. I just did.
On March 25 2012 07:13 kcdc wrote: No. The hatchery doesn't do the auto-spawn in that situation because it's already at 3+ larvae. If the inject happens right before the auto-spawn and you don't spend the larvae to get the standing larvae under 3, then it will skip that auto-spawn. It's not a bug--hatcheries just don't spawn larvae when there are already 4 sitting there.
I am very well aware of 3+ larvae situation. If you dont mind, please read on. I think I made it clear enough with enough evidence. Thank you.
perhaps you should just build another hatchery? this bug you talk of will most likely happen once or twice per game max and will effect the gameplay very little. it is the same kind of 'bug' as mules mining 30 more minerals then dieing without being able to return them. its not game breaking unless the 2 players that are playing are literally perfect players.
Its in no way shape or form the same kind of bug. If you drop a mule on the close patch, it will consistently lose 30 minerals on its way back, each and every time. If you constantly keep injecting your hatchery, you wont consistently lose a larva here and there, you might lose one every time, or you might not lose one the whole game.
Furthermore, the analogy is terrible anyways. Its a bug where in 10% of the inject cases, you lose 1 larva, which translates to a unit. It might be a drone, or an ultralisk, its just gone, you cant build it. So the analogy should be more along the lines of a battlecruiser suddenly not appearing out of the starport.
The larva problem is a definitive bug, while the mule issue is a feature. If you dont send it on the close patch, it wont expire half way back.
If you only drop mules on farther patches those will get mined faster tho, so when nearly mined out ur left with only close mineral patches which will result in oversaturation. while we are at it someone could test this also.
Since this bug is triggered by the inject larva from the queen, which uses energy, the closest analogy I can think of is if 1 out of 10 mules you drop, or 1 out of 10 chrono boosts are lost.
On April 05 2012 08:36 Arkymedes wrote: Since this bug is triggered by the inject larva from the queen, which uses energy, the closest analogy I can think of is if 1 out of 10 mules you drop, or 1 out of 10 chrono boosts are lost.
It is a big deal and need to be addressed.
It's not nearly so severe. It would be more akin to if a quarter of your chrono boosts (in 1 in 10) was gone - in my mind, it is as if the chrono boost somehow boosted itself so that it ended 2.5% faster (and hence, for every 10 boosts, you lose 25% of one boost, which is akin to what is happening here.)
I would like to see it addressed though, as a zerg player. :D More larva = more units = more gg.
This is huge actually... And it makes a lot of sense especially in ZvZ. Sometimes you inexplicably end up with 2 more/less lings than your opponent. Couple that with an early engagement that costs you a scouting ling or two, and now you're down by 20% army size to your opponent and you made no considerable mistakes.
Really makes ZvZ a LOT more random particularly because early aggression is so huge in that MU.
Shouldn't really be QQ worthy for Protoss or Terran as this is just adding more consistency to the game.
Basically... This one small thing can account for up to 10% of losses in ZvX...
Hell, nerf larva if you like, just make it consistent or at least controllable (like the patch distance rearrangement for MULEs). Pure engine randomness in a race is just a joke.
On March 31 2012 05:22 Glockateer wrote: Honestly, inject larva is so strong that this is insignificant. Missing one larva 7% of the time doesn't matter especially when zergs don't always use their extra larva consistently from either resources or busy managing elsewhere. It may be like this by design to begin with. Whether it is changed or not won't make much of a difference.
On March 31 2012 04:55 gh0un wrote: Furthermore, the analogy is terrible anyways. Its a bug where in 10% of the inject cases, you lose 1 larva, which translates to a unit. It might be a drone, or an ultralisk, its just gone, you cant build it. So the analogy should be more along the lines of a battlecruiser suddenly not appearing out of the starport.
No, your analogy is terrible. The battlecruiser is paid for before coming out whereas the larva is something free and didn't cost money to make.
Trying to write this off as unimportant is horrible. Imagine if every single unit you made had a 15second delay added to its build time at random. It doesn't cost you more money, but there is no way for you to control it other than just make extra production facilities and cross your fingers.
This is absolutely huge and should be addressed asaply by blizzard.
This is a bug. Trying to relate this to another game mechanic is impossible without doing some serious heavyweight calculations with a bunch of variables included. Until this is done, someone else is just going to bring up some additional variable to invalidate a mechanics-comparison argument and we'll be dancing in circles until the end of time. But I don't think that a mechanics-comparison is even necessary to determine that this as a bug.
There are two things we have to consider-
1) Is this working as intended? We can deduce that this is not the case because it is not consistent with a measure that has ALREADY been implemented by blizzard to make sure that NOTHING interrupts the following principle.
1)One larva will spawn when the hatchery's "time under 3 larva" timer has hit 15 seconds
NO MATTER WHAT
The measure I am referring to is the pause timer on the natural larva spawn. If a Q larva spawn pops before a natural larva spawn cycle, assuming that we were under 3 natural larva during the pop, then there is a pause placed on the timer. This timer resumes to where it was before the pause as soon as the player dips back under 3 larva. This exact mechanic seems to exist so that Queen/Natural larva spawn time management is completely unnecessary. If blizzard wanted players to keep an eye on natural larva time, they would have either 1) introduce a natural larva timer 2) not have implemented this "pause" timer function to begin with
2) Does this introduce randomness into the game that can NOT be mitigated by player intervention? Ok, supposing it isn't working as intended, so what? Everything has been balanced according the outcomes of games with this bug intact, removing it would only serve to unhinge an already delicate tightrope walk. Ignoring the fact that this argument actually defeats itself (changing anything disrupts everything, hence why re-balances follow balances) - mechanical randomness is the bane of competitive anything that doesn't rely on mechanical randomness as the foundation of the game itself. (Poker is an exception because players are dealt hands that are "mechanically random" but everyone else's hands are just as random - I'm sure there are others). The underlying principle being that we are faced with a mechanically random probability in a game that is supposed to be working towards minimizing these chance occurrences. Can it be mitigated by player intervention? - Absolutely not. There is no natural larva timer, and therefore no way to accurately predict when the two spawning cycles will fall within the 1.5 second window.
Whether or not this random event is game changing doesn't matter. If it is game-changing then it should be changed because a player will have a significant unfair advantage due to a dice roll that is beyond his/her/korean control. If itisn't game gamechanging, then it should be changed because it isn't working as intended and it changing it won't disrupt the flow of the game that much anyways.
On April 11 2012 04:26 dc0cc wrote: This is a bug. Trying to relate this to another game mechanic is impossible without doing some serious heavyweight calculations with a bunch of variables included. Until this is done, someone else is just going to bring up some additional variable to invalidate a mechanics-comparison argument and we'll be dancing in circles until the end of time. But I don't think that a mechanics-comparison is even necessary to determine that this as a bug.
There are two things we have to consider-
1) Is this working as intended? We can deduce that this is not the case because it is not consistent with a measure that has ALREADY been implemented by blizzard to make sure that NOTHING interrupts the following principle.
1)One larva will spawn when the hatchery's "time under 3 larva" timer has hit 15 seconds
NO MATTER WHAT
The measure I am referring to is the pause timer on the natural larva spawn. If a Q larva spawn pops before a natural larva spawn cycle, assuming that we were under 3 natural larva during the pop, then there is a pause placed on the timer. This timer resumes to where it was before the pause as soon as the player dips back under 3 larva. This exact mechanic seems to exist so that Queen/Natural larva spawn time management is completely unnecessary. If blizzard wanted players to keep an eye on natural larva time, they would have either 1) introduce a natural larva timer 2) not have implemented this "pause" timer function to begin with
2) Does this introduce randomness into the game that can NOT be mitigated by player intervention? Ok, supposing it isn't working as intended, so what? Everything has been balanced according the outcomes of games with this bug intact, removing it would only serve to unhinge an already delicate tightrope walk. Ignoring the fact that this argument actually defeats itself (changing anything disrupts everything, hence why re-balances follow balances) - mechanical randomness is the bane of competitive anything that doesn't rely on mechanical randomness as the foundation of the game itself. (Poker is an exception because players are dealt hands that are "mechanically random" but everyone else's hands are just as random - I'm sure there are others). The underlying principle being that we are faced with a mechanically random probability in a game that is supposed to be working towards minimizing these chance occurrences. Can it be mitigated by player intervention? - Absolutely not. There is no natural larva timer, and therefore no way to accurately predict when the two spawning cycles will fall within the 1.5 second window.
Whether or not this random event is game changing doesn't matter. If it is game-changing then it should be changed because a player will have a significant unfair advantage due to a dice roll that is beyond his/her/korean control. If itisn't game gamechanging, then it should be changed because it isn't working as intended and it changing it won't disrupt the flow of the game that much anyways.
It is game changing, no doubt about it. One missing larva can be the deciding factor in a game, so therefore it should be fixed. There's really no debate. Even if it wasn't game changing it should still be fixed since it's a bug that can give slight advantages or slight disadvantages. I don't see why a bug of this manner has to be "justified" to be fixed..
I don't agree that this is a bug. Larva will not spawn when larva > 3, as applies to 2+4, as its always been.
That being said, I agree with some other points regarding the overlap of mule casting and I would agree, based on that, that hatcheries should always spawn 3 larva regardless of timing of spawn larva spell. OP should make this point more clear in the opening post.
Larva not spawning above 3 is not the issue at hand. The issue is that there is an internal timer for each hatchery that is being reset when it should be paused. Each hatchery has a "time spent under 3 larva" (hereby referred to as the TS3) timer that resets every 15 seconds as long as there is less than 3 larvae at the hatch. Every time it resets, a larva pops. This timer will be paused if a group of Queen Larvae pop to bring it over 3. It will resume where it last left off the next time the larva count dips below 3. If the TS3 is anywhere between 13.5 and 14.99 when the Queen Larvae pop, it resets without producing a larva the next time the larvae count dips below 3 instead of resuming at 13.5-14.99. This is the only case in which this timer resets without producing a larva (and seemingly arbitrarily at that). Read the OP again if you still do not understand.
This is an amazing find. I've had ZvZ games where I've done the exact same build order as my opponent and died because I had less lings than him. After watching the replays I couldn't figure out why so I just chocked it up to my noobness. But now it could be this.
Great job, but I'm nou sure about patching (as more people are). Just making the larva spawn no matter what decreases randomness (good thing) but if this amounts to 1 extra larva per 10 injects it might skew balance, so that should be corrected. Perhaps patching this, but then also slightly increasing larva spontaneous spawn time? That means less randomness, but same amount of larva when averaged out over the time of 10 or so injects. Anyone who feels the same?
I don't think an extra larva every few injects is a major concern in ZvT or ZvP as the limiting factor for unit production is almost ALWAYS economy, supply cap, or queen count/missed injects, and rarely the specific larva count itself. Having 1 more roach or 2 more lings usually isn't going to make the difference in those MUs.
The huge MU affected by this, both now and by a future fix is ZvZ.
ZvZ is a MU that often ends with 1 and 2 base aggression where a single larva often means the difference between an outright win and a loss.
Unlike ZvP or ZvT, it is probably safe to say that a solid 50% of ZvZ are determined by the difference of 2-3 more units. (Like PvP if that makes more sense to you). Often time, the money is available, the supply is available, and the queen is hitting her inject, but there's just not quite enough larva. Thinking back over the past year... How many of those games have been determined not by a brilliant move by the victor, but by this glitch adding up 2-3 times over the course of the game, putting the loser down by just enough units to be no contest?
Almost every Zerg player here understands exactly what's going on here once its brought up because we've all experienced it, we just all chalked it up to our own bad macro. The fact that ZvZs have been getting randomly determined due to bad game mechanics for the past 2 years is huge and in order for that MU specifically to remain competitive and fair, this needs to be resolved as soon as possible.
This is a huge fine that dramatically impacts a close zvz game. That being said, the only thing to argue is whether zergs should always be given that fourth larvae or to just ignore it when an inject has been done. Does the extra larvae impact zvp or zvt?
Well, this explains why my early aggression builds have unexpected variations. I used to blame larvae spwan distance to mineral patches when they are at the north side of your main, but this makes a lot more sense.
Nice analysis and good find. AS you say, it probably doesn't change the outcome of many games, but it shouldn't be that hard for blizzard to fix.
I think the OP would be easier to read with a short unspoilered (1 paragraph is enough) introduction and summary of what you have found. (oops, didn't realise the last reply was 3 days ago, sry was linked here. )
Although I wouldn't consider this a glitch so much as a design decision, it would probably reduce randomness if the timer was paused when interrupted by the larva pop, rather than reset.
There are two ways you could design the larva spawn ability:
1. To reset the timer whenever another larva arrived 2. To reset the timer whenever the timer finished
(With both of these, pausing for any time there are 3 or more.)
Neither of these approaches makes more sense than the other to me. In the absence of the Spawn Larva ability, either of these approaches would replicate BW accurately (I think,) and do the same thing.
I think the second approach, resetting the timer only when it finishes, and just pausing (not resetting,) when more than 3 appear by inject, would reduce randomness, and is probably the better approach. Blizzard currently uses the first method, and I support a switch.
The timer does currently pause when interrupted by a queen spawn. It has always paused. It is designed to pause. When the timer is interrupted by a queen larva pop at the 13.5 - 14.99 second mark it resets instead of pausing. This is a bug because it goes against the way it is designed.
I don't understand what you mean by #1 - larva arrives when the timer finishes, so 1 and 2 should be the same, no?
They would be the same in the absence of queen injects, but #1 includes when a larva arrives from inject. Sorry that wasn't clear.
Basically it's a "bug" because it stops the larva from spawning as soon as the injected ones pop but doesn't pause the timer until they land, right? So the timer is at 13.5 - 14.99 when the injected ones pop and then finishes while they are in the air, starts again at 0 without spawning a new one and then pauses when they hit the ground. Is that correct? That is odd, it should pause the timer and halt larva production at the same time, whether that's when they pop or when they become selectable.
Can someone explain the larvae spawn process in form of a flow chart for the larvae algorithm. I find visualization very helpful when programming stuff.
On April 21 2012 04:23 Gfire wrote: They would be the same in the absence of queen injects, but #1 includes when a larva arrives from inject. Sorry that wasn't clear.
Basically it's a "bug" because it stops the larva from spawning as soon as the injected ones pop but doesn't pause the timer until they land, right? So the timer is at 13.5 - 14.99 when the injected ones pop and then finishes while they are in the air, starts again at 0 without spawning a new one and then pauses when they hit the ground. Is that correct? That is odd, it should pause the timer and halt larva production at the same time, whether that's when they pop or when they become selectable.
Ah, that's a much better way of putting it. The animation puts the larva count above 3 but does not actually pause the timer until the larva land; which is a problem because both algorithms are supposed to be reacting to the same event (larva going over 3 due to queen pop).
maybe Blizzard would've caught this themselves if they didn't insist on that stupid animation with the larva flying through the air, which pisses me of every single early game, deciding whether to wait for ~2 energy and inject or use the larvae right away -_______-
Kinda surprised and a little disappointed that nobody major has taken notice of this and I don't see any mention from Blizzard about fixing it.this bug effectively gives Zerg a 10% chance to be missing 1 larva every time he injects.
Fixing it will have an extremely small impact on ZvP and ZvT while fixing a notable issue in ZvZ. How is this not getting more attention?
All of you who believe this is a bug, please help out and drop a message on the official support topic! http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4253897379 It may just be that Blizzard has not thoroughly parsed through it. It at least warrants a reply from them, if anything.
hmmm would be nice if this would be changed and afterwards the animation of the larva jumping out as well, to optimize it. Since it would probably be enough to reduce the injection to 3 larva. I personally like it time your injections larva spending perfectly and don't fear loosing a larva. Good way to spread the good from the bad in ZvZ. Usually have my opponents in ZvZ lose a larva or two, because they are lazy with their larva management.
So this was discovered back in March and still nothing has been done about it? Really? Really Blizzard...I get that you can't fix everything all the time, but this should be important to you. I don't understand. ><
Okay for my small brain to get it straight: a) 3 Larva at Hatch -> inject pops 4 additional = 7larvae at available .... now if there are only b) 2 Larva at Hatch + 1 egg -> inject pops during the 15sec spawn of the default 3rd larva = 2 + 4 = 6 = 1 missing?
Okay. Just tried it... its like i said there (i hope thats the case its all about here too). Its most likely that there is one list or array wich is looked up for the larvae production and the algorithm checks if there is < 3 to trigger the larvae production and since its 6 at that time you wont get your 1 larva back
Edit: okay i red it a 2nd time and what i tried out there isnt what its about ^^ ... just leave me and my comment alone
Hello OP here again. Since Patch 1.5 addressed some small glitches like burrowed baneling vs colossus, I rechecked for this larva disappearing glitch under patch 1.5.
The result was rather disappointing. Blizzard didn't take it seriously. It has been over 4 months since my original post, yet they didn't fix the glitch this time. We might have to wait until HOTS comes out. I updated patch 1.5 experiment result with replay link in OP.
I decided to bump the thread again so that people know this bug still exists. Your comment here or more importantly at official bug report would help fix this problem sooner.
Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be i nthe best interest of the game.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be i nthe best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be i nthe best interest of the game.
It's not a buff. Even if Zerg was 100% win rate in every tournament, it's still a bug. Has to be fixed.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be i nthe best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be i nthe best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
sigh nice job trying to divert the thread its not going to work.
what if i told you that theres a bug with the attack of the Darktemplar and ultralisk causing them to miss attacks?
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
sigh nice job trying to divert the thread its not going to work.
what if i told you that theres a bug with the attack of the Darktemplar and ultralisk causing them to miss attacks?
Look, read what I posted. I said, if a bug is happening, and that race is strong, it does not need to be made stronger - even if its a glitch. Likewise, if a race is weak, and there is a bug - it should be fixed to bring them on par. You're the one misinterpreting what I've said.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
sigh nice job trying to divert the thread its not going to work.
what if i told you that theres a bug with the attack of the Darktemplar and ultralisk causing them to miss attacks?
what would you say about that?
you are making all these comparisons that arent the same at all, the fact is an ultralisk missing an attack would be HUGE whereas this is minor and that is why personally i think they should just fix it so it pauses the larvae untill you are below 3 again not gonna change much, or dont fix it still wont change much.
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
sigh nice job trying to divert the thread its not going to work.
what if i told you that theres a bug with the attack of the Darktemplar and ultralisk causing them to miss attacks?
what would you say about that?
you are making all these comparisons that arent the same at all, the fact is an ultralisk missing an attack would be HUGE whereas this is minor and that is why personally i think they should just fix it so it pauses the larvae untill you are below 3 again not gonna change much, or dont fix it still wont change much.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
"Game breaking" in that it affects the consistency of solid zerg play in a way that cannot be controlled. If zerg is too strong, fix that by nerfing zerg. Arguing to leave this bug in as a way to nerf zerg is ridiculous, because it isn't consistently impacting Zerg as a race... it is inconsistently impacting them. It'd be like if terran mules had a 10% chance to detonate on impact next to a mineral patch that had a 6 in its value somewhere... sure, over many games and many iterations statistics would show that it would come out as a 2% "nerf to terran", but the truth of the situation is that it wouldn't be a 2% nerf to terran ALWAYS, but a 4% nerf to terran in half of terran games.
Not fixing this and relying on it to help "fix" zerg is like saying that if zerg gets really and truly unlucky with something completely unrelated to either's play, the matchup is balanced (or less zerg favored/not zerg favored) and you'd consider that an optimal outcome.
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
sigh nice job trying to divert the thread its not going to work.
what if i told you that theres a bug with the attack of the Darktemplar and ultralisk causing them to miss attacks?
what would you say about that?
you are making all these comparisons that arent the same at all, the fact is an ultralisk missing an attack would be HUGE whereas this is minor and that is why personally i think they should just fix it so it pauses the larvae untill you are below 3 again not gonna change much, or dont fix it still wont change much.
There is a glitch with the ultralisk, where it makes the attack-animation, but doesn't do any damage if the unit it's attacking runs away fast enough. The same with dark templar.
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
sigh nice job trying to divert the thread its not going to work.
what if i told you that theres a bug with the attack of the Darktemplar and ultralisk causing them to miss attacks?
what would you say about that?
you are making all these comparisons that arent the same at all, the fact is an ultralisk missing an attack would be HUGE whereas this is minor and that is why personally i think they should just fix it so it pauses the larvae untill you are below 3 again not gonna change much, or dont fix it still wont change much.
There is a glitch with the ultralisk, where it makes the attack-animation, but doesn't do any damage if the unit it's attacking runs away fast enough. The same with dark templar.
O i see is this the same one that happens when someone runs away from seeker missile or loads something into a medivac/warp prism/overlord before a projectile hits?
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
On August 18 2012 03:10 Tao367 wrote: Zerg still doing extremely well in tournaments and on ladder, any buffs to zerg at this point would just increase that. I understand it's a glitch, but fixing it would give a buff to zerg which is not what needs to happen to the game at this point.
so if this was an issue with mules or crono
you would be all for it right?
If it was a bug, and if the case was that fixing it would give a buff to an already very strong race at that moment in time, yes, fixing it would not be in the best interest of the game.
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
sigh nice job trying to divert the thread its not going to work.
what if i told you that theres a bug with the attack of the Darktemplar and ultralisk causing them to miss attacks?
what would you say about that?
LOL
No matter the recent changes to balance, or the results, Zerg will always be underpowered in Zergrusher's mind.
Also, no diversion going on here. Tao367 responded to Zergrusher's own choice in wording this bug as "game breaking".
so what was your reaction to mules getting nerfed on gold bases?
It stopped mules becoming retarded on gold bases with 3 or 4 orbitals when terran were "very strong." As a Terran, (and someone that looks at this game with balance in mind, trying to be as little biased as possible), it was a nessecary change.
so if a races marco mechanic is glitched shouldn't it be fixed for the sake of balance?
You should try re-reading my posts to see what I've written.
your QQing about zerg and calling it op and trying to justify why a game breaking glitch shouldn't be fixed/
"Game breaking", as in so bad that zerg simply cannot win games at the moment? Oh wait.
sigh nice job trying to divert the thread its not going to work.
what if i told you that theres a bug with the attack of the Darktemplar and ultralisk causing them to miss attacks?
what would you say about that?
you are making all these comparisons that arent the same at all, the fact is an ultralisk missing an attack would be HUGE whereas this is minor and that is why personally i think they should just fix it so it pauses the larvae untill you are below 3 again not gonna change much, or dont fix it still wont change much.
There is a glitch with the ultralisk, where it makes the attack-animation, but doesn't do any damage if the unit it's attacking runs away fast enough. The same with dark templar.
O i see is this the same one that happens when someone runs away from seeker missile or loads something into a medivac/warp prism/overlord before a projectile hits?
No it's not the same. The attack animation will go through and the unit will not be hit because of attack point speed (not the same as attack speed) which is a bug. The projectile thing is intended because it's manually flying through the air and is meant to be dodgeable. An ultralisk/dt melee attack is not supposed to be dodgeable once the animation has started but is.
The main problem with the bug is that it can give a player an unfair advantage in a zvz matchup even if they both do the same build, and, well, it's a fucking bug. Fixing it would provide a negligible difference in the zvt and zvp matchup. I can't fathom why people who don't play zerg would want to keep the bug, it won't affect them at all.
If you're _______ enough to think that larva inject is overpowered and should be lowered in effectiveness that doesn't change the fact that this is a bug and that this bug should be fixed.
Balance is a separate issue that can be dealt with on it's own as normal.
It's as simple as that. No one should be against fixing the bug.
Very sad they didn't address it in 1.5. Have Blizzard really ignored this thread (and similar on their site)? Can't they figure out how important is the randomness produced by that glitch? Should we make slides and a TED presentation for them?
It's probably the whole proccess of eliminating bugs. There's a bunch of shit you gotta do to get the programmers fix the bugs. I'm 100% sure they know this bug and plenty of others.
That said, this should be at the top of the list lol..it's quite big.
Hi. OP here. I just realized that a moderator added "in 1.5" to the title. I don't know when it was added. Maybe that's what attracted some people to this old thread. This thread was my first post on TL. I hope this gets enough attention and fixed at least in HotS.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Cn74X.png)
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