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On November 13 2012 22:28 Rassy wrote:On November 13 2012 08:23 IdrA wrote: you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive. the army is supposed to be that strong cuz you give up everything else to get it. if you get an advantage early on then you can afford to build enough static defense or to apply pressure to t/p fast enough. if you dont you cant and you end up with a base race situation where you have the one super army you invested absolutely everything in. its supposed to be that strong cuz its all you get. but terrans and protosses are still stuck on doing 3 base timings that were really good but are slowly getting worse and worse as people learn defensive timings. when that fails theyre SUPPOSED to lose in the late game because its a failed investment. but bl/infestor is so slow and bad to attack with that zerg has to drag it out. this makes it look, to stupid people, like the terran and protoss is still competitively in the game but fighting against this unfairly untouchable zerg army when in fact the opponent should have left as soon as they ran their collosus army into a spine crawler wall and infestors. maybe bl/infestor is stronger than it should be, but those situations are just what happens given game design and current play styles. that specifically is not an imbalance thing. you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles. even protosses who are learning to do the mass warp prism harass as z gets a slower army dont understand that thats just to buy you time and put the zerg allin. if you do something that encourages zerg to get a 200 supply broodlord infestor army but then stay on a stalker archon army you're the one doing something wrong. when more protosses are comfortable playing for the macro game and learn air transitions, and when terrans start to understand mech better and learn to use ghosts, if zerg still seems overpowered then we can talk. the game will be boring as shit, but terran and protoss late game armies can fight bl infestor if you're just willing to be as abusive and boring as zergs have learned to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its nice to see that even idra admits the infestor is op  (you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles.) Hes wrong with a few statements though. "you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive" Yet it is always zerg who has the most bases, even if he goes for bl infestor. This isnt protoss or terrans fault, they harras all they can, yet zerg still gets to 4-5 base easily (bar 2 base all ins from protos) while protoss and terran are at 3 base. Then once zerg has this economy advantage he has a way to spend it, with bl infestor. Yes the end army of bl infestor is verry immobile, but the army comes at a stage that the map already has been split and fortified with static defences. There is verry little room to abuse the immobility of the end game army. An immobile midgame army like terran and toss have, allows the opponent (read zerg) to freely get 4-5 base and bl infestor, then once at the end stage there is no way annymore for terran or toss to explore the immobility of the zerg bl infestor army.
Oh, wait, you're seriously taking Idra's post. Let me laugh even harder.
You do understand that of three races Zerg has the most mobility during early and mid-game, right? And the fact that Zerg can win with mid-game alone, without BroodLords and 20+ infestors?
User was warned for this post
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i think the point kharnage was trying to make was that the disagree => unwise reasoning is useless without actual knowledge on dev team's activity. There are some hints as to what they're busy with, but no more than that.
I think the existence of something like the deathball is a weakness, in the sense that it determines for a near 100% how the game goes. In the case of a deathball, i'd rather see that stuff happens around which significant impact on a deathball vs deathball fight. At highest levels of play, one can already see something like that already, so i'm not too pessimistic, but at the moment it's just too difficult to pull off.
I can imagine them going in that direction, seeing some of the new units in hots. I do realise some people don't like these units, but they are a step in mentioned direction. There are certainly weaknesses in this concept, but saying people are unwise, or dumb for choosing a different concept is at least shortsighted, how good the reasons for another concept are, for that way, it will turn into a religious debate instead of an actual discussion.
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On November 13 2012 22:35 DidYuhim wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:28 Rassy wrote:On November 13 2012 08:23 IdrA wrote: you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive. the army is supposed to be that strong cuz you give up everything else to get it. if you get an advantage early on then you can afford to build enough static defense or to apply pressure to t/p fast enough. if you dont you cant and you end up with a base race situation where you have the one super army you invested absolutely everything in. its supposed to be that strong cuz its all you get. but terrans and protosses are still stuck on doing 3 base timings that were really good but are slowly getting worse and worse as people learn defensive timings. when that fails theyre SUPPOSED to lose in the late game because its a failed investment. but bl/infestor is so slow and bad to attack with that zerg has to drag it out. this makes it look, to stupid people, like the terran and protoss is still competitively in the game but fighting against this unfairly untouchable zerg army when in fact the opponent should have left as soon as they ran their collosus army into a spine crawler wall and infestors. maybe bl/infestor is stronger than it should be, but those situations are just what happens given game design and current play styles. that specifically is not an imbalance thing. you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles. even protosses who are learning to do the mass warp prism harass as z gets a slower army dont understand that thats just to buy you time and put the zerg allin. if you do something that encourages zerg to get a 200 supply broodlord infestor army but then stay on a stalker archon army you're the one doing something wrong. when more protosses are comfortable playing for the macro game and learn air transitions, and when terrans start to understand mech better and learn to use ghosts, if zerg still seems overpowered then we can talk. the game will be boring as shit, but terran and protoss late game armies can fight bl infestor if you're just willing to be as abusive and boring as zergs have learned to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its nice to see that even idra admits the infestor is op (you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles.) Hes wrong with a few statements though. "you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive" Yet it is always zerg who has the most bases, even if he goes for bl infestor. This isnt protoss or terrans fault, they harras all they can, yet zerg still gets to 4-5 base easily (bar 2 base all ins from protos) while protoss and terran are at 3 base. Then once zerg has this economy advantage he has a way to spend it, with bl infestor. Yes the end army of bl infestor is verry immobile, but the army comes at a stage that the map already has been split and fortified with static defences. There is verry little room to abuse the immobility of the end game army. An immobile midgame army like terran and toss have, allows the opponent (read zerg) to freely get 4-5 base and bl infestor, then once at the end stage there is no way annymore for terran or toss to explore the immobility of the zerg bl infestor army. Oh, wait, you're seriously taking Idra's post. Let me laugh even harder. You do understand that of three races Zerg has the most mobility during early and mid-game, right? And the fact that Zerg can win with mid-game alone, without BroodLords and 20+ infestors?
Oh so now it's not the Infestor that's OP but the whole race? Why should take you seriously, come on man, atleast give a decent response.
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On November 13 2012 23:00 Giku wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:35 DidYuhim wrote:On November 13 2012 22:28 Rassy wrote:On November 13 2012 08:23 IdrA wrote: you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive. the army is supposed to be that strong cuz you give up everything else to get it. if you get an advantage early on then you can afford to build enough static defense or to apply pressure to t/p fast enough. if you dont you cant and you end up with a base race situation where you have the one super army you invested absolutely everything in. its supposed to be that strong cuz its all you get. but terrans and protosses are still stuck on doing 3 base timings that were really good but are slowly getting worse and worse as people learn defensive timings. when that fails theyre SUPPOSED to lose in the late game because its a failed investment. but bl/infestor is so slow and bad to attack with that zerg has to drag it out. this makes it look, to stupid people, like the terran and protoss is still competitively in the game but fighting against this unfairly untouchable zerg army when in fact the opponent should have left as soon as they ran their collosus army into a spine crawler wall and infestors. maybe bl/infestor is stronger than it should be, but those situations are just what happens given game design and current play styles. that specifically is not an imbalance thing. you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles. even protosses who are learning to do the mass warp prism harass as z gets a slower army dont understand that thats just to buy you time and put the zerg allin. if you do something that encourages zerg to get a 200 supply broodlord infestor army but then stay on a stalker archon army you're the one doing something wrong. when more protosses are comfortable playing for the macro game and learn air transitions, and when terrans start to understand mech better and learn to use ghosts, if zerg still seems overpowered then we can talk. the game will be boring as shit, but terran and protoss late game armies can fight bl infestor if you're just willing to be as abusive and boring as zergs have learned to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its nice to see that even idra admits the infestor is op (you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles.) Hes wrong with a few statements though. "you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive" Yet it is always zerg who has the most bases, even if he goes for bl infestor. This isnt protoss or terrans fault, they harras all they can, yet zerg still gets to 4-5 base easily (bar 2 base all ins from protos) while protoss and terran are at 3 base. Then once zerg has this economy advantage he has a way to spend it, with bl infestor. Yes the end army of bl infestor is verry immobile, but the army comes at a stage that the map already has been split and fortified with static defences. There is verry little room to abuse the immobility of the end game army. An immobile midgame army like terran and toss have, allows the opponent (read zerg) to freely get 4-5 base and bl infestor, then once at the end stage there is no way annymore for terran or toss to explore the immobility of the zerg bl infestor army. Oh, wait, you're seriously taking Idra's post. Let me laugh even harder. You do understand that of three races Zerg has the most mobility during early and mid-game, right? And the fact that Zerg can win with mid-game alone, without BroodLords and 20+ infestors? Oh so now it's not the Infestor that's OP but the whole race? Why should take you seriously, come on man, atleast give a decent response.
I'm not saying that whole race is OP. I'm just completely against the guy who is ignorantly saying that BL/Infestor is the only way of playing Zerg.
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On November 13 2012 23:00 Giku wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:35 DidYuhim wrote:On November 13 2012 22:28 Rassy wrote:On November 13 2012 08:23 IdrA wrote: you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive. the army is supposed to be that strong cuz you give up everything else to get it. if you get an advantage early on then you can afford to build enough static defense or to apply pressure to t/p fast enough. if you dont you cant and you end up with a base race situation where you have the one super army you invested absolutely everything in. its supposed to be that strong cuz its all you get. but terrans and protosses are still stuck on doing 3 base timings that were really good but are slowly getting worse and worse as people learn defensive timings. when that fails theyre SUPPOSED to lose in the late game because its a failed investment. but bl/infestor is so slow and bad to attack with that zerg has to drag it out. this makes it look, to stupid people, like the terran and protoss is still competitively in the game but fighting against this unfairly untouchable zerg army when in fact the opponent should have left as soon as they ran their collosus army into a spine crawler wall and infestors. maybe bl/infestor is stronger than it should be, but those situations are just what happens given game design and current play styles. that specifically is not an imbalance thing. you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles. even protosses who are learning to do the mass warp prism harass as z gets a slower army dont understand that thats just to buy you time and put the zerg allin. if you do something that encourages zerg to get a 200 supply broodlord infestor army but then stay on a stalker archon army you're the one doing something wrong. when more protosses are comfortable playing for the macro game and learn air transitions, and when terrans start to understand mech better and learn to use ghosts, if zerg still seems overpowered then we can talk. the game will be boring as shit, but terran and protoss late game armies can fight bl infestor if you're just willing to be as abusive and boring as zergs have learned to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its nice to see that even idra admits the infestor is op (you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles.) Hes wrong with a few statements though. "you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive" Yet it is always zerg who has the most bases, even if he goes for bl infestor. This isnt protoss or terrans fault, they harras all they can, yet zerg still gets to 4-5 base easily (bar 2 base all ins from protos) while protoss and terran are at 3 base. Then once zerg has this economy advantage he has a way to spend it, with bl infestor. Yes the end army of bl infestor is verry immobile, but the army comes at a stage that the map already has been split and fortified with static defences. There is verry little room to abuse the immobility of the end game army. An immobile midgame army like terran and toss have, allows the opponent (read zerg) to freely get 4-5 base and bl infestor, then once at the end stage there is no way annymore for terran or toss to explore the immobility of the zerg bl infestor army. Oh, wait, you're seriously taking Idra's post. Let me laugh even harder. You do understand that of three races Zerg has the most mobility during early and mid-game, right? And the fact that Zerg can win with mid-game alone, without BroodLords and 20+ infestors? Oh so now it's not the Infestor that's OP but the whole race? Why should take you seriously, come on man, atleast give a decent response.
You really can't take IdrA seriously on balance. He complained about blinkstalker all-in after scouting it and not responding correctly.
And yeah broodlords are immobile, but so are tanks and thors (maybe a teeny bit less?). Speedling backstabs to the third base are better than hellion backstabs, you can't really take down production with hellions like you can with lings. So Zerg wins there too. Lost 20 drones to a hellion runby (lategame)? Make 20 drones with a bank of 60 larva.
Also, spines > bunkers.
/edit
All I'm saying is, Zerg isn't as IdrA would like you to think it is. Imba? Who knows. But definitely doing amazingly atm. And man, when IdrA talks about Toss and Terrans developing new strats/adjusting, where was his adjusting when complaining about Zerg being underpowered?
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On November 13 2012 22:28 Rassy wrote:On November 13 2012 08:23 IdrA wrote: you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive. the army is supposed to be that strong cuz you give up everything else to get it. if you get an advantage early on then you can afford to build enough static defense or to apply pressure to t/p fast enough. if you dont you cant and you end up with a base race situation where you have the one super army you invested absolutely everything in. its supposed to be that strong cuz its all you get. but terrans and protosses are still stuck on doing 3 base timings that were really good but are slowly getting worse and worse as people learn defensive timings. when that fails theyre SUPPOSED to lose in the late game because its a failed investment. but bl/infestor is so slow and bad to attack with that zerg has to drag it out. this makes it look, to stupid people, like the terran and protoss is still competitively in the game but fighting against this unfairly untouchable zerg army when in fact the opponent should have left as soon as they ran their collosus army into a spine crawler wall and infestors. maybe bl/infestor is stronger than it should be, but those situations are just what happens given game design and current play styles. that specifically is not an imbalance thing. you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles. even protosses who are learning to do the mass warp prism harass as z gets a slower army dont understand that thats just to buy you time and put the zerg allin. if you do something that encourages zerg to get a 200 supply broodlord infestor army but then stay on a stalker archon army you're the one doing something wrong. when more protosses are comfortable playing for the macro game and learn air transitions, and when terrans start to understand mech better and learn to use ghosts, if zerg still seems overpowered then we can talk. the game will be boring as shit, but terran and protoss late game armies can fight bl infestor if you're just willing to be as abusive and boring as zergs have learned to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its nice to see that even idra admits the infestor is op (you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles.) Hes wrong with a few statements though. "you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive" Yet it is always zerg who has the most bases, even if he goes for bl infestor. This isnt protoss or terrans fault, they harras all they can, yet zerg still gets to 4-5 base easily (bar 2 base all ins from protos) while protoss and terran are at 3 base. Then once zerg has this economy advantage he has a way to spend it, with bl infestor. Yes the end army of bl infestor is verry immobile, but the army comes at a stage that the map already has been split and fortified with static defences. There is verry little room to abuse the immobility of the end game army. An immobile midgame army like terran and toss have, allows the opponent (read zerg) to freely get 4-5 base and bl infestor, then once at the end stage there is no way annymore for terran or toss to explore the immobility of the zerg bl infestor army.
Did Idra really say air transition for protoss?
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On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 19:54 Big J wrote:On November 13 2012 19:34 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 13 2012 19:01 Big J wrote:On November 13 2012 18:12 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 13 2012 18:06 Kharnage wrote:On November 13 2012 15:47 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 15:37 TERRANLOL wrote:On November 13 2012 07:25 Hider wrote:On November 13 2012 05:50 sieksdekciw wrote:
[quote]
Yes. And they are still better, and the only reason they are not again in code S, is cause zergs got a bit better and were heavily helped by the imbalance that zerg is. Don't get me wrong, the skill gap is still big, but not as big as before. Terran is supposed to be overresented on ladder, GSL, foreign tournaments, other tournmanets etc. Since they are the most played race. In fact, as GSL is the only place where that is happening, it is easy to conclude that terran is heavily imbalanced. I argue that the numbers are signifacntly signifcant as well. Terran has been underpresented in masters and GM For such a long time. Everytime a terran players plays against a zerg or a protoss player, he is vastly superior to them. The average master terran player is like top 1% of his race, while the average toss/zerg is top 10%. The problem with the Blizzard team is that they just look at the statistics of the ladder, and think.. Uh TVZ on ladder = 50% (even though this is between the top 10% toss vs the top 1% teran). So obv. the terran is supposed to win a lot more than 50% if the game was balanced. Honestly that's a pretty dumb assumption to make. The guys who are on the balance team are programmers, statisticians and mathematicians. They understand what you've explained and they understand a whole lot more. Being a programmer myself I can tell you that kind of stuff occurs to you while you're programming the system. They even mentioned in a post a while back about balance, and at a blizzcon, that they have a formula that figures that kind of stuff in. The math that was in that formula is miles more advanced than the math you're showing me right now. Just because someone is a programmer doesnt mean he is WISE in his choices. The guys at Blizzard are too busy in their day-to-day activities and details to have a clue about "the big picture". You have to be NOT INVOLVED and IMPARTIAL to have a good view for the right choices, but as long as they try to "fix" the game through adjusting the units only they are not doing it right. Simple example: What is the reason for the deathball? Why does it exist? 1. Units are FORCED into tight formations by the movement and unit selection mechanics of the game. These are neither race-specific nor unit-specific. 2. Having a tight group of units is the most efficient way to win, because it maximizes your firepower. That second point is universally true and was true in BW already, but did the deathball exist back then? NO ... and this makes it clear where you need to "fix it" and since Blizzard isnt seeing it they are pretty "unwise" [which is less of an insult compared to dumb, which I was tempted to use]. Honestly, shit like this really pisses me off. You have no clue what the 'day to day' activities of the dev team, or the balance team, or any of the blizzard staff entail. You have no idea of their qualifications, their backgrounds, or their ability to impartially have a 'good view' of the 'big picture'. You spout this shit as if you have a magically superior vision of what SC2 should be and it's so obvious that if blizzard haven't implemented 'your vision' then they are doing it wrong. Who the FUCK do you think you are??? You may be pissed off but you're only embarrassing yourself. There are a lot of people that go around saying "Who the fuck do you think you are?" to people younger than them, forever stifling their creativity and self-confidence. Each of the people on the Blizz dev team (not to mention every great man that ever lived) was once a young man + Show Spoiler +or woman, just an expression... who was unhappy with the current state of affairs and started looking for new solutions. Most new proposals are wrong, but so are the old accepted ones. It's through civil discussion that new better ideas are born. So, Mr. Kharnage, stop pulling the argument from authority and find good reasons why the person is wrong. If you cannot, do not join in on the discussion. This is not what he said. He said he is pissed off by people who deny that the developers are qualified, because of their personal opinions, which is actually very close to what you are saying. Even more, he gave an argument, which was that this guy has no clue about the day-to-day activities of blizzard, yet shits upon them. Also, there is no bravery or greater intelligence in shitting upon someone elses work. Everybody knows that all things can always be done better. There is really nothing interesting in spreading general knowledge. Proving, that your own ideas are superior to longtime established, working solutions is the impressive part. That's a very generous reading of what he said. In fact, having re-read those opinions, I still cannot get it. It does not matter what the day-to-day activities at Blizzard are, the whole point is that it should be possible to discuss the development process. If the opinions can be shown to be false, so be it. But he was telling the person to stop talking because he is not qualified and thus should shut up. As for your own point, it's not about saying that things could be better, it's saying what should be better and how. It will not be clear in the beginning, but that's why we have a discussion. Yet, to have a discussion, we cannot have people going around telling others to shut up because they are not qualified. Yeah, I see what you are saying, but just look at his example of unit movement, here is a quote from DB: We tested this internally a week or two ago when we first saw this video (thanks to the author of the video).
It didn't actually change anything. We tried some really extreme values as well to really push it... There is quite some more on that topic in this thread on B.net. And it clearly shows, that the discussion is there, that blizzard cares, and the developers do have a clue about the game. So in conclusion (in my eyes), this guy is nothing but an (uninformed?) hater of the development team. Yes, Kharnage's reaction was quite fierce, but I fully understand him, because we all want SC2 to be the best it can be, yet it gets really frustrating to read everybodies amateur opinion over and over again on topics that people have already tested and argued through with a lot more effort than "the developers are not the right people to judge their game". And yes, things are not clear in the beginning. That's why I said there is nothing interesting about claiming that stuff, the interesting stuff is trying to prove it, be it by a good detailed (and therefore probably long) arguement/discussion, or probably even better, through straight up testing. So if Blizzard half-heartedly tests something that isnt going to work in its implementation and which was regarded as a joke in the thread anyways (after that kind of "we dont take your ideas serious enough to even try them out in the beta" answer) it is enough for you? Well not for me and if you think I am wrong then ARGUE WITH THE REASONING. Explain to me why ...
Half-heartedly... so everything that hasn't been exposed to a huge portion of the community for an extended periode of time is half-heartedly? If you read the article, you will read that DB stated that they tested various instances of such movement. Imo this is not half-heartedly testing.
Furthermore, the HotS beta is not a playground for any community idea someone has ever had. Make a map, test it yourself. If it is a popular idea, you will find a few (yeah not a lot, but still some) people to test such stuff, at least if you can eloquently explain the idea and it's goals in a thread (--> FRB, --> Starbow).
Or just test it in Starbow. It's in there, I played that mod, I like that mod, but I actually don't think that the movement makes a significant difference in the playability of certain styles (while I think that the unit/income changes do actually matter a lot to the gameplay of the mod).
To the other stuff:
On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:
1. asymmetric production speed boosts for the three races which kick in at different timings and dont work for every unit of each race are a good idea.
2. tightly clumped up groups of infantry are a good idea, because to make the game "fair" they had to nerf AoE abilities ... which usually are the exciting points in the game.
3. the deathball is a good thing.
4. tightly clumped units of Marines (and Hydras and Blink Stalkers) are NOT responsible for capital ships and defensive structures being more or less useless.
1.) asymetric production was in BW as well. A hatchery can start to produce 3 Ultralisks in 42seconds, but a factory (similar cost to a hatchery) just 1siege tank. The production boost that were introduced in SC2 (on top of changed production times) - I believe you talk about those - chronoboost, larva inject, mules, reactores, switchable addons - don't do anything differently than the (broodwar-) difference between a gateway (150mineral building that can produce 1zealot = 100resources/2supply worth of units in 40seconds) vs a barracks (150mineral building that can produce 100resources/2supply worth of units in 48seconds), which leads to a production advantage for Protoss. And this is a really, really soft example.
And (still talking BW), different units profit differently from this production differences. F.e: 1 larva, would you build an ultralisk or 2zerglings from it? Do you wait for 9larva and 450minerals, to start 18zerglings, or do you wait for 9larva and stockpile 900/900 to start 9mutalisks?
Asymetric production is one of the core principles that made Starcraft different from games with similar design (like CnC1 and RedAlert).
2.) Tightly clumped units can be good, or can be bad. In a game with a good variety of melee units that are simply designed to be stronger than ranged units on their own, clumping is a vital part of ranged play. If I had the choice, I would want less clumping in SC2, but I actually think - talking from my experience with other RTS games - the only way to reduce unit clumping, is to force more actionbased play, so that you have to move out with smaller amounts of units earlier. (just play any RTS game as noob, do some Big Game Hunters style of turtle play and see how it turns out. It's always going to be ball vs ball. Only when you start to get better, start to get how rushes work etc, the amount of units per location will decrease. Therefore, the best - maybe only - way to decrease clumping is to increase action).
And in conclusion, actionbased play is very tightly connected to unitdesign and - balancing against each other. SC2 PvZ is stale, because Protoss can't move out due to zerg-speed and the roach being too strong vs sametime-available Protoss units. Zerg on the other hand cannot attack either, because of Protoss-range and Protoss-walls. It's unhealthy unit relationship that is hurting the matchup, not clumping, yet all we see is deathballs vs deathballs.
3.) The deathball is not a good thing, but it's not a bad thing either. Deathballs are necessary. At some point in the game, you want to grab your army and kill the opponent. Same for watching a game. At some point, you want to see something big happening. Harassment all over the map is nice and exciting. However, seeing someone die from multipronged aggression while no real encounter has ever happened feels wrong.
Outside of biostyles (the irony... the super dps-dense balls allow for these styles more than anything else) and multipronged zergstyles against macro Terrans (a pity that we don't see this enough. Probably the best reason to nerf endgame zerg to force more aggressive play), I agree that the game might be lacking these things. (lategame warp-prism usage is actually quite cool as well). But if you actually watched this game from the very beginning, it has become a lot better just by figuering out all the various timings and ways to spread an opponent out and though the deathball is a goal in the game, it's not a consistent playstyle anymore, most of the time. (and that was being done just by figuring and balance changes, without the change of coremechanics)
4.) Of course they are responsible for captial ships not being very good. But you know, there would be an easy solution. Buff the said units until they are viable. If rushing them becomes too strong, lengthen the time to tech there. For example, BCs and Broodlords do beat marines in the higher numbers, that's why we see those units in the late/endgame against marines. Carriers don't beat them ever, that's why we don't see them at all against marines. BCs have seen a little bit of usage against Zerg, but they could use a small buff still. Carriers need quite a buff.
Defensive structures not good enough? Sorry, but I simply disagree with this. 1canon + wall holds a ton of (Zerg) stuff, spines are nearly as often being whined about as Broodlords are. Bunkers... don't even start about those things, they should get nerfed 
PFs, Turrets... all of that stuff is really good. Maybe Protoss vs air defense is slightly lacking. Maybe all the ground defenses could use +1range (7range spine/canon vs 5-6range mobile troops makes runbies quite strong and the need for siege weapons smaller), but they are generally quite good and cheap and outside of highlevel games, I can only encourage everybody to just build one extra, because it won't matter on that level of play for the macrogame, but win you a lot of games in the shortrun.
On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:
Just remember ... "because the devs say so" or something similar isnt a good enough reason. If you dont answer then I have to assume that I am right in that these things are terrible AND a problem of the game.
EDIT:
Slight addition to the above: How "high quality" and "thorough" Blizzard internal testing is can be clearly seen by the HotS units and their really wild changes. I for one dont put much stock in those skills ... with such uninspired and almost random ability changes.
Most of the community has "asked" blizzard to be more open about their unit designs and allow themselves more changes. Blizzard listened, it's a good thing. Not a bad thing.
Though I also agree with Artosis on that matter. Stuff like the warhound might not have been very interesting by design, but could have been really good for the strategy part in the RTS Starcraft:HotS. Still happy that it is gone, yet really courious about how it would have worked out with it.
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Asymmetric production was in BW. However, BW rarely had max armies trading and then both sides had bank to remax. The slower Eco of BW made building up that huge bank much more rare. And even in rare 200/200 situations, the armies would be spread throughout the map so one side doesn't lose 100 supply in one fight. It was mostly a 20 supply advantage here, another 10 supply there until one side can't keep up. So being able to make 100+ supply at once wasn't as big an issue.
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As someone that played t vs p in BW, this amount of whine about bl/infestors should be kinda comical. There's just no way in hell that dealing with bl/infestor is even close in difficulty to dealing with carriers in BW, whether it be pure carriers or combined with any combination of units. You attempt to beat it the same way, take the map and attack where they aren't, until you either have to face them head on or it's obvious you have the means to win in a convincing fashion. I don't remember that much carriers are imbalanced talk, though.
Maps like daybreak are a lot harder than, say, entombed valley when it comes to dealing with bl/infestor. Point is, if maps can alter the viability of units, then it's probably not inherently imbalanced and your complaints should probably be directed at how maps are made. Or, you can simply accept that sometimes maps will favor you and other times they won't. Life.
If you're whining because you can't win but you keep playing the same style, then you probably deserve every loss and should expect more. Have to focus more on exhausting possibilities. I find "corrupter timings," like in stephano versus crank, where they are used offensively, to be far more problematic than units that I have a choice to keep evading if I choose to. Especially when all of my timings, be it a fourth or a push, hinge on not losing units to corrupters that won't die before killing them. I don't think toss players have shown much resolve; if it's not one thing zerg is using, it's going to be something else they are crying about. Should be happy that hasn't been exposed yet.
HotS is set to come out. At least wait it out and see if the tempest helps you. All this said, design wise, the infestor probably does way too much and is boring. For an outsider, z vs t looks very imbalanced to me, in part due to the infestor. Since I haven't played t vs z/looked for solutions, that may be an unfounded opinion.
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On November 13 2012 23:24 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 19:54 Big J wrote:On November 13 2012 19:34 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 13 2012 19:01 Big J wrote:On November 13 2012 18:12 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 13 2012 18:06 Kharnage wrote:On November 13 2012 15:47 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 15:37 TERRANLOL wrote:On November 13 2012 07:25 Hider wrote:
[quote]
Terran is supposed to be overresented on ladder, GSL, foreign tournaments, other tournmanets etc. Since they are the most played race.
In fact, as GSL is the only place where that is happening, it is easy to conclude that terran is heavily imbalanced. I argue that the numbers are signifacntly signifcant as well. Terran has been underpresented in masters and GM For such a long time. Everytime a terran players plays against a zerg or a protoss player, he is vastly superior to them.
The average master terran player is like top 1% of his race, while the average toss/zerg is top 10%. The problem with the Blizzard team is that they just look at the statistics of the ladder, and think.. Uh TVZ on ladder = 50% (even though this is between the top 10% toss vs the top 1% teran). So obv. the terran is supposed to win a lot more than 50% if the game was balanced.
Honestly that's a pretty dumb assumption to make. The guys who are on the balance team are programmers, statisticians and mathematicians. They understand what you've explained and they understand a whole lot more. Being a programmer myself I can tell you that kind of stuff occurs to you while you're programming the system. They even mentioned in a post a while back about balance, and at a blizzcon, that they have a formula that figures that kind of stuff in. The math that was in that formula is miles more advanced than the math you're showing me right now. Just because someone is a programmer doesnt mean he is WISE in his choices. The guys at Blizzard are too busy in their day-to-day activities and details to have a clue about "the big picture". You have to be NOT INVOLVED and IMPARTIAL to have a good view for the right choices, but as long as they try to "fix" the game through adjusting the units only they are not doing it right. Simple example: What is the reason for the deathball? Why does it exist? 1. Units are FORCED into tight formations by the movement and unit selection mechanics of the game. These are neither race-specific nor unit-specific. 2. Having a tight group of units is the most efficient way to win, because it maximizes your firepower. That second point is universally true and was true in BW already, but did the deathball exist back then? NO ... and this makes it clear where you need to "fix it" and since Blizzard isnt seeing it they are pretty "unwise" [which is less of an insult compared to dumb, which I was tempted to use]. Honestly, shit like this really pisses me off. You have no clue what the 'day to day' activities of the dev team, or the balance team, or any of the blizzard staff entail. You have no idea of their qualifications, their backgrounds, or their ability to impartially have a 'good view' of the 'big picture'. You spout this shit as if you have a magically superior vision of what SC2 should be and it's so obvious that if blizzard haven't implemented 'your vision' then they are doing it wrong. Who the FUCK do you think you are??? You may be pissed off but you're only embarrassing yourself. There are a lot of people that go around saying "Who the fuck do you think you are?" to people younger than them, forever stifling their creativity and self-confidence. Each of the people on the Blizz dev team (not to mention every great man that ever lived) was once a young man + Show Spoiler +or woman, just an expression... who was unhappy with the current state of affairs and started looking for new solutions. Most new proposals are wrong, but so are the old accepted ones. It's through civil discussion that new better ideas are born. So, Mr. Kharnage, stop pulling the argument from authority and find good reasons why the person is wrong. If you cannot, do not join in on the discussion. This is not what he said. He said he is pissed off by people who deny that the developers are qualified, because of their personal opinions, which is actually very close to what you are saying. Even more, he gave an argument, which was that this guy has no clue about the day-to-day activities of blizzard, yet shits upon them. Also, there is no bravery or greater intelligence in shitting upon someone elses work. Everybody knows that all things can always be done better. There is really nothing interesting in spreading general knowledge. Proving, that your own ideas are superior to longtime established, working solutions is the impressive part. That's a very generous reading of what he said. In fact, having re-read those opinions, I still cannot get it. It does not matter what the day-to-day activities at Blizzard are, the whole point is that it should be possible to discuss the development process. If the opinions can be shown to be false, so be it. But he was telling the person to stop talking because he is not qualified and thus should shut up. As for your own point, it's not about saying that things could be better, it's saying what should be better and how. It will not be clear in the beginning, but that's why we have a discussion. Yet, to have a discussion, we cannot have people going around telling others to shut up because they are not qualified. Yeah, I see what you are saying, but just look at his example of unit movement, here is a quote from DB: We tested this internally a week or two ago when we first saw this video (thanks to the author of the video).
It didn't actually change anything. We tried some really extreme values as well to really push it... There is quite some more on that topic in this thread on B.net. And it clearly shows, that the discussion is there, that blizzard cares, and the developers do have a clue about the game. So in conclusion (in my eyes), this guy is nothing but an (uninformed?) hater of the development team. Yes, Kharnage's reaction was quite fierce, but I fully understand him, because we all want SC2 to be the best it can be, yet it gets really frustrating to read everybodies amateur opinion over and over again on topics that people have already tested and argued through with a lot more effort than "the developers are not the right people to judge their game". And yes, things are not clear in the beginning. That's why I said there is nothing interesting about claiming that stuff, the interesting stuff is trying to prove it, be it by a good detailed (and therefore probably long) arguement/discussion, or probably even better, through straight up testing. So if Blizzard half-heartedly tests something that isnt going to work in its implementation and which was regarded as a joke in the thread anyways (after that kind of "we dont take your ideas serious enough to even try them out in the beta" answer) it is enough for you? Well not for me and if you think I am wrong then ARGUE WITH THE REASONING. Explain to me why ... Half-heartedly... so everything that hasn't been exposed to a huge portion of the community for an extended periode of time is half-heartedly? If you read the article, you will read that DB stated that they tested various instances of such movement. Imo this is not half-heartedly testing. Furthermore, the HotS beta is not a playground for any community idea someone has ever had. Make a map, test it yourself. If it is a popular idea, you will find a few (yeah not a lot, but still some) people to test such stuff, at least if you can eloquently explain the idea and it's goals in a thread (--> FRB, --> Starbow). Or just test it in Starbow. It's in there, I played that mod, I like that mod, but I actually don't think that the movement makes a significant difference in the playability of certain styles (while I think that the unit/income changes do actually matter a lot to the gameplay of the mod). To the other stuff: Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:
1. asymmetric production speed boosts for the three races which kick in at different timings and dont work for every unit of each race are a good idea.
2. tightly clumped up groups of infantry are a good idea, because to make the game "fair" they had to nerf AoE abilities ... which usually are the exciting points in the game.
3. the deathball is a good thing.
4. tightly clumped units of Marines (and Hydras and Blink Stalkers) are NOT responsible for capital ships and defensive structures being more or less useless.
1.) asymetric production was in BW as well. A hatchery can start to produce 3 Ultralisks in 42seconds, but a factory (similar cost to a hatchery) just 1siege tank. The production boost that were introduced in SC2 (on top of changed production times) - I believe you talk about those - chronoboost, larva inject, mules, reactores, switchable addons - don't do anything differently than the (broodwar-) difference between a gateway (150mineral building that can produce 1zealot = 100resources/2supply worth of units in 40seconds) vs a barracks (150mineral building that can produce 100resources/2supply worth of units in 48seconds), which leads to a production advantage for Protoss. And this is a really, really soft example. And (still talking BW), different units profit differently from this production differences. F.e: 1 larva, would you build an ultralisk or 2zerglings from it? Do you wait for 9larva and 450minerals, to start 18zerglings, or do you wait for 9larva and stockpile 900/900 to start 9mutalisks? Asymetric production is one of the core principles that made Starcraft different from games with similar design (like CnC1 and RedAlert). 2.) Tightly clumped units can be good, or can be bad. In a game with a good variety of melee units that are simply designed to be stronger than ranged units on their own, clumping is a vital part of ranged play. If I had the choice, I would want less clumping in SC2, but I actually think - talking from my experience with other RTS games - the only way to reduce unit clumping, is to force more actionbased play, so that you have to move out with smaller amounts of units earlier. (just play any RTS game as noob, do some Big Game Hunters style of turtle play and see how it turns out. It's always going to be ball vs ball. Only when you start to get better, start to get how rushes work etc, the amount of units per location will decrease. Therefore, the best - maybe only - way to decrease clumping is to increase action). And in conclusion, actionbased play is very tightly connected to unitdesign and - balancing against each other. SC2 PvZ is stale, because Protoss can't move out due to zerg-speed and the roach being too strong vs sametime-available Protoss units. Zerg on the other hand cannot attack either, because of Protoss-range and Protoss-walls. It's unhealthy unit relationship that is hurting the matchup, not clumping, yet all we see is deathballs vs deathballs. 3.) The deathball is not a good thing, but it's not a bad thing either. Deathballs are necessary. At some point in the game, you want to grab your army and kill the opponent. Same for watching a game. At some point, you want to see something big happening. Harassment all over the map is nice and exciting. However, seeing someone die from multipronged aggression while no real encounter has ever happened feels wrong. Outside of biostyles (the irony... the super dps-dense balls allow for these styles more than anything else) and multipronged zergstyles against macro Terrans (a pity that we don't see this enough. Probably the best reason to nerf endgame zerg to force more aggressive play), I agree that the game might be lacking these things. (lategame warp-prism usage is actually quite cool as well). But if you actually watched this game from the very beginning, it has become a lot better just by figuering out all the various timings and ways to spread an opponent out and though the deathball is a goal in the game, it's not a consistent playstyle anymore, most of the time. (and that was being done just by figuring and balance changes, without the change of coremechanics) 4.) Of course they are responsible for captial ships not being very good. But you know, there would be an easy solution. Buff the said units until they are viable. If rushing them becomes too strong, lengthen the time to tech there. For example, BCs and Broodlords do beat marines in the higher numbers, that's why we see those units in the late/endgame against marines. Carriers don't beat them ever, that's why we don't see them at all against marines. BCs have seen a little bit of usage against Zerg, but they could use a small buff still. Carriers need quite a buff. Defensive structures not good enough? Sorry, but I simply disagree with this. 1canon + wall holds a ton of (Zerg) stuff, spines are nearly as often being whined about as Broodlords are. Bunkers... don't even start about those things, they should get nerfed PFs, Turrets... all of that stuff is really good. Maybe Protoss vs air defense is slightly lacking. Maybe all the ground defenses could use +1range (7range spine/canon vs 5-6range mobile troops makes runbies quite strong and the need for siege weapons smaller), but they are generally quite good and cheap and outside of highlevel games, I can only encourage everybody to just build one extra, because it won't matter on that level of play for the macrogame, but win you a lot of games in the shortrun. Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:
Just remember ... "because the devs say so" or something similar isnt a good enough reason. If you dont answer then I have to assume that I am right in that these things are terrible AND a problem of the game.
EDIT:
Slight addition to the above: How "high quality" and "thorough" Blizzard internal testing is can be clearly seen by the HotS units and their really wild changes. I for one dont put much stock in those skills ... with such uninspired and almost random ability changes. Most of the community has "asked" blizzard to be more open about their unit designs and allow themselves more changes. Blizzard listened, it's a good thing. Not a bad thing. Though I also agree with Artosis on that matter. Stuff like the warhound might not have been very interesting by design, but could have been really good for the strategy part in the RTS Starcraft:HotS. Still happy that it is gone, yet really courious about how it would have worked out with it.
1. The question was not about asymmetric production, but rather about asymmetric BOOSTS. The general asymmetric production between Zerg and the other two races works as proven in BW, but is the same true if you also apply boosts which only affect a limited part of their army for two races and the full repertoire for the third? I am convinced that Siege Tanks not being boosted through reactors is one of the reasons why mech is so hard to pull off; casters are telling us about the limited reproducability of the tank every mech game after all ... Since "more units on the battlefield" is not a good thing, the only remaining option is to get rid of these boosts ... which would also get rid of the MULE which people have whined about forever ...
2. If you make melee units much stronger than ranged units you are basically screwing up the balance when there are few units around. This doesnt work and increasing the attacks of the Siege Tank - to counteract the deathball for example - would be just as bad. If you had 2-3 Zealots while the opponent has 5-6 Marines you will win simply because there isnt that mass of units around. So your train of thought is not going in the right direction. Tougher units or units which deal more damage dont work if they are changed to accomodate the "mass army fight", because that always screws up the individual balance between any units ... so the only solution is to get rid of the deathball by NOT adjusting these combat values.
3. Deathballs are not necessary to win. If the other side isnt capable of bringing a deathball to the battlefield then you dont need yours to win either. The big clumps of armies do prevent real micro from happening, because you can not focus on a small part of your army and let your bigger part run into their doom. Just watch some BW games and you see plenty of action ... "something big" is NOT necessary for entertainment purposes, its just what people are told what they should think is good. As usual: bigger is not necessarily better.
Smaller fights between smaller armies just offer more control to the player since they are slower AND they leave room for the devs to implement seemingly overpowered abilities. If Fungal would only hit 3 Marines each time because they are spread out that much it wouldnt be such a pain in the rear ability for example. Slower battles are also easier to understand and follow for a spectator.
4. The same argument from #2 applies to capital ships ... if you buff the BC to not die easily to 20 Marines you would make BC rushes pretty powerful.
Static defenses are pretty terrible in SC2 due to the simple fact that a tight clump of infantry can tear a small number of them down too easily. Its the same as for the capital ships and buffing them is a terrible idea, because of cannon rushes and so on. Even a Planetary Fortress on its own only lasts longish against a serious attack if it is repaired instantly and nothing can prevent it from being destroyed by a column of Banelings rolling in on a rightclick.
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So Blizzard is trying to be more open about their unit design, but the way they are doing it is pretty much piss poor, because of the comment about "internal testing" for the movement adjustment. That is a pretty decent thread of 40 pages and it got "a few hours" of testing? I cant take that seriously and even Browders recent comments in the OP are generic and only list "every possible option" ... which should be pretty obvious. That kind of "community interaction" is unnecessary because it stinks of a public relations ploy to just calm down the people complaining about it.
Another thing which formed my opinion of Blizzard devs being unwise is the pretty poor design for the new units in HotS ...
- Yet another "free unit spawner" for the race with the biggest production capability and which is supposed to be replacing all their units regularly?
- A unit which can pull enemy units into the midst of their own clump of units? (We did agree that "many infantry against few big ships is bad" and this pretty much shows they dont understand the problems their clumped unit movement creates.)
- The many stupid implementations of the Oracle, Mothership Core and the "22 range I am safe against your attacks because I can fly and also have a lot of health"-Tempest for Protoss?
- A mine which costs supply and fires missiles which are able to hit flyers?
- The Warhound?
- The Battle Hellion is an ok-ish concept, but it might suffer from the "what happens in a few vs few scenario" due to the increase hp. All they came up for this unit was a new name? They must be joking here ...
Sorry ... they just threw in their wildest ideas for units and created them and probably bothered more about "new death animation" than actually thinking about their unit concepts. I really cant take them seriously anymore until they start showing that they understand the concept of the deathball (they said they wanted to do something against it IIRC, so there is hope) and why/how it is made possible. Since the "tightly clumped unit problem" is independant of the race or the specific unit it needs a general solution and not one based on units.
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On November 13 2012 23:37 vthree wrote:
Asymmetric production was in BW. However, BW rarely had max armies trading and then both sides had bank to remax. The slower Eco of BW made building up that huge bank much more rare. And even in rare 200/200 situations, the armies would be spread throughout the map so one side doesn't lose 100 supply in one fight. It was mostly a 20 supply advantage here, another 10 supply there until one side can't keep up. So being able to make 100+ supply at once wasn't as big an issue.
Lets also not forget that you would be hard pressed to get a 200/200 BW army on a single screen, even if you wanted to. That game was built for a much smaller screen size, no wide screen, lower resolution and chunker UI. People forget how much more room everything took up in BW. It was one of the reasons why there were fewer deathballs.
Forcing people to operate on multiple screens can prevent “blobbing”.
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Rabiator has fair points, Blizzard dev team are a decent AAA game developers. But surely, they're not 'epic' developers who could create legendary games, which we're looking for. And with the current state of game industry its impossible for such developers to exist. Therefore discussion of Blizzard's competency is meaningless, they've changed company direction (money comes before product). And possibly we'll never see any legendary games in the future ever 
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On November 14 2012 00:50 bokeevboke wrote:Rabiator has fair points, Blizzard dev team are a decent AAA game developers. But surely, they're not 'epic' developers who could create legendary games, which we're looking for. And with the current state of game industry its impossible for such developers to exist. Therefore discussion of Blizzard's competency is meaningless, they've changed company direction (money comes before product). And possibly we'll never see any legendary games in the future ever
These sorts of vague, overarching statements about “legendary developers” are the main reason why Blizzard can never win. The release a Starcraft 2 in an era when every company is trying to reinvent the RTS genre, adding “features” they think will make RTS games more enjoyable. Removing resource collection, base building, direct control of units, micro or control. Feature are added to automatically build units, build bases without building placement or formation buttons to force units into specific shapes, complete with buffs for that shape.
Then Blizzard comes out with Starcraft 2 and says: “Forget all that crap, we did it first and we did it best. People will build units by hand, they will scout with workers and worry about harvesting resources again. The only thing we find worth wild in this new world of RTS games are waypoints, shift commands and unlimited unit selection. Beyond that, all your stuff is crap.” and then Starcraft 2 sells 4.5 million over 2 years. Reviewers love the game, people are back to building bases, kiting units and worrying about build orders. It is like a pizza shop opening, only serving cheese pizza because its was the best and everyone being thankful for being shown that topping suck.
It may be popular and easy to crap on Blizzard on TL. After all, we are comparing it to the gold standard of RTS game, perfected and shined over 10 years of play. And beyond that, there are thousands of posts where people flesh out in great detail how bad Starcraft 2 is, so you don’t even need to come up with your own reasons, they are provide for you.
But people forget where RTS games were going before Starcraft 2 came out and how much it reminded people that the original ideas are the best ideas.
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On November 14 2012 00:40 Rabiator wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 13 2012 23:24 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 19:54 Big J wrote:On November 13 2012 19:34 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 13 2012 19:01 Big J wrote:On November 13 2012 18:12 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 13 2012 18:06 Kharnage wrote:On November 13 2012 15:47 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 15:37 TERRANLOL wrote:On November 13 2012 07:25 Hider wrote:
[quote]
Terran is supposed to be overresented on ladder, GSL, foreign tournaments, other tournmanets etc. Since they are the most played race.
In fact, as GSL is the only place where that is happening, it is easy to conclude that terran is heavily imbalanced. I argue that the numbers are signifacntly signifcant as well. Terran has been underpresented in masters and GM For such a long time. Everytime a terran players plays against a zerg or a protoss player, he is vastly superior to them.
The average master terran player is like top 1% of his race, while the average toss/zerg is top 10%. The problem with the Blizzard team is that they just look at the statistics of the ladder, and think.. Uh TVZ on ladder = 50% (even though this is between the top 10% toss vs the top 1% teran). So obv. the terran is supposed to win a lot more than 50% if the game was balanced.
Honestly that's a pretty dumb assumption to make. The guys who are on the balance team are programmers, statisticians and mathematicians. They understand what you've explained and they understand a whole lot more. Being a programmer myself I can tell you that kind of stuff occurs to you while you're programming the system. They even mentioned in a post a while back about balance, and at a blizzcon, that they have a formula that figures that kind of stuff in. The math that was in that formula is miles more advanced than the math you're showing me right now. Just because someone is a programmer doesnt mean he is WISE in his choices. The guys at Blizzard are too busy in their day-to-day activities and details to have a clue about "the big picture". You have to be NOT INVOLVED and IMPARTIAL to have a good view for the right choices, but as long as they try to "fix" the game through adjusting the units only they are not doing it right. Simple example: What is the reason for the deathball? Why does it exist? 1. Units are FORCED into tight formations by the movement and unit selection mechanics of the game. These are neither race-specific nor unit-specific. 2. Having a tight group of units is the most efficient way to win, because it maximizes your firepower. That second point is universally true and was true in BW already, but did the deathball exist back then? NO ... and this makes it clear where you need to "fix it" and since Blizzard isnt seeing it they are pretty "unwise" [which is less of an insult compared to dumb, which I was tempted to use]. Honestly, shit like this really pisses me off. You have no clue what the 'day to day' activities of the dev team, or the balance team, or any of the blizzard staff entail. You have no idea of their qualifications, their backgrounds, or their ability to impartially have a 'good view' of the 'big picture'. You spout this shit as if you have a magically superior vision of what SC2 should be and it's so obvious that if blizzard haven't implemented 'your vision' then they are doing it wrong. Who the FUCK do you think you are??? You may be pissed off but you're only embarrassing yourself. There are a lot of people that go around saying "Who the fuck do you think you are?" to people younger than them, forever stifling their creativity and self-confidence. Each of the people on the Blizz dev team (not to mention every great man that ever lived) was once a young man + Show Spoiler +or woman, just an expression... who was unhappy with the current state of affairs and started looking for new solutions. Most new proposals are wrong, but so are the old accepted ones. It's through civil discussion that new better ideas are born. So, Mr. Kharnage, stop pulling the argument from authority and find good reasons why the person is wrong. If you cannot, do not join in on the discussion. This is not what he said. He said he is pissed off by people who deny that the developers are qualified, because of their personal opinions, which is actually very close to what you are saying. Even more, he gave an argument, which was that this guy has no clue about the day-to-day activities of blizzard, yet shits upon them. Also, there is no bravery or greater intelligence in shitting upon someone elses work. Everybody knows that all things can always be done better. There is really nothing interesting in spreading general knowledge. Proving, that your own ideas are superior to longtime established, working solutions is the impressive part. That's a very generous reading of what he said. In fact, having re-read those opinions, I still cannot get it. It does not matter what the day-to-day activities at Blizzard are, the whole point is that it should be possible to discuss the development process. If the opinions can be shown to be false, so be it. But he was telling the person to stop talking because he is not qualified and thus should shut up. As for your own point, it's not about saying that things could be better, it's saying what should be better and how. It will not be clear in the beginning, but that's why we have a discussion. Yet, to have a discussion, we cannot have people going around telling others to shut up because they are not qualified. Yeah, I see what you are saying, but just look at his example of unit movement, here is a quote from DB: We tested this internally a week or two ago when we first saw this video (thanks to the author of the video).
It didn't actually change anything. We tried some really extreme values as well to really push it... There is quite some more on that topic in this thread on B.net. And it clearly shows, that the discussion is there, that blizzard cares, and the developers do have a clue about the game. So in conclusion (in my eyes), this guy is nothing but an (uninformed?) hater of the development team. Yes, Kharnage's reaction was quite fierce, but I fully understand him, because we all want SC2 to be the best it can be, yet it gets really frustrating to read everybodies amateur opinion over and over again on topics that people have already tested and argued through with a lot more effort than "the developers are not the right people to judge their game". And yes, things are not clear in the beginning. That's why I said there is nothing interesting about claiming that stuff, the interesting stuff is trying to prove it, be it by a good detailed (and therefore probably long) arguement/discussion, or probably even better, through straight up testing. So if Blizzard half-heartedly tests something that isnt going to work in its implementation and which was regarded as a joke in the thread anyways (after that kind of "we dont take your ideas serious enough to even try them out in the beta" answer) it is enough for you? Well not for me and if you think I am wrong then ARGUE WITH THE REASONING. Explain to me why ... Half-heartedly... so everything that hasn't been exposed to a huge portion of the community for an extended periode of time is half-heartedly? If you read the article, you will read that DB stated that they tested various instances of such movement. Imo this is not half-heartedly testing. Furthermore, the HotS beta is not a playground for any community idea someone has ever had. Make a map, test it yourself. If it is a popular idea, you will find a few (yeah not a lot, but still some) people to test such stuff, at least if you can eloquently explain the idea and it's goals in a thread (--> FRB, --> Starbow). Or just test it in Starbow. It's in there, I played that mod, I like that mod, but I actually don't think that the movement makes a significant difference in the playability of certain styles (while I think that the unit/income changes do actually matter a lot to the gameplay of the mod). To the other stuff: Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:
1. asymmetric production speed boosts for the three races which kick in at different timings and dont work for every unit of each race are a good idea.
2. tightly clumped up groups of infantry are a good idea, because to make the game "fair" they had to nerf AoE abilities ... which usually are the exciting points in the game.
3. the deathball is a good thing.
4. tightly clumped units of Marines (and Hydras and Blink Stalkers) are NOT responsible for capital ships and defensive structures being more or less useless.
1.) asymetric production was in BW as well. A hatchery can start to produce 3 Ultralisks in 42seconds, but a factory (similar cost to a hatchery) just 1siege tank. The production boost that were introduced in SC2 (on top of changed production times) - I believe you talk about those - chronoboost, larva inject, mules, reactores, switchable addons - don't do anything differently than the (broodwar-) difference between a gateway (150mineral building that can produce 1zealot = 100resources/2supply worth of units in 40seconds) vs a barracks (150mineral building that can produce 100resources/2supply worth of units in 48seconds), which leads to a production advantage for Protoss. And this is a really, really soft example. And (still talking BW), different units profit differently from this production differences. F.e: 1 larva, would you build an ultralisk or 2zerglings from it? Do you wait for 9larva and 450minerals, to start 18zerglings, or do you wait for 9larva and stockpile 900/900 to start 9mutalisks? Asymetric production is one of the core principles that made Starcraft different from games with similar design (like CnC1 and RedAlert). 2.) Tightly clumped units can be good, or can be bad. In a game with a good variety of melee units that are simply designed to be stronger than ranged units on their own, clumping is a vital part of ranged play. If I had the choice, I would want less clumping in SC2, but I actually think - talking from my experience with other RTS games - the only way to reduce unit clumping, is to force more actionbased play, so that you have to move out with smaller amounts of units earlier. (just play any RTS game as noob, do some Big Game Hunters style of turtle play and see how it turns out. It's always going to be ball vs ball. Only when you start to get better, start to get how rushes work etc, the amount of units per location will decrease. Therefore, the best - maybe only - way to decrease clumping is to increase action). And in conclusion, actionbased play is very tightly connected to unitdesign and - balancing against each other. SC2 PvZ is stale, because Protoss can't move out due to zerg-speed and the roach being too strong vs sametime-available Protoss units. Zerg on the other hand cannot attack either, because of Protoss-range and Protoss-walls. It's unhealthy unit relationship that is hurting the matchup, not clumping, yet all we see is deathballs vs deathballs. 3.) The deathball is not a good thing, but it's not a bad thing either. Deathballs are necessary. At some point in the game, you want to grab your army and kill the opponent. Same for watching a game. At some point, you want to see something big happening. Harassment all over the map is nice and exciting. However, seeing someone die from multipronged aggression while no real encounter has ever happened feels wrong. Outside of biostyles (the irony... the super dps-dense balls allow for these styles more than anything else) and multipronged zergstyles against macro Terrans (a pity that we don't see this enough. Probably the best reason to nerf endgame zerg to force more aggressive play), I agree that the game might be lacking these things. (lategame warp-prism usage is actually quite cool as well). But if you actually watched this game from the very beginning, it has become a lot better just by figuering out all the various timings and ways to spread an opponent out and though the deathball is a goal in the game, it's not a consistent playstyle anymore, most of the time. (and that was being done just by figuring and balance changes, without the change of coremechanics) 4.) Of course they are responsible for captial ships not being very good. But you know, there would be an easy solution. Buff the said units until they are viable. If rushing them becomes too strong, lengthen the time to tech there. For example, BCs and Broodlords do beat marines in the higher numbers, that's why we see those units in the late/endgame against marines. Carriers don't beat them ever, that's why we don't see them at all against marines. BCs have seen a little bit of usage against Zerg, but they could use a small buff still. Carriers need quite a buff. Defensive structures not good enough? Sorry, but I simply disagree with this. 1canon + wall holds a ton of (Zerg) stuff, spines are nearly as often being whined about as Broodlords are. Bunkers... don't even start about those things, they should get nerfed PFs, Turrets... all of that stuff is really good. Maybe Protoss vs air defense is slightly lacking. Maybe all the ground defenses could use +1range (7range spine/canon vs 5-6range mobile troops makes runbies quite strong and the need for siege weapons smaller), but they are generally quite good and cheap and outside of highlevel games, I can only encourage everybody to just build one extra, because it won't matter on that level of play for the macrogame, but win you a lot of games in the shortrun. Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:01 Rabiator wrote:
Just remember ... "because the devs say so" or something similar isnt a good enough reason. If you dont answer then I have to assume that I am right in that these things are terrible AND a problem of the game.
EDIT:
Slight addition to the above: How "high quality" and "thorough" Blizzard internal testing is can be clearly seen by the HotS units and their really wild changes. I for one dont put much stock in those skills ... with such uninspired and almost random ability changes. Most of the community has "asked" blizzard to be more open about their unit designs and allow themselves more changes. Blizzard listened, it's a good thing. Not a bad thing. Though I also agree with Artosis on that matter. Stuff like the warhound might not have been very interesting by design, but could have been really good for the strategy part in the RTS Starcraft:HotS. Still happy that it is gone, yet really courious about how it would have worked out with it.
On November 14 2012 00:40 Rabiator wrote:
1. The question was not about asymmetric production, but rather about asymmetric BOOSTS. The general asymmetric production between Zerg and the other two races works as proven in BW, but is the same true if you also apply boosts which only affect a limited part of their army for two races and the full repertoire for the third? I am convinced that Siege Tanks not being boosted through reactors is one of the reasons why mech is so hard to pull off; casters are telling us about the limited reproducability of the tank every mech game after all ... Since "more units on the battlefield" is not a good thing, the only remaining option is to get rid of these boosts ... which would also get rid of the MULE which people have whined about forever ...
As I have already said (or at least implied), production boosts are nothing but additional ways for production. Their asymetry by design is in no ways different to the general asymetry of production design.
If tanks are not being produced because it takes too long to produce them, then just change the value, no need to question reactors.
On November 14 2012 00:40 Rabiator wrote:
2. If you make melee units much stronger than ranged units you are basically screwing up the balance when there are few units around. This doesnt work and increasing the attacks of the Siege Tank - to counteract the deathball for example - would be just as bad. If you had 2-3 Zealots while the opponent has 5-6 Marines you will win simply because there isnt that mass of units around. So your train of thought is not going in the right direction. Tougher units or units which deal more damage dont work if they are changed to accomodate the "mass army fight", because that always screws up the individual balance between any units ... so the only solution is to get rid of the deathball by NOT adjusting these combat values.
I'm not saying that melee units should be stronger. I said that the strategies of the game should allow the player that has to build melee/low range units, to engage with them for as long as they scale well.
SC2 doesn't manage that for all of those units, therefore the melee player must (go allin or) turtle and wait for the opponent to go into the open.
On November 14 2012 00:40 Rabiator wrote:
3. Deathballs are not necessary to win. If the other side isnt capable of bringing a deathball to the battlefield then you dont need yours to win either. The big clumps of armies do prevent real micro from happening, because you can not focus on a small part of your army and let your bigger part run into their doom. Just watch some BW games and you see plenty of action ... "something big" is NOT necessary for entertainment purposes, its just what people are told what they should think is good. As usual: bigger is not necessarily better.
Broodwar tank pushes, broodwar hydralisk busts, MM pushes. Sorry, but that's all just big army play, the only difference being movement and visually, but it's the same idea. Get your whole army into the face of your opponent.
I'm not a broodwar specialist, but in the few games I have seen (usually the ones that float around with comments like "amazing game") I actually haven't seen a single game, in which someone didn't try to overrun a locations with most of his army moving there.
On November 14 2012 00:40 Rabiator wrote:
Smaller fights between smaller armies just offer more control to the player since they are slower AND they leave room for the devs to implement seemingly overpowered abilities. If Fungal would only hit 3 Marines each time because they are spread out that much it wouldnt be such a pain in the rear ability for example. Slower battles are also easier to understand and follow for a spectator.
Yes, and they are achieved by allowing for more aggressive macro play in all matchups or changing the production-action relation (upping the amount of things that can be done with a unit, until a new unit is produced and you gotta get out of there; map sizes, unit speed, production speed).
On November 14 2012 00:40 Rabiator wrote:
4. The same argument from #2 applies to capital ships ... if you buff the BC to not die easily to 20 Marines you would make BC rushes pretty powerful.
Did you even read what I wrote? If they become to powerful, make them enter the battlefield later. For example, BC now additionally needs an armory, and the fusion core takes another 20seconds. (this concept works very well for zerg units. Ever tried to rush Ultras of one or two bases, or broodlords? It's a bad strategy, because of the huge amounts of bound investments of time/resources)
Even more, it's not about buffing them to be superunits. It's about smoothing out their transition. 1BC should get murdered by 20marines. The strength of Carriers and BCs lies within their supply efficientness, versality and the flying aspect. Right now, their costefficiency is just (in the case of the BC slightly) too low.
On November 14 2012 00:40 Rabiator wrote:
Static defenses are pretty terrible in SC2 due to the simple fact that a tight clump of infantry can tear a small number of them down too easily. Its the same as for the capital ships and buffing them is a terrible idea, because of cannon rushes and so on. Even a Planetary Fortress on its own only lasts longish against a serious attack if it is repaired instantly and nothing can prevent it from being destroyed by a column of Banelings rolling in on a rightclick.
I simply disagree. I think it's easy enough to turtle in this game. If you want more defenders army advantages for small groups, then I agree with you. At least when we talk about Protoss.
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On November 14 2012 01:26 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2012 00:50 bokeevboke wrote:Rabiator has fair points, Blizzard dev team are a decent AAA game developers. But surely, they're not 'epic' developers who could create legendary games, which we're looking for. And with the current state of game industry its impossible for such developers to exist. Therefore discussion of Blizzard's competency is meaningless, they've changed company direction (money comes before product). And possibly we'll never see any legendary games in the future ever These sorts of vague, overarching statements about “legendary developers” are the main reason why Blizzard can never win. The release a Starcraft 2 in an era when every company is trying to reinvent the RTS genre, adding “features” they think will make RTS games more enjoyable. Removing resource collection, base building, direct control of units, micro or control. Feature are added to automatically build units, build bases without building placement or formation buttons to force units into specific shapes, complete with buffs for that shape. Then Blizzard comes out with Starcraft 2 and says: “Forget all that crap, we did it first and we did it best. People will build units by hand, they will scout with workers and worry about harvesting resources again. The only thing we find worth wild in this new world of RTS games are waypoints, shift commands and unlimited unit selection. Beyond that, all your stuff is crap.” and then Starcraft 2 sells 4.5 million over 2 years. Reviewers love the game, people are back to building bases, kiting units and worrying about build orders. It is like a pizza shop opening, only serving cheese pizza because its was the best and everyone being thankful for being shown that topping suck. It may be popular and easy to crap on Blizzard on TL. After all, we are comparing it to the gold standard of RTS game, perfected and shined over 10 years of play. And beyond that, there are thousands of posts where people flesh out in great detail how bad Starcraft 2 is, so you don’t even need to come up with your own reasons, they are provide for you. But people forget where RTS games were going before Starcraft 2 came out and how much it reminded people that the original ideas are the best ideas.
Very well said, completely agree.
I will quote the Grrrr... on this matter, taken from his recent interview.
What do you think of starcraft2 as a game?
I thnk it's a good game. I lot of its critics are mostly people who had extremely high expectations... because it's the sequel of the greatest RTS game ever made.
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Removing the Pathogen Glands upgrade could be a good start. It's not as drastic as the other changes that were suggested, but could still be not as game-breaking...
I wonder why that wasn't brought up yet? Seeing as the Khaydarin Amulet (HT energy upgrade) was removed, why is this still available?
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On November 13 2012 23:18 plogamer wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 23:00 Giku wrote:On November 13 2012 22:35 DidYuhim wrote:On November 13 2012 22:28 Rassy wrote:On November 13 2012 08:23 IdrA wrote: you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive. the army is supposed to be that strong cuz you give up everything else to get it. if you get an advantage early on then you can afford to build enough static defense or to apply pressure to t/p fast enough. if you dont you cant and you end up with a base race situation where you have the one super army you invested absolutely everything in. its supposed to be that strong cuz its all you get. but terrans and protosses are still stuck on doing 3 base timings that were really good but are slowly getting worse and worse as people learn defensive timings. when that fails theyre SUPPOSED to lose in the late game because its a failed investment. but bl/infestor is so slow and bad to attack with that zerg has to drag it out. this makes it look, to stupid people, like the terran and protoss is still competitively in the game but fighting against this unfairly untouchable zerg army when in fact the opponent should have left as soon as they ran their collosus army into a spine crawler wall and infestors. maybe bl/infestor is stronger than it should be, but those situations are just what happens given game design and current play styles. that specifically is not an imbalance thing. you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles. even protosses who are learning to do the mass warp prism harass as z gets a slower army dont understand that thats just to buy you time and put the zerg allin. if you do something that encourages zerg to get a 200 supply broodlord infestor army but then stay on a stalker archon army you're the one doing something wrong. when more protosses are comfortable playing for the macro game and learn air transitions, and when terrans start to understand mech better and learn to use ghosts, if zerg still seems overpowered then we can talk. the game will be boring as shit, but terran and protoss late game armies can fight bl infestor if you're just willing to be as abusive and boring as zergs have learned to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its nice to see that even idra admits the infestor is op (you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles.) Hes wrong with a few statements though. "you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive" Yet it is always zerg who has the most bases, even if he goes for bl infestor. This isnt protoss or terrans fault, they harras all they can, yet zerg still gets to 4-5 base easily (bar 2 base all ins from protos) while protoss and terran are at 3 base. Then once zerg has this economy advantage he has a way to spend it, with bl infestor. Yes the end army of bl infestor is verry immobile, but the army comes at a stage that the map already has been split and fortified with static defences. There is verry little room to abuse the immobility of the end game army. An immobile midgame army like terran and toss have, allows the opponent (read zerg) to freely get 4-5 base and bl infestor, then once at the end stage there is no way annymore for terran or toss to explore the immobility of the zerg bl infestor army. Oh, wait, you're seriously taking Idra's post. Let me laugh even harder. You do understand that of three races Zerg has the most mobility during early and mid-game, right? And the fact that Zerg can win with mid-game alone, without BroodLords and 20+ infestors? Oh so now it's not the Infestor that's OP but the whole race? Why should take you seriously, come on man, atleast give a decent response. You really can't take IdrA seriously on balance. He complained about blinkstalker all-in after scouting it and not responding correctly. And yeah broodlords are immobile, but so are tanks and thors (maybe a teeny bit less?). Speedling backstabs to the third base are better than hellion backstabs, you can't really take down production with hellions like you can with lings. So Zerg wins there too. Lost 20 drones to a hellion runby (lategame)? Make 20 drones with a bank of 60 larva. Also, spines > bunkers. /edit All I'm saying is, Zerg isn't as IdrA would like you to think it is. Imba? Who knows. But definitely doing amazingly atm. And man, when IdrA talks about Toss and Terrans developing new strats/adjusting, where was his adjusting when complaining about Zerg being underpowered?
blink stalkers were OP especially given the ladder spawn locations, and was nerfed in 1.4,
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On November 14 2012 15:31 trinxified wrote:
Removing the Pathogen Glands upgrade could be a good start. It's not as drastic as the other changes that were suggested, but could still be not as game-breaking...
I wonder why that wasn't brought up yet? Seeing as the Khaydarin Amulet (HT energy upgrade) was removed, why is this still available?
That's easy. HT's can be warped in instantly (with Khaydarin Amulet this means instant storm defence), while Infestors have a training time (meaning defence comes later). The problem wasn't really HT's starting with a storm, it was the combination of that upgrade + warpgate.
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On November 13 2012 22:35 DidYuhim wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:28 Rassy wrote:On November 13 2012 08:23 IdrA wrote: you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive. the army is supposed to be that strong cuz you give up everything else to get it. if you get an advantage early on then you can afford to build enough static defense or to apply pressure to t/p fast enough. if you dont you cant and you end up with a base race situation where you have the one super army you invested absolutely everything in. its supposed to be that strong cuz its all you get. but terrans and protosses are still stuck on doing 3 base timings that were really good but are slowly getting worse and worse as people learn defensive timings. when that fails theyre SUPPOSED to lose in the late game because its a failed investment. but bl/infestor is so slow and bad to attack with that zerg has to drag it out. this makes it look, to stupid people, like the terran and protoss is still competitively in the game but fighting against this unfairly untouchable zerg army when in fact the opponent should have left as soon as they ran their collosus army into a spine crawler wall and infestors. maybe bl/infestor is stronger than it should be, but those situations are just what happens given game design and current play styles. that specifically is not an imbalance thing. you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles. even protosses who are learning to do the mass warp prism harass as z gets a slower army dont understand that thats just to buy you time and put the zerg allin. if you do something that encourages zerg to get a 200 supply broodlord infestor army but then stay on a stalker archon army you're the one doing something wrong. when more protosses are comfortable playing for the macro game and learn air transitions, and when terrans start to understand mech better and learn to use ghosts, if zerg still seems overpowered then we can talk. the game will be boring as shit, but terran and protoss late game armies can fight bl infestor if you're just willing to be as abusive and boring as zergs have learned to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its nice to see that even idra admits the infestor is op (you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles.) Hes wrong with a few statements though. "you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive" Yet it is always zerg who has the most bases, even if he goes for bl infestor. This isnt protoss or terrans fault, they harras all they can, yet zerg still gets to 4-5 base easily (bar 2 base all ins from protos) while protoss and terran are at 3 base. Then once zerg has this economy advantage he has a way to spend it, with bl infestor. Yes the end army of bl infestor is verry immobile, but the army comes at a stage that the map already has been split and fortified with static defences. There is verry little room to abuse the immobility of the end game army. An immobile midgame army like terran and toss have, allows the opponent (read zerg) to freely get 4-5 base and bl infestor, then once at the end stage there is no way annymore for terran or toss to explore the immobility of the zerg bl infestor army. Oh, wait, you're seriously taking Idra's post. Let me laugh even harder. You do understand that of three races Zerg has the most mobility during early and mid-game, right? And the fact that Zerg can win with mid-game alone, without BroodLords and 20+ infestors?
HAH HAHAHAHAHAHA Oh lord your post made me laugh.
How many times do you see zerg win in mid-game alone without infestors? Oh that's right almost none. It's so rare in todays game because it's so easy to defend zerg attacks. There is a reason zergs are going for infestor/bl/corr (hint it's not because it's fun, it's the only viable thing to consistantly win games with).
Do you think it's coincidence that DRG for example is trying not to play the turtle style of infestor/bl/corruptor and is now losing more? Protoss/Terrans rarely lose to zerg in the mid game anymore. So no you really have no idea what you are talking about.
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On November 14 2012 16:09 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 22:35 DidYuhim wrote:On November 13 2012 22:28 Rassy wrote:On November 13 2012 08:23 IdrA wrote: you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive. the army is supposed to be that strong cuz you give up everything else to get it. if you get an advantage early on then you can afford to build enough static defense or to apply pressure to t/p fast enough. if you dont you cant and you end up with a base race situation where you have the one super army you invested absolutely everything in. its supposed to be that strong cuz its all you get. but terrans and protosses are still stuck on doing 3 base timings that were really good but are slowly getting worse and worse as people learn defensive timings. when that fails theyre SUPPOSED to lose in the late game because its a failed investment. but bl/infestor is so slow and bad to attack with that zerg has to drag it out. this makes it look, to stupid people, like the terran and protoss is still competitively in the game but fighting against this unfairly untouchable zerg army when in fact the opponent should have left as soon as they ran their collosus army into a spine crawler wall and infestors. maybe bl/infestor is stronger than it should be, but those situations are just what happens given game design and current play styles. that specifically is not an imbalance thing. you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles. even protosses who are learning to do the mass warp prism harass as z gets a slower army dont understand that thats just to buy you time and put the zerg allin. if you do something that encourages zerg to get a 200 supply broodlord infestor army but then stay on a stalker archon army you're the one doing something wrong. when more protosses are comfortable playing for the macro game and learn air transitions, and when terrans start to understand mech better and learn to use ghosts, if zerg still seems overpowered then we can talk. the game will be boring as shit, but terran and protoss late game armies can fight bl infestor if you're just willing to be as abusive and boring as zergs have learned to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its nice to see that even idra admits the infestor is op (you cant really tell if its imbalanced yet because most p's and t's are still stuck on outdated styles.) Hes wrong with a few statements though. "you realize that to get that bl infestor super army you give up so much mobility you cant even defend yourself, much less pressure them. t/p should always end up with a ton of bases, production, and full tech if zerg is playing turtle hive" Yet it is always zerg who has the most bases, even if he goes for bl infestor. This isnt protoss or terrans fault, they harras all they can, yet zerg still gets to 4-5 base easily (bar 2 base all ins from protos) while protoss and terran are at 3 base. Then once zerg has this economy advantage he has a way to spend it, with bl infestor. Yes the end army of bl infestor is verry immobile, but the army comes at a stage that the map already has been split and fortified with static defences. There is verry little room to abuse the immobility of the end game army. An immobile midgame army like terran and toss have, allows the opponent (read zerg) to freely get 4-5 base and bl infestor, then once at the end stage there is no way annymore for terran or toss to explore the immobility of the zerg bl infestor army. Oh, wait, you're seriously taking Idra's post. Let me laugh even harder. You do understand that of three races Zerg has the most mobility during early and mid-game, right? And the fact that Zerg can win with mid-game alone, without BroodLords and 20+ infestors? HAH HAHAHAHAHAHA Oh lord your post made me laugh. How many times do you see zerg win in mid-game alone without infestors? Oh that's right almost none. It's so rare in todays game because it's so easy to defend zerg attacks. There is a reason zergs are going for infestor/bl/corr (hint it's not because it's fun, it's the only viable thing to consistantly win games with). Do you think it's coincidence that DRG for example is trying not to play the turtle style of infestor/bl/corruptor and is now losing more? Protoss/Terrans rarely lose to zerg in the mid game anymore. So no you really have no idea what you are talking about.
Please define Midgame and "win a game". I have seen tons of games recently in which zerg can defend everything and put a lot of pressure up with ling infestor and the advantage they get is so high, that they can mass infestors and go for broodlords safely.
Maybe you can not finish your opponent with ling infestor as easily, but this combination is too strong and too easy to get.
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