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On December 26 2012 09:44 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 09:41 aksfjh wrote:On December 26 2012 07:40 truthUnderVeil wrote:On December 26 2012 01:52 Mavvie wrote:
If you play better than your opponent, you will win. If you make mistakes, you will lose. That's how the game always has been, and always will be. Not really. You can be better than your zerg opponent as terran, the zerg can make many mistakes, but it takes one good fungal and the game is even and even you are behind. That is the problem: being beaten consistently by less mechanically skilled players than yourself. Don't tell me you don't see the problem if players like ForGG or Polt who have far better mechanics than their zerg counterparts but can lose and lose regularly to inferior mechanics of players like Nerchio or Scarlett or Idra. It's not even all about fungal. Fungal compounds on top of the early game queen strengths and the economic power housing that happens behind them. Fungal helps Zerg have a great late game to aim for that they can use reliably to secure a win. Without it, Zerg has to use less reliable strategies and tactics, like larva banking for a fast remax or tech switch, and relying on great engagements before it's "too late." As much as I hate comparing races and drawing quick parallels, I guess a good way to think of it is if Terran OCs were also PFs, and simultaneously tanks did 70 damage to every unit once again. Terran would expand as early as possible and then use the econ advantage to mass enough tanks+support to push across the map. A great late game strategy mixed with the ability to be greedy in the early game without recourse. I don't use this as a literal example, but to illustrate the fundamental issue with how the other races have to approach vZ match ups these days. They have strong early game defenses as well as a great late game strategy to aim for. Neither perfect by any means, but strong nonetheless. It's funny, my standard sarcastic piece of insanity when someone suggests Hellions were 2GD is something along the lines "OMG I didn't wall off ling runby killed me lings imba! Give OCs PF cannon plz". The alternate was a PF that can fly and shoot from the air I think.
I always liked the imbalanced idea that CCs could land on units and crush them. I digress though.
Your post was great. We still hear some comments from other casters along the lines of "Well, Zerg DOES have the same number of bases as Terran, so Zerg is technically behind!" Of course, they exclaim that after Zerg goes for a bust and doesn't kill the opponent outright. By the same logic, Terran must be a base up or be behind every time they push out against Protoss. These notions, along with "Zerg is inefficient," "Protoss units are more costly, so they should be better," and "Terrans have the best ability to turtle," need to be squelched.
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There's a lot more that needs to be said that hasn't yet.
1. Terran is balanced around Korean Terrans.
Terran is a very multi-task, micro-oriented race, and that's what the Koreans thrive on. Zerg, on the other hand, is more of a chore race, aimed at overwhelming through economy. Terran falls in line with the Korean style of play while Zerg is more of a foreigner race, and since the Koreans are the best players in the world the skill ceiling for Terran has shot through the roof whereas Zerg hasn't really been affected by the Korean learning curve. This is why Terran got nerfed so much. Not because it was more powerful, but because the Koreans used the race in such a way that prevented the other races from competing.
2. Terran is imbalanced too.
Blizzard have employed the awful strategy of balancing through imbalances, giving each race an equal number of absolutely broken strategies. They tried to fix one (hellion runbys) by buffing queens, and now Zerg winrates have exploded, but there are still many totally broken Terran strats.
- 2 rax rushes are still imbalanced because Zerg can't kill a finished bunker (even today I'm incapable of writing that sentence without feeling extreme disgust at Blizzard's balance team).
- Medivac drops are far too powerful considering the investment.
- Zerg can't attack. They have been recently in pro games, but that's far more of a metagame thing to kill Terrans who are playing greedier with every month.
- Fungal is the only thing Zerg has that can damage Terran units. Everything else is either extremely cost-inefficient or can be avoided through micro.
I'm not saying Zerg isn't more powerful in the match, I'm just pointing out that there is plenty of bullshit that benefits each side.
3. Wings of Liberty is not worth fixing.
There is so much wrong with this game and so few tournaments happening between now and Heart of the Swarm that anything more than another Zerg-nerf band-aid fix is too much. Blizzard is lucky that the winrates are what they are, considering how thoroughly they've fucked up the game design, and any more attempts to fix the deep-seated issues that make the game near unplayable will result in even more one-sided tournaments. The good news is that Heart of the Swarm seeks to amend all the really awful game design, so let's treat that as one giant balance patch to fix Wings of Liberty and hold our breath until then.
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The Hellion Expand wasn't broken. There was one problematic aspect to it, and that was that a heavy 2 Factory Mass Hellion push could be masked to look just like the standard expand. Obviously, the commitment to defense is worlds different, which is why the Ferrarilords were generally welcomed (though they themselves are a bit problematic with parking spots designed for slowlords. The parking spots are outrageously good anyway).
Agreed though, that their time-sensitive asymmetric design idea is ridiculously ass-backwards design. It essentially promotes matches that are heavily scripted and in that regard feel more like a MOBA than an RTS game.
WoL salvageability, likewise agreed. Though HotS won't do much, Legacy of the Void is basically where any work will get done, if any, unless they're willing to do really, really drastic patches for HotS.
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I was unimpressed with with most of these points to be honest. The whole "I can't safely go onto creep without vision of what's ahead or a detector" is ridiculous to me. Also the "6 queens holds off all kind of all-ins" argument is garbage. 6 queen openers might hold off the same Hellion openings Terrans have been doing for a year, but if you try new things, you will find more success. Try dropping more, the Zerg is strong up front with the queens, but the back is usually vulnerable. To be honest, I just see a thread crying about how Zerg has a reasonable chance to hold of early Terran pressure and still
Drone well behind it. DeMuslim does a 4 starport banshee build, I saw him beat Scarlett with it even when she OPENED MUTA. Try that, and I wish you success with your TvZ in the future, although hopefully not as a result of a patch.
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I think its naive to think HotS will some how fix the gameplay.
If anything it looks like it will create more problems.
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IM MVP the man himself is currently streaming and loosing on NA to some random Z master player who is going for 30+ infestors and is A moving with 100+ lings armies.
Le sigh
User was temp banned for this post.
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I'm not a T player, but is weird for me to watch Z's in TvZ defending hellion pushes almost easily with just queens and lings.
I mean, if the T goes hellion heavy, the Z should be forced at least to make spines. Even being forced to make roaches (or more spines) in case of lot of hellions. Even in the games the pro Z's go for roaches, they are not behind at all in eco.
Z defenses are strong even without spending too much money, so that combined the almost always eco lead, plus the lategame dominance, is just too much, the race for the T to slow down the Z is really hard.
So why not, for example, nerf queens? It was that buff in the first place that started the patchzerg era (yeah, not to mention how masseable and strong are infestors). Why not set queen range into 4?
The buff from 3 to 5 was a lot. Why not go into a middle ground?
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On December 26 2012 16:57 Belha wrote:
So why not, for example, nerf queens? It was that buff in the first place that started the patchzerg era (yeah, not to mention how masseable and strong are infestors). Why not set queen range into 4?
The buff from 3 to 5 was a lot. Why not go into a middle ground?
I was actually saying that 4 would've been better when they were testing the buff in the first place
then again it's pretty late, and blizzard has their heads elsewhere that they won't admit their mistake (and thus won't revert it)
(oh. except for bunker changes)
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nerfing queens wont solve the issue, cause queen buff already made 4-6 queen openings useful for Z to take un punishable 3rd and zerg still has energy anyway on macro queens.. the issue is around larva mechanics, unforgivingness if macro cycle because of larva stack and ofcourse winfestor, zerg already has discovered way too good opertunities.. my god how OP zerg would been with old fungal of 2011... with current metagame
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On December 26 2012 10:07 Solarist wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 09:36 Coffee Zombie wrote:
Apart from Infestors, the whole thing boils down to larvae. In the past, you needed larvae to defend early pushes and to shoo off the contain from Reactor Hellion Expand quickly. Zerg players didn't like it. I vividly remember the endless inanity of "making Roaches is unacceptable because it means we can't drone/tech optimally". I am serious. The damage IdrA and Artosis have done to Zerg players' mindset cannot be underestimated.
The issue is that, as we all have (to our boredom) noticed over the last half a year, the Zerg economy, if unhindered, is broken. The ability to use all your production slots on nothing but economy is way too good to exist, except for the fact that in the past you could force Zerg to use larvae for defense. This meant both sides made army, econ and teched a bit. It was fair (though understandably felt bad for Z because they were literally being damaged).
Also, the only really boring part about Reactor Hellion was that T went for it almost always. The opener itself played out entertainingly enough: both sides had high stakes (immediate, long-lasting loss of map control for Terran, severe economic damage or outright game loss for Zerg) and there was lots of action happening. Terrans were busy trying to snipe tumors, Z was busy trying to sneak them past the Hellions, players had to watch their Queens/Hellions constantly to prevent a Hellion/Speedling snipe, respectively, and so forth. The most important thing of all, though, was that it led to an actual midgame.
And from here we get to the cascade effect the Queendralisk buff had. The early game implications are clear for all to see. But the ripple effects? Dear god. First, creep spread easily goes out of control, where spreading it was an effort before. The better economy allows for a very early swell of Infestors, which helps make Zerg safe and essentially kills the midgame, from which we get into quick, fast, Infestor/T3 comp with the accompanying tech switches. The sheer scale of the change is perhaps best realized when one stops to consider that in the past a 17 minute Hive was risky and greedy. Such a far cry from our current, absurdly safe 12 minute Hive timings, isn't it? That's all because Z had to invest into a midgame to fight off the Terran midgame (which they could get to due to less creep and slower Zerg development). And damn, was that midgame ever good.
The slower Hive timings also made the late game more bearable - Terran had more time to get their infrastructure up to contend with Zerg's endgame composition. The fundamental character of it was then, and still is expensive, inflexible Terran infrastructure making very narrow anti-1-unit counters that have no other use vs. a flexible Zerg infrastructure making little but threats.
The greatest casualty of the Queendralisk patch hasn't been balance, though - a certain amount of imbalance you can work around and it is even entertaining for some. The greatest casualties have been fun (the game has become dull), the idea that the game makes any kind of sense (the kind of imbalance and it's degree make the games feel just plain stupid). I also can't tell good and bad Zergs apart anymore. In the past, great creep spread was an achievement. There were brilliant holds, good game sense, great flanks. Mutas hadn't been eclipsed so badly and so were an actual (not just stubbornly stylistic) option. Now it's the same dull monotony where it feels like the sheer, absurd, dominant power of some key units does more work than the player. Spot on post, hit pretty much all the points
Excellent post. There use to be a time where zerg players were able to really differentiate themselves especially when it came down to the early game. DRG was one of them. I kind of miss the 2011 days with mid games that involved flanks and back doors etc with muta/ling/bling (this was absolutely a blast to watch) until the blasted infestors took over.
Thinking about it, the zerg race as a whole seems to suffer from design problems (including balance patches) due to inconsistencies.
-Larvae mechanic: Fact is.. BW zerg units were actually very cost efficient due to the 3 larvae her hatch limit (Most pro games will show that zerg will be down 50 supply most of the time and be fine against their opponents). In SC2, you can have up to 17 larvae stock piled per hatch. This means that SC2 zerg units have to be cost inefficient. Why? Due to their production advantage thanks to the larvae mechanic, either the opposition can handle multiple waves of the zerg army or the zerg units are weaker to compensate for the larvae advantage because no race will win in terms of marco vs a zerg. (Another reason why once you lose the critical engagement, the zerg production snowballs over the T/P production capabilities and win the game).
But when we look at SC2 zerg units, the only unit that seems very cost inefficient are the hydras. Everything else is not so bad (not great but better than hydras) plus its very weird to see alot of 2 supply units. If zerg had 1 supply hydras (or roach) with slightly reduced stats, this would actually limit the larvae mechanic somewhat which comes to the other point.
-"Need to stay one more base ahead than your T/P opponent" This is simply not true in SC2. In BW, this was true to the limited production/larvae zerg had. In SC2, you can fill out your mineral line with drones in seconds. Range 5 queens just makes this process so much easier. Zergs could saturate 3 bases in no time while having that "threat" of an all out attack looming over the T/Ps head. 3 Bases is probably the most optimum due to the fact that having too many drones = reduced army supply. Plus with each hatchery + queen can result in a total of 17 larvae, you just dont need so many bases like do you in BW. Ive seen so many SC2 games that have zerg pinned to 3 base but win anyway. Its weird, I know but from a swarmy race in the early game, it sort of turns into a BW mech ball in the late game with less drawbacks.
Then the last of its problem is this infestor unit which is pretty much the most cost efficient (the most boring also) spell caster, or unit in the game even more so than the marine. Atleast you can kill marines with ease or the fact that marine micro is sickening to watch at times.
tl;dr: I just miss the old TvZ days. I dare say it.. but it really made TvZ BW proud. You could say that the matchup transitioned nicely with a healthy dose of "new"ess from being SC2. Sadly, it took a turn in the wrong direction.
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On December 26 2012 14:29 Savagewood wrote:
I was unimpressed with with most of these points to be honest. The whole "I can't safely go onto creep without vision of what's ahead or a detector" is ridiculous to me. Also the "6 queens holds off all kind of all-ins" argument is garbage. 6 queen openers might hold off the same Hellion openings Terrans have been doing for a year, but if you try new things, you will find more success. Try dropping more, the Zerg is strong up front with the queens, but the back is usually vulnerable. To be honest, I just see a thread crying about how Zerg has a reasonable chance to hold of early Terran pressure and still
Drone well behind it. DeMuslim does a 4 starport banshee build, I saw him beat Scarlett with it even when she OPENED MUTA. Try that, and I wish you success with your TvZ in the future, although hopefully not as a result of a patch.
6 Queens doesn't hold off any all-in. The thing that makes it broken is that it forces the Terran to all-in if they want to make the Zerg invest larvae into anything but Drones. A Zerg that makes nothing but Drones is flat out broken (which is good). Used to be, light pressure forced Z to make units (bang, set back to fairness). Now, lolnope, they press sdddd all day if it's not a very, very heavy push.
Dropping? When drops come at 10 minutes or something? When the problem is a 6-7 minute third that gets saturated super quickly, and is guarded by 7 range 2.5 speed (=medivac speed) mobile AA?
The 4 ports I won't even get to.
On December 26 2012 15:22 Zombo Joe wrote:
I think its naive to think HotS will some how fix the gameplay.
If anything it looks like it will create more problems.
Yup. Might fix some, but it doesn't fix any of the actual causes these problems stem from.
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On December 26 2012 09:36 Coffee Zombie wrote:
Apart from Infestors, the whole thing boils down to larvae. In the past, you needed larvae to defend early pushes and to shoo off the contain from Reactor Hellion Expand quickly. Zerg players didn't like it. I vividly remember the endless inanity of "making Roaches is unacceptable because it means we can't drone/tech optimally". I am serious. The damage IdrA and Artosis have done to Zerg players' mindset cannot be underestimated.
The issue is that, as we all have (to our boredom) noticed over the last half a year, the Zerg economy, if unhindered, is broken. The ability to use all your production slots on nothing but economy is way too good to exist, except for the fact that in the past you could force Zerg to use larvae for defense. This meant both sides made army, econ and teched a bit. It was fair (though understandably felt bad for Z because they were literally being damaged).
Also, the only really boring part about Reactor Hellion was that T went for it almost always. The opener itself played out entertainingly enough: both sides had high stakes (immediate, long-lasting loss of map control for Terran, severe economic damage or outright game loss for Zerg) and there was lots of action happening. Terrans were busy trying to snipe tumors, Z was busy trying to sneak them past the Hellions, players had to watch their Queens/Hellions constantly to prevent a Hellion/Speedling snipe, respectively, and so forth. The most important thing of all, though, was that it led to an actual midgame.
And from here we get to the cascade effect the Queendralisk buff had. The early game implications are clear for all to see. But the ripple effects? Dear god. First, creep spread easily goes out of control, where spreading it was an effort before. The better economy allows for a very early swell of Infestors, which helps make Zerg safe and essentially kills the midgame, from which we get into quick, fast, Infestor/T3 comp with the accompanying tech switches. The sheer scale of the change is perhaps best realized when one stops to consider that in the past a 17 minute Hive was risky and greedy. Such a far cry from our current, absurdly safe 12 minute Hive timings, isn't it? That's all because Z had to invest into a midgame to fight off the Terran midgame (which they could get to due to less creep and slower Zerg development). And damn, was that midgame ever good.
The slower Hive timings also made the late game more bearable - Terran had more time to get their infrastructure up to contend with Zerg's endgame composition. The fundamental character of it was then, and still is expensive, inflexible Terran infrastructure making very narrow anti-1-unit counters that have no other use vs. a flexible Zerg infrastructure making little but threats.
The greatest casualty of the Queendralisk patch hasn't been balance, though - a certain amount of imbalance you can work around and it is even entertaining for some. The greatest casualties have been fun (the game has become dull), the idea that the game makes any kind of sense (the kind of imbalance and it's degree make the games feel just plain stupid). I also can't tell good and bad Zergs apart anymore. In the past, great creep spread was an achievement. There were brilliant holds, good game sense, great flanks. Mutas hadn't been eclipsed so badly and so were an actual (not just stubbornly stylistic) option. Now it's the same dull monotony where it feels like the sheer, absurd, dominant power of some key units does more work than the player.
One of the best posts regarding this issue that I've seen in a while - and that also confirms my idea that the Queen buff has ruined the match up even more than the fungal damage output
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On December 26 2012 11:33 _Search_ wrote:
2. Terran is imbalanced too.
Blizzard have employed the awful strategy of balancing through imbalances, giving each race an equal number of absolutely broken strategies. They tried to fix one (hellion runbys) by buffing queens, and now Zerg winrates have exploded, but there are still many totally broken Terran strats.
- 2 rax rushes are still imbalanced because Zerg can't kill a finished bunker (even today I'm incapable of writing that sentence without feeling extreme disgust at Blizzard's balance team).
- Medivac drops are far too powerful considering the investment.
- Zerg can't attack. They have been recently in pro games, but that's far more of a metagame thing to kill Terrans who are playing greedier with every month.
- Fungal is the only thing Zerg has that can damage Terran units. Everything else is either extremely cost-inefficient or can be avoided through micro.
All your points are painfully wrong, how can you even write such hyperboles without any evidence? Hatchery first can hold even proxy 11/11, otherwise it would not be standard. Completed Bunkers can sometimes be killed, sometimes they can't, but anyway the whole point of the defence is preventing one Bunker from completing in range of the Hatchery. Medivac drops can be handled easily with Overlord spread, creep, not-even-static defence and the fact Speedlings on creep can usually come in a matter of seconds to clear said drop. Stating that Zergs can't attack is laughable, check games from players like Leenock, Life or Stephano (or anyone playing something else than turtle Hive, really) and don't forget to apologize for writing something that dumb. Zergs have midgame agressive options both against Terran and Protoss even if biased Zergs love nothing more than complaining that they supposedly only have Infestors and Fungal to win... which, surprise surprise, is precisely your last point. I would sure love if neither Zerglings nor Roaches nor Ultralisks made any damage to my units, and your point about cost-inefficiency are empty words from the past since (a) maps are now covered in creep making Zerg units way more efficient and (b) Zergs learnt that nothing forces them to charge their whole army from a single angle.
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On December 26 2012 11:33 _Search_ wrote:
2. Terran is imbalanced too.
Nope. It is not. It is so underpowered that we don't see almost any terrans at the top tournaments making it to ro4 or ro8. Hell, Blizz's own tournament had 4 terrans qualify at ro32. Don't say ridiculous things.
The stuff about 2 raxes...I saw Scarlett make 3 hatch before pool and stop 11/11 rax. So don't start me on that cause you are plain wrong.
Please, by all means, defend your race, but say things that are true. Don't imagine stuff and use your imagination to talk about balance.
About zerg not being able to attack at mid game...man, In the last 10zvt's I've seen, if the zerg is ahead one game, second game is almost always high eco bling bust. Out of 3 bases. The race is that ridiculous.
See ladder. 20% terran at most at gm. 44% zerg. how is this even remotely close to balanced? I, a masters/gm terran, have 13/41 W/L vs zerg this season. On pro tournaments (GSL) zerg has 64% win rate vs terran in the last season. It is not EVEN close to balanced.
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On December 27 2012 02:55 truthUnderVeil wrote:Nope. It is not. It is so underpowered that we don't see almost any terrans at the top tournaments making it to ro4 or ro8. Hell, Blizz's own tournament had 4 terrans qualify at ro32. Don't say ridiculous things. The stuff about 2 raxes...I saw Scarlett make 3 hatch before pool and stop 11/11 rax. So don't start me on that cause you are plain wrong. Please, by all means, defend your race, but say things that are true. Don't imagine stuff and use your imagination to talk about balance. About zerg not being able to attack at mid game...man, In the last 10zvt's I've seen, if the zerg is ahead one game, second game is almost always high eco bling bust. Out of 3 bases. The race is that ridiculous. See ladder. 20% terran at most at gm. 44% zerg. how is this even remotely close to balanced? I, a masters/gm terran, have 13/41 W/L vs zerg this season. On pro tournaments (GSL) zerg has 64% win rate vs terran in the last season. It is not EVEN close to balanced.
The way terran is designed makes it hard to play and harder to recover from a mistake. If you have bad macro as a zerg or a protoss and a lot of minerals / gas saved up, you can press 4srrrrrrrrrrr as zerg to instantly spend that bank or Wzzssssssss as protoss. If you have that much minerals / gas as a terran you can't instantly spend it because of how terran production works.
Also, one bad micro slip up can cause you to instantly lose all your marines to fungal / banelings / ect
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Blizzard could easily fix all the imbalances and make the game fun again, all they need to do is make fungal growth a slow spell. It will still do the damage, just instead of freezing units in place it will just slow them by 40%, just like original Queen ensnare worked in Brood War.
I mean if ensnare was lot harder to pull off, the queen was much more expensive and came in later and only had 1 useful spell, then why is the infestor 10x easier to use, had 3 ridiculously powerful spells and the fungal prevents units from moving?
I mean I just don't get it. In Brood War it was thought the queen and ensnare was balanced and it was so hard to use it pretty much did nothing, but the infestor is balanced in SC2? Now I know we have the Red Alert 2 designer on SC2 as the main guy to design SC2(who is responsible for hiring people at Blizzard?), but lets not make SC2 into a Red Alert 2 noob fest.
I also call for Dustin Browder and David Kim to be fired and for Rob Pardo who designed the originals SC and Brood War to take over multiplayer and make Starcraft 2 balanced and fun.
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Heres few things that could do it:
a) Reduce friendlyfire splash from siegetanks (dosent affect tvt/tvp too much)
b) You cant no more cancel creeptumor... (you should commit when you put the tumor to ground, instead of just pressing the cancel button and put it again when hellions are not there)
c) Fix the maps, Daybreak, cloudkingdom etc. maps where zergs can see everything with overlords came when zerg needed "Buff", now when the zerg is considered best race, they still have overlord cliffs which allows them to be prepared against everything. Scouting after fixing this wont be impossible.
d) Hatcheries _need_ larva cap, at lategame situations zergs doesnt spend anymoney to infranstructure when terrans and protosses need to spend thousands of minerals and gas so they can reinforce after battle
Not saying that all of these should come but some of these would be a beginning
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Yes Infestor is an issue, but the counter of the Infestor is the most important issue.
Why don't Terran players whine about Ghosts instead of Infestors ?
Ghost is one those units designed to counter Infestors, and they are pretty bad at it. They were OP (Snipe countered all the Z late game units), but they also were nerfed too hard by Blizzard. One of the key to balance WoL Infestors is the Ghost in my opinion.
My 2 cents. (from a mid-high master league Zerg player)
I would love to see Terran players agree with me on this point.
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EPT
