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The goal to split the map quickly and zergs need to prevent it in broodwar
if the mech player managed to split the map he pretty much won the game. terran had the strongest late game army by a large margin. defender advantage was a big thing in broodwar however it didnt stop terran from attacking in late game to be cost effective anyway.
zerg always had the job to prevent the split map situation from happening against terran because of this. in result there would be natural incentive to constantly attack to fight over position and never sit back.
in starcraft 2 every race has a strong late game army and the defender advantage is pretty huge. whoever attacks in late game usually ends up losing the game.
One race having a stronger late game army in starcraft 2 is problematic
having this in starcraft 2 sounds imbalanced and we already been through WoL having zerg broodlord infestor army simply being stronger than protoss late game. the concept itself is not bad because it worked in broodwar but there are a few key reasons why this concept of design doesnt work well in staracraft 2.
1) the way economy works have been talked about a lot so i wont go into it too much in detail. basically mining from over 4 bases at a time doesnt give you an economical advantage where as in broodwar it was crucial for a player to keep expanding at a rapid rate. this created the dynamic of the terran player stretching out as much and as fast as possible while still being able to hold attacks. this allowed the zerg to find wholes in his defense and be successful by attacking to delay the terran. zerg could expand much more and waste more resources during this battle because he has a higher income.
the need for rapid expanding beyond 3 bases in starcraft 2 is not needed so zerg struggle to find the ways to be aggressive against a meching player.
2) the incentive to attack at all is lower because zerg isnt guaranteed death in a split map situation the same way they were in brood war. one could argue a spore crawler swarm host viper infestor army is just as strong as a mech late game army where attacking for either one of them means getting ineffective trades.
Final thoughts
you can blame units like ravens, swarm hosts, siege tanks and broodlords all you want but i think the roots of the problems are at a much more basic level.
you watch proleague and think this is a minor issue because it almost never happens but in regions like europe this is not too uncommon that games end up with both players benefit from not attacking, or rather attacking means death.
im one of those guys who love mech and have been trying to make it work at many occasions, however because of the problems ive mentioned is a main reason why i dont like playing or watching it so much. i want mech to work but this is not the way i want it to play out.
i believe similar issues exists in every matchup in starcraft 2 and i think these problems will always be around and we will be reminded of them once in a while in games where split map games does happen.
i just wanted to share my view on why we see stalemates in starcraft 2 more often than broodwar and why turtle playstyles are much less action packed and uninteresting than they were in broodwar.
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I assume you watched Reality vs Soulkey game 1 and game 2?
I agree, nothing more to say
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Terran, Zerg and Protoss all need a major rework. Urgently. I have no idea how but I'm not a game designer. I just know that if only slight changes are made until LotV whenever that is, it'll be too late.
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Protoss mass carriers were always considered unbeatable once you got to a certain point. Artosis said it right when he said, don't let them get there. I think Soulkey did not try the right ways to battle this.
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United Kingdom12043 Posts
Swarmhosts just shouldn't exist. Reality should have won the first game with his slow push but he could barely move because soulkey had an endless supply of free units. They're just simply badly designed, nothing should be free in an RTS.
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what changes would you suggest Morrow?
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On February 10 2014 22:03 Qikz wrote:
Swarmhosts just shouldn't exist. Reality should have won the first game with his slow push but he could barely move because soulkey had an endless supply of free units. They're just simply badly designed, nothing should be free in an RTS.
Ravens have free units as well, PDDs together with tanks achieve the same thing. Both are silly and should be changed imo.
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Has anyone tried hydra with swarm hosts at the same time? PDD's drain really fast with all those locusts.
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I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
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On February 10 2014 22:03 Qikz wrote:
Swarmhosts just shouldn't exist. Reality should have won the first game with his slow push but he could barely move because soulkey had an endless supply of free units. They're just simply badly designed, nothing should be free in an RTS.
How can you be so unbelievably biased as to believe that building pfs turrets ravens and vikings then sitting in your base for 1.5 hours before moving out, losing half your army and then still having an army zerg can't beat is a strat worthy of winning? That strat is fucking stupid, sh are the only way zerg has a chance, and that map is awful.
The combined apm in that game must have been like 150.
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Morrow, switch to starbow 
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As usual a good and accurate post on what lies beneath the units and the builds (which most people seem to focus exclusively on). I do however have a point of contention with something you said:
On February 10 2014 21:55 MorroW wrote:
in starcraft 2 every race has a strong late game army and the defender advantage is pretty huge.
Is this really true? We have always talked about how it takes an entire army to deal with an entire army, that zoning and area control units are far less effective (compared to lurkers, old tanks, storm, etc) in SC2. And indeed when you look at most of the strategies considered game-breakingly strong, what were they? Pushes and timing attacks that would almost always cost the defender the game if he didn't properly defend. Bunkers rushes, 5rax reapers (which I'm sure you're familiar with  ), 4gate, 7 roach rush, blue flame hellion drops, Polt's 1/1/1 marine-tank-raven shenanigans and every derivative timing attack, Stephano's quick mass Roach max into attack, PartinG's soul train immortal push, hellbat drops, widow mine parade pushes, and now we have the Blink attack in PvT which isn't even an all-in to boot.
I'd love to see your reasoning as to why the defender's advantage is huge in SC2. Or perhaps I misunderstood and you meant in late game specifically.
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Okay about Reality vs Soulkey.
I am going to hit a dead horse and put some blame on the map used. Star Station is an outdated map first of all but also it's transition into a 2 player map have been anything but smooth.
We have been here before and it is an overly repeated concept that doesn't work. You can't have a map where 4 or more bases are covered with only 2 entrances.
These kinds of games. They are not new just because Swarm hosts are new. WOL had them as well. It happened on the Original Shakuras Plateau. Dare I remind you about Metropolis where this was basically the norm. Mech and Swarm host just extends this even further, and Blizzard does seem to be aware of this problem.
We can all agree that games like those shouldn't happen but there are multiple factors that all cause this. Proleague tends to have some innovative maps but in this case they are hopeless behind with a map that everyone else already have trashed.
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Russian Federation262 Posts
This kind of playstyles must be completely removed from game or reworked. Its very frustrating to watch games like Soulkey vs Reality and much more frustrating to play. Blizz, do something!
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A symptom of this is that you need to lose units once you reach 200/200 to build your ultimate composition. Even if that means just throwing them into a meatgrinder for 0 gains. Roaches and stalkers are prime examples of this. This also implies that army composition gets much more important than tactics in the later stages of a game and players are free to almost mindlessly spam static defenses (and orbitals) just because you accumulate resources you can't actually spend on army since you don't want (edit: or don't need to) to attack. I absolutely dislike it.
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On February 10 2014 22:07 bo1b wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2014 22:03 Qikz wrote:
Swarmhosts just shouldn't exist. Reality should have won the first game with his slow push but he could barely move because soulkey had an endless supply of free units. They're just simply badly designed, nothing should be free in an RTS. How can you be so unbelievably biased as to believe that building pfs turrets ravens and vikings then sitting in your base for 1.5 hours before moving out, losing half your army and then still having an army zerg can't beat is a strat worthy of winning? That strat is fucking stupid, sh are the only way zerg has a chance, and that map is awful. The combined apm in that game must have been like 150.
Well, by the same token, turtle mech is kind of the only choice when facing someone with muta ling bling control of Soulkey. The chances of beating SK with 4M is pretty low after the nerfs.
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On February 10 2014 22:07 bo1b wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2014 22:03 Qikz wrote:
Swarmhosts just shouldn't exist. Reality should have won the first game with his slow push but he could barely move because soulkey had an endless supply of free units. They're just simply badly designed, nothing should be free in an RTS. How can you be so unbelievably biased as to believe that building pfs turrets ravens and vikings then sitting in your base for 1.5 hours before moving out, losing half your army and then still having an army zerg can't beat is a strat worthy of winning? That strat is fucking stupid, sh are the only way zerg has a chance, and that map is awful. The combined apm in that game must have been like 150.
Think the other way round. Maybe the way Terran is forced to play like this is bcuz of the SH itself. U just cannot move out unless u have 10+ Ravens. I bet no Terran wants to play like this. Turtle 1,5h or move out earlier and get smashed in most of the games.
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On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote:
I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
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On February 10 2014 22:14 vthree wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2014 22:07 bo1b wrote:On February 10 2014 22:03 Qikz wrote:
Swarmhosts just shouldn't exist. Reality should have won the first game with his slow push but he could barely move because soulkey had an endless supply of free units. They're just simply badly designed, nothing should be free in an RTS. How can you be so unbelievably biased as to believe that building pfs turrets ravens and vikings then sitting in your base for 1.5 hours before moving out, losing half your army and then still having an army zerg can't beat is a strat worthy of winning? That strat is fucking stupid, sh are the only way zerg has a chance, and that map is awful. The combined apm in that game must have been like 150. Well, by the same token, turtle mech is kind of the only choice when facing someone with muta ling bling control of Soulkey. The chances of beating SK with 4M is pretty low after the nerfs.
Or other top 10 korean zergs.
edit: Also the OP is a little long drawn. All of that could be said in 4 sentences.
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Noobs making games. Need to be a good reason to leave your base, all game long, and fight for positions. There ain't always. Hence, turtle. Obvious to anyone with a brain, really.
Noob game designers not taking this into account since the dawn of multiplayer.
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EPT
