During the break, our SC2 Multiplayer team has been keeping up with all the major tournaments going on, as well as gathering feedback from the highest end of players. From the tournament games, we were seeing the advantages and disadvantages per matchup still swinging quite drastically in some cases, and the main strategies/timings being used seem to still be changing. We wonder if this is because Legacy of the Void is such a different game than Heart of the Swarm that even the highest skilled players are still in the process of figuring the game out.
From the top-end pro players we’ve consulted with so far, we’re seeing a variety of feedback. Getting mixed feedback on opposing viewpoints on a topic is something that is normal, but what was not normal was how different the viewpoints were even among the same races. For example, when the question was something like "who has the advantage in the late game in TvZ in an even game," the feedback among one race would range from Terran having no chance due to Ultra/Brood/Viper combo to Zerg having no chance due to Liberator/Ghost combo. Again, we wondered if the such varied feedback from pro players is due to the highest skilled players out there are still trying to master and figure out the game.
Due to these factors, we wanted to ask for feedback on a couple possible courses of action before committing. We currently wonder whether it's best to quickly turn around a balance patch with changes that feel necessary (maybe a patch consisting of the 2-3 most ‘important’ changes), or if it's best to wait and give a chance for players to discover new solutions and strategies. So far, the majority of the top-pro players we've pinged seemed to prefer waiting for the moment, and our team is also slightly leaning towards keeping a close eye on how the game develops while focusing more on balance test maps. Nevertheless, we wanted to hear your thoughts in this area.
Now let's talk a bit more about the specifics of some potential issues that we could address.
Photon Overcharge Energy Cost Increase
This is a change that seems correct right now, because we want to promote a more action packed game, and it's really difficult to go on the offense at certain stages against Photon Overcharge, especially on maps where Protoss just needs to defend a single area. The main thing to figure out here is how well or badly Protoss is doing in the other matchups to tweak the race as a whole accordingly. We also agreed with your assessment of Protoss in that they looked to be the weakest race initially with the launch of Legacy of the Void, then they looked to be on the stronger side towards the end of last year, and we're not quite certain where they stand today.
Adept
We wonder if over time, Adept strength won't be as big of an issue. There are two reasons why we think this. First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks. Second is while Adepts still look very powerful in games, they seem to be weaker than when Legacy of the Void first launched. We intend to keep a close eye on this unit in the coming weeks, and we think it would be best to not be too quick to judge on whether they're OP or not. While it could be the case that Adepts should receive a nerf, waiting to see how things play out could allow for better decisions. Please give us your thoughts in this area.
Roach/Ravager Combo
We do agree with you and think that in the long run, if the Roach/Ravager combo remains powerful, it may be problematic due to Zerg players mostly focusing on utilizing this combo in most of their matchups. Here, the main thing to figure out is where Zerg strength really lies. We completely agreed with you in that Zerg looked to be the strongest race at the start of Legacy of the Void. However, after pinging many of the highest level players during the break, we wonder if this is changing due to players adapting to the new Zerg strengths.
For example, if Zerg turns out to be weaker vs. Terran and solid vs. Protoss, instead of focusing on a Ravager nerf like we are currently, we can potentially look at other things such as an increase to Baneling movement speed to combat the new Terran tools against them such as Tier 1 Reaper grenades or Tier 2 Siege Tank medivac pick up. Of course, this is just one example and depending on how things turn out, we would obviously need to come up with the right solution accordingly.
Parasitic Bomb Nerf
Parasitic bomb is another area that could most likely use a nerf, and we can definitely continue testing the change to see if the fix is correct.
Multiplayer Game Speed
We also wanted to bring up a new idea for your feedback. We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
If we are to consider something like this, we could imagine an approach like this: platinum and above players would play on the current speed (fastest), whereas gold and below would play one notch slower on fast speed. There are some feasibility issues we’d have to overcome, but we’d like to at least get your feedback on this.
We see both advantages and disadvantages to a change like this. Similar to why co-op missions uses different game speeds, StarCraft II is one of the most difficult games to master, and it may be both helpful and enjoyable for players of certain skill levels to be given extra time to think and act during their games. At the same time however, this would mean that the game wouldn’t feel the same for everyone, and it could also just feel “wrong” to make a change such as this since the game has been working a certain way for so long.
Obviously there are other pros and cons of making a change like this, and we have much time to consider the idea. We would love to hear your thoughts on this concept.
Summary
Other issues that we've previously worked on don't seem as necessary, but we don't want to brush them off until you have had your chance to provide your input, so please point out other issues that you think is problematic, and we'll definitely go over them within our design team and discuss those issues with pro players as well.
Whether we do a quick turn around on a balance patch or not, there looks to be many things we need to keep a look out for and many topics to discuss/figure out. Let's get discussions going as soon as possible to start off this year and continue working towards what the best moves are for the game. Happy new year!
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
I like this. It sounds like they are realizing what I have been saying all along
We completely agreed with you in that Zerg looked to be the strongest race at the start of Legacy of the Void. However, after pinging many of the highest level players during the break, we wonder if this is changing due to players adapting to the new Zerg strengths.
One thing I am wondering is why they are ignoring the map issues so much. I hope they are working hard on a new map pool
Another week of blablalbla and no changes, what a suprise! "Give us feedback" , its something the community is doing for ages, but you do have to listen to it Blizzard.....
RIP tournament Terrans. Another month of this and SSL/GSL really won't have any more Terran players left.
// Marinelord doesn't count because he was up against Innovation, a Terran player. Marinelord almost lost to the Z, but he managed to hit a timing where the Ultras were out but didn't have the armor upgrade. The P player he beat only killed 1 tank with 3 disruptors.
On January 09 2016 04:53 CannonsNCarriers wrote: RIP tournament Terrans. Another month of this and SSL/GSL really won't have any more Terran players left.
// Marinelord doesn't count because he was up against Innovation, a Terran player. Marinelord almost lost to the Z, but he managed to hit a timing where the Ultras were out but didn't have the armor upgrade. The P player he beat only killed 1 tank with 3 disruptors.
Excuse me sir. Have you seen todays matches? As far as I am aware out of 3 matches 3 terrans advanced.
i hope they don't attach ladder ranking to game speed, i know i'm bad at the game but i like the speed that I can play it on, I'm comfortable with it. Maybe you could choose your game speed when you ladder so you only play other people who want to play that game speed.
On January 09 2016 04:53 CannonsNCarriers wrote: RIP tournament Terrans. Another month of this and SSL/GSL really won't have any more Terran players left.
// Marinelord doesn't count because he was up against Innovation, a Terran player. Marinelord almost lost to the Z, but he managed to hit a timing where the Ultras were out but didn't have the armor upgrade. The P player he beat only killed 1 tank with 3 disruptors.
if you're making that gargantuan claim based off of one best of 9 you need some help
On January 09 2016 04:55 KingofdaHipHop wrote: i hope they don't attach ladder ranking to game speed, i know i'm bad at the game but i like the speed that I can play it on, I'm comfortable with it. Maybe you could choose your game speed when you ladder so you only play other people who want to play that game speed.
Good post. With the ladder spee change they would create a two class society. People playing on normal speed and being used to it would never ever be able to catch up with the fast players!
Making gold and below on training wheels feels like the incorrect move. It then also brings up the logistics of which game speed does a gold looking for a promotion playing a low platinum play on? Logically you'd think Fastest but that puts the Gold player at a massive disadvantage because how would he gain practice to effectively kill Platinums at the fastest speed outside of potential promotion ledges?
It's surprising to see the mention of ladder game speed to me. That falls under the same category as "why isn't there a pro-mode and casual where one has easier mechanics" in that it's bad to split the player base on that line.
Seems like there's no reasonable way to do it, that transition would be really messed up after you're climbing the ranks especially after the new ladder system is eventually implemented.
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
I think that David Kim's reasoning leaves out some important details.
Given time the power level of any unit will be incorporated into standard assumptions about what the race is capable of, strategies will be built around it to the point that people can no longer imagine the game functioning without it. You see this all the time, Blizzard introduces something powerful and controversial, but they leave it in the game and when you suggest later on that it's too powerful you're berated for trying to cripple the race by removing an essential tool. So you can leave the adept as it is, the game will still function, but you'll just see adepts every single game as the cornerstone for every single strategy and you'll just be overly restricted in your own build orders by having to account for adept rushes all the time.
The take-away is that units are rarely OP, which in the common understanding only happens in two cases: unstoppable rushes (reapers) and unstoppable compositions (infestors). In both scenarios there is a problem with the win rates which hinges on the power of these units, that is to say it's clearly identifiable in the game flow that there is a direct link between the outcome of a game and certain things that these units enable. The adept is a somewhat generic army unit like the marauder, stalker or roach, by itself it can hardly decide games because you need to have the economy to back it up, they are still susceptible to certain counters, you can still outplay your opponent with harassment etc. It is not like the reaper where you could announce your rush before the game and even championship level players could not stop them and it is not like the infestor where your economy would cease to matter as long as you had a composition that could literally not be defeated. It's just a very powerful unit, like the medivac, but it's merely problematic, not gamebreaking.
And note David Kim's phrasing. First of all he incorrectly poses the question of OPness presumably to deflect from the question of whether it's correctly tuned and also he is so careful about committing to anything: the adept might or might not be too strong, it's impossible to tell, we can only wait and do nothing, but we'll pay close attention to the situation to see whether they literally break the game. He is the one that maybe incorrectly tuned the unit, but he's not really promising to do much about it, is he?
I think the speed change could only work if you make the game speed related to your mmr. So that the game becomes slowly faster and faster. Once you hit platin or something the gamespeed stays the same. The growth of speed should be almost not noticeable.
Ladder is very overwhelming for new players, especially with the economy changes. I'm not surprised that the community here would be against the game speed suggestion, but hopefully we can all agree that we could still do more to make the game more accessible at lower levels. We all want the game to grow a lot more than it has, that's for sure.
On January 09 2016 05:15 p68 wrote: Ladder is very overwhelming for new players, especially with the economy changes. I'm not surprised that the community here would be against the game speed suggestion, but hopefully we can all agree that we could still do more to make the game more accessible at lower levels. We all want the game to grow a lot more than it has, that's for sure.
yeah i think there should still be a way for it, it's just implementing a system that doesn't split the player base or change certain people's experience drastically.
Gamespeed is not a good suggestion in my opinion. You internalize a different time sense and when you rank up that internal clock doesn't match with the game anymore. Also I see a lot of consistency problems, e.g. when you have placement matches or when a gold meets a platinum. Also gold-platinum sounds quite too high for me as a border. The (remaining) playerbase of SC2 is pretty hardcore, being in gold isn't that terrible.
About patching, as always I hold the stance that patching a bit too much is always better than patching too little. Patches can be taken back very quickly if blizzard is as watchful as they claim to be. No-patches don't do anything. And the general direction of patches has been positive in SC2 on average (which means that some patches might have been bad, but in general the patches have improved the game step-by-step).
Some more direct feedback on the upbrought topics: Photon Overcharge Energy Cost Increase: Yes please. If not for balance reasons, if not for reasons of Protoss having too much defense, please do it so that not every TvP ladder game is a pylon rush at the ramp.
Adept: The combat capabilities of the unit are OK in my opinion, but the psionic transfer allows them to suicide on workers too efficiently and close in on enemy armies with range advantages too easily. My suggestion: Normal collision for the shade, the shade gets pushed by every unit in the game (think of an archon under construction) to prevent invulnerable blocks.
Roach/Ravager is fine in the grand scheme of things, but a nerf on the morphing time and maybe a slight nerf on the corrosive bile cooldown, i.e. 2-3 extra seconds, might increase the gamequality a little bit.
Parasitic Bomb Nerf sounds good to me. But I wanna bring up some alternatives to the 90-->60 damage nerf again. a) Damage delay in some form, for example starting the damage per second lower and then increasing it over time (for a total of 80-90). That way there is a bigger reward for splitting an affected unit off early. b) Stacking removed, so a unit may only be affected by 1 parasitic bomb's splash at a time.
Baneling Speed increase: No, baneling speed works extremely well in relation with stimmed marines which is their main application. There are a lot of stats on banelings and other units that can be altered, but the speed of banelings is something that makes for very enjoyable gameplay.
We do agree with you and think that in the long run, if the Roach/Ravager combo remains powerful, it may be problematic due to Zerg players mostly focusing on utilizing this combo in most of their matchups. Here, the main thing to figure out is where Zerg strength really lies. We completely agreed with you in that Zerg looked to be the strongest race at the start of Legacy of the Void. However, after pinging many of the highest level players during the break, we wonder if this is changing due to players adapting to the new Zerg strengths.
For example, if Zerg turns out to be weaker vs. Terran and solid vs. Protoss, instead of focusing on a Ravager nerf like we are currently, we can potentially look at other things such as an increase to Baneling movement speed to combat the new Terran tools against them such as Tier 1 Reaper grenades or Tier 2 Siege Tank medivac pick up. Of course, this is just one example and depending on how things turn out, we would obviously need to come up with the right solution accordingly.
Yay, more speed increases. That'll be fun for terran to split against faster banelings.
Also, I think this is maybe interesting regarding game design: it seems like diversity in strategy for Blizzard for protoss revolves around a proper balance between mostly robo, stargate, with assumed support of gateway units, so that the precise relative balance of gateway units isn't that meaningful because the different roles and resource costs guarantee all the units will be used in some fashion anyway. So that's why the relative power of adepts vs other gateway units is not on their radar. On the other hand, for zerg it's considered a real problem if players prefer roach-ravager over zergling-baneling, since the choices are more exclusionary.
I hate to see that Blizzard seems to think tankivacs are here to stay. It really is bandaid solution to it being weak and having lot more counters while forcing all tvt to be marine tank 100% of time with doom drop speeding around. Its a sore to watch.
It really is cause of singularity in tvt currently and problem with mech in other matchups as tanks are balanced around that
On January 09 2016 05:11 p4ch1n0 wrote: I think the speed change could only work if you make the game speed related to your mmr. So that the game becomes slowly faster and faster. Once you hit platin or something the gamespeed stays the same. The growth of speed should be almost not noticeable.
The game speed on the co-op missions is INFURIATINGLY slow. Not that they're any fun to play in the first place... every mission since WoL has been "destroy these three-five things that power this other thing."
I pray they don't implement this stupid game speed patch on the ladder. Every time I want to place in 2s with a friend or something I'll have to play dozens of games at below normal speed... ugh I'd honestly quit playing.
Let them nerf Photon Overcharge... maybe this will actually awaken the development team! After all, without PO to take extremely greedy thirds I have no idea how Protoss can actually win macro games.
On January 09 2016 05:15 p68 wrote: Ladder is very overwhelming for new players, especially with the economy changes. I'm not surprised that the community here would be against the game speed suggestion, but hopefully we can all agree that we could still do more to make the game more accessible at lower levels. We all want the game to grow a lot more than it has, that's for sure.
I think it would be better if the game was slowed down by 5% for all players, personally I feel like it's slightly too fast.
I play mostly online chess these days and there you can adjust the pacing of the game very easily by changing game time. It doesn't really split the community, since it's still the same form of chess and as long as queuing times are decent I feel better off with different choices, especially since skills translate so well. It's not like they're totally different forms of chess. Though timing sense in Starcraft is more important than for chess, so there the difference would be more jarring.
So for Starcraft we already have team games and archon and unranked, and it might seem dubious to add different game speeds, but I don't think it's a completely ridiculous suggestion. However, if part of the problem is that the game is too fast, period, then I think better is to just slightly reduce its speed instead of compromising by having different modes. Nevertheless any change like this should have been part of the expansion, not a patch addition. And having bronze-gold players on a different game speed seems really bad..
Also, another way to change pacing (imo) is different maps / resources for lower level players, but I think game speed can be a part of that. One could envision a sort of novice ladder played on smaller maps with easy to defend bases and such, dunno if it could be successful though, probably not though.
I think a separate unranked mode played on fast would be an okay thing to have but it shouldn't be part of the main ladder system imo. but anything to help out casual and low level players I am generally in favor of.
I think all the changes are good, except for the speed, I would want to play the game as the current speed so that I would get used to the timings and such, and that's coming from a Bronzer. I think that would also partially make us understand how cool pro games are with such timings and so on.
On January 09 2016 05:11 p4ch1n0 wrote: I think the speed change could only work if you make the game speed related to your mmr. So that the game becomes slowly faster and faster. Once you hit platin or something the gamespeed stays the same. The growth of speed should be almost not noticeable.
Then every timing in the game gets thrown off
Timings stay the same, right? Every unit and every building will take the exact same amount of ingame-time to build, bacause everything get slower/faster. But ofc your real world perception of timings will be off.
I don't think reducing the game speed is a good idea. maybe for Bronze players only it's okay though. I don't think silver and gold players that have been playing for a long time want a slower game speed.
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
I think that David Kim's reasoning leaves out some important details.
Given time the power level of any unit will be incorporated into standard assumptions about what the race is capable of, strategies will be built around it to the point that people can no longer imagine the game functioning without it. You see this all the time, Blizzard introduces something powerful and controversial, but they leave it in the game and when you suggest later on that it's too powerful you're berated for trying to cripple the race by removing an essential tool. So you can leave the adept as it is, the game will still function, but you'll just see adepts every single game as the cornerstone for every single strategy and you'll just be overly restricted in your own build orders by having to account for adept rushes all the time.
The take-away is that units are rarely OP, which in the common understanding only happens in two cases: unstoppable rushes (reapers) and unstoppable compositions (infestors). In both scenarios there is a problem with the win rates which hinges on the power of these units, that is to say it's clearly identifiable in the game flow that there is a direct link between the outcome of a game and certain things that these units enable. The adept is a somewhat generic army unit like the marauder, stalker or roach, by itself it can hardly decide games because you need to have the economy to back it up, they are still susceptible to certain counters, you can still outplay your opponent with harassment etc. It is not like the reaper where you could announce your rush before the game and even championship level players could not stop them and it is not like the infestor where your economy would cease to matter as long as you had a composition that could literally not be defeated. It's just a very powerful unit, like the medivac, but it's merely problematic, not gamebreaking.
And note David Kim's phrasing. First of all he incorrectly poses the question of OPness presumably to deflect from the question of whether it's correctly tuned and also he is so careful about committing to anything: the adept might or might not be too strong, it's impossible to tell, we can only wait and do nothing, but we'll pay close attention to the situation to see whether they literally break the game. He is the one that maybe incorrectly tuned the unit, but he's not really promising to do much about it, is he?
Actually I'd like for Blizzard to nerf Roach/Ravager, not because I think they are strong, but because I don't like Roaches and Ravager. I want to play Hydras and Banelings. Maybe they can nerf roach ravager and buff hydra baneling
On January 09 2016 05:20 jinjin5000 wrote: I hate to see that Blizzard seems to think tankivacs are here to stay. It really is bandaid solution to it being weak and having lot more counters while forcing all tvt to be marine tank 100% of time with doom drop speeding around. Its a sore to watch.
It really is cause of singularity in tvt currently and problem with mech in other matchups as tanks are balanced around that
Try mech. Mech is good against Marine/Tank. Marauders are the problem with mech, not marines.
It'd also be good if people built turrets to defend against drops.
Why not bring back the concept of "Practice Games" but instead of having rocks blocking your main entrance you play on a slower speed? Having a slower speed in actual ladder seems like a terrible idea.
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
Bingo.
There is almost never a build/strategy that can't be held. The influence of that build/strategy on the matchup can be too oppressive though.
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
I think that David Kim's reasoning leaves out some important details.
Given time the power level of any unit will be incorporated into standard assumptions about what the race is capable of, strategies will be built around it to the point that people can no longer imagine the game functioning without it. You see this all the time, Blizzard introduces something powerful and controversial, but they leave it in the game and when you suggest later on that it's too powerful you're berated for trying to cripple the race by removing an essential tool. So you can leave the adept as it is, the game will still function, but you'll just see adepts every single game as the cornerstone for every single strategy and you'll just be overly restricted in your own build orders by having to account for adept rushes all the time.
The take-away is that units are rarely OP, which in the common understanding only happens in two cases: unstoppable rushes (reapers) and unstoppable compositions (infestors). In both scenarios there is a problem with the win rates which hinges on the power of these units, that is to say it's clearly identifiable in the game flow that there is a direct link between the outcome of a game and certain things that these units enable. The adept is a somewhat generic army unit like the marauder, stalker or roach, by itself it can hardly decide games because you need to have the economy to back it up, they are still susceptible to certain counters, you can still outplay your opponent with harassment etc. It is not like the reaper where you could announce your rush before the game and even championship level players could not stop them and it is not like the infestor where your economy would cease to matter as long as you had a composition that could literally not be defeated. It's just a very powerful unit, like the medivac, but it's merely problematic, not gamebreaking.
And note David Kim's phrasing. First of all he incorrectly poses the question of OPness presumably to deflect from the question of whether it's correctly tuned and also he is so careful about committing to anything: the adept might or might not be too strong, it's impossible to tell, we can only wait and do nothing, but we'll pay close attention to the situation to see whether they literally break the game. He is the one that maybe incorrectly tuned the unit, but he's not really promising to do much about it, is he?
Oh yeah, also wanna say that this is an excellent analysis on a far spread community and blizzard perception on what is worth patching and what not.
On January 09 2016 05:11 p4ch1n0 wrote: I think the speed change could only work if you make the game speed related to your mmr. So that the game becomes slowly faster and faster. Once you hit platin or something the gamespeed stays the same. The growth of speed should be almost not noticeable.
Then every timing in the game gets thrown off
Timings stay the same, right? Every unit and every building will take the exact same amount of ingame-time to build, bacause everything get slower/faster. But ofc your real world perception of timings will be off.
Yeah that's what I meant; you'd end up having no clue at all when upgrades / production cycles were finishing by feel alone
We should stop to talk about game speed. The difference between fast and faster is not only at minerals/minute income also fire attack, movements etc. Difference ist too drastically, I can tell that based on my 50 training ladder (fast) before ladder (faster) in WoL. Maybe they should increase the path between hatch/nexus/CC and minerals at all places. So only minerals/minute income change for all leagues and esports.
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
I think that David Kim's reasoning leaves out some important details.
Given time the power level of any unit will be incorporated into standard assumptions about what the race is capable of, strategies will be built around it to the point that people can no longer imagine the game functioning without it. You see this all the time, Blizzard introduces something powerful and controversial, but they leave it in the game and when you suggest later on that it's too powerful you're berated for trying to cripple the race by removing an essential tool. So you can leave the adept as it is, the game will still function, but you'll just see adepts every single game as the cornerstone for every single strategy and you'll just be overly restricted in your own build orders by having to account for adept rushes all the time.
The take-away is that units are rarely OP, which in the common understanding only happens in two cases: unstoppable rushes (reapers) and unstoppable compositions (infestors). In both scenarios there is a problem with the win rates which hinges on the power of these units, that is to say it's clearly identifiable in the game flow that there is a direct link between the outcome of a game and certain things that these units enable. The adept is a somewhat generic army unit like the marauder, stalker or roach, by itself it can hardly decide games because you need to have the economy to back it up, they are still susceptible to certain counters, you can still outplay your opponent with harassment etc. It is not like the reaper where you could announce your rush before the game and even championship level players could not stop them and it is not like the infestor where your economy would cease to matter as long as you had a composition that could literally not be defeated. It's just a very powerful unit, like the medivac, but it's merely problematic, not gamebreaking.
And note David Kim's phrasing. First of all he incorrectly poses the question of OPness presumably to deflect from the question of whether it's correctly tuned and also he is so careful about committing to anything: the adept might or might not be too strong, it's impossible to tell, we can only wait and do nothing, but we'll pay close attention to the situation to see whether they literally break the game. He is the one that maybe incorrectly tuned the unit, but he's not really promising to do much about it, is he?
Oh yeah, also wanna say that this is an excellent analysis on a far spread community and blizzard perception on what is worth patching and what not.
Another way to think about it that I figured is the following idea:
A race is either balanced, underpowered or overpowered. That is to say, if it's not precisely balanced then it is in fact imbalanced and requires intervention. On the other hand a unit can be weak or strong without being imbalanced, that only happens when it's too weak or too strong, there is much more leeway there. I think people are confused about that, or worse, they'll say nonsensical things like how they want all units to be strong when they really mean 'viable'.
Blizzard, come on really? Late game TvZ you are really giving merit to claims "Terran is impossible to beat late game?" That is so absurd. What clandestine progamer club are you visiting for this "feedback?" There is NO way you can compare BL/Ultra/Viper to ANY late game composition in which Terran is superior. Liberator/ghost as a composition? I've seen that composition get wrecked so many times. In fact, I see Zergs simply going Bane/Ling to clear up ghost and then Corruptor/Viper to clean up the Liberators. They're letting this game die, while they sit on their butts contemplating nonsensical suggestions. How is adept/warp prism not obvious? What else do you need to see? The fact that every Protoss I play, who executes this ridiculously OP cheese, that requires little skill, has a w/l of at least 75% TvP while their PvZ and PvP hovers around 50% should tell you something. There are "Patch" Protoss that should not be at their current rank, but instead, use this mindless build to erroneously increase their ladder/MMR. It's tantamount to the guy in WoL who got to GM by doing a 4-gate every game.
On January 09 2016 05:39 Tenks wrote: Why not bring back the concept of "Practice Games" but instead of having rocks blocking your main entrance you play on a slower speed? Having a slower speed in actual ladder seems like a terrible idea.
I completely forgot about those, I don't hate this as a solution instead.
On January 09 2016 06:12 nubHunter wrote: if they nerf photon overcharge, protoss is going to have a hard time.
protoss design is made over mothership core.
I think it is less of nerf, but more a rebalance. Right now Protoss are spamming PO as soon as they see some units. Sometimes I attack with 6 zerglings and opponents uses pylon overcharge 4 times and I am not even in range ! I then back up and come again 15 seconds later but he has enough enery still !
It is more so they use it with more use of brain instead of just spamming it I think
They sometimes even use 2 PO to kill overlord without a care in the world.
Photon overcharge should be nerfed for design reasons and that's their main reasoning:
"This is a change that seems correct right now, because we want to promote a more action packed game"
PO is too good against terran and discourages drops and scouting, however, thanks to the ravager being able to just blow up pylons I don't think they should change it without a ravager nerf of some kind.
I also want to know which pros are saying this: "Zerg having no chance due to Liberator/Ghost combo." TvZ games have almost all been 'try to kill the zerg before the late game'. We saw very WoL style all ins out of both Dream and Alive this morning doing just that. The only notable exception off the top of my head was that game Soulkey didn't build vipers.
I hope they are looking at maps too. I really want to see maps that can benefit defender's advantage so we see longer games with more bases and more chess like strategy.
On January 09 2016 06:19 Charoisaur wrote: the fact that there are pros that say ghost liberator is unbeatable for zerg is quite ridicolous. Did they ask firecake for feedback?
Ghost/Lib is handily beaten by Zerglings of all things. No ghosts will be getting off snipes if zerglings are on the field. I mean really, who did they talk to here? I think it is Catz.
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
I think that David Kim's reasoning leaves out some important details.
Given time the power level of any unit will be incorporated into standard assumptions about what the race is capable of, strategies will be built around it to the point that people can no longer imagine the game functioning without it. You see this all the time, Blizzard introduces something powerful and controversial, but they leave it in the game and when you suggest later on that it's too powerful you're berated for trying to cripple the race by removing an essential tool. So you can leave the adept as it is, the game will still function, but you'll just see adepts every single game as the cornerstone for every single strategy and you'll just be overly restricted in your own build orders by having to account for adept rushes all the time.
The take-away is that units are rarely OP, which in the common understanding only happens in two cases: unstoppable rushes (reapers) and unstoppable compositions (infestors). In both scenarios there is a problem with the win rates which hinges on the power of these units, that is to say it's clearly identifiable in the game flow that there is a direct link between the outcome of a game and certain things that these units enable. The adept is a somewhat generic army unit like the marauder, stalker or roach, by itself it can hardly decide games because you need to have the economy to back it up, they are still susceptible to certain counters, you can still outplay your opponent with harassment etc. It is not like the reaper where you could announce your rush before the game and even championship level players could not stop them and it is not like the infestor where your economy would cease to matter as long as you had a composition that could literally not be defeated. It's just a very powerful unit, like the medivac, but it's merely problematic, not gamebreaking.
And note David Kim's phrasing. First of all he incorrectly poses the question of OPness presumably to deflect from the question of whether it's correctly tuned and also he is so careful about committing to anything: the adept might or might not be too strong, it's impossible to tell, we can only wait and do nothing, but we'll pay close attention to the situation to see whether they literally break the game. He is the one that maybe incorrectly tuned the unit, but he's not really promising to do much about it, is he?
Oh yeah, also wanna say that this is an excellent analysis on a far spread community and blizzard perception on what is worth patching and what not.
Another way to think about it that I figured is the following idea:
A race is either balanced, underpowered or overpowered. That is to say, if it's not precisely balanced then it is in fact imbalanced and requires intervention. On the other hand a unit can be weak or strong without being imbalanced, that only happens when it's too weak or too strong, there is much more leeway there. I think people are confused about that, or worse, they'll say nonsensical things like how they want all units to be strong when they really mean 'viable'.
Yeah pretty much matches my thoughts. This is how I usually picture the balance of units within a race:
This basically means that the "red unit" is overpowered in comparison to the "grey unit". If we are talking about racial balance all we care about is the blue line and what you and I are talking about is an issue of "design". However if we talk about the literal meaning of balance, i.e. the equality of things, this is very well an issue of the game. It's a rather basic conception that is not widely applied in SC2, that for example a faster unit should usually be weaker in combat than a slower unit. A ranged unit should have less damage than a melee unit. A unit that can only attack ground should be stronger than a unit that can attack air and ground. If you want a high damage, high range unit this means it needs some severe trade-offs like low mobility and can only hit ground. Sometimes this is true, like for siege tanks, but then there are very often tools that can too easily circumvent those disadavantages without too much of an extra cost. Like the medivac pick up for tanks (the medivac is a unit you usually have anyways, it's not an extra investment for your tanks alone) or the adept shadow thingy to get rid of the ranged/mobility issues of a unit whose combat stats make sense without that.
Blizzard, can you think of something else besides trying to buff baneling move speed . Why is it always move speed with you guys? Is it because it is something you think you can touch without modifying any other relationships? The result is that I can't even remember the days when a medivac didn't move 7000 mph...
On January 09 2016 06:19 Charoisaur wrote: the fact that there are pros that say ghost liberator is unbeatable for zerg is quite ridicolous. Did they ask firecake for feedback?
Ghost/Lib is handily beaten by Zerglings of all things. No ghosts will be getting off snipes if zerglings are on the field. I mean really, who did they talk to here? I think it is Catz.
You'd think so in theory...but then you remember that Terran has been making marines and some sort of heavy splash all game long...no one is complaining about pure ghost liberator, that's a bit ridiculous.
The fact that ghost liberator can deny so many different compositions from Zerg is ridiculous. You've annihilated the threat of mutas, vipers, broodlords, ultras, lurkers (lol), basically any armored unit dies instantly, and you're under no threat of air attack at all.
So saying that you can just "make zerglings" is a bit ridiculous. You're not making zerglings as a stylistic choice or even because it's the best option --> you're making zerglings because literally nothing else is viable. You're making zerglings because there's nothing left to make.
I don't have much to say about balance. But I think that they desperately need to change some stuff about protoss just to make it more fun to play with and/or at least play against. There is a pretty big lack of protoss from plat to master which I think could be because of this. Changing photon overcharge is good I guess but yeah.. it is pretty sad the game has to be balanced around an ability like that. The adept I think need some change as well but not sure how (personally I hate the shade ability but a lot of people seems to enjoy it, I guess most of the problems with the adept comes from warp gates anyway, just like almost everything else that is wrong with protoss).
I don't think they should nerf parasitic bomb, they should increase the others races anti air instead to make it even, tbh I don't think people realize just how detrimental air balls are to how fun this game will be. This is no facts, just my thoughts.
Protoss is just not fun to play right now. Against Terran you HAVE to adept cheese while taking 3 bases and against Zerg you have to do some sort of timing attack that hits before Lurkers. PvP is the most fun Protoss matchup...
At least when I play Terran I know that if I fend off the Adepts until combat shields I can have some fun.
On January 09 2016 06:55 DinoMight wrote: Protoss is just not fun to play right now. Against Terran you HAVE to adept cheese while taking 3 bases and against Zerg you have to do some sort of timing attack that hits before Lurkers. PvP is the most fun Protoss matchup...
At least when I play Terran I know that if I fend off the Adepts until combat shields I can have some fun.
In my personal opinion I have to heavily disagree.
As a Zerg I can't beat Protoss with Lurkers if they are good players. They build 2 observers and go Charge Zealot, Archon Immortal army and that crushes lurker easy.
Only time lurkers are good when you timing push with lurker or snipe observer. Otherwise Protoss army crush lurkers.
On January 09 2016 06:55 DinoMight wrote: Protoss is just not fun to play right now. Against Terran you HAVE to adept cheese while taking 3 bases and against Zerg you have to do some sort of timing attack that hits before Lurkers. PvP is the most fun Protoss matchup...
At least when I play Terran I know that if I fend off the Adepts until combat shields I can have some fun.
In my personal opinion I have to heavily disagree.
As a Zerg I can't beat Protoss with Lurkers if they are good players. They build 2 observers and go Charge Zealot, Archon Immortal army and that crushes lurker easy.
Only time lurkers are good when you timing push with lurker or snipe observer. Otherwise Protoss army crush lurkers.
Nobody just makes Lurkers though. There's always Lurkers + Hydras. Without splash damage Hydras are really strong vs. P.
On January 09 2016 06:55 DinoMight wrote: Protoss is just not fun to play right now. Against Terran you HAVE to adept cheese while taking 3 bases and against Zerg you have to do some sort of timing attack that hits before Lurkers. PvP is the most fun Protoss matchup...
At least when I play Terran I know that if I fend off the Adepts until combat shields I can have some fun.
In my personal opinion I have to heavily disagree.
As a Zerg I can't beat Protoss with Lurkers if they are good players. They build 2 observers and go Charge Zealot, Archon Immortal army and that crushes lurker easy.
Only time lurkers are good when you timing push with lurker or snipe observer. Otherwise Protoss army crush lurkers.
Nobody just makes Lurkers though. There's always Lurkers + Hydras. Without splash damage Hydras are really strong vs. P.
I sent you private message. please don't share that tactic, because that would destroy my winrate versus P haha
Well I think Blizzard needs to prioritize fixing the most broken things first. Remove the stackable damage on parasitic bomb and the invulnerability of nydus worms.
On January 09 2016 06:55 DinoMight wrote: Protoss is just not fun to play right now. Against Terran you HAVE to adept cheese while taking 3 bases and against Zerg you have to do some sort of timing attack that hits before Lurkers. PvP is the most fun Protoss matchup...
At least when I play Terran I know that if I fend off the Adepts until combat shields I can have some fun.
In my personal opinion I have to heavily disagree.
As a Zerg I can't beat Protoss with Lurkers if they are good players. They build 2 observers and go Charge Zealot, Archon Immortal army and that crushes lurker easy.
Only time lurkers are good when you timing push with lurker or snipe observer. Otherwise Protoss army crush lurkers.
Nobody just makes Lurkers though. There's always Lurkers + Hydras. Without splash damage Hydras are really strong vs. P.
I sent you private message. please don't share that tactic, because that would destroy my winrate versus P haha
Thats the problem: Bad Protoss player cant handle Lurker. Thats why they nerfed and trashed them X times. Making them useless in ZvT and a pain in the ass to play in PvZ. Its really sad.
Different game speeds would be a horrible idea. All timings would be different from what you see in pro games. How could you learn what was good? I love the reduced time to play games - I normally only get an hour to play, so can now often get 6 games in. Making the games take longer would be rubbish.
I'm currently gold, been plat, and I don't see any reason I'd want to slow the game down. I'd rather focus on speeding up than learning a bad habit I'd need to break each time I break back into plat
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
I think that David Kim's reasoning leaves out some important details.
Given time the power level of any unit will be incorporated into standard assumptions about what the race is capable of, strategies will be built around it to the point that people can no longer imagine the game functioning without it. You see this all the time, Blizzard introduces something powerful and controversial, but they leave it in the game and when you suggest later on that it's too powerful you're berated for trying to cripple the race by removing an essential tool. So you can leave the adept as it is, the game will still function, but you'll just see adepts every single game as the cornerstone for every single strategy and you'll just be overly restricted in your own build orders by having to account for adept rushes all the time.
The take-away is that units are rarely OP, which in the common understanding only happens in two cases: unstoppable rushes (reapers) and unstoppable compositions (infestors). In both scenarios there is a problem with the win rates which hinges on the power of these units, that is to say it's clearly identifiable in the game flow that there is a direct link between the outcome of a game and certain things that these units enable. The adept is a somewhat generic army unit like the marauder, stalker or roach, by itself it can hardly decide games because you need to have the economy to back it up, they are still susceptible to certain counters, you can still outplay your opponent with harassment etc. It is not like the reaper where you could announce your rush before the game and even championship level players could not stop them and it is not like the infestor where your economy would cease to matter as long as you had a composition that could literally not be defeated. It's just a very powerful unit, like the medivac, but it's merely problematic, not gamebreaking.
And note David Kim's phrasing. First of all he incorrectly poses the question of OPness presumably to deflect from the question of whether it's correctly tuned and also he is so careful about committing to anything: the adept might or might not be too strong, it's impossible to tell, we can only wait and do nothing, but we'll pay close attention to the situation to see whether they literally break the game. He is the one that maybe incorrectly tuned the unit, but he's not really promising to do much about it, is he?
Oh yeah, also wanna say that this is an excellent analysis on a far spread community and blizzard perception on what is worth patching and what not.
Another way to think about it that I figured is the following idea:
A race is either balanced, underpowered or overpowered. That is to say, if it's not precisely balanced then it is in fact imbalanced and requires intervention. On the other hand a unit can be weak or strong without being imbalanced, that only happens when it's too weak or too strong, there is much more leeway there. I think people are confused about that, or worse, they'll say nonsensical things like how they want all units to be strong when they really mean 'viable'.
Yeah pretty much matches my thoughts. This is how I usually picture the balance of units within a race:
This basically means that the "red unit" is overpowered in comparison to the "grey unit". If we are talking about racial balance all we care about is the blue line and what you and I are talking about is an issue of "design". However if we talk about the literal meaning of balance, i.e. the equality of things, this is very well an issue of the game. It's a rather basic conception that is not widely applied in SC2, that for example a faster unit should usually be weaker in combat than a slower unit. A ranged unit should have less damage than a melee unit. A unit that can only attack ground should be stronger than a unit that can attack air and ground. If you want a high damage, high range unit this means it needs some severe trade-offs like low mobility and can only hit ground. Sometimes this is true, like for siege tanks, but then there are very often tools that can too easily circumvent those disadavantages without too much of an extra cost. Like the medivac pick up for tanks (the medivac is a unit you usually have anyways, it's not an extra investment for your tanks alone) or the adept shadow thingy to get rid of the ranged/mobility issues of a unit whose combat stats make sense without that.
I agree with most of your post, but this part I'm not sure about.
How does unit responsiveness factor into unit strength? You mention that slow units should be stronger than fast units, but slow units tend to be melee and/or A+move types, e.g. Thors and Ultralisks. By ignoring unit skill floor and ceiling, we end up with shitty situations like WoL bio vs LBM, where Banes didn't even need to split and so engaging as a Zerg was infinitely mechanically easier than engaging as a Terran.
Photon Overcharge Energy Cost Increase Still believe this is more of a coverage problem rather than a time problem. If the MSC movement speed was slower it would require the Protoss to position the MSC correctly rather than the current state of just reacting when they see a threat.
Adept Adepts are too strong, no doubt at the moment the biggest issue is the time dealing with them and Protoss is abusing this like crazy which is why they are able to take an early 3rd safely with no defending units except the MSC. When a group of adepts is in your base they are too much of a threat to move out, thus players must defend until they have a reasonable economy, enough to push and to defend against warp prism adept drops. Adepts are just buying too much time currently.
Roach/Ravager Combo Not sure on this one.
Parasitic Bomb Nerf Not sure on this one.
Multiplayer Game Speed Great idea, anything that helps casual players get into the scene is awesome.
First is that we have seen time and time again that it takes much more time to learn how to defend against attacks using new or changed units compared to the time it takes to learn how to execute the attacks
The reason for this is that the opponent limits his build order diversity and opts for 1-2 different builds that are safe and allow him to defend against it. That is, however, absolutely terrible game design. It is essential that overly strong early game units gets nerfed accordingly so players can opt for different types of openings.
I think that David Kim's reasoning leaves out some important details.
Given time the power level of any unit will be incorporated into standard assumptions about what the race is capable of, strategies will be built around it to the point that people can no longer imagine the game functioning without it. You see this all the time, Blizzard introduces something powerful and controversial, but they leave it in the game and when you suggest later on that it's too powerful you're berated for trying to cripple the race by removing an essential tool. So you can leave the adept as it is, the game will still function, but you'll just see adepts every single game as the cornerstone for every single strategy and you'll just be overly restricted in your own build orders by having to account for adept rushes all the time.
The take-away is that units are rarely OP, which in the common understanding only happens in two cases: unstoppable rushes (reapers) and unstoppable compositions (infestors). In both scenarios there is a problem with the win rates which hinges on the power of these units, that is to say it's clearly identifiable in the game flow that there is a direct link between the outcome of a game and certain things that these units enable. The adept is a somewhat generic army unit like the marauder, stalker or roach, by itself it can hardly decide games because you need to have the economy to back it up, they are still susceptible to certain counters, you can still outplay your opponent with harassment etc. It is not like the reaper where you could announce your rush before the game and even championship level players could not stop them and it is not like the infestor where your economy would cease to matter as long as you had a composition that could literally not be defeated. It's just a very powerful unit, like the medivac, but it's merely problematic, not gamebreaking.
And note David Kim's phrasing. First of all he incorrectly poses the question of OPness presumably to deflect from the question of whether it's correctly tuned and also he is so careful about committing to anything: the adept might or might not be too strong, it's impossible to tell, we can only wait and do nothing, but we'll pay close attention to the situation to see whether they literally break the game. He is the one that maybe incorrectly tuned the unit, but he's not really promising to do much about it, is he?
Oh yeah, also wanna say that this is an excellent analysis on a far spread community and blizzard perception on what is worth patching and what not.
Another way to think about it that I figured is the following idea:
A race is either balanced, underpowered or overpowered. That is to say, if it's not precisely balanced then it is in fact imbalanced and requires intervention. On the other hand a unit can be weak or strong without being imbalanced, that only happens when it's too weak or too strong, there is much more leeway there. I think people are confused about that, or worse, they'll say nonsensical things like how they want all units to be strong when they really mean 'viable'.
Yeah pretty much matches my thoughts. This is how I usually picture the balance of units within a race:
This basically means that the "red unit" is overpowered in comparison to the "grey unit". If we are talking about racial balance all we care about is the blue line and what you and I are talking about is an issue of "design". However if we talk about the literal meaning of balance, i.e. the equality of things, this is very well an issue of the game. It's a rather basic conception that is not widely applied in SC2, that for example a faster unit should usually be weaker in combat than a slower unit. A ranged unit should have less damage than a melee unit. A unit that can only attack ground should be stronger than a unit that can attack air and ground. If you want a high damage, high range unit this means it needs some severe trade-offs like low mobility and can only hit ground. Sometimes this is true, like for siege tanks, but then there are very often tools that can too easily circumvent those disadavantages without too much of an extra cost. Like the medivac pick up for tanks (the medivac is a unit you usually have anyways, it's not an extra investment for your tanks alone) or the adept shadow thingy to get rid of the ranged/mobility issues of a unit whose combat stats make sense without that.
I agree with most of your post, but this part I'm not sure about.
How does unit responsiveness factor into unit strength? You mention that slow units should be stronger than fast units, but slow units tend to be melee and/or A+move types, e.g. Thors and Ultralisks. By ignoring unit skill floor and ceiling, we end up with shitty situations like WoL bio vs LBM, where Banes didn't even need to split and so engaging as a Zerg was infinitely mechanically easier than engaging as a Terran.
For one I'm talking about the pure strategical/design conceptions here when it comes to the powerlevel of units in comparison to others when used properly. But for the other, every properly designed unit should just scale well with skill to begin with. This is the very basic concept of designing a competitive, skillbased game. A unit that isn't skill-reliant just shouldn't be in a competitive RTS game. (which is a question of interactions and sometimes hard to blame on the unit itself)
Assuming that it still exists or one wants to have units in the game that are "at a level with well-controlled units in a combat" would be a positive trait that again would need to be balanced off in some way, like say that unit had just lower mobility than a harder to use unit of the same kind had. Like, for every trait that a unit is above average, it needs a trait that it is below average. You could see it as a sum of some kind: If your unit is much above average on speed, it may need to be much below average on damage. Or on range. Or a little bit of both. If it wants a (powerful) ability, it may need to have (very) weak stats of some kind. It really doesn't matter that much how you trade it off for the unit in comparison to another one, what matters is in what relation it stands to the other units in the game. But if you have a jack-of-all trades and then 5 types of specialists you will naturally have gameplay that is limited to making as much of the joat and only support it with the other units if absolutely necessary.
Game speed discussion indicates, what I expected and what I experienced. retention among new and/or returning players must be abysmal.
Self-selected sample: me, former Gold league random player, stopped laddering ~3 years ago. With LotV I came back, did exactly one placement game, left again. Game is too quick, hate the economy changes. Friend, who never was much into ladder, even stopped after playing vs AI games. Speed reduction would bring players like me and him back - at least for a while, but I have no doubts it would be very bad for those going for plat promotion.
On balance, purely from a spectator viewpoint. PvZ is in a disgusting state, Zerg nerfs are not needed now, they were needed at least a month ago. Waiting for the dust to settle is acceptable when balance is somewhat off, not when one matchup is in its worst state it was in five+ years. Kim seems to be too involved to get balance right. He needs a mathematician or statistician, who doesn't care about the game at all, just about numbers, to tell him at least in which direction to go.
On January 09 2016 08:07 MiCroLiFe wrote: Does the word Ultralisk vanish on the blizzard staff meetings?
Look at it differently mate.
Yes Ultralisk the unit is strong, but good players won't let you get them. I know they are a problem in lower leagues like platinum and diamond, but just look at the korean games the last couple of days.
If a Zerg is able to go to Ultralisk then you already failed as a Terran. I don't think I have seen a single Ultralisk in todays 9 matches ZvT.
In my honest opinion if Blizzard nerfed the Ultralisk then TvZ is a dead matchup. I could see terran winrate of over 65% in TvZ (good players/koreans) if ultralisk was nerfed alongside all the other zerg nerfs they already announced.
I really like the idea of lower-level players like myself being able to play on lower speeds. It would make the game less stressfull and more enjoyable, and open it more to casual players.
The implementation has to be made with care though, so other players looking for the "classic feeling" are not punished. These are my suggestions: - Plat/Gold players should be able to choose speed between fast and fastest, with fast by default in gold and fastest in plat. - Bronce/silver players able to choose from normal/fast/fastest with normal by default in bronce, and fast in silver. - Match-making should favor similar speed selection - If finally the speed selection of both players does not match, the speed that is the default for the highest league would be favored (vs diamond always fastest, high bronce vs low plat in fast, etc.)
On January 09 2016 08:07 MiCroLiFe wrote: Does the word Ultralisk vanish on the blizzard staff meetings?
Look at it differently mate.
Yes Ultralisk the unit is strong, but good players won't let you get them. I know they are a problem in lower leagues like platinum and diamond, but just look at the korean games the last couple of days.
If a Zerg is able to go to Ultralisk then you already failed as a Terran. I don't think I have seen a single Ultralisk in todays 9 matches ZvT.
In my honest opinion if Blizzard nerfed the Ultralisk then TvZ is a dead matchup. I could see terran winrate of over 65% in TvZ (good players/koreans) if ultralisk was nerfed alongside all the other zerg nerfs they already announced.
The "good players won't let you get Ultras" idea makes no sense to me from a design point of view. Transitions should be possible, and the unit is there to be played. But the transition by itself should not dictate the whole game, or mean you have won the game unless your rival has already x unit out that hard-counters it. Both ultras and ghosts are too extreme for me.
Also your phrase sounds very similar to others I read during the Broodlord-infestor era...
On January 09 2016 08:07 MiCroLiFe wrote: Does the word Ultralisk vanish on the blizzard staff meetings?
Look at it differently mate.
Yes Ultralisk the unit is strong, but good players won't let you get them. I know they are a problem in lower leagues like platinum and diamond, but just look at the korean games the last couple of days.
If a Zerg is able to go to Ultralisk then you already failed as a Terran. I don't think I have seen a single Ultralisk in todays 9 matches ZvT.
In my honest opinion if Blizzard nerfed the Ultralisk then TvZ is a dead matchup. I could see terran winrate of over 65% in TvZ (good players/koreans) if ultralisk was nerfed alongside all the other zerg nerfs they already announced.
while it's true that current ultras are needed to maintain balance I think the current interaction with ultras vs liberator/ghost is terrible and the most extreme form of hardcounters the game has seen yet. If ultras are out and you don't get the necessary units out in time - or you get them out but the zerg takes them out because you mismicroed - the game is over, no matter if you have completely outplayed your opponent until this point or if it's 6 base terran vs 1 base zerg.
On January 09 2016 08:07 MiCroLiFe wrote: Does the word Ultralisk vanish on the blizzard staff meetings?
Look at it differently mate.
Yes Ultralisk the unit is strong, but good players won't let you get them. I know they are a problem in lower leagues like platinum and diamond, but just look at the korean games the last couple of days.
If a Zerg is able to go to Ultralisk then you already failed as a Terran. I don't think I have seen a single Ultralisk in todays 9 matches ZvT.
In my honest opinion if Blizzard nerfed the Ultralisk then TvZ is a dead matchup. I could see terran winrate of over 65% in TvZ (good players/koreans) if ultralisk was nerfed alongside all the other zerg nerfs they already announced.
The "good players won't let you get Ultras" idea makes no sense to me from a design point of view. Transitions should be possible, and the unit is there to be played. But the transition by itself should not dictate the whole game, or mean you have won the game unless your rival has already x unit out that hard-counters it. Both ultras and ghosts are too extreme for me.
Also your phrase sounds very similar to others I read during the Broodlord-infestor era...
By the way: In case you ABSOLUTLY CANT COUNTER ULTRALISKS: You already lost the game. You missed the transition into Ghost and/or Vikings. You missed to secure additional bases. You were allin on bio
On January 09 2016 08:07 MiCroLiFe wrote: Does the word Ultralisk vanish on the blizzard staff meetings?
Actually Korean Terran's are able to handle Ultra's fine. They have started to adapt and transition so their counters are out by the time Ultralisks are out.
Honestly late game TvZ seems fine to me. The difference between release of LOTV zvt (where literally once I got to late game I won 100000% ez pz) and now is way different. Late game zvt is no longer a guaranteed win (unless I am just so far ahead).
Of course it hasn't been shown enough in GSL for other Terran's to realize this and continue to QQ about a non existent problem.
Bio + ghosts + liberators is a pretty good late game composition and with the parasitic bomb nerf incoming it will become even stronger .
Also for the Terran's that sit on their butts, don't do any harass and then complain they get crushed, well you need to be dropping, pushing back creep and not just letting Zerg do whatever they want. In a lot of my zvt's on NA it's insane how passive they are going CC first into skipping hellions and not doing much harass until it's too late.
On January 09 2016 08:07 MiCroLiFe wrote: Does the word Ultralisk vanish on the blizzard staff meetings?
Look at it differently mate.
Yes Ultralisk the unit is strong, but good players won't let you get them. I know they are a problem in lower leagues like platinum and diamond, but just look at the korean games the last couple of days.
If a Zerg is able to go to Ultralisk then you already failed as a Terran. I don't think I have seen a single Ultralisk in todays 9 matches ZvT.
In my honest opinion if Blizzard nerfed the Ultralisk then TvZ is a dead matchup. I could see terran winrate of over 65% in TvZ (good players/koreans) if ultralisk was nerfed alongside all the other zerg nerfs they already announced.
while it's true that current ultras are needed to maintain balance I think the current interaction with ultras vs liberator/ghost is terrible and the most extreme form of hardcounters the game has seen yet. If ultras are out and you don't get the necessary units out in time - or you get them out but the zerg takes them out because you mismicroed - the game is over, no matter if you have completely outplayed your opponent until this point or if it's 6 base terran vs 1 base zerg.
That I can agree on. If blizzard nerf ultra then they need to change a lot of other things and people would hate on Zerg if Blizzard buff other units.
Lets agree on that Zerg has a bad balance within.
Too Strong :
- Ultralisk - Viper - Ravager
Too Weak :
- Baneling - Hydra - Swarm Host
To be fair playing a race makes blind. I understand your point, but if Terran has an easy way to deal with Ultralisk even if he does mistakes in game then the game will be huge failure. In my honest opinion overall terran is stronger than zerg. I am very much convinced of this.
I wish non-zerg players would try themself and see how frustrating it can be in LOTV to macro and tech to Ultralisks against good opponents
I still think the adept + WP problem needs to be adressed, and I don't like the slower game speed for lower levels people idea at all. I mean, the fun thing is to be taxed by the game in the same conditions as the pros... And what happens when a gold is matched with a platinum ? It's really too complicated IMO.
We also wanted to bring up a new idea for your feedback. We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
Does anyone else think this statement is bullshit?
Korean pros give a shit about gold league? huh? what? ... I can't actually believe that any Korean (or other pro) is giving that any thought... I maybe believe that blizzard is asking tons of pros and they could get maybe 1-3 of them to comment on such a topic so they would stop asking.
Personally I think changing game speed is one of the top 3 (or the absolute worst) worst idea they have had for a potential patch.
You want to make the game more enjoyable for casuals, why not make a build order practice mode so people can learn to play.
The list of problems such a change would bring is pretty vast imo.
I like what others have said, 1) All timings would change from league to league 2) wouldn't it actually just make the person playing at a faster speed have the advantage? considering his workers would be mining faster lolz? 3) When one guy loses he would just diminish the win by saying (you played on slow) 4) If I'm a masters player playing 2s with my buddy I have to play at frustratingly slow speed 5) I'm sure there are more, I can't wait to her other peoples' thoughts on such a change.
Honestly I couldn't focus on anything else because I'm stuck on what a terrible idea this is.
I'll be the first to admit I thought very poorly of the "no macro mechanics" change, and I did end up liking that, but this... I really can't imagine.
On January 09 2016 08:07 MiCroLiFe wrote: Does the word Ultralisk vanish on the blizzard staff meetings?
Look at it differently mate.
Yes Ultralisk the unit is strong, but good players won't let you get them. I know they are a problem in lower leagues like platinum and diamond, but just look at the korean games the last couple of days.
Saw HyuN push Dream's far superior bio/tank army all the way back to Dream's base, where he would have died if he didn't have a 1k bank saved up to build a Barracks maze. That was pretty stupid.
Or is Dream a bad player for letting HyuN get to them?
If a Zerg is able to go to Ultralisk then you already failed as a Terran. I don't think I have seen a single Ultralisk in todays 9 matches ZvT.
What 9 matches? Who else played besides aLive vs ByuL and Dream vs HyuN?
We also wanted to bring up a new idea for your feedback. We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
Does anyone else think this statement is bullshit?
Korean pros give a shit about gold league? huh? what? ... I can't actually believe that any Korean (or other pro) is giving that any thought... I maybe believe that blizzard is asking tons of pros and they could get maybe 1-3 of them to comment on such a topic so they would stop asking.
Personally I think changing game speed is one of the top 3 (or the absolute worst) worst idea they have had for a potential patch.
You want to make the game more enjoyable for casuals, why not make a build order practice mode so people can learn to play.
The list of problems such a change would bring is pretty vast imo.
I like what others have said, 1) All timings would change from league to league 2) wouldn't it actually just make the person playing at a faster speed have the advantage? considering his workers would be mining faster lolz? 3) When one guy loses he would just diminish the win by saying (you played on slow) 4) If I'm a masters player playing 2s with my buddy I have to play at frustratingly slow speed 5) I'm sure there are more, I can't wait to her other peoples' thoughts on such a change.
Honestly I couldn't focus on anything else because I'm stuck on what a terrible idea this is.
I'll be the first to admit I thought very poorly of the "no macro mechanics" change, and I did end up liking that, but this... I really can't imagine.
Reading the phrase you've marked in bold, I think you have not understood the basic idea. Both players would play at the same speed.
The speed should be selectable, not just enforced.
-Gamespeed change is the worst idea ever, watching replays, timings & coaching will make less sense the lower players and it will slow their learning speed imho. -I think parasidic bomb should be removed completely and hydras need a huge aa buff(possibly range increase or a new ability). Hydras has zero role in the current meta, this would fix many problems(liberator, zvz muta cancer, not getting rekt by phoneix in low numbers) -There are certain things that still looks really ugly in this game, to be spesific there are three worst designs: tankivacs, invincible nydus & warp prism pick range. I don't have balance problem with them personally but they look really horribly bad in the game -Overcharge energy increase is good but damage shouldn't be increased along with the energy. It has just too much damage, it killed all the fun in zvp, there is no possible agression by zerg except ravager all-in or just camping with lurkers and waiting for tech without dying. -You will probably take your time and give players time to "figure out" how to defend vs adepts but the straight fact is they are op, just as simple. Eventually it will get nerfed after adepts will dominate all korean tournaments anyways. They cost 25 gas and have all the tools. Shade cd must be increased and need a serious shield nerf. -Something should be done about SH & Infested Terrans
On January 09 2016 08:07 MiCroLiFe wrote: Does the word Ultralisk vanish on the blizzard staff meetings?
Look at it differently mate.
Yes Ultralisk the unit is strong, but good players won't let you get them. I know they are a problem in lower leagues like platinum and diamond, but just look at the korean games the last couple of days.
Saw HyuN push Dream's far superior bio/tank army all the way back to Dream's base, where he would have died if he didn't have a 1k bank saved up to build a Barracks maze. That was pretty stupid.
Or is Dream a bad player for letting HyuN get to them?
We also wanted to bring up a new idea for your feedback. We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
Does anyone else think this statement is bullshit?
Korean pros give a shit about gold league? huh? what? ... I can't actually believe that any Korean (or other pro) is giving that any thought... I maybe believe that blizzard is asking tons of pros and they could get maybe 1-3 of them to comment on such a topic so they would stop asking.
Personally I think changing game speed is one of the top 3 (or the absolute worst) worst idea they have had for a potential patch.
You want to make the game more enjoyable for casuals, why not make a build order practice mode so people can learn to play.
The list of problems such a change would bring is pretty vast imo.
From reading this, it stands to reason that gold players would get matched against platinum players, that is currently how matchmaking works. If you are gold and playing at a high level you could be matched against plat and diamond players.
They would be playing at "faster" speed, therefore their workers would mine faster, units would move faster, everything in the game would progress faster for them... This would give completely unbalanced advantage to higher skilled player, which is the exact opposite of what I imagine they are trying to achieve (helping the player with lower skill).
For that to not happen they would have to rework matchmaking, which would make matchmaking less accurate to accommodate an extraneous variable not related to accurate matching of skill.
I like what others have said, 1) All timings would change from league to league 2) wouldn't it actually just make the person playing at a faster speed have the advantage? considering his workers would be mining faster lolz? 3) When one guy loses he would just diminish the win by saying (you played on slow) 4) If I'm a masters player playing 2s with my buddy I have to play at frustratingly slow speed 5) I'm sure there are more, I can't wait to her other peoples' thoughts on such a change.
Honestly I couldn't focus on anything else because I'm stuck on what a terrible idea this is.
I'll be the first to admit I thought very poorly of the "no macro mechanics" change, and I did end up liking that, but this... I really can't imagine.
Reading the phrase you've marked in bold, I think you have not understood the basic idea. Both players would play at the same speed.
The speed should be selectable, not just enforced.
If we are to consider something like this, we could imagine an approach like this: platinum and above players would play on the current speed (fastest), whereas gold and below would play one notch slower on fast speed. Source[/QUOTE]
The way matchmaking currently works, if you are in gold league and playing at a higher level than gold, you will get match against a higher league player, such as plat or diamond. Based on this statement it stands to reason that you would be matched against plat or even diamond players playing at different game speeds.
This would mean that a gold league player playing at a slower speed could end up playing against a diamond playing at the faster speed.
Because everything about the game progresses more quickly at faster game speeds this means the diamond player's workers would mine faster, the units would move across the map faster, he could expand faster, it would a completely unfair advantage to the better player.
By trying to help the player with lower skill they would be making it even harder for them.
You would actually have to change the way matchmaking works just to make sure you didn't have matching across leagues. Then you would have a less accurate matchmaking system because you are matching on an extraneous variable that is unrelated to how well you are playing, but only concerns not mixing and matching outside of game speeds.
Also imagine playing in gold league at slower speeds, then you finally advance to plat and you're super happy about it, then you get crushed over and over because you've been playing with training wheels this whole time. I imagine that would feel like running into a brick wall.
In good balancing - army compositions trade cost efficiently vs each other - but both sides lose units, for example,
1-1 marnies will trade vs 1:0 marines well - but you will both lose units. At the end you might end up with a 200- 300 mineral advantage that snowballs and lets you win the game Another example, roach ravager vs protoss - Protoss might win the fight, but will lose units. To compensate, zerg might have a better economy.
This was a huge problem in Wol and Hots. Collossus deathballs or Swarmhost plays for example - made your opponent lose too many units - without losing enough yourself. It wasnt trading, it was just removing your opponents army from the game.
The same problem is found with ultras. There arent many units that actually cost effectively challenge the Ultralisk. Liberators, thors, and Ghosts are good - but hard to tech into and much harder to control.
Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
On January 09 2016 09:47 NKexquisite wrote: Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
In my personal opinion your post is very disrespectful towards other gamers and Blizzard itself. Banelings are currently in a very bad shape.
Please in future contribute something with more substance.
On January 09 2016 09:47 NKexquisite wrote: Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
In my personal opinion your post is very disrespectful towards other gamers and Blizzard itself. Banelings are currently in a very bad shape.
Please in future contribute something with more substance.
I don't think buffing the base speed helps much though. It could also make them (unintentionally) really strong in early game offense and defense if Blizzard overtunes it. They could try changing the research time for baneling speed instead or something to that extent, or buff their health slightly so that tanks can't kill them in one shot.
In the end, the problem for ling/bane/muta seems to be the fact that it's not larva efficient.
On January 09 2016 09:47 NKexquisite wrote: Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
In my personal opinion your post is very disrespectful towards other gamers and Blizzard itself. Banelings are currently in a very bad shape.
Please in future contribute something with more substance.
They are decent. They deal well with some of the strongest units in the game - marines, zerglings, workers and aren't terrible against various other units (hellbats, hydras, hellions, zealots, adepts). If dropped into the middle of them, they can even be used efficiently against various armored units. + Show Spoiler +
Problem with that is not the baneling but the achingly slow speed of speed upgraded overlords. As a reference, it's the same as Thor speed.
The baneling is in an OK place and makes for very fun micro scenarios. They shouldn't tinker with its speed, tags or damage vs light. They could tinker a bit with its damage vs nonlight targets to see if it would be too universal if it did like 25+10 instead of 20+15, or maybe add 5 health or 1 armor, but neither of those is necessary. Or maybe buff baneling speed to 100/100 or so. (really, I'm just throwing out unnecessary tweaks that might not be broken) Against Protoss and Zerg as I said a major buff to its viability would be faster drops, which obviously would also have other (probably problematic) implications.
In the end, the problem for ling/bane/muta seems to be the fact that it's not larva efficient.
I think it is only partly that. It has a lot to do with the openings in my opinion. It looks like just can't smoothly open into ling/bling at the moment, you probably need some form of roach/ravagers early, not just due to larva but due to liberators and possibly mass reaper openings. I think this is one thing that zergs will figure out eventually, how to not overcommit to roaches, how to get the melee upgrades faster, transition back into the zerglings/banelings and get a spire up to actually deal with the drops. But at the moment the roach/ravager is just the much less technical options to deal with the variety of terran builds thrown around. Maybe the larva and the 12 worker start that allows for much harder terran 2-bases ends up too much and maybe ravager/infestor is really the way to deal with marine midgames, but I personally believe that we will eventually see some form of ling/bling/corruptor compositions.
On January 09 2016 05:15 p68 wrote: Ladder is very overwhelming for new players, especially with the economy changes. I'm not surprised that the community here would be against the game speed suggestion, but hopefully we can all agree that we could still do more to make the game more accessible at lower levels. We all want the game to grow a lot more than it has, that's for sure.
True. However, i really don't think to slow down game speed for the low leagues is a great idea. What about "training league" ? Does it still exist ? I remember to play a lot of games in this league to get rid of ladder stress. I think it is the best way to practice. If my memory is right, time was slowly and maps pool was specific (rocks to avoid early rush).
On January 09 2016 06:19 Charoisaur wrote: the fact that there are pros that say ghost liberator is unbeatable for zerg is quite ridicolous. Did they ask firecake for feedback?
Ghost/Lib is handily beaten by Zerglings of all things. No ghosts will be getting off snipes if zerglings are on the field. I mean really, who did they talk to here? I think it is Catz.
I didn't offer feedback, because I understand the game well enough to know that I don't understand the game well enough yet, unlike you. But trust me on this, whichever pro they did talk to, understands the game far better than you do.
On January 09 2016 10:04 Elentos wrote: In the end, the problem for ling/bane/muta seems to be the fact that it's not larva efficient.
I've heard this a few times now, and I'm not sure how it makes sense. OK, Injects are worse, but at least until 3 Rax Reaper became a thing in the last couple of weeks, Zerg was rolling in more minerals than ever before (free 3 bases in general, Prion Terrances on top of that). So how did Zerg not have enough minerals to get one extra Hatchery + Queen? What am I missing?
Ah blizzard ;( Why ;~; So much stuff not posted here. I really do wonder which feedback they are looking into and which they just read and then completely ignore from the top players..
On January 09 2016 10:55 -Kyo- wrote: Ah blizzard ;( Why ;~; So much stuff not posted here. I really do wonder which feedback they are looking into and which they just read and then completely ignore from the top players..
too many changes at once create chaos and blizzard is not able to tell what is causing the problems then.
Gamespeed change also changes balance for those leagues. Some attacks could become significantly weaker if the opponent's counter is micro... and given more time, the attack could do no damage potentially with the change.
The meta is still developing at the moment, I would prefer them to release more standard maps soon and we shall see how it goes. I personally am quite happy at where it is at except terran could need some more buff for fun factor
So many reasons I don't like the suggested game speed change. I think I'll go with one of the more entertaining, tongue in cheek, ones here.
1998-2010: starcraft is played on fastest. 3rd party software measure APM through correcting the in-game time (measured on normal speed) to fastest.
2010: 2015: starcraft2 is played on faster. Blizzard catches up on people caring about APM, and now shows it after games, but as if the game was played on normal speed. Blizzard APM is off. 3rd party software correct APM to be displayed accurately for faster.
end of 2015: After 5 years, blizzard patches the APM after games, displaying actual APM in faster mode. After a total of 17 years, blizzard now shows the APM in "faster" minutes, where the game is actually played.
januray 2016: After the APM has finally caught up to the game being played on faster, blizzard now considers changing game speed from faster to normal.
On January 09 2016 11:21 Cascade wrote: So many reasons I don't like the suggested game speed change. I think I'll go with one of the more entertaining, tongue in cheek, ones here.
1998-2010: starcraft is played on fastest. 3rd party software measure APM through correcting the in-game time (measured on normal speed) to fastest.
2010: 2015: starcraft2 is played on faster. Blizzard catches up on people caring about APM, and now shows it after games, but as if the game was played on normal speed. Blizzard APM is off. 3rd party software correct APM to be displayed accurately for faster.
end of 2015: After 5 years, blizzard patches the APM after games, displaying actual APM in faster mode. After a total of 17 years, blizzard now shows the APM in "faster" minutes, where the game is actually played.
januray 2016: After the APM has finally caught up to the game being played on faster, blizzard now considers changing game speed from faster to normal.
Good to see that people still focus on the MOST IMPORTANT things in the game
I've got a huge huge problem with PvT. I honestly hope that blizzard isn't looking at purely just "winrate" percentage and thinking that PvT is fine, but it's not. Warp prism/adepts is strong and I feel like Protoss going this strategy is the only reason why this matchup's winrate hovers near 50% give or take. However, if Protoss doesn't go with this opening, then my god, is PvT ridiculous. Late game PvT is absurdly imbalanced in favor of Terran. This isn't a case of the matchup being reversed from WoL/HotS where Terran is moderately favored in early/mid game and Protoss is mildly favored lategame and in LotV, Protoss has to try and kill Terran before the lategame - because it is most absolutely not. In WoL/HotS Terran was favored early on with their numerous harass options, before Protoss gets both colossus+storm and slowly starts to tilt the balance in their favor. In LotV, Terran STILL get their numerous harass option so they're favored early on, while being EVEN more favored lategame.
In the first 2-3 weeks of LotV post-release, I was pretty surprised to hear that photon overcharge is only 25 energy - I always assumed it was 50 energy. However, you really need to look deeper into this matchup and you'll see how absurd it actually is. Having 25 energy photon overcharge allows you to get an extremely quick 3rd, yet even with such an early 3rd for Protoss - how in the hell does it make sense that lategame is so favored for Terran? Intuitively, you would think that the game should be about one race trying to prevent the other, macro oriented race from reaching their ideal unit composition - but in PvT, there is no ideal unit composition. Take away the cheap photon overcharge and assuming Protoss doesn't do warp prism/adepts, Protoss really don't have much of a chance in this matchup.
Biggest mistake Blizzard did was to nerf Colossus in LotV. Give Protoss back HotS Colossus and nerfing photon overcharge and potentially nerfing warp prism/adepts strategy and Protoss may actually start to have a chance. Don't just simply nerf photon overcharge (without considering all the other aspects of the matchup as a whole) and make a helpless Protoss situation into an even more helpless situation
"we can potentially look at other things such as an increase to Baneling movement speed to combat the new Terran tools against them " When David Kim finally loses his marbles
On January 09 2016 09:47 NKexquisite wrote: Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
In my personal opinion your post is very disrespectful towards other gamers and Blizzard itself. Banelings are currently in a very bad shape.
Please in future contribute something with more substance.
Sorry you feel that way, but not every Zerg unit needs to be useful in every possible scenario. The very concept of faster banelings is disrespectful to players that have practiced splitting and microing vs them for years.. "Ok you're microing too well, we need to make it harder" is basically what you are advocating for if you support "faster banelings"
Speed of banelings? While I would enjoy more ling/bling action present, speed is not the right direction. It would kill a cool splitting factor out of engagements and make ZvZ pain in the ass.
For game speed and laddering. That's horrible idea because it will make it problematic for players to adapt. Faster is in my opinion fast enough. If they want to help newer players maybe make game slower in unranked mode?
Really hope they don't change game speed. I played some coop on faster and it felt really off. I'm usually plat in 1's anyway but I wouldn't enjoy having to play at a slower speed if i get placed into gold. Even more so if it is for team games too.
Also would be really hard for people who get used to faster in gold then get promoted to plat.
On January 09 2016 09:47 NKexquisite wrote: Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
In my personal opinion your post is very disrespectful towards other gamers and Blizzard itself. Banelings are currently in a very bad shape.
Please in future contribute something with more substance.
Sorry you feel that way, but not every Zerg unit needs to be useful in every possible scenario. The very concept of faster banelings is disrespectful to players that have practiced splitting and microing vs them for years.. "Ok you're microing too well, we need to make it harder" is basically what you are advocating for if you support "faster banelings"
In my opinion I disagree with you. I think banelings are weak.
I have to strongly disagree. In korea banelings don't work versus good terrans with medivac tanks.
On January 09 2016 09:47 NKexquisite wrote: Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
In my personal opinion your post is very disrespectful towards other gamers and Blizzard itself. Banelings are currently in a very bad shape.
Please in future contribute something with more substance.
Sorry you feel that way, but not every Zerg unit needs to be useful in every possible scenario. The very concept of faster banelings is disrespectful to players that have practiced splitting and microing vs them for years.. "Ok you're microing too well, we need to make it harder" is basically what you are advocating for if you support "faster banelings"
In my opinion I disagree with you. I think banelings are weak.
I have to strongly disagree. In korea banelings don't work versus good terrans with medivac tanks.
Medivac/tank is way worse vs banelings than WM, people don't make banelings because they rather use the gas in things like ultras/ravagers/vipers etc. Not because they are weak.
On January 09 2016 09:47 NKexquisite wrote: Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
In my personal opinion your post is very disrespectful towards other gamers and Blizzard itself. Banelings are currently in a very bad shape.
Please in future contribute something with more substance.
Sorry you feel that way, but not every Zerg unit needs to be useful in every possible scenario. The very concept of faster banelings is disrespectful to players that have practiced splitting and microing vs them for years.. "Ok you're microing too well, we need to make it harder" is basically what you are advocating for if you support "faster banelings"
In my opinion I disagree with you. I think banelings are weak.
I have to strongly disagree. In korea banelings don't work versus good terrans with medivac tanks.
Medivac/tank is way worse vs banelings than WM, people don't make banelings because they rather use the gas in things like ultras/ravagers/vipers etc. Not because they are weak.
I don't know. I have to strongly disagree. My personal opinion is much like that of David Kim who thinks it is a possibility to buff banelings.
I hate these updates. They all read the same, "we are listening to your feedback. We hear what you are saying. We get what you mean. But we are going to do nothing. Please give more feedback."
P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45%. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
On January 09 2016 09:47 NKexquisite wrote: Faster Banelings? I had to go back and re-read that 5 times to make sure I saw that correctly. Maybe they can make them fly too while they're tweaking them.
In my personal opinion your post is very disrespectful towards other gamers and Blizzard itself. Banelings are currently in a very bad shape.
Please in future contribute something with more substance.
Sorry you feel that way, but not every Zerg unit needs to be useful in every possible scenario. The very concept of faster banelings is disrespectful to players that have practiced splitting and microing vs them for years.. "Ok you're microing too well, we need to make it harder" is basically what you are advocating for if you support "faster banelings"
In my opinion I disagree with you. I think banelings are weak.
I have to strongly disagree. In korea banelings don't work versus good terrans with medivac tanks.
Medivac/tank is way worse vs banelings than WM, people don't make banelings because they rather use the gas in things like ultras/ravagers/vipers etc. Not because they are weak.
I don't know. I have to strongly disagree. My personal opinion is much like that of David Kim who thinks it is a possibility to buff banelings.
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance. All protoss and terran currently win in GSL. Yesterday 2x ZvT and both time Terran won despite zerg being favorite.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance. All protoss and terran currently win in GSL. Yesterday 2x ZvT and both time Terran won despite zerg being favorite.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
Are you saying Nestea and FruitDealer are coming back to own LotV? I hope so!
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance. All protoss and terran currently win in GSL. Yesterday 2x ZvT and both time Terran won despite zerg being favorite.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
Are you saying Nestea and FruitDealer are coming back to own LotV? I hope so!
That would be sooooo sweet. I love both of them, but they are very old now and I haven't heard anything of Fruitdealer in a very long time.
The only thing that would be even better is Jaedong winning the GSL. That is my favorite dream to believe in haha
On January 09 2016 11:21 Cascade wrote: So many reasons I don't like the suggested game speed change. I think I'll go with one of the more entertaining, tongue in cheek, ones here.
1998-2010: starcraft is played on fastest. 3rd party software measure APM through correcting the in-game time (measured on normal speed) to fastest.
2010: 2015: starcraft2 is played on faster. Blizzard catches up on people caring about APM, and now shows it after games, but as if the game was played on normal speed. Blizzard APM is off. 3rd party software correct APM to be displayed accurately for faster.
end of 2015: After 5 years, blizzard patches the APM after games, displaying actual APM in faster mode. After a total of 17 years, blizzard now shows the APM in "faster" minutes, where the game is actually played.
januray 2016: After the APM has finally caught up to the game being played on faster, blizzard now considers changing game speed from faster to normal.
Good to see that people still focus on the MOST IMPORTANT things in the game
"Tongue in cheek" is this smilie: and it means that I am trying to make a joke or point out something funny rather than making a serious argument.
But thanks for reading the part that you found controversial and replying to that alone.
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
I refused to play/buy LotV due to them making the easiest race even EASIER and still not addressing Toss' biggest problem: handling mutas. Everything that is being talked about now, as well as winrates, should have been incredibly obvious to any GM player, during the first stages of beta. Shoot, any diamond player should have known better.
Seriously, phoenix are good? Need good micro. Need great scouting. Need to invest in super expensive building/upgrades for them. Yet Parasitic Bomb is OK? Some asymmetrical balance... Toss gets 1 click annihilation of ground, you take air! This game is a joke.
Worse than the horrendous balance due to not addressing the real issues (not even a new unit that shoots up for Toss, etc), is the focus on balance. Man, if only I make the adept strong enough and it becomes the only way to play the game, I might be able to get close to 45%... There is no longer any strategy in this game due to a desperation from a team to find an easy way to get close to 50% win rate.
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
I refused to play/buy LotV due to them making the easiest race even EASIER and still not addressing Toss' biggest problem: handling mutas. Everything that is being talked about now, as well as winrates, should have been incredibly obvious to any GM player, during the first stages of beta. Shoot, any diamond player should have known better.
Seriously, phoenix are good? Need good micro. Need great scouting. Need to invest in super expensive building/upgrades for them. Yet Parasitic Bomb is OK? Some asymmetrical balance... Toss gets 1 click annihilation of ground, you take air! This game is a joke.
Worse than the horrendous balance due to not addressing the real issues (not even a new unit that shoots up for Toss, etc), is the focus on balance. Man, if only I make the adept strong enough and it becomes the only way to play the game, I might be able to get close to 45%... There is no longer any strategy in this game due to a desperation from a team to find an easy way to get close to 50% win rate.
Ok you made a reasonable point with your post and I strongly agree now. I did not realize before your post that zerg was easiest race.
I was blinded by my own race before. Now I understand it better and will join you in your mission to nerf zerg and buff protoss.
We should add a new protoss unit that shoots "up" like you say. What is your vision of this unit? Let's discuss it
My propose to nerf muta is that zerg is only allowed to have 10 mutalisk for each spire. So zerg cannot build too many strong mutas
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
I refused to play/buy LotV due to them making the easiest race even EASIER and still not addressing Toss' biggest problem: handling mutas. Everything that is being talked about now, as well as winrates, should have been incredibly obvious to any GM player, during the first stages of beta. Shoot, any diamond player should have known better.
Seriously, phoenix are good? Need good micro. Need great scouting. Need to invest in super expensive building/upgrades for them. Yet Parasitic Bomb is OK? Some asymmetrical balance... Toss gets 1 click annihilation of ground, you take air! This game is a joke.
Worse than the horrendous balance due to not addressing the real issues (not even a new unit that shoots up for Toss, etc), is the focus on balance. Man, if only I make the adept strong enough and it becomes the only way to play the game, I might be able to get close to 45%... There is no longer any strategy in this game due to a desperation from a team to find an easy way to get close to 50% win rate.
Ok you made a reasonable point with your post and I strongly agree now. I did not realize before your post that zerg was easiest race.
I was blinded by my own race before. Now I understand it better and will join you in your mission to nerf zerg and buff protoss.
We should add a new protoss unit that shoots "up" like you say. What is your vision of this unit? Let's discuss it
My propose to nerf muta is that zerg is only allowed to have 10 mutalisk for each spire. So zerg cannot build too many strong mutas
While your sarcasm is cute, I've yet to be surprised by anything in LotV. Every reason given for not playing beforehand has materialized. Many top GM zergs, in HotS, weren't even using hotkeys. I mean ANY hotkeys. The discrepancy in skill needed between the races needed to be brought a lot closer. Somehow, it went the other direction. This is not acceptable/viable.
D Kim could be in bronze league and say mutas should do 500 damage a hit... if so, that's what would happen and the rhetoric would be the same. It wouldn't matter if you're Flash and you offer a retort, you would simply be called biased by him. Non Korean streamers have a shtick and his isn't much different.
It's not about proposals, as it's a moot point with this regime. It's about only talking about boycotting or putting pressure on them to find a new team/people. This game has gone nothing but downhill. The only good idea was trying to stop 4 gate. This team couldn't even get me to play more than 10 beta games... that's how unappealing and trashy this game should be from a Toss perspective.
None of our new units even filled a void. Just here's some random stuff, while other races get buffs (even if randomly happened). If I could ask for one thing to be in the game, just one thing. It would actually be scourges. I'm not biased... I had no problem mentioning other races I didn't play being much harder in BW; ie., I thought Zerg was the hardest.
Watching this game just isn't fun, without scourges. It's not fun to play either. There's no risk/reward. Super warp prisms just living for eternity. I don't like anything about this game. With the viewership numbers... those who do like something have been a minority for a while.
Stop talking about balance as if it matters. Talk about balance once you force them to fire people...
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
I refused to play/buy LotV due to them making the easiest race even EASIER and still not addressing Toss' biggest problem: handling mutas. Everything that is being talked about now, as well as winrates, should have been incredibly obvious to any GM player, during the first stages of beta. Shoot, any diamond player should have known better.
Seriously, phoenix are good? Need good micro. Need great scouting. Need to invest in super expensive building/upgrades for them. Yet Parasitic Bomb is OK? Some asymmetrical balance... Toss gets 1 click annihilation of ground, you take air! This game is a joke.
Worse than the horrendous balance due to not addressing the real issues (not even a new unit that shoots up for Toss, etc), is the focus on balance. Man, if only I make the adept strong enough and it becomes the only way to play the game, I might be able to get close to 45%... There is no longer any strategy in this game due to a desperation from a team to find an easy way to get close to 50% win rate.
Ok you made a reasonable point with your post and I strongly agree now. I did not realize before your post that zerg was easiest race.
I was blinded by my own race before. Now I understand it better and will join you in your mission to nerf zerg and buff protoss.
We should add a new protoss unit that shoots "up" like you say. What is your vision of this unit? Let's discuss it
My propose to nerf muta is that zerg is only allowed to have 10 mutalisk for each spire. So zerg cannot build too many strong mutas
While your sarcasm is cute, I've yet to be surprised by anything in LotV. Every reason given for not playing beforehand has materialized. Many top GM zergs, in HotS, weren't even using hotkeys. I mean ANY hotkeys. The discrepancy in skill needed between the races needed to be brought a lot closer. Somehow, it went the other direction. This is not acceptable/viable.
D Kim could be in bronze league and say mutas should do 500 damage a hit... if so, that's what would happen and the rhetoric would be the same. It wouldn't matter if you're Flash and you offer a retort, you would simply be called biased by him. Non Korean streamers have a shtick and his isn't much different.
It's not about proposals, as it's a moot point with this regime. It's about only talking about boycotting or putting pressure on them to find a new team/people. This game has gone nothing but downhill. The only good idea was trying to stop 4 gate. This team couldn't even get me to play more than 10 beta games... that's how unappealing and trashy this game should be from a Toss perspective.
None of our new units even filled a void. Just here's some random stuff, while other races get buffs (even if randomly happened). If I could ask for one thing to be in the game, just one thing. It would actually be scourges. I'm not biased... I had no problem mentioning other races I didn't play being much harder in BW; ie., I thought Zerg was the hardest.
Watching this game just isn't fun, without scourges. It's not fun to play either. There's no risk/reward. Super warp prisms just living for eternity. I don't like anything about this game. With the viewership numbers... those who do like something have been a minority for a while.
Stop talking about balance as it matters. Talk about balance once you force them to fire people...
It was not joke. I really mean what I was saying. I am 100% on your side. I am converted. I said to myself "what if I am wrong and others are actually more right than I?".
Then what can we do. What would you do if you sit in the chair?
I just have to say nerfing the photon overcharge to 50 mana will render it much more useless because pylons are so easy to destroy.
I do agree it is a cheesy tactic to rush pylon overcharge at the enemy base, but Protoss needs something to defend in the early game, and unless Blizzard can re-tool the Protoss units so that PO can be removed from the game, it or something like it will have to stay to give Protoss any chance of surviving early game.
What if PO can only be cast at pylons near a Nexus or Gateway? This would allow it to keep its defensive nature while removing the annoying pylon spamming at the enemy's base. Since the pylon energy field's color is already an in-game indicator of which pylons are near a gateway or nexus it should be a logical addition to implement.
Also, since Protoss can no longer warp in on higher ground even with vision, there is no need for the reduced pylon energy field radius which was brought in because of that. Blizzard may want to consider making this change to PO while increasing pylon radius to allow pylons near the ramp to defend even if there is no gateway there.
Lastly, if Blizzard is going to increase the energy cost to 50 they should seriously consider increasing the range, duration and strength of PO and increasing the health of pylons because as is they are easy to destroy.
If Blizzard changes PO to only work on pylons near gateways and nexii they may not need to nerf Adepts as harassment with them is much more costly, micro-intensive and exciting to watch than pylon spam in my view.
On January 09 2016 13:44 Perdac Curall wrote: I just have to say nerfing the photon overcharge to 50 mana will render it much more useless because pylons are so easy to destroy.
I do agree it is a cheesy tactic to rush pylon overcharge at the enemy base, but Protoss needs something to defend in the early game, and unless Blizzard can re-tool the Protoss units so that PO can be removed from the game, it or something like it will have to stay to give Protoss any chance of surviving early game.
What if PO can only be cast at pylons near a Nexus or Gateway? This would allow it to keep its defensive nature while removing the annoying pylon spamming at the enemy's base. Since the pylon energy field's color is already an in-game indicator of which pylons are near a gateway or nexus it should be a logical addition to implement.
Also, since Protoss can no longer warp in on higher ground even with vision, there is no need for the reduced pylon energy field radius which was brought in because of that. Blizzard may want to consider making this change to PO while increasing pylon radius to allow pylons near the ramp to defend even if there is no gateway there.
Lastly, if Blizzard is going to increase the energy cost to 50 they should seriously consider increasing the range, duration and strength of PO and increasing the health of pylons because as is they are easy to destroy.
If Blizzard changes PO to only work on pylons near gateways and nexii they may not need to nerf Adepts as harassment with them is much more costly, micro-intensive and exciting to watch than pylon spam in my view.
Maybe Pylon Overcharge could do extra damage versus zerg units, but less damage to normal units like terran have?
20 damage versus normal units +30 damage versus Zerg units and splash damage in air versus zerg air units.
It would help protoss versus zerg winrate and zerg players cannot just build muta because protoss has stronger overcharge on pylons that can splash the mutalisks that protoss has hard time to deal with
The game speed for lower leagues is a GREAT idea. The problem is that it TOO LATE. Everyone is used to the faster speeds now. If Blizz is going to do this I would say make it for Silver and below.
As for balance changes, I would say leave everything the way it is. Give the pro's at least a season to figure out the strategies.
On January 09 2016 13:49 EatingBomber wrote: Remember when Protoss Gateway units were stronger in the early game than the early-game units of other races?
Now the discussion has shifted to how Protoss NEEDS, and I repeat, NEEDS, Photon Overcharge, just to survive to the mid-game. Absurd.
On January 09 2016 13:49 EatingBomber wrote: Remember when Protoss Gateway units were stronger in the early game than the early-game units of other races?
Now the discussion has shifted to how Protoss NEEDS, and I repeat, NEEDS, Photon Overcharge, just to survive to the mid-game. Absurd.
Which WoL were you playing? Because the one I played had a number of early Terran pressures which Protoss struggled against for years before Nexus cannon was introduced in HoTS. Protoss early units may be strong but it is hard to get enough of them to hold off pushes in the early game that is why MSC and PO were introduced. I would rather see actual fighting units to solve the problem but this does not seem to be the path Blizz is pursuing.
On January 09 2016 13:44 Perdac Curall wrote: I just have to say nerfing the photon overcharge to 50 mana will render it much more useless because pylons are so easy to destroy.
I do agree it is a cheesy tactic to rush pylon overcharge at the enemy base, but Protoss needs something to defend in the early game, and unless Blizzard can re-tool the Protoss units so that PO can be removed from the game, it or something like it will have to stay to give Protoss any chance of surviving early game.
What if PO can only be cast at pylons near a Nexus or Gateway? This would allow it to keep its defensive nature while removing the annoying pylon spamming at the enemy's base. Since the pylon energy field's color is already an in-game indicator of which pylons are near a gateway or nexus it should be a logical addition to implement.
Also, since Protoss can no longer warp in on higher ground even with vision, there is no need for the reduced pylon energy field radius which was brought in because of that. Blizzard may want to consider making this change to PO while increasing pylon radius to allow pylons near the ramp to defend even if there is no gateway there.
Lastly, if Blizzard is going to increase the energy cost to 50 they should seriously consider increasing the range, duration and strength of PO and increasing the health of pylons because as is they are easy to destroy.
If Blizzard changes PO to only work on pylons near gateways and nexii they may not need to nerf Adepts as harassment with them is much more costly, micro-intensive and exciting to watch than pylon spam in my view.
Maybe Pylon Overcharge could do extra damage versus zerg units, but less damage to normal units like terran have?
20 damage versus normal units +30 damage versus Zerg units and splash damage in air versus zerg air units.
It would help protoss versus zerg winrate and zerg players cannot just build muta because protoss has stronger overcharge on pylons that can splash the mutalisks that protoss has hard time to deal with
As far as I know there is no way to make attacks do more damage to only Zerg units, and besides there are plenty of strong early Terran pushes as well.
On January 09 2016 13:44 Perdac Curall wrote: I just have to say nerfing the photon overcharge to 50 mana will render it much more useless because pylons are so easy to destroy.
I do agree it is a cheesy tactic to rush pylon overcharge at the enemy base, but Protoss needs something to defend in the early game, and unless Blizzard can re-tool the Protoss units so that PO can be removed from the game, it or something like it will have to stay to give Protoss any chance of surviving early game.
What if PO can only be cast at pylons near a Nexus or Gateway? This would allow it to keep its defensive nature while removing the annoying pylon spamming at the enemy's base. Since the pylon energy field's color is already an in-game indicator of which pylons are near a gateway or nexus it should be a logical addition to implement.
Also, since Protoss can no longer warp in on higher ground even with vision, there is no need for the reduced pylon energy field radius which was brought in because of that. Blizzard may want to consider making this change to PO while increasing pylon radius to allow pylons near the ramp to defend even if there is no gateway there.
Lastly, if Blizzard is going to increase the energy cost to 50 they should seriously consider increasing the range, duration and strength of PO and increasing the health of pylons because as is they are easy to destroy.
If Blizzard changes PO to only work on pylons near gateways and nexii they may not need to nerf Adepts as harassment with them is much more costly, micro-intensive and exciting to watch than pylon spam in my view.
Maybe Pylon Overcharge could do extra damage versus zerg units, but less damage to normal units like terran have?
20 damage versus normal units +30 damage versus Zerg units and splash damage in air versus zerg air units.
It would help protoss versus zerg winrate and zerg players cannot just build muta because protoss has stronger overcharge on pylons that can splash the mutalisks that protoss has hard time to deal with
As far as I know there is no way to make attacks do more damage to only Zerg units, and besides there are plenty of strong early Terran pushes as well.
From a technical standpoint it would work. If you have problems versus Terran than lets say PO does extra damage versus all biological (zerg units, marauder marines) if you think terran is too strong for Protoss.
On January 09 2016 04:53 CannonsNCarriers wrote: RIP tournament Terrans. Another month of this and SSL/GSL really won't have any more Terran players left.
// Marinelord doesn't count because he was up against Innovation, a Terran player. Marinelord almost lost to the Z, but he managed to hit a timing where the Ultras were out but didn't have the armor upgrade. The P player he beat only killed 1 tank with 3 disruptors.
What are you talking about? Terran is winning over 50% in both non-mirrors according to Aligulac. And isn't currently under 50% in any matchup in the GSL or SSL (which just started).
Terran had a 72% winrate versus Zerg, and a 73% winrate versus Protoss in NationWars.
What are you seeing, that I am not seeing? Did I miss some tournament?
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
I refused to play/buy LotV due to them making the easiest race even EASIER and still not addressing Toss' biggest problem: handling mutas. Everything that is being talked about now, as well as winrates, should have been incredibly obvious to any GM player, during the first stages of beta. Shoot, any diamond player should have known better.
Seriously, phoenix are good? Need good micro. Need great scouting. Need to invest in super expensive building/upgrades for them. Yet Parasitic Bomb is OK? Some asymmetrical balance... Toss gets 1 click annihilation of ground, you take air! This game is a joke.
Worse than the horrendous balance due to not addressing the real issues (not even a new unit that shoots up for Toss, etc), is the focus on balance. Man, if only I make the adept strong enough and it becomes the only way to play the game, I might be able to get close to 45%... There is no longer any strategy in this game due to a desperation from a team to find an easy way to get close to 50% win rate.
Ok you made a reasonable point with your post and I strongly agree now. I did not realize before your post that zerg was easiest race.
I was blinded by my own race before. Now I understand it better and will join you in your mission to nerf zerg and buff protoss.
We should add a new protoss unit that shoots "up" like you say. What is your vision of this unit? Let's discuss it
My propose to nerf muta is that zerg is only allowed to have 10 mutalisk for each spire. So zerg cannot build too many strong mutas
While your sarcasm is cute, I've yet to be surprised by anything in LotV. Every reason given for not playing beforehand has materialized. Many top GM zergs, in HotS, weren't even using hotkeys. I mean ANY hotkeys. The discrepancy in skill needed between the races needed to be brought a lot closer. Somehow, it went the other direction. This is not acceptable/viable.
D Kim could be in bronze league and say mutas should do 500 damage a hit... if so, that's what would happen and the rhetoric would be the same. It wouldn't matter if you're Flash and you offer a retort, you would simply be called biased by him. Non Korean streamers have a shtick and his isn't much different.
It's not about proposals, as it's a moot point with this regime. It's about only talking about boycotting or putting pressure on them to find a new team/people. This game has gone nothing but downhill. The only good idea was trying to stop 4 gate. This team couldn't even get me to play more than 10 beta games... that's how unappealing and trashy this game should be from a Toss perspective.
None of our new units even filled a void. Just here's some random stuff, while other races get buffs (even if randomly happened). If I could ask for one thing to be in the game, just one thing. It would actually be scourges. I'm not biased... I had no problem mentioning other races I didn't play being much harder in BW; ie., I thought Zerg was the hardest.
Watching this game just isn't fun, without scourges. It's not fun to play either. There's no risk/reward. Super warp prisms just living for eternity. I don't like anything about this game. With the viewership numbers... those who do like something have been a minority for a while.
Stop talking about balance as it matters. Talk about balance once you force them to fire people...
It was not joke. I really mean what I was saying. I am 100% on your side. I am converted. I said to myself "what if I am wrong and others are actually more right than I?".
Then what can we do. What would you do if you sit in the chair?
You mind F'd me. I was like this doesn't really sound like sarcasm, at all, yet the odds of someone having your mentality has to be around the odds of albinism. Major props to you.
The reality is, to me at least, is that greed killed this game. In 2012, their greed, which led to trying to force Koreans into everything imaginable, killed this game. At this point, more important than balance, is that fact they killed the game. The game was popular when it wasn't even good. It could still be, but you would need to "buy players." They need to buy hype. An influx of money is probably a requisite for jump starting interest.
SC 2 is a competitive game, right? Esport. Well, all things equal but money, would you rather strive to be a pro NBA player or bowler? As long as SC 2 is all about how much money they can immediately pocket, there is no hope for SC 2.
But, if somehow unicorns appeared... to actually have this game stand on its own legs and not "money legs..." balance talk needs to take a backseat. BW, seriously, wasn't THAT balanced. What this game needs more than a utopian 50% balance (which obv isn't achievable...) are options.
We need more units, more options for countering. More options for everything. This game needs to return to being a strategy game. And it NEEDS scourges. I literally get sick to my stomach watching warp prisms just idle wherever they feel like on the map, and just harass on a whim, all game, whenever they feel like. This game should have enough options and complexity to the point where what David Kim says actually has some truth to it: "it needs more time."
It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS. Everyone had to do the same opener... at that point, who cares if the number is close to 50 or not? It's not fun. May as well be playing tic tac toe at that point. More focus on strategy and sensible units. Not "I clicked once, all your units died. HAHA." This game can't be taken seriously until people are fired.
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
I refused to play/buy LotV due to them making the easiest race even EASIER and still not addressing Toss' biggest problem: handling mutas. Everything that is being talked about now, as well as winrates, should have been incredibly obvious to any GM player, during the first stages of beta. Shoot, any diamond player should have known better.
Seriously, phoenix are good? Need good micro. Need great scouting. Need to invest in super expensive building/upgrades for them. Yet Parasitic Bomb is OK? Some asymmetrical balance... Toss gets 1 click annihilation of ground, you take air! This game is a joke.
Worse than the horrendous balance due to not addressing the real issues (not even a new unit that shoots up for Toss, etc), is the focus on balance. Man, if only I make the adept strong enough and it becomes the only way to play the game, I might be able to get close to 45%... There is no longer any strategy in this game due to a desperation from a team to find an easy way to get close to 50% win rate.
Ok you made a reasonable point with your post and I strongly agree now. I did not realize before your post that zerg was easiest race.
I was blinded by my own race before. Now I understand it better and will join you in your mission to nerf zerg and buff protoss.
We should add a new protoss unit that shoots "up" like you say. What is your vision of this unit? Let's discuss it
My propose to nerf muta is that zerg is only allowed to have 10 mutalisk for each spire. So zerg cannot build too many strong mutas
While your sarcasm is cute, I've yet to be surprised by anything in LotV. Every reason given for not playing beforehand has materialized. Many top GM zergs, in HotS, weren't even using hotkeys. I mean ANY hotkeys. The discrepancy in skill needed between the races needed to be brought a lot closer. Somehow, it went the other direction. This is not acceptable/viable.
D Kim could be in bronze league and say mutas should do 500 damage a hit... if so, that's what would happen and the rhetoric would be the same. It wouldn't matter if you're Flash and you offer a retort, you would simply be called biased by him. Non Korean streamers have a shtick and his isn't much different.
It's not about proposals, as it's a moot point with this regime. It's about only talking about boycotting or putting pressure on them to find a new team/people. This game has gone nothing but downhill. The only good idea was trying to stop 4 gate. This team couldn't even get me to play more than 10 beta games... that's how unappealing and trashy this game should be from a Toss perspective.
None of our new units even filled a void. Just here's some random stuff, while other races get buffs (even if randomly happened). If I could ask for one thing to be in the game, just one thing. It would actually be scourges. I'm not biased... I had no problem mentioning other races I didn't play being much harder in BW; ie., I thought Zerg was the hardest.
Watching this game just isn't fun, without scourges. It's not fun to play either. There's no risk/reward. Super warp prisms just living for eternity. I don't like anything about this game. With the viewership numbers... those who do like something have been a minority for a while.
Stop talking about balance as it matters. Talk about balance once you force them to fire people...
It was not joke. I really mean what I was saying. I am 100% on your side. I am converted. I said to myself "what if I am wrong and others are actually more right than I?".
Then what can we do. What would you do if you sit in the chair?
You mind F'd me. I was like this doesn't really sound like sarcasm, at all, yet the odds of someone having your mentality has to be around the odds of albinism. Major props to you.
The reality is, to me at least, is that greed killed this game. In 2012, their greed, which led to trying to force Koreans into everything imaginable, killed this game. At this point, more important than balance, is that fact they killed the game. The game was popular when it wasn't even good. It could still be, but you would need to "buy players." They need to buy hype. An influx of money is probably a requisite for jump starting interest.
SC 2 is a competitive game, right? Esport. Well, all things equal but money, would you rather strive to be a pro NBA player or bowler? As long as SC 2 is all about how much money they can immediately pocket, there is no hope for SC 2.
But, if somehow unicorns appeared... to actually have this game stand on its own legs and not "money legs..." balance talk needs to take a backseat. BW, seriously, wasn't THAT balanced. What this game needs more than a utopian 50% balance (which obv isn't achievable...)
We need more units, more options for countering. More options for everything. This game needs to return to being a strategy game. And it NEEDS scourges. I literally get sick to my stomach watching warp prisms just idle wherever they feel like on the map, and just harass on a whim, all game, whenever they feel like. This game should have enough options and complexity to the point of what David Kim actually says has some truth to it: "it needs more time."
It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS. Everyone had to do the same opener... at that point, who cares if the number is close to 50 or not? It's not fun. May as well be playing tic tac toe at that point. More focus on strategy and sensible units. Not "I clicked once, all your units died. HAHA." This game can't be taken seriously until people are fired.
I don't know if you just insulted me or not my english is not strong enough.
Have you ever considered making your own game or getting into the industry? Maybe you can save RTS gaming with good ideas. Application to Blizzard Starcraft 2.
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
I hated viper vs colossi. It was so coin flippy to me. It's so stressful/annoying when so much of your army strength, and chances of winning, can disappear in 2 clicks from the opponent... or vice versa, and it appears like luck was the deciding factor...
But I mainly arrived at the same oracle into stlakers due to mutas. Phoenix just aren't a unit you want to make vs Zerg. You don't want to go colossi then have to make phoenix. You have to be so much better than your opponent to not end up too far behind economically or not end up with the wrong balance/composition. It just wasn't worth it. You wanted to feel like you could win the game if you were around the same level as your opponent.
On January 09 2016 13:03 playa wrote: P vs Z numbers could be at 20% win rate, and you'd keep hearing "let's wait and see" until one month (if ever) it reaches 45% win rate. Then, time to pop in and say "looks like you nubs finally figured out how to play." Kim has the greatest job: if the numbers show imbalance, well, need more time, obviously; if numbers are close to 50%, well, pat on the back to self. The lack of objectivity and authority from more knowledgeable people makes this game impossible to be optimistic about.
In my opinion I strongly disagree.
Game is young and needs time. Looking at korea I am very optimistic about future of balance.
I remember in the beginning in LOTV when Zerg was by far the worst race ever in existence. Then Zerg heroes Fruitdealer and Nestea emerged. They showed us the way. We zerg players practiced hard and adapted and this is why we have a thick skin now and look like strong monsters.
In time Protoss will adept. They had an easy time and now they need to train a bit more.
It is all good
I refused to play/buy LotV due to them making the easiest race even EASIER and still not addressing Toss' biggest problem: handling mutas. Everything that is being talked about now, as well as winrates, should have been incredibly obvious to any GM player, during the first stages of beta. Shoot, any diamond player should have known better.
Seriously, phoenix are good? Need good micro. Need great scouting. Need to invest in super expensive building/upgrades for them. Yet Parasitic Bomb is OK? Some asymmetrical balance... Toss gets 1 click annihilation of ground, you take air! This game is a joke.
Worse than the horrendous balance due to not addressing the real issues (not even a new unit that shoots up for Toss, etc), is the focus on balance. Man, if only I make the adept strong enough and it becomes the only way to play the game, I might be able to get close to 45%... There is no longer any strategy in this game due to a desperation from a team to find an easy way to get close to 50% win rate.
Ok you made a reasonable point with your post and I strongly agree now. I did not realize before your post that zerg was easiest race.
I was blinded by my own race before. Now I understand it better and will join you in your mission to nerf zerg and buff protoss.
We should add a new protoss unit that shoots "up" like you say. What is your vision of this unit? Let's discuss it
My propose to nerf muta is that zerg is only allowed to have 10 mutalisk for each spire. So zerg cannot build too many strong mutas
While your sarcasm is cute, I've yet to be surprised by anything in LotV. Every reason given for not playing beforehand has materialized. Many top GM zergs, in HotS, weren't even using hotkeys. I mean ANY hotkeys. The discrepancy in skill needed between the races needed to be brought a lot closer. Somehow, it went the other direction. This is not acceptable/viable.
D Kim could be in bronze league and say mutas should do 500 damage a hit... if so, that's what would happen and the rhetoric would be the same. It wouldn't matter if you're Flash and you offer a retort, you would simply be called biased by him. Non Korean streamers have a shtick and his isn't much different.
It's not about proposals, as it's a moot point with this regime. It's about only talking about boycotting or putting pressure on them to find a new team/people. This game has gone nothing but downhill. The only good idea was trying to stop 4 gate. This team couldn't even get me to play more than 10 beta games... that's how unappealing and trashy this game should be from a Toss perspective.
None of our new units even filled a void. Just here's some random stuff, while other races get buffs (even if randomly happened). If I could ask for one thing to be in the game, just one thing. It would actually be scourges. I'm not biased... I had no problem mentioning other races I didn't play being much harder in BW; ie., I thought Zerg was the hardest.
Watching this game just isn't fun, without scourges. It's not fun to play either. There's no risk/reward. Super warp prisms just living for eternity. I don't like anything about this game. With the viewership numbers... those who do like something have been a minority for a while.
Stop talking about balance as it matters. Talk about balance once you force them to fire people...
It was not joke. I really mean what I was saying. I am 100% on your side. I am converted. I said to myself "what if I am wrong and others are actually more right than I?".
Then what can we do. What would you do if you sit in the chair?
You mind F'd me. I was like this doesn't really sound like sarcasm, at all, yet the odds of someone having your mentality has to be around the odds of albinism. Major props to you.
The reality is, to me at least, is that greed killed this game. In 2012, their greed, which led to trying to force Koreans into everything imaginable, killed this game. At this point, more important than balance, is that fact they killed the game. The game was popular when it wasn't even good. It could still be, but you would need to "buy players." They need to buy hype. An influx of money is probably a requisite for jump starting interest.
SC 2 is a competitive game, right? Esport. Well, all things equal but money, would you rather strive to be a pro NBA player or bowler? As long as SC 2 is all about how much money they can immediately pocket, there is no hope for SC 2.
But, if somehow unicorns appeared... to actually have this game stand on its own legs and not "money legs..." balance talk needs to take a backseat. BW, seriously, wasn't THAT balanced. What this game needs more than a utopian 50% balance (which obv isn't achievable...)
We need more units, more options for countering. More options for everything. This game needs to return to being a strategy game. And it NEEDS scourges. I literally get sick to my stomach watching warp prisms just idle wherever they feel like on the map, and just harass on a whim, all game, whenever they feel like. This game should have enough options and complexity to the point of what David Kim actually says has some truth to it: "it needs more time."
It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS. Everyone had to do the same opener... at that point, who cares if the number is close to 50 or not? It's not fun. May as well be playing tic tac toe at that point. More focus on strategy and sensible units. Not "I clicked once, all your units died. HAHA." This game can't be taken seriously until people are fired.
I don't know if you just insulted me or not my english is not strong enough.
Have you ever considered making your own game or getting into the industry? Maybe you can save RTS gaming with good ideas. Application to Blizzard Starcraft 2.
Being a Blizzard employee is clearly about a buddy system. If you're not sucking up or ignorant about the issues, I don't see how you could have a chance. And no, I didn't insult you. In fact, the opposite.
Even if you have better ideas, you're still human. Who is to say you don't become David Kim'ish and start trying, desperately, to discredit pro gamers (or high level players in general)? In WoL, Kim used to talk about differing win rates at different stages in the game, in T vs P. He was clearly trying to do an honest job/be transparent. However... in HotS, P vs Z win rates, in this regard, were way more embarrassing, yet no mentions...
The problem is if it's a good job you realize there are better ideas/people, but... you have to erroneously seem like you're the man for the job. It's like someone makes you an honorary GM, and now your task becomes trying to keep the title via seeming like you deserve it. Unless you're given the security to where you can admit mistakes and that pro players actually know what they're talking about, without fear of repercussions, then you face a facade.
Anyone who can allow swarm hosts to continue in their state for that long... there can't be that much sense of security, since there was 0 care for the state of the game... only numbers.
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
I hated viper vs colossi. It was so coin flippy to me. It's so stressful/annoying when so much of your army strength, and chances of winning, can disappear in 2 clicks from the opponent... or vice versa, and it appears like luck was the deciding factor...
But I mainly arrived at the same oracle into stlakers due to mutas. Phoenix just aren't a unit you want to make vs Zerg. You don't want to go colossi then have to make phoenix. You have to be so much better than your opponent to not end up too far behind economically or not end up with the wrong balance/composition. It just wasn't worth it. You wanted to feel like you could win the game if you were around the same level as your opponent.
Hello playa.
What would you change about what you said earlier?
You said in Grandmaster there are zergs who play without hotkeys and that zerg is the easiest race. What is your idea of chaning it ?
Do you think that Zerg gamers have the lowest average skill level in Starcraft 2 out of the three races?
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
Well, who would have thought? The match-up based around the most insane hardcounters in the game (Phoenix-Mutalisk, Immortal-Roach, Viper-Colossi, etc) ends up having the least strategic diversity.
Seriously, though. The hardcounter system pigeonholes players into a specific playstyle, which is why PvZ, despite featuring far more unit diversity than TvZ and TvT, is so insanely frustrating
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
I hated viper vs colossi. It was so coin flippy to me. It's so stressful/annoying when so much of your army strength, and chances of winning, can disappear in 2 clicks from the opponent... or vice versa, and it appears like luck was the deciding factor...
But I mainly arrived at the same oracle into stlakers due to mutas. Phoenix just aren't a unit you want to make vs Zerg. You don't want to go colossi then have to make phoenix. You have to be so much better than your opponent to not end up too far behind economically or not end up with the wrong balance/composition. It just wasn't worth it. You wanted to feel like you could win the game if you were around the same level as your opponent.
Hello playa.
What would you change about what you said earlier?
You said in Grandmaster there are zergs who play without hotkeys and that zerg is the easiest race. What is your idea of chaning it ?
Do you think that Zerg gamers have the lowest average skill level in Starcraft 2 out of the three races?
I play on the KR server, and it is blatantly untrue that Zerg players do not use hotkeys. Also, it is untrue that Zerg us the race requiring the least skill, ZvT requires a great deal of skill for both sides, ZvZ requires incredible, consistent micro, and I think PvZ is just stupid and consists either of 2-3 base all-ins or 200/200 1a battles with both players desperately trying to cast some spells or kill the enemy spellcasters before the fight
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
I hated viper vs colossi. It was so coin flippy to me. It's so stressful/annoying when so much of your army strength, and chances of winning, can disappear in 2 clicks from the opponent... or vice versa, and it appears like luck was the deciding factor...
But I mainly arrived at the same oracle into stlakers due to mutas. Phoenix just aren't a unit you want to make vs Zerg. You don't want to go colossi then have to make phoenix. You have to be so much better than your opponent to not end up too far behind economically or not end up with the wrong balance/composition. It just wasn't worth it. You wanted to feel like you could win the game if you were around the same level as your opponent.
Hello playa.
What would you change about what you said earlier?
You said in Grandmaster there are zergs who play without hotkeys and that zerg is the easiest race. What is your idea of chaning it ?
Do you think that Zerg gamers have the lowest average skill level in Starcraft 2 out of the three races?
I play on the KR server, and it is blatantly untrue that Zerg players do not use hotkeys. Also, it is untrue that Zerg us the race requiring the least skill, ZvT requires a great deal of skill for both sides, ZvZ requires incredible, consistent micro, and I think PvZ is just stupid and consists either of 2-3 base all-ins or 200/200 1a battles with both players desperately trying to cast some spells or kill the enemy spellcasters before the fight
But I am confused now.
Teamliquid user "playa" said that Zerg is the easiest race and some Grandmaster Zerg players don't even use hotkeys. Who am I supposed to believe now
I'm glad Blizzard is taking their time making decisions. There's still very little data and a great deal of variance, and I'm glad that they don't jump to conclusions.
As for game speed, I'm very concerned. I'm gold at the moment, and I wouldn't want a slower speed (I might suck as I play a single game every few months, but faster isn't that fast). I wouldn't mind giving up unranked for slower speed though.
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
I hated viper vs colossi. It was so coin flippy to me. It's so stressful/annoying when so much of your army strength, and chances of winning, can disappear in 2 clicks from the opponent... or vice versa, and it appears like luck was the deciding factor...
But I mainly arrived at the same oracle into stlakers due to mutas. Phoenix just aren't a unit you want to make vs Zerg. You don't want to go colossi then have to make phoenix. You have to be so much better than your opponent to not end up too far behind economically or not end up with the wrong balance/composition. It just wasn't worth it. You wanted to feel like you could win the game if you were around the same level as your opponent.
Hello playa.
What would you change about what you said earlier?
You said in Grandmaster there are zergs who play without hotkeys and that zerg is the easiest race. What is your idea of chaning it ?
Do you think that Zerg gamers have the lowest average skill level in Starcraft 2 out of the three races?
I play on the KR server, and it is blatantly untrue that Zerg players do not use hotkeys. Also, it is untrue that Zerg us the race requiring the least skill, ZvT requires a great deal of skill for both sides, ZvZ requires incredible, consistent micro, and I think PvZ is just stupid and consists either of 2-3 base all-ins or 200/200 1a battles with both players desperately trying to cast some spells or kill the enemy spellcasters before the fight
But I am confused now.
Teamliquid user "playa" said that Zerg is the easiest race and some Grandmaster Zerg players don't even use hotkeys. Who am I supposed to believe now
i think noregret is the gm who doesnt use any hotkeys?
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
I hated viper vs colossi. It was so coin flippy to me. It's so stressful/annoying when so much of your army strength, and chances of winning, can disappear in 2 clicks from the opponent... or vice versa, and it appears like luck was the deciding factor...
But I mainly arrived at the same oracle into stlakers due to mutas. Phoenix just aren't a unit you want to make vs Zerg. You don't want to go colossi then have to make phoenix. You have to be so much better than your opponent to not end up too far behind economically or not end up with the wrong balance/composition. It just wasn't worth it. You wanted to feel like you could win the game if you were around the same level as your opponent.
Hello playa.
What would you change about what you said earlier?
You said in Grandmaster there are zergs who play without hotkeys and that zerg is the easiest race. What is your idea of chaning it ?
Do you think that Zerg gamers have the lowest average skill level in Starcraft 2 out of the three races?
I play on the KR server, and it is blatantly untrue that Zerg players do not use hotkeys. Also, it is untrue that Zerg us the race requiring the least skill, ZvT requires a great deal of skill for both sides, ZvZ requires incredible, consistent micro, and I think PvZ is just stupid and consists either of 2-3 base all-ins or 200/200 1a battles with both players desperately trying to cast some spells or kill the enemy spellcasters before the fight
But I am confused now.
Teamliquid user "playa" said that Zerg is the easiest race and some Grandmaster Zerg players don't even use hotkeys. Who am I supposed to believe now
Caveat: I mainly played NA. I used to show screenshots of top GM games on NA vs Zerg players. It would be max vs max. I would have all hotkeys being used and my opponent would have 0. Many players either only use the select all army hotkey or would only hotkey their queens. Select all then A-move allowed players, seriously, to reach number 1 GM.
The biggest reason I thought Zerg was the hardest in BW was due to the 12 unit limit (hard to control 100 lings, etc with a unit restriction). Without a unit selection cap, for Zerg, it's going to inherently be easier, as long as its more about flooding the opponent with cheap/expendable units. So, a unit limit would instantly increase the skill needed for Zerg.
In HotS, if you microed like a god, and could control the endless amounts of spells, etc, then you'd win the ground battles. It had nothing to do with Zerg's skill/ability. When it comes to which race is more difficult/less, it's always "follow the non Koreans." Ie., which non Koreans seem to always have the most success and how? If a lot of people are winning macro games with a race vs Koreans, then their race is probably easier. The best news in LotV was the warp in nerf: all-ins are the easiest to execute/have success with. If people win 60% of the time if they all-in, and they choose to all-in a lot, you end up playing an imbalanced game or forced to all-in yourself.
This is why it's so troubling that D Kim stopped acknowledging win rates at various stages in the game. He stopped caring about the reality and only wanted to show what would fit his narrative for doing a good job.
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
I hated viper vs colossi. It was so coin flippy to me. It's so stressful/annoying when so much of your army strength, and chances of winning, can disappear in 2 clicks from the opponent... or vice versa, and it appears like luck was the deciding factor...
But I mainly arrived at the same oracle into stlakers due to mutas. Phoenix just aren't a unit you want to make vs Zerg. You don't want to go colossi then have to make phoenix. You have to be so much better than your opponent to not end up too far behind economically or not end up with the wrong balance/composition. It just wasn't worth it. You wanted to feel like you could win the game if you were around the same level as your opponent.
Hello playa.
What would you change about what you said earlier?
You said in Grandmaster there are zergs who play without hotkeys and that zerg is the easiest race. What is your idea of chaning it ?
Do you think that Zerg gamers have the lowest average skill level in Starcraft 2 out of the three races?
I play on the KR server, and it is blatantly untrue that Zerg players do not use hotkeys. Also, it is untrue that Zerg us the race requiring the least skill, ZvT requires a great deal of skill for both sides, ZvZ requires incredible, consistent micro, and I think PvZ is just stupid and consists either of 2-3 base all-ins or 200/200 1a battles with both players desperately trying to cast some spells or kill the enemy spellcasters before the fight
But I am confused now.
Teamliquid user "playa" said that Zerg is the easiest race and some Grandmaster Zerg players don't even use hotkeys. Who am I supposed to believe now
i think noregret is the gm who doesnt use any hotkeys?
Noregret was one of them, who was routinely number 1 on ladder. "Endoftheline" was a high GM player with 100'ish APM who didn't use hotkeys, either. It was stupidly hard to beat him, no matter how many mistakes he made, and even though he only used select all so couldn't harass... the micro requirement and variety of units needed was just so much more.
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
Well, who would have thought? The match-up based around the most insane hardcounters in the game (Phoenix-Mutalisk, Immortal-Roach, Viper-Colossi, etc) ends up having the least strategic diversity.
Seriously, though. The hardcounter system pigeonholes players into a specific playstyle, which is why PvZ, despite featuring far more unit diversity than TvZ and TvT, is so insanely frustrating
Thankfully, Zergs have been enjoying the Lurker and Ultralisk so much that they haven't been building Vipers so I've been able to build expensive Protoss units again. In time, I trust the Viper will begin to ruin my games again, and I'm not sure how effective two base timings are going to be.
Though i find Lotv much more fun to play due to the speed of the game, and getting through the tedious early game. ..I likely wouldn't have improved as fast if the pace of the game was like Hots or WoL. Which i rarely played.
Losses are far more painful when you have to commit more time to just getting out of the early game. Knowing that you have to play for 7 mins or so until things really start happening again, makes it not nearly as fun.
In Lotv i loose, its like whatever 2 mins and i'm in the middle of a vibrant new game.
I'd like to mention another reality/problem that invariably kills this scene: you can lose to a hacker in WCS qualifers and there is no recourse. I'm not talking about going "full avilo." I'm talking about you know the guy is hacking, 100%, but if you don't play at a high level, then you won't understand just how conclusive it is. So, in turn, no one at Blizzard can help you in a tournament unless you're a "big name."
There shouldn't be much interest to play this game online, in tournaments, unless both players are given full vision. The rampant amount of hacking is very understated and makes mirror matchups next to impossible to win. Experimenting with full vision is about the only way to create some interest outside of pumping money in... Nerfing blatantly OP units months after the obviousness is just pathetic -- not motivating or anything along those lines.
On January 09 2016 15:23 Cyanocyst wrote: Hate that speed change idea.
Though i find Lotv much more fun to play due to the speed of the game, and getting through the tedious early game. ..I likely wouldn't have improved as fast if the pace of the game was like Hots or WoL. Which i rarely played.
Losses are far more painful when you have to commit more time to just getting out of the early game. Knowing that you have to play for 7 mins or so until things really start happening again, makes it not nearly as fun.
In Lotv i loose, its like whatever 2 mins and i'm in the middle of a vibrant new game.
100% agree with this post.
In HOTS I once played a 3 hour mech game, thank god I won. I'm afraid to consider what that loss did to the poor mech player
We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
Why would you ask the best players there are, how to improve the game for the (much) less skilled players? That makes no sense. Ask the bronze players what they think about it. Get some bronze players and simply test it. However in general I am not a big fan of making an artificial limit which wil be very hard to breach because you are not used to it. And how is it going to work when a gold players plays vs a plat?
We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
Why would you ask the best players there are, how to improve the game for the (much) less skilled players? That makes no sense. Ask the bronze players what they think about it. Get some bronze players and simply test it. However in general I am not a big fan of making an artificial limit which wil be very hard to breach because you are not used to it. And how is it going to work when a gold players plays vs a plat?
The gold player get to play at normal speed, the plat player play at faster obviously.
The game speed change is approaching everything from entirely the wrong angle imo. It would be just a band aid for a game that has little to no supporting pillars for new players who want to try competitive. The proper way to introduce new players and keep them is to
- Incentivize actually playing competitive 1v1. No, a lame bonus pool is not enough to incentivize to mass game and get better. More importantly, it's not a fun mechanic and is kind of forced incentivization. You want to get to a place where people play because they enjoy the process, not because they're afraid of falling down in rank. Expand the leveling up system somehow, introduce unit skins. It worked for TF2, it worked for CS:GO, it's worked for Dota 2, it's going to work for SC2, without degrading the game quality at all as long as you don't make the skins bonkers. It's kind of mind boggling to me how they haven't done this already. - Introduce an actual way for new players to incrementally improve themselves. Just some ideas: - Introduces 'challenges' or something that reward you for maxing supply in a game before [x] mark. That reward you for winning a competitive game while not being supply blocked for more than 10 seconds the entire game. There should be dozens of types of these with different landmarks to reach, and good rewards for reaching them. - Introduce an ingame coaching system. Players upload replays, other players can view them publically and give advice. Uploaded player rates advice, and both players get something for doing so. - Introduce a proper way for players to learn all the hotkeys and stuff in the game. There's more than just unit production. Every player should know about stuff like the fast warpin trick, camera location hotkeys, fastest way to inject, etc. - Honestly it's pretty trivial to come up with good stuff here. But I honestly doubt that Blizz even has interested in engaging in something like this right now, for a lack of developers who can work on that stuff. But whatever, then don't complain when no new players join your game.
The idea of different speed game for Bronze, Silver and Gold is horrible!
First of all, as Platinum player I play very often against Golds and sometimes against Silvers (high MMR, people leveling accounts I guess?). What speed are we supposed to play?
Secondly - I have another account to play only as Random, which is in Gold. If they introduce this lower speed for leagues bellow Plat I am not going to touch this account. I can't imagine not playing on Fastest. I may be a complete noob, but I play casually since WoL premiere. This is the speed of SC2!
Seriously, what kind if idea is that? o.O
There is so many more ideas that could be introduced to encourage new or casual players. For example what @heishe wrote above my post. How hard it is to understand for Blizzard that skin packs are the way to go? I personally don't care about it, but apparently this is what makes many games so popular, or even made them so popular in the first place.
Blizzard - whatever you are smoking there, change the supplier! That's not working!
We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
Why would you ask the best players there are, how to improve the game for the (much) less skilled players? That makes no sense. Ask the bronze players what they think about it. Get some bronze players and simply test it. However in general I am not a big fan of making an artificial limit which wil be very hard to breach because you are not used to it. And how is it going to work when a gold players plays vs a plat?
The gold player get to play at normal speed, the plat player play at faster obviously.
Please take your low content trolling somewhere else. Hm, the only thing that seems fair to be is that it wouls be played on faster speed. If a gold meets a plat they have plat mmr anyway.
We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
Why would you ask the best players there are, how to improve the game for the (much) less skilled players? That makes no sense. Ask the bronze players what they think about it. Get some bronze players and simply test it. However in general I am not a big fan of making an artificial limit which wil be very hard to breach because you are not used to it. And how is it going to work when a gold players plays vs a plat?
The gold player get to play at normal speed, the plat player play at faster obviously.
Please take your low content trolling somewhere else. Hm, the only thing that seems fair to be is that it wouls be played on faster speed. If a gold meets a plat they have plat mmr anyway.
Obviously Blizzard is not that dumb. The only way this system works is with two pools that do not play each other and some convoluted promotion process which is more or less permanent.
We have received multiple pieces of feedback from Korean pro players who believe it would be nice if lower-level players had a slower game speed on ladder, similar to how it is in co-op missions mode.
Why would you ask the best players there are, how to improve the game for the (much) less skilled players? That makes no sense. Ask the bronze players what they think about it. Get some bronze players and simply test it. However in general I am not a big fan of making an artificial limit which wil be very hard to breach because you are not used to it. And how is it going to work when a gold players plays vs a plat?
The gold player get to play at normal speed, the plat player play at faster obviously.
Please take your low content trolling somewhere else. Hm, the only thing that seems fair to be is that it wouls be played on faster speed. If a gold meets a plat they have plat mmr anyway.
Low content?!?! FYI, I had a great follow up planned with gravitational wells (I'd have calculated the mass needed) and a "the technology isn't there yet" reference. Anyway, ok, fair enough...
So the reason I think different game speeds is a bad idea is basically that you will get a bunch of people that would like to play on the speed they are not playing on. On TL you would mainly see people in gold- wanting to play at usual speed (I'd be in that group for example), but I can definitely imagine non-TL players advancing to platinum being annoyed at the different game speed, messing up the build they were doing in gold.
And that is assuming everyone is placed in their appropriate league. While blizzzards MMR and match making is pretty good, bar a few hickups, their league placement is often incredibly inaccurate and misleading. - Imagine a diamond or master player that pick up player at the end of a season, get a bit unlucky in placement and get placed in gold, but then the ladder lock is in place, and they'll have to play on normal for the rest of the season. - How about team leagues? I have a bunch of friends playing, and we have easily 5-10 different team configurations,each with its own MMR and leagues that typically is well below our MMR and skill level as we have few games with each configuration. - How about a master player that first place in gold and then go on a 25 game win-streak, and the ladder won't change league until his first loss? - Maybe the most important one: evolution over time. We all know that as the lower level players drop of from the ladder, it'll be increasingly difficult to stay in the higher leagues. That means that today's platinum and gold over time will fall down into gold and below even if they stay at the same skill level.
All in all, game speed by league assumes: 1) Everyone below a certain skill benefits from playing at a slower pace, everyone above doesn't. 2) League is an accurate gauge of a players skill. Both of which are clearly not true.
So how SHOULD we make it more inviting for lower level players? I wrote a long post in another thread half a year ago about how we need more skill-related achievements for players that don't require you to beat your opponent, such as hitting your build order, producing X number of unit Y, getting a unit with Z kills, etc. And we need to put huge focus on them, popping up after the game. Not a big "DEFEAT!!! > : ( YOU SUCK!!!", but achievement bars popping up "nailed the build", "great injects", "fighter drones", "top 3 control" etc. It's a very basic principle of setting up goals that you have to make goals that you have full control over. So for example don't set up a goal like "I'll win the local 100m competition", but rather "I'll train three times a week for my 100m sprint". You get the idea. The principle is similar to what heishe posted:
On January 09 2016 19:02 heishe wrote: The game speed change is approaching everything from entirely the wrong angle imo. It would be just a band aid for a game that has little to no supporting pillars for new players who want to try competitive. The proper way to introduce new players and keep them is to
- Incentivize actually playing competitive 1v1. No, a lame bonus pool is not enough to incentivize to mass game and get better. More importantly, it's not a fun mechanic and is kind of forced incentivization. You want to get to a place where people play because they enjoy the process, not because they're afraid of falling down in rank. Expand the leveling up system somehow, introduce unit skins. It worked for TF2, it worked for CS:GO, it's worked for Dota 2, it's going to work for SC2, without degrading the game quality at all as long as you don't make the skins bonkers. It's kind of mind boggling to me how they haven't done this already. - Introduce an actual way for new players to incrementally improve themselves. Just some ideas: - Introduces 'challenges' or something that reward you for maxing supply in a game before [x] mark. That reward you for winning a competitive game while not being supply blocked for more than 10 seconds the entire game. There should be dozens of types of these with different landmarks to reach, and good rewards for reaching them. - Introduce an ingame coaching system. Players upload replays, other players can view them publically and give advice. Uploaded player rates advice, and both players get something for doing so. - Introduce a proper way for players to learn all the hotkeys and stuff in the game. There's more than just unit production. Every player should know about stuff like the fast warpin trick, camera location hotkeys, fastest way to inject, etc. - Honestly it's pretty trivial to come up with good stuff here. But I honestly doubt that Blizz even has interested in engaging in something like this right now, for a lack of developers who can work on that stuff. But whatever, then don't complain when no new players join your game.
Maybe they could add an option when looking for a ladder game that lets you choose the slower speed. That way people can get paired against other fellas looking for a slower game, and can choose to transition to the fastest mode whenever they feel like it.
It's obvious that the game is too overwhelming for new players with the new economy.
God damnit, protoss strong ? Ok I'm done with the game for sometime, I'm tired of playing zergs and them feeling so op to me (dont know if its the case, but thats the feeling, diamond player). I play twice more zergs than protoss and terrans, its crazy.
PO nerf is ok PB nerf is ok Adepts -> remove +13 bonus vs light and make a 20 flat damage instead. This way they won't 2 shot marines/workers, they will still 2 shots lings, they will scale much better in late game. 20 flat is too much? then put it 15 but with increased attack speed, and resonating glaives gives +5 damage instead of increase attack speed. Lurkers -> make hive tech Ravagers -> increase bile cooldown+ give armored tag
they will still 2 shots lings, they will scale much better in late game. 20 flat is too much?
The late game change is easy enough to fix though. Reasoning Glaves should just be a more expensive upgrade and take longer to research, and then you can increase the attack speed bonus to 60% or something like that.
It really makes no sense that it costs 100/100 and is relatively fast to research as that makes it better for early midgame timings than later game viability.
If they do anything with the game speed, it should be an option, as others here have argued, not an automatic mechanism. I'm a casual player, mostly 2v2, and have oscillated between gold and plat the last couple of years. It would be incredibly annoying to have to adapt to different speeds all the time.
And is it not already possible to change the game speed in custom games (or do I confuse sc1 and sc2?). In that case I would prefer they improve upon the channels where one can find other players wanting to play custom games on lower speeds, or that they made a separate "training ladder".
20 flat is too much. I tested it and the adept singlehandedly starts beating roach/ravager/hydra/ling compositions. Also turns the adept in a pretty good counter to the marauder and still counters marines. Do I need to mention warpgate allins with that? 15 with increased attack speed and +5attack upgrade is probably very similar if you aim for similar dps. Some relations (zerglings) might be different, but for most relations it wouldn't matter too much.
Don't know about more expensive upgrade, I don't think the upgrade is what is causing big problems. I don't think the units stats are what is causing problems. It's the places the adept reaches with psionic transfer and warpgates/prisms.
On January 09 2016 22:34 Big J wrote: 20 flat is too much. I tested it and the adept singlehandedly starts beating roach/ravager/hydra/ling compositions. Also turns the adept in a pretty good counter to the marauder and still counters marines. Do I need to mention warpgate allins with that? 15 with increased attack speed and +5attack upgrade is probably very similar if you aim for similar dps. Some relations (zerglings) might be different, but for most relations it wouldn't matter too much.
Don't know about more expensive upgrade, I don't think the upgrade is what is causing big problems. I don't think the units stats are what is causing problems. It's the places the adept reaches with psionic transfer and warpgates/prisms.
Agree. Blizzard should focus on the Warp Prism more to solve this but unfortunately no mention of that in this update when it was brought up many times by the community already.
I think early game TVP is more a question of good game design than a balance issue. This might be hard to admit for a lead game designer. And it surely wont improve by watching it closely.
Changing the game speed is just an awful idea. Did Blizzard really ask pros which would be like asking gold players their ideas on balance, or did they just make it up to drum up support their their own idea? It just doesn't make any sense. The gold player will on attempting to promote themselves to platinum will not only play with every single macro timing in the game wrong, but with the simple micro that underpins basic unit interactions everyone relies on completely to be completely wrong as well.
On January 09 2016 14:06 playa wrote: It killed my soul to have to go mass blink stalker every game vs Zerg in HotS.
The Viper killed everyone's soul for forcing us to do that. I just did 2 base timings pre-Viper to avoid playing versus that dumb unit, but then I just quit HOTS altogether.
I hated viper vs colossi. It was so coin flippy to me. It's so stressful/annoying when so much of your army strength, and chances of winning, can disappear in 2 clicks from the opponent... or vice versa, and it appears like luck was the deciding factor...
But I mainly arrived at the same oracle into stlakers due to mutas. Phoenix just aren't a unit you want to make vs Zerg. You don't want to go colossi then have to make phoenix. You have to be so much better than your opponent to not end up too far behind economically or not end up with the wrong balance/composition. It just wasn't worth it. You wanted to feel like you could win the game if you were around the same level as your opponent.
Hello playa.
What would you change about what you said earlier?
You said in Grandmaster there are zergs who play without hotkeys and that zerg is the easiest race. What is your idea of chaning it ?
Do you think that Zerg gamers have the lowest average skill level in Starcraft 2 out of the three races?
I play on the KR server, and it is blatantly untrue that Zerg players do not use hotkeys. Also, it is untrue that Zerg us the race requiring the least skill, ZvT requires a great deal of skill for both sides, ZvZ requires incredible, consistent micro, and I think PvZ is just stupid and consists either of 2-3 base all-ins or 200/200 1a battles with both players desperately trying to cast some spells or kill the enemy spellcasters before the fight
But I am confused now.
Teamliquid user "playa" said that Zerg is the easiest race and some Grandmaster Zerg players don't even use hotkeys. Who am I supposed to believe now
Caveat: I mainly played NA. I used to show screenshots of top GM games on NA vs Zerg players. It would be max vs max. I would have all hotkeys being used and my opponent would have 0. Many players either only use the select all army hotkey or would only hotkey their queens. Select all then A-move allowed players, seriously, to reach number 1 GM.
Ok I think I understand your point of view. Zerg players just do A-move attack without hotkeys after they press all army button. Maybe David Kim could make Zerg like bw again where you cannot control more units so zerg has harder time with management?
Or what solution would you say is good way to go about it?
Why not make unranked ladder for players with bronze to silver mmr play at a slighly lower game speed? I don't think Blizzard should slow down the ranked ladder, but I don't see an issue slowing down unranked a bit for the new players out there.
On January 10 2016 01:07 Ctone23 wrote: Why not make unranked ladder for players with bronze to silver mmr play at a slighly lower game speed? I don't think Blizzard should slow down the ranked ladder, but I don't see an issue slowing down unranked a bit for the new players out there.
Why? And at which speed is a ranked vs unranked match going to be played?
A long while back there was a post from David Kim on reducing the insane amount of damage that SC2 units can dish out. The idea was to allow players more time to micro the fight by saving injured units and repositioning units to counter the enemy.
Obviously it got shelved as the rebalancing of units would have been a huge job (shame they never had a long beta period to try something like this ).
This would have been a better way of slowing down the game, both for players and spectators. Especially for casuals the fights in SC2 seem to be over in the blink of an eye and you are dependent on the analysis from the casters to understand what happened.
On January 10 2016 03:09 DeadByDawn wrote: A long while back there was a post from David Kim on reducing the insane amount of damage that SC2 units can dish out. The idea was to allow players more time to micro the fight by saving injured units and repositioning units to counter the enemy.
Obviously it got shelved as the rebalancing of units would have been a huge job (shame they never had a long beta period to try something like this ).
This would have been a better way of slowing down the game, both for players and spectators. Especially for casuals the fights in SC2 seem to be over in the blink of an eye and you are dependent on the analysis from the casters to understand what happened.
It was more than shelved. There's even more damage output now.
I actually don't think roach ravager is OP, as time goes on people will be doing other things. It doesn't transtion as well into lategame as other comps. Mostly Zergs don't know what to build and ravager is an all around solid comp so they all default to building ravagers. Not really a balance issue imo. I would say wait, I actually don't think the game is incredibly imbalanced at the moment, people just whine and don't know how to play so they blame the game. If there are areas that are imbalanced it's not clear how badly or even what the correct fix would be. So no, wait for a season or so.
On January 10 2016 03:41 crazedrat wrote: I actually don't think roach ravager is OP, as time goes on people will be doing other things. It doesn't transtion as well into lategame as other comps. Mostly Zergs don't know what to build and ravager is an all around solid comp so they all default to building ravagers. Not really a balance issue imo. I would say wait, I actually don't think the game is incredibly imbalanced at the moment, people just whine and don't know how to play so they blame the game. If there are areas that are imbalanced it's not clear how badly or even what the correct fix would be. So no, wait for a season or so.
Roaches should be 1 supply (and Ravager 3) and have marginally worse core stats. This would make them slightly worse in midgame and more viable late game.
On January 10 2016 03:41 crazedrat wrote: I actually don't think roach ravager is OP, as time goes on people will be doing other things. It doesn't transtion as well into lategame as other comps. Mostly Zergs don't know what to build and ravager is an all around solid comp so they all default to building ravagers. Not really a balance issue imo. I would say wait, I actually don't think the game is incredibly imbalanced at the moment, people just whine and don't know how to play so they blame the game. If there are areas that are imbalanced it's not clear how badly or even what the correct fix would be. So no, wait for a season or so.
Roaches should be 1 supply (and Ravager 3) and have marginally worse core stats. This would make them slightly worse in midgame and more viable late game.
No, roaches should actually just be removed, and the early/mid game units redesigned around that hole in Zerg defense. It's just a plain boring and stupid unit, it's also by far the most not-Zerg like unit in the Zerg arsenal.
Its original design intention was actually to be a beefy harasser that burrows everywhere and is annoying, with its early game function just there to transition into a place where its safe to tech But that clearly failed. Think about how the roach is used now: It's a slow ranged unit with mediocre damage output and high health that is mostly a moved. It's not like Zerg at all and more importantly, it's not interesting at all.
Zerg needs more units that benefit from the player skill directly. Zerg is mostly a move right now, with a few spammable spell caster abilities, which creates this kind of weird dynamic where it's most powerful for bad players, because it's easy to use and hard to counter, and weaker and weaker the stronger the Zerg player gets because their opponents learn to deal with stuff like ravager biles and the Zerg can't use their skill to improve its usage. Toss and Terran have heaps and heaps of units that benefit greatly from positioning and micro of the player throughout all phases of the game. Zerg has Mutas and maybe the Lurker and that's mostly it. The rest is mostly a move.
On January 10 2016 03:41 crazedrat wrote: I actually don't think roach ravager is OP, as time goes on people will be doing other things. It doesn't transtion as well into lategame as other comps. Mostly Zergs don't know what to build and ravager is an all around solid comp so they all default to building ravagers. Not really a balance issue imo. I would say wait, I actually don't think the game is incredibly imbalanced at the moment, people just whine and don't know how to play so they blame the game. If there are areas that are imbalanced it's not clear how badly or even what the correct fix would be. So no, wait for a season or so.
Roaches should be 1 supply (and Ravager 3) and have marginally worse core stats. This would make them slightly worse in midgame and more viable late game.
The ravager does not feel imbalanced to me. Midgame if you have problems use drops and defend. I don't use mass roach ravager in any matchup, .. they scale off as you approach lategame, hold out and you will be doing well. At most 4-5 ravagers is good. That amount does scale well, but more and the investment in roaches - you don't want that.
Also I want to say that I do not care if bronze gets a slower speed, actually I think it's an excellent idea, I don't know why you would not do this. I've said many times this has to be the hardest game for a noob to learn of any game I've ever seen.
Its the same thing as before. What happened back then was that the game did not improve. Why would it be different now? Because of David Kim?
Blizzard cares about balance 99%. Exaggerating. Still, I really wish they did changes cuz of Design. It would make the game healthier which means more fun but is it gonna happen? I seriously doubt it.
On January 10 2016 03:09 DeadByDawn wrote: A long while back there was a post from David Kim on reducing the insane amount of damage that SC2 units can dish out. The idea was to allow players more time to micro the fight by saving injured units and repositioning units to counter the enemy.
Obviously it got shelved as the rebalancing of units would have been a huge job (shame they never had a long beta period to try something like this ).
This would have been a better way of slowing down the game, both for players and spectators. Especially for casuals the fights in SC2 seem to be over in the blink of an eye and you are dependent on the analysis from the casters to understand what happened.
Yeah, it's really too bad. Then they went and introduced units like the disruptor and abilities like parasitic bomb, which just make it even more volatile.
Why couldn't they just start simple and give everything an HP buff while keeping the damage the same? Got to start somewhere. Probably too late at this point.
On January 10 2016 03:41 crazedrat wrote: I actually don't think roach ravager is OP, as time goes on people will be doing other things. It doesn't transtion as well into lategame as other comps. Mostly Zergs don't know what to build and ravager is an all around solid comp so they all default to building ravagers. Not really a balance issue imo. I would say wait, I actually don't think the game is incredibly imbalanced at the moment, people just whine and don't know how to play so they blame the game. If there are areas that are imbalanced it's not clear how badly or even what the correct fix would be. So no, wait for a season or so.
Roaches should be 1 supply (and Ravager 3) and have marginally worse core stats. This would make them slightly worse in midgame and more viable late game.
No, roaches should actually just be removed, and the early/mid game units redesigned around that hole in Zerg defense. It's just a plain boring and stupid unit, it's also by far the most not-Zerg like unit in the Zerg arsenal.
Its original design intention was actually to be a beefy harasser that burrows everywhere and is annoying, with its early game function just there to transition into a place where its safe to tech But that clearly failed. Think about how the roach is used now: It's a slow ranged unit with mediocre damage output and high health that is mostly a moved. It's not like Zerg at all and more importantly, it's not interesting at all.
Zerg needs more units that benefit from the player skill directly. Zerg is mostly a move right now, with a few spammable spell caster abilities, which creates this kind of weird dynamic where it's most powerful for bad players, because it's easy to use and hard to counter, and weaker and weaker the stronger the Zerg player gets because their opponents learn to deal with stuff like ravager biles and the Zerg can't use their skill to improve its usage. Toss and Terran have heaps and heaps of units that benefit greatly from positioning and micro of the player throughout all phases of the game. Zerg has Mutas and maybe the Lurker and that's mostly it. The rest is mostly a move.
Most of this is right except the speed. Roaches are not slow at all. Unupgraded yes. But not after speed upgrade and on creep(they almost are as fast as Hellions wtf). They are actually too fast then for the stats they have. They are also tanky and have ok damage and can be burrowed AND are cheap. They should have been adjusted a long time ago.
But Im afraid SC 2 will never be really balanced. During the 5 years there was constantly back and forth which race is stronger and there where some terrible designs in terms of Units. e.g. reapers,oracles, mutas with speed buff and regen now adepts, all units that are frustating to play against because they are fast, hard to catch and can get to full Hp (for the most part). One playstyle has basiclly been cut for one race(Mech) and the others aren´t relly diverse either. The balance team doesn´t know what is good for the game which is sad. The Game needs to change(something that should have been done at the beginning of the beta) or the future for it will be dark.
Adding another tank that takes longer to siege, does higher dmg, and cannot be transported in shooting mode would give Terran interesting choices to make and it would give an answer to ultras from the factory. Keeping thors strong versus air units but making them less strong against ground units would be a fair compensation.
Zerg muta switch in ZvP is awful to deal with. Buffing archon anti air would limit the strength of the lategame muta switch while making storm more viable in ZvP. More options is usually better right?
On January 10 2016 03:09 DeadByDawn wrote: A long while back there was a post from David Kim on reducing the insane amount of damage that SC2 units can dish out. The idea was to allow players more time to micro the fight by saving injured units and repositioning units to counter the enemy.
Obviously it got shelved as the rebalancing of units would have been a huge job (shame they never had a long beta period to try something like this ).
This would have been a better way of slowing down the game, both for players and spectators. Especially for casuals the fights in SC2 seem to be over in the blink of an eye and you are dependent on the analysis from the casters to understand what happened.
It was more than shelved. There's even more damage output now.
Terrible, terrible d.. well, you get the point
Newly introduced units tend to be more resilient at the same time. If one looks at the new additions in this expansion, adepts have an escape ability, disruptors shoot safely from a distance, lurkers are invisible and ranged, cyclones are very fast and maneuverable, ravagers augment roaches with hit points and range, liberators are fairly beefy. Most of those units are gas-heavy and expensive as well. I think the high damage output mainly targets marines and zealots, that is to say mineral units. I'm curious whether army compositions will over time drift towards emphasizing gas units, treating mineral units as disposable fodder. A related example based on the same dynamics is the bio composition where frequent trading causes marines to die and medivacs to survive, only straining mineral income. I don't know how it works out in practice though.
Im very positive with the thoughts of the balance team, really undermining how they have been working with the community, in particular pros, and have gotten a better sense of the new game.
Now, for the changes, I think all of Korea is pretty much agreeing that pylon overcharge has a problem, that concerns mostly energy cost, but possibly damage too. The option of a third base from 3:10 - 4:00 vs T and Z with mostly no problem to reflect aggression or harassment simply concludes into too many viable unit compositions and forces Terran in particular to not be able to play aggressive in the mid game and be very vulnerable to warpprism harassment at the same time. I think regarding the warpprism - adept issue, I have heard korean pros such as Dream, Forte and Byun talk about the pick up range being still very difficult in many cases and True actually suggested it to be better if the shade ability had a higher cooldown too, however I also agree with your point that the issue should be waited out longer until players figure out how to deal with it, again in particular terran. I think the cyclone is still a big issue in the inability for high level korean Terrans to win TvPs, since warpprism escape it mostly due to missing vision - what about the suggestion that lock on grants vision for the duration - which would make the cyclone better versus all forms of harass and fewer units would hardcounter it; for example stalker would be hardcountered by them before they have blink, opening a window of aggression in the ealry game and ealry mid game also against pylon overcharge, in my opinion exactly what terran needs & this change would barely affect TvZ since the cyclone is not used and hard to imagine to mass up with, since the few HP and big cost. TvZ seems surprisingly balanced on highest level at the moment, with the meta swifting into Terrans favor slightly. Although the meta has always been focusing on heavy mid game drop or push styles by both races, meaning there is few to be sure about the late game, apart from that aswell ghosts and liberators seem more than enough to deal with the new ultras, however mass liberator lategame seems to still be neglected by parasitic bomb and corruptors (also combined with spores & queens). Obviously even the best of the best have yet found it hard to deal with "mass" reaper openings, but I do think that is extremely dependent of the map & often just an element terran has, to be favored on some maps.
Furthermore, everyone really, really enjoys the game, all agree that it is better than HotS considering high level development. Lastly, keep an eye on Zerg endgame overall and the skillceiling of tankivacs and adept/disruptor warpprism, could prove to be situationally undefeatable.
On January 10 2016 14:38 oGsChess wrote: Im very positive with the thoughts of the balance team, really undermining how they have been working with the community, in particular pros, and have gotten a better sense of the new game.
Now, for the changes, I think all of Korea is pretty much agreeing that pylon overcharge has a problem, that concerns mostly energy cost, but possibly damage too. The option of a third base from 3:10 - 4:00 vs T and Z with mostly no problem to reflect aggression or harassment simply concludes into too many viable unit compositions and forces Terran in particular to not be able to play aggressive in the mid game and be very vulnerable to warpprism harassment at the same time. I think regarding the warpprism - adept issue, I have heard korean pros such as Dream, Forte and Byun talk about the pick up range being still very difficult in many cases and True actually suggested it to be better if the shade ability had a higher cooldown too, however I also agree with your point that the issue should be waited out longer until players figure out how to deal with it, again in particular terran. I think the cyclone is still a big issue in the inability for high level korean Terrans to win TvPs, since warpprism escape it mostly due to missing vision - what about the suggestion that lock on grants vision for the duration - which would make the cyclone better versus all forms of harass and fewer units would hardcounter it; for example stalker would be hardcountered by them before they have blink, opening a window of aggression in the ealry game and ealry mid game also against pylon overcharge, in my opinion exactly what terran needs & this change would barely affect TvZ since the cyclone is not used and hard to imagine to mass up with, since the few HP and big cost. TvZ seems surprisingly balanced on highest level at the moment, with the meta swifting into Terrans favor slightly. Although the meta has always been focusing on heavy mid game drop or push styles by both races, meaning there is few to be sure about the late game, apart from that aswell ghosts and liberators seem more than enough to deal with the new ultras, however mass liberator lategame seems to still be neglected by parasitic bomb and corruptors (also combined with spores & queens). Obviously even the best of the best have yet found it hard to deal with "mass" reaper openings, but I do think that is extremely dependent of the map & often just an element terran has, to be favored on some maps.
Furthermore, everyone really, really enjoys the game, all agree that it is better than HotS considering high level development. Lastly, keep an eye on Zerg endgame overall and the skillceiling of tankivacs and adept/disruptor warpprism, could prove to be situationally undefeatable.
On January 10 2016 03:41 crazedrat wrote: I actually don't think roach ravager is OP, as time goes on people will be doing other things. It doesn't transtion as well into lategame as other comps. Mostly Zergs don't know what to build and ravager is an all around solid comp so they all default to building ravagers. Not really a balance issue imo. I would say wait, I actually don't think the game is incredibly imbalanced at the moment, people just whine and don't know how to play so they blame the game. If there are areas that are imbalanced it's not clear how badly or even what the correct fix would be. So no, wait for a season or so.
Roaches should be 1 supply (and Ravager 3) and have marginally worse core stats. This would make them slightly worse in midgame and more viable late game.
Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
On January 10 2016 01:07 Ctone23 wrote: Why not make unranked ladder for players with bronze to silver mmr play at a slighly lower game speed? I don't think Blizzard should slow down the ranked ladder, but I don't see an issue slowing down unranked a bit for the new players out there.
Why? And at which speed is a ranked vs unranked match going to be played?
I think it would be better to have a "training ground" to avoid ranked vs unranked (assuming that will continue post ladder revamp). Maybe unranked vs ranked begins at gold league mmr? Unranked players with bronze or silver mmr are looped into the training grounds and is a separate ladder? Thinking out loud here..
Why? Quality of life improvement is at most what we're talking about. It's clear Blizzard is still thinking on the ladder revamp, so now is the time to make suggestions and discuss. The idea is to give players the option to play MP at a slightly lower speed, players who just completed the campaign, etc.. Just make it a another button on the ladder option, new players can still enter ranked if they want, or they can click to go into training.
tl;dr It would be nice to have an "official" option for new players to practice crisis management, macro/micro, to have a place where it's okay to be a noob practicing against other noobs.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
This is part of the game though, the randomess. Would it be awesome if blizzard fixed it? Yes. But right now this is hows it supposed to be.
I can't play on anything but the normal game speed. If I came back to ladder and had to play games on slower speeds I don't think I could keep myself playing long enough to deal with it.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
I played coop on normal speed and it feels just sooo dumb. And I'm just gold.
The fast speed should be taken care of by letting go of "terrible terrible damage abilities" like with Oracles, Banelings, and Mines. I played waaaay too many matches where the game was decided in a split second, with no chance for comeback. Thus resulting in a very disappointing feeling.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
it's not like there's limited ways to scout, it's just not standard in the way the race tends to play its strategies. 1 drone not mining for a full minute does actually matter.
if you did this as terran for say a widow mine drop build, your build would absolutely not be seemless, and it typically stalls the actual drop by more than 10 seconds. otherwise, you need to choose between having a lesser economy, being supply blocked, or having less units. the keyword is 'seemless', and you'll often see some pros not scout when they play certain openings because they understand how the scouting worker at the start of the game delays everything. instead, they rely on other methods, such as their opponents scout arriving at their base.
however, there are many builds where a worker scout after the first rax, gate, pylon is totally reasonable and the build is still working great.
for zerg, people just need to find the appropriate times to drone scout (and figure out the information they're presented) or simply to scout in general. obviously speed overlords and fast lair are not the option here. those options actually set the zerg so far behind it's not funny.
your argument may be: but it's worth all the information you get. that's a toss-up and is not necessarily correct. it's a common workaround response to people having difficulty scouting. the case is that you set yourself behind--increasingly so as the game goes on. notice how players don't build spores until the last moment possible? try to take lair after taking a third? don't get burrow until much later into a game? this is because they're not necessary to the strategy they have in mind, and not necessary for that stage of the game. yes, you are going to get all of those things eventually, but the later you have to get them, the better your economy goes.
keep in mind, every worker mining is just about 50 minerals a minute, possibly less. if you squeeze in a couple minutes of extra mining per extra drone you would have, it's an extra ~100 minerals (on top of the workers paying for themselves) that you wouldn't have had. that's just 2 minutes, for 2 workers.
once again, the goal should be to make whatever build you're making seemless and sensical.
On January 11 2016 19:48 DemigodcelpH wrote: Do they copy and paste this stuff? We don't want to "see how it plays out". Ravagers and parasitic bomb need to be nerfed ASAP.
Ravagers in what matchup? I find as mech ravagers to be pretty easy to fight against.
I was so shocked when i read the comment about the adepts. So i really need to see some tvp in GSL/ Starleague quick to see if i am just completely blind and biased or adept WP combination is imbalanced as shit and destroys options for the terran and blizzard didnt watch any replays/tourneys the past month. I hope the first thing is true and i get to see the "the counter" blizzard is waiting for to get a 50% win rate in tvp (i dont do 1/1/1).
Could someone with programing skills create a community feedback update generator so I don't have to wait for next week? It doesn't have to be very complicated, the more generic it sounds, the better! I'd do it myself but I lack skill and time for that.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
it's not like there's limited ways to scout, it's just not standard in the way the race tends to play its strategies. 1 drone not mining for a full minute does actually matter.
if you did this as terran for say a widow mine drop build, your build would absolutely not be seemless, and it typically stalls the actual drop by more than 10 seconds. otherwise, you need to choose between having a lesser economy, being supply blocked, or having less units. the keyword is 'seemless', and you'll often see some pros not scout when they play certain openings because they understand how the scouting worker at the start of the game delays everything. instead, they rely on other methods, such as their opponents scout arriving at their base.
however, there are many builds where a worker scout after the first rax, gate, pylon is totally reasonable and the build is still working great.
for zerg, people just need to find the appropriate times to drone scout (and figure out the information they're presented) or simply to scout in general. obviously speed overlords and fast lair are not the option here. those options actually set the zerg so far behind it's not funny.
your argument may be: but it's worth all the information you get. that's a toss-up and is not necessarily correct. it's a common workaround response to people having difficulty scouting. the case is that you set yourself behind--increasingly so as the game goes on. notice how players don't build spores until the last moment possible? try to take lair after taking a third? don't get burrow until much later into a game? this is because they're not necessary to the strategy they have in mind, and not necessary for that stage of the game. yes, you are going to get all of those things eventually, but the later you have to get them, the better your economy goes.
keep in mind, every worker mining is just about 50 minerals a minute, possibly less. if you squeeze in a couple minutes of extra mining per extra drone you would have, it's an extra ~100 minerals (on top of the workers paying for themselves) that you wouldn't have had. that's just 2 minutes, for 2 workers.
once again, the goal should be to make whatever build you're making seemless and sensical.
Hmmmm. This is an extremely interesting point you make. Is there any way you can demonstrate how a Terran sending out an SCV scout at an inappropriate time delays a Widow Mine drop?
On January 11 2016 06:15 Jj_82 wrote: I played coop on normal speed and it feels just sooo dumb. And I'm just gold.
The fast speed should be taken care of by letting go of "terrible terrible damage abilities" like with Oracles, Banelings, and Mines. I played waaaay too many matches where the game was decided in a split second, with no chance for comeback. Thus resulting in a very disappointing feeling.
Pretty much what has been said even since SC2 was released and needs to be said over and over again until Blizzard listens.
The problem is not the game speed. It's the damage output.
Everything dies so fast. That's why there is no time to react, not because of the speed. Even if you would micro your army the units would still die fast because of the damage!
I don't have a solution for the problem, maybe there is too much work do be done but I would just reduce damage across the board x %.
On January 11 2016 06:15 Jj_82 wrote: I played coop on normal speed and it feels just sooo dumb. And I'm just gold.
The fast speed should be taken care of by letting go of "terrible terrible damage abilities" like with Oracles, Banelings, and Mines. I played waaaay too many matches where the game was decided in a split second, with no chance for comeback. Thus resulting in a very disappointing feeling.
Pretty much what has been said even since SC2 was released and needs to be said over and over again until Blizzard listens.
The problem is not the game speed. It's the damage output.
Everything dies so fast. That's why there is no time to react, not because of the speed. Even if you would micro your army the units would still die fast because of the damage!
I don't have a solution for the problem, maybe there is too much work do be done but I would just reduce damage across the board x %.
It is not as simple as it sounds. It really is an interesting idea and people stated that it should have been done in the beta. I do not think there is any space for it now that the game is live because it changes the balance completely. For example they tried (intern as they said) attack speed reduction. But what does that result in? Banelings, disruptors get more powerful, onehit units in general, storm, emp etc. In case of a total damage reduction you have similar problems: One example for damage reduction is the siegetank (lets keep tankivac out of this thought). zerglings would get close to it without dying. Also things like flying into turrets etc. would not be punished as hard as now. As i said, i like the idea but its very complex and i do not see blizzard making such a huge change.
On January 11 2016 19:48 DemigodcelpH wrote: Do they copy and paste this stuff? We don't want to "see how it plays out". Ravagers and parasitic bomb need to be nerfed ASAP.
Because kneejerk reactions are always a good idea.
all i can say as a terran lotv is absolutely no fun to play... very limited strategy wise, vs protoss u cant attack at all until warp prism dies, while u have to watch out for so many protoss all ins ... vs zerg u its ok but once they get out ultralisks its kinda hope not to die until u hv enough ghosts. especially for none pro terran players i feel like its the worst sc2 so far... also i dont like the game pace at all, thats just my personal opinion... i did like the slow pace start with alot of scouting and try to read the enemy strategy at start.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
A big NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to changing game speed. i am a gold player and would hate a slower speed. You might as well make bronze be turn based then.
On January 12 2016 13:14 bigbadgreen wrote: You might as well make bronze be turn based then.
LOL... A turn based version of SC2 would be something. Hmmm... should I hit with this baneling now or should I wait the next turn... Let me think for a while...
As usual Blizzard doesn't understand where the "game is too fast" comes from. It's because Oracle can clean your mineral line in seconds(you're dead), adepts can do the same(you're dead), mutalisks are pain in the ass globally(super fast movement speed, fast regen), medevacs have boost now and mines can kill workers fast too. And all of this comes faster than in previous version of SC2 because the economy is super fast. How they cannot see this? Every unit they buffed in last few years became faster & deadlier!(probably not every unit, but you understand I hope )
Solution? Lets slow down lower leagues!
How about you would look at units and tune them down a little bit? This(game feels too fast to play) was reported from the beginning of the beta on all levels(I saw even masters unhappy with that) and yet they ignored it and now they are suggesting THIS?! If they reintroduce demotion again, it would be hilarious. One day you can be playing on fastest, the other day on faster! Sigh I am now sad
Edit> Also bases mines out faster which forces you to take expansions faster - you feel the game is faster
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Zerg economy being exponential has nothing to do with single drone, it just means that 1 drone is a lot less valuable than for other races.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Zerg economy being exponential has nothing to do with single drone, it just means that 1 drone is a lot less valuable than for other races.
In zvz a drone scout puts you behind quite a bit early game. 100 minerals less in the early game is a lot in a mirror. Zergling scout is early enough to tell what tech the opponent will possible go for.
You can hold any build with hatch first in zvz anyway on non 4 player maps. It's just the 4 player maps that add that dumb randomness in the matchup.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Zerg economy being exponential has nothing to do with single drone, it just means that 1 drone is a lot less valuable than for other races.
In zvz a drone scout puts you behind quite a bit early game. 100 minerals less in the early game is a lot in a mirror. Zergling scout is early enough to tell what tech the opponent will possible go for.
You can hold any build with hatch first in zvz anyway on non 4 player maps. It's just the 4 player maps that add that dumb randomness in the matchup.
Highly doubt, that any pro game has been lost because of 1 mining worker deficit. Hell, people even lose 10 workers mid game and still dont give a fuck.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Zerg economy being exponential has nothing to do with single drone, it just means that 1 drone is a lot less valuable than for other races.
In zvz a drone scout puts you behind quite a bit early game. 100 minerals less in the early game is a lot in a mirror. Zergling scout is early enough to tell what tech the opponent will possible go for.
You can hold any build with hatch first in zvz anyway on non 4 player maps. It's just the 4 player maps that add that dumb randomness in the matchup.
Highly doubt, that any pro game has been lost because of 1 mining worker deficit. Hell, people even lose 10 workers mid game and still dont give a fuck.
I'm pretty sure people would take pro players word over yours, especially when that 100 mineral comes early in the game where it DOES make bit difference
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Zerg economy being exponential has nothing to do with single drone, it just means that 1 drone is a lot less valuable than for other races.
In zvz a drone scout puts you behind quite a bit early game. 100 minerals less in the early game is a lot in a mirror. Zergling scout is early enough to tell what tech the opponent will possible go for.
You can hold any build with hatch first in zvz anyway on non 4 player maps. It's just the 4 player maps that add that dumb randomness in the matchup.
Highly doubt, that any pro game has been lost because of 1 mining worker deficit. Hell, people even lose 10 workers mid game and still dont give a fuck.
I'm pretty sure people would take pro players word over yours, especially when that 100 mineral comes early in the game where it DOES make bit difference
It doesnt matter where the words come, people should evaluate what sounds likely. Also, pro gamers often talk bullshit.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Zerg economy being exponential has nothing to do with single drone, it just means that 1 drone is a lot less valuable than for other races.
In zvz a drone scout puts you behind quite a bit early game. 100 minerals less in the early game is a lot in a mirror. Zergling scout is early enough to tell what tech the opponent will possible go for.
You can hold any build with hatch first in zvz anyway on non 4 player maps. It's just the 4 player maps that add that dumb randomness in the matchup.
Highly doubt, that any pro game has been lost because of 1 mining worker deficit. Hell, people even lose 10 workers mid game and still dont give a fuck.
I'm pretty sure people would take pro players word over yours, especially when that 100 mineral comes early in the game where it DOES make bit difference
It doesnt matter where the words come, people should evaluate what sounds likely. Also, pro gamers often talk bullshit.
Play through a build sending 1 drone to a corner of your base and then play through it without doing so. You will notice that it's not insignificant at all. It can mean the difference of like 4 roaches for a given timing, which can mean the difference between defending and not defending. In a game about seconds, everything matters.
As for the "changes", this is stupid. "We will wait and see" "We will monitor the situation" "Maybe but maybe not". Why not just make changes and if it's a problem, revert them with a hotfix? What's with being so afraid of making changes? The team has been way too scared of making changes for the entire lifetime of Starcraft II. That ladder speed change would never work so it's not even worth discussing. Playing on Fast is so much easier that players would never be able to get over the gap from Gold to Platinum. I'd say that a Silver player playing on Fast would be approximately as good as a Platinum player playing on Faster, the difference would be way too massive.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Thanks for posting scarlett. Could you explain for a gold zerg what information you get by seeing the scout? That they go hatch first?
Dear blizzard. i actually miss blink all in era. I would rather stop blink all ins all over again than beeing forced to stay in my base every tvp. Protoss can harass whit adeps so easy whit no risk. and when you clear it, THey have 3 bases.. and its not possible to punish it! Nothing really works. Late game are actually even worse than hots now. Because you cant snipe templars anymore lol.. emp? oh lets make some archons. tvp is horrible atm
Tvz: Ultralisk are to strong. Maraduers suck. Liberators is easy to avoid. Fungal + ultra.. cant even land snipe. AND if youre lucky and get 40 ghost, kill all ultras, Zerg remake them. and your ghost has 0 energy. and its gg..
Yet again, terrans are forced to go Marines tank medivac in all match ups.
As a Terran main I feel frustrated with Starcraft 2 currently. I have not played since back in WoL and I have now climbed back up to diamond (Currently rank 7.) The game feels really fast paced which I enjoy but currently it feels very stale to play Terran Marine/Tank seems to be dominant in all match ups and I feel forced to play certain ways in certain match ups.
TvP : The main one everyone is complaining about currently. The Protoss has a lot of very high damage harass units which can deal incredible damage to your economy while being fairly cheap. Mainly the Warp Prism / Adept or Oracle I'm talking about here. This forces you to stay in your base to defend your workers and even if you wanted to move out and attack PO will shut down nearly all aggression. Before the Protoss reaches 3 saturated bases drops are impossible to do due to the MSC being able to run between mineral lines. I think aiming nerfs at Adepts or Warp Prism and PO is the correct way to balance up this match up.
I have however noticed I win more and more games in TvP now due to building excessive amounts of defense to stop the inevitable all in attempt and when the game enters late game it feels a lot better. Once you reach around 10 liberators the Protoss starts having serious issues. I however think more usage of the Tempest can off set the strength of the liberator. Since Protoss usually establishes a economy lead during the early game since Terran has to turtle up to survive I think it is feasible to say Protoss can counter late game Terran with the use of the Tempest.
TvZ : God this match up makes me want to rip my hair out. Either you kill the Zerg before 10 minutes or you go full sim city turtle mode and create a fortress of doom to survive. Ultralisks can be dealt with by Ghosts or Liberators. But the Liberator gets countered by the Viper while the Ghost requires high numbers and very good micro to save.
Early to mid game feels alright all though I am having some trouble with dealing with Roach/Ravager. But I think this is mostly due to a lack of APM on my part to be able to stutter step forward my bio while I pickup and move my tanks from the bile. I would like to see the bile standing out a bit more though as I sometimes miss a bile shot or two in the mess. I think a bile range reduction could balance them out a bit more although this would require maps being redesigned due to the liberator and I'm unsure if a change is even needed.
TvT : Now this match up I mostly enjoy although doom drops suck. Mech seems fairly good but it can be countered by switching towards air Terran. A buff to the Thor would make mech even better here which I would like to see even though I play Marine/Tank. Honestly I don't have a lot to say about TvT. Compared to PvP or ZvZ it feels like we don't really have anything to complain about.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
ZvZ is very volatile now and an early 1 drone scout is actually stronger with how the econ is changed. Because you start with 12 workers and cap at 16. People are going 17 hatch / overdroning to about 19 before transfering. By that time the drone is coming back. What you lose now is much less than before. Then you consider the value of having the information. Also, dealing with exponential curves, the higher overall worker count dilutes the cost, and larvae / map control put a cap on production so even in an ideal sense it is not actually such an exponential curve. Even if he does blindly open hatch, if you really are worried about the minerals, you know his gas timing so you adjust yours, you are fine.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
ZvZ is very volatile now and an early 1 drone scout is actually stronger with how the econ is changed. Because you start with 12 workers and cap at 16. People are going 17 hatch / overdroning to about 19 before transfering. By that time the drone is coming back. What you lose now is much less than before. Then you consider the value of having the information. Also, dealing with exponential curves, the higher overall worker count dilutes the cost, and larvae / map control put a cap on production so even in an ideal sense it is not actually such an exponential curve. Even if he does blindly open hatch, if you really are worried about the minerals, you know his gas timing so you adjust yours, you are fine.
I like how you explain to a top-5 greatest foreigner how scouting works. Confidence.
I really like the idea of different speeds for lower leagues but I think it would be problematic going from fast to fastest when they rank up to platinum would be a big slap to the face. Why not increase the speed with each league and hit the current game speed at diamond. This allows the rare players in bronze to play a game and have more time to enjoy doing fun micro and those that improve have the challenge gradually increased. Playing someone a league higher on their game speed can also ease you into the change in speed ^^
On January 13 2016 04:16 Empirimancer wrote: Is the perception that T > Z only caused by the three racks reaper build (with certain maps in particular) or is there more to it?
3 rax reapers is pretty strong, but it is not viable on all maps. But even if the terran player plays a macro game from the start, it is hard for zergs to hold terran's aggression while teching to hive, mainly due to the queen nerf. If they don't tech, they'd lose anyway, and not teching does not help with the defense that much either.
Slower game speed for lower league players feels off. I think if it were done, it would make sense to limit it to bronze-silver. Maybe give silver players the option to check/uncheck the game speed change - make it a preference, like a map preference where you get it if a matched player wants it too, but not necessarily every time. However it's implemented, something in the UI should say in big, bright letters what game speed you're on - both during find match and during the loading screen.
Sidebar: When we talk about hurdles to new players, no one should underestimate the impact of the UI... too much or too little info at the right/wrong time makes a big difference to new players.
A better alternative to game speed may be making all units last longer - like a universal damage nerf/hp buff/armor buff. I bet this would be a logistical nightmare but it may be worth it.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
ZvZ is very volatile now and an early 1 drone scout is actually stronger with how the econ is changed. Because you start with 12 workers and cap at 16. People are going 17 hatch / overdroning to about 19 before transfering. By that time the drone is coming back. What you lose now is much less than before. Then you consider the value of having the information. Also, dealing with exponential curves, the higher overall worker count dilutes the cost, and larvae / map control put a cap on production so even in an ideal sense it is not actually such an exponential curve. Even if he does blindly open hatch, if you really are worried about the minerals, you know his gas timing so you adjust yours, you are fine.
I like how you explain to a top-5 greatest foreigner how scouting works. Confidence.
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Zerg economy being exponential has nothing to do with single drone, it just means that 1 drone is a lot less valuable than for other races.
it being exponential means each worker is more valuable in the early game other than for the minerals to build another base - the more minerals you have the more you can spend on drones (until no larvae left) - t + p are limited to 1 at a time per nex/cc. and in a standard zerg build order you are limited by minerals before being limited by larvae -> the more eco you get
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Thanks for posting scarlett. Could you explain for a gold zerg what information you get by seeing the scout? That they go hatch first?
when you see a drone scout from the enemy it means they want to play reactive (or there is no reason to scout) -> they are playing defensive -> you can play greedier. if it's a fake drone scout and a 1base build or something it weakens their attack more than your increased greed (other than a 12pool + spine or some shit but thats awful and loses to anything)
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
ZvZ is very volatile now and an early 1 drone scout is actually stronger with how the econ is changed. Because you start with 12 workers and cap at 16. People are going 17 hatch / overdroning to about 19 before transfering. By that time the drone is coming back. What you lose now is much less than before. Then you consider the value of having the information. Also, dealing with exponential curves, the higher overall worker count dilutes the cost, and larvae / map control put a cap on production so even in an ideal sense it is not actually such an exponential curve. Even if he does blindly open hatch, if you really are worried about the minerals, you know his gas timing so you adjust yours, you are fine.
there is so very rarely a situation you go gasless now though.. if you take gas then you will have 16 on mineral + 3 on gas without a scout and 20th drone rallied to natural as it finishes (and yea 17h is superior to 18h or 19h) - there is only a few seconds before gas finishes if hpg or a couple seconds before starting gas if hgp where you have more than 16 drones on minerals
~
the only thing worth seeing with a drone scout is 1base all in and it is easily defendable on any 2p map even if you dont see early with hatch pool gas ; on 4 player maps; yes it could help you - but you have to be lucky to go to correct base or you wont even see their build by the time you have to put down hatch or pool - with the current map pool the 4player maps also have less defendable naturals -> hatch first cant defend 14/14 well even if you know its coming after choosing build; anyways its better to just veto 4player maps if you dont wanna play zvz roulette
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Zerg economy being exponential has nothing to do with single drone, it just means that 1 drone is a lot less valuable than for other races.
it being exponential means each worker is more valuable in the early game other than for the minerals to build another base - the more minerals you have the more you can spend on drones (until no larvae left) - t + p are limited to 1 at a time per nex/cc. and in a standard zerg build order you are limited by minerals before being limited by larvae -> the more eco you get
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
Thanks for posting scarlett. Could you explain for a gold zerg what information you get by seeing the scout? That they go hatch first?
when you see a drone scout from the enemy it means they want to play reactive (or there is no reason to scout) -> they are playing defensive -> you can play greedier. if it's a fake drone scout and a 1base build or something it weakens their attack more than your increased greed (other than a 12pool + spine or some shit but thats awful and loses to anything)
On January 10 2016 23:47 Aegwynn wrote: Would they consider increasing overlord speed for the first 5 seconds of the game? It is literally impossible to scout terran on certain maps, playing a zvt blindly isn't very strategic. And the bigger problem is with zvz which is too random
maybe you could scout with a drone ...? or is that to much to ask?
That can add even more randomness to the zvz, because drone scouting will leave you behind in mirror openings And obviously you can't drone scout terran because everything you need to see happens after the 2nd supply depot
How will using 1 Drone to scout leave you behind? I think the information gathered, including the basic openings, is worth far more than having less than 100 minerals gathered than your opponent, more than easily made up for. Also, there are numerous ways to scout a Terran. A fast Lair/Pneuatized Carapace is one of them.
cuz zerg eco is exponential and seeing an enemy drone scout as a zerg gives you almost as much info as drone scouting yourself - theres a reason nobody does it in high level zvz
ZvZ is very volatile now and an early 1 drone scout is actually stronger with how the econ is changed. Because you start with 12 workers and cap at 16. People are going 17 hatch / overdroning to about 19 before transfering. By that time the drone is coming back. What you lose now is much less than before. Then you consider the value of having the information. Also, dealing with exponential curves, the higher overall worker count dilutes the cost, and larvae / map control put a cap on production so even in an ideal sense it is not actually such an exponential curve. Even if he does blindly open hatch, if you really are worried about the minerals, you know his gas timing so you adjust yours, you are fine.
there is so very rarely a situation you go gasless now though.. if you take gas then you will have 16 on mineral + 3 on gas without a scout and 20th drone rallied to natural as it finishes (and yea 17h is superior to 18h or 19h) - there is only a few seconds before gas finishes if hpg or a couple seconds before starting gas if hgp where you have more than 16 drones on minerals
~
the only thing worth seeing with a drone scout is 1base all in and it is easily defendable on any 2p map even if you dont see early with hatch pool gas ; on 4 player maps; yes it could help you - but you have to be lucky to go to correct base or you wont even see their build by the time you have to put down hatch or pool - with the current map pool the 4player maps also have less defendable naturals -> hatch first cant defend 14/14 well even if you know its coming after choosing build; anyways its better to just veto 4player maps if you dont wanna play zvz roulette
Well you can take a slower gas, don't have to go gasless. Prion and Ulrena I am not opening hatch, but gasless is good on Orbital. But on Dawn after scouting you take the gas at 1:40 ... faster gas isn't great there, you can oversaturate.. may as well scout, 13/12 can be good on Dawn, hard to scout with an ovi and bases are split... not good. Ruins you get an ovi scout in so it's not that bad, 50/50 chance, even late scout is better than no scout... diagonal surprise lings is not good. Central / Lerilak I am not opening hatch so I won't comment.
EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/G15HFrV.jpg)
. Why is it always move speed with you guys? Is it because it is something you think you can touch without modifying any other relationships? The result is that I can't even remember the days when a medivac didn't move 7000 mph...
and it means that I am trying to make a joke or point out something funny rather than making a serious argument.
).
