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Queens don't need a re-design, they need a -1 range nerf aka a revert on the old buff they were given that was a bandaid fix to the fact liberators used to be incredibly OP.
Why are people suddenly wanting to re-design things in the game that already work perfectly fine. Queen design/Zerg design is perfectly fine.
What's not fine is building 10+ queens early game vs Terran let's a Zerg player be invincible to every possible attack and build that exists in the game. That is not fine, or balanced.
I think creep tumors could be adjusted, getting free vision is too strong. If you have high apm/mechanics, you are getting something entirely for free that is simply an advantage over the other races. If Terran players had something like creep spread that we could simply spend extra APM on and get free vision...they would all love to do that too.
So yes, people could recommend balance tweaks to queens, but do people really think queens themselves are designed poorly? They seem pretty well designed to me, just balanced poorly.
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I'm always nervous about patching the queen nowadays, because we saw with the queen patch how powerful and unbalanced the game can become when you alter the queen (2012 Queen Patch), because it is such a fundamental unit.
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On July 18 2018 11:33 blunderfulguy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2018 11:28 Boggyb wrote:On July 18 2018 11:09 esReveR wrote:On July 18 2018 10:19 Boggyb wrote:
I'm 100% in favor of a queen redesign as they are the one unit in the game that ignores the economy and attacking unit trade off dynamic and anything that is that extreme of an outlier is probably bad.
While they are doing that, I'd like to see them also get rid of Terran and Protoss macro mechanics. Even without them, the skill ceiling of SC2 will still be well above what humans are capable of and there is no reason to artificially raise the skill floor in a competitive game. They tried this in the LotV beta and the game was considerably worse because if it. It only lasted a short time before they realized it wasn't working. The fact that they only tested it for a short time is why it never worked. That's the kind of change that requires months of testing. No matter how much testing they do for however long, gameplay suffered and players hated it. That's why it didn't work.
There are no mules, injects, nor chrono boosts in Brood War and people don't seem to mind. I'm hard pressed to believe that people suddenly decided that having to hit something every X seconds was essential game play.
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Queens are fundamentally flawed units. They are essentially the swiss army knife of the Zerg. They wear nearly every hat that typical starcraft armies are made up of (melee, ranged, spellcaster). They are the most economically effective unit in the game without question.
While a redesign would help bring interest back to the race and welcomed by most current Zerg players (maybe I'm wrong here) I don't see how it is possible without adding 1-2 new units or completely revamping the tech tree.
Would be cool but Blizzard.
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This thread will be my armchair balance designer masturbatory dream.
Queens have been pure bullshit ever since their range was increase from 3 to 5.
If zerg was forced to make meaningful armies (not 20 lings and 6 queens in tvz) before getting to 80 drones into infinity larva production the game would be much more interesting and active in the midgame.
Obviously this will likely require a buff. My suggestion would be better ling damage, but weaker scaling for lings (such as making adrenal slightly worse)
I can rant for days on how stupid the queen range buff was back in WoL. I entirely blame it on the broodlord infestor meta and have never forgiven david kim for it. I will go to my grave seething with petty rage over a videogame.
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On July 18 2018 12:03 Boggyb wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2018 11:33 blunderfulguy wrote:On July 18 2018 11:28 Boggyb wrote:On July 18 2018 11:09 esReveR wrote:On July 18 2018 10:19 Boggyb wrote:
I'm 100% in favor of a queen redesign as they are the one unit in the game that ignores the economy and attacking unit trade off dynamic and anything that is that extreme of an outlier is probably bad.
While they are doing that, I'd like to see them also get rid of Terran and Protoss macro mechanics. Even without them, the skill ceiling of SC2 will still be well above what humans are capable of and there is no reason to artificially raise the skill floor in a competitive game. They tried this in the LotV beta and the game was considerably worse because if it. It only lasted a short time before they realized it wasn't working. The fact that they only tested it for a short time is why it never worked. That's the kind of change that requires months of testing. No matter how much testing they do for however long, gameplay suffered and players hated it. That's why it didn't work. There are no mules, injects, nor chrono boosts in Brood War and people don't seem to mind. I'm hard pressed to believe that people suddenly decided that having to hit something every X seconds was essential game play.
Comparing Brood War to StarCraft 2 and LotV like this is nonsensical. In BW you have to constantly fight against the game itself while staying on top of macro and micro, it isn't about "BW players don't seem to mind" not having Mules, Injects, Chrono, etc. They're different games, different mechanics, different designs, different players. Removing macro mechanics in SC2 would be like fixing all of the "glitches" in BW.
And "having to hit something every X seconds" was far from sudden in gaming and it didn't start with SC2 + Show Spoiler +BW forces you to click something every few seconds if you want to win, Counter Strike forces you to move if you want to win, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR, Call of Duty, if you want more loot and dead demons in Diablo you have to keep clicking, World of Warcraft and however many other MMOs keep you moving and have you clicking abilities every second (literal 1 second global ability timers); believe it or not, gamers like being forced to stay busy if they want to win, going all the way back to Pong in the 70s, before that was tennis several hundreds of years ago, before that was football/soccer thousands of years ago unless my history is off
If something is removed, you must replace it with someone of equal value (or hopefully greater, when you're talking about game design). Otherwise you leave an empty void where that thing was; you create a vacuum, and I for one very, very much dislike vacuums, as do most living creatures and nature itself and I'm not one to argue with nature.
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Australia1237 Posts
1) Restore our nerfed larave, heck, buff it. Make Zerg zergy again.
2) Give us better early game AA. It has to be fast and nimble. Either great if done preemptively or fast enough to be reactive, pick one, not both so it's not OP.
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On July 18 2018 12:04 FarmI3oy wrote:
Queens are fundamentally flawed units. They are essentially the swiss army knife of the Zerg. They wear nearly every hat that typical starcraft armies are made up of (melee, ranged, spellcaster). They are the most economically effective unit in the game without question.
While a redesign would help bring interest back to the race and welcomed by most current Zerg players (maybe I'm wrong here) I don't see how it is possible without adding 1-2 new units or completely revamping the tech tree.
Would be cool but Blizzard.
This sums it up so very nicely and saves me - and the reader - from voicing the same in worse english.
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On July 18 2018 12:03 Boggyb wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2018 11:33 blunderfulguy wrote:On July 18 2018 11:28 Boggyb wrote:On July 18 2018 11:09 esReveR wrote:On July 18 2018 10:19 Boggyb wrote:
I'm 100% in favor of a queen redesign as they are the one unit in the game that ignores the economy and attacking unit trade off dynamic and anything that is that extreme of an outlier is probably bad.
While they are doing that, I'd like to see them also get rid of Terran and Protoss macro mechanics. Even without them, the skill ceiling of SC2 will still be well above what humans are capable of and there is no reason to artificially raise the skill floor in a competitive game. They tried this in the LotV beta and the game was considerably worse because if it. It only lasted a short time before they realized it wasn't working. The fact that they only tested it for a short time is why it never worked. That's the kind of change that requires months of testing. No matter how much testing they do for however long, gameplay suffered and players hated it. That's why it didn't work. There are no mules, injects, nor chrono boosts in Brood War and people don't seem to mind. I'm hard pressed to believe that people suddenly decided that having to hit something every X seconds was essential game play.
Hitting something every X second is the quintessential mechanic of T, P and Z.
The core of SC2 is hitting something every X seconds.
EDIT: Also if these mechanics disappear you get a game with a very low skill ceilling and people stop playing it.
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On July 18 2018 12:03 Boggyb wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2018 11:33 blunderfulguy wrote:On July 18 2018 11:28 Boggyb wrote:On July 18 2018 11:09 esReveR wrote:On July 18 2018 10:19 Boggyb wrote:
I'm 100% in favor of a queen redesign as they are the one unit in the game that ignores the economy and attacking unit trade off dynamic and anything that is that extreme of an outlier is probably bad.
While they are doing that, I'd like to see them also get rid of Terran and Protoss macro mechanics. Even without them, the skill ceiling of SC2 will still be well above what humans are capable of and there is no reason to artificially raise the skill floor in a competitive game. They tried this in the LotV beta and the game was considerably worse because if it. It only lasted a short time before they realized it wasn't working. The fact that they only tested it for a short time is why it never worked. That's the kind of change that requires months of testing. No matter how much testing they do for however long, gameplay suffered and players hated it. That's why it didn't work. There are no mules, injects, nor chrono boosts in Brood War and people don't seem to mind. I'm hard pressed to believe that people suddenly decided that having to hit something every X seconds was essential game play.
There's also no multiple building selection and no worker rally straight towards the minerals. Do you see the relation here?
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On July 18 2018 12:04 FarmI3oy wrote:
Queens are fundamentally flawed units. They are essentially the swiss army knife of the Zerg. They wear nearly every hat that typical starcraft armies are made up of (melee, ranged, spellcaster).
i wanna mention the flipside of it. most early/midgame zergunits get hardcountered pretty easily. if your sacrificial overlord does not collect the necessary information, without the queen there would be coin flip decision early on in the game. lack of information is already a difficult thing against certain build (ex: phoenix first). imo thats sth to keep in mind, when thinking about a redesign.
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Funny how most of the posts are from terrans and protosses... Just go redesign your own races, keep away from Zerg. I bet u all would delete queens from the game, so u could easy win with every ballshit from your arsenal.
I think current Queen is fine. Comparing it to hero unit which MSCore was with all it's imbalanced skills is crossing the line. Whining that Queen is versatile unit which can be useful at every state of the game is sooo biased especially from protoss players, who have so much units with that "ability".
Protoss redesign with MSCore removal was a must, because shooting pylons was ballshit idea. Queen is one of the best designed units that gives Zerg this unique feel. Spreading the creep, injecting, it's pretty much what differences good Zerg player from bad, so stripping this race from that "skill factor" makes it more boring and "a-move" race.
In a world where Protoss and Terrans has soo many ways to kill Zerg in early game, removing or drastically redesigning queen basically means removing Zerg from the game, or redesigning all races very, very deep.
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Remove larva inject and add it as an ability to the hatchery itself? at the cost of a queen. Same cool down and same larva spawn time (although either could be tweaked a bit in length I guess). Just less time and actions wasted on injects. Perhaps also force single hatch select for it to work so a player has cycle through each or something like to take the edge off of it.
Call it "Metabolism Explosion" or something.
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Maybe there could be a cooldown on queen production so it takes longer to build up a good force of them
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not sure if the queen redesign is a good idea or not - maybe - but if it fixes the ZvZ meta so standard isn't taking a third hatchery while also doing a ling bane allin every single game then i'm for it
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Dont change whats not broken
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On July 18 2018 09:14 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
If the sky is the limit, I would love this paired with a total overhaul of Zerg's AA. To start I'd like them to strip the queen of any early AA abilities and just switch the hydra with the roach on the tech tree with rebalanced stats respectively.
Additionally, queen AA is now a cheap hive upgrade and hives can produce multiple queens at once. This way they still have their lategame utility as an inexpensive support/AA unit.
Wouldn't moving Roaches back in the tech tree just insta kill Zerg vs Archondrops/Hellbats/Gladepts/Banelings/etc?
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On July 18 2018 19:12 TrashPanda wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2018 09:14 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
If the sky is the limit, I would love this paired with a total overhaul of Zerg's AA. To start I'd like them to strip the queen of any early AA abilities and just switch the hydra with the roach on the tech tree with rebalanced stats respectively.
Additionally, queen AA is now a cheap hive upgrade and hives can produce multiple queens at once. This way they still have their lategame utility as an inexpensive support/AA unit. Wouldn't moving Roaches back in the tech tree just insta kill Zerg vs Archondrops/Hellbats/Gladepts/Banelings/etc?
Maybe gladepts but the rest could be defended with hydras assuming they were cheaper weaker tier 1 tech
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P and T have too many harass otion available in early game while zerg got nothing early to really counter them since wol except ravagers that are too expensive to be produce if the other isn't in a 2 bases semi-all in.
Nerfing/reworking queens will mean hellbats need to require upgrade again, even some adept/reapers/hellions/cyclon are too good at poking if zerg haven't the queens, every flying units has to be nerfed oracles/phoenix/liberator/medivac/banshee/warprism.
So no queens are fine, if it seems ugly not to be able to kill a zerg which mass queens remember 2 shield batteries or one tank achieve the same and deny every attempts for zerg to kill P/T.
But yeah, Terrans have the nostalgia of early wol with queens with 3 range and their 70% winrates vs Z when they kill zerg before 5min with bunker rush or hellions banshee.
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Remove hatcheries, make queens hatcheries, now that would be cool.
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EPT
