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On August 23 2020 23:35 BonitiilloO wrote:
Creep tumor should cost minerals to help the economy vs other races
Queen should cost 1 more supply and spawn 1 less larva
zergs don't do macro hatcheries anymore and they get 80 drones while other races are still in 60 or less.
Is the current cap for larva 19 per hatch? Tune down the max number of larvae, if you want more then you're forced to spend money on extra hatcheries.
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On August 24 2020 03:37 Calliope wrote:
Speaking of creep, why does it actually provide vision? None of the races need to play with maphack. Zergs do most of the scouting with overlords and the map presence of the fast units anyway. Maybe the game would be more balanced if zerg did not have so much vision enabling them to set up accurate multipronged flanking in advance.
After thought, if you should decide between creep tumors giving vision or creep tumors invisibility, what do you decide ?
Before SC2 came out (before BETA), a lot of players (casuals and hard core players, pros ???) always have been annoyed by the creep mecanics. But in definitive, if i have to remove something, i ll remove the invisibility and increase his health a little bit with adding a bonus armor to prevent the effectiveness of T1 units (and then, by the way, decrease his mana cost regarding to the inject-spell)
The worst thing actually in this mecanic is the lack of cooldown, A single Queen can spawn multiple tumors with rapid-fire as Solar oftenly does. When i see a bunch of creep tumors close together, i m just getting mad..
Edit : remove vision is also a design problem, how can you know if there s a structure or an ennemy when you re spawnning the tumor in the fog of war ?
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On August 24 2020 03:56 AirbladeOrange wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2020 03:37 Calliope wrote:
Speaking of creep, why does it actually provide vision? None of the races need to play with maphack. Zergs do most of the scouting with overlords and the map presence of the fast units anyway. Maybe the game would be more balanced if zerg did not have so much vision enabling them to set up accurate multipronged flanking in advance. I've always wondered this too but I think it's too late to change because of how major of a change it would be to remove it. I wish creep were different. Something like zerg units would get a sizeable health regen buff when on it but very slowly lose health when off of it.
If it wasn't too late to delete the msc, then it's not too late to completely removed creep vision.
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Removing creep vision is an atrocious idea and a massive nerf to a core mechanic.
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On August 24 2020 22:15 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:
Removing creep vision is an atrocious idea and a massive nerf to a core mechanic.
Been following the thread for a while, am no good player myself (very very casual player, more of a tourney watcher for the last 10 years), I definitely have wondered what is the downside to removing vision, as most of the comments here seem to be in favour of this.. but there must be a con to it right?
What do you think are the worst things that will come out of it?
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These threads are really a phenomenon, a minor change to a small balance patch and somehow the topic's evolved into destroying zerg core mechanics. How about we remove Warpgate or Orbital Commands?
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On August 24 2020 22:30 plainsane wrote:
These threads are really a phenomenon, a minor change to a small balance patch and somehow the topic's evolved into destroying zerg core mechanics. How about we remove Warpgate or Orbital Commands?
Redesigning the game around not having mules and warpgate, weaker queens, weaker creep and weaker hatchery production would be perfectly fine in my book. There were even some serious mods which checked it out back in the day, but I have not seen anybody talk about them for years. IDK if there is even a LotV version.
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Northern Ireland25585 Posts
On August 24 2020 23:00 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2020 22:30 plainsane wrote:
These threads are really a phenomenon, a minor change to a small balance patch and somehow the topic's evolved into destroying zerg core mechanics. How about we remove Warpgate or Orbital Commands? Redesigning the game around not having mules and warpgate, weaker queens, weaker creep and weaker hatchery production would be perfectly fine in my book. There were even some serious mods which checked it out back in the day, but I have not seen anybody talk about them for years. IDK if there is even a LotV version.
The game is truly miraculously balanced in my view despite the existence of Warpgate especially. Despite valid criticisms the core game of SC2 has been and still is better balanced than both BW and WC3. Other competing RTS games may have balance in a racial sense but a real crushing lack of variety strategically.
That said I think it’s worth looking at core mechanics despite that, game can always be better.
Creep and injects are pretty good things to have in a really mechanical game, there’s always room to improve and prioritisation and all that stuff.
The issue is the ceiling on those mechanics isn’t shared by those of the other races. This issue is only magnified by Legacy’s economy changing and their strengths coming into play earlier.
Protoss and Terran got all the juice out of the orange of their macro mechanics within a few years of Wings being out, if not even earlier. Zerg are immeasurably better these days and there is still room to improve.
It’s hard to comment without knowing the people involved, I’m pretty sure when Browder, Kim et al were designing Wings they weren’t anticipating half the map being covered in creep as players improved.
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On August 24 2020 23:19 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2020 23:00 Slydie wrote:On August 24 2020 22:30 plainsane wrote:
These threads are really a phenomenon, a minor change to a small balance patch and somehow the topic's evolved into destroying zerg core mechanics. How about we remove Warpgate or Orbital Commands? Redesigning the game around not having mules and warpgate, weaker queens, weaker creep and weaker hatchery production would be perfectly fine in my book. There were even some serious mods which checked it out back in the day, but I have not seen anybody talk about them for years. IDK if there is even a LotV version. The game is truly miraculously balanced in my view despite the existence of Warpgate especially. Despite valid criticisms the core game of SC2 has been and still is better balanced than both BW and WC3. Other competing RTS games may have balance in a racial sense but a real crushing lack of variety strategically. That said I think it’s worth looking at core mechanics despite that, game can always be better. Creep and injects are pretty good things to have in a really mechanical game, there’s always room to improve and prioritisation and all that stuff. The issue is the ceiling on those mechanics isn’t shared by those of the other races. This issue is only magnified by Legacy’s economy changing and their strengths coming into play earlier. Protoss and Terran got all the juice out of the orange of their macro mechanics within a few years of Wings being out, if not even earlier. Zerg are immeasurably better these days and there is still room to improve. It’s hard to comment without knowing the people involved, I’m pretty sure when Browder, Kim et al were designing Wings they weren’t anticipating half the map being covered in creep as players improved.
People tend to forget than injects and larva production were already nerfed at the start of lotv
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On August 24 2020 22:24 chuchutrain wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2020 22:15 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:
Removing creep vision is an atrocious idea and a massive nerf to a core mechanic.
Been following the thread for a while, am no good player myself (very very casual player, more of a tourney watcher for the last 10 years), I definitely have wondered what is the downside to removing vision, as most of the comments here seem to be in favour of this.. but there must be a con to it right? What do you think are the worst things that will come out of it?
Losing the creep vision destroys one of Zerg's main form of defender's advantage.
Zerg doesn't have tanks, or forcefields, and their 'walls' are of little value against anything beyond early game hellions or adepts.
A big part of the defender's advantage Zerg gets is the combination of vision and movement speed provided by creep. Knowing the opponent's army movement, or forcing them to slow down to remove that vision, let's the Zerg position their army better for a defensive fight and fire up units. If you remove creep vision, then Zerg needs to dump extra resources and attention into vision, which is one of their main defensive advantages.
This would be especially bad in TvZ, where you need creep anyway to fight efficiently. Only now it would be of no value spotting drops or move-outs.
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On August 24 2020 09:22 Sprog wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2020 23:35 BonitiilloO wrote:
Creep tumor should cost minerals to help the economy vs other races
Queen should cost 1 more supply and spawn 1 less larva
zergs don't do macro hatcheries anymore and they get 80 drones while other races are still in 60 or less. Is the current cap for larva 19 per hatch? Tune down the max number of larvae, if you want more then you're forced to spend money on extra hatcheries.
That's actually a good idea. The other races have to continually build units or else they've basically wasted production time they could have been using. Zerg by design has always been able to save larva a bit, but with so many larva per hatchery, they are basically able to completely ignore having to waste production time for a good chunk of the game and are instead limited by supply and income.
I think in general, the macro mechanics have been badly in need of rebalancing for a long time now. Chronoboost is useful for about the first 10 minutes of the game and then it falls off the map in terms of usefulness, and with the added battery charge, chronoboost has now become a more situational spell since there are key times it shouldn't be used now. Similar with MULES. They're nice to have early on, and can be useful situationally, but once terran gets enough SCVs, diminishing returns set in for MULES and often scans are favoured unless terran is already behind and is using MULES to replace dead workers. With zerg, there is no trade-off for using injects, and not only do injects not slowly lose value, they actually gain power and usefulness as the game goes on. Because there are unlimited queens available, outside of when the first two or three queens pop in the game, there is never a question of whether an inject should be done or if creep should be spread instead. Typically, enough queens are made so both can be done, with the added bonus of queens also being good for holding off a huge number of different builds. The trade-offs the other races have to deal with don't exist for zerg and zerg is rewarded for abusing this.
Zerg macro mechanics exist in the same tier of design issues as warpgate where there should be trade-offs to using them, but in reality there aren't so it's always favourable to use them. Like warpgate, fixing the zerg mechanics would require a ton of work and would be quite difficult so it probably won't end up happening.
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There are no diminishing returns for mules. That +225 minerals is always +225 minerals. Proportionately an individual mules might be less relative to an income, but chances are, you have an orbital for every base, so it is proportional. Scans are used because if you was to ask anyone if they would pay for an eventual 225 min cost for an uncounterable instant information and detector over an area for a period of time, it is well worth the cost no matter what race it is.
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On August 25 2020 00:54 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There are no diminishing returns for mules. That +225 minerals is always +225 minerals. Proportionately an individual mules might be less relative to an income, but chances are, you have an orbital for every base, so it is proportional. Scans are used because if you was to ask anyone if they would pay for an eventual 225 min cost for an uncounterable instant information and detector over an area for a period of time, it is well worth the cost no matter what race it is.
That's my point. As a proportion of income, mules start to be less impactful on overall income and scans become much more worthwhile as the game goes on so there becomes less of a trade-off, but it is still a trade-off nonetheless. With how zerg is set up right now, they can have the equivalent of both at once quite early in the game since all they need to do is make queens that they were going to make for defensive purposes anyway. In doing so they both can boost their economy and boost their map vision/informational advantage at the same time.
With mules or chronoboost, there is never a risk of their power snowballing out of control as the game goes on. Injects and the sheer number of larva zerg has access to on the other hand are a large part of why the zerg economy can snowball out of control since the advantage gained by injects (more larva, thus more units) is cumulative and is lasting rather than temporary.
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On August 25 2020 01:33 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2020 00:54 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There are no diminishing returns for mules. That +225 minerals is always +225 minerals. Proportionately an individual mules might be less relative to an income, but chances are, you have an orbital for every base, so it is proportional. Scans are used because if you was to ask anyone if they would pay for an eventual 225 min cost for an uncounterable instant information and detector over an area for a period of time, it is well worth the cost no matter what race it is. That's my point. As a proportion of income, mules start to be less impactful on overall income and scans become much more worthwhile as the game goes on so there becomes less of a trade-off, but it is still a trade-off nonetheless. With how zerg is set up right now, they can have the equivalent of both at once quite early in the game since all they need to do is make queens that they were going to make for defensive purposes anyway. In doing so they both can boost their economy and boost their map vision/informational advantage at the same time. With mules or chronoboost, there is never a risk of their power snowballing out of control as the game goes on. Injects and the sheer number of larva zerg has access to on the other hand are a large part of why the zerg economy can snowball out of control since the advantage gained by injects (more larva, thus more units) is cumulative and is lasting rather than temporary.
There's still spawning time and cost. Sure, a Zerg can instantly remax on zerglings, but a remax of zerglings is easily dealt with if the other player maintained tech units. If both players are reset, then zerglings can wreak havoc, but the whole idea of trading ineffectively for zerg is that their stronger economy and shittier units allow them to trade their crappy units over and over and swarm the opponent with those shitty units.
Remaxing on anything other than zerglings (or roaches) takes the spawning time, and for high tier units that is plenty long enough for a terran to get enough of an army out to defend. Endgame terrans and toss may not be able to instantly remax, but it takes them 2 production cycles... which is about the same as the 1 from zerg + the move across the map. And they can do it over and over, whereas a zerg remaxing cannot do it instantly again, as it takes 4-5 injects to get those 19 larvae per hatchery back up again.
I really don't think hte problem is the larvae bank. The problem is the fact that a zerg can (and should) generally sit on 1 base more than their opponent. If as a 3-base terran your push on the 4th works, you win. If it fails, the zerg's economy takes off and you play defense and try to get back through drops and backstabs. Protoss do a similar push but it's earlier. The problem is that modern zergs are too good to not win if they get and hold that stable economic advantage.
That said, if you take away the economy advantage, zerg units are way too trashy to hold up in a "fair" fight. You need to be able to trade an infinite amount of banelings for cheaper units... because trading banelings at an equal economy means you run out and die. So you'd actually have to *buff* zerg units if you nerf their economic advantages. It'll change their swarmy nature, and I don't know if that is actually desirable.
Oh, and I am not opposed to lowering the max larvae per hatch. I just don't think it'll change much. In fact, it might just make stuff harder: sniping a hatch now can really set production back, but if zerg get used to making more macro hatcheries, every individual hatch being sniped will actually hurt production less.
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On August 25 2020 03:25 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2020 01:33 Ben... wrote:On August 25 2020 00:54 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There are no diminishing returns for mules. That +225 minerals is always +225 minerals. Proportionately an individual mules might be less relative to an income, but chances are, you have an orbital for every base, so it is proportional. Scans are used because if you was to ask anyone if they would pay for an eventual 225 min cost for an uncounterable instant information and detector over an area for a period of time, it is well worth the cost no matter what race it is. That's my point. As a proportion of income, mules start to be less impactful on overall income and scans become much more worthwhile as the game goes on so there becomes less of a trade-off, but it is still a trade-off nonetheless. With how zerg is set up right now, they can have the equivalent of both at once quite early in the game since all they need to do is make queens that they were going to make for defensive purposes anyway. In doing so they both can boost their economy and boost their map vision/informational advantage at the same time. With mules or chronoboost, there is never a risk of their power snowballing out of control as the game goes on. Injects and the sheer number of larva zerg has access to on the other hand are a large part of why the zerg economy can snowball out of control since the advantage gained by injects (more larva, thus more units) is cumulative and is lasting rather than temporary. There's still spawning time and cost. Sure, a Zerg can instantly remax on zerglings, but a remax of zerglings is easily dealt with if the other player maintained tech units. If both players are reset, then zerglings can wreak havoc, but the whole idea of trading ineffectively for zerg is that their stronger economy and shittier units allow them to trade their crappy units over and over and swarm the opponent with those shitty units. Remaxing on anything other than zerglings (or roaches) takes the spawning time, and for high tier units that is plenty long enough for a terran to get enough of an army out to defend. Endgame terrans and toss may not be able to instantly remax, but it takes them 2 production cycles... which is about the same as the 1 from zerg + the move across the map. And they can do it over and over, whereas a zerg remaxing cannot do it instantly again, as it takes 4-5 injects to get those 19 larvae per hatchery back up again. I really don't think hte problem is the larvae bank. The problem is the fact that a zerg can (and should) generally sit on 1 base more than their opponent. If as a 3-base terran your push on the 4th works, you win. If it fails, the zerg's economy takes off and you play defense and try to get back through drops and backstabs. Protoss do a similar push but it's earlier. The problem is that modern zergs are too good to not win if they get and hold that stable economic advantage. That said, if you take away the economy advantage, zerg units are way too trashy to hold up in a "fair" fight. You need to be able to trade an infinite amount of banelings for cheaper units... because trading banelings at an equal economy means you run out and die. So you'd actually have to *buff* zerg units if you nerf their economic advantages. It'll change their swarmy nature, and I don't know if that is actually desirable. Oh, and I am not opposed to lowering the max larvae per hatch. I just don't think it'll change much. In fact, it might just make stuff harder: sniping a hatch now can really set production back, but if zerg get used to making more macro hatcheries, every individual hatch being sniped will actually hurt production less.
I agree Zerg having the economic advantage is good and necessary (and unique to their race). I think the issue is there is that their ideal lategame should be having so much econ/bank/mining/larva that they can overwhelm the opponent or batter them constantly until they die or are unable to continue mining. They should swarm them with lower cost efficient units. The problem is that Zerg actually has some of the strongest lategame armies, with mobile Spore forests and the highest number of useful spellcasters with the highest number of battle-oriented spells (AOE/damage/crowd control, or NP/Abduct).
If Zerg's endgame army was a little weaker in a straight up battle, then it would put pressure/incentive on them to actually try to end Terran/Protoss. I think with BCs, Terran super endgame is probably stronger, but Protoss seems to need some help. Lategame aside, I think Zerg with their explosive economy in LotV can effectively achieve stronger armies because they can access multiple T3 units (Viper + Lurker in PvZ) faster than the opponent while having an econ advantage... This means that Zerg (at least in PvZ as that is the biggest issue), is basically stronger throughout the whole game except maybe late-lategame or endgame, but Protoss isn't going to get there.
I've wondered before with all the sped up econ in LotV, if there might be certain tech/upgrades that can be re-scaled. For example, +2 and +3 attack/armor upgrades taking longer to finish, or Hive/Hive tech taking longer so there is more time fighting with lower tech units before players access lategame units.
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Mexico2170 Posts
Imo the core problems of zerg is:
Larva Mechanic is too good, and the way they can easily expand is also too strong. To balance that, they made it easier to suffer damage to harass and timming pushes. That worked on WoL and HotS. However on Lotv we have 3 problems: It's easier for the zerg to expand, Protoss and Terran timmings/harass have been generally nerfed and the Queen is stronger than when the game came out, and finally zergs have gotten better in defending pushes, and the maps favor defending expantions in general too.
The end result is that i'ts very hard to deal economic damage to a zerg. And even if you do deal damage t's negated by the larva mechanics and zergs becoming better. They defend their bases with 4-5 queens, and even if your harass kills 7-10 drones they just remax them instantly. Since Queens don't require larva, the intended design trade-off of "zerg either drones or makes army" is negated, as they can make both drones and queens and defend well.
The queen should be a vulnerable unit, only good vs air. It should have never been good to defend pushes. I'd say increasing the time to spawn larva from the hatchery a little bit, and nerfing the queen, either in health, damage, cost or supply, so that zerg can't just make 5, defend every push and keep droning as if nothing had happened.
That's the main problem in PvZ (and to an extend TvZ). There doesn't seem to be a way anymore to stop the zerg from growing and taking half the map incredibly fast, and thanks to LotV and increased game knowledge and mechanics the Zergs can do it much more effectively than ever before. So when the midgame comes, and the lategame comes, the zerg is always at an advantage, which makes the mid and lategame themselves being hard to judge as the zerg is always ahead by the time they come.
BTW I think creep giving vision is cool, and spreading creep is a good mechanic. However maybe it does too many things, as it gives vision, speed, and health regen. It also delays every push as you need to clear it as you push else your fighting at a disadvantage. I like the idea of the creep tumors being visible without detectos.
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Italy12246 Posts
It's honestly not just lategame that's awkward against Zerg because of larva. They are the only race that can lose, say, 15 out of 50 workers (30ish percent), and still be in the game. Meanwhile, if Terran or Protoss lose, say 8 out of 40 (20 percent), they sometimes can have a Hail Mary play but for the most part, they are done. Given the choice I wish Terran and Protoss were more like Zerg in that regard because games being ended by a single widow mine drop is dumb as hell, but it's honestly pretty hard to achieve that.
edit: if you think it was easy for Zerg to suffer damage to non-committed timings or harassment in WoL you were watching the wrong game. WoL vZ post Queen buff was all about using every single resource you had to build up to just one all-in before Hive tech kicked in. Most builds investing in cutesy harassment or pokes were not optimized for that and fell out of flavour.
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Mexico2170 Posts
Didn't see anything posted here so just a heads-up.
Theres a major bug where medivacs can't load units, literally lost a game just now because of that. Don't play terran until hotfix.
And btw i've been doing proxy VR against all races today. It's been pretty fun.
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On August 25 2020 00:46 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2020 09:22 Sprog wrote:On August 23 2020 23:35 BonitiilloO wrote:
Creep tumor should cost minerals to help the economy vs other races
Queen should cost 1 more supply and spawn 1 less larva
zergs don't do macro hatcheries anymore and they get 80 drones while other races are still in 60 or less. Is the current cap for larva 19 per hatch? Tune down the max number of larvae, if you want more then you're forced to spend money on extra hatcheries. That's actually a good idea. The other races have to continually build units or else they've basically wasted production time they could have been using. Zerg by design has always been able to save larva a bit, but with so many larva per hatchery, they are basically able to completely ignore having to waste production time for a good chunk of the game and are instead limited by supply and income. I think in general, the macro mechanics have been badly in need of rebalancing for a long time now. Chronoboost is useful for about the first 10 minutes of the game and then it falls off the map in terms of usefulness, and with the added battery charge, chronoboost has now become a more situational spell since there are key times it shouldn't be used now. Similar with MULES. They're nice to have early on, and can be useful situationally, but once terran gets enough SCVs, diminishing returns set in for MULES and often scans are favoured unless terran is already behind and is using MULES to replace dead workers. With zerg, there is no trade-off for using injects, and not only do injects not slowly lose value, they actually gain power and usefulness as the game goes on. Because there are unlimited queens available, outside of when the first two or three queens pop in the game, there is never a question of whether an inject should be done or if creep should be spread instead. Typically, enough queens are made so both can be done, with the added bonus of queens also being good for holding off a huge number of different builds. The trade-offs the other races have to deal with don't exist for zerg and zerg is rewarded for abusing this. Zerg macro mechanics exist in the same tier of design issues as warpgate where there should be trade-offs to using them, but in reality there aren't so it's always favourable to use them. Like warpgate, fixing the zerg mechanics would require a ton of work and would be quite difficult so it probably won't end up happening.
I second this. Macro hatcheries were one of Broodwar's best features.
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On August 25 2020 08:20 [Phantom] wrote:
Didn't see anything posted here so just a heads-up.
Theres a major bug where medvacs can't load units, literally lot a game just now because of that. Don't play terran until hotfix.
And btw i've been doing proxy VR against all races today. It's been pretty fun.
Why doesn't Blizzard play test their patches? Seriously.
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