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Is there somewhere to discuss state of the game in a friendly way? Just for discussion sake and theorycrafting sake. I recently have been watching quite a bit of starcraft and came up with this thought on the state of Starcraft. Would love to see people giving counter arguments or offer different viewpoints for discussion sake (I hope this is allowed in TL?):
Zerg is designed to have better economy and production than the other two races (through larva mechanics). So for Terran and Protoss to beat zerg, they have to deal meaningful early game damage, otherwise, zerg will be ahead in economy and units, which eventually snowballs into a victory for them. Even at max supply, I can't argue that Terran and Protoss have better compositions than zerg (zerg has strong tier 3 units like viper, swarmhost, lurkers).
With the current meta already figured out, all possible early game harassment strategies against zerg are figured out and can be defended. What this means is that, top zergs these days will come out on top into the mid game and snowball into victory unless they make a big mistake from defending the early game harassments (the top ones pretty much don't). This also means that even at the highest skill level, a Terran or Protoss unfortunately still has to rely on Zerg to make mistakes in order to win - just executing your strategy close to perfection does not lead to victory since you will be behind if zerg defends it properly (which is likely since meta is figured out). This is why top zergs like Reynor who has fantastic mechanics and have memorized the protoss and terran playbook have a close to 100% (I remember its 90+%) win-rate against protoss for example.
In fact, diving deeper into this, even with new patches that changes up the dynamics and introduces new harassment timings etc, there eventually must come to a point where zerg must be able to defend every possible harassment, otherwise terran / protoss who play perfectly can keep abusing the strategy and always win out, which I'm sure Blizzard won't allow to happen. Blizzard also unlikely will allow the existance of a strategy that can only be defended non-deterministically (based on luck). So if the eventual state of stability for the game is such that every strategy can be defended by zerg in some deterministic way, then zerg will always have the advantage against the other two races via the observation stated above. Anyway, just theorycrafting, would love to get some feedback.
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United States33500 Posts
On June 30 2021 01:37 kingism wrote:
Is there somewhere to discuss state of the game in a friendly way? Just for discussion sake and theorycrafting sake. I recently have been watching quite a bit of starcraft and came up with this thought on the state of Starcraft. Would love to see people giving counter arguments or offer different viewpoints for discussion sake (I hope this is allowed in TL?):
It's allowed and encouraged, but there's a cosmic force that eventually causes all of these threads to end with the two most vociferous people bickering with each other until a mod closes it. Hopefully it won't happen this time 
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Yea I will remove this post if it gets out of hand in any way. Just trying to theorycraft in a friendly manner. Just thought that this is a higher level observation that actually applies to the game of starcraft through its various cycles of updates and eventual stable state when there are no more patches. Just wanted to share and discuss.
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I'm actually enjoying the current state of the game. Matches are much more back and forth these days compared to the years immediately following the release of LOTV.
As for general Zerg strength, we have been shown many counters to those various play styles even in late-game. Now reaching late game against Zerg is no longer the death sentence it once was. Protoss and Terran have more tools to work with now unlike before. This is just one guys humble opinion of course.
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Anyone have any thoughts on this? Actually before we discuss specific units like Lurkers, the big picture is that Zerg (being the defender) will always, always come on top at the end of the meta, otherwise the meta is broken. You can ask Artosis and Tastelass, they have admitted this too on their streams. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid this because you can't perfectly balance a game. So yes, if there are no more patches (which I hear is the case), expect to see most tournaments won by Zergs unless they have an off day.
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This is at a level few of us can hope to achieve, but it's still semi-regular at the pro level to see ZvTs where the zerg mines out their whole side of the map and then is at the mercy of the terran who is still mining.
I think on a general, conceptual level, it's definitely about stopping the zerg. But on a player-to-player level, there's always room to out play the other person. That's not to say it won't require substantially more effort than the other player is putting in, but that's not a bad thing; these are asymmetrical games.
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I think the overall state of the game is pretty damn good. My issues are more about individual unit interactions (with all 3 races) and how in a split second games are often won or lost at lower levels of play.
I suspected a while ago that Zerg was a little overpowered -- Serral even admitted one time that if he doesn't make any major mistakes he thought Zerg should win -- but now I think balance is good.
And it's always encouraging to watch unorthodox playstyles and strategies work at high levels of play. This gives me hope as a lower-level player that I can keep the game fun and play my own way as long as I'm good enough at the basics.
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Mexico2170 Posts
Yes, the Zerg race is conceptually broken.
Like you says there's a timer. If you don't stop the Zerg growths they just crush you helplessly and you can see this in all levels of play. The lava mechanic makes it that if they focus on eco, they will have better eco than the other races. If they focus on army the will have more army than the other races faster.
Conceptually this was balance in WoL with two things, denying scout and making strong trimmings so as to hit the Zerg before they transitioned from eco to army, catching them in the middle and dealing a devastating blow. The second was to expand and turtle to reach late game composition of 200/200 high tech units that were stronger than the Zerg counterpart, and since all races share the supply of 200/200 Zerg couldn't have more units than you anymore.
All of that went to shit, of courses when they buffed the queen and made the Zerg very hard to kill early, as well as increasing their map control and scouting abilities. Zerg also discovered late game comps like BL infector and then units like the Lurker and Viper were introduced.
Zerg is also the race with the highest skill floor, but then it becomes relatively easy compared to Terran and Protoss due to all their macro coming from one building, insta Remax, insta tech switch capabilities, and the fact most of their units are a+click.
Make no mistake, there is a reason why the Top forgeigners of all time have been Zerg.
That being said, I think the game is fairly balanced ATM. But the problem is in some ways it's balanced through overpowered vs that ends up making everything relatively equal but feeling unfair. See: widow mines, BC Blink, DT blink, Shield batteries.
The problem was always that blizzard just added units in the expansions and never tried to change core aspects of the races that were problematic.
Before the VR buff we saw how the only viable strategy in PVZ anymore was mass adepts. I have little doubt that by the end of the year Zerg will have figured out the VR and it won't need a nerf.
I wonder what the state of the game will be then.
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On September 19 2021 08:48 [Phantom] wrote:
Yes, the Zerg race is conceptually broken.
Like you says there's a timer. If you don't stop the Zerg growths they just crush you helplessly and you can see this in all levels of play. The lava mechanic makes it that if they focus on eco, they will have better eco than the other races. If they focus on army the will have more army than the other races faster.
Conceptually this was balance in WoL with two things, denying scout and making strong trimmings so as to hit the Zerg before they transitioned from eco to army, catching them in the middle and dealing a devastating blow. The second was to expand and turtle to reach late game composition of 200/200 high tech units that were stronger than the Zerg counterpart, and since all races share the supply of 200/200 Zerg couldn't have more units than you anymore.
All of that went to shit, of courses when they buffed the queen and made the Zerg very hard to kill early, as well as increasing their map control and scouting abilities. Zerg also discovered late game comps like BL infector and then units like the Lurker and Viper were introduced.
Zerg is also the race with the highest skill floor, but then it becomes relatively easy compared to Terran and Protoss due to all their macro coming from one building, insta Remax, insta tech switch capabilities, and the fact most of their units are a+click.
Make no mistake, there is a reason why the Top forgeigners of all time have been Zerg.
That being said, I think the game is fairly balanced ATM. But the problem is in some ways it's balanced through overpowered vs that ends up making everything relatively equal but feeling unfair. See: widow mines, BC Blink, DT blink, Shield batteries.
The problem was always that blizzard just added units in the expansions and never tried to change core aspects of the races that were problematic.
Before the VR buff we saw how the only viable strategy in PVZ anymore was mass adepts. I have little doubt that by the end of the year Zerg will have figured out the VR and it won't need a nerf.
I wonder what the state of the game will be then.
Patently false. Maru, Cure and Clem have shown you can play turtle late game and win out vs Zerg's. Serral and Reynor have won like what, one series against Clem... in ages? Maps decide the small advantages during each stage of the game recently. TvZ is fine. There aren't any hard timers.
The state of StarCraft 2 is in a great place right now balance wise. We just need new maps. I can complain about how boring skytoss is in PvZ, but Serral has shown its not impossible to do on even footing.
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I think it's different for every match up.
TvP honestly I'm a Zerg player but it seems like Protoss is kind of maybe a bit overpowered vs Terran, Aligulac however has the balance at a near flawless 50.67 %, I know it's not the gospel of anything but it does give kind of a rough idea that pretty much the better player wins.
But I feel like, I don't know if TvP isn't a bit Protoss favored I would at least say that the Terran has to do more and better for equal results.
ZvP could be alot better honestly, Adepts could probably use a slight buff, as well as Stalker anti-air capabilities. Units like the Stalker would really benefit from a buff because the Stalker is an inherently high skill cap and versatile unit. It's fun to watch Parting pick some Terran player apart using great blink micro. Is it really ever fun to watch Trap turtle to skytoss?
The Lurker is extremely potent in the match up, and imo could stand to be nerfed. The unit is so strong I would go as far to say that Adaptive Talons should be outright removed from the game, it's just way too big of a buff. I think Adaptive Talons were necessary back when the Lurker was thought of as weak. Players needed an incentive to start utilizing Lurkers, but that time is kind of long gone and in ZvP, Lurkers reign supreme on the ground and that is something that needs to change.
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On September 19 2021 01:15 kingism wrote:
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Actually before we discuss specific units like Lurkers, the big picture is that Zerg (being the defender) will always, always come on top at the end of the meta, otherwise the meta is broken. You can ask Artosis and Tastelass, they have admitted this too on their streams. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid this because you can't perfectly balance a game. So yes, if there are no more patches (which I hear is the case), expect to see most tournaments won by Zergs unless they have an off day.
I somewhat disagree with this sentiment I think Zerg is only in the position of being guaranteed a win if they play perfectly on maps with more than 6 bases per player if you look at maps like oxide and becket it can be very hard for Zerg to be efficient enough in late game to win. Maps that have more than 6 bases per player tend to lean towards Zerg because Terran and Protoss are more limited in the number of bases they can hold in late game. A lot of times late game vs Zerg will come down to who can secure the neutral bases on a map. If Terran or toss can mine equal resources to Zerg than late game tends to get away from Zerg. Therefore I think a lot of Zerg’s late game strength at the highest pro level comes down to map ballance. Fortunately their is a time honored tradition in Starcraft of ballancing the game through maps.
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I think for 99.9 percent of us, the state of the game is fine. If you're under 6.5K MMR, nothing needs to be changed because if you play sufficiently well and do decent enough strategies you can overcome the balance problems in SC2. 6.5K MMR might even be a little low. Maybe 6.8K MMR. I think if SC2 never got another patch for 99.9% of us, the game is perfectly fine balance wise. I basically have stopped playing the game for a little while and mostly just enjoy watching tournaments. I found the game to be fun and could win with multiple different strategies for all 3 races, with all ins (1 base, 2 base, 3 base), long macro games, defensive styles, aggressive styles, etc. The game was basically fine and I never felt that I won or lost because of balance or game design. I was constantly experimenting, looking for magic elixirs that would break the game wide open and never found them (a sign of decent balance).
However, for about 10-20 people in the world, the game is not fine. These are the ultra elites of the world (the serrals, the rogues, the clems, the heromarines, the traps and zests of the world, etc). These are my observations about the highest levels of play. I think PVT is pretty much balanced. I think TVZ is mild to moderately broken in favor of terran. I think PVZ is hopelessly broken in favor of zerg.
The basic issue with TVZ is that zerg has to trade extremely inefficiently for 8-9 minutes with lings/banes + either muta or hydra until they can get to Hive and vipers+something else. Then they start trading about even. If you look at resources lost in a 15-20 min TVZ where the game is not decided and both players still have equal chances, its often like 10-20 K in favor of terran. I just don't think that's great balance wise. Protoss also trades inefficiently vs terran bio but its pretty short. You get a colossus or storm out at like minute 5 or 6 and then you should be able to trade evenly the rest of the game basically. Zerg can't trade evenly until late game so its a matter of trying to keep an extra mining base on the terran up and going to account for the poor trading. I think in a 20 min TVZ, there are probably hundreds of lings and banes made that never actually touch a terran unit because they are blown up by tanks, widow mines, kiting marines, etc. Whether that's good balance I don't know but I see terran's generally having the edge on zergs because they don't face the same economic pressures and will field a better army for longer.
The basic issue with PVZ is the lack of strength of protoss ground units vs zerg and the inability to really harass zerg at the higest levels. To put it more simply, protoss players can't just sit back, macro up and play a ground game vs zerg. You'll die because the zerg units can hit hard early and most protoss ground units actually aren't very good vs most zerg ground units in a straight up fight. The most favorable relationship is maybe immortals vs roaches but even still if the zerg is going pure roach and the toss is going pure immortals from 1 or 2 robo bays, they could still die because the immortals will need batteries, a meatshield buffer, a prism to juggle them, etc. And that's the most favorable relationship; it just gets worse for other protoss ground units vs zerg ground from there. You can sometimes sit back, macro up and play an air game vs zerg (carriers are kinda good vs everything basically) but at the highest levels that's getting harder and harder to do. So protoss is dependent on timing attacks and sneaky plays and its just hard to do that 3 or 4 times in a row vs multiple opponents of the same race across a tournament. If you want to fix PVZ, you need to make it viable for protoss to just play a macro game vs zerg where you can build a ground army without gambling on adepts or DTs or oracles and have a good chance of taking good fights vs zerg. However right now protoss can't do that because most protoss units are actually pretty bad vs most zerg ground units and so pro's have kind of realized they should just start building the skytoss army they want earlier rather than playing with bad units you'll end up throwing away.
Anyway so those are my thoughts. PVT is fine and balanced. TVZ is not. PVZ is not. Not sure what can be done or should be done but would be surprised if someone at blizzard is actually thinking and working on these issues.
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I thing that I'm not satisfied with the game right now is that if protoss wants to play late game, skytoss is the only way. And that make watching the protoss games sometimes boring compare to the other two races.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
Game is boring, stale and need something to shake things up. Either quicker map rotation or a patch. Watching the same maps and the same tactics for so long is booooooring. Or we need new faces but we all know this not gonna happen 
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On September 20 2021 03:55 deacon.frost wrote:Game is boring, stale and need something to shake things up. Either quicker map rotation or a patch. Watching the same maps and the same tactics for so long is booooooring. Or we need new faces but we all know this not gonna happen
This is more important than balance.
The Zerg community left the game. The AllThingsZerg discord is a ghost town except for 1 guy that still plays. All of my friends stopped playing.
It was never about balance. It was always about fun.
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Northern Ireland26218 Posts
On September 20 2021 07:11 InfCereal wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2021 03:55 deacon.frost wrote:Game is boring, stale and need something to shake things up. Either quicker map rotation or a patch. Watching the same maps and the same tactics for so long is booooooring. Or we need new faces but we all know this not gonna happen This is more important than balance. The Zerg community left the game. The AllThingsZerg discord is a ghost town except for 1 guy that still plays. All of my friends stopped playing. It was never about balance. It was always about fun.
Weird how it was probably quite populated in the good old BL/Infestor days.
But no, fun is absolutely important, I agree. I’m sure there’s a subset of players that just enjoy winning at all costs, but having fun is kind of important part of the game.
Small sample size admittedly, most Terran I know find the game too hard for their level, most Protoss find the most effective playstyles unsatisfying and bemoan their ability to play more ‘straight up’, and most Zerg feel constricted by ‘defend defend defend and then have a huge lead’.
Everything feels a bit out of whack, I think by and large many players want to show off and have their micro and macro chops tested, have a wide range of options open and feel they have a variety of styles that they can imprint their personality and preferred approach on the game with.
I’m a pretty safety first kind of player, not terrible mechanically for my level and I don’t like gambling and all-inning blindly. Well, having played them in BW and just liking the race aesthetic I kind of suck at Protoss. When I seriously off-raced I got my Terran higher, and given my style I think Zerg would actually be my best race.
But hey, regardless I’m missing out whatever I pick. Microing bio can be hard but is, to me super fun. There’s nothing comparable in the game, so if I’m picking the other two I’m missing out on that immediately.
I like having asymmetric races with different flavours, but ideally they should also enable more differing styles and, well be as fun as one another.
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I maintain that the biggest issue lies in the necessity to go Air in every matchup to have a balanced, effective composition. It struck me recently that there is no A2A splash damage unit in the game (besides the viper, which is a spellcaster).
Broodwar is a perfect game. We should all just switch our attention back to Broodwar.
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Northern Ireland26218 Posts
On September 20 2021 08:25 ThunderJunk wrote:
I maintain that the biggest issue lies in the necessity to go Air in every matchup to have a balanced, effective composition. It struck me recently that there is no A2A splash damage unit in the game (besides the viper, which is a spellcaster).
Broodwar is a perfect game. We should all just switch our attention back to Broodwar.
It’s not really, bloody great game though.
A pretty big chunk of what makes it so great is UI limitations that I’m not sure you can replicate nowadays without annoying/disinteresting modern players.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about by going air in every matchup though, yeah it’s a huge part of PvZ but the other matchups?
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On September 20 2021 08:25 ThunderJunk wrote:
I maintain that the biggest issue lies in the necessity to go Air in every matchup to have a balanced, effective composition. It struck me recently that there is no A2A splash damage unit in the game (besides the viper, which is a spellcaster).
Broodwar is a perfect game. We should all just switch our attention back to Broodwar.
Technically the liberator offers air to air splash and as does mutas.
I wouldn't call broodwar perfect either. I think SC2 is about as close as its going to get. And again for 99.9% of us there's room to improve and grow. Largely I agree that playstyles are a bit stale overall but thats typically something that should be solved with additions of new units and abilities to the game but that would require patches.
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On September 20 2021 08:25 ThunderJunk wrote:
I maintain that the biggest issue lies in the necessity to go Air in every matchup to have a balanced, effective composition. It struck me recently that there is no A2A splash damage unit in the game (besides the viper, which is a spellcaster).
Broodwar is a perfect game. We should all just switch our attention back to Broodwar.
It's a little interesting that Blizzard clearly saw air as a potential problem, that's why we had giga-parasitic bomb when LotV launched. It was _the_ anti air deathball spell. You just couldn't mass air when it existed, full stop.
If I recall correctly, liberators also had a similar strength aganist air back at the beginning too.
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EPT
