Evolution and overall design of Starcraft 2

Hi there.

First of all I want to mention I'm not a native English speaker, but I've been learning the language in hard mode and did my best. Actually, I've started because of Starcraft and this is a whole another story.

There are a lot of mistakes in the text of course, but I’ll try to correct them all as soon as possible, so thank you all.

I'd started to write this article for like a month ago because I wanted to share my musings about how broken warhound was and why it should be removed. Since they are not a problem anymore, I'd stopped, but lately many people trying to write something about sc2 and since Blizzard is paying attention to them I’ve desired to continue my text.

There are more thoughts for brainstorming than actual offers.

Hope it will be interesting for you.

The main idea, that I want to propose, is “The more opportunities we have, the better games could be” and why design means much more than numbers and why the numbers are changing as the time going. And how a Zerg has evolved.

About TvZ and Zerg overall
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Let me explain how the match-up worked.

2 rax pressure MAY put your workers count slightly ahead, because you end up being like with 25 scvs and he has 30 drones and units, instead of 28 to 40 ratio. Maybe numbers are not exactly like this, but the idea is same.
Hellions vs Lings wars to get a map control for 3rd base. Creep spread control.

Did anyone remember why Terrans 95% of their games were playing with reactor-hellion THEN expand? Because it was save against lings/banelings/roaches or any sort of all-in. That why roach-bane-lings pushes «suddenly» became incredibly good, because when Terran had faced the siege queen patch, players has started playing with “1 barrack Expand 2 refineries into hellions” – because you need to push your economy up, because Zerg is ahead by default and now you can’t punish it.

But with this build order, your first units come out later and this window is enough to attack with those all-ins. Of course, when the banshee follow up has been opened it solved the problem (before, Terran was making like 4-6 hellions and then switching factory to tech-lab to get early siege mode but roaches already at your door). So now those all-ins are not so strong as they were 3 months ago, especially with mass banshees-hellions follow up, thanks to the our genius MVP.
Then Terran going to push for “pre-lair” timing, where Zerg wants to get his mutas out or something T2, but he has to spend some money to stay alive.
Then marine-tank vs muta-bane wars for map control and getting expansions.
BECAUSE Zerg wants his T3 army and Terran wants to prevent it.
And the last timing of “pre-hive” with the same idea of “pre-lair”.

This is how the match-up worked back then at it’s peak.

Nowadays we have a dull and only “pre-hive” timing at best. TvZ even doesn’t have 2 base all-ins like PvZ does, map control is not needed anymore at all, Zerg has a superior economy, better vision and better units (T3), so Terran has to wait for mistakes. That’s not my words, I’ve been reading these lines over and over again and for most of people match-up now is frustrating because how unfair it is.

Not “hard”, but literally “unfair”, I mean, TvP is hard for both sides, but the better player wins, like it is in mirror matches and that’s amazing.

So let’s get back to basics. Because this is the problem.

We had so many changes for every race, maps have been changed, metagame is always changing, but the basic idea of Being Zerg always been the same as before.

A long time ago when we had maps like Steps of War or Scrap Station, so we had games where 3rd base was not allowed. What does it mean?

T3 tech was almost unreachable for Zerg and Zerg’s T1-T2 is obviously weaker than T3. Even T2 tech was weaker, because when everyone has less economy Zerg is the worst race, because of larva / hatchery production mechanic and strength of units.

Then we had maps like Shattered Temple or Shakuras Plato where every side seemed balanced, because there were many goals to do to achieve your victory.
There was a “good T2 era” I would say, where T3 was closer than before and economy was nice for supporting your T2, but not enough for making a straight transition to T3 where Zerg is going nuts.

Then we’ve received Daybreak and Antiga. Mutas are not so strong at these maps, 3rd base is easier on them, so the T3 tech era had became. Ultras or (and) Brood Lords has started to appear in every game. Terrans started to struggle with.

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Thanks God, we have our genius MVP who had shown us the ghosts play. Suddenly, Terran had opened for himself a “T3” transition that was pure counter to mass Ultras and BLs, it was literally a rape when 20 ghosts were demolishing 14 BLs or Ultras. Hi, Stephano.

But ghosts are “another T2” technology, I would say, not “Terran’s T3”.
Ghosts do not counter T1 and T2 units at all. I’ve been watching every single game at every single tournament and still don’t understand the idea behind the snipe nerf.

The “reactive race” sees that his opponent is making transition into ghosts, where he has to throw out his tanks, since they are useless against T3, and Zerg just…waits. Then obviously lose a fight to 10 ghosts and continue making T3 while Terran has already 20 ghosts.

What's the point?

I remember the game between ForGG and Leenock, where Leenock had shown how to deal with ghosts: ling-bane-ultra composition. Terran low on tanks and really slow if he has 20 ghosts, but Zerg is not.

I think this game is amazing in every single way. Like literally, pure awesomeness for learning, it's like a slice of time.

Leenock has exploited plots which Terran could not defend, because of his production mechanic. If you are reading this and still haven’t watched this game I really recommend do this. Because this game is like “the raising of T3 wars” for both sides, instead of marine-tank vs muta-bane wars.

And then the snipe patch has come out. I think, mostly after this game:

WCG 2011 - Grand Final Main Stage, Day 4

I’m pretty sure MVP could make anything to overwhelm XiGua. He has decided to make a show with snipes and nukes instead of mass battlecruisers for example, because how much better player he is and he simply could do this.

So, after the snipe patch, Terran could not deal with T3 and that had begun the «2 barracks rushes into pushes every 2 minutes to prevent everything what a Zerg wants» era.

That was the MKP’s best time I would say, his games at various MLG tournaments vs DRG were awesome. But why?

Since Terran can’t deal with Zerg’s T3 composition, players had started to play VERY aggressive, like never approaching the late game at all. Like, literally, the most aggressive Terran wins and it was MKP.

This was an amazing time, because Bio plays had shined at their best.

Most of Zerg players were still playing with mutas, but there were players like Stephano, who shown us the strength of Infestor play and this style slowly was becoming more and more popular, because it is the counter to Terran’s Bio and overall they are better on new maps.

Terran was struggling with the game again, because T2 wars became harder and Tier 3 Ultralisks or Brood Lords are much better with infestors than with useless mutas at this stage of a game. So Terran had no answer for T3 and then even T1-T2 became really hard, because of infestors. But it was still beatable for top players and interesting for viewers.

But then the siege queen patch has come out and that was… just to much. Because now Terran has no answer at all, now he has to aim at “post T3 game” or do a “pre-hive” timing. Terran players were trying to make timing pushes at 3rd base for a while but this simply was not enough.

Now Zerg do a straight T1 -> T3 transitions through the infestors, because he is save due to good maps, queens, superior map control and production.

I mean, the idea behind Zerg is the same as it was 2 years ago, but with new buffs, nerfs and maps Zerg has been rescaled from the worst to best, because their game now basically STARTS from Tier 3, where Zerg is ahead by default, because this is how the Starcraft 2’s Zerg has been designed.

So for if we want to fix everything, we have to remake some early and basic things because they are snowballing into the mid game, affect on transitions and late game approaching.

Of course we can stupidly nerf BLs by simply increasing their cost because they are, you know, really good and supply because what the hell the capital ship that can be made 15 at a time costs 4 supplies?

Actually, I really don’t like the idea of increased cost, because it may ends up being duller than it is, because you have to wait more time while your drones are collecting recourses.

But increased supply is nice. “The reactive race” in my mind has to have high supply and cheap units, because this provoke to do attacks or do other stuff, and not sitting behind your static defense making a deathball. Sorry, but “Reactive race” with a deathball possibility? No way.

And that’s would be enough I think for a Brood Lord, because the problem is how easy you are can get them and their count in production at the same time, but not the actual unit.

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Production

So, production is our problem. Since Zerg has the most powerful, the easier and the cheapest production we should up to date something.

Power

This is self-explained shot I think. Quality provided by technologies of the 2012 year. Maybe they’re still not there.

Easiness

4 hatcheries injection management is far easier than 15 warp-ins + 2 robotics + Stargates maybe + boosts. Not to mention difference in microing at this time.

Cost

Let’s take for an example a deep late-game situation:

And do some math:

11 Barracks + 3 Factories + 6 starports + 1 armory + 10 tech-labs + 6 reactors + 4 ghost academies.
Total cost: 4550 minerals and 1750 gas

Looks like Zerg’s main base was killed. Not a big deal, we only want to see the overall cost of overall production.

6 hatcheries, a lair, a hive, a pool, a spire, a great spire, an infestation pit, a cavern.
Total cost: 2800 minerals and 1000 gas.

Wow, that’s pretty cheap, especially when we have additional spire and additional lair. And we’ve got this amazing production (see previous screenshot and imagine lings are Ultras (of course they're not, but get into this idea) )

I can’t suggest something because it’s really hard to do in this situation, but if we want to slow a Zerg down, we have to make something with their mechanic overall and rescale it again. As soon, as we have HotS add-on, which, you know, is about Zerg, we could experiment there.

Size of Infestor

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Lately, I see some people suggesting this as well and I've always thought this change is great. It's simply and amazing in every way.

Let's take a look on this picture:

19 ghosts, 19 infestors and one Psy-storm.

Fungal has the same radius as a storm has, so you can catch 19 ghosts with ONE fungal and only 6 infestors.
Same with seeker missiles. Same idea with tanks splash damage, hellions, colossi.

So, what if we make them smaller? How does this affect on the game?

People now should have to actually control their infestors. How many times we've seen "beautiful fungal growths" when 15 clumped infestors running into tanks and... only few of them die, because they are so massive and fill like 1/3 of monitor range, so splash damage simply doesn't work on them. This is a huge mistake to make and should be punished.

But, if you are controlling your inferstors greatly, they are not taking any splash damage at all. This adds another dimensional into the fight, because there are more things which may happen as outcome. More micro, more intense and more interesting to watch.

Not to mention, infestors are the fastest casters being while fighting on creep, and let's be honest, after the siege-queen buff creep is everywhere.

Fungal growth

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Is this spell overpowered? Why people want to remake this?

Let’s step away from a fungal and look at psy storm.

Psy storm is pure awesomeness in terms of design, because it is so much complicated and we have a ton of possibilities that can be our outcome in a battle.

First of all, HT is slow, like really slow – 1,875 movement speed is like Thor or Burrowed roach has.

It is make difficulties to land even A storm, but even then, your opponent has to do a lot of mistakes to get full amount of damage. HT may be killed by snipes or in rare cases by another units, but it is a protoss’s mistake. And you can actually dodge them all, of course it is hard, but you still have an opportunity to do this.

We can use HTs in complex with good forcefields or warpprism drops to increase the potential outcome. Both of these possibilities might be prevented. Or not.

This is really great ability in terms how it’s complicated and scaling with skill of both players.

But a fungal growth?

This ability is so binary. Since an infestor is incredible fast unit, with streaming lings or broodlords on top of them the actual landing of a fungal growth is not a problem at all. With the stun effect some banelings rape everything which it caught, or BLs kills everything without any other possibility.

Or a "chain fungal"? Of course, punishing is great, but in complex how the other zerg units work plus reinforcement mechanic plus how easy to land the money fungal - this is just too big.

So what we can make better? How to rework this ability without nerfing it to hell? How to create more opportunities for other side?

Besides the size of infestor, we can change cast range, aoe, speed or actual ability. So let’s think about.

How about to decrease the speed for example to 1.88 + 0.37 (up to 2.25 on creep)? We’ve created some difficulties to land the “money fungal”, because an opponent now has a tiny bit more time to split or pull back, I mean, to react at all. Also, the cost of a-moving them during the engagement or wrong positioning now is more, because they are may being killed easier.

How about a stun effect?

I’d suggest a slow effect like purge. If you never played wc3, or dota or whatever, let me explain: you cast “purge” and target is being slowed at ~90% and slowly regains its initial speed for 3 seconds.
Now we’ve created a window, where some marines can be lifted, some of them may be microed, reinforcement MAY be in time and so on, there are a lot of possibilities with this mechanic.

Even chain fungal is staying in this case, but you really have to “chain” since phoenix/medivac/raven regains his speed and after 3 seconds it will fly away from you. From that infestor only, don’t forget about queens, corruptors and so on.

Of course we can play with these numbers, because this whole article is about new concepts.

Neural Parasite

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This ability is too weak and too strong at the same time. It’s really strong when being used on Mothership or Ravens, like the game changing factor where other player had a single chance to win against BL-infestor-corruptor composition and it’s gone.
But in other hand Neural Parasite totally useless. It is good against colossi, thors maybe tanks, but nobody worries about it because it’s nearly impossible to do, because of range, manacost and feedback.

What I want to suggest is remove the possibility using it on air units, because it is unbelievable overpowered on them. Mothership’s vortex is the only one opportunity to beat Zerg’s late game composition, besides maybe 30 carriers with 3-3-3, but AT WHAT COST, and then compare replenishment capabilities of Protoss and Zerg, so, yeah.

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Same story with ravens, but they are much-much expensive than a Mothership and requires additional production structures, which is time and money that Terran doesn’t have.

But now we have to buff this ability, so let’s change the mechanic:

The Neural Parasite v2.0 – costs 25 energy for first second and additional 25 energy for each second it holds a unit.

So, a full energy infestor now can hold a unit up to 8 seconds, which is quite low for Funday Mondays vs Terran, but can be useful in pro matches.

Also, nowadays vs Protoss you can’t land it at all, because it costs 100 energy while hp amount of the infestor is 90 with range 7. Feedback simply shuts it down before.

This is nice change I think, because now our infestor has more options in fight, and Terran / Protoss has them as well, since feedback and EMP will break the effect, because without energy you can’t prolong the effect.

Warpgate design

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I've been reading themes on forums how warp gates is broken, some thoughts about it from different people and solutions, which feels for everyone not so good. But, I think you can't balance the warp mechanic without buffing gateway units, but if you will do this, mass gate all-ins or early pressures going to be very hard to stop, they are actually already strong, so you will have some hard time to rebalance entire early game, which is unnecessary.

Nowadays gateway tech is balanced around forge, sentries and warp-ins which provide great opportunities to defense against a Zerg. At first minutes versus Terran stalkers are better than marines and zealots are great as well, so in complex with choke points, ramps, forcefields and guardian shield P is pretty much save and even can make attacks which have a possibility to be deadly.

Terran relies on static bunkers defense, SimCitying and repair, Zerg relies on queens and map control.

What can we do with the warp technology?

Obviously, you are can warp units at your base and be like a Terran. This is your basic opportunity.

But what ALSO you can do is warp at another side of a map, even in different places at once. But you have to use your PREbuilt pylons on PREcleared spot or use your PREbuilt warp prism which has to be alive, on spot and transformed. Add to these the fact that actual warp lasts 5 seconds, during which a pylon, prism or warping units could be... killed.

And all of the sudden, there are a lot of opportunities! But their usefulness and efficient are scaling with skill of players. Both of them. Because a player might see the prism and relocate units in time. Or can simply shut down this prism when it moving through the sky with something and your opponent will lose much more.

These things are making tense while the game is going. This is great to have opportunities and possibilities scaling with skill and experience of both players.

And not to mention, Blizzard has done a great job in the design of how it looks, sounds and even feels.

Late-game PvT mass zealots instant warp-ins

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...But end-game 20 gates zealot warp-ins in PvT are broken because of warp technology in combination how a zealot works.

Zealots are good in late-game overall, because they provide "a shield" which Terran has to break and this is not a bad thing, because once zealots are gone Protoss is almost completely off-guard. But they are really cheap and do not requires any micro at all, which is kind of unfair and always upsets Terran players who are kite, kite and kite them until zealots are dead, but then they are facing another part of zealots and can't actually fight them since their reinforcement mechanic can't provide this and half of their army already gone.

Terran in most cases can't kill the reinforcement pylon or prism because Protoss obviously defends it and during the fight, the pylon is on the rear side of the army and when Terran kites he is going into opposite direction of it.

To be fair, Terran's army has more supply size, because of mules are replacing some of workers at this stage of the game, which helps them a lot.

How can we remake zealot?

If you increase the cost, it will ruin early game. I mean, cost of (let's say) 125 minerals in a late-game is not a big deal, but in first minutes is.

Supply to 3? This is solves our initial problem, but deathball-wise we will be weaker by far. Terran may stomps us in 200/200, because it is already really close fights, so we have to buff something in this case.

What if we decrease armor by 1? That's possible and can be debatable. But this is pure nerf as well but at every stages of the game in every match-ups. Nobody likes nerfs. We have to create another ways to deal, another opportunities to have.

Back then, Terrans had a possibility to snipe off zealots IF ghosts had some excess of energy. High skill required. Actually, that's why everybody hated (and hates) this nerf - now the snipe is absolutely one-dimensional. Back then you had some very rare opportunities like sniping banelings, marines, roaches, whatever. And it's gone. That why I'm talking about this concept of adding variations, not to decrease them.

So, zealots. What I want really to suggest is the concept of slightly better EMP. The new opportunity to deal with if you are good and opponent is making a mistake.

Let's pretend THE zealot 2.0 has 75 shields and 75 hp amount instead of 50 to 100. Now, your EMP them with better benefit.
Protoss may spread them out to prevent this possibility and may not, Terran can catch off guard, choke points and clumping now benefits for Terran as well and all of the sudden, we have some things to worry about in our engagements and controls.

We have created a new dimension.

Our Zealot 2.0 now is weaker than v1.0, not because of EMP, but also because of shield has less armor than hp. And now, if you want to have equal "meat-shield" as it was before, you'll be thinking about getting the shield upgrade as well as the armor one. But this also means you have to spend some chronoboosts, money and time to get it.

This, in some way, making the mid-game stage more longer, because your deathball without shield upgrade now is slightly worse than it used to be. And with new amount of shields in fight you MAY be weaker if you got some really good EMPs, but overall it stays almost the same. I want to note, zealots after instant late-game warp-ins have full health, while ghosts already has spent some amount of energy.

Keep in mind, EMPs have small radius, ghosts are much more expensive than zealots are after fight they are being built 40 seconds + walk time.

Protoss has the cheapest and fastest upgrades in the game already, but with this change, we also could make shields upgrade slightly cheaper in terms of it cost or time.
Don't forget, this upgrade works on every single unit the Protoss player has, so we have to be very, very careful with this change, if ever do it.

What can we do with the actual warp?

Decreased build time from gateways or (and) increased cooldown for warpgates may force to play with pure gateways, and this is kind of like removing the warp technology from the game completely.

We can make some analysis how it may affect on the game at every single stage, but the truth is this is not going to fix the 20 warpgates warp-ins into Terran base after a fight. There is no difference between 1 second and 1000 seconds cooldown, because they are ready.

And gateways are not so badass as warpgates, we already discussed about.

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Maybe make the actual warp-in longer? Huh, that’s interesting.

To understand how much warpgates are better than gateways, let’s pretend for 1 minute that warp-in lasts as much as cooldown does. We created something between gateway and warpgate – we can make our units like a gateway or robo does, but it appears at powered by energy area which we has chosen for. Seems strong enough, because there is no reinforcement time.

But during the ~30 seconds warp-in this unit or the structure which provides the energy for can be easily killed. Of course if you are warping at home, there is almost no threat and our primary problem is kind of has been solved, but our offensive and defensive opportunities as Protoss is really bad in this case.

Warp prism for reinforcement is still better then moving your fresh units from home in terms of attack, but we are losing half of uniqueness of the Protoss race. Now, we can’t warp-in a couple of zealots to deal with a drop or get fast archons at our fourth nexus.

Our position mistakes cost a little bit more, our warps may be threatened more often and a defender gets a little bit more advantage.

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Or harass with warp prisms for example. Of course you still can use them like a dropship, because it is still fast and cool, but now you can’t successfully warp-in with your drop. If you’re doing a warp you are taking some risks and that’s great, because it is your decision. I mean, if you’re doing a drop with 4 zealots and warping 4 zealots as well, you can’t load them all and fly away.

So that’s why our warp-in lasts 5 seconds, not 30 and this is great.

But what if we change the number up to 8? Actually, changing this number equals changing the cost of mistakes, rescaling a defender advantage and speed of reinforcement.

How about a pylon which provides less energy? For example, you are making one zealot, and the powerfield radius of that pylon decreases by 10%, and after 5th warp you don’t be able to do a warp at that pylon. For example, it constantly charges up like every 2 seconds, so you can do an another 1 warp-in after that time and after 4 seconds another 2 warp-ins and so on.

I think this is may be even the better change, than we have “no warp at high ground at all” in HotS, because we still can do it, but a little bit harder overall. But it is still possible.

For example we want to warp-in 5 DTs, but since the range is decreasing with every warp you do, you’ll end up being with only 2 DTs because for the 3rd DT the pylon will be out of range.

This change almost not affecting the prism warp-ins, because a 5 units warp is already enough, but 10 is really strong. If you want to make 15 warps at once you have to have 3 pylons as well, which is not a big deal with 3k mineral bank or being at home, but can affect at overall gameplay since you have to be more careful and precise when you place them outside.

So, if you are still reading, thank you. I just really wanted to share some thoughts, because any content in my opinion is great. For example, even this article is full of total BS on 90%, there are still 10% that could be useful to actual thinking and we may end up being with a great game named Starcraft 2.

Thanks.

Evolution and overall design of Starcraft 2

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