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When Wings of Liberty first came out, Zerg had a really tough time. First of all, the maps were smaller, spawn positions were closer, overlords were slower, queens had lower range, lower dps (attack speed), were slower, and creep tumors spawned almost 50% slower.
Stronger Reapers, Stim Timings, 1-1-1, 4-gates, all made a zerg's life hell. Zergs often had to aggressively scout, barely tie a fight while gaining an economic/upgrade advantage, and snowball a slight edge to victory. It was tough to be a Zerg, and the race was almost purely reactionary in real time.
To help out the Zergs in the early-mid game, 2 main things were done. First, there is a spot by every natural expansion where Zerg can park an Overlord without it being killed. The Overlord gives a pretty good idea of what the opponent is doing for the next few minutes, thus swapping out the need to 2-4 lings, and swapping them out for drones, boosting the economy. Next, the Queen was made significantly stronger. Not just in one or two areas, but essentially every single way opposing the items in the first paragraph. The Queen is the most well rounded and cost efficient unit in the game, scaling very well to the mid game.
Fast forward to today, and the maps are much larger, there is much more care given to the placement of spawn positions. The early game threats of the reaper, 4-gate, and early timing attacks have been nerfed out of the game. Other early game interactions have largely been eliminated due to the mobility and DPS of the Queens, as well as the significantly easier scouting abilities of Zerg. Zerg no longer needs to react well on the spot, because the information is coming way too quickly. This needs to be remedied. I believe that it can be remedied very easily without breaking the race.
The following solutions would contribute strongly to requiring Zerg players to scout as much as the other races:
1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
and 1 or 2 of the following:
1) Decrease Queen Health from 175 to 125/150 depending on other nerfs 2) Decrease Transfusion from 75 to 50 and have the 50 health over time occur outside of combat 3) Decrease Overlord and Overseer speed/health by 10-15% 4) Decrease Queen Speed by 10-15% 5) Revert Creep Tumor spawn time to 15s 6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air 7) Give Queen Light or Armored designation
These are slight changes that will force Zerg to be more diligent, and allow more exciting early game interactions. I don't think they will break the race or cause immense swings in balance. I'd like your feedback to see if this makes sense or what different minor changes can occur in the game to revive early game interactions vs Zerg. I am excluding the complete all-ins of the 3 rax proxies and cannon rushes when I say early game interactions.
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hmm good points. After all, a zerg made it through the IEM qualifier recently, so that's a problem.
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On January 08 2020 19:12 ThxSub~ wrote: hmm good points. After all, a zerg made it through the IEM qualifier recently, so that's a problem.
Instead of all these ingame nerfs to zerg why not just limit the amount of zergs allowed into tournaments? We would get the results much more effectively.
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We've had like 1 major tournament, immediately after the patch, in which major changes occurred (many of them substantial nerfs to Zerg).
How about we just... you know... actually watch and see how things play out before nerfing the linchpin of Zerg defense / map control?
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On January 08 2020 19:12 ThxSub~ wrote: hmm good points. After all, a zerg made it through the IEM qualifier recently, so that's a problem. There are TWO ! ! allready, don t forget Dark
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Why should Zerg even be nerfed?
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If you want to swing the zerg winrates in the other direction, just ban serral from tournaments.
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Canada8767 Posts
On January 09 2020 00:32 InfCereal wrote: If you want to swing the zerg winrates in the other direction, just ban serral from tournaments.
Ya I mean it's not like the last 3 events Serral won were zvz finals
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If you nerf queens, zerg will just mass more queens. You dont have a choice with battle cruisers in the game.
If anything, queens should be buffed and made more expensive and 3 or 4 supply.
I would also like to add that in a standard game, a scv scout/reaper opening followed by hellion will scout everything zerg is doing for first 6minutes, worst come worst you got scans.
For protoss, probe scout into adept scout into oracles scouts everything for the entire game.
Are you saying zerg should not have the same luxury? Overlord speed is good but come pretty late and is a big investment that slows down your lair and queen count.
Early game scouting is MUCH more important for zerg than the other races, since it dictates how many drones you need and if you need roaches.
Other races, you can blindy open the same opening every game and be safe against everything.
Adept into oracle defends everything zerg can throw early game with good control/scouting.
Reaper into hellion into banshees defends everything zerg can throw, even without scouting.
You are focusing on the wrong aspects of the game. Early game information is a good thing. You dont want your game to become RNG coin flippy. If you dont have scouting info early on, everything you do as a zerg feels like a huge gamble. For the other races, against zerg mostly, theres one goood build you can do everygame that will be good in every single situation. (Aka, wall off and get air units and zerg cant kill you before hydras).
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I wholeheartedly agree with your point about early game vision for zerg players. You have adressed the core issue of playing vs zerg really well in the opening post.
Since removing the highground at the natural is not even a change to any zerg unit, but simply to maps, it might even go accepted by the community. And it is also quite easily implemented by changing a few tiles on the map.
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It's nice to see posts like this, i gotta save it, and whenever I would get upset at the Blizz team for the proposed changes, I can remind myself, that it could be worse, guys like OP could be involved with balancing an RTS
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The only change needed to happen is just to adjust the maps selected for each map pool. A lot of them favor Zerg or make doing a tank push much harder because you're prone to being surrounded really easily. Only other issue is some maps are too difficult to defend things like Bane Ultralisk when you're playing ghost lib, Zerg otherwise isn't too too bad just yet
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Is this battlenet now where everyone makes new threads with balance whines that have no reason because huge patch just went out and there are literally 0 numbers on how the state of balance is since the patch?
Hope this won´t be the new TL standard. :-(
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On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested.
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On January 09 2020 02:07 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested.
If single mapmaker chose not to have Overlord spot at natural's choke on a map, then that map will probably receive lower score from Zerg judges at least, because the map deviates from standard by not having very recognisable feature, that helps to guarantees normal gameplay in XvZ. This is the case even if other measures are done to keep the impact of missing spot minimal, because judges would be unsure about how it would play out. For standard and macro categories that are the most competitive difference between finalist and others can be a 100th of a point. Also, even if the map got to finalist, the tournament for testing the maps could have possibly worse games, because players didn't adjust correctly. Thus, taking such a risk is not really something, that a mapmaker would want to do.
If we want to test it out, we would probably have to have a tournament with current maps with modifications to minimise other parts of the map effecting the gameplay in unknown way. Running such tournament would be hard just because Zerg players probably would not want to participate in a tournament that exists only because of perceived problems regarding Zerg and maps. Also there would not be many games to look at without tournament being bigger. Thus, only true way to address the issue would probably be that Blizzard chooses to remove some of the spots from maps, when adding them to the ladder pool. This of course would still be risky.
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Why would this be needed?
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On January 09 2020 04:24 Legan wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 02:07 Harris1st wrote:On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested. If single mapmaker chose not to have Overlord spot at natural's choke on a map, then that map will probably receive lower score from Zerg judges at least, because the map deviates from standard by not having very recognisable feature, that helps to guarantees normal gameplay in XvZ. This is the case even if other measures are done to keep the impact of missing spot minimal, because judges would be unsure about how it would play out. For standard and macro categories that are the most competitive difference between finalist and others can be a 100th of a point. Also, even if the map got to finalist, the tournament for testing the maps could have possibly worse games, because players didn't adjust correctly. Thus, taking such a risk is not really something, that a mapmaker would want to do. If we want to test it out, we would probably have to have a tournament with current maps with modifications to minimise other parts of the map effecting the gameplay in unknown way. Running such tournament would be hard just because Zerg players probably would not want to participate in a tournament that exists only because of perceived problems regarding Zerg and maps. Also there would not be many games to look at without tournament being bigger. Thus, only true way to address the issue would probably be that Blizzard chooses to remove some of the spots from maps, when adding them to the ladder pool. This of course would still be risky.
Or you could submit the map with an overlord pod and delete it during the iteration phase. Besides, given that it's mostly a matter of optics and not actually balance (because let's be honest it's mostly a bunch of terrans being angry about mapmakers/TLMC judges treating overlord pods as compulsory and reaper spots as optional more so than the tangible balance impact), not putting overlord pods sounds like an okay move strategically for the upcoming TLMC.
Also why would you want to run a tournament to test removing overlord pods? You wouldn't see a difference. Sure, TLMC judges strict insistence on overlord pods has been a bit overblown in the past, and so has the reaction from terrans on their Twitter soapboxes, but that doesn't change the fact that overlord pods are but a small part of a map and the impact of strong overlord pods (like on Simulacrum), weak overlord pods (like on Nightshade) or no overlord pod can only really be viewed holistically as part of the map. So leaving strategic mapmaking for TLMC purposes aside, it really comes down to what suits the map not which people you want yelling at you.
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On January 09 2020 05:23 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 04:24 Legan wrote:On January 09 2020 02:07 Harris1st wrote:On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested. If single mapmaker chose not to have Overlord spot at natural's choke on a map, then that map will probably receive lower score from Zerg judges at least, because the map deviates from standard by not having very recognisable feature, that helps to guarantees normal gameplay in XvZ. This is the case even if other measures are done to keep the impact of missing spot minimal, because judges would be unsure about how it would play out. For standard and macro categories that are the most competitive difference between finalist and others can be a 100th of a point. Also, even if the map got to finalist, the tournament for testing the maps could have possibly worse games, because players didn't adjust correctly. Thus, taking such a risk is not really something, that a mapmaker would want to do. If we want to test it out, we would probably have to have a tournament with current maps with modifications to minimise other parts of the map effecting the gameplay in unknown way. Running such tournament would be hard just because Zerg players probably would not want to participate in a tournament that exists only because of perceived problems regarding Zerg and maps. Also there would not be many games to look at without tournament being bigger. Thus, only true way to address the issue would probably be that Blizzard chooses to remove some of the spots from maps, when adding them to the ladder pool. This of course would still be risky. Or you could submit the map with an overlord pod and delete it during the iteration phase. Besides, given that it's mostly a matter of optics and not actually balance (because let's be honest it's mostly a bunch of terrans being angry about mapmakers/TLMC judges treating overlord pods as compulsory and reaper spots as optional more so than the tangible balance impact), not putting overlord pods sounds like an okay move strategically for the upcoming TLMC. Also why would you want to run a tournament to test removing overlord pods? You wouldn't see a difference. Sure, TLMC judges strict insistence on overlord pods has been a bit overblown in the past, and so has the reaction from terrans on their Twitter soapboxes, but that doesn't change the fact that overlord pods are but a small part of a map and the impact of strong overlord pods (like on Simulacrum), weak overlord pods (like on Nightshade) or no overlord pod can only really be viewed holistically as part of the map. So leaving strategic mapmaking for TLMC purposes aside, it really comes down to what suits the map not which people you want yelling at you. I agree that the Overlord spot is only small thing and not a problem, but is being perceived as one because being Zerg specific feature, that is not liked, and has become something that people like to whine about. I just wanted to highlight that people want to play it safe and be lazy.
The tournament option is just alternative to avoid having TLMC linked to it. More of an afterthought than anything else.
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darn hit quote instead of edit..sorry.
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I think we should be getting to the point where we use maps to balance the game.
In my opinion the map pool should probably have a bigger variety of map sizes and chokier areas to deal with. We basically have 8 different variations of Fighting Spirit.
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