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Forums - PC - Dear Blizzard, please fix Starcraft II

scottie on 07 October 2010
zarx said:
scottie said:
zarx said:

a rush is often very risky if you don't manage your economy right. tactics like a good wall off, scouting and rushing out and microing units to defend will usually  allow you to counter the rush and if the opponent committed to much to the rush they will easily be killed in the mid game. it's all a matter of balance. And if everyone starts just rushing the smart players will all just devise counter rush strats and win every time. IMO anyway


But the different forms of rushing require exactly the opposite strategy - what you build to defend against marines is the exact opposite to what you build to defend against Banshees. And unless you are much much much better than your opponent, you wont be able to try  to do both counters because you won't do either well enough


that's why you scout and harass. If they have time to tech to banshees and build a marine army then if you scouted then you should have time to counter both or counter attack your self, on the other hand sitting in your base trying to predict what they are going to attack you with will usually lead to you losing. 

And if they rush marines it will take longer to get out a Banshee and by that time the Banshees aren't really considered a rush. A rush as I understand it is attacking the enemy as soon as possible, 6 pool zerglings etc is a rush. I think you seem to have more of a problem with the very fast pace of starcraft 2 rather than rushing. Yes everything has a counter and yes every second counts. Starcraft 2 is a totally different game to AoE2 for example, AoE 2 is a relatively slow passed game where rushing is not really an option at all and a bigger army will almost always win, unless war elephants are involved of course, that game encourages building up a large city and a large army over the more fast passed rock paper scissors gameplay in SC2 that encourages scouting and micro over large armies in the early game and transitioning into large armies in the mid to late game. 


I have yet to see a single game where the winner did either of the following

 

Had more than 15 combat units

Had more than 2 types of combat units

 

This whole, rushing army that transitions into a lategame army doesnt happen. It did in SC1, you used a rush to weaken your opponents economy, whilst keeping your going, then sent another wave to weaken them further. In SC2 you send in a rush to kill straight off the bat.

 

As for scouting, it just doesn't work. Considering a fight of non terran vs terran (if you're going to rush, you play terran, if you're going to play terran, you rush, so assuming we want to compare rush vs non rush we have to compare terran vs non terran) If you scout early, all that you learn is that your terran opponent is building a lot of SCVs and probably a barracks. If you scout late, you learn that your opponent has at least 3 marines, and that is all because your worker dies too quickly to see more



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r505Matt on 07 October 2010
scottie said:
zarx said:
scottie said:
zarx said:

a rush is often very risky if you don't manage your economy right. tactics like a good wall off, scouting and rushing out and microing units to defend will usually  allow you to counter the rush and if the opponent committed to much to the rush they will easily be killed in the mid game. it's all a matter of balance. And if everyone starts just rushing the smart players will all just devise counter rush strats and win every time. IMO anyway


But the different forms of rushing require exactly the opposite strategy - what you build to defend against marines is the exact opposite to what you build to defend against Banshees. And unless you are much much much better than your opponent, you wont be able to try  to do both counters because you won't do either well enough


that's why you scout and harass. If they have time to tech to banshees and build a marine army then if you scouted then you should have time to counter both or counter attack your self, on the other hand sitting in your base trying to predict what they are going to attack you with will usually lead to you losing. 

And if they rush marines it will take longer to get out a Banshee and by that time the Banshees aren't really considered a rush. A rush as I understand it is attacking the enemy as soon as possible, 6 pool zerglings etc is a rush. I think you seem to have more of a problem with the very fast pace of starcraft 2 rather than rushing. Yes everything has a counter and yes every second counts. Starcraft 2 is a totally different game to AoE2 for example, AoE 2 is a relatively slow passed game where rushing is not really an option at all and a bigger army will almost always win, unless war elephants are involved of course, that game encourages building up a large city and a large army over the more fast passed rock paper scissors gameplay in SC2 that encourages scouting and micro over large armies in the early game and transitioning into large armies in the mid to late game. 


I have yet to see a single game where the winner did either of the following

 

Had more than 15 combat units

Had more than 2 types of combat units

 

This whole, rushing army that transitions into a lategame army doesnt happen. It did in SC1, you used a rush to weaken your opponents economy, whilst keeping your going, then sent another wave to weaken them further. In SC2 you send in a rush to kill straight off the bat.

 

As for scouting, it just doesn't work. Considering a fight of non terran vs terran (if you're going to rush, you play terran, if you're going to play terran, you rush, so assuming we want to compare rush vs non rush we have to compare terran vs non terran) If you scout early, all that you learn is that your terran opponent is building a lot of SCVs and probably a barracks. If you scout late, you learn that your opponent has at least 3 marines, and that is all because your worker dies too quickly to see mor

Scouting doesn't work? Are you playing the same game? The point of scouting isn't to see everything, the point of scouting is to see a little and make an educated guess as to what you don't see.

Even the pros rush, but rarely, since it is overall the weakest strat, but used properly can be tricky and throw off your opponent in a series.

Also, I hope you're not confusing rushing with timed pushes, there's a HUGE difference.



johnsobas on 07 October 2010
scottie said:
zarx said:
scottie said:
zarx said:

a rush is often very risky if you don't manage your economy right. tactics like a good wall off, scouting and rushing out and microing units to defend will usually  allow you to counter the rush and if the opponent committed to much to the rush they will easily be killed in the mid game. it's all a matter of balance. And if everyone starts just rushing the smart players will all just devise counter rush strats and win every time. IMO anyway


But the different forms of rushing require exactly the opposite strategy - what you build to defend against marines is the exact opposite to what you build to defend against Banshees. And unless you are much much much better than your opponent, you wont be able to try  to do both counters because you won't do either well enough


that's why you scout and harass. If they have time to tech to banshees and build a marine army then if you scouted then you should have time to counter both or counter attack your self, on the other hand sitting in your base trying to predict what they are going to attack you with will usually lead to you losing. 

And if they rush marines it will take longer to get out a Banshee and by that time the Banshees aren't really considered a rush. A rush as I understand it is attacking the enemy as soon as possible, 6 pool zerglings etc is a rush. I think you seem to have more of a problem with the very fast pace of starcraft 2 rather than rushing. Yes everything has a counter and yes every second counts. Starcraft 2 is a totally different game to AoE2 for example, AoE 2 is a relatively slow passed game where rushing is not really an option at all and a bigger army will almost always win, unless war elephants are involved of course, that game encourages building up a large city and a large army over the more fast passed rock paper scissors gameplay in SC2 that encourages scouting and micro over large armies in the early game and transitioning into large armies in the mid to late game. 


I have yet to see a single game where the winner did either of the following

 

Had more than 15 combat units

Had more than 2 types of combat units

 

This whole, rushing army that transitions into a lategame army doesnt happen. It did in SC1, you used a rush to weaken your opponents economy, whilst keeping your going, then sent another wave to weaken them further. In SC2 you send in a rush to kill straight off the bat.

 

As for scouting, it just doesn't work. Considering a fight of non terran vs terran (if you're going to rush, you play terran, if you're going to play terran, you rush, so assuming we want to compare rush vs non rush we have to compare terran vs non terran) If you scout early, all that you learn is that your terran opponent is building a lot of SCVs and probably a barracks. If you scout late, you learn that your opponent has at least 3 marines, and that is all because your worker dies too quickly to see more

you can usually see how many barracks he made, and if he got a tech lab or a reactor or neither.  Scouting is the most important thing you do.



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leatherhat on 07 October 2010

See the rush coming with good recon, crush it, take advantage of enemies crippled economy. Rushing is not the be all end all of tactics, certainly not more so than sc1. 



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leatherhat on 07 October 2010
scottie said:
zarx said:
scottie said:
zarx said:

a rush is often very risky if you don't manage your economy right. tactics like a good wall off, scouting and rushing out and microing units to defend will usually  allow you to counter the rush and if the opponent committed to much to the rush they will easily be killed in the mid game. it's all a matter of balance. And if everyone starts just rushing the smart players will all just devise counter rush strats and win every time. IMO anyway


But the different forms of rushing require exactly the opposite strategy - what you build to defend against marines is the exact opposite to what you build to defend against Banshees. And unless you are much much much better than your opponent, you wont be able to try  to do both counters because you won't do either well enough


that's why you scout and harass. If they have time to tech to banshees and build a marine army then if you scouted then you should have time to counter both or counter attack your self, on the other hand sitting in your base trying to predict what they are going to attack you with will usually lead to you losing. 

And if they rush marines it will take longer to get out a Banshee and by that time the Banshees aren't really considered a rush. A rush as I understand it is attacking the enemy as soon as possible, 6 pool zerglings etc is a rush. I think you seem to have more of a problem with the very fast pace of starcraft 2 rather than rushing. Yes everything has a counter and yes every second counts. Starcraft 2 is a totally different game to AoE2 for example, AoE 2 is a relatively slow passed game where rushing is not really an option at all and a bigger army will almost always win, unless war elephants are involved of course, that game encourages building up a large city and a large army over the more fast passed rock paper scissors gameplay in SC2 that encourages scouting and micro over large armies in the early game and transitioning into large armies in the mid to late game. 


I have yet to see a single game where the winner did either of the following

 

Had more than 15 combat units

Had more than 2 types of combat units

 

This whole, rushing army that transitions into a lategame army doesnt happen. It did in SC1, you used a rush to weaken your opponents economy, whilst keeping your going, then sent another wave to weaken them further. In SC2 you send in a rush to kill straight off the bat.

 

As for scouting, it just doesn't work. Considering a fight of non terran vs terran (if you're going to rush, you play terran, if you're going to play terran, you rush, so assuming we want to compare rush vs non rush we have to compare terran vs non terran) If you scout early, all that you learn is that your terran opponent is building a lot of SCVs and probably a barracks. If you scout late, you learn that your opponent has at least 3 marines, and that is all because your worker dies too quickly to see more


You aren't likely to see everything he makes, you have to make informed guesses on what his strat may be based on whats he built and what you've seen before. 



ǝןdɯıs ʇı dǝǝʞ oʇ ǝʞıן ı ʍouʞ noʎ 

Ask me about being an elitist jerk

Time for hype

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zarx on 07 October 2010
scottie said:
zarx said:
scottie said:
zarx said:

a rush is often very risky if you don't manage your economy right. tactics like a good wall off, scouting and rushing out and microing units to defend will usually  allow you to counter the rush and if the opponent committed to much to the rush they will easily be killed in the mid game. it's all a matter of balance. And if everyone starts just rushing the smart players will all just devise counter rush strats and win every time. IMO anyway


But the different forms of rushing require exactly the opposite strategy - what you build to defend against marines is the exact opposite to what you build to defend against Banshees. And unless you are much much much better than your opponent, you wont be able to try  to do both counters because you won't do either well enough


that's why you scout and harass. If they have time to tech to banshees and build a marine army then if you scouted then you should have time to counter both or counter attack your self, on the other hand sitting in your base trying to predict what they are going to attack you with will usually lead to you losing. 

And if they rush marines it will take longer to get out a Banshee and by that time the Banshees aren't really considered a rush. A rush as I understand it is attacking the enemy as soon as possible, 6 pool zerglings etc is a rush. I think you seem to have more of a problem with the very fast pace of starcraft 2 rather than rushing. Yes everything has a counter and yes every second counts. Starcraft 2 is a totally different game to AoE2 for example, AoE 2 is a relatively slow passed game where rushing is not really an option at all and a bigger army will almost always win, unless war elephants are involved of course, that game encourages building up a large city and a large army over the more fast passed rock paper scissors gameplay in SC2 that encourages scouting and micro over large armies in the early game and transitioning into large armies in the mid to late game. 


I have yet to see a single game where the winner did either of the following

 

Had more than 15 combat units

Had more than 2 types of combat units

 

This whole, rushing army that transitions into a lategame army doesnt happen. It did in SC1, you used a rush to weaken your opponents economy, whilst keeping your going, then sent another wave to weaken them further. In SC2 you send in a rush to kill straight off the bat.

 

As for scouting, it just doesn't work. Considering a fight of non terran vs terran (if you're going to rush, you play terran, if you're going to play terran, you rush, so assuming we want to compare rush vs non rush we have to compare terran vs non terran) If you scout early, all that you learn is that your terran opponent is building a lot of SCVs and probably a barracks. If you scout late, you learn that your opponent has at least 3 marines, and that is all because your worker dies too quickly to see more

haven't seen much have you? massing 1 or 2 types of unit is a legit strat, but a decent player will be able to counter easily. I guess the most popular Terran unit combo the MMM ball falls into you 2 combat units but I often see MMM with siege tanks or a couple thors and a lot of other 3 unit type combos. your 15 units comment on the other hand is just plane wrong, your average MMM ball will usally contain about 14-16 Marines 6-7 Marauders and 3-5 Medivacs and often they will be much bigger, I often see upwards of 10 Hydralisks with like 20-30 zerglingsbanelings , it's not uncommon to see forces of 15plus stalkers in a game. If anything armies are on average bigger than they were in SC1. 

and as for scouting if you are going to use workers then you do it very early of coarse possibly even one of your starters if you are protoss and wan't to find out what's up and/or set up a proxy and later they can use any flyer for harras and scouting or a probe, Zerg can use overlords in the early game etc. And a little info can go a long way BTW.

I suggest looking up Husky starcraft and or HDstarcraft on youtube and watch some high level play, it's actually a lot of fun and informative.



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c0rd on 07 October 2010

Mind giving out your friends' names? (can check on sc2ranks.com ). I just hardly find this credible, I imagine they may not be as good as you think, because "rushing" is stopped so easily at the higher levels (though some cheese will occasionally catch players off guard)

I suggest watching some pro replays, as they'll show you what are currently the best strategies the world currently knows. Seems your friends can learn a lot from this, as well.

Terran is slightly stronger than the other races, with Zerg being the weakest, but it probably isn't nearly as large a gap as people make it out to be. The last MLG (last month) was dominated by Protoss (they took the top 3 spots), while a zerg just won GSL within the week, a huge Korean tournament (the winner got ~$85k, that's no joke)



zarx on 07 October 2010
c0rd said:

Mind giving out your friends' names? (can check on sc2ranks.com ). I just hardly find this credible, I imagine they may not be as good as you think, because "rushing" is stopped so easily at the higher levels (though some cheese will occasionally catch players off guard)

I suggest watching some pro replays, as they'll show you what are currently the best strategies the world currently knows. Seems your friends can learn a lot from this, as well.

Terran is slightly stronger than the other races, with Zerg being the weakest, but it probably isn't nearly as large a gap as people make it out to be. The last MLG (last month) was dominated by Protoss (they took the top 3 spots), while a zerg just won GSL within the week, a huge Korean tournament (the winner got ~$85k, that's no joke)

apparently the Korean ladder has far more zerg players than the western ones apparently. Seems that Zerg are not so much underpowered as they don't fit well with the western play style. And I think that's the reason why Blizzard are reluctant to buff Zerg to much TBH.



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r505Matt on 07 October 2010
zarx said:
c0rd said:

Mind giving out your friends' names? (can check on sc2ranks.com ). I just hardly find this credible, I imagine they may not be as good as you think, because "rushing" is stopped so easily at the higher levels (though some cheese will occasionally catch players off guard)

I suggest watching some pro replays, as they'll show you what are currently the best strategies the world currently knows. Seems your friends can learn a lot from this, as well.

Terran is slightly stronger than the other races, with Zerg being the weakest, but it probably isn't nearly as large a gap as people make it out to be. The last MLG (last month) was dominated by Protoss (they took the top 3 spots), while a zerg just won GSL within the week, a huge Korean tournament (the winner got ~$85k, that's no joke)

apparently the Korean ladder has far more zerg players than the western ones apparently. Seems that Zerg are not so much underpowered as they don't fit well with the western play style. And I think that's the reason why Blizzard are reluctant to buff Zerg to much TBH.


I don't think that's the right way to look at it though. If you look at the GSL alone, there were 16 zergs in the Ro64, and only 2 in the Ro16. There were less zerg players than any other race, and more zerg players lost early.

Also, check this out, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=157464

If you look at the win/losses by matchup without Fruitdealer and Rainbow, the numbers are staggeringly one-sided for the tournament with Terran at 67%, Zerg at 33% and Protoss as 45%. And there were far less zerg games than Protoss and/or Terran. The GSL is a microcosm for the current balance issues, and they're even more apparant at the high levels of play.

Fruitdealer is an anomaly. Just because he can win with zerg doesn't mean zerg is on equal footing. It's just like winning with Ganondorf in Smash Bros. It's surely possible, but doesn't change the fact that he's one of the worst characters.

Now, the thing that's still important to realize is that the balance issues people think exist are just false. The game is fairly balanced. There are really only a few small things that need real fixing. The hard part about that though is certain strats can abuse UP stuff, so buffing those problem units would just make those strats dominate. You ever see roach-drop play? It's nasty, even though roaches are probably the most underwhelming unit in the game. It completely decimates Terran if you time it right though. Tanks? Marauders? Marines? Hellions? None of those matter. You drop the roaches right in the Terran base on top of Tanks and Marauders, so they're not really a problem.

So again, the balance problems are much much smaller than people make them out to be. The only real issues I see are the "APM" problem for Zerg, lack of good tier 1 AA for Zerg, roaches being kind of meh, Ultras being broken/unusale. Terran's mostly not OP, it's actually pretty balanced, Zerg and Protoss just need some tweaking. The only OP thing I find with Terran is the marauder. The Marauder is the most cost-effective unit in the game, you just got SOOO much for that 100/25/2. Essentially, Marauders shouldn't get stim, and everything might be fine. It would change the way Terrans would micro their MMM too. I won't get into Protoss since I'm not sure what could really fix them. Zerg's problems in terms of units can be fixed by buffing those units, but Toss's problem lies in timing. MMM ball is countered by either Coll or HT, but both of them come out soooo late. 3Rax push is sooooo strong vs. Toss. Or even 5rax rines is pretty strong. The only way to survive lies in good Sentry play, but I still think it's a little unfair as is. And EMP blast.... Not sure why they designed it that way. Essentially Terran has this tier 1.5 unit that is just pure anti-Protoss.



zarx on 07 October 2010
r505Matt said:
zarx said:
c0rd said:

 

apparently the Korean ladder has far more zerg players than the western ones apparently. Seems that Zerg are not so much underpowered as they don't fit well with the western play style. And I think that's the reason why Blizzard are reluctant to buff Zerg to much TBH.


I don't think that's the right way to look at it though. If you look at the GSL alone, there were 16 zergs in the Ro64, and only 2 in the Ro16. There were less zerg players than any other race, and more zerg players lost early.

Also, check this out, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=157464

If you look at the win/losses by matchup without Fruitdealer and Rainbow, the numbers are staggeringly one-sided for the tournament with Terran at 67%, Zerg at 33% and Protoss as 45%. And there were far less zerg games than Protoss and/or Terran. The GSL is a microcosm for the current balance issues, and they're even more apparant at the high levels of play.

Fruitdealer is an anomaly. Just because he can win with zerg doesn't mean zerg is on equal footing. It's just like winning with Ganondorf in Smash Bros. It's surely possible, but doesn't change the fact that he's one of the worst characters.

Now, the thing that's still important to realize is that the balance issues people think exist are just false. The game is fairly balanced. There are really only a few small things that need real fixing. The hard part about that though is certain strats can abuse UP stuff, so buffing those problem units would just make those strats dominate. You ever see roach-drop play? It's nasty, even though roaches are probably the most underwhelming unit in the game. It completely decimates Terran if you time it right though. Tanks? Marauders? Marines? Hellions? None of those matter. You drop the roaches right in the Terran base on top of Tanks and Marauders, so they're not really a problem.

So again, the balance problems are much much smaller than people make them out to be. The only real issues I see are the "APM" problem for Zerg, lack of good tier 1 AA for Zerg, roaches being kind of meh, Ultras being broken/unusale. Terran's mostly not OP, it's actually pretty balanced, Zerg and Protoss just need some tweaking. The only OP thing I find with Terran is the marauder. The Marauder is the most cost-effective unit in the game, you just got SOOO much for that 100/25/2. Essentially, Marauders shouldn't get stim, and everything might be fine. It would change the way Terrans would micro their MMM too. I won't get into Protoss since I'm not sure what could really fix them. Zerg's problems in terms of units can be fixed by buffing those units, but Toss's problem lies in timing. MMM ball is countered by either Coll or HT, but both of them come out soooo late. 3Rax push is sooooo strong vs. Toss. Or even 5rax rines is pretty strong. The only way to survive lies in good Sentry play, but I still think it's a little unfair as is. And EMP blast.... Not sure why they designed it that way. Essentially Terran has this tier 1.5 unit that is just pure anti-Protoss.

well what I said about it is basically what I got from an interview with a guy from blizzard, I got nothing on you in-depth analysis.

But personally from what I have seen Zerg do seem harder to play well, most of that stems from the economy micro that you must do to produce a competitive number of units. And their individual units don't seem to be as good as same tier units from the other races. So unless you have god like unit micro or something you need numbers on your side and mid game that is much harder with zerg managing larvae takes more skill than setting up 5 rax or 5 warpgates and pumping out units. 

But I don't see how it can be fixed without redesigning how zerg plays or buffing their units which would probably give the best players an advantage and ruining the balance. Hopefully Blizzard can find a way to fine tune the game to the point where it isn't a major issue, they did it with brood war so there is hope. My only fear is it may take until Legacy of the void before it is as finely balanced as brood war is.



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