Seriously? The mutalisks -> devourer/guardian mechanic was way more interesting. They have absolutely taken a step backwards in terms of creativity and lore in my mind.
It's just not nearly as cool as it used to be.
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Seriously? The mutalisks -> devourer/guardian mechanic was way more interesting. They have absolutely taken a step backwards in terms of creativity and lore in my mind.
It's just not nearly as cool as it used to be.
Browder touched on this in a recent interview:
Quote:
GameStar:
One thing we wondered about is that you moved the broodlord upgrade from the mutalisk to the corruptor. Why?
Dustin Browder:
We noticed that the corruptor needed a way to stay in the game after I swept the sky. So if I fly around with my corruptors and kill everybody, what's use are these corruptors any more? The same applies to the Protoss Phoenix: What do I do if I have killed everything in the sky? That's why we added the anti-grav ability to the Phoenix so it remains useful. Without some mechanic to give the unit a way to »recycle« itself, air-to-air fliers become very difficult to use.
I sort of agree.
I don't really think the Corruptor should mutate into the Brood Lord, but I also don't think we really need another tier 3 air unit...
Mutalisks in the Zerg Single player campaign probably transform into Guardians and Devourers.
So in the campaign Mutalisks and Corruptors transform into the same unit? :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadow Archon
lol so dramatic...Quote:
Originally Posted by dyermaker
Brood Lords and Guardians aren't technically the same unit, they just basically do the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by pure.Wasted
haha i know right. i don't know why everybody's so crabby about sc2 all of the sudden. it's called testing. yes, testing, so don't go super saiyan and carnage on some mutation. And yeah, it's probably gonna stay, but doesn't mean you have to get so ANGRY about it...Quote:
Originally Posted by moosh
If you think about it, hydralisk kinda lost its evolution too since the lurker is removed lol
Zerg should have less units produced by larvae, and more by evolution (y)
I'd agree to that.
Well not exacly, one shoots acid spores the other launches living things ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadow Archon
oh,yeah and and the guardian kinda look cooler than the brood lord...(at least for me)
When a mutation is not beneficial for an organism, it got cut off by evolution. The zerg race evolve (fast!) and they keep only the more effective mutation. Make sense with lore, no?
I disagree with that. I like being able to remote build units.Quote:
Originally Posted by horror
The ability to turn units you already have in the field into other units you want to build over building them at your base is enough of a reason that Zerg should have more metamorphosis. For some things, there's Nydus Worms. For everything else, there should be mutation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kimera757
Is it just me or are the respones missing the larger point of the post?
MUTAlisk.
It doesn't mutate, which is very dumb.
Lol I like the subtly placed Mastercard commercialQuote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid
It's a name...
The whole reason the unit was named "Muta"lisk in the first place was because it mutates.
It no longer mutates in to anything.
That is the point of this thread.
Names are important because they convey meaning. Would you like the Carrier to not have fighters? Ultralisks that are wimpy? Zealots without any zeal? Battlecruisers that are solely transport units?
It's probably gonna mutate in the expansions.
You're basing this on what, exactly?Quote:
Originally Posted by sandwich_bird
On this board, the default explanation for any trivial complaint about units in SC2 seems to be either that the desired unit will (1) be in single player, or (2) be introduced in later installments.
I think MUTA is based off mutilate not mutate
If you're being serious, wouldn't it be Mutilisk, then? With an i?
It's mutation,because that was the only unit that can morph/mutate into 2 different units... at least makes sense...Quote:
Originally Posted by Brutaxilos
The mutalisk works perfectly right now; there are more important areas of the game that need help right now.
Perhaps the Mutalisk could be renamed the flyinglisk. :p
I just don't really like how many things are vastly different from single player to multi player. They've had so much time to work on the game it shouldn't feel like a "lite" version. I know they've said they could go nuts doing anything they wanted in single player since it didn't need to be balanced like MP, but the single player is not what we play this game for years on for. I wish they'd have gone all out making things work in MP rather than just removing all the stuff that was tough to balance. I'm not saying I want Devourer and Guardian aspects back per se since new mutations would be nice, but a little more work making the whole game fit would have made me happier.
I say happier because I'm already happy with the game, just like everyone else there's things that could change for the better imo.
Unless Blizzard named the Mutalisk knowing that they would add Devourers, the most you can say is that it could turn into 1 different unit.Quote:
It's mutation,because that was the only unit that can morph/mutate into 2 different units... at least makes sense...
Furthermore, let's ask the question: why did Mutalisks mutate into Guardians in the first place?
Answer: UI limitations.
See, in the earlier days of SC1's development, Zerg didn't have centralized production. They did have larva, and every building produced its own larva. But this larva only made units of a certain type. So Hydralisk Den larva could only make Hydralisks; Spawning Pool larva could only make Zerglings. And so forth. All well and good, right?
Then someone got the idea to centralize Zerg unit production. The Hatchery, and the Hatchery alone, would be the source of all Zerg production. Well, that's all well and good, but the Zerg had 10 units. And the UI only had room for nine.
They got around this by having one of the units become another unit. This is also why the 2 BW units are also mutations from other units.
The simple fact of the matter is that there are tradeoffs for making one unit become another. You cannot just willy-nilly make units morph from other units and expect the game to play out the same way.
Take Brood Lords. One of the reasons Guardians sucked was that you couldn't go for just them; you had this intermediate step of building Mutalisks. This puts a hard cap on the production time and cost of the unit; it cannot be produced any faster or cost less than Mutalisks. If you could build Guardians straight from larva, they might have been more worthwhile as Tier 3 tech.
Brood Lords balance being produced from Corruptors by being powerful. Yes, there is an intermediate step, but what you get is something on the order of a Carrier or BattleCruiser in strength. Guardians were never that good. Corruptors also compliment Brood Lords much better than Mutalisks complimented Guardians.
Units should have morphs when the destination unit is sufficiently powerful and compliment each other well. They should not have morphs because of their name.
Why? A single-player RTS has very, very different needs from a competitive multiplayer RTS. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that they are almost diametrically opposed to one another; that feeding the needs of one necessarily removes you from the needs of another.Quote:
wish they'd have gone all out making things work in MP rather than just removing all the stuff that was tough to balance.
A level-based single-player game needs to constantly be giving you new things. New units, new enemy units, new combat situations, etc. And over the course of 25+ missions, it's very hard to do that with just 12 units per side. Not without making everything very samey. Each level in a single-player game needs to have its own unique identity and its own unique characteristics. It needs to serve the overall needs of the flow of the game at that point.
Limiting yourself to what works for multiplayer won't get this done. And shoving a bunch of single-player units into competitive multiplayer isn't a good way to make a competitive game.
well said nichol, I agree completely
I totally agree with the OP when it comes to the muta mechanic being more interesting, but it's still a different game that demands different things.
Good post, but could you explain why every worker had two menus for basic and advanced buildings? There was nothing stopping blizzard from making two larva menus.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicol Bolas
This is very debatable.Quote:
Corruptors also compliment Brood Lords much better than Mutalisks complimented Guardians.
Short of your terran opponent going battlecruisers to counter your brood lords, Mutalisks are a much better option. Against Protoss and Zerg maybe, though.
And Hydralisk don't Hydrate.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hydra
Hy·dra (hī'drə)
n.
1.Greek Mythology The many-headed monster that was slain by Hercules.
2.A constellation in the equatorial region of the southern sky near Cancer, Libra, and Centaurus. Also called Snake2.
3.A persistent or multifaceted problem that cannot be eradicated by a single effort.
I believe 3 is the intended prefix definition for the Hydralisk. Actually, if that was Blizzard's original intent, that's a lot more elegant than I'd originally thought...
Hydralisk is not a Hydra, it's a Hydralisk. Mutalisk is a name. It doesn't really matter what kind of reference any unit makes because they're just names.
Marauders don't literally do any marauding. Reapers don't do any reaping. Lets not start changing names of legacy units just because.
If names have no reference, let's just start calling them, "Unit 1, 2, 3," and so-on.
Names *need* to convey meaning, or they're pointless.
Good lord this is a frustrating argument. I give up.
What exactly is the alternative? To change the name? But it would clearly be stupid to have a unit which looks and plays exactly like a mutalisk, and which everyone recognizes as such from its long history in SC1, but which is called something else. Or do you think that some kind of mutation ability should be restored? Fine, but then you have to make an argument about gameplay (something which Browder has explicitly addressed), not the appropriateness of the name.
This is isn't true. Yes, many units have names which relate to their particular function; but it's also obvious that names are also chosen for aesthetic reasons, i.e. because they sound cool. Does it bother you that the devourer doesn't eat things?Quote:
If names have no reference, let's just start calling them, "Unit 1, 2, 3," and so-on.
Names *need* to convey meaning, or they're pointless.
Good lord this is a frustrating argument. I give up.
lol, look guys, here's the deal. Not every unit has a name that accurately represents its function, but the zerg units that are of the "lisk" family have names that are CLEARLY representative of the unit.
Mutalisk - mutates into different organisms
hydralisk - Defined by ManjiSanji a few posts down, but also notable I thought was that the spines it shot were through hydraulic pressure in the body, which I think I remember reading in the SC1 manual or something.
Ultralisk - do I really need to go any further? :)
I just don't really see why the broodlord and corrupter cannot morph from the mutalisk. It was just such a cool and original concept and so many years later, it's just replaced with something infinitely blander and uninspired. For crying out loud, the corrupter and broodlord fill the same roles as the devourer/guardian respectively.
It seems like they kept so many things in the game because of "nostalgia" and it just seems silly not to do the same for this. It's not just nostalgia at work here either, it kind of violates the lore, is a worse game play element and just doesn't make much sense to me.
Anyway, it was interesting to read everyone's opinions.
The Devourer creates bacteria that eats away at armor and flesh alike. Thats why they take more damage while the spores are on them. The name sticks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maxa
Ugh. Corruptors should most certainly NOT evolve from Mutalisks... =S
OK, so what does "Hydralisk" mean that has anything to do with the gameplay utility of the unit? Where in the legends of Hydra does the concept of GtG/GtA generalist come into play? Yes, the Hydra was snakelike, and the Hydralisk is snakelike, but you're talking about gameplay. Specifically, that the gameplay use of a unit needs to be reflected in its name.Quote:
If names have no reference, let's just start calling them, "Unit 1, 2, 3," and so-on.
Names *need* to convey meaning, or they're pointless.
For the reasons I outlined. Corruptors become more useful if they can later be made into BroodLords. And having Mutalisks become Corruptors is just bad for Zerg AtA, as well as being intellectually lazy.Quote:
I just don't really see why the broodlord and corrupter cannot morph from the mutalisk.