The Zerg Problem -- Statistical Analysis

[Aldrius]

Why must the Hydralisk be such a generalist? There is certainly nothing in the code that requires it.

Every Zerg unit is a generalist. Except for the Devourer. What they SHOULD do, is stuff like the Roach or Corruptors, generalists with some interesting new mechanic. Corruptors turn your enemies against eachother, Roaches are solid tanks because they regenerate their health like crazy. Or stuff like the Ultalisks cleaving upgrade where they gain an AoE attack.

I don't really like the Hydralisk cliff-climbing, but it's not a bad idea, it's still a generalist even if it can cliff-climb.

[pure.Wasted]

ALTHOUGH (just had this idea), if the Hydralisk's ground attack becomes melee while keeping a ranged anti-air I could see it as a viable cliff-walker (that would also have the added benefit of giving the Roach a stronger role as an anti-ground ranged unit).

This is only one out of many possible solutions. There's no reason why the Baneling must have + both against Light and against structures.

If the Hydralisk takes over on the +fortified, loses damage in general, but gains enough range to outrange defense structures . . . we might have our first early-game siege unit.

The Terrans brought in the first tier-1 cliff-hopper. The Protoss brought in the first tier-1 spellcaster. No reason the Zerg can't innovate their portion of the early game.

This complicates the Zerg GtA options somewhat (maybe forcing the Roach to take over on this front?). The solutions really are endless.

Every Zerg unit is a generalist.

Is the Dark Templar a generalist? The Archon? The Colossus? All of them have one very straight-forward attack and no activated abilities. If your definition of 'generalist' is expansive enough to fit them in, then I suppose we're on the same page. Even the Lurker is more complicated than any of these.

But anyway, as long as we agree that the Zerg are not being overcomplicated by any of these suggestions, the semantics are a detour.

[SpiderBrigade]

If the Hydralisk takes over on the +fortified, loses damage in general, but gains enough range to outrange defense structures . . . we might have our first early-game siege unit.

The Terrans brought in the first tier-1 cliff-hopper. The Protoss brought in the first tier-1 spellcaster. No reason the Zerg can't innovate their portion of the early game.

While I do really find this idea interesting, wouldn't it basically make all enemy defensive structures pointless, since the Hydralisk is so massable?

Is the Dark Templar a generalist? The Archon? The Colossus? All of them have one very straight-forward attack and no activated abilities.

Archon is a generalist, definitely, although yes it is better against swarms due the the splash. But it is quite solid against pretty much anything. DT and Colossus are not for the obvious reason that they cannot attack air.

[pure.Wasted]

While I do really find this idea interesting, wouldn't it basically make all enemy defensive structures pointless, since the Hydralisk is so massable?

It might! There's a lot of issues to explore here.

1. Is this Siegealisk tier 1 or tier 2? If tier 2, then Siege Tanks are just around the corner -- and Siege Tanks would remain far more dangerous than Hydralisks.

2. Does it gain cliff-climbing? If it's a tier 2 unit, innate cliff-climbing is interesting, but nothing to write home about -- the tier 2 Mutalisk can cliff-climb and more at will. If it's tier 1, cliff-climb can be a tier 2/3 upgrade. In either case, a cliff-climb unit capable of siege range opens up devastating and interesting possibilities.

3. Do Lurkers come with cliff-climb built-in, or does it require an upgrade? Can they move while burrowed? Can they cliff-climb while burrowed?

Personally, I think with the amount of numbers there are to tweak, Blizzard could easily make this work if they gave it a shot. Make the Hydra cost more, make it deal less damage, make it have less life, make it cliff-climb slower, make it attack slower. There's plenty of options, so as long as the concepts are interesting and dynamic, we're on the right track.

edit: I don't think I actually answered your question. Apart from "Blizzard can make it balanced" -- I don't think it is inherently a problem. A lot of people thought that a spellcaster in tier 1 would be inherently imbalanced because no one has a way of specifically dealing with that sort of threat that early. It's true, they don't -- but the game works fine.

It would definitely force the T and P to play a different game if the Zerg goes Hydra, but isn't that part of the point? A player's choice of units SHOULD influence his opponent's build order and tactics. That the Hydralisk does not do so already is a failing.

Archon is a generalist, definitely, although yes it is better against swarms due the the splash. But it is quite solid against pretty much anything. DT and Colossus are not for the obvious reason that they cannot attack air.

Okay, so you wouldn't call a Zergling or Ultralisk a generalist, then. Clearly you and Aldrius have different definitions of the term.

The most important thing is that we agree the Zerg racial identity isn't being compromised. And I'm pretty sure we do!

[flabortast]

Zerg lacking cliff climbing units is to offset the fact that their entire ground force can be relocated to any part of the map with one cheap Tier 2 building.

[pure.Wasted]

Zerg lacking cliff climbing units is to offset the fact that their entire ground force can be relocated to any part of the map with one cheap Tier 2 building.

Should the Protoss lack cliff climbing units to offset the fact that their units can materialize, almost instantly, in the middle of an enemy mineral line?

If the units that make up the Zerg army are kept from being updated into more interesting ones by a single game mechanic such as the Nydus Worm . . . then the Nydus Worm is doing far more harm to Zerg gameplay than good. Especially when it's used so rarely as it is right now, but the consequences of even that rare use are felt in every game by the lack of cliff-climbers, for instance.

Anyway, I don't actually believe the Nydus Worm has anything to do with what's going on. If that was Blizzard's reasoning, they made a serious miscalculation. If relocating the entire army is as easy as you say by a cheap tier 2 building, how would giving the Hydralisk cliff-climb possibly be imbalanced? Since the Hydra can already do all that stuff from the Nydus Worm, the change is trivial at most, and does not need to be "offset."

[SoFool]

I think the dev team should keep all lings & lisks & scrap the rest in the first place. It is every z fans' dream for a zerg to move underground which the infestor can, but it is limited that it can only move up to another terrain by a ramp =\ I also wish the nydus worm can relocated itself to another destination too. And seriously, they really need to work on the infestation mechanic.

Anyway I also think there are no decent z players in blizz, that's why no z has won in 1v1 yet (blizzcon 2v2 is not counted ;p).

[Aldrius]

I think the dev team should keep all lings & lisks & scrap the rest in the first place.

That's exactly what they did.

Lings and Lisks is just most of the Zerg army.

[Nicol Bolas]

THE ZERG PROBLEM

The foundation of this assessment is faulty. You're basically working under the belief that "for a race to be interesting, its units must be interesting."

This is easily undermined with 2 things. Zerglings are boring. They're just tiny melee units that do huge damage. Hydralisks are pretty boring too; standard ranged units with ground and air attacks. Ultralisks are just units with lots of HP. And so on. The Zerg were always the least "interesting" race, by the metric you're using. Hell, the only siege-range unit they had was a flying piece of crap called the Guardian; building those things most of the time is a waste of gas. None of these units are as nifty or cute as anything the Terrans have, with their Siege Mode and Spider Mines and Stim Paks and such.

So clearly, what made the Zerg interesting in SC1 was not the coolness of their units.

The other thing that undermines your point is what actually makes the Zerg an interesting race: their mechanics. Larva production means fast tech switches. Zergling to Hydra/Lurk to Lurker/'Ling, to Ultra/'Ling. Or back and forth. Whatever. It takes nothing for the Zerg to be able to do this kind of dance.

The Zerg in SC1 lived and died by how well the player used the race's mechanics. If you could manage your larva properly, you were doing great. If you couldn't, you're dead. You're as dead as a Protoss player who can't Psi Storm, or a Terran player who can't 'Mech.

In SC2, the Zerg have many new mechanics. Spawn Larva, creep movement speed, Creep spreading + Tier 2 Nydus and so on. Hell, you could even consider having the Overlord speed + drop in one research to be a substantially new mechanic, as it allows for much faster Overlord drop tech (not having to contend with slow drops and other stupid things).

So, with the foundation of this argument broken, let's move on to specifics.

Harassment

Reapers are GtG units. Stalkers need spotters to be able to blink uphill, and they still require research to be able to blink at all.

Mutalisks are generalists. They're air units, so an entire category of units can't even so much as shoot at them.

Mutalisks, cost for cost, ought to be the best harassment in the game. And they're not even dedicated to that task; they have many functions that they can perform.

Not to mention, through the use of Zerg mechanics and creativity, you can create other forms of harassment than Mutalisks. You don't have to be given something as obvious and creatively bankrupt as a cliff climber to be able to harass people.

Siege

Siege is something the Zerg have always pretty much had to do without. In SC1, they never had any truly effective form of siege unit.

It's a racial propensity, like how Protoss units have more total Hp per unit cost than most other races. Doing away with this just weakens their niche. The Zerg should be able to deal with things that other races need Siege to deal with. Dark Swarm was the Zerg equivalent of siege.

Simple -- make the Hydralisk a cliff-walker

That's exactly what the Zerg need. A cheap, ranged, massable, unit that can go anywhere.

It really doesn't get more imbalanced than that. Cheap, generalist ranged (GtG and GtA), and go anywhere are three separate properties. Any unit should only ever two of them. Even the Mutalisk is fairly expensive at 100 gas.

As for Lurker cliff-climbing, especially with a move to Tier 2... seriously, do you want to give other races an actual chance at all?

What are the Zerg's options if he wishes to harass, however?

Zerglings and Mutalisks.

Talk about a failure of imagination. Baneling Bombing runs from Overlords into your mineral patch. That's an option. And here's another: Nydus Drop.

Before you start fixing a problem, you should explore the current conditions to see if the problem actually exists.

Why must the Hydralisk be such a generalist? There is certainly nothing in the code that requires it.

So, the Hydralisk should be... what exactly? A GtG specialist? So what do the Zerg use for GtA now? And, more importantly, why call it a Hydralist at all? Why not just make up a unit from scratch?

If the bonus it offers to ground units is so significant as to warrant sending Overlords out in the middle of the map to plant creep for an offensive push... then we're on to something.

Um, Nydus. You know, one of those harassment methods you're on about?

The Protoss brought in the first tier-1 spellcaster

Ghosts. Tier 1. Queens. Tier 1. Hell, you can have a Queen out right when 'Lings pop. The Protoss didn't bring the first anything.

Should the Protoss lack cliff climbing units to offset the fact that their units can materialize, almost instantly, in the middle of an enemy mineral line?

Technically, the Protoss don't have a cliff-climbing unit at all. They have a teleporting unit. The difference being that, unlike Reaper cliff climbing, Blink is useful for more than going up and down cliffs.

Further, like any good mechanic, the ability to materialize is something that can be stopped. If you don't like them showing up in your base, you should invest in some anti-air to kill those pesky Warp Prisms. Whereas the only way to stop Stalkers from Blinking in is to kill their spotter (if the map requires is such that you need one).

If the units that make up the Zerg army are kept from being updated into more interesting ones by a single game mechanic such as the Nydus Worm . . . then the Nydus Worm is doing far more harm to Zerg gameplay than good.

I'll take Nydus over cliff-climbing anything any day of the week. The Zerg are all about cool mechanics. If you don't like that, then go play Terran or something.

If that was Blizzard's reasoning, they made a serious miscalculation. If relocating the entire army is as easy as you say by a cheap tier 2 building, how would giving the Hydralisk cliff-climb possibly be imbalanced?

See, that's the difference between a balanced idea (Nydus) and an imbalanced one (Hydralisk cliff-climbing). One of these can actually be fought against, has built-in strengths and weaknesses, and so forth; while the other cannot be stopped.

This is why Nydus is preferable. It fits into the Zerg ethic of having lots of units as well as their flexibility: there's no restriction on what comes out of a Nydus Worm, whereas the only things that will ever cliff climb into your base are Stalkers with Blink or Reapers. Hell, the only things that will be warped-into your base are Zealots, Stalkers, and Templar of both kinds. Nydus can get any Zerg ground unit. This allows the Zerg to use their flexibility properly.

If you nerf the Hydralisk to the point where it's reasonable to make them cliff-climbers, you basically screw up Zerg flexibility. If they want to use an alternate route into someone's base, they have to make these crappy Climbolisks that are either expensive or weak. The only good part about them is that they can cliff climb. This is a useless unit if you're not interested in cliff climbing. That's not how the Zerg work.

Anyway I also think there are no decent z players in blizz, that's why no z has won in 1v1 yet

We have been shown 3 matches out of tens of thousands that have been played over the last 3 years (at least). I'm sure that when David Kim plays the Zerg, they win. It's the player, not the race. Their next BR should be between players who have similar skill levels.

[SoFool]

That's exactly what they did.

Lings and Lisks is just most of the Zerg army.

But they didn't remove units like the Overlord (but with new abilities), overseer is just like a fully upgraded SC1 overlord except that it can spawn a changeling (and another ability, forgot what it is). Broodlord functions almost exactly the same like the guardian & the lurker is here to stay.

We have been shown 3 matches out of tens of thousands that have been played over the last 3 years (at least). I'm sure that when David Kim plays the Zerg, they win. It's the player, not the race. Their next BR should be between players who have similar skill levels.

Yea I know that I didn't say that zerg has a problem but the player him/herself, hopefully we get to see Karune using Z in the near future.