"Muta"lisks that don't mutate

[Maxa]

It's probably gonna mutate in the expansions.

You're basing this on what, exactly?

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.

[Brutaxilos]

I think MUTA is based off mutilate not mutate

[ManjiSanji]

If you're being serious, wouldn't it be Mutilisk, then? With an i?

[arthas]

I think MUTA is based off mutilate not mutate

It's mutation,because that was the only unit that can morph/mutate into 2 different units... at least makes sense...

[Hamshank]

The mutalisk works perfectly right now; there are more important areas of the game that need help right now.

[ParticleBeam]

Perhaps the Mutalisk could be renamed the flyinglisk.

[SinsWage]

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.

[Nicol Bolas]

It's mutation,because that was the only unit that can morph/mutate into 2 different units... at least makes sense...

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.

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.

wish they'd have gone all out making things work in MP rather than just removing all the stuff that was tough to balance.

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.

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.

[almostfamous]

well said nichol, I agree completely

[Asfastasican]

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.

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.

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.