Starcraft 2’s meta is in poor shape, and a lot of the blame can be pointed at how strong cheese strategies have gotten compared to macro play and timing attacks. While I agree that cheese and other unusual builds have a role in starcraft, these builds should live and die on the element of surprise. Cheese in LOTV has gotten so optimized that in many cases the opponent’s knowledge of the attack only puts the aggressor in a 50% situation, compared to an easy victory if the attack is un-scouted. It doesn’t help that most cheeses are easier to execute than defend against, often requiring extremely specific counters that differ between similar looking cheeses.
Obviously this is a difficult problem to solve and points to a more fundamental issue with LOTV’s design. But I really think something needs to be done eventually. The relative strength of these builds, even when the opponent knows they’re coming, makes cheese too competitive compared to more traditional aggressive and macro builds.
Want a fix? Bring back larger maps and 4 spawn maps. They naturally discourage cheese by virtue of not being efficient due to the distance your initial worker has to travel to execute a cheese, bar stuff like proxied tech which gets solved by smart layout at the 3rd and 4th.
BRING BACK THE SMALL MAPS TO THE POOL, ATLEAST ONE! Also this is hilarious that positioning doesn’t really matter anymore. Literally nowhere you go you are SURROUNDED on these collossus size maps. Meanwhile the balance is terrible… You can’t literally do anything except all-ins because of the size of the maps and literally no good option for positioning play because the maps are too open. You can’t even make defense on third expo anymore just because how the maps are designed… FOR A-MOVE AND ALL-INS. No fun and no balance. Late game isn’t balanced because of the maps (and in one TvZ case because of the zerg).
Honestly, the only garbage cheese strat in this game is cannon rush. Everything else, including voidray proxies, can be held to varying degrees from barely to decisively.
PvP: at the top level, it’s impossible to hold a cannon rush without cannon rushing yourself. Aside from that, across the board, it is stupid difficult to hold a cannon rush, but extremely easy to execute. The timings for your zealot, stalker, and follow up tech are so cutthroat on the defense.
ZvP: you’re pretty much forced to cancel your natural hatchery, then the Protoss can do whatever the hell he wants - expand, immortal proxy, stalker proxy, go into voidrays. Your choices in defending are absolutely ridiculous too and throw the entire matchup in the air (not in your favor unless your opponent majorly screws up).
TvP: You should be able to hold cannon rushes as Terran. It’s still super annoying though. The voidray/tempest follow up on this strategy is stupid though.
Well, people like Kelthar, BabaYaga claim that
“Cheese is part of the game”.
People hated this strat since Broodwar, but blizzard never addressed the issue.
DankTemplar is right: introducing 4 players maps (or reintroducing old maps from WOL/HOTS) would almost completely shutdown any cheese, because now you need to scout where your opponent is.
My ideas to shut down cheese:
Cannon rush - lock forge behind gateway
12 pool - make hatchery accumulate up to three larva only once spawning pool has been created.
proxy rax/bunker rush - i have no idea how this can be nerfed. Maybe lock bunker behing ebay ?
I don’t really get why people are so against 4 player maps, yes, they are random, but it allowed some risky cheesy and greedy plays,which is an extra layer of depth.One of the best sc2 maps, Frost, was a 4 player map and we saw and played tons of fun games there.
If youre going to invoke my name, at least get it right. Obviously cheese is part of the game, thats not in dispute.
Cheese keeps people honest. Its what stops people from just ignoring their opponent the whole game and racing to see who can get to their favorite doom composition first.
There arent enough big maps already??? Lotv s expandcraft, partially such maps help Z and P go to expand out of control whereas Terran’s job is to finish them… on large maps.
I rememba Abiogenesis… https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Abiogenesis_LE
even a Protoss trying to mass carriers would lose there but ask why on large maps they cant die and do their skytoss deathball, that was most of the time
Sounds like you have no experience cracking a turtle player period. Only time turtling was an issue was end of HotS and when SB super Tempest walls were a thing.
I agree that cheese should exist to “keep people honest”, and as a broad counter to greedy builds or people who don’t scout.
The problem as I see it is that cheese is too effective against everything except very conservative openings. Cheese builds should be at a disadvantage if the defender discovers it early and removes the element of surprise. Right now, the defender has to both scout properly and then execute an extremely specific defense to one of many similar looking cheeses.
My central argument is that cheese builds should more or less collapse if the opponent knows they’re coming and can prepare a generic defense. It’s too punishing for the defender to have to execute a specific defense against a broad toolkit of possible cheeses and their transitions.
One could, nominally, argue that specific cheeses dont have enough forgiveness between scouting them and when they deal damage to prepare a defense, but i hard disagree on the idea that cheese should be held off by generic conservative play. You should still have to react to what your opponent is doing at least a bit, and actually respond to it instead of just coasting on by. being conservative should be a prerequisite for it, not the only thing you have to do.
If cheese is a counter to greedy play (or styles that “ignore their opponent”), then why should it be strong against opponents who know it’s coming and generically slow down their build?
Most cheeses require very specific responses to defeat. Just as an example, the ZvP response to a full cannon rush, cannon contain/expo, cannon contain/proxy robo, cannon contain/proxy stargate/shield battery are all different despite how similar each of these cheeses look initially. Even if a defender scouts it early, the decision to go into lings/roaches/queens/ravagers and/or how many drones to commit as an initial defense can win or lose the game on a very tight margin. The margin is too tight. That’s why I’m advocating that a generic defense should be enough to defeat most cheese builds. Cheese is meant to keep people honest, not win 50% against prepared opponents and 100% against greedy builds. It really should be an all or nothing type of strategy.
Just another thing to consider, there’s nothing normal or “honest” (for lack of a better word) about responses to cheese. Other than scouting, responses to cheese are so different from traditional starcraft that’s it’s almost like playing a completely different game mode. “Honest” gameplay (or conservative play) should have an advantage against cheese.
ok I see your GM posting theorycrafting no need to discuss it further