Game hits all time low

The issue is complicated, but in essence blizzard made a list of all the ways terran can lose the game before the 4 base mark and outright deleted them from the game.

For example, Terrans used to have to make a deliberate choice between AA and AG production from their factories. That was an exploitable weakness. If the terran made the wrong units, he’d die. Now it literally doesn’t matter what units he spams - at the pro level we’ve seen every imaginable comp vs zerg. Cyclone hellion vs everything zerg, tank thor vs everything zerg, liberator tank viking vs everything zerg, the list goes on, biomine vs everything zerg, biotank vs everything zerg. It just doesn’t matter what units he pumps. In HotS it mattered. You make tanks and he goes mutas you die. Make thors and he goes roaches and you die. Etc.

The viking buff meant Terrans can produce AA from their starports thus not blocking their factory production and allowing AG to keep on pumping out again eliminating the choice between AA and AG. The liberator did this even more. It has a decent AA while being ludicrously strong AG. The thor is the reverse - decent AG with ludicrous AA. No matter what units he pumps, his unit comp is guaranteed to keep him alive. There is never a situation where, for example, 3 banshees show up and Zerg has no anti air and just has to type GG. No matter what happens, no matter what units he makes, the terran is fine. Terran used to die when he made the wrong units, but that was in HotS.

The siege tank is another obvious example. The buffs it received meant that fewer tanks were needed to be safe. This means a quicker switch to AA production, less punishment when making the wrong units. If you made thors when you needed tanks, it’s quicker to fix that mistake. When you make the mistake, it is less severe. Under producing AG is much less punishing - having 1 tank in HotS vs a roach allin was game ending but in LotV it would merely be an inconvenience (lift the base, go to the high ground while you wait for a round of tanks). Not to mention when he gets the counter right, it is a much harder counter than before. It went from being difficult to attack a properly prepared terran to outright suicide.

Switching from the widow mine to the tank for defense was a colossal buff. With mines you could poke and prod and back off if you saw a mine or run around the mines or bait the mine shot out before proceeding. This allowed zerg harassment. Now if you go anywhere near a terran base, your units instantly die to a unit you can’t even see, a unit that can hit you from a perfectly invulnerable position that if you wanted to return fire you’d lose your entire army in seconds.

This means harassment is off the table - you can’t get units in and if you did, they’d have no way to retreat meaning they have to do a huge amount of damage to justify their cost. For the same reasons, multi-pronged attacks are off the table, too. 2 tanks and a planetary can defend a ludicrous amount of zerg to the point that if you wanted to segment your army and do a 2 pronged attack, you’d lose both fights.

Denying bases also doesn’t work anymore. If you attack into a terran, you lose far more resources than he does so even if you kill the base he comes out way ahead because he just floats out another one. Attacks are now 100% about efficiency and attacking a terran is NEVER efficient.

You used to be able to exploit their production and reinforcement lines, also impossible now thanks to the tank. You can’t pick off stragglers because there are no stragglers with how huge of zones the tanks control. You also can’t try to get on top of his production, either with harassment or a big push, because tanks deny the harassment before it even gets past the depots and big pushes get worn down by receding tank lines.

This list goes on and on. Literally the only way to beat a terran player is now through attrition and that takes a very long time to do. The way to win is to actively avoid trying to win.

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Maybe you have a point. I was watching the qualifiers for WESG and koreans were insta-gging out when their push fails or the enemy breaks the defense around their 3rd/4th.

If this was GSL they would draw the game out, play defense and try to get that 1% chance of a comeback (which doesn’t actually happen in sc2). So joy, we get to watch a player fighting a losing battle for another 10 minutes.

I’m not sure having the ability to hulk smash your opponent the instant you get a 30 supply lead is the right way to go … probably, having an actual comeback mechanic of some kind would be better. But, given that no such mechanic currently exists, may as well go all the way and let players FATALITY their opponents like in mortal kombat once they gain a moderate advantage.

# of players has now increased enough to reach the lowest point of the last twelve seasons. The game hasn’t had this few of players since 2016. Bring back the action - bring back game ending moments.

It depends on when the 30 supply lead happens. If it’s the late game and the terran has 100 planetaries and a 10k bank, losing 30 supply shouldn’t matter. But, if we are talking the 6 minute mark and he has 1 thor and 6 hellions, and 20 roaches are barrelling into his base, it shouldn’t be hold able (but it is).

Tactical Jump. It lets terran do heavy harrassment that can even threaten the actual army, while never risking any real units outside of their base. This allows them to just turtle and let the BCs do the work until they max.

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Looking at the active players it seems like the Zerg population has been decreasing with Terran and Protoss increasing, at least by percentage.

The fact that Zerg has become a late game oriented race really has taken a lot of the fun out of it for me and I thought about switching races. I wonder if other Zergs are less inclined to play as well.

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People are bored of ZergCraft,buddy.
Few months ago i created free acc with the intention to practice as Zerg.Once i got to 4k MMR it was ZvZ all day…and so i gave up.Ladder is overpopulated with Zergs,its boring af and the shi77y balance changes make it even worse.

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i’d say the zerg decrease is serrals fault.

when it comes to zerg winning, it’s only serral, the rest of us ladder zergs are suffering because he is so good. he makes the race look better than it is. i’ve only lost 350 MMR this season, still struggling…

TVZ at 40% right now man.

There are 5 Zerg players in the top 10 on Aligulac. The most of any race. There are 2 non Korean Zergs in the top 5. The highest rated Toss player, herO, is 10th.

Mr. 20/200 supply Elazer almost has the same rating as SoS, a prior world champion… If it’s only Serral who is winning, what Toss player is winning or coming close? Zerg is leading by far more than any other race has in the history of the game, yet… “just Serral.”

:clown_face::clown_face::clown_face:

It’s like saying “only Flash wins.” It’s like… yeah, if you’re the best player of a race/game and you play the best race at the pro level… go figure.

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Yet another person blaming their own ladder experiences on a phenomenon that happens exclusively at the tippity top of the ladder. Turn your brain on, then post. The game lost loads of casuals who are by definition unaffected by the balance of the top 0.01% of the ladder and most of the ZvZ finals were caused by the region lock, not balance. If that weren’t enough, zerg was disadvantaged at the pro level excluding serral.

The problem is a gameplay problem that affects all levels, which is exactly what Turtlecraft 2 is.

That isn’t caused by balance, it is is caused by the region lock. Remove the region lock. Problem solved! That’s not what this topic is about. This topic is about an effect that can cause casuals to leave, which balance can’t because it doesn’t affect them. Balance only affects the top 0.1%.

Did you know it’s possible to have a 5% winrate and have a higher performance than someone with a 95% winrate?

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

It depends on who you are winning against. A 95% winrate vs opponents with -10,000,000 ELO would be infinitely less impressive than a 5% winrate vs opponents with +10,000,000 ELO. One means you are neanderthal who has never used a keyboard in his life, the other means you are thousands of times better than serral.

Winrates do not have meaning unless you control for the skill variable.

Where should Reynor be ranked then? The guy even manages to beat Serral in series, so it seems pretty reasonable to me. It’s not like non Koreans are high in the ranks with other races.

Reynor’s performance is not in contradiction to what I said. Remove the region lock if you tire of seeing the strongest race in the foreign scene win everything. Zerg has been historically the strongest in the foreign scene, nothing has changed. Protoss and terran are strongest in korea and those players are blocked from the majority of tournaments thanks to the region lock.

Serral is only 6.8k on KR. Reynor is about 6.4k. There are monsters Zest, Cure, Dear, etc, with 7k+ mmr on KR.

Did you know that: you’re beyond biased and are a cancer to these forums?

Being educated on how basic math works = cancer to the forums.

Your logic = :clown_face: logic.

Dude, every time I debunk one of your points, another two points come up that are even worse. Remember last year when I showed that Terran declined in representation at every point of every tournament? Suddenly it was “ELO” that mattered.

It’s like a 15 headed Hydra of stupid.

Lying isn’t an argument, bourne. You’ve never won an debate. It is a mathematical fact that winrates don’t account for the skill of the participants. If you want to prove the results are a product of balance, you have to eliminate the possiblity that skill caused the result.

I wouldn’t have to lie to beat you… That would be like kicking the special needs kid in the teeth.