WARNING- This post is more of an article that’s 7 pages long and there’s little TLDR. Enjoy.
I’d like to see a new expansion that makes the biggest changes to this game yet, to make the game more like BW. BW is a superior game - the fights last longer; there’s more depth; more builds; more tactics and more interesting gameplay from an observer perspective. Note this isn’t a balance complaint but more of an article on how this game could be far superior with a major overhaul.
Balance without balance - LOTV seems to be balanced around the fact that all races can “defeat” each other, but is that truly balanced?. PvZ for instance, yeah protoss can win, but through catching zerg offguard sometimes. If zerg is prepared, they’ll always drag it to the late game where they are just superior. True balance would be that you can defeat your opponent through skill regardless of matchup-- and it shouldn’t require catching your opponent offguard. That only works so many times. Moreover, it’s just not interesting to watch. True balance also requires a balance of risk vs reward. Low risk high reward situations abound in LOTV. There’s far too many safe openings to lead to monotonous game play.
SC2 was never as balanced as BW at any stage, but at least prior to LOTV it had much more of a semblance of balance than now. It’s just not fun w/the 12 worker start and poor balance of units. There’s no longer any distinct early/mid/late game and timing pushes are few, and they’re wonky. The races have lost their identities as well. Protoss was the expensive, strong, high efficiency and tech race. Zerg was the swarmy, tactical race. Terran is the offensive and positional race. That’s been all switched up since BW.
Consider what’s happened between BW and now. Terran has become far more tactical (simplistic definition of tactical is troop movement. That used to be zerg’s thing). Zerg has become far more expensive/strong/high efficiency. Ravagers and infestors are incredibly efficient units, as are hydralisks when supported by roaches. oddly enough, has the most “tech”. Energy-free corrosive biles, the awesome spells on the vipers and infestors. Zerg can stop units from blinking, tactical jumping, and all that w/fungal. They can teleport all their units instantly in the enemy base w/nydus. (this used to be a protoss feature w/arbiter’s recall).
And Protoss has lost its identity altogether. It’s no longer the strong race – gateway units are very weak. Stargate units are weak compared to the other race’s equivalent. Robo units are okay with the protoss identity due to immortal and disruptor’s strength. Those are the only high cost high efficiency units protoss has (though disruptor is no reaver and a far inferior unit). Nor is protoss any longer the “tech” race. Protoss lost most of its noteworthy tech – mind control given to zerg (neural parasite), maelstrom given to zerg (fungal growth – w/damage added but stun removed), ability to recall offensively lost altogether and put on the nexus with a long, universal cooldown. Stasis done away with entirely. Protoss aoe made significantly weaker (psi storm from 120 dmg to 80, loss of reaver and a gimped version added w/the disruptor (while ironically the lurker returns even stronger than in BW as a siege unit whose aoe is incredible). Colossus was brought in SC2 for reliable all purpose AOE–to compensate for loss of reaver and a weaker psi storm but then nerfed to the ground in LOTV to only do its full dmg to light units—the reaver wasn’t anti light, it was general purpose aoe. Protoss needed a general purpose aoe unit. And the disruptor is not a good compensation for the reaver for obvious reasons- it’s a unit that casts a cost free long CD spell rather than paid for, stored aoe charges that can attack every few sec. There should be a cost to such a strong ability like scarab fire (and intercepters)- remember this as I delve into zerg deeper. It’s going to apply to brood lords and swarm hosts.
It’s going to take a major overhaul to fix this game. The three fundamental changes I think this game needs are as follows -
- Make zerg swarmy again. Zerg have efficient, high supply powerful units at this state of the game, many of them being casters (ravagers, swarm hosts come to mind). Zerg ends up with very few units, many of them far too cost efficient, so they’re not battering their opponent with waves of attacks anymore.
Zerg feels more like protoss than anything. You just look at the ravager for instance, protoss has no equal to it in power early game. It shreds stalkers, zealots, sentries, and adepts. It isn’t until the immortal that it is rivaled in one on one power, and that’s an entire tech tier above the ravager.
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Make protoss units powerful and cost efficient again. Protoss units are the least cost efficient of any race. Look at any replay in both pvz and pvt. Immortal is the only consistent cost efficient protoss unit at this time. HT and disruptors with lucky shots can see cost efficiency. Even the colossus is not cost efficient in LOTV due to its severe nerfs.
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Hard counters shouldn’t exist and need to be reworked. Part of the beauty of BW’s balance was that even units that looked like they counter other units can be beaten with those units.
So let’s talk about each of these three fundamental changes I’d make.
FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE I - ZERG SWARM -
Zerg units need to go back to being swarmy. Hydralisk needs to go back to 1 supply. Perhaps even the roach. The units need to be adjusted to being swarm oriented, where zerg keeps its economic advantage it has with cheap hatcheries and the ability to mass produce drones like the other races can’t. But its trade off should be that the units are not cost efficient. One thing to keep in mind is that cheaper, more numerous units are inherently less cost efficient than more proportionately expensive but fewer units, even if they have the exact same stats per cost. That’s due to the simple fact that when one of the more numerous units dies, it is completely out of the fight. So if you had a zealot have the same exact stats as 3 zerglings, the zealot is stronger due to the fact that once one of the zerglings dies, the zealot retains its stats while the zerglings are now 33% weaker due to the loss of that one Zergling.
One of the key things that needs to happen to fix zerg’s lack of swarm is the removal of the queen. What does that have to do with the swarmyness of zerg you ask? For one, the queen is something of a super unit in itself, requiring the zerg to make less units to hold early game. Rather than make a group of hydralisks, or a bunch of zerglings, the zerg can make queens and fewer zerglings/roaches than it needs to hold. Then the zerg explodes in unit production, but none of its units are swarmy except the Zergling itself. Gone are the 1 supply units. Furthermore, the queen takes up 2 supply which makes the zerg feel less swarmy because these giant, high hp units are taking the place of swarmy units in the early game to defend zerg, and taking up supply in general throughout the game that makes zerg feel less swarmy.
The queen is essentially a bandaid like the mothership core was a bandaid to protoss. Unlike the MSC, few have suggested that the queen is a bandaid to zerg. It is in fact a bandaid, it’s just that it was added so early on that players never got to play a version of SC2 (even in its earliest of early beta) without the queen. (fun fact- the original queen in alpha was a single hero unit that could “deep burrow” onto creep so it can jump from one hatch to another to defend. I got to play this version in blizzcon 2009. Definitely didn’t fit zerg.) The queen’s always just been there, so we don’t know any different. Much like the MSC needed to be removed, the queen needs to be removed. (can you imagine if the MSC was allowed to be mass produced like the queen? The cries we’d hear…)
Let’s first look at why the queen was added in the first place. Contrary to what some might think, it wasn’t for early game defense OR early game AA. It was actually to add a macro mechanic to compensate for the addition of Multi Building Selection (MBS). In BW, there was an interesting tension between macro and micro. You can focus more on one at the expense of the other… Or try to do both and be a jack of all trades, master of none. The interface was the limiting factor there allowing a focus on one or the other. To macro, you’d have to individually select one production building at a time. So to make 6 zealots, youd have to select each gateway and que a zealot then move onto the next. In SC2, the devs wanted to update the interface, but noticed the tension between micro and macro was gone. It was too easy to make units while microing. So their solution were the macro mechanics for all races – chrono boost, larva inject, and mules. Unlike chrono and mule, the queen was mobile so it can also do a secondary macro mechanic for zerg – spread creep. The queen also served a role to defend zerg against air, and a little bit against ground (originally the queen only had 3 ground range) but you can see that was beside the point. The intent for the queen was to be a macro mechanic. Queens were later in WOL given long anti-ground range due to zerg being cheesed heavily early game w/lots of harass options, particularly hellions.
Queens remove a lot of the excitement of the game when zerg is involved. When you watch a BW game, it was exciting to see an early zealot or marine attack on zerg. Now w/the 12 worker start, those units take so long to get to zerg he’s already got 3+ queens and pretty much nullifies the attack. In both BW and SC2, Zerg can kill a protoss right away with a zergling runby at any point in the early game, but the same isn’t true in SC2 with protoss killing zerg w/4 zealots or the like. Happened in BW often, but four zealots are laughed at in SC2. It was certainly true in BW. There’s just so little risk to zerg in the early game, short of some wild dice rolling proxies. Combined w/the twelve worker start, and the games with zerg are just so completely boring since they just macro to the late game most of the time, and even when they don’t, the game consists of them successfully holding a timing attack and then… macroing to the late game.
Queens are also far too powerful to belong in the game, even if they were a defensive-only unit… The nydus proves how powerful queens are. Evenly matched or superior defending armies lose to a nydus attack because queens are just too much to handle. 175 HP, 1 armor, no armor tag (thats huge), long ranged attack both air and ground, abiltiy to heal and creep spread, and good damage. All of this without requiring larva. Remember, larva is a limiting factor with zerg. It creates tension between economy and army. Queens exist completely outside of that balance. Even if they just insta-died off creep, they’re still too powerful defensively for everything they do. Last point - they take up supply which is what makes zerg feel even less swarmy from a race fantasy perspective. (on a related note, it’s odd that queens, which are made to stick to creep, don’t lose health like zerg structures do off creep. That was an oversight in my estimation, particularly when queens were allowed to spread creep and overlords can drop creep, the HP decay that should have been added to queens had a clear workaround).
There’s four main objections I see to queens being out of the game (or drastically nerfed)
- Zerg has no AA in T1!
- Zerg needs them for early defense!
- Queens are a necessary macro mechanic (spawn larva)
- Without queens, where the creep spread??
All of these have simple solutions.
- Zerg has no AA in T1
This is the number one objection players make to pretty much any proposed change to queens. But it has a simple fix that’s been talked about since the beginning of WOL. Swap hydralisk and roach warren in the tech tree. Hydralisk den should only req pool while roach warren reqs lair. Make hydralisks a 1 supply unit and rebalance so zerg feels swarmy again. Make the roach the heavy T2 support uniut it should be, and that also sends ravagers to T2 where they belong. Actually fixes quite a few issues. - Zerg needs queens for early defense
Make spines, zerglings and the new T1 hydralisks. Also, BW clearly demonstrates zerg do not need this larvaless hero unit to hold against other races. Not only that, but zerg static D has been improved since BW – spines and spores can move where they couldn’t before, and no longer require two phases of production (from creep colony to static D unit- that requires far more attention than only having to produce a spine or spore standalone.) Contrast this to say, protoss, who actually have a much weaker photon cannon than compared to BW. Now it’ll actually take larva commitment to defend, rather than the larvaless queen. - Queens are a necessary macro mechanic. (spawn larva)
They actually aren’t. Spawn larva can be moved to the hatchery itself. You don’t need everything to have variety. Protoss and terran both have it on their town hall, why shouldn’t zerg? Give the hatchery energy and make spawn larva cost 25 or 50. - Without queens, where the creep spread??
Move the creep tumor spell to the hatchery! There’s two simple ways it can work. The hatchery can either spawn a creep tumor in a radius around itself, and creep tumors work exactly as they do now. The only problem with this is that once the freshest tumor is killed, you’d be reset and have to start a fresh tumor all over from the hatchery and slow crawl your way forward. The fix to that is to have a higher energy, long or unlimited range creep tumor placement spell at the hatchery. So let’s say 25 energy for a regular creep tumor in radius around the hatchery, and 75 energy for a global or long range creep tumor placement. It would definitely create tension between spawning larva and tumoring, which right now there doesn’t exist because you assign a queen to every hatch and then a queen or two to tumoring on the field. Protoss and terran have a tension for their macro mechanics. Protoss can choose to use it for probes or for production or for upgrades. It’s a trade off. Terran can use it for scouting/detection or for economy or for supply. That’s great. This is completely absent for zerg. Now, the trade off is truly between the tumors (vision and movement speed) and inject larva (economy/production ).
The other solution would be to simply have hatcheries spawn creep tumors with a global range- anywhere there’s creep, there can be a tumor. This could actually create some fun instances with overlords dropping creep and a tumor placed immediately thereafter. (You could balance the nydus around this too- making it require creep but also making creep easier to place anywhere w/this change). If this change were to be made, I’d say that creep tumors should no longer give vision. That would be the trade off to this powerful ability. That way, you’d have to have a unit on the field to give vision to where you want to tumor, even as you are lurching creep forward on the map. I actually think this would be a good thing. It’s enough that creep gives zerg more movement.
FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE II – PROTOSS COST EFFICIENCY
Protoss’ race fundamentals were big, expensive, cost efficient units with high tech stuff like mind control and recall. The warp gate addition to SC2 was supposed to make protoss even more high tech, with the ability to warp units anywhere. But they added a terrible drawback that broke protoss’ other identity, which is expensive, high efficient units due to the power of the warp gate. Now that warp-ins have been severely nerfed in LOTV, the weakness of gateway units is rather stark. It’s more of a problem than ever.
My suggestion would be to either remove the warpgate mechanic altogether, or to make it work only in a radius around the nexus. You can see a post I made with an indepth discussion about this here: Fundamental P Fix- Nexus only warpins - #29 by HomoERektus-1184
Incidentally, pylons had 50% more HP in BW and they were nerfed severely in HP to make up for how powerful warp gate was. Attakcing the pylon is all too common now to depower protoss units, and it’s far too effective. That’s because pylons have too few HP. Remove the warpgate mechanic around pylons and these paper-thin pylons could be strengthened again.
Then there’s the lack of tech abilities for Protoss. Stasis and arbiter recall being the biggest ones. Protoss needs these abilities. There’s many situations—particulary against things like siege tanks where protoss needs stasis. It’s extremely offputting that, when Blizz realized that Zerg needed something against powerful units—particularly the siege tank—they gave zerg the abduct spell in HOTS but had no forethought to give protoss an ability to manage difficult units as well. Stasis was that ability. Actually, protoss had a bandaid fix to this at least in WOL w/mothership’s black hole, but that was taken away as well in HOTS while at the same time giving zerg abduct.
Protoss also sorely lacks the ability to offensively recall. Yeah, it’s on the mothership. The mothership is slow and there’s only one of them. Protoss needs a doom drop. Warp gates don’t cut it. Zerg can doomdrop with nydus and terran doomdrops very well with speed medivacs that heal the bio units. Look at games where terrans turtle and mass air and make turrets all around. Protoss don’t have an effective answer except to mass expand themselves and hope to punch through an entrance w/ground units. BW protoss had this under control w/arbiter recall, and if there’s too many turrets, the arbiter would be escorted by corsair which could disruptor web the turrets for effective entry.
Protoss is also missing a big early game caster that can do damage. The sentry just doesn’t cut it. Look at the ravager- Ravagers are a fast, high HP, no armor tag unit that casts an unlimited damaging spell. Damage spells are protoss’ forte, not zerg’s. The ravager, if anything, should have been a protoss unit. (just imagine another four legged strider w/a goofy blue floating orb on its head instead of the ravager). It fits much more with protoss than it does with zerg. And the fact that less than a handful of them can win an early game rush? That’s protoss, not zerg.
I would argue though to completely remove cooldown based spells and abilities altogther. Everything should cost something. Swarm hosts, brood lords, ravagers, and disruptors should not have free abilities on cooldown. Swarmhosts and brood lords should cost minerals to use their abilties, much like the carrier’s intercepter or the reaver’s scarab. Disruptors should simply be reavers w/stored charges that cost minerals. Even the infested terran, which probably shouldn’t exist in the game, should cost something more than just energy.
Also consider all of the tech protoss lost since BW. Protoss Mind control was given to infestors- this was a mistake. Protoss needs it back. They’re the big, cost efficient race. They should be taking your units, not zerg. Disruption web was removed, which is sorely needed for breaking into positions. This was mostly given to zerg w/the viper’s cloud ability. Zerg didn’t need this especially because they already got abduct. Some might think the cloud ability is more like a dark swarm ability, but in practice it almost always acts like disruption web.
Then consider the range advantage protoss lost since BW. Dragoons used to outrange all of the other basic units in the game, including marines and hydralisks. In BW, marines had 5 range upgraded and hydralisks had 5 range upgraded, while dragoons had 6. In SC2, marines have 5 range, hydralisks have 6 range upgraded, and stalkers have 6 range. Even the SC2 campaign acknowledged that dragoons are supposed to have the range advantage and gave them 7 range upgraded. But where is that advantage now? You might say blink, but the stalker was deliberately nerfed as compared to the dragoon to make up for blink. Protoss should have a range advantage with its early unit. Protoss also used to hve a mass stun in maelstrom which has simply gone away. Now you can see Protoss has difficulty answering hit and run units—particularly with the BC’s tactical jump. You look at the proposed patch changes where tactical jump has a vulnerability period of 1 second, where if the ability is disrupted, it doesn’t activate and goes on cooldown! Quite a vulnerability. Except protoss is the only race that can do nothing about it, given they have no way to stun the BC. Out of all 3 races, protoss should be the one to do something about interrupting an ability like tactical jump—it’s the advanced race! But nothing. And you can very quickly see the problem here. Protoss needs its abilities back. Starcraft 2 was supposed to add more things to every race—to accentuate their specialties. It did the opposite w/protoss.
FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE III- SOFTEN HARD COUNTERS
SC2 relies too much on hard countering, something that lesser RTS games use as a crutch for balance design. If the opponent makes this unit, you should make this unit to counter. But that’s just uninteresting and not at all creative. For instance, in BW vultures counter zealots on paper and tanks counter dragoons on paper. But you can beat vultures w/zealots and you can beat tanks w/dragoons. And vice versa. It all comes down to strategy, tactics, micro and positioning. That very rarely exists in SC2. Too many units just hard counter other units. The hard countering needs to be softened to allow for more interesting, dynamic games.
In short, then, there shouldn’t simply be “counter comping” to beat your opponent’s army, especially if it’s well rounded. That’s what made BW so interesting. There needs to be more thought put on tactics, positioning, timings, and the like. Starcraft 2 only has some of that, and we’re all poorer for it, particularly the spectating fans. Think of how boring the tempest is. This thing has no use but to counter capital ships and sometimes do a long, drawn out proxy cheese. That’s not interesting. Now think of how BCs could jump on top of the tempests and beat them, even though tempests hard counter them. That’s really cool. (except for the fact that in this particular scenario (1) the protoss has no counter play to the counter play- the tempests just die when TJ’ded, and (2) the tempests were themselves hardcounter units that were almost useless outside of taking out those BCs, so it’s rather lame to then have the BCs kill them off. All of this is traced back to the flaw in tempests being designed only to hard counter units like BC/liberator).
With the above changes I’ve proposed, you’d have a much more enjoyable, interesting game. And likely better balanced. Changing the numbers on the current units just isn’t enough at this point. It requires sweeping redesign to get this game to sequel the greatness that is BW.
