The op’s version would be a nerf to high level zergs because creep tumors would be super easy to snipe. They have to time when they place the tumors by keeping track of hellion movements. If the tumors go on their own they will just be picked off for free. The creep that links the third are critical to tvz and so if they can’t get those up it’s just game over vs most 2 base pushes.
If it’s an ability you can turn on or off by right clicking the ability’s icon on the command bar then that’s a different story and would definitely cause balance issues. In general I think creep spread needs to be harder, not easier, but harder in a way that adds strategy to the game.
While I like the idea, I’m a bit worried of how TvZ might play out with this change. Normally the opportunity cost of scan is a mule, but if you are destroying minerals with that change then the balance shifts around extremely unpredictably. Depending on how much the tumor density changes, it might lead to dramatic consequences.
If the tumor density is much lower but they are harder to kill, a scan not only reveals an area but also destroys minerals depending on how harder the tumors are to kill, and each killed tumor would deny a huge area of vision. If the tumor density is not much lower and they are easier to kill, a scan might not destroy as much vision but could end up in a lot of mineral damage. Either way, unless the numbers are exactly correct (and also maybe even add a cost to scan depending on how the change affects creep), scan is suddenly much more efficient, unless tumors are so much harder to kill that a scan might not destroy as much vision area and minerals, in which case it might be worse.
I dont know, sinking several thousands of minerals into creep that gets cleared by scans might not be the best for TvZ. Scan does not need to be better than it already is.
Thats another possibility. But I’m pretty scared of changing one of the core race mechanics of zerg in dramatic ways personally. Its like giving barracks or gateways a toggle that auto builds units, who knows what would happen.
Yeah they’d need an HP buff. But it’s an idea taken from broodwar. Sunken colonies provided creep and defense. A 25 mineral creep tumor with 3 armor and 50 health would be pretty hard to kill so it creates interplay between the zerg and terran. Terran can collect free minerals out on the map but it doesn’t make sense to do so if he loses more than 1 marine per 2 tumors. So it’s a game of outplaying the opponent in placing tumors in places they think they can kill but they actually can’t kill and so he donates marines to you for free.
The beautiful thing about it is that if it’s bad they can always revert with another balance update. In the meantime some zergs lose some games – big deal, I think not.
I’m also hesitant because it would require relearning the race. Balance wise it might look weak at first while the learning process happens, which who knows how long it might take, while it might end up being overpowered or too weak or whatever. The change might have ripple effects for a decade.
I’m not in favour of removing that amount of apm tax though without a clear downside while also potentially nerfing the skill ceiling by removing control of creep spread, so I’m more happy to do a mineral cost rework than simply an auto creep mechanic. But we’d need to understand that we’d be in for the long haul and who knows if casual zerg players would even be willing to put in the effort to relearn the race from the ground up and keep up with the constant rebalancing that it would take, because it would take a miracle and a half to get it right fast.
That’s exactly what the game needs. It’s dying because it’s stale, it’s predictable, and we’ve all seen the same interactions before on repeat. The “learning moments” will make for great esports content. You know, the kind of content that happened in the early days of Wings of Liberty when tournaments had 100k concurrent viewers.
It’s purely an academic exercise anyway because blizzard isn’t doing anything new for the game. The balance counsel probably thinks it’s outside of their authority to do any major redesigns. I find the arguments interesting because I am closely studying why RTS games fail or succeed and that information is quite literally worth its weight in gold. Every rts coming out is a remix of past ideas with no substantial improvements. They just reskin the same old ideas and have the same old game play issues but worse because their games aren’t as polished as sc2 is. But even sc2 had design mistakes that are baked into the foundation of the game & can’t be altered without creating a whole new game from the ground up. Having energy-cost only abilities available from tier 1 was one of those problems. It steered the game towards mechanics and away from strategy. Chess has been popular for a thousand years and yet sc2 died in 15 and why is that. It’s because the typical human being finds multitasking to be stressful. The way to solve this is through zone control which simplifies the map down to a single contested lane, making it equivalent to a MOBA battle at that point. The problem then is deathballing. How do you make players spread out and control zones instead of f2’ing a deathball. The answer to that is splash, absolutely vicious splash. If you don’t spread out, you are annihilated by splash. This makes players spread out, control the map, and that simplifies the map down to a MOBA battle in the center lane where they put their attention. This emphasizes strategy (shaping the center lane) and it emphasizes micro & unit retainment. That was the next thing they did wrong. They made the economy so big that individual units don’t matter anymore, and that makes micro unimportant and that makes unit interactions very stale. Downsize the economy. Increase the power of zone control. Increase the power of splash so zone control can’t deathball. The game is now decided by strategy and micro, leaving multitasking behind in the dust bins of history.
Also a big mistake they made was to allow players to concentrate all their important buildings in their main base. It should’ve been designed with limitations. Each command center can only run 2 production facilities. So if you want more production, you need to build it at far off bases. Again, to reduce the turtling which creates long games that emphasize multitasking. The goal of their design should’ve been to encourage players to interact, but they encouraged players to stall and never fight. This happens because economical plays with a defender’s advantage are just too powerful. The first person to attack will lose because the defender’s advantage is too powerful. If players are forced to spread out their production, instead of concentrating it in the main base, it hurts their ability to deathball, to turtle, and it makes defending way more complicated. That incentivizes attacking aka player interaction aka action aka micro aka fun and exciting game play.
Creep is just bad design in general.
Zerg units are good on creep and weak off creep. That gives great advantage over other races for high level zergs who can spread the creep quickly enough and position their units, while on lower level where players who spends time spreading creep won’t have time to build any army or eco, so other races are at advantage there on most of the map area.
And in teamgames you can’t spread creep too much unless your allies are zerg as well; one of the reasons why I think zerg just is trash in teamgames unless its 1 base allin …
Most oddly, this post spins it like creep is some sort of disadvantage that zerg is burdened with like an albatross. No other race has to “deal with it”? Other races would LOVE something as powerful as creep. Terran would give body parts for a “pavement” buff that sped up all their units, locked out enemy expansion, and revealed the map, all for some minor APM cost. And you want to remove the apm cost.
If the idea is simply to lower the APM cost of it for low level players, then it should be counterbalanced by making the “auto” spread much much slower than the rate of spread from a placed tumor.
Terrans have much better speed buff than creep to many of their units.
And blocking expansions? I think zerg expansion gets blocked by engibay or pylon way more often than terran expansion gets blocked by creep. Not to mention that terran can just build their structure elsewhere and move it to position when it’s clear. And don’t even start talking about terran having trouble revealing the map.
You really wouldn’t. Zerg is balanced around creep spread to where on average the zerg wins fights on creep and loses them off creep. So what your saying, when you say you’d love creep spread, is that you never want to be on equal footing when on the offensive ever again. The only time you can attack is if you are ahead. That’s what creep does. Creep protects the terran and the protoss more than it protects the zerg.
We can prove this is true by asking one simple question. Would zerg’s win-rate go up or down if creep were removed? The win-rates would go up because zerg’s units move as fast on the offensive as they do on the defensive, and that’s a buff.
Pylon blocked, yes. Ebay blocked? Literally never happens.
Depends on the structure, but sure, I’ll give you that.
You know Stim is the only speed-buff they have aside from medivac boost, right?
Eh, this one’s pretty even in late-game with sensor towers and scan, but in earlier stages of the game it’s definitely not. It’s definitely in Zerg’s favour between overlords and creep in the early/mid game.
LMAO you’re joking right? it’s genuinely incredible for defense because your ability to close on the enemy is MUCH faster, your ability to restrict micro through surrounds is far better, and since you can see which direction they’re coming from at all times, you have ample time to prepare the engagement as well.
Terrans say they want creep and that’s probably true until they realize all their units move as slow as a pre lair roach off of creep. Suddenly it dawns upon them that creep protects the terran more than it protects the zerg, and they realized what they wanted wasn’t creep – what they actually wanted was free wins.
But you can’t make the free wins too easy, because then the terran can’t gaslight himself into believing he earned the win. No, no, the win has to be hard enough that the terran can tell himself he earned it, but not so hard that he actually has to earn it. You hear what I am saying, bro.
Meanwhile the guys like me picked zerg because it was harder, and that’s why we like it. We don’t want any easy wins. In fact, Blizzard should delete metabollic boost, and remove the queen. The roach should cost 8 supply. You know why I don’t care if they do this? Because I will still be beating GM terrans with the same win-rates no matter what happens, because their issue was, and always will be, a skill issue and no amount of buffs will ever change that.
Most Terran units already walk as slow as an un-upgraded Roach off creep. 3.15 (2.25 in editor) is basically the default movement speed for Terran ground units. It would not be a good idea to give Terran a creep-like movement mechanic, but most Terran units probably wouldn’t lose much speed off “creep” in that scenario.
On the other hand, Zerg units are generally fast both on creep and off-creep. Removing the creep movement speed bonus would likely require Zerg units to be adjusted to fall somewhere in the middle of those values.
The definition of creep spread is reduced speed off creep. If terrans are to receive creep then the movement speed of thors would be reduced from 2.62 to 2.0 when off creep. That’s what creep does. So if you are talking about giving creep to terran, then the creep needs to do to terran what creep does to zerg and that’s reduced movement speed unless near a command center.
Anyone who thinks that’s a buff is out of their minds. Creep protects the terran more than it protects zerg.
That is extremely unlikely, considering how slow Terran units typically are. For most units there would be no need whatsoever to reduce their speed.
Zerg units themselves are also hardly any slower off creep than they were in Brood War. When I ran the calculations for Zerglings and Hydralisks off creep, they were within about 6% of the original Brood War values.
Infestors were also strictly buffed compared to Defiler, as they both have the same speed off creep.
Edited: Lurkers are slightly slower off creep by about 11%, although their off creep speed came to within 1% back when they still had their speed upgrade.
Edited: Ultralisks also took a major hit to their speed in StarCraft II, but StarCraft II Ultralisks are heavily reworked compared to the single-target Brood War ones.
The source for BW speeds is here: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Unit_Movement_Speed (using the Marine & Siege Tank as a baseline)`.
To get the equivalent SC2 speed, just divide the BW speed by the Marine/Tank value of 4,
and multiply by the Marine’s speed in StarCraft II.
Probability has nothing to do with anything. The definition of creep spread is reduced movement speed away from hatcheries. When applied to terran, that means reduced movement speed when away from command centers. Anything other than this isn’t creep spread by definition. Reduced movement speed is a nerf by definition. Creep spread is a nerf, a limitation, to zerg, and terran benefits from that limitation.
You don’t see Terran trying to help the zerg spread creep, do you? Does the terran want more creep? Why does terran want to reduce the creep spread unless the creep limits zerg? If creep is limiting zerg, how on Earth can it be considered an advantage?
Terran whine logic is simply a complete inversion of reality. Zerg is super glued to creep and somehow that’s a buff. In other news, unicorns roam the plains of flat-earth.
No, it is a speed bonus on creep, and that fact can be demonstrated by looking at the actual speeds of Zerg units compared to their closest counterparts.
The speeds of Zerglings, Hydralisks, Roaches, and Infestors off creep is very close to their StarCraft BW equivalents where creep did not provide a movement bonus.
Meanwhile, the speeds of Tanks and Bio, Stalkers, pre-buff High Templar, and Zealots are the same when the same methodology is used to compare their own speeds to their Brood War equivalents.
This demonstrates that the existence of the creep speed bonus does not usually result in a significant nerf to the base movement speed of most Zerg units. There may be some niche units where it applies, but those are outliers rather than the norm.
