Blizzard didn’t like my balance idea to require Terrans to build their buildings both ON TOP of creep and inside the range of a pylon. 
Edit: I didn’t realize I still had this replay but I thought you guys might like to see it. This is my first game as Protoss and I think I did pretty well. I’d love some constructive criticism from the other P players here though.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/63363-1v1-protoss-steppes-of-war
The trouble is it’s easy to think that just adding extra units will fix the game, like somehow lurkers would magically fix Zerg. And a lot of zerg really believe this too. And the logic makes sense too, because they look at these cool abilities that other races have and say “I want that!” because its what they lose to. Cloaked Units that attack (DTs, Banshees), Cliff Hopping Units (Reapers, Colossus), etc. And since they’re really hard to use, these low-mid level players never get a chance to play with Infestors in their game, so they never get those “WOW!” moments with their race. It’s all speedling/muta/roach play, then they get stomped because theres so many good counters that comes easy to the other races.
Adding more units into the mix for a bad player isn’t going to really fix anything. You’ll tech to lurkers and then raven/Banshees will kill them and we’ll be back here discussing why Terran owns zerg for free and blizzard sucks at making games. Or how Terran can too easily bunker up your natural and go to town on you ignoring the fact that you let him come into your base and literally build a building without doing anything about it or following it up with 1 base baneling plays. It’s easy to blame the game and not yourself, it’s that way in every game thats ever existed.
But really the issue is that while blizzard has done an exceptional job balancing the game at the highest levels, it seems that at the lowest levels terran does stomp the competition way too easy. It might just be because at low level Zerg is just really hard to play straightforward, its not as simple as “Build a barracks and keep pumping guys.” Zerg is like Yun in that while they can be competitive it takes a lot of practice to get there; doesn’t make them bad, but they have a steeper learning curve
Edit: I’ll check out the replays posted up here when I have a chance, stuck at work : P
I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you. Zerg do not have a unit that makes the opponent say “Fucking Zerg!” Infestors are crap. Fungal Growth’s immobilze would be useful if Zerg had some sort of unit that did AOE splash attack. I wish it stopped units from shooting and then made them insanely slow instead of an immobilize with maybe half the duration. Neural Parasite leaves the infestor vunerable and the range is not that great where you can snipe off power units, so it instantly gets owned when you see the touchy feely tentacle I will agree with you that lurkers alone probaly won’t save Zerg. It is a combination of Lurker and Defiler that will save it. All the range in the world won’t do crap in a dark swarm. That stupid bunkering tactic? Plague it and watch it burn.
I also want to vent on the Ultralisk. You can only have a max of 3, because the more you have the more retarded they get. They use similar AI as the zergling in wanting to to get behind the enemy. Having more than 3 causing the Ultralisk to go apeshit trying to get through but can’t because the other ultralisk huge ass is covering it. So it wastes a lot of time trying to get through while in most cases the ultralisk gets eaten up by whatever it’s trying to kill.
Another thing. Weapon upgrades. There are only two units that do melee. The Zergling and the Ultralisk. Hydralisk, Roach and Infested Terrans [if you want to call it a unit] are ranged. Why can’t I just have a single upgrade for my ground units instead of having to choose melee and ranged? The third option can probaly be ground speed off/on creep or faster healing rates. Upgrading Protoss and Terran units get the benefit of upgrading all units from that single upgrading station. Hell a comparsion? Zealots and Stalkers when upgraded to weapon level 1, they both benefit. For zerg, I need to decide melee for my zerglings or ranged for my more versatile Hydra?
You say that adding more units won’t solve anything for Zerg. I am not sure if I want to agree with you on that but Zerg does lack that “oh shit it’s _____!” unit. Protoss have it with Motherships and Carriers as well as Void rays that are pain once they get fully charged that really anti-air can’t do shit against them. Terran? What don’t they have? They have the battlecruiser, thors and of course the nuke.
Is Zerg impossible to win with? No, I’m not saying that either. But to say that a Zerg army can produce just as many answers as the other two would be a lie. We need to do tech 2 to answer for anything against air in the form of Hydras or Mutas. I wouldn’t mind some sort of burrowing to the other side through cliffs unit or more burrow while moving units. Lurker would be perfect for on the move burrow and attack.
Terran have Engineering Bay for infantry upgrades and armory for vehicle and ship upgrades. Zerg have Missile, Melee, Flying and Carapace as well as bonuses like Chitinous plating for Ultras. Protoss is what, attack, shield and armor? That’s all pretty different and its the same as it was in Brood War.
I find Fungal Growth works pretty well at stopping bio balls and hellions or vikings and medivacs. They seem to struggle mostly against mech considering the factory counters everything and that the barracks units are already so tough to deal with for everyone.
I remember hearing Idra say that he really enjoyed the Infestor and that it is his personal favorite unit in Starcraft 2. Also he though Dark Swarm was a poor crutch for brood war but maybe that comes from his Terran play in BW.
I think the issue with Zerg is that you have to be reactive and you have to work much harder with microing in battles. No race depends as much on positioning and momentum as Zerg. With Protoss I just 1A my main army and maybe target specific unit types if necessary and target abilities if available. I have 3-4 control groups for combat. On the hand, as Zerg every unit type is on its own control group because I nearly always give them separate orders, and my units are all over the place. It’s a lot easier to lose a battle you could have won. Plus they have the least forgiving macro mechanic.
They just need to bring this same execution requirement to other races, and we’ll be much better able to judge their weaknesses. A lot of times I feel Zerg is weak in one way that is hard to make up for, but I’m not sure if it’s really hard to make up for or only because I was so busy doing other things at the same time. Scouting the enemy still takes the cake though. Zerg are best at scouting everything except the opponent’s base, and they are by far the easiest race to scout against (no wall in, can’t build outside/at the extremities of base).
Thats the point im trying to make. If you take the time to look at the TvT game i posted, u will see that im not a very horrible player compared to my opponent… I know im not a good player, but my friend isnt either. Terrans are just easier to play with!!! I appreciate all the advice im getting from everyone though, and do understand that im not very good. Im sure if ANY of u post your replays, we all could generate pages worth of criticism… So yes, i can argue that the zerg are hard to play with because you have to play significantly better against an oppone t with equal skill that plays terran…
People expecting all the races to “require the same amount of effort to win” is a poor way of approaching the game. That’s like saying every character in a fighting game should require the same execution for reward. Shit’s not going to happen. Zerg requires a lot of work but the pay off is big. Sure there’s some shit that needs fixing but get out of the mindset that wah wah Zerg is shit because tourney results show otherwise. And to use the excuse of “I dont have that kind of micro/macro” is whining like a scrub. Get better. Games aren’t balanced for scrubs.
Pimp, Irren, i do appreciate all the advice and discussions, but im just pissed that i cant beat my frind when i play zerg. The guy is bronze league, with a low win ratio, while i am silver with a decent league win ratio. Ill get better with time thanks to everyone’s advice!
Like banelings? Seriously, try out fungal growth plus banelings w/ speed sometime. It will ruin a bio ball faster than anything you’ve ever seen.
NP is hard to use and now that it has been nerfed to 12 seconds I can see how someone might consider it pretty weak. With creative play and use of cliff sight/creative positioning it can still be quite powerful. Infested Terran + Fungal Growth is amazing anyways though especially for getting things clumped together for banelings/ultras or using the infested terrans for intense mineral line harassment while also fighting elsewhere. The Defiler, as much as I love it, should not be in SC2. Think about how stupid banelings would be if dark swarm was in? Also, how would plague stop the ‘stupid bunkering’ tactic when 99% of the time the most evil bunkers used against Zerg are the ones used at the beginning of the game near YOUR base.
The maps are what really fuck over the ultras in my opinion. Several maps do not allow for the amount of space that a unit like the Ultra requires to truly be effective.
Terran = Infantry Weapons, Infantry Shields, Vehicle Plating, Vehicle Weapons, Aerial Plating, Aerial Weapons = 6 upgrades total
Zerg = Ground Melee Dmg, Ground Ranged Dmg, Ground Armor, Air Damage, Air Armor = 5 upgrades total
Protoss = Ground Unit Dmg, Ground Unit Armor, Air Unit Dmg, Air Unit Armor, Psi Shields = 5 upgrades total
And also this problem you have in terms of stressing where to upgrades is made easier by picking armor for the start. Get ground armor first if you know you’re getting a bunch of ground units but are unsure as to your opponent’s motives. Scouting should give you plenty of information to know what the best follow up by the time you decide to start getting your second upgrade going.
Mothership is pretty terribad, as are carriers. Blizzard has even admitted they were comfortable with the mothership being a bad unit that was just cool…if it could be effectively used in a game great, if not whatever. Battlecruisers are pretty good but the tech is somewhat prohibitive and there’s a lot to gain by not stressing your economy on them in the first place.
You clearly haven’t had fully upgraded Ultras and Cracklings knocking at your door!
I’m not sure about this.
Whats wrong with having a balanced game? And looking at ur sig, you main Ryu, who im sure doesnt take much effort to win with, like im sure you probably main terran in sc2…
Play a good Terran…
That stupid reaper strat is …stupid. Mass reapers with bunker for the contain, FE for early macro, then tech switch to marauder by the time the zerg has roaches up. Use the reapers to deny extractors/expos for the gas necessary for mutas.
The last tournament, basically every T used this strat succesfully in every TvZ matchup. Idra came closest to beating it, but even he gg’ed it at the end. With practice, it’s not unwinnable, 2 queen creep spread with early speedlings is essential to keeping a handle on it, but even then you’re way behind because of the Terran 2 base.
TvZ is anything but an easy matchup. Read this also, it was posted two pages back.
What would be awesome would be to have some 1v1 matches with some of u guys and have observers watching. Fun? Yeah!!! Who is down?
If i was playing for money…I’d pick terrain its clear there the best or increase your odds of winning even at my scrubby level.
Outside of that from what i can tell its not too bad, but it sounds like zerg could use a tad bit of help.
Really? Really?
What? The whole point is that the payoff ISN’T big for Zerg right now. You work harder so you can stay even or be BEHIND. Not so you can have an advantage. That doesn’t make sense in any game.
Yes. 
You missed my point entirely. Don’t even compare this to a fighting game, there is no comparison. Not in the gameplay, and certainly not in balance as far as the roster goes. My point is that sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Zerg is disadvantaged or the Zerg player mismicro’d. I never got that feeling as P or T, it was always obvious when I screwed up because there aren’t that many things to screw up to begin with.
As far as effort goes, yes I expect them to be even. This isn’t a fighting game where there’s a cap on execution. There’s no hard limit in the game on how many actions you can do, how well you can outmicro your opponent. It’s not like fighting games where you can reach a certain threshold where more execution is less important (once you can anti air, you can anti air). You can always get better at outmicroing your opponent in SC2, there is no such threshold, and Zerg being handicapped in that department is a concern.
Wow… maybe you’re just better off sticking to single player mode. I hear you can adjust the difficulty setting so you won’t have to worry about too much effort.
Execution in Brood War did not seem to be equal across all races. Terran were considered the most micro intensive and required the highest APM to execut the strategies. Two of the most famous low APM players suceeded with Protoss, Stork and Nal_Ra. Protoss seemed to be the easiest for beginners to pick up. Zerg had so many options and were so flexible that they were difficult to manage.
I don’t think that it should necessarily be all the same, but maybe some minor tweaks to Terran will help make the matchups a bit better.
First Irrenicus, and now you. What was wrong with me saying the SC2 should be balanced? And then saying winning w/ Ryu is easier than the majority of the Street Fighter cast, or saying Terran’s are the best race in SC2???