How about 12 workers, but you start with -12000 minerals so you have to mine the base out first and start long distance mining to the natural before you can afford your first supply depot/pylon/overlord.
No, you're thinking about this all wrong. 49 mineral start, but a 2 mineral microtransaction for $1 every game. Of course, that puts you at 51 minerals. If you want more, there's the 52 mineral microtransaction for $10.
While this is clearly a meme, it is neat to think about balance issues cause by this. With a 1 worker start, zerg overlord scouting becomes OP, because it will get to the opponent's base and give you zero cost scouting for a long time. It might work out that super early ling floods could hit before it is realistic for other races to scout, which might have some curious consequences for early game build orders for T and P.
What would make this even MORE competitive is to play on a slower game setting - like I'd like it at 50% speed so we can really FOCUS on the worker pathing.
Making your first worker faster when you start with one worker is actually a lot more important, since each additional worker represents a much larger percentage of your economy and thus how fast you can ramp up.
If you want diversity of game play -- adjust via maps - maybe have a different number of starting workers on different maps - one map might have 6 starting workers another map might have 12 - another 8
It wouldn't work. There were many many changes made to accommodate the 12 worker start such as increasing overlord speed and creep spread, warpgate research time and all 3 races macro mechanics being tuned for a 12 worker start. It will just come to the point that certain races are determined to absolutely be favoured with fewer worker starts and it won't be able to be balanced.
@@Cellus5000 it will not be balanced for different starting conditions on a map by map basis. Hoping for that is like hoping for the game to be balanced on xel'naga caverns.
just let players start at the the primordial soup stage where you have to develop your scvs, probes and drones like in the game spore strategic overload that only the greatest minds can master :)
Actually not a terrible idea to try. I would like to add that something like double harvest could be added to add the funky worker mining which means that fewer workers per base are more efficient, further aligning the systems
Might have been formatted by it, but yeah it's the right format. IDK sometimes it's legit people just using it to refactor things they have written themselves... not such a big deal. Interesting times though.
The amount of starting workers should vary. Probably not 1 worker, but maybe 7 - 12, with the more normal (heh) amount more frequent that the extreme high or low. If this would shake up the cookie cutter build orders, that is.
AOE varies the tourneys by map types and worker starts. Theres a "standard" online set, then a tourney set. Im really not sure why we dont have something similar. Clearly the terran council isnt helping, so why dont we have different tournament formats? Make one tourney a random race, make another one an 8 worker start or with older maps or only four player maps.
@@diogog.fernandes6650 I assume (if you have a proper balance of maps) that you would end up with a handful of players (maybe Rogue, Has, Scarlett, those types of players) who would build strats around those maps and force better players to deal with it. But that doesn't work if you have like 9 maps in the pool, one "weird" map, and it's a Bo3. Then yeah, they would just veto it.
The sarcasm is strong, but, as someone who doesnt play and only watches, this could be good occasionally. Seeing the same run bys every early game that dont accomplish much of anything except "he got one drone and oh my god the reaper gets away with one hp again" Edit: yes it feels like every recast i see is ZvT, give protoss some sauce
This is so true its the same thing every game with the 4 lings until the queen comes out then they try to get the tumor. For like 5 years they've done this it's just so bleh dude change the game please
you do realize this would be sooooooooooooooooo far from good to watch right. it took 4 minutes for him to get a second base. sure TvZ early game is pretty much solved and samey. but the joke is 1 worker start doesnt fix that it delays it. zealot ling macro in the early game isnt super uncommon. neither is the oracle adept harass. it doesnt only do "nothing" but delay the early game it also speeds up the late game because the tech compared to worker count is much much earlier. so the mid game which is the cool part of the game is next to nonexistent, and we transition from 15 minutes of watching workers mine to 45 minutes of standing and staring at eachother with 2 death balls
On a real note, I think one of the biggest problems with modern starcraft is the upgrade costs. They've all taken a trend down in cost and is a much lower investment. I think just increasing t2 and t3 upgrades by 50/50 and 100/100 would have a similar result to lowering the workers. Keep in mind the reason they lower the upgrade costs is because they super nerf a unit like the widow mine or the disruptor and then lower the upgrade cost to compensate. They could've just not nerfed the unit as hard in the first place. Seriously, why do we need to nerf mine aoe by 35% and then lower upgrade costs to compensate when we could have just nerfed the aoe by 10% or 15%. Neutering the tech unit and indirectly buffing the marine was insane.
Costs for upgrades have gone down because more and more the upgrades are becoming required rather than part of a build. Instead of making good units great, the upgrades make trash units not trash. Upgrades can be expensive when units are good at a baseline (and they should be).
Would just going back to 6 workers or maybe reducing to 4 have a similar effect without slowing the game down as much? I do enjoy the games that are slightly faster but i see how slowing it down can add nuances and more build variety to it.
Can't wait to build workers for 5 minutes to then lose because my zealot was half a nanometer away from closing my wall and I now lost to lings running into my base.
Ye. Game is rough when you jave to react to your opponent. Much better if you can just do the same build order in each game and be safe on your 3-4 bases.
You are the best sc2 scientist thank you for everything you do seriously. My group loves 8 worker start. Hoping it gets through to the best creative players, bringing our game of strategy back.
That one random wisp of hair rebelling right down the middle of your forehead somehow really sells the hell outta the 1:13 "I'm like a StarCraft SCIENTIST!" bit haha.
People joke about this, but Age of Empires 2 has Nomad, played competitively, which has you start with 3 workers scattered around a random map and no base.
I don't know much about AoE, but isn't the map layout way more important in that game because of the different type of resources and how they can spawn? What I mean is that I don't know if there is enough of a justification for that type of early decision because starcraft is too symmetrical in comparison.
@@Unormalism Oh wow; thanks. That sounds pretty good in the right situation. Maybe not every day ladder, but I know people I'd want to try that with in SC2. I need to try AoE one of these days.
@@pitju99 I agree. Having only two resources and two ways to get them really minimizes the importance of placement; you would just always place at the nearest place, as to not be slowed down. And admittedly in AoE 2 you usually only need to find a source of food near trees to decide where to start building, but the mid/late game are all about jockeying for resources. The other big factor is being able to build walls.
@@MrCthur In competitive play, there's typically 1 Nomad map mixed in with several standard maps, including a map where your base is safely walled in, a heavy water map etc. Picking and choosing the civs you play vs the maps you play on is a big part of the competitive metagame and what keeps it healthy. You /don't/ always play Nomad, but it's a monkey wrench that can keep things interesting.
I fondly remember the days when we held ctrl+F1 while waving the mouse around the minimap in the loading screen to instantly click on a mineral and then try to select 2-3 workers to split them. Back then often times we quiet literally had a huge advantage over people who were missing 2-3 seconds of mining time because they boxed their workers after the loading screen.
Hey Pig, big fan! As a master level player, and a fan of fun strategies (like Uthermals challenges). My main criticism of this would be the forced tech tree: Something like a bc rush seems to be eliminated, and a lot of creativity with it. Thoughts?
You know that really cool trick that bots do with their apm to get increased mining efficiency. Life was doing it over a decade ago, that's why he had his drones on hotkeys and had 450+ (700+ lotv) apm with a 6 worker start. That's why he used to get so many runbys to work, he literally was earlier than anyone else with his timings. Expression of skill comes in many forms.
@@mikerosoft1009 Look uo Harstrem or Uthermal vs. bots. There's a whole group of people designing sc2 bots as a challenge and playing them against each other. One of the core things the bots do is microing their mineral lines to get up to 12% increased mineral efficiency. Life was doing that during his peak in Heart of the Swarm and became famous for his zergling runbys because he had an advantage that not many people even knew about to be honest. Let alone trying to replicate that technique, good luck. Right now Starcraft 2 is very focused on a particular type of micro as the key skill in determining outcomes. Being really good at other aspects of sc2 doesn't translate to wins at all. Simple example, Zergling and Zealot micro is meaningless now. Both of those units attack, deal damage and then play their animations so a skilled player can do a lot of work with them. Adepts and Queens are the units people use now instead to fill those roles, there's not really much going on there.
I seem to recall rather distinctly that the reason for the increase in the number of starting workers was to "enhance" the game and make it more "interesting". At the time I bemoaned the fact that those in charge seemed to want the game to become a "twitch" game and avoid "long and boring games". I always have enjoyed strategy games and RTS's and looked forward to building from just a construction yard up through the full tech tree. I never wanted StarCraft to be Nine Minute Games. But then I was always in the minority. I do find it amusing that in 2024 this "One Worker Start" is considered a viable and "exciting" change. You guys are just the most amazing bunch of folks.... everything old is new again.
I want to see a round robin tournament with a 1 zerg 1 terran 1 protoss, with everyone playing each other and seeing how it works out. Including a mirror matchup This was really cool to watch
@17:20 of course no worker start is meaningless expression... but one worker ONLY start with minerals for CC/Nex/Hatch, MMMM now we're cookin' strategy. can delay start by choosing to change start location
My Sarcasm Detector was struggling with this one. Still fun to see the "what if?" played out so clearly. And to think about just how much slower it could get... increased resource costs for everything, slower moving/mining workings, less returned resources per trip, fewer overall resources per base, slower game speed, reduced supply per supply unit/building... But ya the slower start or game speed doesn't really reduce the effectiveness of higher APMs, it just makes micro more intensive.
ok hear me out... What about a variable worker start? It would really only work for tournaments, but you could have it so that players alternate between who picks the map and the worker count. You have a set of worker counts to choose from, so they can't just pick 12 every time, and once you choose one of the numbers it's removed from the pool in the same way maps are. ie [12,11,10,9,8,7,6] for a Bo7, [12,10,9,8,6] for a Bo5, and [12,9,6] for a Bo3. Could be interesting.
except for the part where zerg auto wins because larva spawn faster than the worker build time meaning even if they only start with one larva, their second worker is 1sec faster, their third worker is 2 sec faster, and so on.
Go back to the days of WarCraft 2, one worker and nothing else. Watching my town hall build knowing my opponent was doing the same thing and wondering who was a quarter second ahead for the whole build time was very strategic.
Amazing video for sure. Definitely over 9000% better to start with 1 worker. The only way it could get better is if the start was 0 works, 50 minerals and a constructing base that starts at 1%. Imagine the viewership minutes you could get then!
I just realized how much mineral Zerg loses in such starting positions just becuse their worker spawns from eggs further away from minerals while other race workers spawn on the closest point to the rally point which is minerals.
I think it would be hilarious when the first one pool strategy is being developed and the player forgets that they've actually gotta bank 250 minerals so they can rebuild the one worker again or they brick themselves and gg out xD
Instead of less workers why not start with more workers and less mineral patches? Like 1 patch per base and only 2 bases. And 1 shared gas in the middle of the map that the players need to argue over. Add in a dialogue tree and diplomacy options for the two players to vote for which of them gets more of the gas income. Suddenly yeah, you’ve got 2 carriers vs my 4 zerglings and 1 queen. But I’m voting to tax your carriers so you can’t afford to produce interceptors and my city-states give me a cyclone. Now I’m winning.
I really love it. The epic moments I remember regarding SC2 are mostly the 6 worker times because there is a lot of tension during the early game. versus now everything is just mostly midgame to lategame. Maybe 4 worker start is the best number though. because it is the right amount of workers where something could happen adding that tension of would he/she do a cheese or not
What you actually need is a 0 worker start with 50 minerals. That way, there's no handholding. The game gives you the necessary tools to succeed but doesn't force you to play any given way. You can discover how YOU want to play
The problem with skill expression on 1 worker is that it’s more exciting to watch 2 armies fight than 2 workers mine. I do like the idea of more strategy tho, the idea of games changing dynamically via tech switches, etc. is much more engaging to me than cringing at how much damage Clem can get off 2 drop ships of marines while saving 80-90% of them thru perfect micro.
I think economy upgrades could be interesting. Like an upgrade for zerg that lets you morph a drone into two drones for 25 minerals (split drones couldn't split again). Protoss could have an upgrade that would allow probes to carry 6 minerals/gas or something like that. Terran could get something (maybe a 'durability' buff upgrade for MULES that makes them last a little longer). Just random suggestions that I'm sure aren't balanced but kind of interesting to think about. Combine stuff like that with a reduced worker start and you make a 'macro' path vs 'aggression' path choice the player can make early.
Sure, why not, could be fun. AOE2 has single villager (well three in nomad) start, where you explore around to figure out where to build a base. WC2 started with 1 worker without a town hall.
Chronoboost would be so op. Cos getting a worker out even if its just 1, like a second or two sooner is huge. Youd scale significantly quicker than the other two
Well, you will need more minerals on your patches for a 1 worker start. Imagine getting 6pooled, constantly flooded, so you gotta focus on building a wall, and then you run out of resources before you could expand or tech. Long distance mining will be the only solution to even expand if minerals dont get fixed.
If we're going for pure skill expression with variety, I vote 1 worker start, but with 250 minerals. This allows for plenty of skill expression in either making workers or forgoing that for early aggression. The only exception to this would be zerg, which would get 0 workers, but 300 minerals. I want to account for their ability to make workers faster in the early game, and I think this might help.
I'd not mind seeing things like 4 worker start either... but honestly, I don't think that works being that low will fly. Probably 8-9 is realistic. But I DO think that it's better to start with that bit less. Like you're saying, it helps with the build up of the start that your opponent can scout and respond to.
I think 6 worker start with an extra pylon/depot/overlord built might be good. That way players have the option to go for gateway/barracks/pool first or be greedy and go for expand first for a more volatile early game.
One of my most enjoyable games was a clan match with TeamSCA in Wings of Liverty. ZvP, 8 pool into 2 base muta (12 mutas), followed by 3 base roach/infestor to hold their kill push. After that it was 5 base ultra infestor with nydus and broods on the way. I have no idea what the protoss was originally planning, but I'm certain it didn't involve being forced to slow expand and deal with mutas before they could do anything. RIP 8 pool, it made players react instead of plan. Now days they don't even scout.
A food for thought: what if instead of nerfing everything (like council does), give more options with different tradeoffs for players It would require some thinking, but this guys do strategy for a living. Surely they can come up with something
Boanaan's first actual building wasnt a forge?! Lol also re: military strategy, I once spoke to someone who wanted to make builds based on WW2 strategy... The builds were terrible, though they did like trench warfare like Pig (showing that their WW2 knowledge was lacking)
Everyone memeing but I actually support the idea, just play test up to the highest minimum number of workers where the next best choice isn't 100% build the next worker.
Okay, but seriously, I think a 9 worker start is probably the best of both worlds: Not too slow, not too fast. Maybe increase the starting minerals to 100 might not be a bad idea too.
I think 1 worker might be viable with a supermineral. We will add an mineral with 1000 resources. This mineral will be mine super fast (35 mineral per trip, unlimited worker). So it both allow the game has more build and avoid the long boring in the beginning.
If you want more variation in SC2 games, you don't change the worker count, here's what you do: remove all the gold mineral and purple gas expansions on the map pool and replace them with standard expansions, and instead, give all STARTING bases 2 purple gas and a fully stocked gold mineral line. Boom! Watch variation return to SC2 overnight...
i miss the 6 worker start so much. id love to see 1 or 6 worker start be a thing again in the competitive ladder. the diversity it brought was what made WoL so great. they may as well have given us 2 bases to start when they changed it to 12 workers. this was the reason beastyqt left sc2 years ago. well one of the reasons
I think you should start with 1 worker but you need to build your main structure. Think about it. You could choose to build where you start or proxy your base on like a good or something, with the trade off being the initial travel time & more exposed base.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I think it should be a 0 worker, 49 mineral start with a $60 dollar dlc to start with an extra mineral. (I'm not a blizzard shareholder)
How about 12 workers, but you start with -12000 minerals so you have to mine the base out first and start long distance mining to the natural before you can afford your first supply depot/pylon/overlord.
No, you're thinking about this all wrong. 49 mineral start, but a 2 mineral microtransaction for $1 every game. Of course, that puts you at 51 minerals. If you want more, there's the 52 mineral microtransaction for $10.
@@danielskrivan6921 Not sure why I wasn't thinking about subscription based service. Silly me. Good shout!
It's not about the number of workers. It's about the bs stories the commentators prepared while there's nothing exciting happening in the map.
@@bami2 enjoy your drone rush every game
make a mod that gives one worker, 400 minerals and no CC/Hatch/nexus so that the player has to find a spot and build one straight away
And then you lose instantly, because you have no structures.
sc2 nomad start lol
warcraft2 style
also have bases give like 1 supply so u have to waste time making a supply depot/pylon/overlord
@@defilerzerg9152 : Just have a 60 second buffer before someone can lose.
@@bami2 aoe2 and starcraft unite
While this is clearly a meme, it is neat to think about balance issues cause by this. With a 1 worker start, zerg overlord scouting becomes OP, because it will get to the opponent's base and give you zero cost scouting for a long time. It might work out that super early ling floods could hit before it is realistic for other races to scout, which might have some curious consequences for early game build orders for T and P.
no, zerg won't be op no matter what according to zerg community
Easy to fix: just reduce supply given by nexus or command center to 6 and don't give zerg free overlord.
It would be op vs toss. vs terram tho? im pretty sure they'll get rax by 10 supply
@@bobyy6557 Meanwhile Zerg is the least represented race in the entire game.
@@Konranjyoutai "least represented race" 😭😭😭. literally there are less protoss. but hey I'm used to the fake narratives zerg community puts out there.
new idea- random worker start
I actually came to the comments to say this. Random worker start would actually be sick.
u mean both the same amount? absolutley nice idea!
There is a mod for this btw
Fischer Random Starcraft
@@hrothgarvonmtamazing comparison lmao. "i dont hate starcraft, im trying to save it!"
What would make this even MORE competitive is to play on a slower game setting - like I'd like it at 50% speed so we can really FOCUS on the worker pathing.
No workers
No base
Final Destination
fox only
I wish mothership can siege on a minera line to be able to mine from.
check out idea man over here!
That would be ridiculous and imba. I support it.
Yes please
zerg could just make a blob on a patch and mine it at once... and terran workers can deliver recources to flying cc's =P
Making your first worker faster when you start with one worker is actually a lot more important, since each additional worker represents a much larger percentage of your economy and thus how fast you can ramp up.
If you want diversity of game play -- adjust via maps - maybe have a different number of starting workers on different maps - one map might have 6 starting workers another map might have 12 - another 8
It wouldn't work. There were many many changes made to accommodate the 12 worker start such as increasing overlord speed and creep spread, warpgate research time and all 3 races macro mechanics being tuned for a 12 worker start.
It will just come to the point that certain races are determined to absolutely be favoured with fewer worker starts and it won't be able to be balanced.
@@L3monsta or...
They would rebalance the game to accommodate??
@@Cellus5000 it will not be balanced for different starting conditions on a map by map basis. Hoping for that is like hoping for the game to be balanced on xel'naga caverns.
just let players start at the the primordial soup stage where you have to develop your scvs, probes and drones like in the game spore
strategic overload that only the greatest minds can master :)
zergs will prob win 99% of the games since they dont have to invent steel and shit
or toss coz they should canonically have a headstart i think?
How about both players start with nothing, run to the store to buy components, assemble a computer, install SC2, ...
We should switch to broodwar econ. 4 worker start but 8 minerals per trip.
Actually not a terrible idea to try.
I would like to add that something like double harvest could be added to add the funky worker mining which means that fewer workers per base are more efficient, further aligning the systems
That Reddit post looks like it was written by ChatGPT.
Might have been formatted by it, but yeah it's the right format. IDK sometimes it's legit people just using it to refactor things they have written themselves... not such a big deal. Interesting times though.
Is there an benefit to spawning in the lower location on that first map as zerg so the eggs are on the bottom of the hatchery, closer to the minerals?
Its a same problem that is a Terran add-ons placement. We must be able to select both, the add-ons location and larva spawn side.
The amount of starting workers should vary. Probably not 1 worker, but maybe 7 - 12, with the more normal (heh) amount more frequent that the extreme high or low.
If this would shake up the cookie cutter build orders, that is.
AOE varies the tourneys by map types and worker starts.
Theres a "standard" online set, then a tourney set. Im really not sure why we dont have something similar. Clearly the terran council isnt helping, so why dont we have different tournament formats?
Make one tourney a random race, make another one an 8 worker start or with older maps or only four player maps.
a different worker count for each map would be sick
The problem js that pro players would veto the maps with different worker starts
@@diogog.fernandes6650 I assume (if you have a proper balance of maps) that you would end up with a handful of players (maybe Rogue, Has, Scarlett, those types of players) who would build strats around those maps and force better players to deal with it.
But that doesn't work if you have like 9 maps in the pool, one "weird" map, and it's a Bo3. Then yeah, they would just veto it.
The sarcasm is strong, but, as someone who doesnt play and only watches, this could be good occasionally.
Seeing the same run bys every early game that dont accomplish much of anything except "he got one drone and oh my god the reaper gets away with one hp again"
Edit: yes it feels like every recast i see is ZvT, give protoss some sauce
This is so true its the same thing every game with the 4 lings until the queen comes out then they try to get the tumor. For like 5 years they've done this it's just so bleh dude change the game please
you do realize this would be sooooooooooooooooo far from good to watch right. it took 4 minutes for him to get a second base. sure TvZ early game is pretty much solved and samey. but the joke is 1 worker start doesnt fix that it delays it. zealot ling macro in the early game isnt super uncommon. neither is the oracle adept harass. it doesnt only do "nothing" but delay the early game it also speeds up the late game because the tech compared to worker count is much much earlier. so the mid game which is the cool part of the game is next to nonexistent, and we transition from 15 minutes of watching workers mine to 45 minutes of standing and staring at eachother with 2 death balls
You're a funny guy Pig. This is why i watch your channel, this exact reason LOL
Maxpax would actually be unbeatable
Ruff would be, too.
All a one worker start would do is make mechanical consistency more important.
On a real note, I think one of the biggest problems with modern starcraft is the upgrade costs. They've all taken a trend down in cost and is a much lower investment. I think just increasing t2 and t3 upgrades by 50/50 and 100/100 would have a similar result to lowering the workers. Keep in mind the reason they lower the upgrade costs is because they super nerf a unit like the widow mine or the disruptor and then lower the upgrade cost to compensate. They could've just not nerfed the unit as hard in the first place. Seriously, why do we need to nerf mine aoe by 35% and then lower upgrade costs to compensate when we could have just nerfed the aoe by 10% or 15%. Neutering the tech unit and indirectly buffing the marine was insane.
Costs for upgrades have gone down because more and more the upgrades are becoming required rather than part of a build.
Instead of making good units great, the upgrades make trash units not trash.
Upgrades can be expensive when units are good at a baseline (and they should be).
Would just going back to 6 workers or maybe reducing to 4 have a similar effect without slowing the game down as much?
I do enjoy the games that are slightly faster but i see how slowing it down can add nuances and more build variety to it.
it cant that is the fun part. the game look the same but lasted 10 minutes longer
@@alviworldur just objectively wrong
Can't wait to build workers for 5 minutes to then lose because my zealot was half a nanometer away from closing my wall and I now lost to lings running into my base.
Skill issue
Well you should have scouted better buddy boyo
Ye. Game is rough when you jave to react to your opponent.
Much better if you can just do the same build order in each game and be safe on your 3-4 bases.
Make better simcity and block entrance with units on hold? Pros doing this shit for like all the time SC released.
You are the best sc2 scientist thank you for everything you do seriously. My group loves 8 worker start. Hoping it gets through to the best creative players, bringing our game of strategy back.
That one random wisp of hair rebelling right down the middle of your forehead somehow really sells the hell outta the 1:13 "I'm like a StarCraft SCIENTIST!" bit haha.
Your explanation at the beginning of the game made me believe I was watching SC2 Spinal Tap
Start with 1 worker and 1 base's minerals + 50. Find your own base and take it.
People joke about this, but Age of Empires 2 has Nomad, played competitively, which has you start with 3 workers scattered around a random map and no base.
I don't know much about AoE, but isn't the map layout way more important in that game because of the different type of resources and how they can spawn? What I mean is that I don't know if there is enough of a justification for that type of early decision because starcraft is too symmetrical in comparison.
@@Unormalism Oh wow; thanks. That sounds pretty good in the right situation. Maybe not every day ladder, but I know people I'd want to try that with in SC2. I need to try AoE one of these days.
@@pitju99 I agree. Having only two resources and two ways to get them really minimizes the importance of placement; you would just always place at the nearest place, as to not be slowed down.
And admittedly in AoE 2 you usually only need to find a source of food near trees to decide where to start building, but the mid/late game are all about jockeying for resources. The other big factor is being able to build walls.
@@MrCthur In competitive play, there's typically 1 Nomad map mixed in with several standard maps, including a map where your base is safely walled in, a heavy water map etc. Picking and choosing the civs you play vs the maps you play on is a big part of the competitive metagame and what keeps it healthy. You /don't/ always play Nomad, but it's a monkey wrench that can keep things interesting.
It reminds me of a weird Custom map i palyed some time. It shaped like the world, and you'd have like 2 drones, and a handful of minerals.
Game starts at 4:47
Why the fcknis there a game here?
Rule of thumb, fam: if a headline asks a question, the answer is "probably not."
I fondly remember the days when we held ctrl+F1 while waving the mouse around the minimap in the loading screen to instantly click on a mineral and then try to select 2-3 workers to split them. Back then often times we quiet literally had a huge advantage over people who were missing 2-3 seconds of mining time because they boxed their workers after the loading screen.
you can comparte pigs screen movement with pros and see where they are slightly faster, is fascinating
Hey Pig, big fan! As a master level player, and a fan of fun strategies (like Uthermals challenges). My main criticism of this would be the forced tech tree: Something like a bc rush seems to be eliminated, and a lot of creativity with it. Thoughts?
15:27 This is the most important question in SC2 today!
You know that really cool trick that bots do with their apm to get increased mining efficiency.
Life was doing it over a decade ago, that's why he had his drones on hotkeys and had 450+ (700+ lotv) apm with a 6 worker start. That's why he used to get so many runbys to work, he literally was earlier than anyone else with his timings.
Expression of skill comes in many forms.
What are you referring to?
@@mikerosoft1009 Look uo Harstrem or Uthermal vs. bots. There's a whole group of people designing sc2 bots as a challenge and playing them against each other. One of the core things the bots do is microing their mineral lines to get up to 12% increased mineral efficiency.
Life was doing that during his peak in Heart of the Swarm and became famous for his zergling runbys because he had an advantage that not many people even knew about to be honest. Let alone trying to replicate that technique, good luck.
Right now Starcraft 2 is very focused on a particular type of micro as the key skill in determining outcomes. Being really good at other aspects of sc2 doesn't translate to wins at all. Simple example, Zergling and Zealot micro is meaningless now. Both of those units attack, deal damage and then play their animations so a skilled player can do a lot of work with them. Adepts and Queens are the units people use now instead to fill those roles, there's not really much going on there.
1 worker and 200minerals at the start eZ like warcraft 2 starting ressources
Let's go one step further! The Warcraft 2 start! You start with one worker and 400 minerals!
One worker start unironically feels more natural, if that makes sense, than the 12 worker start which feels very Esport.
Clem vs. Serrel : 1-worker start. Make it happen
4:21 the 6 pool zergling Rush would be so crazy to figure out how to counter though...
I seem to recall rather distinctly that the reason for the increase in the number of starting workers was to "enhance" the game and make it more "interesting".
At the time I bemoaned the fact that those in charge seemed to want the game to become a "twitch" game and avoid "long and boring games". I always have enjoyed strategy games and RTS's and looked forward to building from just a construction yard up through the full tech tree. I never wanted StarCraft to be Nine Minute Games. But then I was always in the minority.
I do find it amusing that in 2024 this "One Worker Start" is considered a viable and "exciting" change. You guys are just the most amazing bunch of folks.... everything old is new again.
u have to start with a worker otherwise u dont have the option to go for a 2nd overlord instantly, which also would be a personal skill expression
I want to see a round robin tournament with a 1 zerg 1 terran 1 protoss, with everyone playing each other and seeing how it works out. Including a mirror matchup
This was really cool to watch
@17:20 of course no worker start is meaningless expression... but one worker ONLY start with minerals for CC/Nex/Hatch, MMMM now we're cookin' strategy. can delay start by choosing to change start location
My Sarcasm Detector was struggling with this one. Still fun to see the "what if?" played out so clearly.
And to think about just how much slower it could get... increased resource costs for everything, slower moving/mining workings, less returned resources per trip, fewer overall resources per base, slower game speed, reduced supply per supply unit/building... But ya the slower start or game speed doesn't really reduce the effectiveness of higher APMs, it just makes micro more intensive.
ok hear me out... What about a variable worker start? It would really only work for tournaments, but you could have it so that players alternate between who picks the map and the worker count. You have a set of worker counts to choose from, so they can't just pick 12 every time, and once you choose one of the numbers it's removed from the pool in the same way maps are. ie [12,11,10,9,8,7,6] for a Bo7, [12,10,9,8,6] for a Bo5, and [12,9,6] for a Bo3. Could be interesting.
woah, for series this would be good no?
lots of variety introduced
If you go zero worker start, you automatically get new players into the habit of building workers.
I like the idea of starting with 400 minerals so you can rather build production, extra base, or tech
except for the part where zerg auto wins because larva spawn faster than the worker build time meaning even if they only start with one larva, their second worker is 1sec faster, their third worker is 2 sec faster, and so on.
This was awesome, unironically. Go further, start with zero worker and build the first one.
I think starting with a random number of workers (both players same ofc) would be cool to watch
Go back to the days of WarCraft 2, one worker and nothing else. Watching my town hall build knowing my opponent was doing the same thing and wondering who was a quarter second ahead for the whole build time was very strategic.
Every time i think pig can surprise me anymore, he takes his dorkness to a whole other level.
I love how we’ve gone from the narrative of “Brood War is great because it hasn’t had a patch in 20 years!!” to, “Change everything about sc2!!!”
Honestly i can't tell when PiG is being serious or not in this😂sometimes he says he's serious and I still don't feel like he's being serious
Amazing video for sure. Definitely over 9000% better to start with 1 worker.
The only way it could get better is if the start was 0 works, 50 minerals and a constructing base that starts at 1%. Imagine the viewership minutes you could get then!
now try both players each start with 6 fully saturated bases to do a fair, unbiased comparison
Are all of these mods open to the public? How can we try them?
yep just search for pig balance mod and there's a worker count dropdown option in the settings on the right
@PiGstarcraft awesome! Thanks!
I just realized how much mineral Zerg loses in such starting positions just becuse their worker spawns from eggs further away from minerals while other race workers spawn on the closest point to the rally point which is minerals.
one worker start very interesting, well done video man
I think it would be hilarious when the first one pool strategy is being developed and the player forgets that they've actually gotta bank 250 minerals so they can rebuild the one worker again or they brick themselves and gg out xD
Instead of less workers why not start with more workers and less mineral patches? Like 1 patch per base and only 2 bases. And 1 shared gas in the middle of the map that the players need to argue over. Add in a dialogue tree and diplomacy options for the two players to vote for which of them gets more of the gas income. Suddenly yeah, you’ve got 2 carriers vs my 4 zerglings and 1 queen. But I’m voting to tax your carriers so you can’t afford to produce interceptors and my city-states give me a cyclone. Now I’m winning.
I really love it. The epic moments I remember regarding SC2 are mostly the 6 worker times because there is a lot of tension during the early game. versus now everything is just mostly midgame to lategame. Maybe 4 worker start is the best number though. because it is the right amount of workers where something could happen adding that tension of would he/she do a cheese or not
What you actually need is a 0 worker start with 50 minerals. That way, there's no handholding. The game gives you the necessary tools to succeed but doesn't force you to play any given way. You can discover how YOU want to play
Abathur evolved hunterkiller overlords for Kerrigan, Stukov and the queens. For the Zerg VIPs they internally secrete febreeze.
I can't even imagine how far my mmr would drop if we had one worker start because I'd be running a worker across the map at 1 second every game
I can't wait to hear more about sc2 lore on dropperlord sphincters!
The problem with skill expression on 1 worker is that it’s more exciting to watch 2 armies fight than 2 workers mine.
I do like the idea of more strategy tho, the idea of games changing dynamically via tech switches, etc. is much more engaging to me than cringing at how much damage Clem can get off 2 drop ships of marines while saving 80-90% of them thru perfect micro.
I think economy upgrades could be interesting. Like an upgrade for zerg that lets you morph a drone into two drones for 25 minerals (split drones couldn't split again). Protoss could have an upgrade that would allow probes to carry 6 minerals/gas or something like that. Terran could get something (maybe a 'durability' buff upgrade for MULES that makes them last a little longer). Just random suggestions that I'm sure aren't balanced but kind of interesting to think about.
Combine stuff like that with a reduced worker start and you make a 'macro' path vs 'aggression' path choice the player can make early.
I think this was just amazing. Yea, maybe slow to start, but I loved every minute of it.
Sure, why not, could be fun. AOE2 has single villager (well three in nomad) start, where you explore around to figure out where to build a base. WC2 started with 1 worker without a town hall.
Chronoboost would be so op. Cos getting a worker out even if its just 1, like a second or two sooner is huge. Youd scale significantly quicker than the other two
Well, you will need more minerals on your patches for a 1 worker start. Imagine getting 6pooled, constantly flooded, so you gotta focus on building a wall, and then you run out of resources before you could expand or tech. Long distance mining will be the only solution to even expand if minerals dont get fixed.
There was a 1 worker start in original Warcraft II custom maps. Started with just 1 worker.
I think the fact we are nitpicking so much over how many workers we need is a psychological sign..... that we really need Starcraft 3.
I’d totally be down to see what some pros make of this
Start with 6 workers but start with a racks/gateway/pool.
Have the option of making a worker first or an attacking unit first
"one worker start" should be, you start with JUST one worker, you have to build your command center/nexus/hatchery
This just looks like old Starcraft 2. Being a returning player from Season 7. Lower worker means more cheese and longer downtime in the beginning.
The gameplay was so exciting that i had to play the video at 0.5 speed
Did somebody threaten PiG to NOT stop talking or else?! I have never heard him talk so fast without any brake at all...
aaah 1 worker start is great for edu-streaming, while 12 worker is for watching, some action in the early minutes
If we're going for pure skill expression with variety, I vote 1 worker start, but with 250 minerals. This allows for plenty of skill expression in either making workers or forgoing that for early aggression. The only exception to this would be zerg, which would get 0 workers, but 300 minerals. I want to account for their ability to make workers faster in the early game, and I think this might help.
back when we had 6 worker start and terrans going racks, factory, starport was a build and not just run of the mill (while taking 2 bases)
Try a mod that allows you to pick how many workers you start with up to 8, and you get 50 more minereals for each worker you don't start with
Pff, 1 worker start should be literally that. Man have to build that command center!
i think this whole "have less workers" argument got a little out of hand ridiculous
but funny ridiculous :D
I'd not mind seeing things like 4 worker start either... but honestly, I don't think that works being that low will fly. Probably 8-9 is realistic.
But I DO think that it's better to start with that bit less. Like you're saying, it helps with the build up of the start that your opponent can scout and respond to.
I think 6 worker start with an extra pylon/depot/overlord built might be good. That way players have the option to go for gateway/barracks/pool first or be greedy and go for expand first for a more volatile early game.
One of my most enjoyable games was a clan match with TeamSCA in Wings of Liverty. ZvP, 8 pool into 2 base muta (12 mutas), followed by 3 base roach/infestor to hold their kill push. After that it was 5 base ultra infestor with nydus and broods on the way. I have no idea what the protoss was originally planning, but I'm certain it didn't involve being forced to slow expand and deal with mutas before they could do anything. RIP 8 pool, it made players react instead of plan. Now days they don't even scout.
A food for thought: what if instead of nerfing everything (like council does), give more options with different tradeoffs for players
It would require some thinking, but this guys do strategy for a living. Surely they can come up with something
Boanaan's first actual building wasnt a forge?!
Lol also re: military strategy, I once spoke to someone who wanted to make builds based on WW2 strategy... The builds were terrible, though they did like trench warfare like Pig (showing that their WW2 knowledge was lacking)
Everyone memeing but I actually support the idea, just play test up to the highest minimum number of workers where the next best choice isn't 100% build the next worker.
Between Rogue and Raynor playing Protoss we see new strategies appear. (Not counting Dark here, because his strategies only work for him)
Pig you are a legend
Okay, but seriously, I think a 9 worker start is probably the best of both worlds: Not too slow, not too fast. Maybe increase the starting minerals to 100 might not be a bad idea too.
I think 1 worker might be viable with a supermineral. We will add an mineral with 1000 resources. This mineral will be mine super fast (35 mineral per trip, unlimited worker). So it both allow the game has more build and avoid the long boring in the beginning.
If you want more variation in SC2 games, you don't change the worker count, here's what you do: remove all the gold mineral and purple gas expansions on the map pool and replace them with standard expansions, and instead, give all STARTING bases 2 purple gas and a fully stocked gold mineral line. Boom! Watch variation return to SC2 overnight...
I don't know the context so the start of the video was like wth am i watching? lol
9:22 but I thought the only reason people massed queens is cause of 12 worker start? why are you massing queens on a 1 worker start?
i miss the 6 worker start so much. id love to see 1 or 6 worker start be a thing again in the competitive ladder. the diversity it brought was what made WoL so great. they may as well have given us 2 bases to start when they changed it to 12 workers. this was the reason beastyqt left sc2 years ago. well one of the reasons
My great grand pappy died to mustard gas. Watch it ya Ozzie
I think you should start with 1 worker but you need to build your main structure. Think about it. You could choose to build where you start or proxy your base on like a good or something, with the trade off being the initial travel time & more exposed base.