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For quite a while now I had the thought that SC2 will turn out to be a very boring game on the long run. It's actually kinda hard to put in words why and how it affects this quality of how interesting a game remains after a long time. An IRC discussion gave me some help to do so.
I want to add two sources that phrased this feeling for me quite well:
An interview from the german page www.fragster.de , translated from german into english. I put it to the end of this text so you don't get bored and stop reading before you actually reached my points :>
And an Article many of you will know since it's from this page.
"Missing the Point"
To sum up my impressions with those I got from these two sources:
-> SC2 will be boring on the long run because it has a very different focus than SC:BW and WC3.
-> In WC3 and BW, execution of tactics was the crucial part. Now it is the straight countering of builds or which tactic you use at all.
-> Battles in WC3 and BW were much about individual micro and, in BW, macro so it was alot about how you use what you have. In SC2 the important part is what you already have. Battles become a rock-paper-scissors-stats-comparison with limited influence by the players.
-> Units could be used very cost efficiently in BW and Wc3. Look at Moon's zeppelin micro video. Watch Nal_Ra old boy EP2 and see him getting entirely destroyed by two or three vultures controlled by Flash. Check out what happens if you micro a WC3 hero or don't or whether you really want to send your Broodwar-Hydras into a well positioned siege tank with attack move only. As I said, SC2 battles are reduced to an army-stats-comparison compared to these two games.
There still are certain units that will be very very cost efficient, such as a Ghost im TvP or Storms against huge bio armies. However their use does not require alot of skill, you just aim for the big bulk. It's more like a basic trait "this unit will be cost efficient in a big battle", not "if you use it really really well this very cheap unit might end the game."
-> Balance will NOT change it essencially. It's only the surface that won't cover up the deeper technical issues I mentioned.
-> I do not want to say that I'm bored with the game right now. I want to say that there are deep issues with it that will make it worse than games like Warcraft 3 and SC:BW on the long run.
-> The speculation that Dustin Browder ruined the game by mixing it up with CnC makes alot of sense to me when I compare CnC with the points above.
Here is the Interview:
Jussi Puranen 'KaaZ' Hallmann:
"I had very high expectations to the game in the beginning and it was really fun for the first two weeks. But the more I played, the more boring it became. Strategic Variation is very limited, one is forced to certain buildorders of which there are only very few different, what makes the game very unvaried. One of the reasons for this must be the weakness of static defense. No matter if cannons, bunker or sunkens: All of them are destroyed too quickly and their cost-benefit ratio is very low, so one is forced to produce alot of units in early game already, instead to protect, for example, a fast expansion with towers or protect a fast tech. Also, the defense of cliffs is not very important, lowering the strategic relevance of it as well.
Another topic was discussed alot already, the simplification of the game. It is designed way too simple and linear and I don't think that this game is eSports-suitable until Blizzard doesn't change something. I'm not impressed by Sc2 so far and I won't play it much until Blizzard fixed the issues."
 
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It's still in beta, builds and strategies have a very long time to go.
+ Show Spoiler +That being said the game is really fucking boring, but I'll give it time to develop 
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On April 24 2010 08:09 Megalisk wrote:It's still in beta, builds and strategies have a very long time to go. + Show Spoiler +That being said the game is really fucking boring, but I'll give it time to develop
Good that you remind me of that, added a comment about balance.
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United Kingdom12024 Posts
Have either of you two actually played the game? It's fantastic fun and still has all the stratergy that it needs to be awesome.
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On April 24 2010 08:13 Qikz wrote:
Have either of you two actually played the game? It's fantastic fun and still has all the stratergy that it needs to be awesome.
Added: -> I do not want to say that I'm bored with the game right now. I want to say that there are deep issues with it that will make it worse than games like Warcraft 3 and SC:BW on the long run.
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On April 24 2010 08:13 Qikz wrote:
Have either of you two actually played the game? It's fantastic fun and still has all the stratergy that it needs to be awesome.
I have had the beta for a while and played about 250 games.
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United States47024 Posts
On April 24 2010 08:07 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
-> SC2 will be boring on the long run because it has a very different focus than SC:BW and WC3.
I don't see how this is guaranteed. It could follow of course from your proceeding points of course, but different in and of itself does not mean it's bad.
On April 24 2010 08:07 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
-> In WC3 and BW, executing of tactics was the crucial part. Now it is the straight countering of builds.
Elaborate on this. "tactics" and "counters" get thrown around a lot, but you need to be more specific on what you mean by this and what makes it bad.
On April 24 2010 08:07 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
-> Battles in WC3 and BW were much about individual micro and, in BW, macro so it was alot about how you use what you have. In SC2 the important part is what you already have. Battles become a rock-paper-scissors-stats-comparison with limited influence by the players.
I have two issues with this. First is that this is a drastic oversimplification about both WC3 and Brood War. Second is that early play in vanilla SC was also a lot about "what you had". Not so much the case in WC3, but that's because the armor/damage system was so convoluted that most people didn't worry about it when they were trying to learn the basics of the game.
People will make the argument that we've "learned a lot about RTS since SC1 came out", but a lot of what's relevant here doesn't translate. Years of Warcraft II didn't make the developments at the beginning of SC1 any less drastic.
On April 24 2010 08:07 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:-> Units could be used very cost efficiently in BW and Wc3. Look at Moon's zeppelin micro video. Watch Nal_Ra old boy EP2 and see him getting entirely destroyed by two or three vultures controlled by Flash. Check out what happens if you micro a WC3 hero or don't or whether you really want to send your Broodwar-Hydras into a well positioned siege tank with attack move only. As I said, SC2 battles are reduced to an army-stats-comparison compared to these two games. There still are certain units that will be very very cost efficient, such as a Ghost im TvP or Storms against huge bio armies. However their use does not require alot of skill, you just aim for the big bulk. It's more like a basic trait "this unit will be cost efficient in a big battle", not "if you use it really really well this very cheap unit might end the game."
This I agree with.
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On April 24 2010 08:18 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2010 08:07 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
-> SC2 will be boring on the long run because it has a very different focus than SC:BW and WC3. I don't see how this is guaranteed. It could follow of course from your proceeding points of course, but different in and of itself does not mean it's bad. Show nested quote +On April 24 2010 08:07 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
-> In WC3 and BW, executing of tactics was the crucial part. Now it is the straight countering of builds. Elaborate on this. "tactics" and "counters" get thrown around a lot, but you need to be more specific on what you mean by this and what makes it bad. Show nested quote +On April 24 2010 08:07 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
-> Battles in WC3 and BW were much about individual micro and, in BW, macro so it was alot about how you use what you have. In SC2 the important part is what you already have. Battles become a rock-paper-scissors-stats-comparison with limited influence by the players. I have two issues with this. First is that this is a drastic overgeneralization about both WC3 and Brood War. Second is that early play in SC was also a lot about "what you had". Not so much the case in WC3, but that's because the armor/damage system was so convoluted that most people didn't worry about it when they were trying to learn the basics of the game.
Thanks for the feedback.
First point is more like an introduction that I wanted to specifiy in the following arguments.
Now for the second one. Maybe you read the TL forums thread about the deeper ideas behind producing a certain unit. The thread creator wrote that in Broodwar the idea was "what do I want to accomplish by building this unit?" whereas the idea in SC2 is "I have a certain enemy and I build a unit to counter it.". Ok, sounds kinda strange but really made alot of sense when thinking about it and reading this thread, hope I'll find the link.
Maybe its easier for whole builds and stategies.
Both player think of certain builds they want to use and continue to reach their goals, such as "survive early game and go for super strong Tier 3 Units." His opponent has another strategy in his mind which he tries to accomplish.
Now both will have to vary a little to respond but continue with their main goal if they don't get into a bad position where they have to overthrow it completely. Possibly they will go for a total change because they see a certain option that can be used to totally destroy the opponent but that won't happen if the other guy plays smart. In SC2 its more like one players takes the leading part and the other one was to follow this and cannot continue his original idea if it doesn't totally fit anymore. Or none of them does and both change everything all the time to respond.
Third point:
As you said, early play. These days people know what to do in a strategy game. If there was somewhat of a warcraft 4, they would be back to 250-300 apm already and actually use it, just as an example. Dunno what early RoC players had but certainly way less.
This is not a thing of the game beeing new anymore. Players have lot of experience with RTS. It's a specific deficit of the game.
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United States47024 Posts
On April 24 2010 08:29 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
Now for the second one. Maybe you read the TL forums thread about the deeper ideas behind producing a certain unit. The thread creator wrote that in Broodwar the idea was "what do I want to accomplish by building this unit?" whereas the idea in SC2 is "I have a certain enemy and I build a unit to counter it.". Ok, sounds kinda strange but really made alot of sense when thinking about it and reading this thread, hope I'll find the link.
Maybe its easier for whole builds and stategies.
Both player think of certain builds they want to use and continue to reach their goals, such as "survive early game and go for super strong Tier 3 Units." His opponent has another strategy in his mind which he tries to accomplish.
Now both will have to vary a little to respond but continue with their main goal if they don't get into a bad position where they have to overthrow it completely. Possibly they will go for a total change because they see a certain option that can be used to totally destroy the opponent but that won't happen if the other guy plays smart. In SC2 its more like one players takes the leading part and the other one was to follow this and cannot continue his original idea if it doesn't totally fit anymore. Or none of them does and both change everything all the time to respond.
This is extremely vague. Moreover, it's hard to prove that this is an inherent problem with the game itself, and not a problem with how people are thinking about the game. Everything you say indicates the latter (because it's about people's attitudes, and not hard-and-fast features of the game). I can see where you're going, but the way this is laid out now just isn't convincing.
On April 24 2010 08:29 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
Third point:
As you said, early play. These days people know what to do in a strategy game. If there was somewhat of a warcraft 4, they would be back to 250-300 apm already and actually use it, just as an example. Dunno what early RoC players had but certainly way less.
This is not a thing of the game beeing new anymore. Players have lot of experience with RTS. It's a specific deficit of the game.
You're making a bunch of assertions, but you're not proving any of them.
Basic mechanics translate from game to game, but beyond that, it's very hard to find analogues. You need to prove that past experiences allow us to skip the "nobody knows what the fuck they're doing" stage of the game's development. Because I can think of no examples where that's true.
I think both of these two arguments have one thing in common: you're assuming that "basic RTS knowledge" should allow us to develop play to an extremely high level already, when this is not the case at all. In fact, if it were true, the game would be extremely shallow--if you could play the game at a high level without intimate knowledge of timing, and the various other game-specific subtleties, a lot of high-level games would be extremely boring.
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The meta game is very new, if you notice there is a connotation between how fancy or diverse/multifaceted a game is with how long it has been played.
Listen to Day9's 100'th episode or compare Korean ZvZ to Foreign ZvZ in SC2 and you will understand.
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On April 24 2010 09:57 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2010 08:29 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
Third point:
As you said, early play. These days people know what to do in a strategy game. If there was somewhat of a warcraft 4, they would be back to 250-300 apm already and actually use it, just as an example. Dunno what early RoC players had but certainly way less.
This is not a thing of the game beeing new anymore. Players have lot of experience with RTS. It's a specific deficit of the game.
You're making a bunch of assertions, but you're not proving any of them. Basic mechanics translate from game to game, but beyond that, it's very hard to find analogues. You need to prove that past experiences allow us to skip the "nobody knows what the fuck they're doing" stage of the game's development. Because I can think of no examples where that's true. I think both of these two arguments have one thing in common: you're assuming that "basic RTS knowledge" should allow us to develop play to an extremely high level already, when this is not the case at all. In fact, if it were true, the game would be extremely shallow--if you could play the game at a high level without intimate knowledge of timing, and the various other game-specific subtleties, a lot of high-level games would be extremely boring.
Ok let me connect it with the optimization of usage of single units or your whole army maybe.
Players are very experienced in RTS and are used to use their units as well as possible. This enables them to use units efficiently such as good positioning in WC3, using their spells well, focussing the right units, using items. In SC:BW its maybe more like controll all your units so they dont move in one by one, good overview, good macro, positioning, not getting pwned by spider mines, good placement and timing of spells.
Most of these skill factors are very simplified and do not allow you to optimize above a certain maximum. For example positioning is pretty easy as you have huge unit groups which stack very closely. Focus firing is not very important in big battles and not very hard in most of smaller battles so you don't have to make these decisions very often.
Right now the only thing that is really really hard to acomplish is to have multi tasking good enough to deal with simultanous eco harass going on.
Atm it does not seem possible to stretch a skill level to an amount that allows you to use units over their value within a battle.
If there were, people would do so because they have their previous skill.
Actually it was a major element of most RTS so far to use units as more than just cost equalizing their costs what really became a rare thing to accomplish in battles.
On April 24 2010 09:57 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2010 08:29 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
Now for the second one. Maybe you read the TL forums thread about the deeper ideas behind producing a certain unit. The thread creator wrote that in Broodwar the idea was "what do I want to accomplish by building this unit?" whereas the idea in SC2 is "I have a certain enemy and I build a unit to counter it.". Ok, sounds kinda strange but really made alot of sense when thinking about it and reading this thread, hope I'll find the link.
Maybe its easier for whole builds and stategies.
Both player think of certain builds they want to use and continue to reach their goals, such as "survive early game and go for super strong Tier 3 Units." His opponent has another strategy in his mind which he tries to accomplish.
Now both will have to vary a little to respond but continue with their main goal if they don't get into a bad position where they have to overthrow it completely. Possibly they will go for a total change because they see a certain option that can be used to totally destroy the opponent but that won't happen if the other guy plays smart. In SC2 its more like one players takes the leading part and the other one was to follow this and cannot continue his original idea if it doesn't totally fit anymore. Or none of them does and both change everything all the time to respond.
This is extremely vague. Moreover, it's hard to prove that this is an inherent problem with the game itself, and not a problem with how people are thinking about the game. Everything you say indicates the latter (because it's about people's attitudes, and not hard-and-fast features of the game). I can see where you're going, but the way this is laid out now just isn't convincing.
Single builds are not versatile to be used as a general basis right now. Ok, this might be a point that mainly came up to me because I am playing Terran which seems to be affected most plus to me.
Single Units became very strong in countering certain Builds or Units so you have to completely overthrow builds very often because you cannot prepare for more than one option in many cases. If you try to, you will get owned by either of them because you didn't put enough ressources into it as you do not have a defense bonus. So you will always be forced to make your build absolutely fit to your opponent's.
Right now it's 4 AM so im gonna try get myself back in the ladder and continue tomorrow ^^
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As was already said, the game is only in the beta stage. There is tons of time for fixes to the game. Hell, this is only the beta for the Original SC2 game. I think lots of people are forgetting that there are still 2 expansions to go. Who knows what will be added then that could change the flow of the game completely. Can you imagine SC1 without Dark Templars, Corsairs, Lurkers, Medics, or Goliath range upgrade? Take any one of these units away and it isn't the same game anymore. I mean even Dark Archons, Devourers and Valkyries are used here and there. As of now the game may be looking boring in the long run but it's only been out for around a month now iirc.
I say we should just wait to see what Blizzard has up their sleeve. Knowing them, Blizzard never fails to deliver. They only fail to deliver on time so we just have to be patient 
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United States47024 Posts
On April 24 2010 10:48 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
Most of these skill factors are very simplified and do not allow you to optimize above a certain maximum. For example positioning is pretty easy as you have huge unit groups which stack very closely.
Many have complained that the opposite is true. Units automatically clumping together requires you to control them and spread them out to avoid being destroyed by storm, EMP, fungal, etc. To take it as given that closely clumped units in large control groups makes positioning easier is just wrong.
On April 24 2010 10:48 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
Focus firing is not very important in big battles and not very hard in most of smaller battles so you don't have to make these decisions very often.
Explain how any mechanic of SC2 makes focus-firing less important?
If focused-fire is less important, it's because differentiation of skill isn't narrow enough for it to matter yet (e.g. look at the extremely broad spread of player skill in Platinum divisions). I can see no inherent mechanic in SC2 that makes focused-fire worse.
On April 24 2010 10:48 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
Single builds are not versatile to be used as a general basis right now. Ok, this might be a point that mainly came up to me because I am playing Terran which seems to be affected most plus to me.
The key words are "right now". What came to be called standard play in Brood War took YEARS to develop, and a completely new set of units and mechanics makes this for sure one of the things you can't just expect to translate into the new game. Just because people got their build orders refined to the second in Starcraft didn't make build orders obvious when they started playing WC3. Starcraft 2 is just as different.
On April 24 2010 10:48 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:
Single Units became very strong in countering certain Builds or Units so you have to completely overthrow builds very often because you cannot prepare for more than one option in many cases. If you try to, you will get owned by either of them because you didn't put enough ressources into it as you do not have a defense bonus. So you will always be forced to make your build absolutely fit to your opponent's.
Right now it's 4 AM so im gonna try get myself back in the ladder and continue tomorrow ^^
If you're designing builds that lose entirely when things don't go as planned, you're designing bad builds, end of story. Moreover, I'm not convinced that everyone is having problems developing builds that are somewhat safe against everything. At the very least, this is the sort of thing that has to be acknowledged across the board as a problem by top level players, and as far as I can see, this isn't the case.
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-> Clumping units make it way easier to get all of your units into firing position.
-> this leads to focus firing beeing not useful in many later game stages because it would lead to units running around stupidly without firing because they don't get range on the specific target or you would just loose a huge part of your damage output as it hits after the target already died.
-> Yes I know it took time for other games thats why I used the term "right now". However, the community is very experienced in RTS games other than when SC1 was released so it's likely that they would find such builds very quickly as people are used to what they are like.
-> Look at TvT. No matter what, you will end in Vikings-Tanks. Actually in TvT and TvP you will end up pumping loads of vikings as soon as the opponent gets air units. In TvZ you often have to adapt almost absolutely after early midgame to what Zerg builds. This might not be true for protoss as they have a very stable base of warpgate units.
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EPT
