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I've been watching a lot of Brood War recently. I never really played BW, except for the campaign. I got the game from my brother, who loved all things Blizzard (he's 27, he played the original Warcraft back in the day), and I played Brood War when I was maybe 11-12. The campaign (especially the music) and the blistering difficulty (I was 12...) turned me off from it and while I thought it was fun, it was never my cup of tea.
I started playing Starcraft 2 in November, and it turned me into all things e-Sports. At first I would watch SC2 streams and tournaments, but for the past few months it's been all BW. And after watching games from this entire past decade, I've decided that I fear for Starcraft 2's future. SC2 will have a long lifespan and attract a lot of players, but nothing compared to BW. Here's why:
1) Brood War's imbalances and strategies were changed by players and maps, not by patches.
Brood War's latest patch is 1.16. SC2 is at 1.3.4. While the format is different, of course, no one can deny that Blizzard is changing this game at a blistering pace. Over 10 years, Brood War had a handful of big balance patches, while SC2 has an armful for just under a year of life. Not only that, there are 2 expansions coming out! This game will change so much that the focus is no longer on players' ingenuity, it's on how Blizzard makes the 4 gate come out 10 seconds later.
We haven't seen much player ingenuity in this game yet. Everyone so far in Starcraft 2 has won by simply making less mistakes than the other player. I haven't seen anything like Savior's masterful backstab lurker positioning in Starcraft 2, nor has anyone tried. Mostly so far we've seen 1 or 2 unit compositions per race and some exploration with build orders, but the strategy of Brood War isn't here. Some argue that Spanishiwa has changed the everyman's ZvX around, but the originality of his build is in debate and while it is a star in the scheme of things, it's a star in an empty sky.
I tell this to people and they say: Havefa1th, this game is young! BW has been around for 10 years, it's too early to make judgments!
Hogwash, here's why:
2) Starcraft 2 plays faster and easier than Brood War.
Starcaft 2 is build around ease of use and speed. Every race has an upgrade to speed, whether it be creep, Metabolic Boost, Glial Reconstitution, Pnematic Carapace, Stimpacks, Chargelots, Observer Speed, Warp Prism Speed or Blink. Combined with swarmier basic units like the Zergling, Marine and Zealot, speed upgrades and the (essentially) unlimited control group, Starcraft 2 units are faster and easier to control. Because units are easier to control, proper positioning and map control become less powerful compared to Brood War, where an unexpected lurker or 2 can wipe out marines while the Terran rushes to control them all. Little things like that become less important, which is why players don't focus on them.
And I don't think they will, not for a long time. At this point SC2 is all about building counters to units you see and making less macro and micro mistakes. In Starcraft 2, we rarely see a higher class of player that goes beyond "banelings counter marines" and into map positioning, backstabs, and metagame.
I hope we someone does start to experiment with great results in Starcraft 2. I'm getting bored of seeing the player who has x+1 stalkers to another Protoss' x stalkers win. I want to see innovation, but I don't think it will come.
So for now, I continue watching MSL VODs.
 
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So in BW player with 5 dragoons will loose to player with 4 dragoons?
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On May 28 2011 06:04 locilocisu wrote:
So in BW player with 5 dragoons will loose to player with 4 dragoons?
In SC2, PvP is such a matchup where the loss of one Stalker early on can lose you the game (see White-ra vs. MC in Dreamhack) because units are faster and easier to control.
In BW, there are other gameplay factors that allows flexibility to a player with a slightly smaller army size. No such thing in SC2.
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Perhaps you should Havefa1th in SC2 lol
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On May 28 2011 06:04 locilocisu wrote:
So in BW player with 5 dragoons will loose to player with 4 dragoons?
exactly
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Starcraft pre-patch 1.08 was in such bad shape compared to SC2 right now isn't even funny.
This video explains it all.
:D
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Netherlands45349 Posts
Just because the game is easier and more accessible does not mean that it will fail as an E-sport, casuals and most of the Starcraft 2 community who do not know what BW is don't know what you are implying, and they don't care either. The people who watch BW see (from their point of view) flaws in the game, whereas Starcraft 2 watchers see little(or atleast the majority does) flaws in the game when it comes to the things you described.
Edit: Firefrexfred describes it nicely.
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You stated things that are different, but not why that would have any effect on the future of SC2. One doesn't follow from the other logically.
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On May 28 2011 06:27 firexfred wrote:
You stated things that are different, but not why that would have any effect on the future of SC2. One doesn't follow from the other logically.
Because units are easier to control, proper positioning and map control become less powerful compared to Brood War, where an unexpected lurker or 2 can wipe out marines while the Terran rushes to control them all. Little things like that become less important, which is why players don't focus on them.
I guess I didn't mention that I think why BW has lasted so long is because the game allows such flexibility and ingenuity from players, while SC2 doesn't, for the reasons stated above and in the blog.
I don't think SC2 will die out, not at all. I think it'll go on for a long time, I just don't know if we'll such a colorful history like BW's.
This is all my opinion I suppose.
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Well, we'll see in ten years  . They're two different games and hopefully we'll be able to see players playing at a high level in both. Would be AMAZING if we could see OSL and OSL2 (for starcraft 2) and likewise for proleague and MSL. Even better would be seeing players competing in both games simultaneously. Imagine Flash and Jaedong fighting against each other in both OSL, MSL, and GSL.
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I'm confused as to why you mention the Spanishiwa build, because that's talking about BOs, not about the mechanics you're talking about. Even then, there are tonnns of innovation in builds beyond Spanishiwa - I've watched SC2 since the beta, and strats are really different (Tester's 2gate 5zealot pressure into expand builds xD).
For instance:
2forge protoss builds [I first saw it used by tyler, don't know if he started it, popularized it, or etc.]
IEchoic TvT
TLO's ghost opening TvT (especially that game vs goOdy  )
Mango build
I mean you can't just seriously have said: "we rarely see a higher class of player that goes beyond "banelings counter marines"". Does MarineKing ring a bell?
And people totally ignore positioning, I mean it's not like anyone ever cares about forcefields, concaves, spread of units, surrounds, baneling drops on protoss clumps that try to FF themselves, etc....oh, wait.
In short, I know it's all opinion, but there's way too much dramallama in the blog title, and these conversations were old even six months ago.
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For the depth of sc, zerg area control (dark swarm,lurkers) would be needed.
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What's weirdest is that for a long time starcraft alpha looked like warcraft in space. It even used the same dos like engine.
Then they were going to scrap the game until the lead designer produced the starcraft we know today in like a month.
This
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft_alpha
changed into this
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft_beta
in one month
Total luck. They weren't designing an esport back then, they were just making fun stuff. Browder first wanted to make the game fun, but he did it by making it try to play like command and conquer, and Starcraft units needed to be responsive, microable. He took the criticism of his unit designs and started nerfing everything down to try and balance the game because he thought this would make people want to watch it. I think he removed a lot of skill to the game by trying to hard to balance every unit. Hopefully my fears are unfounded.
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On May 28 2011 06:04 Megaliskuu wrote:BW balance stopped at 1.08 actually, and there were TONS of changes in each one, this is why BW is considered a fluke, that it turned out so perfect even though it was patched in such a way. http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft_version_history
I'm one of the crowd who's inclined to argue it worked because it was patched that way (i.e. basically twice for balance). By limiting patches, the law of unintended consequences has less to work with even if you're changing a ton at once.
(As a BW Protoss player, I'm still bitter about the storm nerf though.)
Not that the SC2 approach (omg strategy is imba must patch it out kekeke) is necessarily bad, especially as the competitive scene is so much bigger than BW was at first that damage control patching is almost a must - but idk how it will turn out long-term. What I'm hoping is that we see "damage control" continue through the expansion releases, and then they just leave well enough alone for like a year.
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On May 28 2011 06:04 locilocisu wrote:
So in BW player with 5 dragoons will loose to player with 4 dragoons?
yes
skills, skills everywhere
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I honestly believe SC2 will turn out the way WC3 did. without a dedicated fanbase like korea, many players will soon grow out of the game or start playing other games with better graphics. we'll see after the last expansion.
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I don't mean to sound ignorant, but if BW balance was a "fluke", did balance have to do with Kespa and ELO ratings showing Terran > Zerg >> Protoss or did the better players normally just choose T and Z?
Btw, I played Terran in BW and I didn't and don't care if it was super balanced or not so I didn't keep up with that sort of thing. I'm just curious as to why there were these notable discrepancies back in BW. What then determined that BW was balanced? :S
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On May 28 2011 07:49 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:
I don't mean to sound ignorant, but if BW balance was a "fluke", did balance have to do with Kespa and ELO ratings showing Terran > Zerg >> Protoss or did the better players normally just choose T and Z?
Btw, I played Terran in BW and I didn't and don't care if it was super balanced or not so I didn't keep up with that sort of thing. I'm just curious as to why there were these notable discrepancies back in BW. What then determined that BW was balanced? :S
Lot of the balance was done by Kespa making maps. I mean back ten Lost Temple was a serious map, and now we look back and wonder which idiot designed this shit.
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On May 28 2011 06:07 Havefa1th wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2011 06:04 locilocisu wrote:
So in BW player with 5 dragoons will loose to player with 4 dragoons? In SC2, PvP is such a matchup where the loss of one Stalker early on can lose you the game (see White-ra vs. MC in Dreamhack) because units are faster and easier to control. In BW, there are other gameplay factors that allows flexibility to a player with a slightly smaller army size. No such thing in SC2.
Ramps and uphill shooting is one important part, plus reavers in PvP. Even though i'm not a fan of PvP in BW particularly it's clear that you can overcome unit comp and build orders with excellent micro and skill, moreso than SC2 PvP. In my opinion.
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EPT
