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i really don't want this to come across as a "everything is amazing and i'm unhappy" kind of post, but i've been thinking about something lately and wondered if anyone had the same experience as me.
back in bw days, games looked like this:
![[image loading]](http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i269/DunnegonMaster/wk2gm2img1.jpg)
the resolution, especially if viewed live, was rarely better than that. if you tracked down the vods, the quality was better, but never beyond 480p. if you had eagle eyes, you could sometimes see the upgrades each player had, but that was it. the same goes for the minimap--for most of us, it was just a blob of color. unless you knew korean, you had no clue what was being discussed apart from REEEBOOOO and PLAYGGUUU. in many ways, the spectator had incomplete information.
now, for the spectator, sc2 looks like this:
![[image loading]](http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/images/2011/june/linenada3.JPG)
which is certainly awesome, but at the same time i have all the information i could ever want. the stream qualities are so good i can read even small text, the production tab lets me know what's going on behind the scenes, etc. at almost all times, i feel like i know who is ahead and i have a pretty good idea of how games are going to play out.
this was almost never the way in bw. if you read through some of the live report threads (god help you if you do), a great amount of the discussion was just trying to figure out who was in the lead, since the observer for the game controlled so much of the information imparted to the viewer. and a lot of times, that was awesome. just when you thought flash was unprepared for the carrier switch, the observer would switch back to flash's base and BOOM! suddenly, 24 goliaths. i really miss that drama of the unknown, which i can only imagine was heightened by the casters, which so many sc2 games seem to be lacking. i miss that part of watching bw games, and sc2 seems to have designed that kind of drama out of it.
anyone else with me?
 
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well that's one thing i thought people were never going to complain about.
theres probably a way for you to downgrade stream quality for your own amusement, sadly(for people like you loll) people want to watch good quality streams :s.
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I completely agree. Any time a caster doesn't have the production tab or the army tab open during a live event, the chat is instantly filled with people complaining.
I like it.
Not knowing what's coming, when the caster does (especially in dual cast situations like GSL, where Artosis can look things up while the obs keeps the viewer in the dark) can really allow for great suspenseful moments if the casters are on top of things. Humorously enough, it allows for even more suspense when the caster is just as surprised as the viewer.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
haha I remember similar complaints the first time OGN's stat overlay popped up :p
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Hey excellent post! I Totally agree and I miss aspect from BW as well, theres so many games I watch where I just know who is going to win way before it ends, totally takes out the suspense from watching. Although there is so many things I miss from BW that I always find myself going back to play it......
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Well, I guess it's hard to blame casters and observers for using all the observing and replay tools at their disposal, especially considering how useful they are for pointing out the current situation. Also, a lot of newer SC2 fans are accustomed to these observer features, as indicated by the huge storms of fan anger in LR threads whenever an observer forgets to pull up the production tab for a reasonable amount of time.
I wonder how useful manually blocking out the production tab and mineral/gas/supply counters would be to increasing viewer excitement in SC2. Maybe one night I might stick a few sticky notes to my screen to experiment with this.
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I do agree, and that's one reason I actually quite like the bad observers.
Just knowing exact supply counts, exact units, their upgrades, it lets me see the results of the battles very easily. But at the same time, when I go back to watch BW sometimes, I miss some of the SC2 features.
But yes, the suprise was good... "omg is jaedong ahead". Sometimes video quality was so bad I had trouble seeing how many bases each player had, which can seem somewhat bad, but it made it so much fun.
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Depends. I think the units/production tab is fine when nothing much is happening/when both players are teching/expanding and not attacking, cause it really helps spectators understand players' strats and stuff, but during/after battles and stuff I really like when the observers don't show that shit, cause it allows epic moments like season 1 (I think), when Fruitdealer lost his maxed army and everyone thought he lost, but then he comes up with 15 ultras that no one knew about cause the observer hid the production tab.
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Ares[Effort]
DEMACIA6550 Posts
Ya I really miss the unknown factor, did this player scout this or not, will he prepare in time, and how etc
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On one hand I don't want to know everything but on the other hand I want to steal the builds I'm seeing... Hard decision.
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On September 09 2011 13:11 Ares[Effort] wrote:
Ya I really miss the unknown factor, did this player scout this or not, will he prepare in time, and how etc
there was also the unknown factor from the reaver (best unit ever xD...i wish i could get my icon to be a reaver and have it never change from that  ) where you never knew how much damage it would do, there could be anything from 0 scvs killed to stork vs hiya reavers in addition to that the non guaranteed damage was just an awesome thing to have :D
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I kind of agree. I like judging things by eye alone -- which is what you have to do of your opponent in a real game. You have to *count* how many units are killed, not check the kill count meter. You have to *watch* the buildings to see if the upgrade finished in time. There's too much information on the screen, especially when people keep unit health bars on all the time.
I also dislike having so many progress bars. Every egg has one. My hatch has one for larvae, one for tech. Grey/blue... aaahh!!!
I would probably turn off egg progress bars if that were an option. Maybe for hatcheries also. In BW we spammed our hotkeys to check when things were almost done, and that was IF we didn't have them memorized.
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United States335 Posts
If I'm watching from the perspective of wanting to understand better strategic elements of the game, obviously the observer tabs are very handy. From an entertainment value though, I agree that they give the viewer too much information, you can pretty reliably predict the outcome of a match before the big battle(s) happens.
The one point I disagree about completely though is resolution, I always prefer the highest possible resolution for whatever I'm watching. Thankfully the BW streams these days are usually of much better quality than that of the one pictured in the op.
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i thought your point would be that sc2 viewing is confusing as fuck cuz everything clusters together in a massive colorful blob, upon seeing the 2nd pic.
BW streams are way better than the one pictured and have been for quite a while, but the sc2 pathing that makes everything walk in tight formation and the fact that every unit has its health displayed above it makes for a bad viewing experience imo.
Ive tried to watch sc2 streams several times when im bored and always turn it off quickly because its just a clusterfuck.
On the subject of your actual post though lol, i agree the unknown factor in live games is pretty exciting and can add something to matches, although personally I always know who is ahead just because of their builds etc..
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i thought your point would be that sc2 viewing is confusing as fuck cuz everything clusters together in a massive colorful blob, upon seeing the 2nd pic.
Maybe its BW bias speaking, but I do agree with this. SC2 is prettier in a sense, but even after having watched alot more and played some more now, it still is way harder to see whats going on. BW it was always very easy to discern exactly what was going on since everything was more spread out and not as overly colorful and fancy.
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I hate when observers miss some important actions. And I don't enjoy not understanding things because of the lack of information. Example : why did this player pushed now ? answer is obvious if you just saw that his upgrade is done.
It's funny you mention the graphics, because when I watch SC2 it's really hard for me to see everything clearly. Contrast isn't very good, it's almost always dark units on a dark background, and saturation isn't strong enough (that's was probably done on purpose to get rid of BW's cartoonish look, but overall I feel that everything looks grayish).
Also, all those visual effects make it look even more messy. Seriously, I can't see shit in a 200/200 blob vs blob fight. This is probably due to armies taking less place than in BW, so we have a lot of stuffs overlapping.
Mahnini's example illustrates it perfectly :
+ Show Spoiler +Can you name 6 things going on during this battle? What about this one?
Sure I have a lot more information on the screen than on BW, but overall I always feel lost and it's always frustrating now to be aware of every detail going on in a battle.
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i've never really understood mahnini's example, because to me both are pretty clear/clean. i don't mean to turn this into a BW vs SC2 debate or anything like that, but anyone arguing that SC2 is difficult to follow in large battles is either being dishonest or hasn't watched many games. clarity isn't the issue. i think mahini's example illustrates that battle micro may have devolved some, but the issue here really isn't the lack of detail in graphics or anything like that. it feels to me like the unit counting and production tabs just remove an element of drama that made BW engrossing to watch. from a viewer standpoint, i know too much about what is going to happen already, and since the instances of game-changing micro seem to be on the decline, i feel like it turns into a math problem too often.
the fruitdealer example is a great one--that moment was my favorite of the whole tournament. maybe i can spin it like this: bw observers did an amazing job at being directors. they controlled the camera in a way that dictated the game almost as much as the players. i don't know if this was heightened or diffused by the commentators, maybe someone who understands korean can weigh in. i'm not sure if it's possible, but i'd love to see more of this in SC2.
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I wish the observers didn't show production or unit tabs. I think half of the excitement for me came from not knowing if the units had their upgrades researched or if the right units would pop out in time.
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On September 09 2011 13:01 benjammin wrote:
this was almost never the way in bw. if you read through some of the live report threads (god help you if you do), a great amount of the discussion was just trying to figure out who was in the lead, since the observer for the game controlled so much of the information imparted to the viewer. and a lot of times, that was awesome. just when you thought flash was unprepared for the carrier switch, the observer would switch back to flash's base and BOOM! suddenly, 24 goliaths. i really miss that drama of the unknown, which i can only imagine was heightened by the casters, which so many sc2 games seem to be lacking. i miss that part of watching bw games, and sc2 seems to have designed that kind of drama out of it.
anyone else with me?
Best (heh) example of this that immediately came to mind was July's golden mouse OSL final game: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/9682_BeSt_vs_July/vod
23:00 not looking so good for July...
23:45 Woah... wooooah.. Park Sung Joon! Oooooooooooooh!
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Yeah I almost wish I knew how to watch sc2 in korean for this exact reason lol. games just seem more exciting when I'm going off information based on what I know and barely understand what is being said.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/2nBpe.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/oYQSB.png)
