EPTIn contrast, SC2 games, even at the GSL level, are often full of mistakes and awful unit control even with vastly reduced mechanical requirements. Many abilities are designed to simply remove micro from the game for both players (FF, fungal, conc shell) instead of add micro (reaver drops, lurkers vs marines, vulture mines). Battles totalling 200+ supply are over in mere seconds because everything dies so damn fast with clumped units and mindless aoe like colossi, hellions, non-overkilling tanks, and even a lucky baneling or two. I just don't get the same tug-of-war feel in the vast majority of SC2 games. Finally, most of the time pro games just don't really look that impressive. As a high master's player who has rarely played since season 1 ended, I watch pro games and, generally, can do the same things that they do. Marine splitting, stim kiting, dropping 3 places at once, whatever. Sure, I don't do it as well and I sure as hell don't know the timings for hardly anything, but it seems like my play and the pros play isn't too different - there just isn't that feeling of "holy shit this guy is amazing, how the hell does he do all that?"
A message to SotG from a BW Fan - Page 3
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Thermia
United States866 Posts
In contrast, SC2 games, even at the GSL level, are often full of mistakes and awful unit control even with vastly reduced mechanical requirements. Many abilities are designed to simply remove micro from the game for both players (FF, fungal, conc shell) instead of add micro (reaver drops, lurkers vs marines, vulture mines). Battles totalling 200+ supply are over in mere seconds because everything dies so damn fast with clumped units and mindless aoe like colossi, hellions, non-overkilling tanks, and even a lucky baneling or two. I just don't get the same tug-of-war feel in the vast majority of SC2 games. Finally, most of the time pro games just don't really look that impressive. As a high master's player who has rarely played since season 1 ended, I watch pro games and, generally, can do the same things that they do. Marine splitting, stim kiting, dropping 3 places at once, whatever. Sure, I don't do it as well and I sure as hell don't know the timings for hardly anything, but it seems like my play and the pros play isn't too different - there just isn't that feeling of "holy shit this guy is amazing, how the hell does he do all that?" | ||
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DwmC_Foefen
Belgium2186 Posts
You can accredit this to the fact the game is still young but like I said before, I think this is going to be the best we can expect from the game. Besides better mechanics from the players, the game just lacks depth honestly. Unless, two more expansions make up for all of the flaws and introduce some interesting units/abilities. I'm whining, am I not? | ||
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infinity2k9
United Kingdom2397 Posts
Also why do people think that somehow if Flash or whoever switched they could reach some new found level of skill? You can't get blood from a stone and you can't get micro out of horrible units like the Colossus either. If SC2 stopped being patched at 1.4, just for the sake of argument.. would anyone expect it honestly to 'evolve' any significant amount? A year from now you'd end up with just refined versions of the same shit that people are already doing. The metagame that people keep going on about is being pushed heavily by patches not real evolution in gameplay. The game is simply limited in it's current form. | ||
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Doraemon
Australia14949 Posts
as incontrol said, there are simply too many tournaments, i understand they are needed to support the scene, but it also removes that emotional attachment to a player. he just won! but who cares, there's another large tournament tomorrow or next week or next MONTH AT MAX. the only player i follow religiously is Sen and apart from him i couldn't care less about anyone else and i just find it diffcult to barrack for another player. ^refering to what Thermia posted above me, i think he makes a good point in that having more AoE units in sc2 reduces the major battle lengths, you don't get see those epic manlot trains rallied to tanks, those beautiful swarm setups. >< bahhh. end rant | ||
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marttorn
Norway5211 Posts
On September 21 2011 20:29 Doraemon wrote: i think the point that resonated the most with me, and the point that i've made since sc2 first appeared on the scene, is that there is no suspence due to the UI. and that suspense of not knowing who has more supply, what the player is producing and so on is an integral part of the viewing experiece and i just feel that is taken away. I definitely agree with this. However, it's kind of problematic because... What do we do? Make the UI intentionally bad despite the fact that we CAN have it be much better? Not really, that won't slide with the majority of SC2 fans and it'll seem a bit fake/contrived. I suppose it's kind of how people who grew up in the 80's love the bad quality of old music videos, or the glitchy sounds of LP records. | ||
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Xenocide_Knight
Korea (South)2625 Posts
On September 21 2011 16:27 tree.hugger wrote: Mmmm someone asked me the other day what my favorite starcraft final was, and I said; Flash vs EffOrt, obviously, and they said that they had meant Sc2 final. And that stumped me, because really, I can name a handful of BW series that stick in my mind as ridiculously entertaining, but no Sc2 finals. I stayed up for so many sc2 finals, hoping it would entice me into playing sc2. I regret staying up for every one of them. MC/Rain, MKP/MVP, MC/July, Nestea/Inca, MMA/Polt, etc. Probably like the worst RTS matches I've seen. It was literally | ||
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Sm3agol
United States2055 Posts
As someone who played SC2 for a year before deciding to try and like BW after continually seeing people say it is far superior...I don't get it. What I see in SC2 is not a lack of micro-intensive units, but merely the current inability of even the best players to micro well enough without sacrificing macro yet. I see BW players controlling units far better than their SC2 counterparts. I see people botching simple FF and mis-storming at the highest level of SC2 STILL. In a MLG final, a player still had 2 factorys mis-rallied and lost two freaking thors for nothing. SC2 players just aren't good enough for high drama games yet, plus i don't feel the game is balanced well enough yet. T has such massive micro potential, while Z and P have much less, even though they aren't even using all the resources available to them STILL. | ||
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Count9
China10928 Posts
Oh, and agree with anti-micro comments that's already been said. Anti-micro is just not exciting, fungal brings no hype at all, especially on drops (yeah it's been said a million times, it's no scourge). Yeah, it forces good unit positioning and not clumping, but so did darkswarm and that didn't have to freeze everything. And it's not freeze everything for a long time, it's freeze everything for a short time so the other player has to spam click and hope the other guy fucks up. That's not micro. | ||
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deathly rat
United Kingdom911 Posts
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OpticalShot
Canada6330 Posts
I too think that SC2 has something to prove at this point. I know that the game is still two expansions short of complete, but I can't see the fundamentals of the game changing too drastically to "make up for the shortcomings," so to say. Many points have been brought up in this thread and in multiple threads and discussions in the past as well: the "1a" micro, lower skill cap, smart casting, TMI for spectator, etc. I don't see any of these being patched out/modified in the future. There isn't probably one "fix" that someone can pinpoint and address (if there was, it'd have been done already), but something has to be done before/with the release of HotS. SCBW is just fantastic. I'm not saying it's perfect, but there is so much excitement as a spectator sport (e-sport, fine). The recent finals between JangBi and Fantasy was one of the best Bo5 ever played, with a fairytale storyline, and really a down-to-the-wire finish. With a billion SC2 streams being available versus the one-or-two BW streams, I watch BW streams anyway. GSL (finals, even) versus SPL (regular season game)? I'd watch SPL even if it was some crappy ZvZ between two failure Zergs. Sure I'd tune into SC2 if there was nothing else to watch, but my preference would be like BW (casted) > SC2 (casted) > BW (user stream) > SC2 (user stream). Well, depends on which caster, but I would put BW user stream ahead of casted SC2 if [some castors that I won't name] are casting... simply boring and detrimental. I hope for the best for future of e-sports in general. No matter what people say, I still see BW as the stronghold of e-sports and SC2 isn't quite pulling its weight yet (and will it ever?). | ||
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craz3d
Bulgaria856 Posts
On September 21 2011 21:37 marttorn wrote: I definitely agree with this. However, it's kind of problematic because... What do we do? Make the UI intentionally bad despite the fact that we CAN have it be much better? Not really, that won't slide with the majority of SC2 fans and it'll seem a bit fake/contrived. I suppose it's kind of how people who grew up in the 80's love the bad quality of old music videos, or the glitchy sounds of LP records. There ain't much to do other than play BW and hope blizzard gets it right in the next two expansions. I highly doubt that anything will change because the reason BW was so successful was because of its UI and unit AI, which forced you to take an active part in everything, from ordering workers to mine, to microing lings in order to surround a group of units or else they would just attack in line and not do anything. IMO these "limitations" created a lot of levels of competition. If everyone could dribble like Messi and make perfect passes, football would definitely be dull to watch. But since that is not the case, we can sit in front of tv sets and marvel at the shit Ronaldo does and at the speed he does it, and go WOW what did I just see. | ||
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ShadowWolf
United States197 Posts
First is that the players aren't anywhere near as good. When someone like HongUn ( no offense to him ) and people like him are Code S and Code A players then that's just a statement about the other people playing with them. There's no real people who just are so good at the "imbalance" doesn't matter that much. MVP and NesTea are probably the two most solid players in SC2 and both of them have massive, glaring holes in their play that a top tier BW would exploit and decimate. I don't think this cheapens SC2 at all ( thus I disagree with the premise from the "Elephant in the room" article ), but I do think we have to objectively say that it's like watching top level college football. Yeah, it's good, it can be a lot of fun, but you simply aren't seeing the best of the best of the best play. In this situation, crappy finals are very easy to run in to since there's more than a decent chance that it's Really Good player vs. Mediocre Player instead of Great Player vs. Amazing Player. The other problem, in my opinion, isn't that there are too many tournaments. ( I haven't heard the incontrol comment so it's 100% possible I'm restating his opinion in different words ) The problem is that it's hard to build prestige in a tournament. It's not entirely the fault of constant 4-0s in the GSL, but it's one of those things where the tournament doesn't become exciting for viewers because the tournament says so. Tournaments like OSL and MSL have years of prestige built up in addition to a format designed to be that way. GSL is designed more like a "regular season" tournament, but doesn't have something that feels like an MSL or OSL tournament because doing so would take way too long. Part of that is also that there's no competition between formats or a cycle of different formats. It's all GSL all the time or the weekend tournaments in the style of MLG or Dreamhack ( which are *really* cool and a lot of fun, but those don't make a scene in my opinion ). Were I to make an analogy, I think we're at a point where we have college football players playing a college football regular season capped with a "cotton bowl"-esque finals. | ||
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Jenia6109
Russian Federation1612 Posts
On September 21 2011 19:26 Thermia wrote: In contrast, SC2 games, even at the GSL level, are often full of mistakes and awful unit control even with vastly reduced mechanical requirements. Many abilities are designed to simply remove micro from the game for both players (FF, fungal, conc shell) instead of add micro (reaver drops, lurkers vs marines, vulture mines). Battles totalling 200+ supply are over in mere seconds because everything dies so damn fast with clumped units and mindless aoe like colossi, hellions, non-overkilling tanks, and even a lucky baneling or two. I just don't get the same tug-of-war feel in the vast majority of SC2 games. I guess those mistakes are from that fact that battles end so fast. I even imagine that it will be cool if game was at the same speed but when battle begins speed of the game slows a little so player could micro more and spectator could enjoy the battle more... %) | ||
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Benga
Korea (South)471 Posts
On September 21 2011 19:26 Thermia wrote: I just love watching BW games because there's a kind of awe I feel watching players like Flash and Jaedong play - I played terran up to a C in iccup a couple years back now and holy hell did I have to work to get there, and there were still so many glaring holes in my play. Watching the best BW players in the world go at it is like watching a masterpiece unfold; I know there's no way I could ever even approach their skill level no matter how much I worked at it. And, even at the pro level, there's huge differences between the best, the good, the decent, and the "scrubs." It makes upsets more enjoyable to me just because I know how damn hard it is to beat someone that's only moderately better than you. In contrast, SC2 games, even at the GSL level, are often full of mistakes and awful unit control even with vastly reduced mechanical requirements. Many abilities are designed to simply remove micro from the game for both players (FF, fungal, conc shell) instead of add micro (reaver drops, lurkers vs marines, vulture mines). Battles totalling 200+ supply are over in mere seconds because everything dies so damn fast with clumped units and mindless aoe like colossi, hellions, non-overkilling tanks, and even a lucky baneling or two. I just don't get the same tug-of-war feel in the vast majority of SC2 games. Finally, most of the time pro games just don't really look that impressive. As a high master's player who has rarely played since season 1 ended, I watch pro games and, generally, can do the same things that they do. Marine splitting, stim kiting, dropping 3 places at once, whatever. Sure, I don't do it as well and I sure as hell don't know the timings for hardly anything, but it seems like my play and the pros play isn't too different - there just isn't that feeling of "holy shit this guy is amazing, how the hell does he do all that?" I agree whole heartley | ||
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TRAP[yoo]
Hungary6026 Posts
On September 21 2011 22:29 Jenia6109 wrote: I guess those mistakes are from that fact that battles end so fast. I even imagine that it will be cool if game was at the same speed but when battle begins speed of the game slows a little so player could micro more and spectator could enjoy the battle more... %) sorry but WHAT?!?! no its not supposed to be like that... of course OSL/MSL have a ton of history now but its the design of the league to hype matches and players. just take the TSL3 as an example...we had hype and everything and a good story (thorzain beating the first gsl champion and winning the whole thing). GSL took the first step by making the GSTL last for 2 months...i wanna see them go further and make a "new" system for their normal league. go gom!  | ||
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ShadeR
Australia7535 Posts
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Gamegene
United States8308 Posts
I watched JangBANG vs TerroristTerran and I was just all "oh fuck this is the shit." Fantastic strategy, metagame, and play (that reaver play <3). | ||
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Jenia6109
Russian Federation1612 Posts
On September 21 2011 21:44 Sm3agol wrote: Edit: What he ^^ said, but.....it's not a problem with SC2, it's a problem with the players not being good enough yet. As someone who played SC2 for a year before deciding to try and like BW after continually seeing people say it is far superior...I don't get it. What I see in SC2 is not a lack of micro-intensive units, but merely the current inability of even the best players to micro well enough without sacrificing macro yet. I see BW players controlling units far better than their SC2 counterparts. I see people botching simple FF and mis-storming at the highest level of SC2 STILL. In a MLG final, a player still had 2 factorys mis-rallied and lost two freaking thors for nothing. SC2 players just aren't good enough for high drama games yet, plus i don't feel the game is balanced well enough yet. T has such massive micro potential, while Z and P have much less, even though they aren't even using all the resources available to them STILL. I cant agree. I can say this a year ago but not now. Amount of players' mistakes get lower and lower but still the game doesn't look better for me. There is so little things left to develop. Again the battles are so fast that a player cant physically micro better. If you'll say that players dont use all of their abilities or units then let see at BW. Nobody uses Ghosts, Ensnare, Hallucinations, Scouts. But you cant say that players are bad. | ||
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a176
Canada6688 Posts
On September 21 2011 20:27 infinity2k9 wrote: It's down to many elements but SC2 progames simply are not impressive... like i can't tell the difference between supposedly the very best of the best and say, high ladder players. Well i can tell the difference but the fundamentals are so similar. Compare this to the giant leaps of skill from S class downwards. Plus players very often have their own style you can recognize, which is very much watered down in SC2. All of it together makes for tons and tons of bland games where someone goes for a unit composition and wins or loses. It's telling when you ask SC2 fans what some very good games are they very often just say 'gimmick' games where there was lots of nukes or stuff like that. This despite there being shitloads of tournaments constantly, hundreds of high level games played every game even. Also why do people think that somehow if Flash or whoever switched they could reach some new found level of skill? You can't get blood from a stone and you can't get micro out of horrible units like the Colossus either. If SC2 stopped being patched at 1.4, just for the sake of argument.. would anyone expect it honestly to 'evolve' any significant amount? A year from now you'd end up with just refined versions of the same shit that people are already doing. The metagame that people keep going on about is being pushed heavily by patches not real evolution in gameplay. The game is simply limited in it's current form. this is a great point that i never really thought about that much. its true when you see a player like jangbi and you immediately expect STORMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM or soo who's hydra timings are almost perfected or reach and his carriers and manlots, or even fantasy's terrorist vultures! but SC2 players are all so plain and very forgettable. they all end up using the same strats and there's nothing really identifiable for them. although, i cannot say for certain if this is a result of the game itself or if the progamers are to fault. | ||
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Kergy
Peru2011 Posts
I like to make an analogy with soccer. Imagine the times when it was invented, the plan was simple: Get the ball inside your opponent's goal. Since then, complex strategies and abilities were developed to make it what it is now. BW was similar, a game with poor AI that left much more room for the player to develop different sets of rules and skills, and they would only get more and more complex as days passed (Don't forget that BW was also all about cheese in its first years). On the other hand, the SC2 scene is pretty much ruled entirely by Blizzard. It's like they tried to impose a way of playing the game that would leave no room for further development by having complex in-built mechanics like smart casting and even a smarter AI. These things make the game much more noob-friendly and certainly even more entertaining to play (I fell such a great relief when Stalkers wouldn't f*ck around a ramp like Dragoons used to -.-) But sadly, this system is not that great for the growth of the pro-scene of the game, because it makes it a lot more boring to watch... and that's my main point. I haven't played SC2 in months but I enjoy watching it, it's become similar to a 'real' sport for me (I watch soccer, but haven't played it since high-school). If you want this scene to really grow, you can't focus entirely on what 'the community' wants by just adding fancy things that make the game enjoyable for the general public. That's the opposite of what happened with BW, most of us could only watch koreans owning it up, knowing that we'd never be able to do such amazing things. We were real spectators, wether we played/complained or not didn't matter, because we knew that it was the pros (koreans, not foreigners) that dictated how the game developed, and we were fine with it. Take Jaedong's muta micro for example, watching it was delightful because we knew we'd never be able to do such thing... have you ever said, 'Whoa, you can win with only mutas!' after seeing him, and went on to try it on b.net just to get smashed? I sure did. Compare that with fungal growth, it's a much easier ability to deploy when you try it, and the next time you watch it on a pro-match you won't be as impressed as before. Now, why do people watch sports? not because they want to be good at it, but because they want to be entertained, and you can only achieve that with things that are impossible to do for the spectator. No such thing currently exists on SC2, all the abilities that would require an overwhelming ammount of practice/skill were predicted by Blizzard and ruled out with the intention of making them more accesible for the 'community'. I think Blizzard had two choices in the beginning, they could either make a 'simple' game similar to BW, or one that everybody would get hooked to by adding fancier mechanics. Their choice was obvious. | ||
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