Is SC2 fun?

On December 27 2011 17:53 xmShake wrote:
SC2 can be very enjoyable at low levels but as a competitive game, it's simply not very fun at all in terms of actually playing it. I'm going to be comparing this extensively to Broodwar, I game I find to be not only incredibly rewarding but fun to play DURING the fact.

SC2 suffers from a couple of major problems: how an average game is decided, the speed of the battles, and the actual units / micro involved in playing the game.

Think about a ladder session of about 10-15 games, how do they usually play out? It goes like this, either the game is decided early, whether it be through cheese, unfortunate build choice or whatever, or the game plays out into a macro game, players get to 2-3 bases, perhaps there's minor harassment, then there's a big battle, and then someone wins. Does anyone see what's wrong here? Early wins are perhaps unavoidable as they were in Broodwar, but to have most games decided around the 12 minute mark from one 15 second battle is setting people up to feel a lot of things, but entertainment isn't one of them. This is probably one of the reason's why people get so upset when they play this game. It is very possible that a person lost because their macro or economy or composition was inferior to the opposing player's. It's equally possible that the battle was lost due to bad micro, positioning, or a number of other factors. However, in both cases, the focal point of the game was the battle which tends to be the culmination of most games. The long term (arguably where most people would derive their fun), is not valued simply because the first engagement is likely to be the last.

Compare this to Broodwar. The average game time was around 15 minutes, but I would argue that the variety of games were much greater (not the 12 minutes --> battle --> did I win? thing that tends to occur in sc2), and a late game scenario was much more likely due to some of the features in broodwar that don't exist in sc2. This results in a specific point of time in a game becoming less important, and players becoming more focused on the late game, in case a mid game battle is not game deciding (often the case). This is because Broodwar had a variety of strong defensive options for all races and because battles results were often not as dramatically one sided, allowing a player to come back even if they "lost" and engagement.

Consider the defensive options for each race in broodwar: Terran has access to seige tanks and spider marines, Zerg can use dark swarm and replenish their units quickly, and Protoss has psi storms, reavers, cannons, and smart building placement. The result of these options is that a battle needs to be decisive in order for it to be game deciding, otherwise, the most one can do with leftover units is force another battle, or do economic damage, considering most players had another force of units by the time a battle was done in broodwar, sufficient enough to defend the next attack. SC2 has an absence of these options in most matchups due to the general weakness of static defense and the design of the units. A Terran player MAY be able to repel opposing forces with seige tanks, bunkers, and planetary fortresses, but Zerg or Protoss player would be hard pressed to repel anything but light harass with static defense. To defend anything but the lightest attack, an equally sized army is needed. The result of this is simple: when someone wins the battle, they win the game because the loser of the battle can not hope to defend against a stronger army when an army equal in strength is required barring drastic human error. This explains the tendency of sc2 games to be focused at one point.

The reason why a game centered around such a thing would be unlikely to be enjoyed is due to the speed of the battles, and the micro involved in these battles, which are not fun for the player.

SC2 battles tend to be quick, lasting 30 seconds at the longest if you don't count staring at each other with seige tanks in tvt. Broodwar micro battles can span minutes depending on the matchup. The difference in length of battles allow skilled players in micro to differentiate themselves better from weaker micro players, and generally tend to be the funnest of the game anyway (do you like sitting down and making units better, or watching them kill stuff?).

The next part of this is that in my opinion, micro tends to be dull and insufficiently difficult enough for people to become known for their micro ability. Let me analyze typical micro interactions in the matchups.

TvZ: Boils down to spreading your marines and running away from banes while tanks shoot at them. EMP and snipe occurs in later game battles. Hellions and Banshees light harassment. On the zerg side, setting up for a surround, laying down fungals and move commanding banelings. General mutalisk harassment.

These things are incredibly boring and simple to pull off, and there's generally little variety in how these are performed, and some of them are REQUIRED by the player. Marine splitting for example: there's no thought involved, you split your marines or you lose horribly to banelings and/or fungal, a spell which negates your ability to micro at all. EMP units, point and click, autocast and especially cloak makes this trivial to perform, again no brainer, you do it or likely lose. Banshee harass is very shallow in this matchup, either stuff is there to hit your banshees or they're not. Hellion harass is the only fun thing to perform since you can do some cool stuff with juking zerglings, and how much damage they can do. On the zerg side its simply tragic, you don't actually micro at all during battles besides fungaling and then pulling your infestors back if you have them. Mutalisk "harass" boils down to targeting a turret/building and then running away when marines come because your mutalisks will all get mauled. You can do some cute stuff like picking off reinforcing units and stray tanks, but this a rare oppurtunity.

Meanwhile, in broodwar: seige/unseige + tanks and split marines vs swarm + plague + burrow/unburrow lurkers, mutalisks which can kill armies in the most skilled hands, and epic surrounds. This matchup produces some of the most dynamic and entertaining to watch and perform micro of any and in my opinion what all matchups should strive to be designed to reach in terms unit to unit and player to unit interaction.

In PvZ: gateway composition + sentries + colossus vs roaches and friends (more roaches). Besides forcefields and roach micro, is anything actually interesting going on here? colossus sentry make for incredibly uninteresting micro, and the only comment you're ever going to hear in this matchup is "NICE FORCEFIELDS!" or "THE ZERG SIMPLY HAS TOO MUCH".

Broodwar: non-autocast storm that takes skill and does actual damage, sair and reaver play vs river dance hydralisks, mutas sniping templars, scourge / split muta vs sair, and other things. Another incredible matchup where each unit works in harmony with each other to create interesting dynamics where best micro can determine the outcome of unit interactions like sair vs scourge muta or templar gateway vs hydras and stuff.

TvP: MMM kiting and vikings... shooting. Ghosts predict a forcast of emp. Protoss... more colossus and sentry, only now we use templar sometimes too. Like TvZ, this army interactions tend to be game deciding and boil down to emp + positioning or lol colossus.

Broodwar: This matchup was another work of art. Mines + seige mode make for an EXTREMELY map control based matchup, while the interaction between vulture + tank + vessel vs zealot dragoon templar arbiter made for incredible battles. The mines kept away the zealots and dragoons, but they could be used against the terran army by a protoss with good zealot micro or dropships, the emp vs stasis / storm tension, and the siege tank mechanic where they can't shoot what gets close to them being utilized fully by protosses with smart shuttle usage. And Reaver drops, which the potential to kill 20+scvs in a blink of the eye. Another dynamic and interesting matchup.

The key about the broodwar matchups is that the units not only interact well with each other that allows for dynamic gameplay, but also allow the player to interact with their units in such a fashion that there is an unattainable skill ceiling for controlling them. This allows players to become well known for their micro or a certain piece of their micro, which creates excitement because you wanna see how a matchup between a person known for his micro plays out vs a macro player or a well known micro player vs another well known micro player. Who doesn't get excited when they think about boxer's dropship micro or nada controlling some vultures, or july with 9 mutas? Then think about SC2, which has been out for a reasonable amount of time. You don't really get people well known for their micro, only for their game style or creative play (practically the only thing to differenciate players by in sc2). You can bring up someone like marineking but he was only well known for splits because he was one of the first to do it well and often. Pretty much any masters level terran can put up a good marine splitting show for you nowadays. I can't think of another single person known for their micro in particular, only creative play or known for building a type of unit.

I could continue to ramble on about other aspects as to why sc2 is not fun but seeing as micro is probably the biggest aspect of sc2 I find wrong with it, I'll summarize my thoughts. The micro is shallow and uninteresting. The battles are short, and there is rarely a way for you to differentiate yourself through micro. Why play a play game where you make units for 10 minutes so that you can engage in a boring battle for 20 seconds and then greet the score screen? I know I only do it because I feel some commitment towards my CSL team and enjoy playing with my friends, but in really I'd rather be playing broodwar if it was still alive in NA or some KOF13.

For reference im a random player at the top of masters, I play all the matchups and I know pretty much all of them are boring besides tvt (The only sucessful matchup) when it makes it to midgame.