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There's plenty of micro tricks in SC2 that you kinda overlooked.
Yeah, delay before firing is a bitch on hellions, but you could do a reasonable impression of moving shot with banshees, mutas and even brood lords.
There's a of micro involved with HTs in warp prisms. They not only useful for storm drops on mineral lines, they also protect the HTs from snipes/EMPs in big engagements.
Even in deathballs, there's still plenty of micro tricks available. Staggering of siege tanks (death mech ball) is a commonly used one. Spreading units is actually more tedious in SC2 because of the tendency of units to clump. There's marine splitting and blink stalker positioning to snipe vikings. Even in the dreaded colossus vs colossus mass laser battles, there's still subtle micro tricks like staggering your colossi so that only 1 gets hit instead of 3.
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Hellions and Stalkers really should have their attack delay removed. X_X
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On October 23 2012 13:06 Kovaz wrote:
This type of micro would definitely help with the deathball problem. Having to actively perform difficult actions to get the most out of your units means that bigger armies require exponentially more attention, so just getting a bigger army isn't automatically better. It makes small groups of units moving around much more effective, since the deathballing player can't just a-move at the weaker army and win handily, but the split up player can a-move his unit groups that aren't actively fighting other units.
The problem with SC2 is that your army get exponentially better the bigger it is, and no more difficult to use, so you get less utility from two equal halves than from the whole.
QFT. Harass and multitask was so much more important in the average game of BW than it is in SC2 for precisely this reason.
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So well written, i think that blizzard can find in this post alone ALL they need to resolve WOL issues...
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This was an excellent read, and hits on many key subjects that are too often overlooked in favor of balance "discussion." Balancing a game, while difficult, is something that can be often be done with numbers. Making a game interesting and dynamic, however, is an intensely complex affair.
I would disagree on one point: the Immortal. Immortals are often treated as heavy duty stalkers, but this is more the fault of the units they commonly interact with. Immortals are actually very interesting and fun to use because of their huge discrepancy in damage to light and armored units. If you're playing a PvT, and you're up against some early marine/marauder pressure, you benefit from quickly selecting your immortals and targeting down marauders. Letting them fire freely can lead to them doing less than half their potential damage. In PvP, Immortal drops are incredibly fun; picking up and dropping immortals to snipe stalkers so you can get away with your warp prism, and the fact that 2 immortals can 1-shot a probe makes it one of the most micro-intensive but potentially devastating harasses in the game. And in PvZ, immortals are heroes when you fight larger roach numbers; I recall a game where HerO killed an absurd number of roaches with a pair of well-microed immortals and a warp prism, with one reaching nearly 50 kills by the end. However, as the game progresses to larger numbers, they simply become durable damage dealers, as there are so many marauders/roaches that it just doesn't make a difference if you tell them to target or not.
By contrast, the Marauder and Roach are boring. On paper, the marauder looks really cool; it can slow down units, so you can have 1 or 2 dart in and peel a few units away from a retreating force, and kite melee units. But when you fight a gateway army, for example, you want to shoot zealots to slow them down, and take advantage of their extra damage against the stalkers. At first, this makes for interesting fights when there are 3 or 4 units on each side, and you're maneuvering around zealots trying to shoot stalkers... but then, as the engagements grow, you kind of want to be shooting everything with the marauders, so you make alot of them and just attack. Roaches are similar; the quick regen when burrowed means that you simply burrow roaches to heal in between fights; by the time you get it, fights are too large for the burrow micro to really be effective. Against force fields, burrow movement is cool, but binary; if you have it, you sijmply move under the forcefields and keep attacking. If not, you get shut down by the forcefields. Not very interesting or fun.
But, remove the marauder/roach, and immortals gain a new identity - a tank-buster type of unit. Actually, this is their original identity, but it was largely forgotten in favor of "Hey, extra DPS against mass roach/marauder." In large fights, they can be a key unit in taking down high profile threats such as tanks/thors/ultralisks(?)/Colossus when focus-fired, but bulky, low-damage paperweights when firing at units like zealots/zerglings (which are usually automatically targeted). They also retain their synergy with warp prisms, picking them up to escape or reposition against melee units, or even moving them closer to targets like tanks or colossus.
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omg that chinese triangle thing is the coolest thing ive ever seen
i kind of wish i had been old enough to get into competitive BW
T_T
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On October 24 2012 08:38 snively wrote:
omg that chinese triangle thing is the coolest thing ive ever seen
i kind of wish i had been old enough to get into competitive BW
T_T
I started playing melee when I was 6. No excuses.
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Similarly, the other competitive fighting game Artosis likes to watch is fighting games.
Slight typo, but great article!
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Canada11592 Posts
On October 24 2012 04:47 Heh_ wrote:
There's plenty of micro tricks in SC2 that you kinda overlooked.
Yeah, delay before firing is a bitch on hellions, but you could do a reasonable impression of moving shot with banshees, mutas and even brood lords.
There's a of micro involved with HTs in warp prisms. They not only useful for storm drops on mineral lines, they also protect the HTs from snipes/EMPs in big engagements.
Even in deathballs, there's still plenty of micro tricks available. Staggering of siege tanks (death mech ball) is a commonly used one. Spreading units is actually more tedious in SC2 because of the tendency of units to clump. There's marine splitting and blink stalker positioning to snipe vikings. Even in the dreaded colossus vs colossus mass laser battles, there's still subtle micro tricks like staggering your colossi so that only 1 gets hit instead of 3.
Even banshess, mutas and broodlords have the same problem. Broodlords... I dunno, the same could be said about Guardians probably, but I've never really played much with either. Muta and banshees definitely also have the same sluggishness if you compare it to wraith and muta micro from BW.
There definitely is micro with HT, but Blizzard is throwing it's attention at getting the Oracle into an interesting harass unit. Whereas the HT used to do that very same role. Sure you'll see it on occasion, but not nearly so often. Did people suddenly forget how to storm drop when they switched to SC2? It's at least worth looking at.
And absolutely, there is marine splitting and blink stalker. I do not argue SC2 is currently devoid of micro. But that certain unit designs promotes more a-move. (And a-move itself is not devoid of micro.) But note with the colossi wars you are focusing on subtle tricks such as staggering. The same subtle tricks exist in BW. But on top of that, there were some very obvious, in your face, set people screaming, twitch control of your units that required skill to master and were awesome to behold.
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On October 24 2012 10:16 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2012 04:47 Heh_ wrote:
There's plenty of micro tricks in SC2 that you kinda overlooked.
Yeah, delay before firing is a bitch on hellions, but you could do a reasonable impression of moving shot with banshees, mutas and even brood lords.
There's a of micro involved with HTs in warp prisms. They not only useful for storm drops on mineral lines, they also protect the HTs from snipes/EMPs in big engagements.
Even in deathballs, there's still plenty of micro tricks available. Staggering of siege tanks (death mech ball) is a commonly used one. Spreading units is actually more tedious in SC2 because of the tendency of units to clump. There's marine splitting and blink stalker positioning to snipe vikings. Even in the dreaded colossus vs colossus mass laser battles, there's still subtle micro tricks like staggering your colossi so that only 1 gets hit instead of 3. Even banshess, mutas and broodlords have the same problem. Broodlords... I dunno, the same could be said about Guardians probably, but I've never really played much with either. Muta and banshees definitely also have the same sluggishness if you compare it to wraith and muta micro from BW. There definitely is micro with HT, but Blizzard is throwing it's attention at getting the Oracle into an interesting harass unit. Whereas the HT used to do that very same role. Sure you'll see it on occasion, but not nearly so often. Did people suddenly forget how to storm drop when they switched to SC2? It's at least worth looking at. And absolutely, there is marine splitting and blink stalker. I do not argue SC2 is currently devoid of micro. But that certain unit designs promotes more a-move. (And a-move itself is not devoid of micro.) But note with the colossi wars you are focusing on subtle tricks such as staggering. The same subtle tricks exist in BW. But on top of that, there were some very obvious, in your face, set people screaming, twitch control of your units that required skill to master and were awesome to behold.
Well in SC2, the moves that set people screaming are "good" fungals, nice marine splitting, immortal warp prism micro... yeah the standards got lowered. I was just saying that I felt your article was implying that micro is nonexistent in SC2.
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Canada11592 Posts
An oversight on my part. I am usually much more careful about acknowledging the micro that exists in SC2. On the other hand, believe it or not, but I was actually editing it for length.
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On October 23 2012 14:18 Ver wrote:I liked! But why is this hidden in blogs where Blizzard will never see it 
Indeed,
One of the better posts I've seen within the last few weeks.
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nice post, also hadnt seen the day9 vid yet which describes my sentiments about bw units vs sc2 units much better than i could have ever put it myself. I dont quite understand the intention though. If I wanna play a game with all these great aspects I just go and play bw. SC2 is another game where units function differently. Is that bad? Yes I think so, the op thinks so and day9 thinks so too. But there are enough ppl out there who still like and play the game. In order to make things better the whole engine would have to be reworked and even all WoL units would have to be fiddled with. Its not gonna happen.
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Canada11592 Posts
Well I guess Capcom and idSoftware could've said the same thing about the gameplay that developed from Street Fighter II and whichever Quake it was. But instead they decided to build the combo system and strafe jumping into their sequels because it was awesome. It was awesome for the players and it was awesome for the spectators. Win-win.
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There is a point of dragoon micro mastery where players who are extremely good(especially the koreans) could defuse spider mines without the help of observers you really need good reactionary timing and reflexes to pull it off and when they do work . Holy cow you will feel like a boss. I have seen it in action and I felt that little aspects of the game that can't be pulled a the lower level of gameplay is what keeps bringing me back to bw . I haven't seen anything in sc2 that has the same skill level as mention above .
Very good analytical and analysis by falling here he answered most of the response about the AI being the hindrance to the game and when I logically think about it, good players will know how to negate the AI effects from being too much and make the units that are supposedly dumb to the core work at it's best again especially dragoons.
5/5 from me bw had everything micro attraction,macro superiority and spectator friendly units .
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On October 24 2012 10:24 Falling wrote:
An oversight on my part. I am usually much more careful about acknowledging the micro that exists in SC2. On the other hand, believe it or not, but I was actually editing it for length.
Well, 5000 words is pretty long. I wonder if there's a character limit for posts.. must be like 100000 or something.
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Blizzard NEEDS to see this. Amazing post Falling.
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good post. Are you by chance in game design at all? You seem to be able to break down game mechanics much better than most people (including some professional game designers I've worked with).
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Canada11592 Posts
Nope. Not in game designing at all- unless you count home-brew strategy board games. I just think about it a lot and find ways to break it down with examples. The teacher in me?
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ALLEYCAT BLUES51119 Posts
well you have a knack for it, I'll give you that.
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EPT
