Let it Burn - Page 2

On October 31 2012 12:40 JDub wrote:
Just wanted to chime in and say that I <3 SC2. As someone who was very young when BW was released, I personally find SC2 to be much more fun and engaging than BW. My problems with BW:

1) Armies are ridiculously hard to control.
2) I don't like having to click every damn production facility over and over again.
3) No auto-mining.

I tried going back and playing some BW games, but I just found myself battling the interface (how many control groups do I need to move my army around... ? 1-a-2-a-3-a-4-a-5-a-6-a-7-a, but by this point my army needs to move in a different direction...

All that I really remember of BW was UMS games and massing carriers in BGH games. I believe I tried to do some 1v1 but got bored with it very quickly. Anyways, this is just my personal experience, I totally missed out on the greatness of BW, but just wanted to give you the perspective of someone who is now 23 years old, who really loved BW as a game but moved on after a year or so. I'm 2 years in to SC2, with 1000s of games played, and I'm still hooked on the 1v1 experience. I regret the lack of features of BNET 2.0 and the stagnant custom game scene, but I love the pro scene and the matchmaking system. I'm hoping all the features BNET 2.0 should have had at release will be included by LotV, and we'll end up with a great all around game.

On October 31 2012 12:49 Megaliskuu wrote:
I always lol when I hear "battling the interface", get more APM kids.

edit:I'm high master in SC2 so its not like I don't play, but the BW interface is fine, and the SC2 interface is just more convenient, but not as fun to play with IMO. BW feels smooth.

On October 31 2012 12:57 JDub wrote:

Well, I'm mid master in SC2 with about ~120 real APM (SC2 gears APM), and going back and trying to play BW, "battling the interface" is basically the only way I can sum up how it felt. Forget the 12 unit selection max and the fact that I'm trying to move my army using like 6-8 control groups, for me to get my units (read: dragoons) to go where I want them to, especially if I'm going up a ramp or something, I need to be spamming the move command over and over again or they'll just run around in seemingly random directions.

Basically, I can see how the pro BW scene was captivating (although I missed out on it, and am not really interested in watching super old VODs with Korean commentary), but from a player perspective (and from someone in the top 5% of SC2 players no less), I think that SC2 is just a much more fun game to play. I don't know what exactly you mean when you say BW feels "smooth".

@Lalush, I would be very interested in seeing the air unit video you plan on making. I don't really know what you are talking about with tweaking air unit stats to make them way cooler to control, so I think a video would be really awesome to explain what you mean.

On October 31 2012 13:45 Falling wrote:
@JDub
I feel like I'm battling the interface with Battlenet latency. That's how I would say it feels smooth. Anything other than LAN latency feels extremely sluggish. That effects every move action in the game.

And yeah no-one wants buggy dragoon ai (I actually don't think it's that bad.) But they might want hold-position dragoon micro.

On October 31 2012 15:02 Angel_ wrote:
I'm going to ask a question based solely in ignorance.


You're complaining about a lot of things, and a lot of them I agree with. But you talk about how casuals shouldn't get more development or catering (granted when it comes to balance they should have no say whatsoever), but...wasn't the custom map scene (the casual people) one of the primary things that allowed Broodwar to become what it was?

On October 31 2012 12:32 LaLuSh wrote:
I like what MavercK is doing with his SC2BW mod at the moment though.

Worker wandering is back after he created a trigger to make the workers stupid again. Units also space out in a nifty way when moving from point A to B.

At the same time, Dustin Browder very recently said they were testing anti deathball mechanics in house for HotS, but also made some really stupid remarks about it supposedly being negated because progamers supposedly only a-move their troops incrementally in short distances (?!). While reassuring the plebeians on the battle.net forums that Blizzard were "looking into it", he managed to profess his surprise at there not existing a version of Brood War in the Starcraft 2 engine.

That made my faith in them actually looking into it on a worthwhile level fall to zero.

The way MavericK has tinkered with the attack animations, acceleration and movement of air units in his SC2BW mod also shows, in hindsight, how Blizzard should have gone about in designing air units in WoL. I promised in MavercK's thread that I'd make a video showcasing the incredible level of maneuverability that can be achieved through SC2's engine, contrasting it to the fucking joke ass travesty unit designs Blizzard are putting out. I've been lazy, but I'm gonna make that vid.

SC2BW moving shot doesn't work exactly as Broodwar, but it nonetheless allows for some really cool moves whose only reason for not being prevalent in the game was Blizzard's total lack of understanding and competence when setting out to make WoL. Controlling the air units in that mod seriously infuriated me. Because it only served to remind me what SC2 could have been if it were not for Blizzard's incompetence. What could have been if only 1 member of their team had actually ever played brood war outside of the campaign; or even only had an eye for the smaller details. If they through hard work could have made air units control like MiGs and f22 raptors, why then do a half assed job and settle for oil tanker level maneuverability? They were simply incompetent and out of touch with their customers.

Too bad nobody cares anymore.

And honestly. I very much doubt the sc2 team have got any clout at blizzard. I suspect their team is kept really small. I have a feeling they're constantly and desperately whining at the company heads to be lent some battle.net devs who are assigned to D3, WoW, Project Titan and whatthefuckever. Meanwhile, they've got an ever growing to-do list, which ultimately has them cutting items from the list and prioritizing what's most important (which apparently was poorly implemented chat channels, followed by the arcade).

I think the pro beta feedback forums were really telling when it came to what players really wanted to discuss, in contrast to what Blizzard were willing to do. Starts out fairly enthusiastic with lots of people making suggestions. People kept civil, and surprisingly didn't go off on too crazy tangents when submitting critique. But after a while it dawns on the progamers that Blizzard just want to tweak some damage points here, some psi limit points there, maybe some armor values here and range levels there.

After discussing those for a while the progamers realize there's not much more definitives to be proclaimed about balance. Those will emerge and be addressed with time. Meanwhile the threads wanting to discuss deathballs or overarching game design stopped being made.

The past two months 70% of the posts in that forum were made by avilo. With the energetic grubby and tireless morrow occasionally chiming in. I think most if not all of the input is coming from the public battle.net beta forums now.

I'm honestly too tired to care. I can take a hint. I know they are not looking for the kind of feedback I'd be willing to give (if encoured); so I just don't post.

On October 31 2012 12:48 LaLuSh wrote:


I don't think any BW enthusiast would contest the three points you brought up. They might have argued their implementation prior to SC2's release, but I'd wager nobody wants those changes reverted now.

On October 31 2012 15:54 Falling wrote:

Depends what you're talking about. When the cry goes out 'need to focus on casuals,' it could very well be talking about actual gameplay. In that case, screw that. We need the game to have more skill, not less. They can go play Angry Birds or Zynga games.

But if what we mean by catering to casuals is better/ more accessible maps, well that helps everyone. I don't think anyone would be against that. In fact that probably should've been Blizzards major push to get casuals to stick around with SC2. Rather than trying to get everyone to 1v1 (hide ladder stats, don't have global rankings.) Battlenet 0.2 needs to be 2.0 to attract and keep casuals. Super competive people will around that if the game is good enough (I've learned more about computers, networking, port forwarding, and VPN trying to get BW to work on new computers than I have with anything else.)

But good gameplay positively impacts the casual as well even if they can't make full use of it. If casuals can play with casuals in a fun, non-stressful environment, it doesn't really matter if there are some tricky moves (like moving shot and the Chinese triangle) that require high APM.

So it really comes down to what we mean by what in the game is catering to casuals. Dumbing down gameplay isn't the right way.

On October 31 2012 16:03 sluggaslamoo wrote:


But Lalush, Starcraft should be about strategy.

Now foreigners, who mind you, who are much better at strategy than koreans, can win because they don't need to spend 16 hours a day in team houses LITERALLY fighting the AI.

On October 31 2012 16:24 Nazza wrote:


Catering to casuals through blizzard's perspective (imo)....

Hey, we know that alot of ppl have hardcore jobs that require strenuous hours, which leave them only 1 hour to play each day to blow off steam etc. etc., so we made the map pool favour really wacky strategies and cheeses that casual players can pick up and win against other players from time to time, instead of racking their brain over long management games.

I dunno though. If you make a game like Starcraft, it is not going to attract casuals at all to multiplayer. Alot of casual players just simply buy a game just because they want to play sentry scramble with some friends. Blizzard really didn't have to worry at all about not catering to casuals simply because they'll buy the game anyways.

Personally, I feel that SC2 (and HotS) has more rules (rules, not restrictions) to it than BW, which makes it quite hard for a newer person to adapt to. I feel like the devs didn't realize what made gameplay in BW simple was also what made it complex. Small things like being able to take workers off of gas in BW made a big difference, but I feel that the devs just decided to put in 2 gases per expo in SC2 in order to "make it more complex". Or adding in Towers in order to promote having map vision, when good unit control can do the same thing (and is more fun/active).



Ofc it should. Everyone loves seeing foreigners do some flavour of the month strategy that abuses some patch imbalance every month. They are such clever players!

On October 31 2012 16:03 sluggaslamoo wrote:


But Lalush, Starcraft should be about strategy.

Now foreigners, who mind you, who are much better at strategy than koreans, can win because they don't need to spend 16 hours a day in team houses LITERALLY fighting the AI.