On April 29 2011 14:12 dalenous wrote: What made BW so great is the people themselves. It was released as another RTS game. But what made it so great was the Koreans and how they viewed and used it. If it wasnt for the poor economy of South Korea during the late 90's and early 2000's then they wouldnt have used Starcraft as a way to entertain the masses. Let bygones be bygones and look toward the future. Sure broodwar was a great game but really what made the units so great is their imperfections, horrible Dragoon Ai comes to mine, glitchy scarabs, heck even the muta micro wasnt supposed to exist.
the dragoon ai and the scarab dud issue is not something i would use as a positive for broodwar. dragoons are slow moving and hard to control sure, but having them wander around chokepoints like idiots isnt very good. im not advocating changing dragoons so they have the acceleration and footspeed of lionel messi, just that they arent so 'dumb.'
i dont think they intended mutas to be microless, but you can micro mutas without the stacking, which was probably unintended. the stacking makes it more effective and harder for marines to target though.
but it is true that the community made broodwar what it is,exactly why I said that whatever the designer does the community always figure out how to pull through.
the give it time argument is not for the the developers side...its for the community side.
example PvP in SC2 is as retarded ZvZ in BW,but these days I'm seeing that the pros are figuring out how to effectively counter the 4gate madness and are now succeeding(if only great does the same with ZvZ in BW :p),but blizzard keeps screwing with everything that pros do in the name of casuals by making drastic changes to the game.
bottom line once Blizzard slows down on patches and lets the community do stuff instead of caving to the noobs SC2 will become a better game.
also in SC2 pros are proving the noobs that ball on ball is absolutely useless because the weaker composition will always lose but a more positional play makes even the weakest composition look super strong,especially July.
On April 29 2011 14:12 dalenous wrote: What made BW so great is the people themselves. It was released as another RTS game. But what made it so great was the Koreans and how they viewed and used it. If it wasnt for the poor economy of South Korea during the late 90's and early 2000's then they wouldnt have used Starcraft as a way to entertain the masses. Let bygones be bygones and look toward the future. Sure broodwar was a great game but really what made the units so great is their imperfections, horrible Dragoon Ai comes to mine, glitchy scarabs, heck even the muta micro wasnt supposed to exist.
the dragoon ai and the scarab dud issue is not something i would use as a positive for broodwar. dragoons are slow moving and hard to control sure, but having them wander around chokepoints like idiots isnt very good. im not advocating changing dragoons so they have the acceleration and footspeed of lionel messi, just that they arent so 'dumb.'
i dont think they intended mutas to be microless, but you can micro mutas without the stacking, which was probably unintended. the stacking makes it more effective and harder for marines to target though.
but it is true that the community made broodwar what it is,exactly why I said that whatever the designer does the community always figure out how to pull through.
the give it time argument is not for the the developers side...its for the community side.
example PvP in SC2 is as retarded ZvZ in BW,but these days I'm seeing that the pros are figuring out how to effectively counter the 4gate madness and are now succeeding(if only great does the same with ZvZ in BW :p),but blizzard keeps screwing with everything that pros do in the name of casuals by making drastic changes to the game.
bottom line once Blizzard slows down on patches and lets the community do stuff instead of caving to the noobs SC2 will become a better game.
also in SC2 pros are proving the noobs that ball on ball is absolutely useless because the weaker composition will always lose but a more positional play makes even the weakest composition look super strong,especially July.
Exactly-- positional play like Huk vs. JulyZerg on Crossfire in the most recent GSL Ro32 shows how ball vs. ball play is a symptom of how young the game is, not the game itself. July threatened to tear Huk apart by moving to counter-attack every time Huk even thought about attacking July. Beautiful play.
StarCraft 2 is LESS THAN 1 YEAR OLD. Do you remember what competitive StarCraft 1 was like 8 months in? When BroodWar was just a gleam in Blizzard's eye? Who are the "great heroes" of StarCraft 1? What great tournaments and perfect balance was spawned? The game was horribly balanced at first, and up until BroodWar was released mutalisks were just ABSURDLY overpowered.
are you people being this stupid on purpose, just to piss me off? you are comparing:
-a game in 1999 in which there were no rts esport/underdeveloped esports scene with a severe lack of skilled, knowledgeable players
to
-a game in 2011 that was built on the back of a thriving esport with hundreds of competitive players with a very deep understanding of rts games, balance and competition. there are thousands of threads discussing balance in sc2, analysing units and build orders. fuck, there's even a youtube segment based on the discussion of imbalance.
if you cant see a difference between those two scenarios and their balance evolution, i dont know what to say to you. its impossible to compare them. if warcraft 2 was an esport comparable to the current brood war scene, you'd bet your ass that starcraft wouldve been analysed at the rate sc2 is now. But... ultimately, they were proven wrong and BroodWar was a great succcess. Have a little faith. SC2 is a new game, and will come into its own. It's already staked a significant claim to moving towards being the premier eSport in the world (prize purse, popularity) and is being widely embraced and bringing StarCraft into the mainstream. I for one think that for all the criticism, SC2 is way better balanced than SC1 was 8 months in.
yes, the game is new and there are changes, but its fundamentally the same game with the same concepts. like i said earlier, sc2 is expected to be more balanced than starcraft 1 was a year in because of all the knowledgeable and skilled analysis that has been going on - something that original brood war did not have.
idgaf if it is becoming the premier (foreign) esport. would you embrace red alert 1 becoming the premier esport too? no, because its a shitty game, and sc2 is still far below brood war, despite riding the success of the original and having all the time and power in the world to improve upon it, make it better, address balance issues etc etc. and people STILL make posts about how its more balanced than brood war was in it's infancy, good lord
im sorry, but i cant find starcraft 2 'extremely entertaining.' even if you discount the inherent problems like gumbified macro/micro, boring units, indecipherable graphics, the korean bw scene is much, much more entertaining. maybe sc2 hasnt reached its skill ceiling, but the competitive components i mentioned before have been so badly bludgeoned by blizzard that it wont even match current brood war even if sc2 players were totally maxed out
On April 29 2011 14:04 Ribbon wrote: I suppose you guys are right. It's not like players have improved massively in the last year, or that old builds have fallen by the wayside due to metagame shifts and people learning to deal with them better. The average length of a game hasn't even significantly increased since GSLs of old!
And if BW didn't directly transfer to SC2, we'd be seeing Warcraft 3 players like Moon and Lyn being able to compete in major tournaments, and that'd be absurd!
On April 29 2011 13:23 Legatus Lanius wrote:
"Next to nothing from BW transfers directly to SC2 in any meaningful way. If it did, then SC2 would be almost exactly like BW" yeah, its just total coincidence that all the ex-bw players that switched over havent embarassed themselves at sc2 yet (excluding the embarassment of actually playing sc2 of course.) going by your logic, MC beginning his career in sc2 would have been of equal competitiveness to a 15 year old boy who has never played an rts before
Exactly! A 15-year-old with no progaming experience competing in the GSL?! That'd be Creator! I mean, absurd! I don't know why I said Creator. That's the kind of name a 14-year-old with no progaming experience before SC2 playing in a GSL would have, and that's a stupid concept to which I'll give no further thought.
And we know, of course, that players are playing optimally. Why, if I did a long recap of a highly-rated game between two top players in the TSL a few pages back, I probably couldn't even find enough horrific micro mistakes to make a lame running gag out of! There's no way the skill ceiling hasn't been reached!
I suppose I'll just have to accept that SC2 is totally mapped out thanks to Brood War. I bet Bisu figured out the optimal number of chrono boosts to spend on his warp gate research to safely 3-gate expand while teching in like 2008 or something. Even the literally hundreds of wildly different maps used in pro tournaments so far haven't produced any notable change in gameplay.
I guess there's just no hope
So, you don't think that skill at WC3 could also transfer over into SC2? They have fairly comparable APM and micro...
Flash was a 15 year old wonder kid in BW, but the example given was a 15 year old kid with NO PREVIOUS RTS experience. That guy you linked probably played BW like a lot of the kids who decide to try to be a progamer.
Foreign Broodwar is by no means perfect, they're not even close to the pros and we all know that.
There is no chronoboost in BW, you have just convinced me that you have never watched Broodwar before and have no real basis for your arguments. Good day to you sir.
There are also no Warp Gates in Brood War - I feel comfortable saying that he was being sarcastic. He's trying to push the argument that BW experience does not translate directly to SCII, but he's using an unreasonably specific example to do so. I don't blame you for missing that, it wasn't exactly a stellar point.
Really, just because BW players didn't come to SCII with specific builds doesn't mean that they weren't helped immensely by their experience. The overall tactics of the games are not entirely dissimilar, and being a BW player really teaches one how to think properly about all economy-centred RTS games. The fact that SCII shares many units and other archetypes with BW makes the experience even more relevant.
The point about CreatorPrime is also silly. Nobody is saying that non-BW players can't be good at the game, just that knowledge taken from a decade of BW progaming has advanced the state of SCII far beyond where BW was 8 months into the development of its professional scene. Even new players like Creator benefit hugely from the BW experience of others - simply put, players approaching SCII know where to begin, what an effective strategy should achieve, applications of certain kinds of tactics (melee units, drops, healing, siege tanks, etc.), and far more. To say that new players like Creator don't benefit from the experience of others in BW scene is like saying that Flash didn't benefit from the developments in the BW scene that preceeded him.
On April 29 2011 14:12 dalenous wrote: What made BW so great is the people themselves. It was released as another RTS game. But what made it so great was the Koreans and how they viewed and used it. If it wasnt for the poor economy of South Korea during the late 90's and early 2000's then they wouldnt have used Starcraft as a way to entertain the masses. Let bygones be bygones and look toward the future. Sure broodwar was a great game but really what made the units so great is their imperfections, horrible Dragoon Ai comes to mine, glitchy scarabs, heck even the muta micro wasnt supposed to exist.
the dragoon ai and the scarab dud issue is not something i would use as a positive for broodwar. dragoons are slow moving and hard to control sure, but having them wander around chokepoints like idiots isnt very good. im not advocating changing dragoons so they have the acceleration and footspeed of lionel messi, just that they arent so 'dumb.'
i dont think they intended mutas to be microless, but you can micro mutas without the stacking, which was probably unintended. the stacking makes it more effective and harder for marines to target though.
but it is true that the community made broodwar what it is,exactly why I said that whatever the designer does the community always figure out how to pull through.
the give it time argument is not for the the developers side...its for the community side.
example PvP in SC2 is as retarded ZvZ in BW,but these days I'm seeing that the pros are figuring out how to effectively counter the 4gate madness and are now succeeding(if only great does the same with ZvZ in BW :p),but blizzard keeps screwing with everything that pros do in the name of casuals by making drastic changes to the game.
bottom line once Blizzard slows down on patches and lets the community do stuff instead of caving to the noobs SC2 will become a better game.
also in SC2 pros are proving the noobs that ball on ball is absolutely useless because the weaker composition will always lose but a more positional play makes even the weakest composition look super strong,especially July.
even if blob v blob is somehow eliminated, what about all the other problems? this game just lacks interesting units. compare the utility of a vulture vs a hellion or whatever their sc2 counterpart is. what about the goofed macro? or the micro?
Dont waste your time Legatus, the last time that I tried to explain some of this new RTS gamers what is the difference between BW and SC2 I got banned, they just think that an interesting game is like those in NASL, 2 guys sitting in their asses for long time and then one 200/200 clash and everything is finished.
On April 29 2011 02:20 Legatus Lanius wrote: comparing the 6th osl to the 6th gsl is criminally stupid. both games, as RTS's, are virtually the same at the base. sure, one has less macro/less micro/less demanding units, but its still the same idea. in the 6th gsl, you have ex-high level brood war players who already have strong mechanical skills and dexterity that just needs to be applied to new hotkeys/new buildings/new units etc etc. circa bw 2001, nobody had any idea what they were doing, even noobs like iron and mvp would embarass boxer and garimto back then
I feel like the Brood War fans in this thread are being unfair to SC2, but in a very predictable way-- it's pretty cliche.
Fans of an old [game, technology, genre of music] bemoan that its successor [StarCraft II, Facebook, hip-hop] is totally without value, a pale comparison to the old days of [Brood War, landline telephones, disco]. These young whipper-snappers (read: SC2 fans) just don't know about the glory days. It's an age old-story.
StarCraft 2 is LESS THAN 1 YEAR OLD. Do you remember what competitive StarCraft 1 was like 8 months in? When BroodWar was just a gleam in Blizzard's eye? The game was horribly balanced at first, and up until BroodWar was released mutalisks were just ABSURDLY overpowered. Hell, half the new units in BW were designed to counter/mitigate them (Corsair, DA with Maelstrom, Valkyrie).
People whined, people moaned.
But... ultimately, they were proven wrong and BroodWar was a great succcess. Have a little faith. SC2 is a new game, and will come into its own. It's already staked a significant claim to moving towards being the premier eSport in the world (prize purse, popularity) and is being widely embraced and bringing StarCraft into the mainstream. I for one think that for all the criticism, SC2 is way better balanced than SC1 was 8 months in.
Remember when a quarter of the map pool was Blistering Sands/Steppes of War? No one was even dreaming of maps like Terminus and Tal'Darim being added in within ~6 months of release. But Blizz adjusted. That's just one example... SC2 is extremely entertaining, is developing all the time, and is nowhere near its skill/design/entertainment ceiling. Instead of bashing it compared to BroodWar, embrace the ride and appreciate it as its own game.
I find it amusing that you're a) using a strawman argument and b) accusing said strawman of being cliche while being the epitome of cliche yourself. Your argument, repeated thousands and thousands of times across these forums for the past year, is that "sc, and even bw, was horribly balanced when it first came out, and all the players were terrible, and bw has been growing ever since then. give sc2 time, I'm sure it'll be good, too!"
First of all, I think using "trust the game will get good" is a lazy proxy for actually articulating what aspects of sc2 inspire such faith. Those on the other side have said, for example, that an abundance of one-dimensional units don't bode well for sc2. What, then, is your reason for believing otherwise? If it's just blind faith based on the "starcraft" and "blizzard" brand names, then, well, I think I'll just stop here.
But the more cogent counter-argument has already been written in this thread. It deserves reiteration: sc2 had 11 years of an rts e-sport to learn from. The notions of micro, macro, the concepts of economy and base management, multitasking, flanking, harassing, unit compositions, scouting, and so on...in other words, all the fundamentals of an rts have been fleshed out to a science by brood war. Moreover, the pro-scene sprung up globally even before retail, and has only intensified in number and quality of play. You're telling me that NONE of that carries over, that NONE of that accelerates the development of sc2 as an e-sport? I find that laughably naive, or willfully ignorant.
To illustrate: I watched a bit of the NASL today, and its amazing that Julyzerg is performing at such a high level in sc2. He'd been an over-the-hill legend for a while now; isn't it curious, if sc2 "is its own game," that a washed-up player like July was doing so well in sc2? Even more strangely, why are all the top pros ex-bw or ex-wc3 pros, if sc2 "is its own game"? It's because the rts genre is only so wide, and even within that narrow definition, sc2 sits pretty close to bw, and maybe even wc3, for the same concepts to apply.
Given all this, don't you think that we, as longtime bw fans, followers, students, have legitimate voices when it comes to thinking about sc2's future?
On April 29 2011 14:12 dalenous wrote: What made BW so great is the people themselves. It was released as another RTS game. But what made it so great was the Koreans and how they viewed and used it. If it wasnt for the poor economy of South Korea during the late 90's and early 2000's then they wouldnt have used Starcraft as a way to entertain the masses. Let bygones be bygones and look toward the future. Sure broodwar was a great game but really what made the units so great is their imperfections, horrible Dragoon Ai comes to mine, glitchy scarabs, heck even the muta micro wasnt supposed to exist.
the dragoon ai and the scarab dud issue is not something i would use as a positive for broodwar. dragoons are slow moving and hard to control sure, but having them wander around chokepoints like idiots isnt very good. im not advocating changing dragoons so they have the acceleration and footspeed of lionel messi, just that they arent so 'dumb.'
i dont think they intended mutas to be microless, but you can micro mutas without the stacking, which was probably unintended. the stacking makes it more effective and harder for marines to target though.
but it is true that the community made broodwar what it is,exactly why I said that whatever the designer does the community always figure out how to pull through.
the give it time argument is not for the the developers side...its for the community side.
example PvP in SC2 is as retarded ZvZ in BW,but these days I'm seeing that the pros are figuring out how to effectively counter the 4gate madness and are now succeeding(if only great does the same with ZvZ in BW :p),but blizzard keeps screwing with everything that pros do in the name of casuals by making drastic changes to the game.
bottom line once Blizzard slows down on patches and lets the community do stuff instead of caving to the noobs SC2 will become a better game.
also in SC2 pros are proving the noobs that ball on ball is absolutely useless because the weaker composition will always lose but a more positional play makes even the weakest composition look super strong,especially July.
even if blob v blob is somehow eliminated, what about all the other problems? this game just lacks interesting units. compare the utility of a vulture vs a hellion or whatever their sc2 counterpart is. what about the goofed macro? or the micro?
lack of interesting units is something that can be fixed with expansions otherwise the game is literally screwed.I swear if Blizzard does not hire Day[9] and Tyler for consulting by then they'd be shooting themselves in the fucking face.
On April 29 2011 14:47 Legatus Lanius wrote: StarCraft 2 is LESS THAN 1 YEAR OLD. Do you remember what competitive StarCraft 1 was like 8 months in? When BroodWar was just a gleam in Blizzard's eye? Who are the "great heroes" of StarCraft 1? What great tournaments and perfect balance was spawned? The game was horribly balanced at first, and up until BroodWar was released mutalisks were just ABSURDLY overpowered.
are you people being this stupid on purpose, just to piss me off? you are comparing:
-a game in 1999 in which there were no rts esport/underdeveloped esports scene with a severe lack of skilled, knowledgeable players
to
-a game in 2011 that was built on the back of a thriving esport with hundreds of competitive players with a very deep understanding of rts games, balance and competition. there are thousands of threads discussing balance in sc2, analysing units and build orders. fuck, there's even a youtube segment based on the discussion of imbalance.
if you cant see a difference between those two scenarios and their balance evolution, i dont know what to say to you. its impossible to compare them. if warcraft 2 was an esport comparable to the current brood war scene, you'd bet your ass that starcraft wouldve been analysed at the rate sc2 is now. But... ultimately, they were proven wrong and BroodWar was a great succcess. Have a little faith. SC2 is a new game, and will come into its own. It's already staked a significant claim to moving towards being the premier eSport in the world (prize purse, popularity) and is being widely embraced and bringing StarCraft into the mainstream. I for one think that for all the criticism, SC2 is way better balanced than SC1 was 8 months in.
yes, the game is new and there are changes, but its fundamentally the same game with the same concepts. like i said earlier, sc2 is expected to be more balanced than starcraft 1 was a year in because of all the knowledgeable and skilled analysis that has been going on - something that original brood war did not have.
idgaf if it is becoming the premier (foreign) esport. would you embrace red alert 1 becoming the premier esport too? no, because its a shitty game, and sc2 is still far below brood war, despite riding the success of the original and having all the time and power in the world to improve upon it, make it better, address balance issues etc etc. and people STILL make posts about how its more balanced than brood war was in it's infancy, good lord
im sorry, but i cant find starcraft 2 'extremely entertaining.' even if you discount the inherent problems like gumbified macro/micro, boring units, indecipherable graphics, the korean bw scene is much, much more entertaining. maybe sc2 hasnt reached its skill ceiling, but the competitive components i mentioned before have been so badly bludgeoned by blizzard that it wont even match current brood war even if sc2 players were totally maxed out
I apologize for being facetious about "bashing" SC1; you were talking so absurdly about SC2 in relation to BW that I thought you were trying to be ironic, and so I took your tone. I'll take my own, then, if it's easier to get my point across:
You are comparing a game that has been building a following and being explored by pros since 1998 to one that is less than 1 year old. "It's fundamentally the same game with the same concepts" is a vacuous phrase; if that was true then someone who plays BW at a high level could become Masters in SC2 in less than a week, yes? Same game?
Of course that's ridiculous; vast changes in macro mechanics, micro needs, unit compositions, tempo, etc. mean that it's a totally different game. If you look at GSL 2 and GSL 3, virtually every game was 1 base, and the most devastating strategy was a marine-SCV all-in. Today, that's a joke; TvTs regularly go past 25 minutes and every match-up has changed drastically. It's far more common to see games get to 2 base at the very least, and it's no longer unusual to see half-map-versus-half-map macro-fests.
If you don't like SC2 that's fine, but saying "IT'S DOOMED. I HAVE FORESEEN IT. IT'S BEEN TAPPED OUT ALREADY." is pretty absurd fanboy-ism at best, and just trolling at worst.
On April 29 2011 02:20 Legatus Lanius wrote: comparing the 6th osl to the 6th gsl is criminally stupid. both games, as RTS's, are virtually the same at the base. sure, one has less macro/less micro/less demanding units, but its still the same idea. in the 6th gsl, you have ex-high level brood war players who already have strong mechanical skills and dexterity that just needs to be applied to new hotkeys/new buildings/new units etc etc. circa bw 2001, nobody had any idea what they were doing, even noobs like iron and mvp would embarass boxer and garimto back then
I feel like the Brood War fans in this thread are being unfair to SC2, but in a very predictable way-- it's pretty cliche.
Fans of an old [game, technology, genre of music] bemoan that its successor [StarCraft II, Facebook, hip-hop] is totally without value, a pale comparison to the old days of [Brood War, landline telephones, disco]. These young whipper-snappers (read: SC2 fans) just don't know about the glory days. It's an age old-story.
StarCraft 2 is LESS THAN 1 YEAR OLD. Do you remember what competitive StarCraft 1 was like 8 months in? When BroodWar was just a gleam in Blizzard's eye? Who are the "great heroes" of StarCraft 1? What great tournaments and perfect balance was spawned? The game was horribly balanced at first, and up until BroodWar was released mutalisks were just ABSURDLY overpowered.
People whined, people moaned.
But... ultimately, they were proven wrong and BroodWar was a great succcess. Have a little faith. SC2 is a new game, and will come into its own. It's already staked a significant claim to moving towards being the premier eSport in the world (prize purse, popularity) and is being widely embraced and bringing StarCraft into the mainstream. I for one think that for all the criticism, SC2 is way better balanced than SC1 was 8 months in.
Remember when a quarter of the map pool was Blistering Sands/Steppes of War? No one was even dreaming of maps like Terminus and Tal'Darim being added in within ~6 months of release. But Blizz adjusted. That's just one example... SC2 is extremely entertaining, is developing all the time, and is nowhere near its skill/design/entertainment ceiling. Instead of bashing it compared to BroodWar, embrace the ride and appreciate it as its own game.
I don't ever remember whining about anything in the original Starcraft. The game was just fun. Complaining was never on my mind. I don't think anyone was "proven wrong" when Brood War became an esport in Korea because it just happened naturally. It was a good game that allowed for competition to build between players and ended up being fun to watch too.
I don't find SC2 entertaining at all, even though I want it to be. For me, the most awesome possible thing in the whole world would be if SC2 was better than BW.
I mean, even thinking about it takes me back to how pumped I was for SC2 because I was expecting better. I was expecting more.
Instead we just ended up with a mediocre RTS and everyone forcing esports down each others throats.
The SC2 community is pretty horrible to be a part of too. I attribute a lot of the negativity to how awful battle.net 2.0 is and the sense of entitlement everyone gets from the flawed ladder system. I used to love reading the strategy forums in the BW section. When SC2 came out I tried my best to help new people out like people helped me when I was getting interested in competetive BW.
Unfortunately almost every thread was full of unhelpful spam or balance whining. It was really depressing and eventually I just stopped visiting the SC2 strategy forum all together.
I'm sure some people just want to see SC2 burn, which is fine, everyone is entitled to an opinion.
I want it to be a success. It can't be a success without good, honest feedback.
After the most recent Dustin Browder interview it's really clear to me that there hasn't been enough good feedback about the game design. They still don't understand fundamental aspects of gameplay like micro which is really bad for the future of the game.
On April 29 2011 14:47 Legatus Lanius wrote: StarCraft 2 is LESS THAN 1 YEAR OLD. Do you remember what competitive StarCraft 1 was like 8 months in? When BroodWar was just a gleam in Blizzard's eye? Who are the "great heroes" of StarCraft 1? What great tournaments and perfect balance was spawned? The game was horribly balanced at first, and up until BroodWar was released mutalisks were just ABSURDLY overpowered.
are you people being this stupid on purpose, just to piss me off? you are comparing:
-a game in 1999 in which there were no rts esport/underdeveloped esports scene with a severe lack of skilled, knowledgeable players
to
-a game in 2011 that was built on the back of a thriving esport with hundreds of competitive players with a very deep understanding of rts games, balance and competition. there are thousands of threads discussing balance in sc2, analysing units and build orders. fuck, there's even a youtube segment based on the discussion of imbalance.
if you cant see a difference between those two scenarios and their balance evolution, i dont know what to say to you. its impossible to compare them. if warcraft 2 was an esport comparable to the current brood war scene, you'd bet your ass that starcraft wouldve been analysed at the rate sc2 is now. But... ultimately, they were proven wrong and BroodWar was a great succcess. Have a little faith. SC2 is a new game, and will come into its own. It's already staked a significant claim to moving towards being the premier eSport in the world (prize purse, popularity) and is being widely embraced and bringing StarCraft into the mainstream. I for one think that for all the criticism, SC2 is way better balanced than SC1 was 8 months in.
yes, the game is new and there are changes, but its fundamentally the same game with the same concepts. like i said earlier, sc2 is expected to be more balanced than starcraft 1 was a year in because of all the knowledgeable and skilled analysis that has been going on - something that original brood war did not have.
idgaf if it is becoming the premier (foreign) esport. would you embrace red alert 1 becoming the premier esport too? no, because its a shitty game, and sc2 is still far below brood war, despite riding the success of the original and having all the time and power in the world to improve upon it, make it better, address balance issues etc etc. and people STILL make posts about how its more balanced than brood war was in it's infancy, good lord
im sorry, but i cant find starcraft 2 'extremely entertaining.' even if you discount the inherent problems like gumbified macro/micro, boring units, indecipherable graphics, the korean bw scene is much, much more entertaining. maybe sc2 hasnt reached its skill ceiling, but the competitive components i mentioned before have been so badly bludgeoned by blizzard that it wont even match current brood war even if sc2 players were totally maxed out
I apologize for being facetious about "bashing" SC1; you were talking so absurdly about SC2 in relation to BW that I thought you were trying to be ironic, and so I took your tone. I'll take my own, then, if it's easier to get my point across:
You are comparing a game that has been building a following and being explored by pros since 1998 to one that is less than 1 year old. "It's fundamentally the same game with the same concepts" is a vacuous phrase; if that was true then someone who plays BW at a high level could become Masters in SC2 in less than a week, yes? Same game?
Of course that's ridiculous; vast changes in macro mechanics, micro needs, unit compositions, tempo, etc. mean that it's a totally different game. If you look at GSL 2 and GSL 3, virtually every game was 1 base, and the most devastating strategy was a marine-SCV all-in. Today, that's a joke; TvTs regularly go past 25 minutes and every match-up has changed drastically. It's far more common to see games get to 2 base at the very least, and it's no longer unusual to see half-map-versus-half-map macro-fests.
If you don't like SC2 that's fine, but saying "IT'S DOOMED. I HAVE FORESEEN IT. IT'S BEEN TAPPED OUT ALREADY." is pretty absurd fanboy-ism at best, and just trolling at worst.
how do you expect the game to become as good or as interesting with all the gameplay flaws? in your honest opinion, have those fundamental changes made the game better, and more competitive in the future?
On April 29 2011 02:20 Legatus Lanius wrote: comparing the 6th osl to the 6th gsl is criminally stupid. both games, as RTS's, are virtually the same at the base. sure, one has less macro/less micro/less demanding units, but its still the same idea. in the 6th gsl, you have ex-high level brood war players who already have strong mechanical skills and dexterity that just needs to be applied to new hotkeys/new buildings/new units etc etc. circa bw 2001, nobody had any idea what they were doing, even noobs like iron and mvp would embarass boxer and garimto back then
I feel like the Brood War fans in this thread are being unfair to SC2, but in a very predictable way-- it's pretty cliche.
Fans of an old [game, technology, genre of music] bemoan that its successor [StarCraft II, Facebook, hip-hop] is totally without value, a pale comparison to the old days of [Brood War, landline telephones, disco]. These young whipper-snappers (read: SC2 fans) just don't know about the glory days. It's an age old-story.
StarCraft 2 is LESS THAN 1 YEAR OLD. Do you remember what competitive StarCraft 1 was like 8 months in? When BroodWar was just a gleam in Blizzard's eye? The game was horribly balanced at first, and up until BroodWar was released mutalisks were just ABSURDLY overpowered. Hell, half the new units in BW were designed to counter/mitigate them (Corsair, DA with Maelstrom, Valkyrie).
People whined, people moaned.
But... ultimately, they were proven wrong and BroodWar was a great succcess. Have a little faith. SC2 is a new game, and will come into its own. It's already staked a significant claim to moving towards being the premier eSport in the world (prize purse, popularity) and is being widely embraced and bringing StarCraft into the mainstream. I for one think that for all the criticism, SC2 is way better balanced than SC1 was 8 months in.
Remember when a quarter of the map pool was Blistering Sands/Steppes of War? No one was even dreaming of maps like Terminus and Tal'Darim being added in within ~6 months of release. But Blizz adjusted. That's just one example... SC2 is extremely entertaining, is developing all the time, and is nowhere near its skill/design/entertainment ceiling. Instead of bashing it compared to BroodWar, embrace the ride and appreciate it as its own game.
I find it amusing that you're a) using a strawman argument and b) accusing said strawman of being cliche while being the epitome of cliche yourself. Your argument, repeated thousands and thousands of times across these forums for the past year, is that "sc, and even bw, was horribly balanced when it first came out, and all the players were terrible, and bw has been growing ever since then. give sc2 time, I'm sure it'll be good, too!"
First of all, I think using "trust the game will get good" is a lazy proxy for actually articulating what aspects of sc2 inspire such faith. Those on the other side have said, for example, that an abundance of one-dimensional units don't bode well for sc2. What, then, is your reason for believing otherwise? If it's just blind faith based on the "starcraft" and "blizzard" brand names, then, well, I think I'll just stop here.
But the more cogent counter-argument has already been written in this thread. It deserves reiteration: sc2 had 11 years of an rts e-sport to learn from. The notions of micro, macro, the concepts of economy and base management, multitasking, flanking, harassing, unit compositions, scouting, and so on...in other words, all the fundamentals of an rts have been fleshed out to a science by brood war. Moreover, the pro-scene sprung up globally even before retail, and has only intensified in number and quality of play. You're telling me that NONE of that carries over, that NONE of that accelerates the development of sc2 as an e-sport? I find that laughably naive, or willfully ignorant.
To illustrate: I watched a bit of the NASL today, and its amazing that Julyzerg is performing at such a high level in sc2. He'd been an over-the-hill legend for a while now; isn't it curious, if sc2 "is its own game," that a washed-up player like July was doing so well in sc2? Even more strangely, why are all the top pros ex-bw or ex-wc3 pros, if sc2 "is its own game"? It's because the rts genre is only so wide, and even within that narrow definition, sc2 sits pretty close to bw, and maybe even wc3, for the same concepts to apply.
Given all this, don't you think that we, as longtime bw fans, followers, students, have legitimate voices when it comes to thinking about sc2's future?
hey jellyfish,
I say "trust that the game will be good" as evidenced by the drastic rise in quality of pro matches from GSL 2 to GSL May. 1 base all-ins, lack of micro, laughable control, terrible maps, and short games... have all been replaced by macro play, improving (but still sub-ceiling) micro, far better maps, longer games, and more intricate strategies. What product is awesome on Day 1? StarCraft was chobo before years of pros honed and perfected it to an art.
Your point about JulyZerg is, I think, not quite as favorable to your argument as you think. Take a hypothetical: If the US were to create a professional cricket league tomorrow, a massive one whose revenues (hypothetically) dwarfed those of baseball and football, and if baseball and football popularity was waning drastically... if the new cricket teams held try-outs, would it be shocking if MLB or NFL athletes, given sheer athleticism, were the most successful players in the early stages? Could we conclude from that that baseball, cricket and football are mostly the same? Or that five years from now baseball/football players would still dominate the cricket ranks? I think not.
Certainly, SC2 shares many characteristics with BW and WC3 as an RTS. Yet to say they're the same? SC2 has its own nuances and optimal plays which we haven't fully discovered yet, because it is SO YOUNG. So at this early stage in time, the people who have a great deal of experience playing in tournaments and with solid RTS mechanics are pulling ahead. But as knowledge of the game improves, and as it comes into its own, those with knowledge of SC2 will pull ahead of those who merely retain good generic RTS skillsets.
You bring up the example of JulyZerg and say "how can a washed up pro like July do so well?" Well, I think a similar question can be asked: how can a player with far more recent BW success like IMMVP get knocked down to Code A? How does he lose 0-2 to JulyZerg in GSL March? How is it that NesTea (Zergbong) is a SC2 gosu, doing far better than people who have transitioned over from BW with more recent success as Zerg players?
Because JulyZerg and NesTea understand SC2 to a deeper extent than many BW pros who have transitioned over, and even more than some with better macro mechanics than them. It's a new game.
I welcome BW (haha as if I had any authority over this matter) fans and certainly recognize they have a voice with regard to SC2. But saying "BW is better. And always will be." isn't dialogue, it's fanboyism.
On April 29 2011 14:56 jellyfish wrote: First of all, I think using "trust the game will get good" is a lazy proxy for actually articulating what aspects of sc2 inspire such faith. Those on the other side have said, for example, that an abundance of one-dimensional units don't bode well for sc2. What, then, is your reason for believing otherwise? If it's just blind faith based on the "starcraft" and "blizzard" brand names, then, well, I think I'll just stop here.
I totally agree with this argument and I really hate it when people say "it'll be good! just wait!" I don't want to wait and there's no reason for me to wait. Why should I watch shitty games or play a shitty game just because the future *might* be better?
If the future does get better, I'll watch then. But at the moment the game looks really dodgy and boring.
But the more cogent counter-argument has already been written in this thread. It deserves reiteration: sc2 had 11 years of an rts e-sport to learn from. The notions of micro, macro, the concepts of economy and base management, multitasking, flanking, harassing, unit compositions, scouting, and so on...in other words, all the fundamentals of an rts have been fleshed out to a science by brood war. Moreover, the pro-scene sprung up globally even before retail, and has only intensified in number and quality of play. You're telling me that NONE of that carries over, that NONE of that accelerates the development of sc2 as an e-sport? I find that laughably naive, or willfully ignorant.
That's only stuff IN the game as well. What about outside of the game? People are figuring how to optimize builds with computer programs, they can review replays, and I'm sure pro-houses in Korea have much more refined training and practice programs than in 2001.
On April 29 2011 14:47 Legatus Lanius wrote: StarCraft 2 is LESS THAN 1 YEAR OLD. Do you remember what competitive StarCraft 1 was like 8 months in? When BroodWar was just a gleam in Blizzard's eye? Who are the "great heroes" of StarCraft 1? What great tournaments and perfect balance was spawned? The game was horribly balanced at first, and up until BroodWar was released mutalisks were just ABSURDLY overpowered.
are you people being this stupid on purpose, just to piss me off? you are comparing:
-a game in 1999 in which there were no rts esport/underdeveloped esports scene with a severe lack of skilled, knowledgeable players
to
-a game in 2011 that was built on the back of a thriving esport with hundreds of competitive players with a very deep understanding of rts games, balance and competition. there are thousands of threads discussing balance in sc2, analysing units and build orders. fuck, there's even a youtube segment based on the discussion of imbalance.
if you cant see a difference between those two scenarios and their balance evolution, i dont know what to say to you. its impossible to compare them. if warcraft 2 was an esport comparable to the current brood war scene, you'd bet your ass that starcraft wouldve been analysed at the rate sc2 is now. But... ultimately, they were proven wrong and BroodWar was a great succcess. Have a little faith. SC2 is a new game, and will come into its own. It's already staked a significant claim to moving towards being the premier eSport in the world (prize purse, popularity) and is being widely embraced and bringing StarCraft into the mainstream. I for one think that for all the criticism, SC2 is way better balanced than SC1 was 8 months in.
yes, the game is new and there are changes, but its fundamentally the same game with the same concepts. like i said earlier, sc2 is expected to be more balanced than starcraft 1 was a year in because of all the knowledgeable and skilled analysis that has been going on - something that original brood war did not have.
idgaf if it is becoming the premier (foreign) esport. would you embrace red alert 1 becoming the premier esport too? no, because its a shitty game, and sc2 is still far below brood war, despite riding the success of the original and having all the time and power in the world to improve upon it, make it better, address balance issues etc etc. and people STILL make posts about how its more balanced than brood war was in it's infancy, good lord
im sorry, but i cant find starcraft 2 'extremely entertaining.' even if you discount the inherent problems like gumbified macro/micro, boring units, indecipherable graphics, the korean bw scene is much, much more entertaining. maybe sc2 hasnt reached its skill ceiling, but the competitive components i mentioned before have been so badly bludgeoned by blizzard that it wont even match current brood war even if sc2 players were totally maxed out
I apologize for being facetious about "bashing" SC1; you were talking so absurdly about SC2 in relation to BW that I thought you were trying to be ironic, and so I took your tone. I'll take my own, then, if it's easier to get my point across:
You are comparing a game that has been building a following and being explored by pros since 1998 to one that is less than 1 year old. "It's fundamentally the same game with the same concepts" is a vacuous phrase; if that was true then someone who plays BW at a high level could become Masters in SC2 in less than a week, yes? Same game?
Of course that's ridiculous; vast changes in macro mechanics, micro needs, unit compositions, tempo, etc. mean that it's a totally different game. If you look at GSL 2 and GSL 3, virtually every game was 1 base, and the most devastating strategy was a marine-SCV all-in. Today, that's a joke; TvTs regularly go past 25 minutes and every match-up has changed drastically. It's far more common to see games get to 2 base at the very least, and it's no longer unusual to see half-map-versus-half-map macro-fests.
If you don't like SC2 that's fine, but saying "IT'S DOOMED. I HAVE FORESEEN IT. IT'S BEEN TAPPED OUT ALREADY." is pretty absurd fanboy-ism at best, and just trolling at worst.
how do you expect the game to become as good or as interesting with all the gameplay flaws? in your honest opinion, have those fundamental changes made the game better, and more competitive in the future?
I expect the game to become better through exploration of more optimal play, balance patches, map changes, and expansions (Brood War without Corsair/DTs/Medics would be a pretty sad game) to add in further units where needed to shore up gameplay and fun.
I absolutely think many of the fundamental changes from BW are better. BW's skill ceiling was artificially high-- there is no reason why workers should not auto-mine, that you can't select more than 12 units at a time, that you can't hotkey multiple buildings, etc. Those are pre-21st century game mechanics that were scrapped, and I think playing SC2 is much more accessible because of it.
Do I regret DPS being increased and "hard" counters making ball vs. ball gameplay boring? Sure, to an extent. But ball vs. ball gameplay is characteristic of 8 month old play in this game. What's to say that it won't improve, that positional nydus play/SeleCT-style hyperaggro drop play/etc. won't become more standard?
oGsMC v. Thorzain Game 4 Ro8 of TSL, QXC vs. NSPGenius Ro32 on Xel'Naga in TSL, etc... already we're seeing games that are absurdly epic and showing us that SC2 is moving forward and amazing games are increasingly happening all the time. A lot of people criticize SC2, but I haven't heard anyone that actually is willing to give SC2 a chance say that games like those aren't entertaining as all hell.
What is seen in high level play is trickling down to lower leagues all the time. I have consistently seen the quality of pro games rise since release, and so I'm optimistic that play in the game in general has shown no signs of slowing down.
That's all I'm saying. Instead of comparing Year 13 of SC1 versus Month 8 of SC2, give SC2 some time to settle and show off its stuff. It took some time before reaver drops/muta micro/etc. were all discovered. We're finding out new things about SC2 all the time. Give it a chance.
why shouldnt players be forced to actually select their units and have them mine? economy is such a cornerstone to rts and starcraft, why should players that are good at be penalised? the same question with hotkey limitations, why penalise people with faster hands? if you are willing to make macro easier, why not micro too? why not have units automatically back off when they have low health so players can concentrate on strategy? im a firm believer in rewarding people that are good at what rts games are about.
in either case, even if you added automine and easy macro to sc1, the actual characteristics of the units would make it more challenging and require more actions to use properly.
On April 29 2011 02:20 Legatus Lanius wrote: comparing the 6th osl to the 6th gsl is criminally stupid. both games, as RTS's, are virtually the same at the base. sure, one has less macro/less micro/less demanding units, but its still the same idea. in the 6th gsl, you have ex-high level brood war players who already have strong mechanical skills and dexterity that just needs to be applied to new hotkeys/new buildings/new units etc etc. circa bw 2001, nobody had any idea what they were doing, even noobs like iron and mvp would embarass boxer and garimto back then
I feel like the Brood War fans in this thread are being unfair to SC2, but in a very predictable way-- it's pretty cliche.
Fans of an old [game, technology, genre of music] bemoan that its successor [StarCraft II, Facebook, hip-hop] is totally without value, a pale comparison to the old days of [Brood War, landline telephones, disco]. These young whipper-snappers (read: SC2 fans) just don't know about the glory days. It's an age old-story.
StarCraft 2 is LESS THAN 1 YEAR OLD. Do you remember what competitive StarCraft 1 was like 8 months in? When BroodWar was just a gleam in Blizzard's eye? The game was horribly balanced at first, and up until BroodWar was released mutalisks were just ABSURDLY overpowered. Hell, half the new units in BW were designed to counter/mitigate them (Corsair, DA with Maelstrom, Valkyrie).
People whined, people moaned.
But... ultimately, they were proven wrong and BroodWar was a great succcess. Have a little faith. SC2 is a new game, and will come into its own. It's already staked a significant claim to moving towards being the premier eSport in the world (prize purse, popularity) and is being widely embraced and bringing StarCraft into the mainstream. I for one think that for all the criticism, SC2 is way better balanced than SC1 was 8 months in.
Remember when a quarter of the map pool was Blistering Sands/Steppes of War? No one was even dreaming of maps like Terminus and Tal'Darim being added in within ~6 months of release. But Blizz adjusted. That's just one example... SC2 is extremely entertaining, is developing all the time, and is nowhere near its skill/design/entertainment ceiling. Instead of bashing it compared to BroodWar, embrace the ride and appreciate it as its own game.
I find it amusing that you're a) using a strawman argument and b) accusing said strawman of being cliche while being the epitome of cliche yourself. Your argument, repeated thousands and thousands of times across these forums for the past year, is that "sc, and even bw, was horribly balanced when it first came out, and all the players were terrible, and bw has been growing ever since then. give sc2 time, I'm sure it'll be good, too!"
First of all, I think using "trust the game will get good" is a lazy proxy for actually articulating what aspects of sc2 inspire such faith. Those on the other side have said, for example, that an abundance of one-dimensional units don't bode well for sc2. What, then, is your reason for believing otherwise? If it's just blind faith based on the "starcraft" and "blizzard" brand names, then, well, I think I'll just stop here.
But the more cogent counter-argument has already been written in this thread. It deserves reiteration: sc2 had 11 years of an rts e-sport to learn from. The notions of micro, macro, the concepts of economy and base management, multitasking, flanking, harassing, unit compositions, scouting, and so on...in other words, all the fundamentals of an rts have been fleshed out to a science by brood war. Moreover, the pro-scene sprung up globally even before retail, and has only intensified in number and quality of play. You're telling me that NONE of that carries over, that NONE of that accelerates the development of sc2 as an e-sport? I find that laughably naive, or willfully ignorant.
To illustrate: I watched a bit of the NASL today, and its amazing that Julyzerg is performing at such a high level in sc2. He'd been an over-the-hill legend for a while now; isn't it curious, if sc2 "is its own game," that a washed-up player like July was doing so well in sc2? Even more strangely, why are all the top pros ex-bw or ex-wc3 pros, if sc2 "is its own game"? It's because the rts genre is only so wide, and even within that narrow definition, sc2 sits pretty close to bw, and maybe even wc3, for the same concepts to apply.
Given all this, don't you think that we, as longtime bw fans, followers, students, have legitimate voices when it comes to thinking about sc2's future?
hey jellyfish,
I say "trust that the game will be good" as evidenced by the drastic rise in quality of pro matches from GSL 2 to GSL May. 1 base all-ins, lack of micro, laughable control, terrible maps, and short games... have all been replaced by macro play, improving (but still sub-ceiling) micro, far better maps, longer games, and more intricate strategies. What product is awesome on Day 1? StarCraft was chobo before years of pros honed and perfected it to an art.
Your point about JulyZerg is, I think, not quite as favorable to your argument as you think. Take a hypothetical: If the US were to create a professional cricket league tomorrow, a massive one whose revenues (hypothetically) dwarfed those of baseball and football, and if baseball and football popularity was waning drastically... if the new cricket teams held try-outs, would it be shocking if MLB or NFL athletes, given sheer athleticism, were the most successful players in the early stages? Could we conclude from that that baseball, cricket and football are mostly the same? Or that five years from now baseball/football players would still dominate the cricket ranks? I think not.
Certainly, SC2 shares many characteristics with BW and WC3 as an RTS. Yet to say they're the same? SC2 has its own nuances and optimal plays which we haven't fully discovered yet, because it is SO YOUNG. So at this early stage in time, the people who have a great deal of experience playing in tournaments and with solid RTS mechanics are pulling ahead. But as knowledge of the game improves, and as it comes into its own, those with knowledge of SC2 will pull ahead of those who merely retain good generic RTS skillsets.
You bring up the example of JulyZerg and say "how can a washed up pro like July do so well?" Well, I think a similar question can be asked: how can a player with far more recent BW success like IMMVP get knocked down to Code A? How does he lose 0-2 to JulyZerg in GSL March? How is it that NesTea (Zergbong) is a SC2 gosu, doing far better than people who have transitioned over from BW with more recent success as Zerg players?
Because JulyZerg and NesTea understand SC2 to a deeper extent than many BW pros who have transitioned over, and even more than some with better macro mechanics than them. It's a new game.
I welcome BW (haha as if I had any authority over this matter) fans and certainly recognize they have a voice with regard to SC2. But saying "BW is better. And always will be." isn't dialogue, it's fanboyism.
Actually, I agree with you that sc2 and bw are not the same game, and that the skills do not transfer directly. I guess where we differ is in our judgment of just how similar/different they are. To me, the games are similar enough in design and intent that the fundamentals and concepts carry over entirely. And if I'm understanding you correctly, the "whole new game" argument starts being valid once we apply these more general concepts to sc2 in particular.
But I'll only accept that as it applies to the skill levels of the pros themselves, and the sophistication of the metagame. What about the design of the game itself? I think there's enough of an overlap between the games that we can comment on things like the lack of interesting units. In fact, that and the other things the "bw people" are pointing out seem to be basic fundamental design choices of any rts. That the pros are getting acclimated to this particular rts is fine, but that they've already uncovered some flaws in the design is worrisome.
i dont see sc2 as intrinsically fun to watch. brood war makes better use of units that already have more utility, better combinations of said units and better timings. since the game has been out so long and players are so good, when new uses of units are brought out and are successful, its only in spectacular ways.
besides, its a bit unfair comparing the whole set of aesthetics of watching pro broodwar vs watching pro sc2. the korean commentators (for me, the msl ones mostly) absolutely murder english casters
EPT
great does the same with ZvZ in BW :p),but blizzard keeps screwing with everything that pros do in the name of casuals by making drastic changes to the game.
