There are so many easy fixes for SC2 micro, yet blizzard refuses to implement any of them. I can understand their reluctance a year ago when they didn't want to the balance they worked hard on achieving, but now that HotS is on the horizon and will reset the balance anyway, can't they entertain the idea of fixing the game with something beyond simple stats alteration?
I feel like a large part of blizz's reluctance can be attributed to the mantra of sc2 fans that never watched/liked BW. "Keep BW out of sc2." Which is extremely infuriating, because sc2 is supposed to be a sequel, and the point of a sequel is to introduce new things while improving on the old, not completely removing the old and treating it like a leper.
Actually if you watch older interviews with Blizzard you will see they wanted to make a game more BW esque, saying how players with superior micro will always win blabla, you will be able to do wonders with units etc, they kinda stopped saying it when game was closer to finishing
And in the TL(?) interview with Dustin Browder from Blizzcon or something he said that sc2 is a new game and if you want BW you can still play BW. What a fucking horrible attitude to have.
I saw that someone mentioned multipronged attacks. The reason you don't see that other than in TvZ (drops and counter attacks) is because it doesn't reward you. Protoss is the perfect example of a failure of race design. If you are splitting up your army you are only hurting yourself no matter how good of a multitasker you are because the RACE is DESIGNED to be effective when you have everything clumped up together (the Protoss deathball) or else your army is shit. This is why every Protoss matchup sucks to watch because of the horrible design and nothing can save it other than a complete re-design. Not only because of the deathball thing but warpgates is bad game mechanic and the race is just to "slow". Harass possibilities (other than blink stalkers) that can reward players with good multitasking and micro is lacking too. I think the avarage EAPM of Protoss pro's is like max _140_ because there is nothing you do as a protoss player, no joke. I think MC and Puzzle are the tosses with the highest overall APM and they have at least 200 spam apm because there is nothing else for them to spend that apm on. -_-
Puzzle's real APM hit more than 600 real APM during some engagements in his early matches, it's been a while since I watched him play, but it was quite amazing to see every unit seemingly move individually.
The only time I've seen him hit 600 APM was that game when he went beast mode with his blink stalker micro.
Don't want to down play dragon effort in dodging storm but if those were bw storms from the high templars the units are pretty much dead before he can pull them back .
On April 07 2012 02:53 N.geNuity wrote: It's much easier to dodge storms when you can grab 30 units in 1 click. Now units do clumps up more in sc2, yada yada, but storms hitting without smart casting and players dodging storms well with like 30 hydralisks is more micro intensive. No matter what anyone tries to say otherwise.
When hitting storms is easier, dodging storms becomes harder. Also, unlimited unit selection is not a boon to storm-dodging, as it is much easier to spread your units when a drag-box over your army only selects a portion of that army (like in BW) as opposed to your entire army. That storm-dodge video is actually very impressive.
I think whichever game you are more used to and understand better, becomes the game where you appreciate the micro more. This is my experience anyway. Same goes for strategy and really anything in the game.
On April 07 2012 02:53 N.geNuity wrote: It's much easier to dodge storms when you can grab 30 units in 1 click. Now units do clumps up more in sc2, yada yada, but storms hitting without smart casting and players dodging storms well with like 30 hydralisks is more micro intensive. No matter what anyone tries to say otherwise.
When hitting storms is easier, dodging storms becomes harder. Also, unlimited unit selection is not a boon to storm-dodging, as it is much easier to spread your units when a drag-box over your army only selects a portion of that army (like in BW) as opposed to your entire army. That storm-dodge video is actually very impressive.
*facepalm*
In current BW ZvP, zergs have to control their hydralisks well so that not only they dodge the storms when they're casted, they have to make sure they pull away the right units before the hydralisks coming from the back actually block the hydralisks from running away from templar+goon+zeal army.
In SC2, you can easily pull back everything at once.
On April 07 2012 00:51 maybenexttime wrote: There are so many easy fixes for SC2 micro, yet blizzard refuses to implement any of them. I can understand their reluctance a year ago when they didn't want to the balance they worked hard on achieving, but now that HotS is on the horizon and will reset the balance anyway, can't they entertain the idea of fixing the game with something beyond simple stats alteration?
Blizzard's goals for the game are not your goals for the game. In fact, they're not even similar. For some reason two years has not been long enough for most people to recognize and fully comprehend the implications of this fact.
Yeah, their goal apparently is not making the game better.
If you look through various threads that tackled the issue of making SC2 a better game (since everyone was constantly complaining about gameplay ever since playable alpha), the vast majority of them are about making SC2 more similar to BW (in gameplay spirit, not necessarily 1:1 unit design or stats, which is a strawman SC2 elitists are constantly using), whether it's explicitly stated in the OP or not (most of the time it's the latter).
SC2 players want more micro similar to Marines vs. Banelings, Banelings landmines, and such. They want maps and gameplay that does not revolve around 3 base deathballs. They want positional play, multipronged attacks, strategic play, macro games, micro being important, and so on, and so on.
This is precisely what BW does better (in some cases way better) than SC2, and this is what we mean by making SC2 more similar to BW - not turning Stalkers back into Dragoons... So stop with that retarded strawman, please (talking to everyone who keeps using it, not just you). You can make a game that's stays true to BW without making it a copy-cat. Case in point: Armies of Exigo. That game used the StarCraft formula way better than SC2 does, yet 90% of its units, buildings and spells were different from BW.
@JohnnyPG
Every MLG and most GSL finals, with some GSTL games. I still see hardly any micro. And don't bring up the few examples I always mention, please. What I'm always getting at is the fact that the vast majority of units in SC2 are devoid of micro, some come down to spamming spells, and there are a few that shine (Marines and Banelings pretty much).
Also comparing early SC1 to early SC2/SC2 now is ignorant. People who first played SC1 were horrible RTS players by today's standard. People who played SC2 early on were great and experienced RTS players. How can you compare the two?
And given blizzard's track record with SC2, I don't hold my breath for HotS. Especially if they fix the game the same way they "fixed" Phoenix's moving shot. T____T
On April 07 2012 02:33 Rotcod wrote: I was just skimming through the thread and there is a lot of hate for the lack of micro in sc2. The thing that stuck out the most was the comparisons with storms and these two videos came to mind... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMAfBWrVyMM
Sure storm is easy to cast, but you still have to hit the god damn units.
before you bash how easy sc2 is try pulling off either of these moves ^_^
no offense but those moves are very simple compared to storm dodging in BW.
Be fair, the first video is rad.
funny how we have polar opposite reactions
But the first video was really cool! The Terran kept anticipating where the storms would land and maneuvering his army around them. Without that micro his army would have been dead 3 or 4 times over. Sure it's easier to do when you have unlimited selection, but that doesn't really matter --- it still requires a lot of finesse and skill to do that.
The second video... well, it was cute, but when the Terran army is already in full retreat from your army, it's not that hard to drop some guys and storm them. It was perfectly executed but it was kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. It still brought a smile to my face because I do like psionic storm though
Cant really respond to everyone that commented on the videos but I didnt mean to QQ I just thought that maybe people who watched mainly bw hadnt seen some glimpses of godly micro thats being developed at the cutting edge of sc2 ^^
at the moment its still more profitable to practice build orders/macro than micro but in the future stuff like this will be more the focus imo
On April 07 2012 03:16 Rotcod wrote: Cant really respond to everyone that commented on the videos but I didnt mean to QQ I just thought that maybe people who watched mainly bw hadnt seen some glimpses of godly micro thats being developed at the cutting edge of sc2 ^^
at the moment its still more profitable to practice build orders/macro than micro but in the future stuff like this will be more the focus imo
On April 07 2012 03:16 Rotcod wrote: at the moment its still more profitable to practice build orders/macro than micro but in the future stuff like this will be more the focus imo
U sure? In BW, the contrary happened. We still see gamechanging fancy micro, but the focus is on builds/strategy/tactics.
One could almost say that SC2 skipped the micro phase where Boxer and Yellow were at their prime and directly went into the oov era.
On April 07 2012 03:16 Rotcod wrote: Cant really respond to everyone that commented on the videos but I didnt mean to QQ I just thought that maybe people who watched mainly bw hadnt seen some glimpses of godly micro thats being developed at the cutting edge of sc2 ^^
at the moment its still more profitable to practice build orders/macro than micro but in the future stuff like this will be more the focus imo
On April 07 2012 03:16 Rotcod wrote: Cant really respond to everyone that commented on the videos but I didnt mean to QQ I just thought that maybe people who watched mainly bw hadnt seen some glimpses of godly micro thats being developed at the cutting edge of sc2 ^^
at the moment its still more profitable to practice build orders/macro than micro but in the future stuff like this will be more the focus imo
On April 07 2012 02:53 N.geNuity wrote: It's much easier to dodge storms when you can grab 30 units in 1 click. Now units do clumps up more in sc2, yada yada, but storms hitting without smart casting and players dodging storms well with like 30 hydralisks is more micro intensive. No matter what anyone tries to say otherwise.
When hitting storms is easier, dodging storms becomes harder. Also, unlimited unit selection is not a boon to storm-dodging, as it is much easier to spread your units when a drag-box over your army only selects a portion of that army (like in BW) as opposed to your entire army. That storm-dodge video is actually very impressive.
*facepalm*
In current BW ZvP, zergs have to control their hydralisks well so that not only they dodge the storms when they're casted, they have to make sure they pull away the right units before the hydralisks coming from the back actually block the hydralisks from running away from templar+goon+zeal army.
In SC2, you can easily pull back everything at once.
Did you actually watch the video that is being discussed; or play sc2 for that matter? Dragon did not pull back all his units at once. Doing so would be bad. Microing hydra's against protoss in BW is hard. So is microing bio against protoss in SC2. At our level, both are impossibly hard. At the top level, both are still hard enough for it never to be mastered. Don't hate on sc2 micro just because you don't like the game. That video was pure skill.
It's funny, almost every ground unit has entirely uniform stats when it comes to the subtleties of movement and attack (stationary and moving turnrate, accel and lat accel, attack point, angle slop, range slop, backlash,) so most units and almost identical copies of the marine in terms of handling. There are only a few differences unit to unit, which are the big things like attack speed, movement speed, range, unit radius and of course damage and HP.
You should be able to do pretty much the same stuff with most of the other units, but we never see it. I guess there's just not a situation like those banelings that really encourages that type of play all the time.
Hopefully in HotS they'll add more abilities that encourage movement and spreading from both players. Irradiate always comes to mind.
Hellions are cool, and the amount of variance in success they can have with their attack is great, but they move so fast they rarely have good drawn out engagements with anything but zerglings, which they just roast in higher number.
On April 07 2012 02:33 Rotcod wrote: I was just skimming through the thread and there is a lot of hate for the lack of micro in sc2. The thing that stuck out the most was the comparisons with storms and these two videos came to mind... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMAfBWrVyMM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQnGSenR4fQ Sure storm is easy to cast, but you still have to hit the god damn units.
before you bash how easy sc2 is try pulling off either of these moves ^_^
no offense but those moves are very simple compared to storm dodging in BW.
Be fair, the first video is rad.
i am being fair. in sc2 you just click-drag-select the marines, stim, and then run. in bw you do the same thing except that you can only select 12 units at a time, and since there are usually medics involved, you cannot press stim until the selection is pure marines. There is no Tab Select. So basically if there are a bunch of rines and medics, you gotta be careful how to select them, click-drag-select multiple times due to 12 unit limit, while dodging storms.
I'm not bashing sc2, I believe sc2 has great potential. It's just that at the current state of things, I firmly believe the talents of BW A teamers will be wasted and the fans will not get to see them truly shine. We lose and they lose.
On April 07 2012 03:16 Rotcod wrote: Cant really respond to everyone that commented on the videos but I didnt mean to QQ I just thought that maybe people who watched mainly bw hadnt seen some glimpses of godly micro thats being developed at the cutting edge of sc2 ^^
at the moment its still more profitable to practice build orders/macro than micro but in the future stuff like this will be more the focus imo
Ironically, this is one of the few BW-esque aspects of SC2, and yet SC2 elitists don't want SC2 to be more like BW... T______T
I dont really care for bw, it wasnt my scene. I'm simply arguing that sc2 is a good game. If being like BW makes it a good game that great.
Stating that its like BW doesnt make it worse.
Reading comprehension, sir.
Where did I ever say being similar to BW is making it worse? On the contrary, most of the time when an SC2 fan brings up a fun, entertaining aspect of SC2, it's one of those that are similar to BW (point in case: mechanical micro techniques like Marines vs. Banelings, out of ordinary use of units like Baneling landmines or using Auto-Turrets to confuse Siege Tanks, multi-pronged attacks, macro games, etc.; most of the things that are different from BW, aside from UI changes, are complained about).
On April 07 2012 03:16 Rotcod wrote: Cant really respond to everyone that commented on the videos but I didnt mean to QQ I just thought that maybe people who watched mainly bw hadnt seen some glimpses of godly micro thats being developed at the cutting edge of sc2 ^^
at the moment its still more profitable to practice build orders/macro than micro but in the future stuff like this will be more the focus imo
Ironically, this is one of the few BW-esque aspects of SC2, and yet SC2 elitists don't want SC2 to be more like BW... T______T
I dont really care for bw, it wasnt my scene. I'm simply arguing that sc2 is a good game. If being like BW makes it a good game that great.
Stating that its like BW doesnt make it worse.
Reading comprehension, sir.
Where did I ever say being similar to BW is making it worse? On the contrary, most of the time when an SC2 fan brings up a fun, entertaining aspect of SC2, it's one of those that are similar to BW (point in case: mechanical micro techniques like Marines vs. Banelings, out of ordinary use of units like Baneling landmines or using Auto-Turrets to confuse Siege Tanks, multi-pronged attacks, macro games, etc.; most of the things that are different from BW, aside from UI changes, are complained about).
On April 07 2012 03:16 Rotcod wrote: Cant really respond to everyone that commented on the videos but I didnt mean to QQ I just thought that maybe people who watched mainly bw hadnt seen some glimpses of godly micro thats being developed at the cutting edge of sc2 ^^
at the moment its still more profitable to practice build orders/macro than micro but in the future stuff like this will be more the focus imo
Ironically, this is one of the few BW-esque aspects of SC2, and yet SC2 elitists don't want SC2 to be more like BW... T______T
I dont really care for bw, it wasnt my scene. I'm simply arguing that sc2 is a good game. If being like BW makes it a good game that great.
Stating that its like BW doesnt make it worse.
Reading comprehension, sir.
Where did I ever say being similar to BW is making it worse? On the contrary, most of the time when an SC2 fan brings up a fun, entertaining aspect of SC2, it's one of those that are similar to BW (point in case: mechanical micro techniques like Marines vs. Banelings, out of ordinary use of units like Baneling landmines or using Auto-Turrets to confuse Siege Tanks, multi-pronged attacks, macro games, etc.; most of the things that are different from BW, aside from UI changes, are complained about).
Why the sad face then?
Edit: why not 'yay this kind of cool stuff is going to be done by bw progamers '