btw guys in that little SC2 "micro" video u posted is stuff form this micro bot thingy. and set up stuff. so yeah sick micro.
not actually, only one example was made with a bot with the map editor (the one of the drop tanks vs raoches and ultralisk) and the other ones are real examples of micro of real games, i saw some of those games in a MLG or GSL
u mean like a 47min replay. 1 base and not even a mined out base? yeah totally real. not saying there is no micro in SC2 but if u need 2 add this stuff in a "micro highlight" video. it makes u think a little bit.
what are you talking about? i just re-watched the video and there is nothing like 47min 1 basing... the nly thing the author should not have added is the bot thing and the hellion micro vs zerglings (the hellion drop was great but hellions vs zerglings is an easy thing to do)
i dont see anywhere the 47 min replay.. are we talking about the same video?
mb u should look at it again and pay close attention to the part at 3:30.
ah well now i understand, in starcraft 2 there are different mods, one mod is called "obs" there are a lot of maps and ae often used for training, well the concept of these maps are that you an your friends create a game in the map called "Metalopolis OBS" then you play vs one player, and when the match ends... two other players that were in the map as observers, can plan in the same map without the need to create the game again and invite the oponent.
So when like 6 people enter, they playand play and play and that makes the replays very long, but actually there are a lot of games played in that replay.
i know its an obs map because of the clock in the minimap, it is different from the usual cloack and thats because the usuall coloack wuld mark "43 min" but that game between those 2 players is in the 8th minute
well..if you dnt play sc2 or havent played on that map probably you wont understand me so, if you want, forget about that expample if you ont believe it is real, but i can tell you every part f the video is a real situattion, exept of course the bot one.
btw guys in that little SC2 "micro" video u posted is stuff form this micro bot thingy. and set up stuff. so yeah sick micro.
not actually, only one example was made with a bot with the map editor (the one of the drop tanks vs raoches and ultralisk) and the other ones are real examples of micro of real games, i saw some of those games in a MLG or GSL
u mean like a 47min replay. 1 base and not even a mined out base? yeah totally real. not saying there is no micro in SC2 but if u need 2 add this stuff in a "micro highlight" video. it makes u think a little bit.
what are you talking about? i just re-watched the video and there is nothing like 47min 1 basing... the nly thing the author should not have added is the bot thing and the hellion micro vs zerglings (the hellion drop was great but hellions vs zerglings is an easy thing to do)
mb u should look at it again and pay close attention to the part at 3:30.
that...video makes me sad. most of it were marine/bane, which i along with many people are asking for more of in sc2 in all match up. drop play...is universal, not really to do with sc2 specifically. sc2 needs improvement to fully live up to broodwar legacy.
On April 25 2012 04:53 N.geNuity wrote: Independent of micro discussions, the "ball vs ball" phenomena is still encouraged by fundamental things in sc2 design imo. A lot has to do with the maps. And ball vs ball detracts from multitasking as a side note.
I haven't been watching sc2 as intently as I used to, but I never/very very rarely saw anyone expand far away from their main base unless it's a ninja expo (akin to jjakji vs leenock or drg? gsl finals). And that's because you can't have as much map control in sc2 as you can in sc:bw, combined with less defender's advantage and lack of high ground. So that makes larger maps in sc2 not mean more action across the map (as it generally does in sc:bw) but means sticking to your starting location and slowly expanding across the map. An entirely different game. Large maps in sc2 thus far are made to be like tal darim which really means "lots of expos but still wide open", which encourages large army vs large army rather than map positioning (compared to brood war).
As far as high ground mechanics go, things with rolling hills like heart break ridge or chupyung ryung or gladiator much different if the same maps were made in sc2. You can make a high ground advantage by making rolling hills with small chokes (via destructible rocks or whatever) but it's a lot different. Lurkers/tanks with mines on low ground in front on top of ramps can really take map control well while sc2 doesn't have the same equivalent of staticish map position (you can position your army in good locations, but not mines/swarm/whatever).
But besides from high ground, there are numerous things in sc2 that discourages taking far away expansions. Protoss can warp in anywhere on the map, so a ninja expansion can easily be killed/threated by a small warp in (such that PvX matchup it's not a good idea to expand to a place you can't defend easily). The entire zerg creep mechanic encourages it to not expand all the way across the map (such that ZvX matchup zerg wants to stick to expanding closeby. Terran in sc2 is much much more bioball army and not have mines such that terran is encouraged to be more ball dependent). Protoss in sc2 always has blink so that doesn't really help with many expansions.
tvp bw: terran can take its fourth across map (say in 4p map like ground zero) as it's semi ninjaish but terran can take map control/vision with mines and vultures. As well as placing tanks on top of ramps. tvp sc2: terran is going to have mobile bioball army that gets much stronger when clumped together. Even if he expands cross map 5 stalkers can get behind mineral line and kill scvs freely from any planetary. So he will take expansions close to him than go across map. With mobile bioball he doesn't have the same defensive posture as bw and thus can't split army to take map. His army ends up being a ball that attacks.
pvt bw: protoss needs to expand a lot and can stop vultures fairly good with pylon wall offs. Drops can hurt protoss but are quick to clean up in small numbers (4 vulture/2 tank drop is easy to stop if well prepared). The nature of the matchup also makes it hard for terran to really get good drops going to threaten enough expansions. Protoss is the most ballish race, as it wants to crush weaknesses/pieces of the terran when terran moves out. pvt sc2: I don't play protoss but since terran in sc2 wants to get medivacs as part of its ball, sending 2 dropships of marine/maurader can kill far expansions much easier than 2 tanks/4 vultures could in brood war. Plus it's not out of the terran's way to get dropships (i.e. medivacs)
zvall sc:bw: lurkers provide very good static defense on ramps and there are such things as swarm. Mutas control map early on (either to kill speed zealots or to keep terran at bay) and allows for safe far away expansions. Hydras are actually good to mass. zvall sc2: the creep mechanic encourages zerg to expand nearby and not across the map. Armies designed to "overwhelm" protoss or terran army (i.e. mass roach, or banelings, etc). Mutas are much weaker at keeping an army at bay, but instead just threaten "if you leave I'll kill your economy". However turrets are much stronger and protoss is content with balling up. tvz brood war: expanding across the map can happens with mech transition. and 1 group of marine/medic on top of a ramp will defend a lot.
mirror matchups are different but similar sentiments (zvz you don't ninja expo in either bw or sc2; tvt is a positional battle still; pvp in both you don't really expand cross map and ball up more for both games).
tl;dr: fundamental design encourages more ball vs ball stuff. Even with the little 6 mineral 1 gas bases I imagine you don't expand far away because the units still don't hold; you expand more but you still try to expand closer (I imagine). Like on tal darim where you take natural -> take the third by breaking the rocks -> take fourth and fifth at the nearby locations, etc.
Whereas brood war protoss and zerg quite often take their thirds all the way across the map.
I totally agree even if I'm a Sc2 player and not a BW player. The game has still a lot of defects ! Lets hope hots and lotv will fix this without requiring 300 apm ^^
yeah but who knows how far away hots is right now. and lotv could be 4 years away for all we know. And unless hots makes like high ground ramp mechanics and eliminate creep/warp in mechanics the root of such problems probably won't be fixed. Sc2 expansions probably are likely to want to throw in better map control units though.
On April 25 2012 04:53 N.geNuity wrote: Independent of micro discussions, the "ball vs ball" phenomena is still encouraged by fundamental things in sc2 design imo. A lot has to do with the maps. And ball vs ball detracts from multitasking as a side note.
I haven't been watching sc2 as intently as I used to, but I never/very very rarely saw anyone expand far away from their main base unless it's a ninja expo (akin to jjakji vs leenock or drg? gsl finals). And that's because you can't have as much map control in sc2 as you can in sc:bw, combined with less defender's advantage and lack of high ground. So that makes larger maps in sc2 not mean more action across the map (as it generally does in sc:bw) but means sticking to your starting location and slowly expanding across the map. An entirely different game. Large maps in sc2 thus far are made to be like tal darim which really means "lots of expos but still wide open", which encourages large army vs large army rather than map positioning (compared to brood war).
As far as high ground mechanics go, things with rolling hills like heart break ridge or chupyung ryung or gladiator much different if the same maps were made in sc2. You can make a high ground advantage by making rolling hills with small chokes (via destructible rocks or whatever) but it's a lot different. Lurkers/tanks with mines on low ground in front on top of ramps can really take map control well while sc2 doesn't have the same equivalent of staticish map position (you can position your army in good locations, but not mines/swarm/whatever).
But besides from high ground, there are numerous things in sc2 that discourages taking far away expansions. Protoss can warp in anywhere on the map, so a ninja expansion can easily be killed/threated by a small warp in (such that PvX matchup it's not a good idea to expand to a place you can't defend easily). The entire zerg creep mechanic encourages it to not expand all the way across the map (such that ZvX matchup zerg wants to stick to expanding closeby. Terran in sc2 is much much more bioball army and not have mines such that terran is encouraged to be more ball dependent). Protoss in sc2 always has blink so that doesn't really help with many expansions.
tvp bw: terran can take its fourth across map (say in 4p map like ground zero) as it's semi ninjaish but terran can take map control/vision with mines and vultures. As well as placing tanks on top of ramps. tvp sc2: terran is going to have mobile bioball army that gets much stronger when clumped together. Even if he expands cross map 5 stalkers can get behind mineral line and kill scvs freely from any planetary. So he will take expansions close to him than go across map. With mobile bioball he doesn't have the same defensive posture as bw and thus can't split army to take map. His army ends up being a ball that attacks.
pvt bw: protoss needs to expand a lot and can stop vultures fairly good with pylon wall offs. Drops can hurt protoss but are quick to clean up in small numbers (4 vulture/2 tank drop is easy to stop if well prepared). The nature of the matchup also makes it hard for terran to really get good drops going to threaten enough expansions. Protoss is the most ballish race, as it wants to crush weaknesses/pieces of the terran when terran moves out. pvt sc2: I don't play protoss but since terran in sc2 wants to get medivacs as part of its ball, sending 2 dropships of marine/maurader can kill far expansions much easier than 2 tanks/4 vultures could in brood war. Plus it's not out of the terran's way to get dropships (i.e. medivacs)
zvall sc:bw: lurkers provide very good static defense on ramps and there are such things as swarm. Mutas control map early on (either to kill speed zealots or to keep terran at bay) and allows for safe far away expansions. Hydras are actually good to mass. zvall sc2: the creep mechanic encourages zerg to expand nearby and not across the map. Armies designed to "overwhelm" protoss or terran army (i.e. mass roach, or banelings, etc). Mutas are much weaker at keeping an army at bay, but instead just threaten "if you leave I'll kill your economy". However turrets are much stronger and protoss is content with balling up. tvz brood war: expanding across the map can happens with mech transition. and 1 group of marine/medic on top of a ramp will defend a lot.
mirror matchups are different but similar sentiments (zvz you don't ninja expo in either bw or sc2; tvt is a positional battle still; pvp in both you don't really expand cross map and ball up more for both games).
tl;dr: fundamental design encourages more ball vs ball stuff. Even with the little 6 mineral 1 gas bases I imagine you don't expand far away because the units still don't hold; you expand more but you still try to expand closer (I imagine). Like on tal darim where you take natural -> take the third by breaking the rocks -> take fourth and fifth at the nearby locations, etc.
Whereas brood war protoss and zerg quite often take their thirds all the way across the map.
I totally agree even if I'm a Sc2 player and not a BW player. The game has still a lot of defects ! Lets hope hots and lotv will fix this without requiring 300 apm ^^
yeah but who knows how far away hots is right now. and lotv could be 4 years away for all we know. And unless hots makes like high ground ramp mechanics and eliminate creep/warp in mechanics the root of such problems probably won't be fixed. Sc2 expansions probably are likely to want to throw in better map control units though.
i've been thinking about swarm host, replacement to lurker. though it may serve the same purpose, area control, mechanics on how to deal with it differs. against lurkers there are couple of options even without detection and can be dealt with efficiently with micro'ing few units. swarm host spawns broods that can only be stutter stepped or go in circles to minimize damage by chasing broods to kill swarm host, not sure how it'll play out but i hope blizzard consider the unique mechanics rquired on how to deal with such units through micro, not unit or spell.
This broodling mechanic is just plain retarded, they tried to be fancy with the guardian but fucked up instead, now they are trying to be fancy with the lurker and result is probably going to be the same fuck up.
I've been watching SC2 to get used to that game once again, and whenever broodlords come into battle, those broodlings not only pollutes the screen even more, but also take your units aim to focus away.
On April 25 2012 04:53 N.geNuity wrote: Independent of micro discussions, the "ball vs ball" phenomena is still encouraged by fundamental things in sc2 design imo. A lot has to do with the maps. And ball vs ball detracts from multitasking as a side note.
I haven't been watching sc2 as intently as I used to, but I never/very very rarely saw anyone expand far away from their main base unless it's a ninja expo (akin to jjakji vs leenock or drg? gsl finals). And that's because you can't have as much map control in sc2 as you can in sc:bw, combined with less defender's advantage and lack of high ground. So that makes larger maps in sc2 not mean more action across the map (as it generally does in sc:bw) but means sticking to your starting location and slowly expanding across the map. An entirely different game. Large maps in sc2 thus far are made to be like tal darim which really means "lots of expos but still wide open", which encourages large army vs large army rather than map positioning (compared to brood war).
As far as high ground mechanics go, things with rolling hills like heart break ridge or chupyung ryung or gladiator much different if the same maps were made in sc2. You can make a high ground advantage by making rolling hills with small chokes (via destructible rocks or whatever) but it's a lot different. Lurkers/tanks with mines on low ground in front on top of ramps can really take map control well while sc2 doesn't have the same equivalent of staticish map position (you can position your army in good locations, but not mines/swarm/whatever).
But besides from high ground, there are numerous things in sc2 that discourages taking far away expansions. Protoss can warp in anywhere on the map, so a ninja expansion can easily be killed/threated by a small warp in (such that PvX matchup it's not a good idea to expand to a place you can't defend easily). The entire zerg creep mechanic encourages it to not expand all the way across the map (such that ZvX matchup zerg wants to stick to expanding closeby. Terran in sc2 is much much more bioball army and not have mines such that terran is encouraged to be more ball dependent). Protoss in sc2 always has blink so that doesn't really help with many expansions.
tvp bw: terran can take its fourth across map (say in 4p map like ground zero) as it's semi ninjaish but terran can take map control/vision with mines and vultures. As well as placing tanks on top of ramps. tvp sc2: terran is going to have mobile bioball army that gets much stronger when clumped together. Even if he expands cross map 5 stalkers can get behind mineral line and kill scvs freely from any planetary. So he will take expansions close to him than go across map. With mobile bioball he doesn't have the same defensive posture as bw and thus can't split army to take map. His army ends up being a ball that attacks.
pvt bw: protoss needs to expand a lot and can stop vultures fairly good with pylon wall offs. Drops can hurt protoss but are quick to clean up in small numbers (4 vulture/2 tank drop is easy to stop if well prepared). The nature of the matchup also makes it hard for terran to really get good drops going to threaten enough expansions. Protoss is the most ballish race, as it wants to crush weaknesses/pieces of the terran when terran moves out. pvt sc2: I don't play protoss but since terran in sc2 wants to get medivacs as part of its ball, sending 2 dropships of marine/maurader can kill far expansions much easier than 2 tanks/4 vultures could in brood war. Plus it's not out of the terran's way to get dropships (i.e. medivacs)
zvall sc:bw: lurkers provide very good static defense on ramps and there are such things as swarm. Mutas control map early on (either to kill speed zealots or to keep terran at bay) and allows for safe far away expansions. Hydras are actually good to mass. zvall sc2: the creep mechanic encourages zerg to expand nearby and not across the map. Armies designed to "overwhelm" protoss or terran army (i.e. mass roach, or banelings, etc). Mutas are much weaker at keeping an army at bay, but instead just threaten "if you leave I'll kill your economy". However turrets are much stronger and protoss is content with balling up. tvz brood war: expanding across the map can happens with mech transition. and 1 group of marine/medic on top of a ramp will defend a lot.
mirror matchups are different but similar sentiments (zvz you don't ninja expo in either bw or sc2; tvt is a positional battle still; pvp in both you don't really expand cross map and ball up more for both games).
tl;dr: fundamental design encourages more ball vs ball stuff. Even with the little 6 mineral 1 gas bases I imagine you don't expand far away because the units still don't hold; you expand more but you still try to expand closer (I imagine). Like on tal darim where you take natural -> take the third by breaking the rocks -> take fourth and fifth at the nearby locations, etc.
Whereas brood war protoss and zerg quite often take their thirds all the way across the map.
I totally agree even if I'm a Sc2 player and not a BW player. The game has still a lot of defects ! Lets hope hots and lotv will fix this without requiring 300 apm ^^
yeah but who knows how far away hots is right now. and lotv could be 4 years away for all we know. And unless hots makes like high ground ramp mechanics and eliminate creep/warp in mechanics the root of such problems probably won't be fixed. Sc2 expansions probably are likely to want to throw in better map control units though.
i've been thinking about swarm host, replacement to lurker. though it may serve the same purpose, area control, mechanics on how to deal with it differs. against lurkers there are couple of options even without detection and can be dealt with efficiently with micro'ing few units. swarm host spawns broods that can only be stutter stepped or go in circles to minimize damage by chasing broods to kill swarm host, not sure how it'll play out but i hope blizzard consider the unique mechanics rquired on how to deal with such units through micro, not unit or spell.
Could the fact that broods likely deal less damage then a zergling or ultralisk be a tactical factor to consider? Perhaps finding a way to allow a wall of broods to form and instead focusing on the more robust units. Like being a melee wall, which would be really bad for Zerg dps. Sure broods would eventually kill the unit, but they would take longer then if you let zerglings sneak into you after you kill a brood, and the broods dont cost anything to build so no loss to the zerg for killing them. And if they are anything like BW broods, then they are on a time limit, so even if you most of the zerg army and huge mass of broods remain, they will eventually die out.
It seems like the obvious problem with the swarm host is that while it offers a unique possibly slightly better offensive edge to zerg it doesn't seem to offer the same defensive qualities of lurkers.
On April 25 2012 06:56 Sabu113 wrote: It seems like the obvious problem with the swarm host is that while it offers a unique possibly slightly better offensive edge to zerg it doesn't seem to offer the same defensive qualities of lurkers.
Exactly, it can "zerged" down so fast in small numbers where lurkers could hold their weight in situations where place was tight.
- Jae-kyun 'I heard there are many SKT players in Grand Master'
I feel it for SKT. They have been secretly creating a special squad for SC2 and now when the players come out of the closet, a total SKT1 dominance will happen.
meh. sc2 vs bw gameplay stuff is old hat. regardless of whether it's logical or not, i prefer bw. end of story. sports never made any sense anyway, why am i cheering for a group of 15 randomly assembled people who try to put an orange ball in a basket? why is it cooler than watching different athletes from countries compete over who can jump a longer distance? i have no idea. trying to use logic to appeal to emotions is square peg, round hole. neither will ever win.
On April 23 2012 10:07 Ribbon wrote: IIRC, Smash was dropped due to a match-fixing scandal, ironically enough.
when i looked it up, it was because nintendo didn't say yes or no to whether MLG could stream it. it's similar to MLG and capcom, capcom won't say whether they'll allow it so MLG can't do anything to get street fighter or marvel. they don't want to be caught in something like... i dunno, blizzard and KeSPA. (irony!) i don't follow the smash scene but after brawl took away a lot of the tournament players from melee due to NEW GAME HYPE™, many players moved back to melee eventually which is pretty cool. unfortunately, that game has way more problems at the moment, for example, gamecube controllers becoming increasingly rare. i can see that being a problem with BW as we have to do a lot of fancy stuff to get the game to work on modern computers, but at the moment it isn't really that big of a problem. hell if blizzard really cared about keeping BW alive they'd open source their program so that people can really modify it and update it graphically etc while keeping the same behavior. that we're used to.
I don't follow the FPS scene at all, but I've been to MLG, and the Halo crowds number at a few hundred while the CoD crowds number at like 20. CoD actually is a game that's scene is being forced by it's developer. So's LoL, actually (Sundance said MLG was unlikely to pick up Dota 2 because Riot gives MLG wheelbarrows of cash and Valve doesn't), but LoL actually does have a scene. No casuals fled to CoD. CoD has next to zero scene.
maybe because MW3 messed everything up but there were a TON of casuals who switched to MW2. i played halo 3 casually at the time and there was hardly anybody on matchmaking after MW2 came out.
halo's community actually is competitive though, where as MW is nothing but casual pubbing. the problem is that with bungie repeatedly showing that they don't care mechanically about competitive halo, MLG lost a lot on their future when they transitioned from 3 to reach. they live and die on games they have little control over. i can see the same happening with BW and SC2. or even SC2 and SC2 expansion pack.
Tournaments have been fairly consistent about ignoring subpar Blizzard maps, and it's forced Blizz to adopt community maps, and their own maps are a lot more in line with community standards than Blizzard's stated desire for a variety of rush maps (compare Emtombed Valley with Jungle Basin or Slag Pits). If you're referring to patching, then yes there's that, but I don't think the community has been miffed about a balance change after it's been out a while.
blizzard has 2 xpacs on the horizon and thus there will be balance changes in the future that KeSPA will have no control over. i guess they could balance on their own with custom maps and custom unit properties, but then that makes it different from the casual community which is necessary to bring in new talent. i think that having control is a bigger issue and i think it's essential to avoiding the pitfall they fell into with BW. at any time blizzard can just say "f you" and release a balance patch that everyone HAS to play on, for better or worse. hell, remember when they released the BW patch where they added a ton of input lag and we had to rollback our versions to 1.16.1 or something and play on private servers only? and that was only like 2 or 3 years ago!
On April 25 2012 06:30 fabiano wrote: This broodling mechanic is just plain retarded, they tried to be fancy with the guardian but fucked up instead, now they are trying to be fancy with the lurker and result is probably going to be the same fuck up.
I've been watching SC2 to get used to that game once again, and whenever broodlords come into battle, those broodlings not only pollutes the screen even more, but also take your units aim to focus away.
with hitbars turned on they do more than just pollute.
On April 24 2012 23:32 An2quamaraN wrote: What makes the game exciting is your approach to it and players you root for, i bet my hand you've never watched an intense sc2 match even
Hehehe... not only him, I didnt watch any "intense" SC2 match as well XD Sometimes when I'm bored i just play the vods of some games in SC2 and I'm shocked how even the least exiting vods in Company of Heroes can be more entertaining than this.
On April 24 2012 23:32 An2quamaraN wrote: SC2 is not even in it's half potential yet, it's too young, when the switch occurs, and bonjwas plays it, expansions come out i can not see the reason why SC2 shouldn't be bigger than BW.
I wish you to see it making bigger than. But why f.e. I, as BW fan, must be the part of it, when I dont find any pleasure with watching this?
On April 24 2012 23:32 An2quamaraN wrote: That's the reason i also can't understand why you people are sad, instead of being cheerful that your beloved players don't quit competetive scene.
Do i have to be excited that Małysz switched to car racing?
You see, saying that there is no exciting matches in SC2 is just a void talk. Or a hater talk. Actually everything u say is a hater talk.
On April 24 2012 23:32 An2quamaraN wrote: Seeing statements like this i am thankfull i am not a BW fan...such a childish talk.
That explains much about why are you trying defend SC2 so hard.
On April 24 2012 23:32 An2quamaraN wrote: What makes the game exciting is your approach to it and players you root for, i bet my hand you've never watched an intense sc2 match even
Hehehe... not only him, I didnt watch any "intense" SC2 match as well XD Sometimes when I'm bored i just play the vods of some games in SC2 and I'm shocked how even the least exiting vods in Company of Heroes can be more entertaining than this.
On April 24 2012 23:32 An2quamaraN wrote: SC2 is not even in it's half potential yet, it's too young, when the switch occurs, and bonjwas plays it, expansions come out i can not see the reason why SC2 shouldn't be bigger than BW.
I wish you to see it making bigger than. But why f.e. I, as BW fan, must be the part of it, when I dont find any pleasure with watching this?
On April 24 2012 23:32 An2quamaraN wrote: That's the reason i also can't understand why you people are sad, instead of being cheerful that your beloved players don't quit competetive scene.
Do i have to be excited that Małysz switched to car racing?
You see, saying that there is no exciting matches in SC2 is just a void talk. Or a hater talk. Actually everything u say is a hater talk.
Intense is a subjective word. I can count the number of "intense" SC2 matches I've watched on both my hands, and thats dating back to GSL season 1. And now that I look back on some of them, I'm not even sure about that. Not everyone likes the same things.
On April 25 2012 04:53 N.geNuity wrote: Independent of micro discussions, the "ball vs ball" phenomena is still encouraged by fundamental things in sc2 design imo. A lot has to do with the maps. And ball vs ball detracts from multitasking as a side note.
I haven't been watching sc2 as intently as I used to, but I never/very very rarely saw anyone expand far away from their main base unless it's a ninja expo (akin to jjakji vs leenock or drg? gsl finals). And that's because you can't have as much map control in sc2 as you can in sc:bw, combined with less defender's advantage and lack of high ground. So that makes larger maps in sc2 not mean more action across the map (as it generally does in sc:bw) but means sticking to your starting location and slowly expanding across the map. An entirely different game. Large maps in sc2 thus far are made to be like tal darim which really means "lots of expos but still wide open", which encourages large army vs large army rather than map positioning (compared to brood war).
As far as high ground mechanics go, things with rolling hills like heart break ridge or chupyung ryung or gladiator much different if the same maps were made in sc2. You can make a high ground advantage by making rolling hills with small chokes (via destructible rocks or whatever) but it's a lot different. Lurkers/tanks with mines on low ground in front on top of ramps can really take map control well while sc2 doesn't have the same equivalent of staticish map position (you can position your army in good locations, but not mines/swarm/whatever).
But besides from high ground, there are numerous things in sc2 that discourages taking far away expansions. Protoss can warp in anywhere on the map, so a ninja expansion can easily be killed/threated by a small warp in (such that PvX matchup it's not a good idea to expand to a place you can't defend easily). The entire zerg creep mechanic encourages it to not expand all the way across the map (such that ZvX matchup zerg wants to stick to expanding closeby. Terran in sc2 is much much more bioball army and not have mines such that terran is encouraged to be more ball dependent). Protoss in sc2 always has blink so that doesn't really help with many expansions.
tvp bw: terran can take its fourth across map (say in 4p map like ground zero) as it's semi ninjaish but terran can take map control/vision with mines and vultures. As well as placing tanks on top of ramps. tvp sc2: terran is going to have mobile bioball army that gets much stronger when clumped together. Even if he expands cross map 5 stalkers can get behind mineral line and kill scvs freely from any planetary. So he will take expansions close to him than go across map. With mobile bioball he doesn't have the same defensive posture as bw and thus can't split army to take map. His army ends up being a ball that attacks.
pvt bw: protoss needs to expand a lot and can stop vultures fairly good with pylon wall offs. Drops can hurt protoss but are quick to clean up in small numbers (4 vulture/2 tank drop is easy to stop if well prepared). The nature of the matchup also makes it hard for terran to really get good drops going to threaten enough expansions. Protoss is the most ballish race, as it wants to crush weaknesses/pieces of the terran when terran moves out. pvt sc2: I don't play protoss but since terran in sc2 wants to get medivacs as part of its ball, sending 2 dropships of marine/maurader can kill far expansions much easier than 2 tanks/4 vultures could in brood war. Plus it's not out of the terran's way to get dropships (i.e. medivacs)
zvall sc:bw: lurkers provide very good static defense on ramps and there are such things as swarm. Mutas control map early on (either to kill speed zealots or to keep terran at bay) and allows for safe far away expansions. Hydras are actually good to mass. zvall sc2: the creep mechanic encourages zerg to expand nearby and not across the map. Armies designed to "overwhelm" protoss or terran army (i.e. mass roach, or banelings, etc). Mutas are much weaker at keeping an army at bay, but instead just threaten "if you leave I'll kill your economy". However turrets are much stronger and protoss is content with balling up. tvz brood war: expanding across the map can happens with mech transition. and 1 group of marine/medic on top of a ramp will defend a lot.
mirror matchups are different but similar sentiments (zvz you don't ninja expo in either bw or sc2; tvt is a positional battle still; pvp in both you don't really expand cross map and ball up more for both games).
tl;dr: fundamental design encourages more ball vs ball stuff. Even with the little 6 mineral 1 gas bases I imagine you don't expand far away because the units still don't hold; you expand more but you still try to expand closer (I imagine). Like on tal darim where you take natural -> take the third by breaking the rocks -> take fourth and fifth at the nearby locations, etc.
Whereas brood war protoss and zerg quite often take their thirds all the way across the map.
I totally agree even if I'm a Sc2 player and not a BW player. The game has still a lot of defects ! Lets hope hots and lotv will fix this without requiring 300 apm ^^
yeah but who knows how far away hots is right now. and lotv could be 4 years away for all we know. And unless hots makes like high ground ramp mechanics and eliminate creep/warp in mechanics the root of such problems probably won't be fixed. Sc2 expansions probably are likely to want to throw in better map control units though.
i've been thinking about swarm host, replacement to lurker. though it may serve the same purpose, area control, mechanics on how to deal with it differs. against lurkers there are couple of options even without detection and can be dealt with efficiently with micro'ing few units. swarm host spawns broods that can only be stutter stepped or go in circles to minimize damage by chasing broods to kill swarm host, not sure how it'll play out but i hope blizzard consider the unique mechanics rquired on how to deal with such units through micro, not unit or spell.
Could the fact that broods likely deal less damage then a zergling or ultralisk be a tactical factor to consider? Perhaps finding a way to allow a wall of broods to form and instead focusing on the more robust units. Like being a melee wall, which would be really bad for Zerg dps. Sure broods would eventually kill the unit, but they would take longer then if you let zerglings sneak into you after you kill a brood, and the broods dont cost anything to build so no loss to the zerg for killing them. And if they are anything like BW broods, then they are on a time limit, so even if you most of the zerg army and huge mass of broods remain, they will eventually die out.
This is fine in theory, but in practice zergs try not to engage with the rest of their army. The broodlings are effectively infinite, and the brood lord range is greater than anything else in their army, so they siege you with constant broodlings. You have to move past the broodlings to target fire the more expensive and dangerous units (generally the brood lords themselves), and then the rest of the zerg army engages. You wind up pretty well surrounded with the broodlings behind you and the broodlords above a zerg army in front of you. Throw in the fact that fungals can pin you place if you try to run closer, forcing you to be out of range of brood lords while still surrounded by broodlings.
There are some units, basically just collosus and, to a lesser extent archons, which can chew through the broodlings for you as they spawn and buy you time before you need to push past them, but the broodling spawn is the brood lord attack and so does damage of its own even if the broodling dies before getting off a hit. Terran has no good splash unit to clear broodlings, but marines do dps enough to manage ok. Their biggest edge is the insane range vikings that can, in theory, hit the brood lords from out of distance of any anti air.
imo the brood lord mechanic is awful, and I worry that the swarm host will also be awful for the exact same reason. I wouldn't say it breaks the game, as there are ways to play that allow you to just out- macro or multitask a zerg going for broodlords.
Still, it is effectively like the bw terrans 200/200 metal army. No matter how bad the rest of their infrastructure or economy is, they still can win with the big push. Thanks to the infinite broodling and fungal possibilities, I would say it is even more ridiculous than bw terran metal. The way people deal with terran mech in bw is to out macro and just throw waves at them while trying to catch them out of position. In SC2 you tend to try the same things against late game zerg, but it is entirely possible to be forced into an engagement where you kill no gas units. The way to get past this tends to be through composition rather than smart play.
On April 23 2012 23:25 Crownlol wrote: Excited to see this level of open-mindedness.
The fact is, the split from SSBM and SSBB ruined the smash community, and Source really hurt CS.
The quicker pros join the game that more people want to watch (thus monetizing it), the better.
I know you've been playing BW for 12 years, but the more open-minded the BW community is about switching to the newer, more popular game, the better.
Open-minded? Almost all BW players have tried SC2 at some point. There's certain things in BW that just made alot of sense imo. Designers probably never envisioned BW as a top-level competitive game, but it turned out that way. To completely ignore some of the things that made BW great makes SC2 really really hard for a lot of BW fans to accept. I mean yes, micro is there, macro is there. But you don't see defilers coming out at the last second to cast swarm to deny an area, nor do you see reaver harassment, or any sorts of equivalent. I'm really tired of this argument too. I'd just wish SC2 would change >.>
I would regard mmortal speed prism drops pretty much filling that role, not being entirely equivalent but filling some kind of similiar role. The new viper will be filling a close enough role of what the defiler had. Obviously you don't know shit. T_T
Having played both games a fair bit, I can tell you that immortal drops are nothing close to reaver harass. First of all immortals aren't AOE units, secondly warp prisms aren't nearly as essential as shuttles are in any P match-up. Plus you don't load and unload between shots for immortals like you do with reaver/shuttle. Nor do you see the type of loading/unloading + pulling shuttle back micro with immortal/warp prism in battles.
Yes you do, i've seen it this last week at MLG Spring Arena 1. It hasn't happened alot, but it happened.
I think warp prisms are more of a late game unit. The only truely epic immortal drop was Kiwikaki's double robo timing attack vs Idra. Otherwise immortals don't do anything too bad unless you have enough to snipe buildings and have like 30 gate ways to just contantly spam zealots out of your WPs.
On April 23 2012 23:25 Crownlol wrote: Excited to see this level of open-mindedness.
The fact is, the split from SSBM and SSBB ruined the smash community, and Source really hurt CS.
The quicker pros join the game that more people want to watch (thus monetizing it), the better.
I know you've been playing BW for 12 years, but the more open-minded the BW community is about switching to the newer, more popular game, the better.
Open-minded? Almost all BW players have tried SC2 at some point. There's certain things in BW that just made alot of sense imo. Designers probably never envisioned BW as a top-level competitive game, but it turned out that way. To completely ignore some of the things that made BW great makes SC2 really really hard for a lot of BW fans to accept. I mean yes, micro is there, macro is there. But you don't see defilers coming out at the last second to cast swarm to deny an area, nor do you see reaver harassment, or any sorts of equivalent. I'm really tired of this argument too. I'd just wish SC2 would change >.>
I would regard mmortal speed prism drops pretty much filling that role, not being entirely equivalent but filling some kind of similiar role. The new viper will be filling a close enough role of what the defiler had. Obviously you don't know shit. T_T
Having played both games a fair bit, I can tell you that immortal drops are nothing close to reaver harass. First of all immortals aren't AOE units, secondly warp prisms aren't nearly as essential as shuttles are in any P match-up. Plus you don't load and unload between shots for immortals like you do with reaver/shuttle. Nor do you ever see the type of loading/unloading + pulling shuttle back micro with immortal/warp prism.
There was a bit of that today in the GSL with an Immortal against Roaches, keeping the Immortal alive way longer than it should of been, it was pretty epic. But honestly, people are still pretty bad at SC2 in the micro department, yes you have the top guys that are pretty decent but even they don't use some strategies that would just be great to see.. There is an absolute tone of potential in the micro in SC2 that people haven't been using. There are a tone of strategies for Zerg that people don't use, such as drop play from overlords, using baneling drops against a group of fungalled marines while pulling off an amazing flank, magic boxing thors and splitting banelings against tanks, while counter dropping the terrans mineral line with upgraded banelings. The nydus is still a pretty unused utility that players haven't utilised yet. (using Zerg as an example as I play Zerg). I'm pretty confident the BW guys will come in, see the game and improve the micro and strategies a lot after practicing like they do already with BW.
Guys, people have been using Reaver drops since 2001, if immortal drops were that good, we would be seeing them a lot more. Now we have uber progamers testing these things out. Yet we are seeing both of them less (ferrying a bunch of reavers in PvZ used to be quite common), Kiwikaki (iirc) was the king of immortal drops. The whole wait till the game evolves doesn't stand, the kind of evolutions we will see will not be micro ones, they will be strategy and build orders, just like BW. Maybe every few years we might see a form of muta micro appear, before blizzard patches it.
I'm honestly angry of what's becoming of the BW pro scene and this is more like a middle finger to the fans who have been following these teams since forever. I hope Pro-League and OSL keep going on for another five years at least....(hoping)
EPT
