EPTOn May 03 2012 03:31 puppykiller wrote:
The micro in war2 is extremely simple, its not like muta micro where it takes years and years to get good at. Simply it's casting spells really fast (which I as a C- BW Terran can do with almost no effort in war2) and then a moving. Also you can hotkey in war 2, I have no idea why people say you can't.
While the speed of the game is higher than BW, the necessity of micro is 100x lower, which allows you to focus almost all of your attention on macro aside from a bit of spell casting.
I think very few people who call war2 more demanding then BW have never actually played war2 or BW (at at least a legit D+ level).
The micro in war2 is extremely simple, its not like muta micro where it takes years and years to get good at. Simply it's casting spells really fast (which I as a C- BW Terran can do with almost no effort in war2) and then a moving. Also you can hotkey in war 2, I have no idea why people say you can't.
While the speed of the game is higher than BW, the necessity of micro is 100x lower, which allows you to focus almost all of your attention on macro aside from a bit of spell casting.
I think very few people who call war2 more demanding then BW have never actually played war2 or BW (at at least a legit D+ level).
Agreed. While WC2 may be "harder" or "faster" in some areas (no queuing for example), everything else in BW is probably harder to pull off. Stuff like Scourge cloning (which isn't just about speed but accuracy as well) while controlling mutalisk to dodge their scourge + attack them, while possibly going back to produce is an example of something difficult to do.
Also the amount of strategy + preparation for 3 races is a plus too.
Practicing 1 match up (orc vs orc because orcs is imba), means that you only need to practice on less things (1 match up).
So if you got strategy down, you just practice micro + macro.
In BW, having to focus on not only mechanics but on what to do (for 3 matchups) means you have less time to focus on developing micro + macro.
Anyway as for WC2 to BW from BW to SC2 - In BW the split between strategy + mechanics was probably somewhat equal. In lower levels of play, I definitely would say mechanics wins in that regard though. Things like queuing + shift adding to hotkeys is made up for the fact that BW is harder in other areas. Not to mention the game would terribly too mechanical heavy if there was a lack of queuing or shift hotkeying. Also, a lot of units are already hard to use mechanically where few players master them, so adding (harder mechanical stuff) upon that is just going to make the overall game worse IMO because pros will get to practice less on other stuff that's there (and more impressive to watch like Muta or Wraith micro) because they're too worried about building stuff with structures which have no queue slots.
[Edit] - I think a good way to do this is to divide mechanics between "boring have to do mechanics" vs. "don't have to do but impressive and good to pull off mechanics". Having to send your units to minerals or having no queues (as in WC2) for structures each and everytime would fall under the "boring have to do" mechanics. Things like good muta micro would be "don't have to do but impressive and good to pull off" mechanics. The latter is good and should be in, the former isn't needed and may detract from the game in some cases. An important to thing to note is that in some cases, the former leads to the latter (say lack of smart fire may seem like a "boring have to do mechanic" but as a viewer and a player, it would probably fall more under "don't have to do but impressive and good to pull off mechanics"). In cases where the former doesn't lead to the latter (what does sending workers to minerals have to do with being impressive to watch or fun to do?) I'd say it's not beneficial to the game to be in it "unless" there's a desperate need of an "APM booster" for some reason (doing muta micro while sending your workers to minerals can be impressive to watch).
[Edit 2] Actually I think I should rewrite a lot of stuff but I'll keep it in just for "food for thought" I guess >.>.
WC2 is more about mechanics (though like said earlier, BW probably featured "overall" harder mechanics because you can do a lot more in BW than in WC2). Much less strategy due to orc vs orc.
SC2 is more about strategy than mechanics due to less mechanical stuff being needed (there's no cloning needed, smart cast and smart fire for everything, etc). There's is definitely a gap that is seen between pros and non-pros though, even if you just focus on the strategy rather than mechanics (in "GSL Off The Record", pro players play with a mouse only and make diamond + masters look like nubs).
(I use "strategy" kind of broadly - It includes things like knowing all the timings (if you see the opponent has 3 workers on gas for 2 minutes starting at the 3 minute mark, what is the fastest possible time a DT rush can happen, etc), + knowing build orders and what to do against them in general.)
Overall due to the new units (with some exceptions) being slower and not as fancy as BW counterpart, a lot of mechanics is less needed.
I think SC2 is a bit too strategy heavy than mechanics where as BW had a balanced (though some things like automine or MBS or even unlimited unit groups probably wouldn't be that big of a deal if added to BW as there's still a ton of other stuff that is mechanically hard to do).
SC2 as a viewer vs BW as a viewer (well besides the UI improvements):
The lack of need for things like cloning (Banelings + Scourges [well in certain UMS with Scourges] all have smart fire and don't overkill) + other stuff makes things in SC2 seem less impressive to watch.
Also the worse thing for me is that in a lot of games in SC2, it's ball of death vs ball of death. As a spectactor, it's less exciting to view than BW.
Though 6m1hg (or rather, fewer resources per base) tries to remedy that.
Not to mention that a lot of units (not all) of new units aren't as cool to watch (Wraith, Vultures, etc were replaced by more boring units). Seeing Wraiths move like interceptors (aka strafing and attacking all over the place) was a lot more exciting to watch than say slow Banshees or Vikings just being slow.
