On February 21 2016 22:51 _Animus_ wrote: Bw comunity is too conservative for changes into the game, wich is hindrance i feel. For instance that wc3 mod was looking good for me, but when i go into thread and see what people think it was full of shit. Its like Bw people want to force everyone to stay in prehistoric era because touching bw is herecy, when acutally there are people who will enjoy these changes.
I know bw cant make such comeback in one area, the playerpool. On Garena AOE server i saw 10 000 players online and it was not in peak time, dont remember if its AOE 1 or 2 but that was really shoking. If you go in Gameranger server u see a similar picture, no idea about other servers. And Having to see 300+/400 players on iccup peak time makes me ask myself why is that? Probably because game is too complicated and deep to just play without puting too much effort. But that depth is what makes it interesting for me at least. If the game can become more user friendly, or have separate section of server for casual low level players and gets enough advertising it can grow significantly i think. Because if you are not from these who followed esports scene and just go back to the game for fun and get raped 5 times in a row u probably just quit forever.
One more thing, CnCnet servers (Cncnet is provider of online play for the classic CnC games CnC1 ,2, RA 1, 2, Dune 2000) have more RA1 players than Bw almost all the time, which is weird in my oppinion, because all games are just tank spam arena fights and i get bored after playing just a few games.
The reason is that every time people make Brood War in a new engine, they fail to maintain important unite behaviours and other features.
On February 23 2016 07:06 Incognoto wrote: Don't people play iCCup for broodwar?
AoE2 is still quite active, so is AoE3 surprisingly enough. I thought that BW was still somewhat active, something like a 2000 player base? Give or take?
According to ICCup ladder list, there have been over 15000 players to log on this season:
If we are very conservative and say that every player has a smurf account, we still end up with 7000+ unique players just this season.
This doesn't include fish, which is much, much more active. Or other UDP-simulating programs such as GameRanger, Evolve, Garena, and Hamachi. On the lowside, I would conservatively say the sum of their active player bases is 1000.
This also does not include all of the people who play in Korean netcafes. There is of course going to be a lot of overlap between the various venues, but even if we divide by 2 or 3 (saying that every person plays using 2 or 3 of these services), the numbers are still tremendous and much higher than AoE (from what was said in this thread).
4500 players online for AoE 1 in garena. 0_0 and im pretty sure i saw 10K not long ago Thinking of other reason we dont get such number of players is the intensity of the game. its easy to get tired with starcraft. Many will come to play 3-4 games and log off. I know people who dont play because they cant keep up with the fast pace. AoE can be played slower and u can enjoy it longer time.
Well, as I said, there are much more people on Fish. Someone in another thread said something like 18k peaks if I'm not mistaken.
What you say about BW is true, and I think it's especially true for people with very high apm. Busting out 280 apm for multiple games straight is a serious strain. I was a casual AoE2 player for a while and even though I'd never claim to be good, I felt that APMs are for the most part lower there.
That's why, in my opinion, if we would like BW to regain more casual/crowded/mainstream interest with a modern update, I feel like it would be better if the existing BW community is ok with some simple changes in the interface or control. Automine and MBS in particular, imo that would just be good to implement in an update/rerelease. Seriously, as a B~ level player I don't mind very much not having automine or MBS, it doesn't hinder me a lot, though I think it happens to anyone to forget and have some 4-5 probes waiting at nexus or something, and of course it affects everyone to have a harder mechanic to produce units / save buildings in control groups. But I'm pretty sure I would actually feel pretty good with such changes and feel like they improve quality of life for me as a player, and especially, for more casual or slower players or people who used to play long time ago, that's kinda hellish not having automine or MBS, especially when they want to start competing a bit with the better players, and if they compare with other games that have been released in the past 15 years. It doesn't feel particularly fair or rather, particularly smart. It's kinda outdated. 12 unit selection in my view must be super controversial cause it would be a huge change... but in my opinion it's also something that would be good to discuss/modify. Allow people to box as many units, or maybe just a higher limit. Because it slows you down a lot, it requires a lot more speed for not a lot of good reason. You want any decision that you make to be reduced to just as many actions as it needs, the control tools more efficient, without simplifying the mechanics of the game itself, the depth of unit movement and combat, the management of details in countless different possibilities. I've said it before, I think the only true/main advantage to 12 unit selection is the wireframe interface @the bottom which is great and I don't think it's good to lose that. But something could be done to keep the wireframes while still allowing to select more units. In my opinion, these few things are the most important to appeal to new players or more casual players or returning players again in higher numbers and not get them tired of the game, dismissing it as a click fest out of exhaustion and being too punished by it. Along with the extra accessibility and quality of life things, like support for different screen ratio, great Bnet easy to access with no need to forward ports, lan latency.
I think that, no automine / no MBS / 12 unit selection limit are not the reasons why BW is great. BW is great for a lot of reasons, one of them because it actually does have great controls, but they could be even better and use some smart updating
keeping in mind, when BW came out, the context was nobody was very good at RTS, nobody expected that playing BW very well would require such speed, and the other games were not at all comparable in quality of control as well
That's why, in my opinion, if we would like BW to regain more casual/crowded/mainstream interest with a modern update, I feel like it would be better if the existing BW community is ok with some simple changes in the interface or control. Automine and MBS in particular, imo that would just be good to implement in an update/rerelease. Seriously, as a B~ level player I don't mind very much not having automine or MBS, it doesn't hinder me a lot, though I think it happens to anyone to forget and have some 4-5 probes waiting at nexus or something, and of course it affects everyone to have a harder mechanic to produce units / save buildings in control groups. But I'm pretty sure I would actually feel pretty good with such changes and feel like they improve quality of life for me as a player, and especially, for more casual or slower players or people who used to play long time ago, that's kinda hellish not having automine or MBS, especially when they want to start competing a bit with the better players, and if they compare with other games that have been released in the past 15 years. It doesn't feel particularly fair or rather, particularly smart. It's kinda outdated. 12 unit selection in my view must be super controversial cause it would be a huge change... but in my opinion it's also something that would be good to discuss/modify. Allow people to box as many units, or maybe just a higher limit. Because it slows you down a lot, it requires a lot more speed for not a lot of good reason. You want any decision that you make to be reduced to just as many actions as it needs, the control tools more efficient, without simplifying the mechanics of the game itself, the depth of unit movement and combat, the management of details in countless different possibilities. I've said it before, I think the only true/main advantage to 12 unit selection is the wireframe interface @the bottom which is great and I don't think it's good to lose that. But something could be done to keep the wireframes while still allowing to select more units. In my opinion, these few things are the most important to appeal to new players or more casual players or returning players again in higher numbers and not get them tired of the game, dismissing it as a click fest out of exhaustion and being too punished by it. Along with the extra accessibility and quality of life things, like support for different screen ratio, great Bnet easy to access with no need to forward ports, lan latency.
I think that, no automine / no MBS / 12 unit selection limit are not the reasons why BW is great. BW is great for a lot of reasons, one of them because it actually does have great controls, but they could be even better and use some smart updating
keeping in mind, when BW came out, the context was nobody was very good at RTS, nobody expected that playing BW very well would require such speed, and the other games were not at all comparable in quality of control as well
infinity selection of mutas! What a lovely feature, especially in ZvT!
MBS and >12 unit selection would just make the game completely different. It would not longer be a BW.
That's why, in my opinion, if we would like BW to regain more casual/crowded/mainstream interest with a modern update, I feel like it would be better if the existing BW community is ok with some simple changes in the interface or control. Automine and MBS in particular, imo that would just be good to implement in an update/rerelease. Seriously, as a B~ level player I don't mind very much not having automine or MBS, it doesn't hinder me a lot, though I think it happens to anyone to forget and have some 4-5 probes waiting at nexus or something, and of course it affects everyone to have a harder mechanic to produce units / save buildings in control groups. But I'm pretty sure I would actually feel pretty good with such changes and feel like they improve quality of life for me as a player, and especially, for more casual or slower players or people who used to play long time ago, that's kinda hellish not having automine or MBS, especially when they want to start competing a bit with the better players, and if they compare with other games that have been released in the past 15 years. It doesn't feel particularly fair or rather, particularly smart. It's kinda outdated. 12 unit selection in my view must be super controversial cause it would be a huge change... but in my opinion it's also something that would be good to discuss/modify. Allow people to box as many units, or maybe just a higher limit. Because it slows you down a lot, it requires a lot more speed for not a lot of good reason. You want any decision that you make to be reduced to just as many actions as it needs, the control tools more efficient, without simplifying the mechanics of the game itself, the depth of unit movement and combat, the management of details in countless different possibilities. I've said it before, I think the only true/main advantage to 12 unit selection is the wireframe interface @the bottom which is great and I don't think it's good to lose that. But something could be done to keep the wireframes while still allowing to select more units. In my opinion, these few things are the most important to appeal to new players or more casual players or returning players again in higher numbers and not get them tired of the game, dismissing it as a click fest out of exhaustion and being too punished by it. Along with the extra accessibility and quality of life things, like support for different screen ratio, great Bnet easy to access with no need to forward ports, lan latency.
I think that, no automine / no MBS / 12 unit selection limit are not the reasons why BW is great. BW is great for a lot of reasons, one of them because it actually does have great controls, but they could be even better and use some smart updating
keeping in mind, when BW came out, the context was nobody was very good at RTS, nobody expected that playing BW very well would require such speed, and the other games were not at all comparable in quality of control as well
infinity selection of mutas! What a lovely feature, especially in ZvT!
MBS and >12 unit selection would just make the game completely different. It would not longer be a BW.
^^ originaly, mutas were not supposed to be able to clump in one spot and remain like this while attacking.. and nobody was doing that for a good bunch of years and the game was great personally, I never really liked what the discovery of this "bug" did to the game I would vote for putting it out in all honesty
That's why, in my opinion, if we would like BW to regain more casual/crowded/mainstream interest with a modern update, I feel like it would be better if the existing BW community is ok with some simple changes in the interface or control. Automine and MBS in particular, imo that would just be good to implement in an update/rerelease. Seriously, as a B~ level player I don't mind very much not having automine or MBS, it doesn't hinder me a lot, though I think it happens to anyone to forget and have some 4-5 probes waiting at nexus or something, and of course it affects everyone to have a harder mechanic to produce units / save buildings in control groups. But I'm pretty sure I would actually feel pretty good with such changes and feel like they improve quality of life for me as a player, and especially, for more casual or slower players or people who used to play long time ago, that's kinda hellish not having automine or MBS, especially when they want to start competing a bit with the better players, and if they compare with other games that have been released in the past 15 years. It doesn't feel particularly fair or rather, particularly smart. It's kinda outdated. 12 unit selection in my view must be super controversial cause it would be a huge change... but in my opinion it's also something that would be good to discuss/modify. Allow people to box as many units, or maybe just a higher limit. Because it slows you down a lot, it requires a lot more speed for not a lot of good reason. You want any decision that you make to be reduced to just as many actions as it needs, the control tools more efficient, without simplifying the mechanics of the game itself, the depth of unit movement and combat, the management of details in countless different possibilities. I've said it before, I think the only true/main advantage to 12 unit selection is the wireframe interface @the bottom which is great and I don't think it's good to lose that. But something could be done to keep the wireframes while still allowing to select more units. In my opinion, these few things are the most important to appeal to new players or more casual players or returning players again in higher numbers and not get them tired of the game, dismissing it as a click fest out of exhaustion and being too punished by it. Along with the extra accessibility and quality of life things, like support for different screen ratio, great Bnet easy to access with no need to forward ports, lan latency.
I think that, no automine / no MBS / 12 unit selection limit are not the reasons why BW is great. BW is great for a lot of reasons, one of them because it actually does have great controls, but they could be even better and use some smart updating
keeping in mind, when BW came out, the context was nobody was very good at RTS, nobody expected that playing BW very well would require such speed, and the other games were not at all comparable in quality of control as well
That's why, in my opinion, if we would like BW to regain more casual/crowded/mainstream interest with a modern update, I feel like it would be better if the existing BW community is ok with some simple changes in the interface or control. Automine and MBS in particular, imo that would just be good to implement in an update/rerelease. Seriously, as a B~ level player I don't mind very much not having automine or MBS, it doesn't hinder me a lot, though I think it happens to anyone to forget and have some 4-5 probes waiting at nexus or something, and of course it affects everyone to have a harder mechanic to produce units / save buildings in control groups. But I'm pretty sure I would actually feel pretty good with such changes and feel like they improve quality of life for me as a player, and especially, for more casual or slower players or people who used to play long time ago, that's kinda hellish not having automine or MBS, especially when they want to start competing a bit with the better players, and if they compare with other games that have been released in the past 15 years. It doesn't feel particularly fair or rather, particularly smart. It's kinda outdated. 12 unit selection in my view must be super controversial cause it would be a huge change... but in my opinion it's also something that would be good to discuss/modify. Allow people to box as many units, or maybe just a higher limit. Because it slows you down a lot, it requires a lot more speed for not a lot of good reason. You want any decision that you make to be reduced to just as many actions as it needs, the control tools more efficient, without simplifying the mechanics of the game itself, the depth of unit movement and combat, the management of details in countless different possibilities. I've said it before, I think the only true/main advantage to 12 unit selection is the wireframe interface @the bottom which is great and I don't think it's good to lose that. But something could be done to keep the wireframes while still allowing to select more units. In my opinion, these few things are the most important to appeal to new players or more casual players or returning players again in higher numbers and not get them tired of the game, dismissing it as a click fest out of exhaustion and being too punished by it. Along with the extra accessibility and quality of life things, like support for different screen ratio, great Bnet easy to access with no need to forward ports, lan latency.
I think that, no automine / no MBS / 12 unit selection limit are not the reasons why BW is great. BW is great for a lot of reasons, one of them because it actually does have great controls, but they could be even better and use some smart updating
keeping in mind, when BW came out, the context was nobody was very good at RTS, nobody expected that playing BW very well would require such speed, and the other games were not at all comparable in quality of control as well
infinity selection of mutas! What a lovely feature, especially in ZvT!
MBS and >12 unit selection would just make the game completely different. It would not longer be a BW.
^^ originaly, mutas were not supposed to be able to clump in one spot and remain like this while attacking.. and nobody was doing that for a good bunch of years and the game was great personally, I never really liked what the discovery of this "bug" did to the game I would vote for putting it out in all honesty
I think it's safe to say that this is an unpopular opinion in the BW scene. At least, I don't like it one bit.
As Zera said, it would completely change the game. There would be no point in having it be "BW" anymore. You could name it Prometheus RTS or something. Or StarCraft 3: Return of the Broods. It wouldn't be "BW HD." It would be "BW4Noobs." Infinite Muta stack would certainly be a problem, even though Irradiate and Corsair would wreck balls of that size just as well if not better, but it would be much harder to achieve the tech necessary (Irradiate) or the number of Corsair (because Scourge would still kill them), especially at the casual level that you seem to be catering to. Many people know how to Mutalisk micro because it's a simple and popular concept, and plenty of UMS have been made for it. Not nearly as many people know how to survive Mutalisk harass and get Irradiate fast enough to not get picked apart.
However, that is not to say that Mutalisk micro somehow made the game unplayable. You say that you "never really liked what the discovery of this 'bug' did to the game," but I cannot agree with that. It forced other races to cope, match-ups to change, strategies to develop, meta to evolve, players to get better. Mutalisk stack micro is, in my opinion, one of the first tenets of "modern" play. Can you really say that you like the play that was shown by progamers in 2005 and prior vs. now? Sure, there were still great games, and they were still really good players. However, the skill level now is far higher. This brings me to my next point: MBS and Automine effectively remove many of what I would call "skill checks" from the game. A "skill check" is something like, "can you control a diverse Terran mech army while laying mines?" If YES then you've passed the test, and you can push. If NO, then you've failed and lost your push and you have to get better at controlling your army. By removing these skill checks, we are lowering the required skill to play the game, and thus the skill ceiling. Many people had claimed that the presence of these ease-of-use tools, as well as SmartCasting and others, would make StarCraft 2 "more strategic," than Brood War because people wouldn't have to devote so much time to the mechanical stuff. As far as I know, there has been no conclusive evidence of this. All that it's done is make the game less demanding. I would not want to lower the ceiling just to raise the floor for popularity's sake.
There are many other problems with implementing MBC/Automine in BW. Instead of continuing to list them, I'll just reiterate that implementing them would make the game not BW anymore, so there would be no point in doing it for BW revival's sake.
On February 24 2016 09:55 Jealous wrote:I think it's safe to say that this is an unpopular opinion in the BW scene. At least, I don't like it one bit.
As Zera said, it would completely change the game. There would be no point in having it be "BW" anymore. You could name it Prometheus RTS or something. Or StarCraft 3: Return of the Broods. It wouldn't be "BW HD." It would be "BW4Noobs." Infinite Muta stack would certainly be a problem, even though Irradiate and Corsair would wreck balls of that size just as well if not better, but it would be much harder to achieve the tech necessary (Irradiate) or the number of Corsair (because Scourge would still kill them), especially at the casual level that you seem to be catering to. Many people know how to Mutalisk micro because it's a simple and popular concept, and plenty of UMS have been made for it. Not nearly as many people know how to survive Mutalisk harass and get Irradiate fast enough to not get picked apart.
However, that is not to say that Mutalisk micro somehow made the game unplayable. You say that you "never really liked what the discovery of this 'bug' did to the game," but I cannot agree with that. It forced other races to cope, match-ups to change, strategies to develop, meta to evolve, players to get better. Mutalisk stack micro is, in my opinion, one of the first tenets of "modern" play. Can you really say that you like the play that was shown by progamers in 2005 and prior vs. now? Sure, there were still great games, and they were still really good players. However, the skill level now is far higher. This brings me to my next point: MBS and Automine effectively remove many of what I would call "skill checks" from the game. A "skill check" is something like, "can you control a diverse Terran mech army while laying mines?" If YES then you've passed the test, and you can push. If NO, then you've failed and lost your push and you have to get better at controlling your army. By removing these skill checks, we are lowering the required skill to play the game, and thus the skill ceiling. Many people had claimed that the presence of these ease-of-use tools, as well as SmartCasting and others, would make StarCraft 2 "more strategic," than Brood War because people wouldn't have to devote so much time to the mechanical stuff. As far as I know, there has been no conclusive evidence of this. All that it's done is make the game less demanding. I would not want to lower the ceiling just to raise the floor for popularity's sake.
There are many other problems with implementing MBC/Automine in BW. Instead of continuing to list them, I'll just reiterate that implementing them would make the game not BW anymore, so there would be no point in doing it for BW revival's sake.
As much as I am interested in thinking about how to modify my favorite game, I do not intend to work on releasing a Prometheus edition BW mod lol. If Blizzard actually started to work on a BW rerelease, they might make any kind of decisions about it that we can't predict or know about, and discussing it and coming up with informed opinions could be useful (or not?).
At least, I find it interesting to talk about^^
The muta problem, you're right about it I think. If you can select more than 12, that's how many can still stack in one spot by repeatedly clicking even without magic box bug. So that wouldn't work Ofc then irradiate & other AoEs become more stupid and it just changes the interaction too much, if Zs would actually clump more mutas and attack like that without the magic box bug (though without the magic box bug you can't do the back and forth repeat attacks). Too much potential spike damage for staked air, too much potential AoE counter damage to that stacked air, too much volatility.
When the muta bug was discovered, I don't know if my memory is right, is that around when JulyZerg dominated with his rushes?? It may be too difficult to make an argument for changing/fixing that because that's what the game has become, and it's not like it always changes it that much since there aren't necessarily mutas in every games... well.. I believe that this kills quite a bit of 1base build variations P could do expecting to defend mutas with an archon (not really enough gas for a lot of corsairs + other tech on one base and corsairs only counters mutas). In my opinion, that's a loss of branches in the early phase of the match up which in my memory we did use to see more variety before the muta stack bug. Maybe it's even one of the causes of when Protoss all started doing almost always FE vs Z? And then it never stopped. When I see an archon chase mutas, get hit and killed and can't strike back, it feels a bit off to me. At one point, when I watched TvZ, there was 3hatch muta harrass in 90% of games. Also if I was a Z player, I think I would get really tired of doing this super intensive micro trick with so much importance on how the early game plays out. I'd be curious if anyone feel like that too^^
Now MBS and Automine as skill checks, personally allow me to be honest I think that's bonkers. There are much more interesting skills in BW than remembering to remind each probe you want it to mine as it pops out, or doing 5Z6Z7Z8Z instead of 5ZZZZ to build 4 zealots, or having to click every gate individually to make units in mid and late game. The multitasking skill is good, but not when it's a pure mechanical check, it should be a decision as well. So as tempo skills go, you already have to remember when every upgrade, unit or building completes to be on point (choose what to do with it and/or what to produce next). And these are good because they are associated with the follow-up decisions, choices. But the probe is always supposed to mine, and by not mining you are losing resources which is critical. What should be automated is automated, why not this? Does it make a good skill check to have probes lose mining time for as long as you don't come back to look at each nexus and tell it to mine, while there are hundreds of other things to do anyway? I don't think so. What's good is when speed and decision go together. You could add any artificial "skill checks" that forces more speed on you without any decision making.. but it has no place in a RTS. For example, no rally points at all for buildings? Why do probes not automine in Starcraft? I don't have a clue, or maybe they forgot. But I bet if they released the original Starcraft with automine, it would obviously still have been great, and I can't imagine we would have wanted to remove it to add a skill check there. Same for MBS, for the same reasons.
I find it interesting how controversial it is. What do the BW players who transitionned to SC2 say about that? Would they say removing automine and MBS would be an improvement to SC2 ??? :D I played SC2, and I think, that would be the opposite of an improvement.
Lets be honest, if Blizzard would make a BWHD exact same game engine and playable in bnet2 without the need of portforwarding, only a few BW players would switch anyway. Thats how elitist they are.
Now imagine the outcry if they only implemented the tiniest change like implementing automine/mbs. Because you know those were the things that made BW great (lol). We could of course also just implement the wc2 patch where you cant set a rally point in BW.
Seriously now, BW players know they are playing the best RTS but many love it for the wrong reasons imo. BW wasnt great solely because of lack of mbs/automine but because of the units/positional/micro/tactical/strategical play.
On February 24 2016 13:38 ProMeTheus112 wrote: Now MBS and Automine as skill checks, personally allow me to be honest I think that's bonkers. There are much more interesting skills in BW than remembering to remind each probe you want it to mine as it pops out, or doing 5Z6Z7Z8Z instead of 5ZZZZ to build 4 zealots, or having to click every gate individually to make units in mid and late game. The multitasking skill is good, but not when it's a pure mechanical check, it should be a decision as well. So as tempo skills go, you already have to remember when every upgrade, unit or building completes to be on point (choose what to do with it and/or what to produce next). And these are good because they are associated with the follow-up decisions, choices. But the probe is always supposed to mine, and by not mining you are losing resources which is critical. What should be automated is automated, why not this? Does it make a good skill check to have probes lose mining time for as long as you don't come back to look at each nexus and tell it to mine, while there are hundreds of other things to do anyway? I don't think so. What's good is when speed and decision go together. You could add any artificial "skill checks" that forces more speed on you without any decision making.. but it has no place in a RTS. For example, no rally points at all for buildings? Why do probes not automine in Starcraft? I don't have a clue, or maybe they forgot. But I bet if they released the original Starcraft with automine, it would obviously still have been great, and I can't imagine we would have wanted to remove it to add a skill check there. Same for MBS, for the same reasons.
I find it interesting how controversial it is. What do the BW players who transitionned to SC2 say about that? Would they say removing automine and MBS would be an improvement to SC2 ??? :D I played SC2, and I think, that would be the opposite of an improvement.
Maybe it just doesn't matter.
The underlying reason why all of these constraints can qualify as a skill check is because they cost you an invisible resource: attention. The way that you spend less of this resource is speed, and the way you spend it more efficiently is multitasking, as you said. There come moments in a game where most of us who are not 300 APM Pro Koreans, and even them at times, are forced to decide between making workers + sending them to mine, making units, microing an army, scouting, etc. If you have all of your Nexii as 0 and you can do 0pppppp whenever you feel like it, all of your Gateways as 9 and do 9zzzzzddddddtttkk and rally them all with one click, then how is your attention being divided? You don't even have to look away from your army for that, ignoring of course the possibility that the enemy is doing some two-pronged attack.
If we oversimplify the game, it won't force you to make decisions like "is this battle important enough that I have to focus on microing perfectly without smartcast and unlimited group hotkeys, or can I go back to my base and do some production real quick." I think it's safe to say we've all had those engagements where we think everything will be okay if we look away for a second, so we go to our production facilities and make a new round of units, maybe set rally. Then you look back at your army and it's toast because you underestimated your opponent's force, or he got the first round of spells/abilities off before you did. Or, two Protoss armies collide, and one player heard the attack notification and decided to finish his macro round because he figured he has the bigger army while the other sent the first volley of Storms, killing essential High Templar, which led him to steamroll the opponent. One person correctly assessed the situation, while the other did not - that is skill.
You're right in that the game could be even more demanding in this regard. If I remember correctly, WarCraft I had a group selection limit of 4 and no hotkeys. WarCraft II had group selection limit of 9. However, I feel that StarCraft hit that sweet spot where there is just enough dividing your attention without being ridiculous and not simplified enough for you to be able to do everything with two hotkeys. Because of this balance, we can appreciate a player's macro in Brood War in the lategame with awe, because we know the effort they went through in order to achieve it, or a player's army movement, or their ability to Storm perfectly during an engagement, so on and so forth. It is because those tasks are mechanically trying that their achievement can be appreciated, their exceptional execution lauded. No one bats an eyelid when someone moves a massive ball around the map in StarCraft II, or when they have perfect macro off 16 Warp Gates in different bases.
As for your last question, I think that the answer is highly subjective. The amount of people that switched fully from BW to SC2 AND vice versa are testament to that.
On February 24 2016 14:45 404AlphaSquad wrote: Lets be honest, if Blizzard would make a BWHD exact same game engine and playable in bnet2 without the need of portforwarding, only a few BW players would switch anyway. Thats how elitist they are.
Now imagine the outcry if they only implemented the tiniest change like implementing automine/mbs. Because you know those were the things that made BW great (lol). We could of course also just implement the wc2 patch where you cant set a rally point in BW.
Seriously now, BW players know they are playing the best RTS but many love it for the wrong reasons imo. BW wasnt great solely because of lack of mbs/automine but because of the units/positional/micro/tactical/strategical play.
I touched upon some of what you said above, but to go more in detail, I think that if BWHD had the same game engine in a superior online gaming service, a lot of people would at least try it out. Switching fully would be a subjective course, like switching from BW to SC2 was for many players. It would also depend on what the major competitions, like the various Korean tournaments, decided to do and what the Afreeca streamers decided to stick to. You make assertions like you know it to be a fact, and drop the overused "elitist" term like you see the hypothetical future, when in reality it is impossible to put an entire gaming population under the same blanket. That's pretty damn ignorant.*
Automine/MBS is definitely not a tiny change. That is a huge change. It changes the way the game is played.
I don't think anyone loves the game because there are none of these control features. They love the game in spite of it not having them and think it's superior to games that do have them. However, all of the things that you list "but because of..." would probably be diluted if the same ease-of-use controls were implemented in Brood War.
EDIT: *I guess it makes sense, seeing as you haven't posted in a Brood War thread in at least a year, and I just didn't bother to look further into your history to see if you've ever posted in Brood War at all:
You probably don't read that many of them either, so how are you to know? Like the great TL poster WhuazGoodNjaggah once said, you're "throwing stones at something you don't understand."
On February 21 2016 23:13 Fighter wrote: I was thinking it might have more in common with the Melee scene. A superior game gets pushed out by a sequel, until eventually everyone realizes it and starts to go back, with stragglers hanging on and following new installments while the original great stays strong.
This. This is the path BW should/could take.
Brood War's popularity comes from its 1v1 scene, not UMS. It's a highly competitive game and if that's not something you're interested in, then you can find UMS on GameRanger/East/whatever. The revival of the game is dependent on its competitive scene, just like Melee. No one cares about players who do story mode or minigames or something, in the sense that those players don't really contribute much to the scene. Same with BW/UMS.
Project Melee, although nixed now, was what could be a parallel to BW HD in some ways, and probably did bring some players to regular BW. Like said above about AoE2 vs. HD, HD brought in new players and the classic is still where the true competition lies. If something like that happens for BW, I'd be happy to see people enter the scene because they were given a more aesthetically pleasing game to get hooked with, and then decided to become competitive and came to the original. But, purists and people who already value competition will probably just stick to the classic. Not to say that I won't try the HD just out of curiosity,
:O
I didn't realize alot of people felt the same way. I've been getting into Melee and AoE2 a ton this year and they seemed so vibrant, all sorts of youtube channels popping up and there seemed like alot of energy in the Genesis 3 melee tourney videos.
and then I look at BW US East and all the UMS have died. Used be tons of Strip Megan Fox, Lotr, helms deep, diplo etc on US BW East. And my favorite game, competitive WW2 Allied Final/TTT and WW1 5.1 or WW1 Diamond. Two years before SC2 came out there still all sorts of great WW2 BW UMS then it just kaputtzz... like one game on US BW east now and you get swarmed by hackers.
ah yes, strip megan fox, the apex of broodwar ums
It's the pinnacle of gaming and has an oscar worthy storyline
i agree with Jealous's assessment of why mbs/auto mine wouldn't work in broodwar, it's literally removing a resource.. there's an interesting discussion to be has regarding "well if we have 12 unit control cap why not have 4? wouldnt that triple the skill required?" and maybe it would, but as of right now the game has been balanced on 12 unit control and no MBS for lik 18 years now, and as is balance is on a razor's edge.. if hdbw adds mbs/unlimited control/rally, it will not have a competitive scene, and if it does balance will be completely different..
it's not just that the spending of this invisible resource differentiates players, it's also just as important as unit stats to the current states of the game.. you could make the argument that hotkeys are the same, which is why rebinding is largely frowned upon in the community..
That recource u talking about is artificial and not needed in my oppinion. MBS and Automine will greatly improve quallity of one's play, we are not korean pro gamers with 300 apm, especially the casual players. There is more than enought things to focus ingame we all know that. Also when we watch foreign bw there will not be as many "game of throws" as now, like lancerX wont lose shuttles here and there :D. MBS and Automine will make players with better understanding rather than better mechanics achieving more results. You will be able to focus on battles, improve micro and will lead to more spectacular games and more eficiency in general. That will benefit the casual players and possibly make newcomers stay for a long time as games offers less stress and mechanics close to the modern standart.
it's definitely not artificial, it's another part of what makes broodwar such a strategically demanding game, because you have to manage yourself as well as the game.. i understand that learning mechanics are hard, but i dont think the beauty of high level broodwar should be thrown away because people are too lazy to learn to macro.. even if we added a mode that had mbs/unlimited unit select for lower level players, i feel it would be a disservice to them when they decided that they wanted to actually play the game as it was intended
On February 24 2016 20:31 Endymion wrote: it's definitely not artificial, it's another part of what makes broodwar such a strategically demanding game, because you have to manage yourself as well as the game..
On February 24 2016 21:32 Zera wrote:Macro and army management are one of the main parts of a game that distinguishe players, we can't just simplify it to zero.
The point is that, with MBS and automine, you still have to manage yourself, there is still a ton of stuff to do anyway (hopefully, BW is a better game than that lol). There is no simplifying macro and army management to zero with MBS and automine. Only quality of life improvements.
On February 24 2016 14:52 Jealous wrote:You're right in that the game could be even more demanding in this regard. If I remember correctly, WarCraft I had a group selection limit of 4 and no hotkeys. WarCraft II had group selection limit of 9. However, I feel that StarCraft hit that sweet spot where there is just enough dividing your attention without being ridiculous and not simplified enough for you to be able to do everything with two hotkeys. Because of this balance, we can appreciate a player's macro in Brood War in the lategame with awe, because we know the effort they went through in order to achieve it, or a player's army movement, or their ability to Storm perfectly during an engagement, so on and so forth. It is because those tasks are mechanically trying that their achievement can be appreciated, their exceptional execution lauded. No one bats an eyelid when someone moves a massive ball around the map in StarCraft II, or when they have perfect macro off 16 Warp Gates in different bases.
As for your last question, I think that the answer is highly subjective. The amount of people that switched fully from BW to SC2 AND vice versa are testament to that.
You made fair points about attention. In my opinion BW would still be highly demanding in that attention resource management with automine and MBS, because there are a ton more things to do. I mean, MBS makes a significant difference to that, but automine doesn't really, so I understand this argument for MBS (only by testing would we know how demanding BW would be in attention resource management with MBS, in my opinion it would still be very demanding in a smarter way : it's not like we spend 20% of the time in game producing units, and it's not like there aren't a ton of other things to do and even I think things we actually don't do at all because there is too much to do :D it's good to relieve that, especially for the less hardcore players, but actually for everyone, imo), but not for automine : it's clear to me automine would not impact this significantly. Can't put MBS and automine in the same box, I guess.
As for SC2, I think reasons why player have left have more to do with the bad pathing or the design of units etc etc. That's why I left (very fast), definitely not because of MBS or automine
The reason is that every time people make Brood War in a new engine, they fail to maintain important unite behaviours and other features.
That is because a lot of those behaviors do not work in 3D. Some were even "happy accidents" which weren't intended by Blizzard, they just rolled with it....aaand we all know how hard it is to try to repeat an "accident" intentionally with the same results....
I don't think Blizzard is a company that woul keep ancient mechanics around. So I wouldn't really care about a remaster as I like BW as it is. Not that I think Blizzard is a company that would do remasters anyway. But there is one poor guy working at Blizzard making those games work on win7 and 10 . Because those 3 games are still pretty popular.
And tbh ... you can't remaster BW and keep all its bugs and outdated mechanics in it. Most game critics would be all over the net telling everyone that Blizzard just slapped better graphics on an old game for quick money.
The 12 group, 9 group, 4 group max. Has always just been there to supress the effects of the bad pathfinding of the games. Just like C&C had done it with infantry being able to mostly walk through each other. So if that is gone, there would be no need for that limitation anymore. Would change the game completely though and everymap would be unbalanced. So everyone that enjoys the multiplayer now would be like: "so I need to wait 10 years till the game is figured out and gets perfectly balanced maps? Nope back to old bw"
Sc2 WoL beta actually brought one of the best examples of when quality of life can be a bad thing. At the beginning rally points of production buildings would be attack move, not just move. But it made some units to powerful, so they decided to go back to move command.
Can't really comment on the AoE 2 remaster. But Armies of Asteroth, feels different then Warcraft 3 especially since there are no super refined maps for the multiplayer. So there is no reason to play it if you think Warcraft 3 is the perfect game. It is a good alternative to Warcraft 3 nevertheless though.
EPT![[image loading]](http://s29.postimg.org/n5acgtq7r/aoe1.png)
I would vote for putting it out in all honesty 
Ofc then irradiate & other AoEs become more stupid and it just changes the interaction too much, if Zs would actually clump more mutas and attack like that without the magic box bug 
