Melee BW AoE2 I feel like these games are like rites of passage for males born in certain generations - like almost everyone within a certain age range has played these and there's that nostalgia factor that gives them that magical feeling.
When blizzard chose not to keep the same voice actor for Kerrigan for sc2/swapped it for some pretty blonde I had a bad feeling that they wouldn't be able to capture that same feeling I got playing the BW campaign. Wish they had just done another expansion / same engine for BW and Wc3
On February 28 2016 03:29 cncbmb wrote: Alright that fourth game I mentioned was a troll joke but I feel it is somewhat true regardless but I think alot of people think the same way
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 It's kinda outdated. 12 unit selection in my view must be super controversial cause it would be a huge change...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
Wasn't JulyZerg stacking mutas by spam clicking them on minerals before the stack bug was discovered though?
I don't know, but I thought, if you do something like that, you can only keep mutas stacked if you keep them moving forward and far away or something, they unstack pretty fast if you don't have a far-unit in select group no? I think before the stack bug, people were attacking with stacked mutas only by flying-by forward and couldn't do back & forth stacked attack, or smtg like that. Not sure, I never do this.
I'm not certain as to the veracity of the statement either, but I do know that JulyZerg didn't invent stacking. He just showcased its potential in progaming first, against Hwasin.
Stacking Mutas on minerals is valid if you stack them often, as in you stack, attack an SCV, stack, attack, etc. However, in my personal opinion, I find it unlikely that it was done this way at any point before this game, because this is the game that changed modern Zerg play:
If there is a counter-example, please provide BTW f10eqq, I've been asking if you want to be in the line-up for ASL in Skype chat but you haven't said anything ): We're in the finals now, would be nice to hear from you!
shark[gm] invented stacking, as well as the larva trick
On February 25 2016 14:23 Disregard wrote: There is difference in why AOE2 maintains it's status, AOE3 had horrid balance issues and AOE2HD has technical problems. These games don't have the same support and dedicated development teams like SC2 does. The former has a community of which has surpassed the abilities of the original developers to put out content and updates, thus remains why AOE2 will forever be the best of the series.
I have no idea of the current status of SC2 as I had never developed interest it in, although I did follow the AOE2 scene quite heavily till last year.
And also the AOE2 scene does not have the same dedicated pro-scene like SC2 or other e-sports games. Majority or if not all of the veteran players just play part-time, there are no true AOE2 teams that dedicate their full time in playing the game. Example many of the high-tier Chinese players have families or attend school.
which balance issues did AOE3 have?
I don't know if this ever got patched, but Japan with the Agri spam was OP. Some civs just were straight up at a disadvantage.
I don't know if this was ever patched (it's been so long since aoe3), I remember when Uhlan's were broken, I think gendarmes are still broken (French late game cavalry if you can get to that point).
There were lots of balance issues throughout aoe3's life that I can remember.
Chinese Cannon spam, Russia late game (instant fortresses could be built that could pump out units instantly, you could literally have 1 Fortress and go from 50 supply to 200/200 in roughly 20 seconds, faster then that maybe). German instant gendarme spam (was a cavalry unit that did splash, ton of HP and just destroyed everything, I do remember this getting nerfed although it's still very strong).
India Elephant spam back in the day made me cry in my dreams.
I could go on with all the balance issues that popped up over the years, don't remember the game ever truly being balanced as every major tournament would always have 1 civ that dominated it and would be a mirror finals (will all the ones I remember, I remember dutch vs dutch final, Japan vs Japan).
AoE3 is fairly balanced today. Won't drag the thread off topic by saying more than that, but all of those issues which you mentioned have been fixed (except France late-game but that's never a problem in real games).
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
Wasn't JulyZerg stacking mutas by spam clicking them on minerals before the stack bug was discovered though?
I don't know, but I thought, if you do something like that, you can only keep mutas stacked if you keep them moving forward and far away or something, they unstack pretty fast if you don't have a far-unit in select group no? I think before the stack bug, people were attacking with stacked mutas only by flying-by forward and couldn't do back & forth stacked attack, or smtg like that. Not sure, I never do this.
I'm not certain as to the veracity of the statement either, but I do know that JulyZerg didn't invent stacking. He just showcased its potential in progaming first, against Hwasin.
Stacking Mutas on minerals is valid if you stack them often, as in you stack, attack an SCV, stack, attack, etc. However, in my personal opinion, I find it unlikely that it was done this way at any point before this game, because this is the game that changed modern Zerg play:
If there is a counter-example, please provide BTW f10eqq, I've been asking if you want to be in the line-up for ASL in Skype chat but you haven't said anything ): We're in the finals now, would be nice to hear from you!
shark[gm] invented stacking, as well as the larva trick
On February 28 2016 03:29 cncbmb wrote: Melee BW AoE2 I feel like these games are like rites of passage for males born in certain generations - like almost everyone within a certain age range has played these and there's that nostalgia factor that gives them that magical feeling.
When blizzard chose not to keep the same voice actor for Kerrigan for sc2/swapped it for some pretty blonde I had a bad feeling that they wouldn't be able to capture that same feeling I got playing the BW campaign. Wish they had just done another expansion / same engine for BW and Wc3
On February 28 2016 03:29 cncbmb wrote: When blizzard chose not to keep the same voice actor for Kerrigan for sc2/swapped it for some pretty blonde I had a bad feeling that they wouldn't be able to capture that same feeling I got playing the BW campaign. Wish they had just done another expansion / same engine for BW and Wc3
Don't forget Jim Raynor's anabolic injections. In SC1, he looks like a shaggy space cowboy, kind of resembling a plausible human being. In SC2, he looks like Hulk.
On February 28 2016 03:29 cncbmb wrote: When blizzard chose not to keep the same voice actor for Kerrigan for sc2/swapped it for some pretty blonde I had a bad feeling that they wouldn't be able to capture that same feeling I got playing the BW campaign. Wish they had just done another expansion / same engine for BW and Wc3
Don't forget Jim Raynor's anabolic injections. In SC1, he looks like a shaggy space cowboy, kind of resembling a plausible human being. In SC2, he looks like Hulk.
Agreed.
We had all wanted to know what happens to Raynor and Kerrigan.
Instead, we get a story about a roided up old Southern man (who is not nearly as relatable as the original Raynor) and a girl who says "I love you Jim"
Actually, they changed Zeratul's portrait so much too that I don't really see zeratul in his SC2 version. Is it my imagination or are the originals also better actors?
When I asked about things like move shot, Patrick Wyatt referred to it as emergent behaviour, which I think is better than a 'bug', which sounds non-functional or debilitating. While not intentionally designed as such, they became features much the same way strafe-jumping in Quake developed. Some of the best stuff is discovered unexpectedly just due to odd quirks in the programming. (His personal favourite was the Eraser.)
I still can't believe the circle jump in Quake was not intended by the developpers o_o I mean is it a mechanic that was already in Q2 unintentionally, and then they re-added it in Q3? Same or different? It feels like such a great feature of the game because it's well balanced with all its aspects and actually adds a lot of depth I can't believe it's not intentional in Q3.
On March 02 2016 20:50 ProMeTheus112 wrote: I still can't believe the circle jump in Quake was not intended by the developpers o_o I mean is it a mechanic that was already in Q2 unintentionally, and then they re-added it in Q3? Same or different? It feels like such a great feature of the game because it's well balanced with all its aspects and actually adds a lot of depth I can't believe it's not intentional in Q3.
Yes I think by the time of Q3A it was intentional (or intenionally not fixed). Most early first person shooters had similar "problems" even Descent (where you coudn't jump but move faster if you accelerate in all three directons at the same time and move "sideways-forward" in an awkward angle) but as late as '99 this could've been easily fixed as shown by Unreal Tournament. But it wasn't and fans loved it.
There some other examples like that. Canceling moves in Street Fighter 2 (yes it was a glitch at first!) was so popular that later Street Fighter iterations recreated it and balanced the whole game around it.
Others like wavedashing in Melee were deemed too "hardcore" by the developers for their target audience so they fixed it in Brawl and 4. Maybe it was the right business decision, as both sequels had massive sales but there's a reason Melee is still the most competitive Smash Bros. iteration.
Maybe Blizzard should have as well looked at their fans and recreated all or at least some of Broodwars quirks in SC2 as they obviously love them. But they looked at the competition which had those quirks sorted out even before BW. And being a business - who knows what was the right decision? Imagine SC2 having negative reviews for feeling/being massivly outdated which result in less sales. Maybe you have a a good new game for some happy BW fans (or not, because they still think BW is better) but a commercial flop.
I think Blizzard has seen the success of AoE2 HD despite being a heavily flawed rerelease and they would be dumb to not consider BW HD / TFT HD. There are some hints that they consider it from the job posting to the rumored TFT patch. And I think they know as well how BW with all it's quirks is seen as their holy grail. A possible BW HD is aimed at returning players which played some BW back in the day, new players which want to explore what it's all about or being intrigued by the level of competition and current players looking for a more comfortable way to play the game.
So a part of the target audience would probably like MBS/automining/smartcasting (the new players). Maybe some returning players would like that as well, but I think most want the game mechanically like back in the day. You can compare it to the recent Pokemon Red/Blue rereleases: They left bugs which can easily corrupt your savegame in the games (missingno) because people remember exploiting those bugs and it's part of the nostalgia. And of course current players like the game as it is because otherwise they would have stopped playing a long time ago.
I think the optimal solution would be adding a "new mode" in which (new) players can have MBS etc. if they want to but make it completly optional so most serious matches won't utilize it. But while being optimal, I think that's very utopic. Probably it's not even possible given the nature of BWs codebase. Even retouching the sprites is way above what Blizzard would do. Maybe they still have the 3D models on which the sprites are based on, but they'll look horrible if captured in high res because they're made for 640x480. I also woudn't have high hopes for a high resolution mode because Blizzard are no magicians. If no hack could have done this reliably in the last 15 years, and I'm certain this has been tried countless times, Blizzard can't do it either. They failed to update smaller stuff in other legacy games like Diablo 2 where they where unsuccessful to increase the stash size despite trying to increase it for a long time.
The best we could hope for is Bnet launcher integration, proper, maybe filtered upscaling either 4:3 or stretched, window mode, compatability with modern operating systems, updates to the netcode, maybe official custom server integration for iccup/fish and if they want to really up the ante some form of skill based matchmaking.
On March 02 2016 20:50 ProMeTheus112 wrote: I still can't believe the circle jump in Quake was not intended by the developpers o_o I mean is it a mechanic that was already in Q2 unintentionally, and then they re-added it in Q3? Same or different? It feels like such a great feature of the game because it's well balanced with all its aspects and actually adds a lot of depth I can't believe it's not intentional in Q3.
Yes I think by the time of Q3A it was intentional (or intenionally not fixed). Most early first person shooters had similar "problems" even Descent (where you coudn't jump but move faster if you accelerate in all three directons at the same time and move "sideways-forward" in an awkward angle) but as late as '99 this could've been easily fixed as shown by Unreal Tournament. But it wasn't and fans loved it.
There some other examples like that. Canceling moves in Street Fighter 2 (yes it was a glitch at first!) was so popular that later Street Fighter iterations recreated it and balanced the whole game around it.
Others like wavedashing in Melee were deemed too "hardcore" by the developers for their target audience so they fixed it in Brawl and 4. Maybe it was the right business decision, as both sequels had massive sales but there's a reason Melee is still the most competitive Smash Bros. iteration.
Maybe Blizzard should have as well looked at their fans and recreated all or at least some of Broodwars quirks in SC2 as they obviously love them. But they looked at the competition which had those quirks sorted out even before BW. And being a business - who knows what was the right decision? Imagine SC2 having negative reviews for feeling/being massivly outdated which result in less sales. Maybe you have a a good new game for some happy BW fans (or not, because they still think BW is better) but a commercial flop.
I think Blizzard has seen the success of AoE2 HD despite being a heavily flawed rerelease and they would be dumb to not consider BW HD / TFT HD. There are some hints that they consider it from the job posting to the rumored TFT patch. And I think they know as well how BW with all it's quirks is seen as their holy grail. A possible BW HD is aimed at returning players which played some BW back in the day, new players which want to explore what it's all about or being intrigued by the level of competition and current players looking for a more comfortable way to play the game.
So a part of the target audience would probably like MBS/automining/smartcasting (the new players). Maybe some returning players would like that as well, but I think most want the game mechanically like back in the day. You can compare it to the recent Pokemon Red/Blue rereleases: They left bugs which can easily corrupt your savegame in the games (missingno) because people remember exploiting those bugs and it's part of the nostalgia. And of course current players like the game as it is because otherwise they would have stopped playing a long time ago.
I think the optimal solution would be adding a "new mode" in which (new) players can have MBS etc. if they want to but make it completly optional so most serious matches won't utilize it. But while being optimal, I think that's very utopic. Probably it's not even possible given the nature of BWs codebase. Even retouching the sprites is way above what Blizzard would do. Maybe they still have the 3D models on which the sprites are based on, but they'll look horrible if captured in high res because they're made for 640x480. I also woudn't have high hopes for a high resolution mode because Blizzard are no magicians. If no hack could have done this reliably in the last 15 years, and I'm certain this has been tried countless times, Blizzard can't do it either. They failed to update smaller stuff in other legacy games like Diablo 2 where they where unsuccessful to increase the stash size despite trying to increase it for a long time.
The best we could hope for is Bnet launcher integration, proper, maybe filtered upscaling either 4:3 or stretched, window mode, compatability with modern operating systems, updates to the netcode, maybe official custom server integration for iccup/fish and if they want to really up the ante some form of skill based matchmaking.
Hands down smartest post I've seen in a long time, props.
it's interesting that SF move cancels were originally an unintentional glitch in SF2 I didn't know that
I don't think it's necessarily hard to modify things in the game, depending on what it is. The easiest way to increase resolution in a 2D game is to increase field of vision, but then things can be too small. Blizz couldnt modify resolution or stash size in D2? That can't be difficult, and they've done both in the Median ultimative mod for D2. Did blizz say they were trying to increase stash size in D2 but failed???
Imo, for making a "HD" version of BW, the best course without reusing any 3D prerenders (not all sprites in BW are 3D prerenders are they?? doesn't look like it to me) would be just retouching them by hand, which to me seems like a OK amount of work for a re-release that players would pay for, and gives much better result than upscaling. The sprites are not very big so good pixel art should do the job for say double resolution max, and then just allow different screen ratios to stretch FOV a little? Interestingly, there could be some nice work done to make terrain look nicer, and maybe some new tilesets MBS or automine, if they wanted to implement something like that even just as options, I don't think that's very difficult at all, few days work or weeks at most?? Routines already exist in the game for these functionalities just have to bridge them to work with buildings and rally points.
On March 03 2016 22:41 ProMeTheus112 wrote: it's interesting that SF move cancels were originally an unintentional glitch in SF2 I didn't know that
I don't think it's necessarily hard to modify things in the game, depending on what it is. The easiest way to increase resolution in a 2D game is to increase field of vision, but then things can be too small. Blizz couldnt modify resolution or stash size in D2? That can't be difficult, and they've done both in the Median ultimative mod for D2. Did blizz say they were trying to increase stash size in D2 but failed???
Imo, for making a "HD" version of BW, the best course without reusing any 3D prerenders (not all sprites in BW are 3D prerenders are they?? doesn't look like it to me) would be just retouching them by hand, which to me seems like a OK amount of work for a re-release that players would pay for, and gives much better result than upscaling. The sprites are not very big so good pixel art should do the job for say double resolution max, and then just allow different screen ratios to stretch FOV a little? Interestingly, there could be some nice work done to make terrain look nicer, and maybe some new tilesets MBS or automine, if they wanted to implement something like that even just as options, I don't think that's very difficult at all, few days work or weeks at most?? Routines already exist in the game for these functionalities just have to bridge them to work with buildings and rally points.
It all depents on the games source code how difficult it is to make something like big resolutions and gameplay changes. For example in the C&C Tiberian Sun and C&C Red Alert 2 engine that's really easy.
Starcrafts (Broodwars) code on the other hand is a complete nightmare if you believe the storys of (ex-) blizzard coders that worked on it. I don't think it would be easy at all. Like I said - if Blizzard could implement high resolutions etc. in a couple of weeks, some hackers would have already done it ages ago by reverse engineering it because there's high demand for such a thing. There were some attempts at this but mostly futile.
It's not like changing some parameters here and there would be enough. Part of the game logic and then some could be tied to the resolution and even if you fix that there could be all kinds of weird glitches (again) that may emerge over time which then could catalyse into bad stuff. Also part of the reason MBS, unlimited army selection and automining isn't in the game isn't necessarily a design decision but also a limitation of the engine which is basically an advanced version of the Warcraft 2 engine from 1995 (a game originally made for DOS). If it wasn't possible back then, it would be even harder now to break these limits, because you have work your way through horrible spaghetti code made by dudes which left the company ages ago to achieve that.
They would probably have to rewrite entire sections of the game to a point were doing it with a new engine would be easier to achieve (this has been attempted as well, but abandoned with "Stargus"). But then they would change/delete all the little glitches fans love about Broodwar and have to artificially reimplement them. Just imagine to artificially rewrite the stupid pathing AI! That goes way beyond anyone could demand from a business like Blizzard which would rather use their (very expensive) programmers for other stuff like new games.
EPT
I would vote for putting it out in all honesty 
