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Now that the D2 and W3 patches have been released in succession, I would expect that there will be a SC patch soon. As with the D2 and W3 patches, the SC patch should support the newer Mac operating systems and improve support for Windows 7, 8, and 10. As with every patch however, there are consequences for the SC community as every third-party tool such as APM Alert and Chaos Plugin will need to be updated, maps using EUD triggers such as Diplo will need to be updated, and replays will become incompatible. While the bright side is that the majority of hacks, such as Oblivion, will not be updated because the author is no longer working on them, so will our precious tools that many of us take for granted.
With the amount of support that the ICCup developers have shown to SC in the past few years, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to stay on 1.16.1 due to lack of motivation. The SC community that plays at Fish will have a difficult time moving to the new patch as many UMS maps depends on using the 1.16.1 patch but who knows, and let's not even bother discussing the Chinese server.
Essentially, the SC community has a tight bond with the 1.16.1 patch. Will we come to accept the new patch and forgo our 7 years of work?
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I would be very disheartened if servers like ICCup and Fish didn't make the move to the new patch to be honest. If it makes the game compatible with newer OS then it should be the direction we should be going in imo. If the past years have shown anything, it's that the game will become harder to play with new OS if we stick to 1.16.1. I think that making the game more accessible is in everyone's best interest, even if it damages the established resources.
I don't know as much about modern UMS but couldn't many of the triggers be straight up copy+pasted? Where there is a will, there is a way. From what I've read on here, UMS are still coming out today that are popular like One Punch Man Defense (iirc). I don't see how the new patch would prevent motivated people from creating the next big thing.
I guess the issue is that this might divide the community. I feel like if everyone, or more specifically the servers, switched over officially, then the transition will be a lot more painless than if there are stalwarts preventing the transition. Although new players that stick around long enough to truly enjoy competitive play are few and far between, a compatibility patch would benefit BW in the long term by making it more accessible to these and other players.
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The only way to avoid division of the community is if everyone moves to the new patch. I don't know anything about map-making or plugin-updating, but I am confident that keeping the community as large and tight-knit as possible should be the highest priority.
As you said, "As with every patch however, there are consequences," and this is no different. But why should this one be different with regards to people making the necessary changes? The community is already small enough. I can't imagine how fragmented it'd be if, in the past, people were stubborn and refused to move to new patches. I know, we've spent much longer on 1.16.1 than any other patch, but still, progress shouldn't be rejected because of laziness.
I am extremely grateful to the people who created the plugins on which we depend, but I'd certainly be disappointed if these people decide not to update the plugins, thus fragmenting the community.
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- Well with the DDraw patch that Aqrit released, playing SC on Windows 7, 8, and 10 is very easy.
- Maps using EUD triggers will be affected, they can't be merely copy and pasted because they rely on memory addresses that are specific to the 1.16.1 patch. If you look at Fish's game list for UMS games, you'll see that EUD maps are played on a lot. I'm expecting Fish to switch to the new patch but I'm just pointing out the possibility of some difficulty with that.
- The new patch won't prevent motivated people to create the next big thing, but the SC community has dwindled and there aren't many people willing to do that kind of stuff anymore.
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On March 16 2016 05:28 xboi209 wrote:
- Well with the DDraw patch that Aqrit released, playing SC on Windows 7, 8, and 10 is very easy.
- Maps using EUD triggers will be affected, they can't be merely copy and pasted because they rely on memory addresses that are specific to the 1.16.1 patch. If you look at Fish's game list for UMS games, you'll see that EUD maps are played on a lot. I'm expecting Fish to switch to the new patch but I'm just pointing out the possibility of some difficulty with that.
- The new patch won't prevent motivated people to create the next big thing, but the SC community has dwindled and there aren't many people willing to do that kind of stuff anymore.
1. Sure, it's been patched, but that's something only people in the know have access to. I'd assume that most players who switch to BW right now have access to this information, but it's a case of not knowing what you don't know. If this patch makes it easier for people to buy the CD or download it from ICCup and install it on a modern machine with no additional effort, that greatly decreases the barrier for entry IMO. Speaking personally, if I were vaguely interested in a game and wanted to play it, but once I installed it didn't work properly, I'd be pretty pissed. If I look on forums and find out I have to download this and enable that and etc., the chances of me continuing to invest effort with no immediate enjoyment are diminishing.
2. Ok, not sure what "EUD" is so perhaps my point is invalid. How hard is it just to change the memory address and nothing else, if that's the only thing preventing the UMS from being updated between patches?
3. That's a constant problem in this community, especially in the foreign scene. However, this change could imaginably benefit long-term by being easier to access for more people, of which a small percentage will become devoted, and consequently could provide the "next big thing."
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Speaking personally, if I were vaguely interested in a game and wanted to play it, but once I installed it didn't work properly, I'd be pretty pissed. If I look on forums and find out I have to download this and enable that and etc., the chances of me continuing to invest effort with no immediate enjoyment are diminishing.
1. Valid point but this discussion is mostly geared towards players at ICCup and Fish who already have to look through forums to figure out how to connect to the servers and use the proper antihack, so the DDraw patch is just another topping on the cake. It could even just come by default from the ICCup download.
How hard is it just to change the memory address and nothing else, if that's the only thing preventing the UMS from being updated between patches?
2. The difficult part is finding the new memory addresses which is time consuming, especially if you have a lot of memory addresses in use. This also applies to the tools we use such as APM Alert.
That's a constant problem in this community, especially in the foreign scene. However, this change could imaginably benefit long-term by being easier to access for more people, of which a small percentage will become devoted, and consequently could provide the "next big thing."
3. We may have to wait a very long time for that small percentage of people, if any, to start contributing to the community.
To be clear, I'm not against switching to the new patch but staying on the current patch may be something worth considering.
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I, for one, would be happy to play some BW for the fun now and then if all I have to do is to install the game. I don't have a big enough interest as of now to search for how I am supposed to make the game work on my win10. I believe I am not the only one is this situation.
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On March 16 2016 05:46 xboi209 wrote:Show nested quote +
Speaking personally, if I were vaguely interested in a game and wanted to play it, but once I installed it didn't work properly, I'd be pretty pissed. If I look on forums and find out I have to download this and enable that and etc., the chances of me continuing to invest effort with no immediate enjoyment are diminishing.
1. Valid point but this discussion is mostly geared towards players at ICCup and Fish who already have to look through forums to figure out how to connect to the servers and use the proper antihack, so the DDraw patch is just another topping on the cake. It could even just come by default from the ICCup download. Show nested quote +
How hard is it just to change the memory address and nothing else, if that's the only thing preventing the UMS from being updated between patches?
2. The difficult part is finding the new memory addresses which is time consuming, especially if you have a lot of memory addresses in use. This also applies to the tools we use such as APM Alert. Show nested quote +
That's a constant problem in this community, especially in the foreign scene. However, this change could imaginably benefit long-term by being easier to access for more people, of which a small percentage will become devoted, and consequently could provide the "next big thing."
3. We may have to wait a very long time for that small percentage of people, if any, to start contributing to the community. To be clear, I'm not against switching to the new patch but staying on the current patch may be something worth considering.
Agreed with you on all points given what you've said. Thank you for the informative reply.
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The very first thing that needs to be done, if anything, is simply implement Lan Latency so battlenet can be playable without Chaos Launcher or other third party add-ons.
Even playing UMS on iccup, more players tend to not have AH on and it's still frustrating to have an input delayed by a full second or more.
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We, as ICCup will judge if the patch is a significant improvement over the current one before making a decision whether or not to go with it. That's really all i can say at this point, since the exact details of the patch (if it comes) are up to speculation.
If there is a patch, we will make sure to let everybody know, how we progress on it.
On March 16 2016 04:25 xboi209 wrote:
With the amount of support that the ICCup developers have shown to SC in the past few years, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to stay on 1.16.1 due to lack of motivation.
That's a false assumption actually. If you paid notice, we recently have been very active; improving the ladder experience by adjusting the ladder system to current challenges, updating the map pool and hosting new tours ( like the ICCup Nation League)
I don't claim everybody in the community loves these changes, but you can't argue we have been disinterested.
- The new patch won't prevent motivated people to create the next big thing, but the SC community has dwindled and there aren't many people willing to do that kind of stuff anymore.
This is more on point: there are still motivated people in this community; but we are getting fewer and fewer and that affects the amount of people able and willing to contribute in various ways. Only solution: we all need to be more active in this hobby of ours and contribute to "the cause" where we can.
Or explicitly: if you are worried about ICCUp having the qualified personal to adjust to a new patch with all the technical details xboi, you staff membership is always open for you and we'd appreciate your input on the matter. :>
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If the patch improves compatibility with newer operating systems but breaks everything else then I'd prefer not to change since we pretty much have everything we need with third party programs. Why do you assume a patch would necessarily break everything though?
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Don't worry, mca will make a new launcher and all is gonna be fine. iccup might as well take mca, since his launcher actually hacks the icclauncher ;-)
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How big were the patches to D2 and W3?
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On March 16 2016 13:19 ejac wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2016 11:27 kingfish- wrote:
Don't worry, mca will make a new launcher and all is gonna be fine. iccup might as well take mca, since his launcher actually hacks the icclauncher ;-) You don't realize the person who made this thread is the creator of mcaLauncher do you?
mca is the creator of mcaLauncher...
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On March 16 2016 08:17 Cele wrote:
We, as ICCup will judge if the patch is a significant improvement over the current one before making a decision whether or not to go with it. That's really all i can say at this point, since the exact details of the patch (if it comes) are up to speculation.
If there is a patch, we will make sure to let everybody know, how we progress on it.
This isn't mean to sound harsh (really not), but you're (all BW admins) not the one that's going to be calling the shot whether or not ICCup will roll with a new patch, despite being it a no-brainer. Obviously it has to happen if Blizzard manages to erase the most common problems, such as colour bugs and hopefully offers a minor help for routing issues.
The point was made by xboi a while ago, dealing with the owners of ICCup, namely YelloAnt, is frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I hold him in highest regards, simply for letting us use the server for years without getting something back, as well as always lending a helpful hand whenever it came to tournament issues. However, he is very reserved when it comes to simple updates, I'm pretty sure any ex- and current senior admin will tell you how annoying his policy is: nobody he doesn't know touches the source. Consequently you'd have to wait months for his trusted coders to maybe have a look. Just as example, it took Soldier about half a year to get some icon changes, me more than two years to bring up ranking updates to discussion, which ultimatively were realized long after I was gone by... I think it was Face? And these are minor tweaks, I really wouldn't want to be the person to non-stop nag Ant to adapt to a new patch, especially since all the coders I knew are most likely gone from the portal by now.
edit: I left out that xboi was in an ICCup admin position and had the pleasure to try to get his inventions added to the portal. I'd say about 95% of the technical forum help topics, tool suggestions, tutorials and whatnot were written by him and him alone, as well as on-person support on the server. He knows what he says first hand, sadly.
On March 16 2016 05:28 xboi209 wrote:
- The new patch won't prevent motivated people to create the next big thing, but the SC community has dwindled and there aren't many people willing to do that kind of stuff anymore.
That's not nearly as bad as you might think. A few years back I thought the same, but I was 'only' somewhat familiar with the European scene and found some people like you from North America. Don't underestimate the East European and Asian Scene though, there's plenty of lunatics left willing to contribute. Really, I wouldn't have expected a Polish flamer would release an effective launcher, or yoda getting Defiler up. Whenever you lost hope one of them pops up, you included.
Also, back in the days we lacked coders even more, at least from what I remembered. Most of the players and admins were students of MINT-subjects, but close to none really studied IT-related subjects, rather physics, maths, chemistry and whatnot. Nowadays there's more people with a general knowledge, so they don't have to invest nearly as much of their free time than they did a decade back. There's hope and hope dies last. I don't think Fish will have a problem to transfer.
Yet, it all depends on ICCup. If they start to hesitate it could really be the end of that server and the foreign scene will take a bigger hit than expected. Not sure if a total newb would undergo the Fish registration and the language issues.
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Wtf there's a Chinese server?
quick edit: Fish will be getting an update as well as all content from wProgramming if a patch is released, and they are actually preparing for a predicted wave of new players.
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yes, but they are using one of the older patches iirc. something like 1.13 or so? I'm not sure.
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On March 16 2016 18:02 GeckoXp wrote:
Yet, it all depends on ICCup. If they start to hesitate it could really be the end of that server and the foreign scene will take a bigger hit than expected. Not sure if a total newb would undergo the Fish registration and the language issues.
I feel like if/when Fish switches, ICCup has no choice but to switch or risk losing a big portion of its current active population. Sure, many low rank players might stick around, especially those that don't even know what Fish is. But if forced with a choice due to convenience and progress, I bet most strong players would pick Fish even if it meant that they had to bite the bullet and take a few hits to their ego in the process. I doubt anyone will keep two version of SC installed. Unless you can do something tricky like using an old .exe? Does that work like that? I don't recall. However, I doubt people would even go that far. Whenever there is a convenience issue, you're going to lose a lot of people in any walk of life imo.
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mca64Launcher also wont be updated
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Speaking as a member of SEN, this patch will be as any other patch to us. We will continue to do what we have always done: Research EUDs and offsets, update tools and plugins, and continue to produce quality UMS and mod content.
We have been coping with patch changes for a long time, lets not forget how devastating 1.14 was to the UMS community due to all the maps broken from stacked text being taken out. Lets not forget the entire series of 1.13 patches a-f being in response to Heinermann's EUD discoveries. And I think the number of hacks, drops, gamelist crashes, ect that will be gone as a result of this will actually be a net gain, these are things that actively kept people from being able to play. The number of lobby greifers alone is staggering.
So in short: Nothing new for us vets, bring it on Blizzard. A little attention for one of the finest games ever produced is certainly not out of place.
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Its an easy question to answer: The crowd will go where it is best.
That means that if BW stays better for over 50% of the users without the patch, people wont patch it, so we will stay on 1.16.1
If however the patch is a great success (lets say they fix maplimit at the same time), then eventually people will move to the next patch.
Its kinda like the free market, the better option will win.
So in other words, Ill be happy if a patch comes out, but I will check first if its worth going into it.
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Blizzard can also fucked up this patch. They already did it with 1.16
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On March 16 2016 19:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
mca64Launcher also wont be updated
I really wish you would update it. It has some problems but it's clearly the best launcher for iCCup. You're literally the ONLY dude to support a foreign StarCraft launcher
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On March 16 2016 20:41 iloveav wrote:
Its an easy question to answer: The crowd will go where it is best.
That means that if BW stays better for over 50% of the users without the patch, people wont patch it, so we will stay on 1.16.1
If however the patch is a great success (lets say they fix maplimit at the same time), then eventually people will move to the next patch.
Its kinda like the free market, the better option will win.
So in other words, Ill be happy if a patch comes out, but I will check first if its worth going into it.
I think this is arguable with the Korean fan base. If a patch releases Fish, wProgramming, and all Koreans will blindly update to it just because it's, well, StarCraft.
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On March 16 2016 20:41 iloveav wrote:
Its an easy question to answer: The crowd will go where it is best.
That means that if BW stays better for over 50% of the users without the patch, people wont patch it, so we will stay on 1.16.1
If however the patch is a great success (lets say they fix maplimit at the same time), then eventually people will move to the next patch.
Its kinda like the free market, the better option will win.
So in other words, Ill be happy if a patch comes out, but I will check first if its worth going into it.
I disagree. Just like in US politics, the popular vote doesn't matter. What matters is what the servers enforce, not the players. You're also wrong in this being a choice between what's better; unless something goes inexplicably wrong, I don't see how this patch can be worse than what we currently have. It's too early to say for sure, but I'm pretty certain this patch would bring improvements to the average modern user. In other words, better is not the quality that is in question. It's whether it's good enough for servers to leave the status quo. Psychologically speaking, many decisions are based off a desire to avoid change as opposed to any actual cost/benefit analysis of the change. That and the potential lack of community support (as was mentioned earlier) are the biggest foreseeable hurdles in my opinion.
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United States4149 Posts
On March 16 2016 15:44 deus_073 wrote:
How big were the patches to D2 and W3?
Nothing huge, just a small patch to help with compatibility / Mac OS X. It did however break 3rd party ladders/hacks, and I'm going to assume custom maps but I'm not sure.
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On March 16 2016 23:11 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2016 20:41 iloveav wrote:
Its an easy question to answer: The crowd will go where it is best.
That means that if BW stays better for over 50% of the users without the patch, people wont patch it, so we will stay on 1.16.1
If however the patch is a great success (lets say they fix maplimit at the same time), then eventually people will move to the next patch.
Its kinda like the free market, the better option will win.
So in other words, Ill be happy if a patch comes out, but I will check first if its worth going into it. I disagree. Just like in US politics, the popular vote doesn't matter. What matters is what the servers enforce, not the players. You're also wrong in this being a choice between what's better; unless something goes inexplicably wrong, I don't see how this patch can be worse than what we currently have. It's too early to say for sure, but I'm pretty certain this patch would bring improvements to the average modern user. In other words, better is not the quality that is in question. It's whether it's good enough for servers to leave the status quo. Psychologically speaking, many decisions are based off a desire to avoid change as opposed to any actual cost/benefit analysis of the change. That and the potential lack of community support (as was mentioned earlier) are the biggest foreseeable hurdles in my opinion.
Politics are bought long before the campaign even begins. That would be a good analogy if Blizzard bought/paid off Fish and Iccup to get the patch going.
Here you have for the moment a different situation. Why did people even migrate from b.net to Iccup? And why some went to fish from there?
It is not because the server enforces something, it is because it has what they are looking for.
You are forgeting that in politics, the 51% can say what the 49% has to do. I dont see Iccup forcing fish koreans to start using Iccup because it does or does not do something.
But I do see Koreans joining Iccup if Fish screws them up.
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On March 16 2016 22:52 WinterViewbot420 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2016 20:41 iloveav wrote:
Its an easy question to answer: The crowd will go where it is best.
That means that if BW stays better for over 50% of the users without the patch, people wont patch it, so we will stay on 1.16.1
If however the patch is a great success (lets say they fix maplimit at the same time), then eventually people will move to the next patch.
Its kinda like the free market, the better option will win.
So in other words, Ill be happy if a patch comes out, but I will check first if its worth going into it. I think this is arguable with the Korean fan base. If a patch releases Fish, wProgramming, and all Koreans will blindly update to it just because it's, well, StarCraft.
I dont know much about koreans and their way of thinking, but It safer to say that they will do what is in their individual interest first, rather than blindly accept anything.
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I dont think they should patch with only the compatibility fixes, maybe they should do all in one type of thing where They fix the compatibility issues but at the same time provide a server with competitive play, ladder and etc. They should atleast have some type of familiarity with the Scene here... Or maybe they'll just totally ignore starcraft i have no idea.
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On March 16 2016 22:41 WinterViewbot420 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2016 19:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
mca64Launcher also wont be updated I really wish you would update it. It has some problems but it's clearly the best launcher for iCCup. You're literally the ONLY dude to support a foreign StarCraft launcher
Dont have a time for this. Much work is needed to fix it.
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On March 16 2016 18:45 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2016 18:02 GeckoXp wrote:
Yet, it all depends on ICCup. If they start to hesitate it could really be the end of that server and the foreign scene will take a bigger hit than expected. Not sure if a total newb would undergo the Fish registration and the language issues. I feel like if/when Fish switches, ICCup has no choice but to switch or risk losing a big portion of its current active population. Sure, many low rank players might stick around, especially those that don't even know what Fish is. But if forced with a choice due to convenience and progress, I bet most strong players would pick Fish even if it meant that they had to bite the bullet and take a few hits to their ego in the process. I doubt anyone will keep two version of SC installed. Unless you can do something tricky like using an old .exe? Does that work like that? I don't recall. However, I doubt people would even go that far. Whenever there is a convenience issue, you're going to lose a lot of people in any walk of life imo.
Yes, on paper this makes sense. Most of the Brood War admins care a lot and if it was up to them a lot more would change. However, they're not in charge of the technical site of the server or the page, which is why a lot of criticism is taken to them. Most of them shut up and don't communicate the issue publicly, because, well, you won't rant about your colleagues, especially since most of them are nice beings.
ICCup is larger than you might think (or not, you do speak Russian after all), with Brood War being just a very tiny addendum to the page. It has so little players, it's really not worth any kind of investment in the eyes of the developers. Ant keeps the server up because it doesn't cost much money and because he likes the game a lot. It's what he apparently started out with. If it ever starts to really cost much time or money, the servers won't survive.
And that's the frustrating part. It could be done, as could be much more. In the past there were a number of people who had the expertise to take on some work, but weren't allowed - xboi being one of them. Consequently nothing changes, despite the Brood War team doing as much as they can to convince Ant and his developers to at least fix the most important features. You don't imagine how long it took to force them to re-start the clan war section, despite us still having three very active divisions.
TL;DR: The decision is not in the hands of the community, but in the hands of people who transferred to other games without playing them.
As for the impact, I have no doubt it'd be a serious, yet understandable blow if ICCup started to really die over night. People claim they'd play more BW, even if it was just every now and again, and I believe them. What holds them back is the colour shit and the routing issues. Even if they were fixed, a non-English server is required, as ordinary battle.net is gobshite. The only alternative would then be Fish, for which you have to download special launchers (no mca apparently) and get to learn about basic phrases, so you can host and find games on your own. You'd replace one barrier with another one. Also, the place is so huge that a casual won't find the existing foreign enclave easily. Mind you, I'm talking about outsiders or people returning after six or seven years inactivity.
I really can't see how a patch would be positive in that regard.
For a side note, I was kind-of looking forward to Birdie's experiment. At the time he tried to host it, it was a bad idea, because ICCup was still a good place to play, despite the antics I and others had caused. If a patch would hit, Birdie's server would at least give us more than just hope. If someone wants to host a new page, the timing couldn't be any better. It doesn't need to do nearly as much as Birdie had planned, a simple ladder for 1v1 and 2v2 would be enough. Elo, Glicko or old point rankings - doesn't matter.
Same goes for any kind of launcher really. It has to feature LanLat, some from of Antihack and not more. The rest is fancy add-ons you can live without, you just got used to them.
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On March 17 2016 00:34 mca64Launcher_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2016 22:41 WinterViewbot420 wrote:On March 16 2016 19:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
mca64Launcher also wont be updated I really wish you would update it. It has some problems but it's clearly the best launcher for iCCup. You're literally the ONLY dude to support a foreign StarCraft launcher Dont have a time for this. Much work is needed to fix it.
I'd love to adopt the project, if not that at least open source and translate the whole thing before abandoning it
Geckoxp
I'm too lazy to pick individual quotes from your post, but if iCCup dies Fish will roflstomp the foreign community out of existence. Nobody wants to learn Korean for a video game and Koreans don't want a bunch of foreigners on the server. Foreigners are treasured right now, but if a bunch of Peruvians and Russians come in you can kiss foreign IPs goodbye, they won't put up with it.
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On March 16 2016 18:02 GeckoXp wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2016 08:17 Cele wrote:
We, as ICCup will judge if the patch is a significant improvement over the current one before making a decision whether or not to go with it. That's really all i can say at this point, since the exact details of the patch (if it comes) are up to speculation.
If there is a patch, we will make sure to let everybody know, how we progress on it.
This isn't mean to sound harsh (really not), but you're (all BW admins) not the one that's going to be calling the shot whether or not ICCup will roll with a new patch, despite being it a no-brainer. Obviously it has to happen if Blizzard manages to erase the most common problems, such as colour bugs and hopefully offers a minor help for routing issues. The point was made by xboi a while ago, dealing with the owners of ICCup, namely YelloAnt, is frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I hold him in highest regards, simply for letting us use the server for years without getting something back, as well as always lending a helpful hand whenever it came to tournament issues. However, he is very reserved when it comes to simple updates, I'm pretty sure any ex- and current senior admin will tell you how annoying his policy is: nobody he doesn't know touches the source. Consequently you'd have to wait months for his trusted coders to maybe have a look. Just as example, it took Soldier about half a year to get some icon changes, me more than two years to bring up ranking updates to discussion, which ultimatively were realized long after I was gone by... I think it was Face? And these are minor tweaks, I really wouldn't want to be the person to non-stop nag Ant to adapt to a new patch, especially since all the coders I knew are most likely gone from the portal by now. edit: I left out that xboi was in an ICCup admin position and had the pleasure to try to get his inventions added to the portal. I'd say about 95% of the technical forum help topics, tool suggestions, tutorials and whatnot were written by him and him alone, as well as on-person support on the server. He knows what he says first hand, sadly. Show nested quote +On March 16 2016 05:28 xboi209 wrote:
- The new patch won't prevent motivated people to create the next big thing, but the SC community has dwindled and there aren't many people willing to do that kind of stuff anymore. That's not nearly as bad as you might think. A few years back I thought the same, but I was 'only' somewhat familiar with the European scene and found some people like you from North America. Don't underestimate the East European and Asian Scene though, there's plenty of lunatics left willing to contribute. Really, I wouldn't have expected a Polish flamer would release an effective launcher, or yoda getting Defiler up. Whenever you lost hope one of them pops up, you included. Also, back in the days we lacked coders even more, at least from what I remembered. Most of the players and admins were students of MINT-subjects, but close to none really studied IT-related subjects, rather physics, maths, chemistry and whatnot. Nowadays there's more people with a general knowledge, so they don't have to invest nearly as much of their free time than they did a decade back. There's hope and hope dies last. I don't think Fish will have a problem to transfer. Yet, it all depends on ICCup. If they start to hesitate it could really be the end of that server and the foreign scene will take a bigger hit than expected. Not sure if a total newb would undergo the Fish registration and the language issues.
im aware of the position the BW section has within the ICCup orject and aware aswell of Ant's position regarding it. I had the "pleasure" myself to request some minor changes and deal with the non-existent results. If that's what xboi meant, i have to agree. But what good is it? You know i supported Birdie's Starserver too, as i did transaltions for the german localisation just like you did and was supportive of the idea, but as you said it didn't happen. And tbh i don't see something else happening atm. So it seems to me, the best we can do is, to work with what we have and stick to ICCup.
And yes the ICCup personal, me included, can be a bit defensive about stuff, but i guess you know full well why. Additionally, i wanna say i will be more than positive to any kind of solution for the described problem. But until then, let's stick to what we have.
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Some ideas:
• since BW is such a small part of iccup for a long time due to various reasons, I believe the server should be moved to TL
• TL is the best place for a BW server since that's what it's most well know for, plus it features a large community that would pick up BW again if they had the right conditions
• having an established server on TL that's managed by people who love the game, with admins who are empowered by the servers' owner, the community could grow.
The only problem I see is money:
- the current owner of the iccup sc server might not give it away for free, though if he loves the game, I think there might be a chance.
- maintaining a server and creating a good launcher with the right tools takes more than passionate people. It takes PAID passionate people. For that I'm willing to donate a certain fee, either per month, per year or maybe a one time thing. 100s of $, even a few K. I'm sure other BW users will do the same if everything is coordinated transparently by some TL staff.
Having iccup and TL separated doesn't make sense in my mind, nor having 2 servers. The community should be unified under one main website. Will there be problems? Of course, but I believe this is the best option.
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I would definitely love a TL hosted server, I think it would grow the foreign scene by a lot and we could put a name to all the faces if we so wish.
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On March 17 2016 01:58 deus_073 wrote:
Some ideas:[...]
Is the TL BW community really that big? It used to be, but nowadays I would do a poll or gather some data first to determine if it's even worth it. Also TL mostly represents the english speaking community. Outside of korea starcraft is most popular in CIS / eastern europe. Unless TL introduces a russian subforum / translation you won't get those players over here.
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Yeah, TL is only a fraction of the ICCup user base. It's mostly Russian and South American, English speakers do not really matter too much.
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im sorry but TL doesn't have the manpower atm to host a server of their own imo. The amount of dedicated tech savy people is not big enough.
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I agree the current TL community may not be that big, but the potential is surely here. I'm confident TL has a lot more traffic than iccup. The chances of growing the player base are much higher here.
@Cele, I highly doubt that. Even if that were the case, you're saying moving the server here and raising money for dedicated staff wouldn't be a solution?
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Go ask Ant if he will do more if you offer him money. ICCup's traffic surely isn't that small and he might talk to you, or even arrange for some form of partnership. Less effort, more output. It's not that they can't, they're not willing to at the moment.
Also, be aware that money changes everything, especially if the admins know the donors. I'm not sure if that's going to be a fine atmosphere.
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I know that as soon as I get financially stable, I will be putting money into the scene, whether it's with the goal of paying people to update certain tools if necessary (mca64launcher), trying to establish a new server or hosting new tournaments.
This game is too perfect to not provide the opportunity to people to play it against each other in a comfortable manner.
Reading all this information about the ICCup server, staff and administration is quite disheartening and leaves one to wonder how amazing ICCup could be for starcraft...
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On March 16 2016 19:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
mca64Launcher also wont be updated
What do you mean won't be updated?
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@Gecko - so you're pushing for establishing Iccup more rather than moving it here? I'm not saying I'm against it, far from it, but I think regular gamers would have a better time on TL rather than iccup, especially in the fragile beginnings. There's so much amazing content here, so much potential for support ... at least that's my reasoning.
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No, I think it's a failure to assume throwing money onto developers would solve the issue, nor do I think having a server on TL would be the best of ideas for several reasons.
Against money:
- Admins tend to do biased decisions once money is involved, even more than they do either way
- probable legal problems with Blizzard Entertainment incoming, it's a pirate server after all (note how ICCup is an area which laughs at IP laws)
- it gets super sisserious and people get the wrong idea of being entitled to service
Against Teamliquid:
- I'm all for diversity, the more pages, the better
- Teamliquid does only support English and is quite American. Most of the players are from different areas and have a different mindset entirely. Not sure if that won't clash sooner or later.
- Teamliquid has the tendency to be super sisserious about things, which has its ups and downs
- Teamliquid has the tendency to focus on Korea for most parts, whereas I'd like to have foreign admins target foreigners only
- for the same reason most TL staff people are most likely more interested in Korea, not sure they'd spend as mch time on foreign issues, which are a lot more boring
Against ICCup:
- Rule 6, developer is lazy
- is good Russian architecture, monument to MS Frontpage, yes yes
please note, none of the points is targeted against Teamliquid or their members, nor against the BW admins of ICCup.
Also, there are no "fragile beginnings", ICCup already exists. If anything, the fragile beginnings are to be expected on Teamliquid or any new platform, because of stuff you have to test in reality. Literally the only reason to keep ICCup is that the system works. It's incredibly hard to build a working server, else Birdie would have had success a few years back in no time.
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On March 17 2016 02:57 deus_073 wrote:
I agree the current TL community may not be that big, but the potential is surely here. I'm confident TL has a lot more traffic than iccup. The chances of growing the player base are much higher here.
@Cele, I highly doubt that. Even if that were the case, you're saying moving the server here and raising money for dedicated staff wouldn't be a solution?
@deus: for the last year (or so) we as ICCup have been very active in cooperating with TL.net for various events. We support their TLS Champs, we did support the TLS Cups in smurf checking, providing casters etc. From that, i think i have some impression of how the structure of the TL staff is. I don't mean to talk bad about it; in fact im a big fan and friendly with many of them. But my impression is: TL staff is set up to achieve, what their focus is: providing coverage and articles as well as some tournaments. They do that gloriously and we are happy to give them a platform in ICCup to host events, but i think there's not to many people who have a great deal of experience with hosting a server and dealing with everything that comes along with it (tech support, anti hack, ladder support etc). ICCup is well structured in that regard, but as previously pointed out, we lack two very important things:
- manpower to pursue all the projects we want to pursue
- the amount of access to the main code to make meaningful adjustments, since, the Server is run with a Dota 1 focus and by a crew of russian dev's who, perhaps rightfully so, see ICCUP BW not as their prime concern.
Let me explain something about the foreign userbase:
despite all the meaningful discussions taking place on this page, the vast majority of users does not frequent TL often or at all. Many russian, former CIS states, and southamerican users do not use TL, in fact the amount of users who is very active here and plays a lot on the server is quite limited. This means that a server hosted by TL will not reach the amount of users we would wish for and would risk to produce a split community, where some users still use the ICCup server and some use the new TL server.
What we should do:
If the described scenario comes up and im not sure it will tbh: We need to make a unified effort to make a new server a sucessful project. That would include the currently very dedicated ICCup admins, tech savy persons who have done a lot for this community like xboi, MCA, Birdie and others. But i can not stress enough that a new server can only florish if it
a) does not neglect the non english users
b) is not run in competition to ICC, but as it's sucessor
Well, that's my perception of the issue at least i don't claim to have certainty on this subject as that would actually be quite foolish :>
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On March 17 2016 03:27 B-royal wrote:
Reading all this information about the ICCup server, staff and administration is quite disheartening and leaves one to wonder how amazing ICCup could be for starcraft...
Well, you gotta not mix things up here. Easy answer:
ICC BW staff -> very dedicated, hard working nerds who try to make us happy in their free time.
ICCup ownership -> more interested in the Dota section then BW, rightfully so, the BW section does not create a lot of income. thus: very limited ability/willingness to change things.
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I understand your points of view. I 100% agree this supposed new server should not be in competition. What would be ideal, though not sure if possible, is to keep the current IP so all the non-english users remain on the server. Not sure how that would work, but I agree that most players don't visit these forums that often. Having said that, the power of TL to convert gamers to sc players is undeniable imo. The reverse does not apply.
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On March 17 2016 04:52 deus_073 wrote:
I understand your points of view. I 100% agree this supposed new server should not be in competition. What would be ideal, though not sure if possible, is to keep the current IP so all the non-english users remain on the server. Not sure how that would work, but I agree that most players don't visit these forums that often. Having said that, the power of TL to convert gamers to sc players is undeniable imo. The reverse does not apply.
i would support such a project if it was on the horizon and continue my staff work there. Yet, i fail to see who can make Ant an offer for it. looking at our statistics @ icc i have to doubt your second point though. A big chunk of the users here don't play on ICCup regular. A small amount of users have joined us after Tastosis did their 15k viewer cast for VNSL, but you'd be suprised how little actually.
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On March 17 2016 04:52 deus_073 wrote:
I understand your points of view. I 100% agree this supposed new server should not be in competition. What would be ideal, though not sure if possible, is to keep the current IP so all the non-english users remain on the server. Not sure how that would work, but I agree that most players don't visit these forums that often. Having said that, the power of TL to convert gamers to sc players is undeniable imo. The reverse does not apply.
I really don't want to disappoint you, but Teamliquid and most foreign events failed to convert gamers into sc players (doesn't mean they were bad). There are single cases for which it worked, but the major leagues for the best players simply didn't fulfill this goal. I had the benefit to see stats on ICCup for a long time, some of them were disheartening, others were great, yet others didn't do anything. It really depends on the style of events.
For instance, the opening and the publicity of the first SSLs had literally no impact on ICCup's numbers whatsoever, leaving out the numbers of downloads for 'professional' replays. It doesn't matter if a Flash, Bisu or whoever returns. People will watch, yes, but not play. Same goes for casts by Tastosis - nice for some, but no impact. People dwell on nostalgia, rather than joining the servers. Especially for Korean events go: Some might try the Fish server, then stop a few days after, as there is no connected community.
Then there'd be the fail-events, of which we had quite a few. I remember the ISLs, which were horrible when it came to effects. It sounded great, but it wasn't, especially the first edition. Great viewer numbers, great increase of ladder activity, so what was the downside? Only the already highly active players generated more training matches and that was it. To maintain the ladder event almost all resources were re-focussed on ladder complaints and technical issues. What was left out was the maintenance of the clan league, especially the lower divisions, where the beginners trained, same went for the beginner programme, replay section and in parts the ordinary news and forum support. The focus was to "appear professional", not helping the server catering to players of all ranks and interests. As a matter of fact, even translations for Russian and Korean issues (e.g. updated rules) had been delayed, pissing off 70% of the user base only a few weeks later.
This went for a couple of events, most of them being organized by English speakers, the biggest issue being either binding too much admin power for too little pay-off (new players), or colliding with own / other and more effective third party events.
Be that as it may, it wasn't TLs fault in most scenarios, and even when there were problems, it wasn't as bad as it was in other cases.
The third class of events were organized by the East Europeans, which indeed brought new blood and promoted semi-known people into stars, namely Defiler and Netwars events. Some of the Nation Wars helped, especially the one sponsored by SBWI, even though the effect was temporary.
In my opinion, the downside of promoting on Teamliquid is that you activate a ton of nostalgic people, who really don't care much for the existing community. They like to discuss the tales of "back when" and then make out plans for a "recreation of the scene", while being deaf to what's really needed. This can drive you really crazy, especially if some nobody from the SCII forums imposes his thoughts on reality, fighting with the collected power of political correctness. If TL.net can turn this around and come up with a project to cater to those who are genuinely interested (!), there might be a chance.
And again, more diverse advertisment for such a programme is a must. TL.net's range is limited, it needs to add other portals, such as the national pages, reddit and god knows where else you could farm for nerds.
To just underline my point, Western Europe, the US and Canada combined used to make about 10 - 15% of the active player base. Whereas Russia alone made about 30%, South America another 30% (both scenes don't really read here), the rest was basically Central American countries, Poland, Korea and China (who also mostly don't read here). Now lean back and guess what kind of audience TL.net appeals to and how much it has to convert in reality to just equal the numbers of ICCup.
edit:
Again, no offense meant to the staff people here, or many people commenting in these forums. The majority is helpful and offers great reads. As Cele pointed out, cooperation is key to really activate new people and recently the most steps seemed to at least have the right intentions. I'm glad all people involved in key positions (namely 2pac and Cele) are incapable of being angry, so that's another stone out of the way :x
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Thank you for sharing, geckoXp. It's clear to me you know what you're talking about.
Since many tournament style of events don't entice people to actually play the game, I think like some other people have mentioned before, a revamp of possibly the graphics and "infrastructure" (automated match making, no color bugs, no crashes, steam integration??,...) similar to age of empires II HD will be the only way to actually get more people playing brood war.
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On March 16 2016 08:12 razorsuKe wrote:
The very first thing that needs to be done, if anything, is simply implement Lan Latency so battlenet can be playable without Chaos Launcher or other third party add-ons.
Even playing UMS on iccup, more players tend to not have AH on and it's still frustrating to have an input delayed by a full second or more.
Are the battle.net servers still operational by the way? I would like to see a "connect to server" option allowing to reach ICCUP, Fish, etc, without needing a special launcher too.
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On March 17 2016 06:12 GeckoXp wrote:
In my opinion, the downside of promoting on Teamliquid is that you activate a ton of nostalgic people, who really don't care much for the existing community. They like to discuss the tales of "back when" and then make out plans for a "recreation of the scene", while being deaf to what's really needed. This can drive you really crazy, especially if some nobody from the SCII forums imposes his thoughts on reality, fighting with the collected power of political correctness.
lol
also i find it amusing stats means so much to iccup people, you are talking about a 15+ year old game with dated (even vomit-inducing for certain kids) graphics and one of the highest mechanical difficulty of all games that exists. the only games i think that surpass BW in terms of mechanical difficulty are certain rhythm games. not to mention RTS is never a mainstream popular game genre at any point in history with the exception of Korea in the early 2000s, how many people are you expecting to attract again, never mind retain? only just shows how many blind Tastosis fanboys there are, thinking they are magic wands or something smh.
also people (especially the same nostalgic and casual sc2-centric people that you abhor!) love to talk about "BW remake" or "HD remake". No matter how many nice new aesthetic features you implement, at its core its still the same difficult game, the retention rate will still be very very low.
if you start adding in non-aesthetic, "gameplay improving" features like MBS, automining and other modern conveniences, its not going to be the same game, it will attract a big uproar in the korean/chinese scene and cause divisiveness in all communities. just like in aoe2 where you have the veterans playing vanilla aoe2 on the 3rd party Voobly server and the rest plays AOE2 HD. also you realise, why would blizzard even do that? ask for modern graphics and mechanics and they will just kindly point you in the direction of sc2.. ALSO as time passes on we coming to a new generation of gamers where there are people that think LoL is a difficult strenous game, never mind games like SC. now you ask yourself what kind of retention rate are you expecting again?
also on topic since this is only a new technical patch i would think all the servers will eventually (sooner or later) adopt the patch once they fix any 3rd party plugin/s that might break with it. small exception with the chinese VS server, unless the new patch addresses their UDP needs too. not sure about how it will influence the mapmaking community (with all this talk of EUD) but i assume they will adapt as well. so i don't get why this is even a thread.
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On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote:
the only games i think that surpass BW in terms of mechanical difficulty are certain rhythm games
The skill cap is infinite, but mechanically speaking BW is a lot harder than O2Jam, LR2, etc
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On March 17 2016 12:01 WinterViewbot420 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote:
the only games i think that surpass BW in terms of mechanical difficulty are certain rhythm games The skill cap is infinite, but mechanically speaking BW is a lot harder than O2Jam, LR2, etc
yeah probably, but i get seriously frightened everytime i look at a pro JP rhythm player. you cannot deny that the amount of practice and talent behind that is any diminished compared to a pro BW player
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France1919 Posts
On March 17 2016 06:12 GeckoXp wrote:
In my opinion, the downside of promoting on Teamliquid is that you activate a ton of nostalgic people, who really don't care much for the existing community. They like to discuss the tales of "back when" and then make out plans for a "recreation of the scene", while being deaf to what's really needed.
And what is really needed?
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On March 17 2016 12:06 Probemicro wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2016 12:01 WinterViewbot420 wrote:On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote:
the only games i think that surpass BW in terms of mechanical difficulty are certain rhythm games The skill cap is infinite, but mechanically speaking BW is a lot harder than O2Jam, LR2, etc yeah probably, but i get seriously frightened everytime i look at a pro JP rhythm player. you cannot deny that the amount of practice and talent behind that is any diminished compared to a pro BW player
It just looks a lot harder, it has the same problem that applies to StarCraft in general, including SC2, which is the initial skill jump. Not just because of mechanical difficulty, but it's just so unique. It's not a game you can just pick up, it takes a few days to even read. It's like learning another alphabet and once you get it down you're just fine, whereas with StarCraft your skill slowly increases over several months or years.
Source: shit o2jam player, but better than average
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On March 17 2016 12:12 WinterViewbot420 wrote:
whereas with StarCraft your skill slowly increases over several months or years.
ohh so instead in rhythm games every beginning players can magically learn how to do an S on an ultra difficult map with just a few weeks of practice? wowww.
lol im through reasoning with you.
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On March 17 2016 12:21 Probemicro wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2016 12:12 WinterViewbot420 wrote:
whereas with StarCraft your skill slowly increases over several months or years.
ohh so instead in rhythm games every beginning players can magically learn how to do an S on an ultra difficult map with just a few weeks of practice? wowww. lol im through reasoning with you.
My point was the mechanical skill required, which you brought up. Improvement in rhythm games comes down to how well you can visually process the notes falling and eventually physical stamina.
StarCraft is not like this. It's not a yes or no situation, there are so many variables and so many different ways to do the same thing.
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On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote:
(...)
not sure about how it will influence the mapmaking community (with all this talk of EUD) but i assume they will adapt as well. so i don't get why this is even a thread.
It's a thread, because xboi, rightfully so, expects that it'll be a problem to adapt for ICCup and other parts of the foreign scene.
As for the rest of your quote goes, it boils down to
On March 17 2016 12:08 HaN- wrote:
And what is really needed?
On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote:
lol
also i find it amusing stats means so much to iccup people
(...)
only just shows how many blind Tastosis fanboys there are, thinking they are magic wands or something smh.
also people (especially the same nostalgic and casual sc2-centric people that you abhor!) love to talk about "BW remake" or "HD remake". No matter how many nice new aesthetic features you implement, at its core its still the same difficult game, the retention rate will still be very very low.
(...) ALSO as time passes on we coming to a new generation of gamers where there are people that think LoL is a difficult strenous game, never mind games like SC. now you ask yourself what kind of retention rate are you expecting again?
I'm not sure I understood you correctly. Stats don't mean much to "ICCup" people. To the owners it matters a lot, like for any other portal. They want to spend their limited resources on what attracts most visitors. This is not Brood War for ICCup.
As for the server admins goes, they never really cared what generates the most traffic or attracts the most players. Sometimes this was a stuipd decision, sometimes it wasn't. The leagues still happened and they still do, nobody takes offense in TLS/TLC not attracting players. It might sound as if it did, but it doesn't. I'm myself am happy that at least that league goes on for now.
To the rest goes, yes I'm aware that it's incredibly hard to get new people to play the game. Therefore a new patch might really be helpful. In parts the younger players will never touch Brood War, either the genre is not appealing, the mechanics, the looks or whatnot. It's personal preference and I'm fine with them not enjoying BW as much as I did.
However, Brood War still is a great game, but it's hard to get it to run properly. If a patch helps with that, fixes color bugs, makes it playable on bigger screens without W-Mode, adds LanLat, Antihack and works on routing issues, it is definitely a chance for the servers to get new people in and re-activate some of the older players.
Yet, these new players need a good environment to play and train, simply to make up for the mechanical difficulty that is the game. I really loved the beginner leagues hosted by L_Master and others, these were such a great idea. I also liked that ICCup used to have a training program, which was never extended. Why not build on top of that?
As for pages like Teamliquid goes - they should definitely keep up the good work with implementing the re-streams, tour coverage and tournaments. But, maybe, if such low level leagues happen again, they could use their power to advertise them more. Not just tolerate that they were hosted, but link them on mainspace, add some "if you want to play yourself, check this league out" addendum to hype posts. Hurts nobody.
There's plenty of other stuff that wasn't done in the past, such as cooperation between pages, but that's really the past. Seems to work to some extent for now.
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Gecko - I agree with your input and you pointed out something I forgot to mention:
For me picking up the game after a few years off was difficult. I couldn't remember how to fix all those silly issues, how to host games, how to get games, how to color fix, etc. THIS is one of the biggest problems beginners have. Now I imagined that moving the current ICCUP server to TL management would provide a big push to tech people that would be empowered to chime in and help.
I understand tournaments and leagues don't have a big impact, but if you wanted to pick BW up after a Tasteless cast, you'd be bombarded with issues. It's not the graphics or the hard mechanics, though they count as well, but it's this difficult process of settings thing up.
Again, good discussion here, let's see what other people think. So far I see that 2 launchers won't be updated, which is a tragedy imo.
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well, im likely to agree with you, but we will be nagging at the server ownership to switch it to the new patch. Perhaps ICC will make the switch, but i'd be a fool to make promises here, so i'm not gonna do that.
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On March 18 2016 03:31 Cele wrote:
well, im likely to agree with you, but we will be nagging at the server ownership to switch it to the new patch. Perhaps ICC will make the switch, but i'd be a fool to make promises here, so i'm not gonna do that.
Glad to hear there are ICCUP members with a progressive mindset. This thread clearly showed the hindrances of your position and your motivation is laudable.
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On March 17 2016 15:31 GeckoXp wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote:
(...)
not sure about how it will influence the mapmaking community (with all this talk of EUD) but i assume they will adapt as well. so i don't get why this is even a thread. It's a thread, because xboi, rightfully so, expects that it'll be a problem to adapt for ICCup and other parts of the foreign scene.
from my impressions of the response on this thread it seems to be mostly an executive issue (iccup owner slow in adopting the patch) than any adminstrative/technical issue. that guy posts or reads this forum? if not this thread is just another ranting pitstop.
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My personal opinion on a possible patch:
1) if blizzard fixes all bugs like icons and colours and adds support for the new OSs it would be already huge since nearly all people (who dont visit sites like tl or were part of the BW-scene before SC2) are not williing to search for a fix or download this and that and test it and probably do soemthing similar again
2) build in lan latency is a MUST!
around 2 months ago I played some games on iccup and it was awful to play while having "lan latency" with the launcher. It was awful to play against russians and south american people and I think 1 central server won't work
3) reintroduce ladders on public servers + antihack
without ladders on local servers people will be forced to dl stuff to get access on private servers. Yes it may be easy and yes it doesn't take much effort to get access on private server but it's 2016 and people are not willing to deal with stuff like this. They prefer to download "f2p" titles with better graphics, bigger playerbase and not having to deal with additional steps.
Furthermore the chance to have latency problems is higher with private servers that hosts games/conncets people from 2 different continents.
4) Introduce a "start matchmaker/play" button for the ladder, people are used to this and they are lazy
5) Implement configurable hotkeys
6) Add more resolution options
All in all I don't see any (global) future for BW with centralised private servers due to latency. The only way to attract people to start playing BW is to make it as easy accessible as possible. What peopel also tend to forget ist, that starcraft was also huge because of the benefits battle.net offered and not only because of the game itself
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I don't think blizzard wants to spend a bunch of money to patch a game for private servers, they are highly aware of fish and iccup. Maybe they'll start patching when they have their own server going.
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On March 18 2016 17:21 AmstAff wrote:
around 2 months ago I played some games on iccup and it was awful to play while having "lan latency" with the launcher. It was awful to play against russians and south american people and I think 1 central server won't work
Games itself are hosted p2p, LanLat has nothing to do with it. The lag you experienced comes from the long distances, not from ICCup itself. If ICCup would be laggy for you, you couldn't join a game, or have to wait a significant amount of time to switch channels.
Also, the public Battle.net ladders won't really work, because they'd need to constantly screen for hackers, abusers and win bots.
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On March 18 2016 17:21 AmstAff wrote:
4) Introduce a "start matchmaker/play" button for the ladder, people are used to this and they are lazy
Birdie wanted automated matchmaking for the Starserver and iirc it was quite a bit of work to code and find the right rating system (elo, glicko 2) with regards to the small user base to make it viable. I'm not very much into that sort of stuff, but my impression was, the potential benefits were not necessarily worth the effort? Im not sure. In any case, having automated matchmaking should be a later project for any private server, it's a good thing to pursue, but a basic icc/fish system would do for starters.
@idea of Blizzard making the official bnet server a good place to play again: I don't think that will happen for the reasons already pointed out by Gecko. Of course Blizzard is very capable of doing that, but you have to ask yourself, how much money will they make on a patch for BW (new sold copies) and how much effort (manpower, first of all) does that warrant?
Setting up a well integrated and supported server and keeping it that way needs personnel for support, basically what your ICCup or fish admin's do in their free time, but as paid employees. I don't see that being a reasonable calculation for Blizzard.
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I think we might have to pick up this thread once we see the changes, then come up with some game plan. Just my 2 cents. I now realize it's useless to start something without seeing what Blizzard thinks. These speculations, though based on common sense, are just that.
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Cele what Birdie did for the community? I like him, but he should be perm banned here, for his project.
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On March 19 2016 16:53 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
Cele what Birdie did for the community? I like him, but he should be perm banned here, for his project.
What, why?
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For me main problem is regarding to p2p connection establishment on bn. Centralised server is, like some people mentioned, troublesome, especial for private servers, due to client-server-client distance issues. For me the best would be a kind of hybrid system, where game lobby is maintained by central server, but game itself is p2p (where stuff like ip and ports is solved by server when game is starting). It can solve one of the biggest problems with sc:bw multiplayer - players without public ip cannot make games. I believe it can be really easy solved, especial that there are even now 'glitches' like latency break, which allow us to maintain it without public ips. But of course, it's pain in the ass, cause you have to find player on channel first, and seeing it on iccup, people look like they are shy or smth, to answer your notification on channel.
If someone in future would willing to make new server, working with newest path, and there will be good reasons for doing so, I can support project in terms of helping in preparation of responsive website (angularjs / knockout). I can also help with backend service, but here I'm rather used to .net solutions and have rather small knowledge of java or php, which may be better options for cost accounting. Anyway project will need people like xboi or mca, because of they strong knowledge how to deal with extensions for sc:bw itself.
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I agree that Birdie did more harm than good. If he straight up lied about it, if he just imagined a server, nothing would be different. He didn't share anything whatsoever that could be picked up by anyone else nor did he announce his situation in a timely fashion. I believe it was after a year and a bit when he finally said he's giving up.
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Did they get rid of the bots that fill up the custom games list yet?
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I think I will stick with 1.16.1 as it is running so smooth nowadays. Only when ICCup switches to the new patch, I will switch, too. And since Gecko is probably right that this is really unlikely to happen, I won't switch at all.
This means Goodbye to Fastest on USEast and USWest though 
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On March 22 2016 18:10 chrisolo wrote:I think I will stick with 1.16.1 as it is running so smooth nowadays. Only when ICCup switches to the new patch, I will switch, too. And since Gecko is probably right that this is really unlikely to happen, I won't switch at all. This means Goodbye to Fastest on USEast and USWest though
iCCup needs to follow Fish or it will die. If the patch is good Fish is 100% going to switch. iCCup's population is less than 5% of Fish's population, which recently got attention in Korea too. If Fish switches, everybody on iCCup that was considering Fish will just dump iCCup as well as all the Koreans there, and possibly all the high level players.
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I think the development team is learning alot from the mistakes they did in D2 and WC3, currently they are working on a fix for them and i think they wont do the same mistake with BW, hopefully.
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What exactly them did wrong?
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On March 22 2016 23:28 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
What exactly them did wrong?
Sooooo many bugs. More D2 bots than ever, the Mac installer was broken for two weeks, Chinese players are having compatibility problems, merc (idk what that is tbh) disappears randomly, there's a new CD key stealing exploit similar to StarCraft, people are getting two weeks bans during transfers, it's just bad.
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WinterViewbot420 are you korean? Who are you?
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On March 23 2016 01:55 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
WinterViewbot420 are you korean? Who are you?
He is clearly Winter's viewbot #420...
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On March 23 2016 02:04 WrathSCII wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2016 01:55 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
WinterViewbot420 are you korean? Who are you? He is clearly Winter's viewbot #420...
beep boop
Really though I'm just some no-name that has a passion for coding, StarCraft, and 7-key rhythm games. I have Kik if you ever wanna hit me up or something lol
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On March 23 2016 02:27 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
are you korean or not?
By blood, yes. I also speak a decent amount and I'm very in tune with the Korean StarCraft scene.
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:D:D:D:D now i know why north korea are so fucked uo. I was pretty sure you are korean.
User was warned for this post
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The only changes I would accept (beyond the obvious making it work with new stuff) is expanded resolution support and removal / expansion of unit / building selection limits. :D
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Hope they only fix bugs and resolution :O
if so, yey!
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I wonder if blizzard will ever add a ladder to BW like sc2's so all you have to do is hit "find match".
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I hope the patch comeos soon that will be sweet
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On April 14 2016 11:59 Bareleon wrote:
I wonder if blizzard will ever add a ladder to BW like sc2's so all you have to do is hit "find match".
You know what I wish for, is a ladder where there is no fucking season reset lol
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VERY cool. 
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in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset...
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On April 14 2016 19:10 Endymion wrote:
in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset...
if they did something really stupid you can always play old 1.16.1 on iccup/fish...
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On April 14 2016 19:15 Probemicro wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2016 19:10 Endymion wrote:
in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset... if they did something really stupid you can always play old 1.16.1 on iccup/fish...
that's true. we're lucky to have private servers, the people who play on d2 official servers aren't quite as fortunate
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On April 14 2016 19:10 Endymion wrote:
in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset...
I couldn't find anything when searching for merc changes in the d2 ladder reset. What changes are being made?
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On April 14 2016 22:59 duncan.mc wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2016 19:10 Endymion wrote:
in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset... I couldn't find anything when searching for merc changes in the d2 ladder reset. What changes are being made?
It's merely a bug introduced in the patch, Blizzard is working on fixing that.
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On April 15 2016 01:12 xboi209 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2016 22:59 duncan.mc wrote:On April 14 2016 19:10 Endymion wrote:
in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset... I couldn't find anything when searching for merc changes in the d2 ladder reset. What changes are being made? It's merely a bug introduced in the patch, Blizzard is working on fixing that.
I think it has already been fixed, along with the 3DFX support they broke with the new patch.
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On April 15 2016 01:19 shin ken wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 01:12 xboi209 wrote:On April 14 2016 22:59 duncan.mc wrote:On April 14 2016 19:10 Endymion wrote:
in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset... I couldn't find anything when searching for merc changes in the d2 ladder reset. What changes are being made? It's merely a bug introduced in the patch, Blizzard is working on fixing that. I think it has already been fixed, along with the 3DFX support they broke with the new patch.
Oh yeah, it was introduced in 1.14a and fixed in 1.14b
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On April 14 2016 19:15 Probemicro wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2016 19:10 Endymion wrote:
in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset... if they did something really stupid you can always play old 1.16.1 on iccup/fish...
if they don't do aynthing really stupid, i think ICCup and Fish will switch to the new patch (;
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On April 14 2016 19:10 Endymion wrote:
in before it kills broodwar like the merc change will hurt this upcoming d2 ladder reset... lol? All the merc change did was fuck up the UI a bit, and that only lasted all of two weeks. No reason for this kind of pessimism.
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Yah. Doesn't sound like there'll be any balance changes, even small ones.
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On April 15 2016 08:59 [[Starlight]] wrote:Yah. Doesn't sound like there'll be any balance changes, even small ones.
Great news ^^ Those are really the only changes that are necessary IMO. Matchmaking and removing hackers and all that would be nice, but that is not as important as making this fantastic game more accessible to all.
As long as by bugs they don't mean something like Mutalisk stack or Valkyrie sprite limit o:
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On April 15 2016 08:59 [[Starlight]] wrote:Yah. Doesn't sound like there'll be any balance changes, even small ones.
hope its not those units get stuck, reaver scrab, muta bugs.. It will ruin the game
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I want the emp animation to be faster.
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On April 15 2016 11:17 LaStScan wrote:
I want the emp animation to be faster.
Isn't it true if the Arbiter already queued the spell, then EMP does not affect recall? So recall can hit before Recall is completed, but Arbiter recalls anyway? There was a great gif somewhere of this happening at 12 o' clock FS, made me laugh xD <3 Arbiters
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On April 15 2016 11:15 Shinokuki wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 08:59 [[Starlight]] wrote:Yah. Doesn't sound like there'll be any balance changes, even small ones. hope its not those units get stuck, reaver scrab, muta bugs.. It will ruin the game
How in the world would fixing the 'dragoons get stuck and freak out' bug ruin the game?
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On April 15 2016 13:23 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 11:15 Shinokuki wrote:On April 15 2016 08:59 [[Starlight]] wrote:Yah. Doesn't sound like there'll be any balance changes, even small ones. hope its not those units get stuck, reaver scrab, muta bugs.. It will ruin the game How in the world would fixing the 'dragoons get stuck and freak out' bug ruin the game?
Right now the Dragoons demand good control in order to be effectively used against FD. If we stop punishing people for poor micro that leads to bugging out, then Dragoon micro becomes easier, potentially throwing the balance of this early game interaction off center.
A better example in my opinion is Goliath vs. Carrier. Part of the viability of Carrier is the ability to abuse ramps because Goliaths suck at getting up and down them. If they move fluidly, Carriers' viability in some situations is now greatly diminished. If you fix Dragoon, you have to fix Goliath. These fixes impact gameplay. Reaver scarab does not even warrant mentioning, look at SC2:BW.
Brood War gameplay should not be touched on the fundamental level, because what we have now is too perfect to risk losing on unforeseen circumstances.
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yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game.
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Pretty sure fixing a bug does not constitute changing dragon AI.
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On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game.
You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error.
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On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error.
Being somewhat pedantic; however I'd go with "could" instead, with the caveat that it there is a much greater chance of really messing stuff up than there is getting any benefit. While improbable, I don't think it can be known for certain that you couldn't have a change work out for the better.
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On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error.
I don't like SC2 (at all), but at the same time I can't buy into the notion that you can't even fix bugs in BW for fear of altering (improving?) gameplay in any way.
If you lose a game due to some sh!tty bug like a unit getting stuck on a ramp, you don't say to yourself, "Well gee, I love how the bugs contribute to a certain person's static idea of what perfect balance is"... nope. Instead you go, "F**king stupid bug, FIX IT!!!".
You can't see BW as some sort of holy untouchable shrine of perfection, because it isn't, and never was.... they made roughly 100 balance changes to the game over time, and probably would've made still more if it had made sense resources-wise to keep balance-patching a game that'd already been out for three years as of 1.08 (the last balance patch).
I love BW too, but to say you can't fix obvious bugs that no one likes because of some alleged perfection that isn't really there is definitely taking things too far.
Can you imagine someone as of the 1.00 patch (i.e. day of release) saying, "BW is perfect and untouchable as is, any changes at all, even bug fixes, will ruin the game"??
We would've ended up with a mediocre game frozen in time, that almost no one would've cared about even a couple of years after release... much less 18 years as it is now.
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On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error.
This is the same attitude of conservatives banning all kinds of things they dont approve of. Gay marriage? Nope! Womans rights? Nope.
The good old times when everything was better. You dont want no change. Change == bad. Always.
It is really bad to just shut your eyes and scream "DONT CHANGE ANYTHING!!111 ITS PURRFECT!".
I am not saying they shouldnt be changing something, but you need to be more open instead of just blindly shooting every idea down. Think first. Maybe good can come from it.
The best thing about a balance patch right now is that we can simply refuse to play it. You dont like it? Play on a different server. But sometimes change can bring good things as well. You should not condemn it before you have actually seen it.
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Nooo not this shit talk again :-(
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On April 15 2016 15:50 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error. I don't like SC2, but at the same time I can't buy the notion that you can't even fix bugs in BW for fear of altering (improving?) gameplay in any way. If you lose a game due to some sh!tty bug like a unit getting stuck on a ramp, you don't say to yourself, "Well gee, I love how the bugs contribute to a certain person's static idea of what perfect balance is"... nope. Instead you go, "F**king stupid bug, FIX IT!!!". You can't see BW as some sort of holy untouchable shrine of perfection, because it isn't, and never was.... they made roughly 100 balance changes to the game over time, and probably would've made still more if it had made sense resources-wise to keep balance-patching a game that'd already been out for three years as of 1.08 (the last balance patch). I love BW too, but to say you can't fix obvious bugs that no one likes because of some alleged perfection that isn't really there is definitely taking things too far. Can you imagine someone as of the 1.00 patch (i.e. day of release) saying, "BW is perfect and untouchable as is, any changes at all, even bug fixes, will ruin the game"?? We would've ended up with a mediocre game frozen in time, that almost no one would've cared about even a couple of years after release, much less 18 years as it is now.
The last balance patch was made in 2001 (1.08). All of the developments in the game since then are based on a static foundation, which has seen MU balance shift, strategies become superior and then inferior, so on and so forth. I will go ahead and say that this is the closest thing there has been to perfect balance in RTS (even in games where the factions are largely homogenous, one is almost always preferred). We are going to jeopardize this pinnacle of balance for the sake of making it easier for people to move some units around? This effectively decreases the skill ceiling of the game, IMO. Bisu's Dragoon micro vs. Flash is impressive because everyone knows Dragoons are retarded. Free's bust against FBH (iirc) was an achievement because his control of Dragoons and Scarab targeting made him achieve something no one would have otherwise expected. If those plays become commonplace because of fixes made to the Dragoon, those plays lose their luster and the viability of certain strategies will inevitably shift. That is not something I would be willing to risk.
When a person encounters a difficulty in the game, they should think "Am I doing this the best possible way, and if not, how can I improve it?" NOT "It's broken, fix it." Isn't that what the SC2 community commonly complains about in their scene right now: people crying loud enough to have things changed before a possible work-around, counter strategy, or implementation of "underpowered" units is discovered. This translates into Brood War as "get better." Why did Progamers never come out and say that the Dragoon needs to be fixed, as far as I recall? Do you think we know better than them? Or perhaps they have accepted and learned how to make the best of the Dragoon's somewhat faulty pathing, knowing that it is what it is, and made it a staple unit for Protoss in the majority of their games?
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So is this the brood war update that blizzard was hiring for or just a basic bug fix? Why bug fix an old game if you are going to do a full update?
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On April 15 2016 15:51 RoomOfMush wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error. This is the same attitude of conservatives banning all kinds of things they dont approve of. Gay marriage? Nope! Womans rights? Nope. The good old times when everything was better. You dont want no change. Change == bad. Always. It is really bad to just shut your eyes and scream "DONT CHANGE ANYTHING!!111 ITS PURRFECT!". I am not saying they shouldnt be changing something, but you need to be more open instead of just blindly shooting every idea down. Think first. Maybe good can come from it. The best thing about a balance patch right now is that we can simply refuse to play it. You dont like it? Play on a different server. But sometimes change can bring good things as well. You should not condemn it before you have actually seen it.
You must be a troll right?
Since 2001 pro gamers dedicated their lives to this game, never expecting anything to get fixed ever and just getting good with the tools the game gave them and something incredible beautiful came out of it.
And now in 20-fucking-16, you, random TL-user #9000 come along and want it changed. No sir, if you think that, you simply don't "get" BW and never loved it. Go play another game with perfect unit pathing.
At any rate, another thread has mutated into the retarted monthly balance discussion. It's a shame because that clearly wasn't the intend if the OP.
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On April 15 2016 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
So is this the brood war update that blizzard was hiring for or just a basic bug fix? Why bug fix an old game if you are going to do a full update?
It looks like an update (resolution, works well/better on modern OSes) plus bug fixes.
No overt balance changes AFAIK, though some are arguing that fixing bugs changes balance a lot (which I think is overstating it a lot).
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On April 15 2016 16:04 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 15:50 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error. I don't like SC2, but at the same time I can't buy the notion that you can't even fix bugs in BW for fear of altering (improving?) gameplay in any way. If you lose a game due to some sh!tty bug like a unit getting stuck on a ramp, you don't say to yourself, "Well gee, I love how the bugs contribute to a certain person's static idea of what perfect balance is"... nope. Instead you go, "F**king stupid bug, FIX IT!!!". You can't see BW as some sort of holy untouchable shrine of perfection, because it isn't, and never was.... they made roughly 100 balance changes to the game over time, and probably would've made still more if it had made sense resources-wise to keep balance-patching a game that'd already been out for three years as of 1.08 (the last balance patch). I love BW too, but to say you can't fix obvious bugs that no one likes because of some alleged perfection that isn't really there is definitely taking things too far. Can you imagine someone as of the 1.00 patch (i.e. day of release) saying, "BW is perfect and untouchable as is, any changes at all, even bug fixes, will ruin the game"?? We would've ended up with a mediocre game frozen in time, that almost no one would've cared about even a couple of years after release, much less 18 years as it is now. The last balance patch was made in 2001 (1.08). All of the developments in the game since then are based on a static foundation, which has seen MU balance shift, strategies become superior and then inferior, so on and so forth. I will go ahead and say that this is the closest thing there has been to perfect balance in RTS (even in games where the factions are largely homogenous, one is almost always preferred). We are going to jeopardize this pinnacle of balance for the sake of making it easier for people to move some units around? This effectively decreases the skill ceiling of the game, IMO. Bisu's Dragoon micro vs. Flash is impressive because everyone knows Dragoons are retarded. Free's bust against FBH (iirc) was an achievement because his control of Dragoons and Scarab targeting made him achieve something no one would have otherwise expected. If those plays become commonplace because of fixes made to the Dragoon, those plays lose their luster and the viability of certain strategies will inevitably shift. That is not something I would be willing to risk. When a person encounters a difficulty in the game, they should think "Am I doing this the best possible way, and if not, how can I improve it?" NOT "It's broken, fix it." Isn't that what the SC2 community commonly complains about in their scene right now: people crying loud enough to have things changed before a possible work-around, counter strategy, or implementation of "underpowered" units is discovered. This translates into Brood War as "get better." Why did Progamers never come out and say that the Dragoon needs to be fixed, as far as I recall? Do you think we know better than them? Or perhaps they have accepted and learned how to make the best of the Dragoon's somewhat faulty pathing, knowing that it is what it is, and made it a staple unit for Protoss in the majority of their games?
Obvious, crappy bugs are NOT a feature, no matter how hard we try to rationalize it. 
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On April 15 2016 16:33 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
So is this the brood war update that blizzard was hiring for or just a basic bug fix? Why bug fix an old game if you are going to do a full update? It looks like an update (resolution, works well/better on modern OSes) plus bug fixes. No overt balance changes AFAIK, though some are arguing that fixing bugs changes balance a lot (which I don't agree with).
Just depends on what kinds of bugs  I'm fine with them fixing the color/multiplayer lobby screen ^^
EDIT: To your previous comment, obvious bugs may not be "features" of the game but from Mutalisk stacking to Scarab dudding, they have played an incalculable role in the development of the game thus far. Therefore, I think it unwise to alter them. Let's agree to disagree ^^
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On April 15 2016 16:35 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 16:33 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
So is this the brood war update that blizzard was hiring for or just a basic bug fix? Why bug fix an old game if you are going to do a full update? It looks like an update (resolution, works well/better on modern OSes) plus bug fixes. No overt balance changes AFAIK, though some are arguing that fixing bugs changes balance a lot (which I don't agree with). Just depends on what kinds of bugs I'm fine with them fixing the color/multiplayer lobby screen ^^ EDIT: To your previous comment, obvious bugs may not be "features" of the game but from Mutalisk stacking to Scarab dudding, they have played an incalculable role in the development of the game thus far. Therefore, I think it unwise to alter them. Let's agree to disagree ^^
I definitely disagree, and I think if bug fixes bother you, you are likely going to be bothered by this update.
From Bliz:
"As of right now we're working on Compatibility and bug fixing for SC and SC:Brood War."
http://us.battle.net/en/forum/topic/20743264164?page=1#20
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On April 15 2016 16:34 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 16:04 Jealous wrote:On April 15 2016 15:50 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error. I don't like SC2, but at the same time I can't buy the notion that you can't even fix bugs in BW for fear of altering (improving?) gameplay in any way. If you lose a game due to some sh!tty bug like a unit getting stuck on a ramp, you don't say to yourself, "Well gee, I love how the bugs contribute to a certain person's static idea of what perfect balance is"... nope. Instead you go, "F**king stupid bug, FIX IT!!!". You can't see BW as some sort of holy untouchable shrine of perfection, because it isn't, and never was.... they made roughly 100 balance changes to the game over time, and probably would've made still more if it had made sense resources-wise to keep balance-patching a game that'd already been out for three years as of 1.08 (the last balance patch). I love BW too, but to say you can't fix obvious bugs that no one likes because of some alleged perfection that isn't really there is definitely taking things too far. Can you imagine someone as of the 1.00 patch (i.e. day of release) saying, "BW is perfect and untouchable as is, any changes at all, even bug fixes, will ruin the game"?? We would've ended up with a mediocre game frozen in time, that almost no one would've cared about even a couple of years after release, much less 18 years as it is now. The last balance patch was made in 2001 (1.08). All of the developments in the game since then are based on a static foundation, which has seen MU balance shift, strategies become superior and then inferior, so on and so forth. I will go ahead and say that this is the closest thing there has been to perfect balance in RTS (even in games where the factions are largely homogenous, one is almost always preferred). We are going to jeopardize this pinnacle of balance for the sake of making it easier for people to move some units around? This effectively decreases the skill ceiling of the game, IMO. Bisu's Dragoon micro vs. Flash is impressive because everyone knows Dragoons are retarded. Free's bust against FBH (iirc) was an achievement because his control of Dragoons and Scarab targeting made him achieve something no one would have otherwise expected. If those plays become commonplace because of fixes made to the Dragoon, those plays lose their luster and the viability of certain strategies will inevitably shift. That is not something I would be willing to risk. When a person encounters a difficulty in the game, they should think "Am I doing this the best possible way, and if not, how can I improve it?" NOT "It's broken, fix it." Isn't that what the SC2 community commonly complains about in their scene right now: people crying loud enough to have things changed before a possible work-around, counter strategy, or implementation of "underpowered" units is discovered. This translates into Brood War as "get better." Why did Progamers never come out and say that the Dragoon needs to be fixed, as far as I recall? Do you think we know better than them? Or perhaps they have accepted and learned how to make the best of the Dragoon's somewhat faulty pathing, knowing that it is what it is, and made it a staple unit for Protoss in the majority of their games? Obvious, crappy bugs are NOT a feature, no matter how much we try to rationalize it.
If you think those "crappy" bugs are something that should be fixed, why do think Blizzard had not fixed them in, like, 1999 or 2001? They clearly were aware, at least of the obvious ones, back then. But they liked the game how it was -with- them and intentionally not fixed them.
And if players work with "crappy bugs" for years and perfect the art of dealing with them, they DO become a feature. It's just an unintentional feature.
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On April 15 2016 16:52 shin ken wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 16:34 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 16:04 Jealous wrote:On April 15 2016 15:50 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error. I don't like SC2, but at the same time I can't buy the notion that you can't even fix bugs in BW for fear of altering (improving?) gameplay in any way. If you lose a game due to some sh!tty bug like a unit getting stuck on a ramp, you don't say to yourself, "Well gee, I love how the bugs contribute to a certain person's static idea of what perfect balance is"... nope. Instead you go, "F**king stupid bug, FIX IT!!!". You can't see BW as some sort of holy untouchable shrine of perfection, because it isn't, and never was.... they made roughly 100 balance changes to the game over time, and probably would've made still more if it had made sense resources-wise to keep balance-patching a game that'd already been out for three years as of 1.08 (the last balance patch). I love BW too, but to say you can't fix obvious bugs that no one likes because of some alleged perfection that isn't really there is definitely taking things too far. Can you imagine someone as of the 1.00 patch (i.e. day of release) saying, "BW is perfect and untouchable as is, any changes at all, even bug fixes, will ruin the game"?? We would've ended up with a mediocre game frozen in time, that almost no one would've cared about even a couple of years after release, much less 18 years as it is now. The last balance patch was made in 2001 (1.08). All of the developments in the game since then are based on a static foundation, which has seen MU balance shift, strategies become superior and then inferior, so on and so forth. I will go ahead and say that this is the closest thing there has been to perfect balance in RTS (even in games where the factions are largely homogenous, one is almost always preferred). We are going to jeopardize this pinnacle of balance for the sake of making it easier for people to move some units around? This effectively decreases the skill ceiling of the game, IMO. Bisu's Dragoon micro vs. Flash is impressive because everyone knows Dragoons are retarded. Free's bust against FBH (iirc) was an achievement because his control of Dragoons and Scarab targeting made him achieve something no one would have otherwise expected. If those plays become commonplace because of fixes made to the Dragoon, those plays lose their luster and the viability of certain strategies will inevitably shift. That is not something I would be willing to risk. When a person encounters a difficulty in the game, they should think "Am I doing this the best possible way, and if not, how can I improve it?" NOT "It's broken, fix it." Isn't that what the SC2 community commonly complains about in their scene right now: people crying loud enough to have things changed before a possible work-around, counter strategy, or implementation of "underpowered" units is discovered. This translates into Brood War as "get better." Why did Progamers never come out and say that the Dragoon needs to be fixed, as far as I recall? Do you think we know better than them? Or perhaps they have accepted and learned how to make the best of the Dragoon's somewhat faulty pathing, knowing that it is what it is, and made it a staple unit for Protoss in the majority of their games? Obvious, crappy bugs are NOT a feature, no matter how much we try to rationalize it. If you think those "crappy" bugs are something that should be fixed, why do think Blizzard had not fixed them in, like, 1999 or 2001? They clearly were aware, at least of the obvious ones, back then. But they liked the game how it was -with- them and intentionally not fixed them. And if players work with "crappy bugs" for years and perfect the art of dealing with them, they DO become a feature. It's just an unintentional feature.
I've worked in the video game industry... all games get released with bugs, you just have to make a judgement call as to if a) its a bug that a gamer is likely to encounter, and b) if it affects the game in a negative ENOUGH way to be a huge problem.
You can't fix absolutely everything, you just don't have the time and resources to do so, particularly on bigger and more complex games, and particularly on games that have to make a certain release date (i.e. 'in time for Xmas', or 'by the end of such-and-such business quarter').
So yeah, Bliz knew that things like goon pathing weren't great, but at the time, they couldn't fix it and/or were still adding and testing other bug fixes, balance improvements, and features to the game (such as replays). They prioritized, and goon pathing didn't make the cut.
But now maybe it will. So, me happy (potentially). Probably many other folks as well, if it and/or other bugs get fixed. Why settle for crappy elements in an otherwise awesome game when you don't have to?
Oh, and the 'bugs are a feature' thing is a well-known joke in the vid game industry. For one example of it, there was a console game back in the day (SNES? Genesis?) where if you went to a particular place in a level, the game would lock up/crash. OBVIOUS, extremely shitty bug.
But the developer didn't want to put the resources into fixing it, so they instead added some line in the instruction manual about how the bad guy had laid some 'traps' in the level that would freeze the game, and it was up to you to memorize where they were and avoid them.(!!)
Total brass balls to do something like that, but it was fairly early days in console gaming, and enough ppl bought into the explanation that they got away with it, lol. 
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On April 15 2016 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
So is this the brood war update that blizzard was hiring for or just a basic bug fix? Why bug fix an old game if you are going to do a full update?
What do you mean by "full update?" If you meant the "remake" that was sensationalized, no, at least not in the next patch.
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So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys.
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On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys.
I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately).
For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck.
And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW.
So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. 
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On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs.
They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want.
Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent!
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BW bugs are like real life bugs. I may sometimes tumble, same as dragon can bug a bit behind mineral line. BW bugs make units so much more realistic. In SC2 everything behaves like a robot in the factory -> perfect, 100% repeatable moves and actions. No flaws, just like repeating a movie.
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On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent!
Don't know what thread you're reading, but I already said multiple times I don't like SC2, and do love BW.
And, you're offering a false choice, i.e. 'Don't fix anything and keep BW pure', or 'Fix bugs and it'll turn into SC2!!!!'. Somehow. Even though BW is a totally different design.
So yeah... tell us another.
BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release).
If it makes you feel better, there is some chance that bad unit pathing may not be fixed or at least may not be FULLY fixed, since apparently SC/BW was programmed in a certain way that makes this difficult (diagonal/nonstandard gridding or somesuch? there was an article on it somewhere).
But whether it's fixed, partially fixed, or not fixed at all, it seems likely that SOME THINGS will get fixed that ultraconservative purists who cherish even the bugs will cry over. Oh well.
Again, go Bliz, crush da bugs, crush 'em up good.
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On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys.
someone did a mod on sc2 (i think he tweaked the unit collision size) and it resulted in armies not moving in a dung beetle ball.
ie pathing doesn't cause balls
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www.youtube.com
this is an obvious bug that should be fixed. Myself personally, and I hope the other proponents of bug fixes, have this in mind when talking about bugs that should be fixed.
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On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game.
Oh gosh, can't fix that. It'd turn BW into SC2, don'cha know. 
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On April 15 2016 19:57 B-royal wrote:www.youtube.comthis is an obvious bug that should be fixed. Myself personally, and I hope the other proponents of bug fixes, have this in mind when talking about bugs that should be fixed.
That and also goon freeze are very bad bugs. Ive lost a few games by fd push because one of my dragoons freezes during battle. Also when you put workers to distant mine minerals, game should calculate ground distance instead of air and when there is an obstacle, like neutral building or something units should be able to recognize that and not loop around in circles.
Perfect gateway placement probe stuck bug also.
Things are far from perfect.
On April 15 2016 20:29 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game.
Oh gosh, can't fix that. It'd turn BW into SC2, don'cha know.
Yeah, u should control the guardians or reavers to not go into cannon range, because there is not enough things to do in game anyways. 200 apm is average for casuals. Rally point also useless, when u can have the feature to click on your units and tell them to move.
Im being sarcastic to emphasize on just how hardcore this game is and with such puristic view over it we can end up with only a handful of players after some years. As game gets old player base gets old too and execution gets harder, on the other hand new players would expect some product close enough to the modern standarts, so they can enjoy and not leave after crushing defeat from players with 10+ years experience, while trying to grasp the old mechanics of the game. Pro scene is gone, we dont have the players who masterfully overcomed every obstalce they encounter in the game. That scene itself was the biggest inspiration for many to play the game. Those times ended and i do think another change should be made so we can bring some people back.
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On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release).
No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck.
I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT.
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On April 15 2016 16:27 shin ken wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 15:51 RoomOfMush wrote:On April 15 2016 14:56 Jealous wrote:On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. You mean user-friendly like SC2? We see what came from that. I stand by my words, to change any gameplay aspect of Brood War would be a grave error. This is the same attitude of conservatives banning all kinds of things they dont approve of. Gay marriage? Nope! Womans rights? Nope. The good old times when everything was better. You dont want no change. Change == bad. Always. It is really bad to just shut your eyes and scream "DONT CHANGE ANYTHING!!111 ITS PURRFECT!". I am not saying they shouldnt be changing something, but you need to be more open instead of just blindly shooting every idea down. Think first. Maybe good can come from it. The best thing about a balance patch right now is that we can simply refuse to play it. You dont like it? Play on a different server. But sometimes change can bring good things as well. You should not condemn it before you have actually seen it. You must be a troll right? Since 2001 pro gamers dedicated their lives to this game, never expecting anything to get fixed ever and just getting good with the tools the game gave them and something incredible beautiful came out of it. And now in 20-fucking-16, you, random TL-user #9000 come along and want it changed. No sir, if you think that, you simply don't "get" BW and never loved it. Go play another game with perfect unit pathing. At any rate, another thread has mutated into the retarted monthly balance discussion. It's a shame because that clearly wasn't the intend if the OP.
Well, I think you are simply an immature prick. Thats an opinion, not fact, as much as yours.
I just said one should never speak in generalizations as they are almost always wrong. Then you just come ahead and speak in generalizations. Its just sad.
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I think people who are experienced but not at the top of the scene tend to be more worried about minor changes like fixing goon and marine freeze than players who are at the top of the scene or the bottom. Because those lower-middle skill players look up to the top players, and they are lower-middle skill players because they are overly focused on specific details like goon micro. The top level player is not afraid of your goons not freezing anymore shaking their position as a great player, because to them there are a zillion things more important and goon micro is just something you get used to, not something that requires special concentration. Fixing it for weaker players would have no impact except to make players less frustrated when they don't know how to unfreeze the goon because, unintuitively, the way you do that is hitting stop.
That said, if they're fixing bugs they're probably looking at much more severe ones, because it costs money to fix them and the general gameplay is more or less not broken. Improved pathing would probably just make the game more fun to play, in the same way 1.12's right-click rally was a huge plus. That came well into the proscene too, and probably did change things a little but not for the worse.
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On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! Don't know what thread you're reading, but I already said multiple times I don't like SC2, and do love BW. And, you're offering a false choice, i.e. 'Don't fix anything and keep BW pure', or 'Fix bugs and it'll turn into SC2!!!!'. Somehow. Even though BW is a totally different design. So yeah... tell us another. BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). If it makes you feel better, there is some chance that bad unit pathing may not be fixed or at least may not be FULLY fixed, since apparently SC/BW was programmed in a certain way that makes this difficult (diagonal/nonstandard gridding or somesuch? there was an article on it somewhere). But whether it's fixed, partially fixed, or not fixed at all, it seems likely that SOME THINGS will get fixed that ultraconservative purists who cherish even the bugs will cry over. Oh well. Again, go Bliz, crush da bugs, crush 'em up good.
I think you have no idea how a bug fix can essentially ruin the game. Someone like Bisu can probably get 8/10 scrab to work while a nooby would gt 2/10 scrab to work. Reaver scrab bug is part of player's skills. Muta bug also will destroy zvt balance. zergs would get destroyed by terran MnM army during that crucial mid game. Also pathing bug can also be solved by a player simply moving around the path with its units (its also part of skill). Please don't give us that attitude. It will ruin the game.
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I feel like the kind of "bugs" you guys are discussing is completely different from what Blizzard is going to be fixing in the next patch. The bugs will more likely be the graphical issues that plague StarCraft and probably a few other non-gameplay stuff.
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On April 16 2016 01:00 Chef wrote:
I think people who are experienced but not at the top of the scene tend to be more worried about minor changes like fixing goon and marine freeze than players who are at the top of the scene or the bottom. Because those lower-middle skill players look up to the top players, and they are lower-middle skill players because they are overly focused on specific details like goon micro. The top level player is not afraid of your goons not freezing anymore shaking their position as a great player, because to them there are a zillion things more important and goon micro is just something you get used to, not something that requires special concentration. Fixing it for weaker players would have no impact except to make players less frustrated when they don't know how to unfreeze the goon because, unintuitively, the way you do that is hitting stop.
That said, if they're fixing bugs they're probably looking at much more severe ones, because it costs money to fix them and the general gameplay is more or less not broken. Improved pathing would probably just make the game more fun to play, in the same way 1.12's right-click rally was a huge plus. That came well into the proscene too, and probably did change things a little but not for the worse.
That's bullshit, sorry.
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On April 16 2016 05:04 xboi209 wrote:
I feel like the kind of "bugs" you guys are discussing is completely different from what Blizzard is going to be fixing in the next patch. The bugs will more likely be the graphical issues that plague StarCraft and probably a few other non-gameplay stuff.
So much this.
Why would Bliz risk the uproar that could accompany actual gameplay bugs when they can work on net (port forwarding) and graphical issues that everyone will love them for, and which actually impact the continued lifetime and sales of their games. (yes BW,D2 and WC3 are still sold in retail stores)
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new patch = end of mca64Launcher
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On April 16 2016 06:19 mca64Launcher_ wrote:new patch = end of mca64Launcher Condolences.
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On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT.
I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage.
Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such).
So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent.
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On April 15 2016 18:11 JieXian wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. someone did a mod on sc2 (i think he tweaked the unit collision size) and it resulted in armies not moving in a dung beetle ball. i.e. pathing doesn't cause balls
Good point.
User was warned for triple posting
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TLADT24920 Posts
On April 16 2016 05:04 xboi209 wrote:
I feel like the kind of "bugs" you guys are discussing is completely different from what Blizzard is going to be fixing in the next patch. The bugs will more likely be the graphical issues that plague StarCraft and probably a few other non-gameplay stuff.
this though I would also like to throw my support behind those arguing for goon pathing, muta stacking and other interesting and unintended bugs. If blizzard fixes anything other than OS compatibility and maybe graphical glitches, I won't be upgrading to the latest version. I grew to love the game as is and I'd rather not see them mess things up. Don't bother trying to change my mind on these issues, it's already made up lol
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On April 16 2016 04:53 Shinokuki wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! Don't know what thread you're reading, but I already said multiple times I don't like SC2, and do love BW. And, you're offering a false choice, i.e. 'Don't fix anything and keep BW pure', or 'Fix bugs and it'll turn into SC2!!!!'. Somehow. Even though BW is a totally different design. So yeah... tell us another. BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). If it makes you feel better, there is some chance that bad unit pathing may not be fixed or at least may not be FULLY fixed, since apparently SC/BW was programmed in a certain way that makes this difficult (diagonal/nonstandard gridding or somesuch? there was an article on it somewhere). But whether it's fixed, partially fixed, or not fixed at all, it seems likely that SOME THINGS will get fixed that ultraconservative purists who cherish even the bugs will cry over. Oh well. Again, go Bliz, crush da bugs, crush 'em up good. I think you have no idea how a bug fix can essentially ruin the game. Someone like Bisu can probably get 8/10 scrab to work while a nooby would gt 2/10 scrab to work. Reaver scrab bug is part of player's skills. Muta bug also will destroy zvt balance. zergs would get destroyed by terran MnM army during that crucial mid game. Also pathing bug can also be solved by a player simply moving around the path with its units (its also part of skill). Please don't give us that attitude. It will ruin the game.
First off, scarab bug probably isn't a bug. I used to work in the vid game industry, and a bug is essentially anything in the game that is NOT INTENDED by the developer.
If you've read Boxer's book As Crazy As Me, he mentions the major reason for switching from Protoss to Terran early on in his career the fact that as of the 1.04 patch, reavers 'became retarded', i.e. the scarabs didn't work quite right anymore. So the 'scarab bug' was quite possibly introduced intentionally by Blizzard in 1.04 as a way to tone down reavers, though we can't know for 100% certain. But if so, it's not something they would ever 'fix', because they wanted it to be that way, i.e. it's not a bug, it's their idea of game balance.
With muta stacking, I'm more sympathetic with you, they couldn't have intended it, yet it did have a balancing effect in TvZ. But, what does it tell you that they needed something unintentional to make TvZ more balanced? It means TvZ was unbalanced, and that Bliz should've worked on that more, and had it be balanced without the dumb luck of an unintentional, player-discovered technique (also highlights how BW was never perfect, even after the big balance patches).
Bugs are random things, and they usually don't help a game, they hurt it. The few that do are sort of the exceptions that prove the rule.
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On April 16 2016 05:04 xboi209 wrote:
I feel like the kind of "bugs" you guys are discussing is completely different from what Blizzard is going to be fixing in the next patch. The bugs will more likely be the graphical issues that plague StarCraft and probably a few other non-gameplay stuff.
Well, we've got you down for predicting Bliz will only be fixing minor/graphical issues, while Chef's predicting that Bliz will only be working on the 'more severe' bugs.
Anyone else want to throw in a prediction? lol.
Fact is, no one knows for 100% certain what Bliz will do, only that they're working on "bug fixes" in general, as they themselves have said.
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im pretty sure they will only fix problems on new systems like Windows 10 cause they still sells this game. They only wants $$$ thats all, they cant sell this game when you cant it run. Also i doubt they will make it good and all will works flawless haha
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On April 16 2016 13:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
im pretty sure they will only fix problems on new systems like Windows 10 cause they still sells this game. They only wants $$$ thats all, they cant sell this game when you cant it run. Also i doubt they will make it good and all will works flawless haha
What Blizzard said:
"As of right now we're working on Compatibility and bug fixing for SC and SC:Brood War."
I'm assuming 'compatibility' means 'works better on modern OSes', which still leaves 'bug fixing' as the other major thing they're doing.
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On April 16 2016 13:17 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 13:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
im pretty sure they will only fix problems on new systems like Windows 10 cause they still sells this game. They only wants $$$ thats all, they cant sell this game when you cant it run. Also i doubt they will make it good and all will works flawless haha What Blizzard said: "As of right now we're working on Compatibility and bug fixing for SC and SC:Brood War." I'm assuming 'compatibility' means 'works better on modern OSes', which still leaves 'bug fixing' as the other major thing they're doing.
You can hope while the rest of us pray that your dreams don't come true.
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On April 16 2016 13:33 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 13:17 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 16 2016 13:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
im pretty sure they will only fix problems on new systems like Windows 10 cause they still sells this game. They only wants $$$ thats all, they cant sell this game when you cant it run. Also i doubt they will make it good and all will works flawless haha What Blizzard said: "As of right now we're working on Compatibility and bug fixing for SC and SC:Brood War." I'm assuming 'compatibility' means 'works better on modern OSes', which still leaves 'bug fixing' as the other major thing they're doing. You can hope while the rest of us pray that your dreams don't come true.
It's not my dreams, it's simply what Blizzard themselves have said they're doing:
http://us.battle.net/en/forum/topic/20743264164?page=1#19
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On April 16 2016 13:38 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 13:33 Jealous wrote:On April 16 2016 13:17 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 16 2016 13:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
im pretty sure they will only fix problems on new systems like Windows 10 cause they still sells this game. They only wants $$$ thats all, they cant sell this game when you cant it run. Also i doubt they will make it good and all will works flawless haha What Blizzard said: "As of right now we're working on Compatibility and bug fixing for SC and SC:Brood War." I'm assuming 'compatibility' means 'works better on modern OSes', which still leaves 'bug fixing' as the other major thing they're doing. You can hope while the rest of us pray that your dreams don't come true. It's not my dreams, it's simply what Blizzard themselves have said they're doing :http://us.battle.net/en/forum/topic/20743264164?page=1#19
You've posted that enough times already, I think we all know what was said. The problem is their statement is very vague. Some hope that by "bug fixes" they mean things that don't affect gameplay, whereas you think it will include things like Dragoon pathing and other such things. Hence my statement.
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On April 16 2016 14:12 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 13:38 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 16 2016 13:33 Jealous wrote:On April 16 2016 13:17 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 16 2016 13:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote:
im pretty sure they will only fix problems on new systems like Windows 10 cause they still sells this game. They only wants $$$ thats all, they cant sell this game when you cant it run. Also i doubt they will make it good and all will works flawless haha What Blizzard said: "As of right now we're working on Compatibility and bug fixing for SC and SC:Brood War." I'm assuming 'compatibility' means 'works better on modern OSes', which still leaves 'bug fixing' as the other major thing they're doing. You can hope while the rest of us pray that your dreams don't come true. It's not my dreams, it's simply what Blizzard themselves have said they're doing :http://us.battle.net/en/forum/topic/20743264164?page=1#19 You've posted that enough times already, I think we all know what was said. The problem is their statement is very vague. Some hope that by "bug fixes" they mean things that don't affect gameplay, whereas you think it will include things like Dragoon pathing and other such things. Hence my statement.
I said they're working on bug fixes, which they are. You then made some crack about my dreams.
It's not my fault that you weren't initially clear.
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On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent.
they need to not touch anything other than making it compatible
bugs are something we've all got used to, even the shitty pathing
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On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. Yes it is like saying that. Reaver suicide into static defence should not be changed. The game should not be made easier for the casual player. Casual players will not come. I do not want them if they did.
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On April 16 2016 15:51 Dazed_Spy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. Yes it is like saying that. Reaver suicide into static defence should not be changed. The game should not be made easier for the casual player. Casual players will not come. I do not want them if they did.
To be fair, I think the majority of us started as casual gamers. Making the game more accessible will hopefully bring more players in. The casuals who decide to get good will only contribute to the scene.
However, I agree with the point that I think you're trying to make, in that Blizzard shouldn't implement fixes to the game that would make it casual-friendly (like Reaver/Guardian into static d, something that is corrected with experience, skill, mindfulness, and effort). This would negatively impact the existing player base and is unnecessary, in my opinion. Plenty of games exist that have very high requirements for being "good" and I don't mind Brood War being one of them.
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On April 16 2016 15:56 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 15:51 Dazed_Spy wrote:On April 15 2016 14:38 _Animus_ wrote:
yeah, its like saying that the guardian and reaver suicide into static defence is also good for the game. Ive seen pro's on stream lose game because of shitty goon AI on ramp, its so silly. If pros having trouble with goon ai what about the regular player? Another thing is the game is very old, player base constantly decreases, which will affect skill level in time. If the game doesnt become more user friendly it cant hold itself in the future, where casual gamer wouldnt even want to do shit with such hard game. Yes it is like saying that. Reaver suicide into static defence should not be changed. The game should not be made easier for the casual player. Casual players will not come. I do not want them if they did. To be fair, I think the majority of us started as casual gamers. Were not talking about the same phenomenon, though. I started as a casual player when I was five, you started as a casual player as an adult (?) and moved onto a private ladder while it was still relatively thriving. Hes talking about bringing in some new demographic into an extremely old and ossified game, who would then also play on this private server. I dont want an influx of casual players because starcraft is not a game for casual players. It was a game for casual rts players over a decade ago, and even then, it had a very low retention rate. Like, even lower than any games retention rate, which are all already very low. Why would I want a bunch of new players to buy a game, fill up the strategy section with whining, get face rolled by me in D ranks, only to have 1-3 more people actually stick a round to the point where they can take a game off me? Broodwar revival is a fantasy.
However, I agree with the point that I think you're trying to make, in that Blizzard shouldn't implement fixes to the game that would make it casual-friendly (like Reaver/Guardian into static d, something that is corrected with experience, skill, mindfulness, and effort). This would negatively impact the existing player base and is unnecessary, in my opinion. Plenty of games exist that have very high requirements for being "good" and I don't mind Brood War being one of them.
How do you even bring in casual players in the first place if you dont make the game more accessible, in the ways that you and I dont want? Let alone keep them? If I could wave a magic wand and get new casual players maybe I'd do it, but within the context of reality, its always about making actual changes directed to making the game easy to play.
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trust me, blizzard would not makes any chnages to a ingame play.
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On April 16 2016 16:03 Dazed_Spy wrote:
Were not talking about the same phenomenon, though. I started as a casual player when I was five, you started as a casual player as an adult (?) and moved onto a private ladder while it was still relatively thriving. Hes talking about bringing in some new demographic into an extremely old and ossified game, who would then also play on this private server. I dont want an influx of casual players because starcraft is not a game for casual players. It was a game for casual rts players over a decade ago, and even then, it had a very low retention rate. Like, even lower than any games retention rate, which are all already very low. Why would I want a bunch of new players to buy a game, fill up the strategy section with whining, get face rolled by me in D ranks, only to have 1-3 more people actually stick a round to the point where they can take a game off me? Broodwar revival is a fantasy.
No, we aren't, and that's okay. I first played when I was 9, so I understand what you mean. Making Brood War more accessible for everyone WILL bring in new players. New players join all the time. The activity issue is that older players leave at a faster rate, at least in the foreign scene.
Having a bunch of new players fill up the strategy section with whining and getting facerolled is just a filter for existence in this environment. Some people push through and become better. I agree with you that there are many "new" players who post in the Strategy section and then disappear a week later, but I've also witnessed the growth of many new players over the past few years because they truly loved the game. Making this game more universally available will increase the amount of players retained, if not the retention rate, simply due to mathematics. If there are 10 new players this month, only 1 of which sticks around for a year or more and improves, then increasing exposure and availability through a new patch would increase that number to 20 and 2, respectively. Brood War revival is what you make it to be. For me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough.
How do you even bring in casual players in the first place if you dont make the game more accessible, in the ways that you and I dont want? Let alone keep them? If I could wave a magic wand and get new casual players maybe I'd do it, but within the context of reality, its always about making actual changes directed to making the game easy to play.
That question is a bit too broad and hypothetical for me to answer in definite terms, but I feel that exposure through various websites like Reddit, TeamLiquid, Battle.net, etc. helps. Keeping them is up to them, not us, but if the game becomes more available in new OS and players don't have to go through a multi-step process involving third party launchers in order to experience the game, there will be some that are kept. Making the game easy to play is out of the question for me, and I would not trade that for more players, so that point of discussion is one I'm not interested in pursuing.
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On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent.
I just gave an example where chokes almost don't matter because of pathing: SC2. Yes, they still matter a bit but not a lot like in BW. If you change that in BW, you can't have defenses that consist of 3 tanks, some turrets, scvs and a small choke. Protoss players wouldn't have to drop/recall anymore they could just run into it. That would be stupid and would take away the whole notion that there are battles all over the map in BW. Defenders advantage is the reason for why that happens in BW because you don't always need your whole army in position to stop a push. The defenders advantage in BW is based on 2 important factors: highground advantage and unit pathing.
You see what happened in SC2 and you say you don't like SC2. I personally don't like SC2 because there aren't battles all over the map all the time and I think it's not too far fetched to say it's one of your reasons as well.
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On April 16 2016 21:38 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent. I just gave an example where chokes almost don't matter because of pathing: SC2. Yes, they still matter a bit but not a lot like in BW. If you change that in BW, you can't have defenses that consist of 3 tanks, some turrets, scvs and a small choke. Protoss players wouldn't have to drop/recall anymore they could just run into it. That would be stupid and would take away the whole notion that there are battles all over the map in BW. Defenders advantage is the reason for why that happens in BW because you don't always need your whole army in position to stop a push. The defenders advantage in BW is based on 2 important factors: highground advantage and unit pathing. You see what happened in SC2 and you say you don't like SC2. I personally don't like SC2 because there aren't battles all over the map all the time and I think it's not too far fetched to say it's one of your reasons as well.
Goons pathing have nothing to do with defenders advantage, its always disadvantage. Simplest examples, when terran sieges up my natural i click my goons to move back, they start to move then 2-3 of them wonder around and gets killed in tank fire range, or when goons cannot go to the point where you want whitout runing around and suiciding in minefields. Having goons on highground shooting down other units can backfire too, as goons cant recognise when to stop and start fire when i put it on the edge of highground and we again get the same runaround, ive seen jangbi on stream lost a game having the highground advantage thanks to the goons ai disadvantage.
Jealous said about mindfullnes effort and attention needed in such situations, thats righ indeed, but wouldnt be better to make my macro produciton, or make drop at the same time, or lead another battle elsewhere while im struggling with my dragoons. Game would greatly benefit of some small enhancements, well be able to execute cleaner gameplay more multitasking, and a spectator can enjoy watching high level players push the game even further.
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On April 16 2016 16:55 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 16:03 Dazed_Spy wrote:
Were not talking about the same phenomenon, though. I started as a casual player when I was five, you started as a casual player as an adult (?) and moved onto a private ladder while it was still relatively thriving. Hes talking about bringing in some new demographic into an extremely old and ossified game, who would then also play on this private server. I dont want an influx of casual players because starcraft is not a game for casual players. It was a game for casual rts players over a decade ago, and even then, it had a very low retention rate. Like, even lower than any games retention rate, which are all already very low. Why would I want a bunch of new players to buy a game, fill up the strategy section with whining, get face rolled by me in D ranks, only to have 1-3 more people actually stick a round to the point where they can take a game off me? Broodwar revival is a fantasy.
No, we aren't, and that's okay. I first played when I was 9, so I understand what you mean. Making Brood War more accessible for everyone WILL bring in new players. New players join all the time. The activity issue is that older players leave at a faster rate, at least in the foreign scene. Having a bunch of new players fill up the strategy section with whining and getting facerolled is just a filter for existence in this environment. Some people push through and become better. I agree with you that there are many "new" players who post in the Strategy section and then disappear a week later, but I've also witnessed the growth of many new players over the past few years because they truly loved the game. Making this game more universally available will increase the amount of players retained, if not the retention rate, simply due to mathematics. If there are 10 new players this month, only 1 of which sticks around for a year or more and improves, then increasing exposure and availability through a new patch would increase that number to 20 and 2, respectively. Brood War revival is what you make it to be. For me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough. Show nested quote +How do you even bring in casual players in the first place if you dont make the game more accessible, in the ways that you and I dont want? Let alone keep them? If I could wave a magic wand and get new casual players maybe I'd do it, but within the context of reality, its always about making actual changes directed to making the game easy to play. That question is a bit too broad and hypothetical for me to answer in definite terms, but I feel that exposure through various websites like Reddit, TeamLiquid, Battle.net, etc. helps. Keeping them is up to them, not us, but if the game becomes more available in new OS and players don't have to go through a multi-step process involving third party launchers in order to experience the game, there will be some that are kept. Making the game easy to play is out of the question for me, and I would not trade that for more players, so that point of discussion is one I'm not interested in pursuing. I never meant to imply im against any patch that either makes broodwar more compatible, or is used as a pretext for some deal that might draw in new players. But I see no value in changing the game for casuals or in pretending that any hypothetical new population would add much value to my experience of the game. I've seen a few new people in the community as well, and yeah the population curve is always a net negative, but the amount of these new players that both stick around and become good enough that I get any enjoyment out of their existence within the community is vanishingly small. I have no particular interest in seeing new players join the community or not join, because the reality is, neither will have much of an impact on my experience. My experience will still be going through the boring process of grinding on iccup until I find the years-seasoned players like you, that can actually give me a game, while the community gradually dwindles. Even with a compatibility patch we will still see negative growth in a years~ time.
"for me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough."
Alright, in that I think we agree completely. On April 16 2016 22:46 _Animus_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 21:38 Miragee wrote:On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent. I just gave an example where chokes almost don't matter because of pathing: SC2. Yes, they still matter a bit but not a lot like in BW. If you change that in BW, you can't have defenses that consist of 3 tanks, some turrets, scvs and a small choke. Protoss players wouldn't have to drop/recall anymore they could just run into it. That would be stupid and would take away the whole notion that there are battles all over the map in BW. Defenders advantage is the reason for why that happens in BW because you don't always need your whole army in position to stop a push. The defenders advantage in BW is based on 2 important factors: highground advantage and unit pathing. You see what happened in SC2 and you say you don't like SC2. I personally don't like SC2 because there aren't battles all over the map all the time and I think it's not too far fetched to say it's one of your reasons as well. Goons pathing have nothing to do with defenders advantage, its always disadvantage. Uh...your point doesnt refute his. It can be true that goon pathing is always a net negative for the protoss player (mental stress and pragmatic ability to kill things) while also having an impact in favour of the defender. Goon pathing does amplify defenders advantage when goons try to run/attack up hill. Period. If you seriously think otherwise, I might suggest theres a reason your stuck on the lower end of iccup ranks.
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On April 17 2016 01:46 Dazed_Spy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 16:55 Jealous wrote:On April 16 2016 16:03 Dazed_Spy wrote:
Were not talking about the same phenomenon, though. I started as a casual player when I was five, you started as a casual player as an adult (?) and moved onto a private ladder while it was still relatively thriving. Hes talking about bringing in some new demographic into an extremely old and ossified game, who would then also play on this private server. I dont want an influx of casual players because starcraft is not a game for casual players. It was a game for casual rts players over a decade ago, and even then, it had a very low retention rate. Like, even lower than any games retention rate, which are all already very low. Why would I want a bunch of new players to buy a game, fill up the strategy section with whining, get face rolled by me in D ranks, only to have 1-3 more people actually stick a round to the point where they can take a game off me? Broodwar revival is a fantasy.
No, we aren't, and that's okay. I first played when I was 9, so I understand what you mean. Making Brood War more accessible for everyone WILL bring in new players. New players join all the time. The activity issue is that older players leave at a faster rate, at least in the foreign scene. Having a bunch of new players fill up the strategy section with whining and getting facerolled is just a filter for existence in this environment. Some people push through and become better. I agree with you that there are many "new" players who post in the Strategy section and then disappear a week later, but I've also witnessed the growth of many new players over the past few years because they truly loved the game. Making this game more universally available will increase the amount of players retained, if not the retention rate, simply due to mathematics. If there are 10 new players this month, only 1 of which sticks around for a year or more and improves, then increasing exposure and availability through a new patch would increase that number to 20 and 2, respectively. Brood War revival is what you make it to be. For me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough. How do you even bring in casual players in the first place if you dont make the game more accessible, in the ways that you and I dont want? Let alone keep them? If I could wave a magic wand and get new casual players maybe I'd do it, but within the context of reality, its always about making actual changes directed to making the game easy to play. That question is a bit too broad and hypothetical for me to answer in definite terms, but I feel that exposure through various websites like Reddit, TeamLiquid, Battle.net, etc. helps. Keeping them is up to them, not us, but if the game becomes more available in new OS and players don't have to go through a multi-step process involving third party launchers in order to experience the game, there will be some that are kept. Making the game easy to play is out of the question for me, and I would not trade that for more players, so that point of discussion is one I'm not interested in pursuing. I never meant to imply im against any patch that either makes broodwar more compatible, or is used as a pretext for some deal that might draw in new players. But I see no value in changing the game for casuals or in pretending that any hypothetical new population would add much value to my experience of the game. I've seen a few new people in the community as well, and yeah the population curve is always a net negative, but the amount of these new players that both stick around and become good enough that I get any enjoyment out of their existence within the community is vanishingly small. I have no particular interest in seeing new players join the community or not join, because the reality is, neither will have much of an impact on my experience. My experience will still be going through the boring process of grinding on iccup until I find the years-seasoned players like you, that can actually give me a game, while the community gradually dwindles. Even with a compatibility patch we will still see negative growth in a years~ time. "for me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough." Alright, in that I think we agree completely. Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 22:46 _Animus_ wrote:On April 16 2016 21:38 Miragee wrote:On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent. I just gave an example where chokes almost don't matter because of pathing: SC2. Yes, they still matter a bit but not a lot like in BW. If you change that in BW, you can't have defenses that consist of 3 tanks, some turrets, scvs and a small choke. Protoss players wouldn't have to drop/recall anymore they could just run into it. That would be stupid and would take away the whole notion that there are battles all over the map in BW. Defenders advantage is the reason for why that happens in BW because you don't always need your whole army in position to stop a push. The defenders advantage in BW is based on 2 important factors: highground advantage and unit pathing. You see what happened in SC2 and you say you don't like SC2. I personally don't like SC2 because there aren't battles all over the map all the time and I think it's not too far fetched to say it's one of your reasons as well. Goons pathing have nothing to do with defenders advantage, its always disadvantage. Uh...your point doesnt refute his. It can be true that goon pathing is always a net negative for the protoss player (mental stress and pragmatic ability to kill things) while also having an impact in favour of the defender. Goon pathing does amplify defenders advantage when goons try to run/attack up hill. Period. If you seriously think otherwise, I might suggest theres a reason your stuck on the lower end of iccup ranks.
nice post interesting thought on the matter. But the "if you don't agree, you suck" comment at the end was really not necessary, was it?
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On April 17 2016 11:36 Cele wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2016 01:46 Dazed_Spy wrote:On April 16 2016 16:55 Jealous wrote:On April 16 2016 16:03 Dazed_Spy wrote:
Were not talking about the same phenomenon, though. I started as a casual player when I was five, you started as a casual player as an adult (?) and moved onto a private ladder while it was still relatively thriving. Hes talking about bringing in some new demographic into an extremely old and ossified game, who would then also play on this private server. I dont want an influx of casual players because starcraft is not a game for casual players. It was a game for casual rts players over a decade ago, and even then, it had a very low retention rate. Like, even lower than any games retention rate, which are all already very low. Why would I want a bunch of new players to buy a game, fill up the strategy section with whining, get face rolled by me in D ranks, only to have 1-3 more people actually stick a round to the point where they can take a game off me? Broodwar revival is a fantasy.
No, we aren't, and that's okay. I first played when I was 9, so I understand what you mean. Making Brood War more accessible for everyone WILL bring in new players. New players join all the time. The activity issue is that older players leave at a faster rate, at least in the foreign scene. Having a bunch of new players fill up the strategy section with whining and getting facerolled is just a filter for existence in this environment. Some people push through and become better. I agree with you that there are many "new" players who post in the Strategy section and then disappear a week later, but I've also witnessed the growth of many new players over the past few years because they truly loved the game. Making this game more universally available will increase the amount of players retained, if not the retention rate, simply due to mathematics. If there are 10 new players this month, only 1 of which sticks around for a year or more and improves, then increasing exposure and availability through a new patch would increase that number to 20 and 2, respectively. Brood War revival is what you make it to be. For me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough. How do you even bring in casual players in the first place if you dont make the game more accessible, in the ways that you and I dont want? Let alone keep them? If I could wave a magic wand and get new casual players maybe I'd do it, but within the context of reality, its always about making actual changes directed to making the game easy to play. That question is a bit too broad and hypothetical for me to answer in definite terms, but I feel that exposure through various websites like Reddit, TeamLiquid, Battle.net, etc. helps. Keeping them is up to them, not us, but if the game becomes more available in new OS and players don't have to go through a multi-step process involving third party launchers in order to experience the game, there will be some that are kept. Making the game easy to play is out of the question for me, and I would not trade that for more players, so that point of discussion is one I'm not interested in pursuing. I never meant to imply im against any patch that either makes broodwar more compatible, or is used as a pretext for some deal that might draw in new players. But I see no value in changing the game for casuals or in pretending that any hypothetical new population would add much value to my experience of the game. I've seen a few new people in the community as well, and yeah the population curve is always a net negative, but the amount of these new players that both stick around and become good enough that I get any enjoyment out of their existence within the community is vanishingly small. I have no particular interest in seeing new players join the community or not join, because the reality is, neither will have much of an impact on my experience. My experience will still be going through the boring process of grinding on iccup until I find the years-seasoned players like you, that can actually give me a game, while the community gradually dwindles. Even with a compatibility patch we will still see negative growth in a years~ time. "for me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough." Alright, in that I think we agree completely. On April 16 2016 22:46 _Animus_ wrote:On April 16 2016 21:38 Miragee wrote:On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent. I just gave an example where chokes almost don't matter because of pathing: SC2. Yes, they still matter a bit but not a lot like in BW. If you change that in BW, you can't have defenses that consist of 3 tanks, some turrets, scvs and a small choke. Protoss players wouldn't have to drop/recall anymore they could just run into it. That would be stupid and would take away the whole notion that there are battles all over the map in BW. Defenders advantage is the reason for why that happens in BW because you don't always need your whole army in position to stop a push. The defenders advantage in BW is based on 2 important factors: highground advantage and unit pathing. You see what happened in SC2 and you say you don't like SC2. I personally don't like SC2 because there aren't battles all over the map all the time and I think it's not too far fetched to say it's one of your reasons as well. Goons pathing have nothing to do with defenders advantage, its always disadvantage. Uh...your point doesnt refute his. It can be true that goon pathing is always a net negative for the protoss player (mental stress and pragmatic ability to kill things) while also having an impact in favour of the defender. Goon pathing does amplify defenders advantage when goons try to run/attack up hill. Period. If you seriously think otherwise, I might suggest theres a reason your stuck on the lower end of iccup ranks. nice post interesting thought on the matter. But the "if you don't agree, you suck" comment at the end was really not necessary, was it?
It does come off almost as a little derogatory, but at the same time I can't really disagree. Goon pathing plays a significant role in many defenders advantage situations.
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So when is it going to happen is the only thing I am curious about.
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On April 17 2016 01:46 Dazed_Spy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 16:55 Jealous wrote:On April 16 2016 16:03 Dazed_Spy wrote:
Were not talking about the same phenomenon, though. I started as a casual player when I was five, you started as a casual player as an adult (?) and moved onto a private ladder while it was still relatively thriving. Hes talking about bringing in some new demographic into an extremely old and ossified game, who would then also play on this private server. I dont want an influx of casual players because starcraft is not a game for casual players. It was a game for casual rts players over a decade ago, and even then, it had a very low retention rate. Like, even lower than any games retention rate, which are all already very low. Why would I want a bunch of new players to buy a game, fill up the strategy section with whining, get face rolled by me in D ranks, only to have 1-3 more people actually stick a round to the point where they can take a game off me? Broodwar revival is a fantasy.
No, we aren't, and that's okay. I first played when I was 9, so I understand what you mean. Making Brood War more accessible for everyone WILL bring in new players. New players join all the time. The activity issue is that older players leave at a faster rate, at least in the foreign scene. Having a bunch of new players fill up the strategy section with whining and getting facerolled is just a filter for existence in this environment. Some people push through and become better. I agree with you that there are many "new" players who post in the Strategy section and then disappear a week later, but I've also witnessed the growth of many new players over the past few years because they truly loved the game. Making this game more universally available will increase the amount of players retained, if not the retention rate, simply due to mathematics. If there are 10 new players this month, only 1 of which sticks around for a year or more and improves, then increasing exposure and availability through a new patch would increase that number to 20 and 2, respectively. Brood War revival is what you make it to be. For me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough. How do you even bring in casual players in the first place if you dont make the game more accessible, in the ways that you and I dont want? Let alone keep them? If I could wave a magic wand and get new casual players maybe I'd do it, but within the context of reality, its always about making actual changes directed to making the game easy to play. That question is a bit too broad and hypothetical for me to answer in definite terms, but I feel that exposure through various websites like Reddit, TeamLiquid, Battle.net, etc. helps. Keeping them is up to them, not us, but if the game becomes more available in new OS and players don't have to go through a multi-step process involving third party launchers in order to experience the game, there will be some that are kept. Making the game easy to play is out of the question for me, and I would not trade that for more players, so that point of discussion is one I'm not interested in pursuing. I never meant to imply im against any patch that either makes broodwar more compatible, or is used as a pretext for some deal that might draw in new players. But I see no value in changing the game for casuals or in pretending that any hypothetical new population would add much value to my experience of the game. I've seen a few new people in the community as well, and yeah the population curve is always a net negative, but the amount of these new players that both stick around and become good enough that I get any enjoyment out of their existence within the community is vanishingly small. I have no particular interest in seeing new players join the community or not join, because the reality is, neither will have much of an impact on my experience. My experience will still be going through the boring process of grinding on iccup until I find the years-seasoned players like you, that can actually give me a game, while the community gradually dwindles. Even with a compatibility patch we will still see negative growth in a years~ time. "for me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough." Alright, in that I think we agree completely. Show nested quote +On April 16 2016 22:46 _Animus_ wrote:On April 16 2016 21:38 Miragee wrote:On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent. I just gave an example where chokes almost don't matter because of pathing: SC2. Yes, they still matter a bit but not a lot like in BW. If you change that in BW, you can't have defenses that consist of 3 tanks, some turrets, scvs and a small choke. Protoss players wouldn't have to drop/recall anymore they could just run into it. That would be stupid and would take away the whole notion that there are battles all over the map in BW. Defenders advantage is the reason for why that happens in BW because you don't always need your whole army in position to stop a push. The defenders advantage in BW is based on 2 important factors: highground advantage and unit pathing. You see what happened in SC2 and you say you don't like SC2. I personally don't like SC2 because there aren't battles all over the map all the time and I think it's not too far fetched to say it's one of your reasons as well. Goons pathing have nothing to do with defenders advantage, its always disadvantage. Uh...your point doesnt refute his. It can be true that goon pathing is always a net negative for the protoss player (mental stress and pragmatic ability to kill things) while also having an impact in favour of the defender. Goon pathing does amplify defenders advantage when goons try to run/attack up hill. Period. If you seriously think otherwise, I might suggest theres a reason your stuck on the lower end of iccup ranks.
LOL, i dont say when attacker is using goons there is no defenders advantage, i only say that goons are giving you defenders disadvantage too with simple examples did you not understand that? If you are concerned about my skill level i wouldnt find the term stuck appropriate. You can see my iccup profile that i hardly play this game for years with less than 10 1v1 games on iccup for a season. I can stuck if i try to reach high rank but i fail to, but im not. I play for fun when i have the time and passion. Besides that if remember correctly i beat you in a tournament some years ago again without practice.
If you care only for your own experience and u enjoy watching the sinking ship bw is becoming, i find that a bit selfish to be honest. I too enjoy bw but that doesnt mean i dont see room for improvement. Modern korean scene is far away from pros were - fact and i see possibilities that can improve it, because these player not gonna grow younger and get better you know.
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On April 19 2016 15:14 _Animus_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2016 01:46 Dazed_Spy wrote:On April 16 2016 16:55 Jealous wrote:On April 16 2016 16:03 Dazed_Spy wrote:
Were not talking about the same phenomenon, though. I started as a casual player when I was five, you started as a casual player as an adult (?) and moved onto a private ladder while it was still relatively thriving. Hes talking about bringing in some new demographic into an extremely old and ossified game, who would then also play on this private server. I dont want an influx of casual players because starcraft is not a game for casual players. It was a game for casual rts players over a decade ago, and even then, it had a very low retention rate. Like, even lower than any games retention rate, which are all already very low. Why would I want a bunch of new players to buy a game, fill up the strategy section with whining, get face rolled by me in D ranks, only to have 1-3 more people actually stick a round to the point where they can take a game off me? Broodwar revival is a fantasy.
No, we aren't, and that's okay. I first played when I was 9, so I understand what you mean. Making Brood War more accessible for everyone WILL bring in new players. New players join all the time. The activity issue is that older players leave at a faster rate, at least in the foreign scene. Having a bunch of new players fill up the strategy section with whining and getting facerolled is just a filter for existence in this environment. Some people push through and become better. I agree with you that there are many "new" players who post in the Strategy section and then disappear a week later, but I've also witnessed the growth of many new players over the past few years because they truly loved the game. Making this game more universally available will increase the amount of players retained, if not the retention rate, simply due to mathematics. If there are 10 new players this month, only 1 of which sticks around for a year or more and improves, then increasing exposure and availability through a new patch would increase that number to 20 and 2, respectively. Brood War revival is what you make it to be. For me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough. How do you even bring in casual players in the first place if you dont make the game more accessible, in the ways that you and I dont want? Let alone keep them? If I could wave a magic wand and get new casual players maybe I'd do it, but within the context of reality, its always about making actual changes directed to making the game easy to play. That question is a bit too broad and hypothetical for me to answer in definite terms, but I feel that exposure through various websites like Reddit, TeamLiquid, Battle.net, etc. helps. Keeping them is up to them, not us, but if the game becomes more available in new OS and players don't have to go through a multi-step process involving third party launchers in order to experience the game, there will be some that are kept. Making the game easy to play is out of the question for me, and I would not trade that for more players, so that point of discussion is one I'm not interested in pursuing. I never meant to imply im against any patch that either makes broodwar more compatible, or is used as a pretext for some deal that might draw in new players. But I see no value in changing the game for casuals or in pretending that any hypothetical new population would add much value to my experience of the game. I've seen a few new people in the community as well, and yeah the population curve is always a net negative, but the amount of these new players that both stick around and become good enough that I get any enjoyment out of their existence within the community is vanishingly small. I have no particular interest in seeing new players join the community or not join, because the reality is, neither will have much of an impact on my experience. My experience will still be going through the boring process of grinding on iccup until I find the years-seasoned players like you, that can actually give me a game, while the community gradually dwindles. Even with a compatibility patch we will still see negative growth in a years~ time. "for me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough." Alright, in that I think we agree completely. On April 16 2016 22:46 _Animus_ wrote:On April 16 2016 21:38 Miragee wrote:On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent. I just gave an example where chokes almost don't matter because of pathing: SC2. Yes, they still matter a bit but not a lot like in BW. If you change that in BW, you can't have defenses that consist of 3 tanks, some turrets, scvs and a small choke. Protoss players wouldn't have to drop/recall anymore they could just run into it. That would be stupid and would take away the whole notion that there are battles all over the map in BW. Defenders advantage is the reason for why that happens in BW because you don't always need your whole army in position to stop a push. The defenders advantage in BW is based on 2 important factors: highground advantage and unit pathing. You see what happened in SC2 and you say you don't like SC2. I personally don't like SC2 because there aren't battles all over the map all the time and I think it's not too far fetched to say it's one of your reasons as well. Goons pathing have nothing to do with defenders advantage, its always disadvantage. Uh...your point doesnt refute his. It can be true that goon pathing is always a net negative for the protoss player (mental stress and pragmatic ability to kill things) while also having an impact in favour of the defender. Goon pathing does amplify defenders advantage when goons try to run/attack up hill. Period. If you seriously think otherwise, I might suggest theres a reason your stuck on the lower end of iccup ranks. LOL, i dont say when attacker is using goons there is no defenders advantage, i only say that goons are giving you defenders disadvantage too with simple examples did you not understand that? What you said was "Goons pathing have nothing to do with defenders advantage, its always disadvantage.". Not a synonymous statement with your later reinterpretation, to say the least " If you are concerned about my skill level." No one is concerned, trust me.
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i would like to see an official ranking and only one official server (to gather all players). Of course, fix the connection issues that the game have.
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On April 17 2016 11:36 Cele wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2016 01:46 Dazed_Spy wrote:On April 16 2016 16:55 Jealous wrote:On April 16 2016 16:03 Dazed_Spy wrote:
Were not talking about the same phenomenon, though. I started as a casual player when I was five, you started as a casual player as an adult (?) and moved onto a private ladder while it was still relatively thriving. Hes talking about bringing in some new demographic into an extremely old and ossified game, who would then also play on this private server. I dont want an influx of casual players because starcraft is not a game for casual players. It was a game for casual rts players over a decade ago, and even then, it had a very low retention rate. Like, even lower than any games retention rate, which are all already very low. Why would I want a bunch of new players to buy a game, fill up the strategy section with whining, get face rolled by me in D ranks, only to have 1-3 more people actually stick a round to the point where they can take a game off me? Broodwar revival is a fantasy.
No, we aren't, and that's okay. I first played when I was 9, so I understand what you mean. Making Brood War more accessible for everyone WILL bring in new players. New players join all the time. The activity issue is that older players leave at a faster rate, at least in the foreign scene. Having a bunch of new players fill up the strategy section with whining and getting facerolled is just a filter for existence in this environment. Some people push through and become better. I agree with you that there are many "new" players who post in the Strategy section and then disappear a week later, but I've also witnessed the growth of many new players over the past few years because they truly loved the game. Making this game more universally available will increase the amount of players retained, if not the retention rate, simply due to mathematics. If there are 10 new players this month, only 1 of which sticks around for a year or more and improves, then increasing exposure and availability through a new patch would increase that number to 20 and 2, respectively. Brood War revival is what you make it to be. For me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough. How do you even bring in casual players in the first place if you dont make the game more accessible, in the ways that you and I dont want? Let alone keep them? If I could wave a magic wand and get new casual players maybe I'd do it, but within the context of reality, its always about making actual changes directed to making the game easy to play. That question is a bit too broad and hypothetical for me to answer in definite terms, but I feel that exposure through various websites like Reddit, TeamLiquid, Battle.net, etc. helps. Keeping them is up to them, not us, but if the game becomes more available in new OS and players don't have to go through a multi-step process involving third party launchers in order to experience the game, there will be some that are kept. Making the game easy to play is out of the question for me, and I would not trade that for more players, so that point of discussion is one I'm not interested in pursuing. I never meant to imply im against any patch that either makes broodwar more compatible, or is used as a pretext for some deal that might draw in new players. But I see no value in changing the game for casuals or in pretending that any hypothetical new population would add much value to my experience of the game. I've seen a few new people in the community as well, and yeah the population curve is always a net negative, but the amount of these new players that both stick around and become good enough that I get any enjoyment out of their existence within the community is vanishingly small. I have no particular interest in seeing new players join the community or not join, because the reality is, neither will have much of an impact on my experience. My experience will still be going through the boring process of grinding on iccup until I find the years-seasoned players like you, that can actually give me a game, while the community gradually dwindles. Even with a compatibility patch we will still see negative growth in a years~ time. "for me, having this game still around and all the active Korean leagues is "revival" enough." Alright, in that I think we agree completely. On April 16 2016 22:46 _Animus_ wrote:On April 16 2016 21:38 Miragee wrote:On April 16 2016 12:27 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 22:11 Miragee wrote:On April 15 2016 18:00 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:33 shin ken wrote:On April 15 2016 17:22 [[Starlight]] wrote:On April 15 2016 17:13 shin ken wrote:
So you think strafejumping in Quake should have been "fixed"? Or canceling in Street Fighter 2? Or wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee? Or Muta stacking in Broodwar?
Sure, those sound a bit more awesome than "weird Dragoon pathing" but there's a reason why a lot of folks hate the clean unit pathing in SC2 and would happily have it interchanged with something artificially stupid. Because the result of perfect pathing are deathballs of units. Which change the whole game at the most fundamental level. I think it's the biggest difference between SC2 and BW and I, personally, do not prefer passive gameplay and deathball armys. I think SC2's problems there are more due to unlimited unit selection plus some other game design choices that BW didn't make (fortunately). For every 'cool' bug you can name, most anyone else can name 50 bugs that aren't 'cool', and in fact, suck. And again, Blizzard has ALREADY SAID that they are right now, as we speak, working on bug fixes for SCBW. So, go Bliz, squish dem bugs. They don't said which bugs they would work on, but I can assure you they won't touch anything related to actual gameplay and balancing because they are not stupid and probably know what their audience want. Which you are obviously not a part of, because you seem to want different, "nicer" and "cleaner" game than Brood War, which you should rather play, so you don't have all those pesky bugs to mess with. May I recommend Starcraft 2? Or the Starbow mod if you want it to be a bit more old school. Those are excellent! BW is BW not because of bugs, but because of a long series of very good design decisions plus a whole lot of nitpicky balancing (a lot of it after release). No, BW is not BW because of bugs. But some "bugs" or polishing issues are huge part of what makes BW special. After reading your constant "yeah, but giving one unit better pathing doesn't change the balance" I think you don't understand the fundamentals of the defenders advantage. Why do you think there is next to no defenders advantage in SC2? Yes, also because of the high ground mechanic, but mostly because units move so perfect that you can just walk them through a choke like it doesn't matter. In SC2 units move through a choke like oil moves through a bottleneck. I'm not saying that changing Dragoon AI might not be a good idea. I don't know. But you have to be really careful and test it because you can't argue that it might not have a huge impact on the balance, especially in PvT. I'm more annoyed about things like goons getting stuck on ramps and freaking out... but better unit pathing would not eliminate defender's advantage. Not only would defenders still have the high ground advantage, as you yourself note, attackers moving through a choke or ramp automatically put themselves at a disadvantage, good pathing or no. Because you bunch up when moving through a choke due to there being LESS SPACE, so area-of-effect attacks/spells and splash damage eat you up, plus you are in-effect flanking yourself, i.e. you are for a few seconds a long skinny line of units, not all of whom can engage at once, while the ones in front are getting torn up by defenders, who, if well-positioned, can engage all at once (concaves and such). So again, better pathing would not eliminate defenders' advantage. I do agree with you that any changes/bug fixes should be well-tested, that's just being prudent. I just gave an example where chokes almost don't matter because of pathing: SC2. Yes, they still matter a bit but not a lot like in BW. If you change that in BW, you can't have defenses that consist of 3 tanks, some turrets, scvs and a small choke. Protoss players wouldn't have to drop/recall anymore they could just run into it. That would be stupid and would take away the whole notion that there are battles all over the map in BW. Defenders advantage is the reason for why that happens in BW because you don't always need your whole army in position to stop a push. The defenders advantage in BW is based on 2 important factors: highground advantage and unit pathing. You see what happened in SC2 and you say you don't like SC2. I personally don't like SC2 because there aren't battles all over the map all the time and I think it's not too far fetched to say it's one of your reasons as well. Goons pathing have nothing to do with defenders advantage, its always disadvantage. Uh...your point doesnt refute his. It can be true that goon pathing is always a net negative for the protoss player (mental stress and pragmatic ability to kill things) while also having an impact in favour of the defender. Goon pathing does amplify defenders advantage when goons try to run/attack up hill. Period. If you seriously think otherwise, I might suggest theres a reason your stuck on the lower end of iccup ranks. nice post, interesting thought on the matter. But the "if you don't agree, you suck" comment at the end was really not necessary, was it?
It wasn't.
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EPT
