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So we've all been complaining about the few issues with MBS, unlimited unit selection, building queues, etc. in Starcraft 2. But I doubt many of us have gone back to playing Starcraft 1 after being in this beta for so long.
I've just done that tonight. I forced myself a break from SC2's beta and played 2v2s 3v3s and 4v4s on BGH in SC1 for the entire night. Here's what I have to report.
The difference is staggering at first. Some first impressions:
"What the hell is this crap?"
Playing on SC1's B.net, I instantly got the impression "how the heck did this game become so popular?" Sound design, while memorable actually *wasn't* that great. It is on par (except Zerg and a few Protoss of course) with SC2. The game felt incredibly aged, even the unit designs felt old and unoriginal. The graphic design for the interface was amateur at best. For instance, have you guys actually looked at what the marine looks like in game? The detail just feels completely lacking.
Graphics
The first thing you notice is easily the graphics. All the tiny little effects are gone, and everything just looks plain. I would say I easily welcome the new graphics in SC2. They are a hearty refresh. Especially the animations. SC1 animations look vastly out dated, even the death of zergs look very outdated. Bravo to the Blizz art department for doing a great job in updating the art.
Pathfinding
At first glance, it's a wholesomely crappier path predicting engine. However, after playing a bit, you start noticing the new pathing system isn't so much better.
Yes, units path around things far quicker and more efficient than in SC1 (running up ramps is a big problem in SC1) but also turns down the tactical-ness of the gameplay.
Let me explain - in SC2, you often moved your units into a ball, and balls of units would attack each other. Micro usually consists of moving them back and forth until one side wins.
SC1 had locked down control. That is, units for some reason would stay in formation. Probably due to the magical box. I find this a good and bad thing. It's good because you have consistent unit behavior, the formation they started in will end in. And units didn't always clump up into a tight ball meaning engagements were tactical, rather than ball vs ball. Units usually spread out to cover more area so instead of massive balls of stalkers coming in at you, you see a wide front of dragoons moving down the map.
MBS
I didn't notice this at all. It is a nonissue. I forgot that SC1 didn't have MBS actually, and losing it wasn't a very big problem.
Unlimited unit selection
I found this a very annoying yet intriguing new restriction upcoming coming back to SC1. The limited unit selection made me pay more attention to squad assignments, and create more interesting squads. It definitely was a good micro sink. Far better than I think Zerg's new macro mechanic or Chrono boost or the mule. It forced you to think tactically how to make a squad and assign that customized squad into a key. It also forced you to micro better your troops because you can't select them all at once.
What blizzard should've done for SC2 is forced the 2 unit selection, but market it better as "create squads on the fly" or something for nay sayers. I found it created a more tactical feel to the game rather than what I do now in SC2, Drag select, A click watch fight. Click a few psi storms as fight goes on.
Game Speed
SC1 actually didn't feel much slower than SC2. The combat started and ended just as fast as SC2. I think the main reason for SC2's speed up is because it's just so much easier to do things in SC2.
Balance
This is one area where it struck a nerve. After playing SC1 again, I could feel the completeness of its balance. Siege tanks for instance, only did 35 damage to marines. Which means the marines can close in on them before dying. They also shot a lot slower so you had more time to get into retaliation range. A lot of the balance ideas made natural sense, where they weren't created to counter a poored designed idea. They were the natural role that was required in terms of how the game was overall designed. Especially great was their airforce design. You can clearly see which ones were the air superiority fighters, the capital ships and the siege ships. The game design also felt a lot simpler. There weren't so many made up roles like "anti-armor" or anything like that. It was the short ranged do all marine, the long ranged siege unit, the melee flamer or the anti-air mech. For Toss, it was the high hp melee, the all rounded all terrain walker, the slow siege unit and great spell casters. For zerg, it's just a massable melee unit, a massable ranged unit, great harass unit that could turn into anti-air or anti-ground. Gives you great options.
You look at SC2 design. They've made up an "armored" feature, just so they can create -anti-armored units. I don't think this adds to the gameplay what so ever since it doesn't synergize with any of the other units other than mixing up your unit ball mixture. They should simply remove armored feature from all units, and rebalance the game using small, medium and large (massive) units. I feel all armored does is complicate the game design and makes balancing a nightmare. The small, medium and large units, you can easily tell which are small, medium and large unit. More so in SC2's scale.
Another thing I've noticed after playing SC2 is the lack of over powered units in SC2. The old mantra from Blizzard was to make everything overpowered. Yet they've nerfed Protoss 13 times. In SC1 every unit seemingly had an achilles heel. Siege tanks felt super overpowered, yet they only do 35 damage to marines. Psi Storm covers a HUGE area and lasts for such a long time but because they do slow damage you can get out of it quickly. Reavers fired incredibly slow and moved incredibly slow but were put to great use. That kind of game design is a lot more forgiving than BOOM BOOM, 2 psi storms you barely even had the chance to flinch and half your units are dead. Or 2 colossi climbs up on your expansion, zap zap half your drones are gone.
Some differences I jot down:
SC1, money is removed after the building is placed down
SC2, money is removed instantly after the order is given
Vespene Refineries/Assimilators/Extractors don't snap to the vespene Geyser. They do in SC2.
SC1's command center doesn't rally to minerals. Big change. I forgot I had to rally them to minerals, I had a bunch of SCVs sitting there doing nothing.
Hotkeys are everywhere, took me ages to change marine from A to M, siege tank from S to T.
Siege tank's Siege mode and unsiege mode are the same hotkey/button. I found this very annoying since I'm using to rapidly hitting E for siege and D for unsiege. Rapidly hitting O actually makes them siege, unsiege and siege lol.
All in all, after going back to SC1, it feels like driving a much simpler, much more raw manual race car vs driving an automatic F1 racecar (the ones with paddle shifts and no clutch, with 5000 buttons for fuel changes). I think that was one of the reasons why SC1 was such a success in eSports and why Warcraft 3 was a pretty big failure. It's simplicity and ease of learning (compared to War3's 5 races, 15 heroes and god knows how many units) create a quick fan following because the average person can quickly understand what is going on.
I hope for SC2, they could simplify it a bit more in terms of game design. Remove artibrary conditions such as slow or armored that doesn't really affect gameplay positively. And actually put units in the game that fit a required role (I'm looking at you mothership)
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Well I'm gonna be the first one to reply to this so I'll try to say something smart:"It's a really good post."
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United States47024 Posts
On May 30 2010 14:10 wankey wrote:
Balance
This is one area where it struck a nerve. After playing SC1 again, I could feel the completeness of its balance. Siege tanks for instance, only did 35 damage to marines. Which means the marines can close in on them before dying. They also shot a lot slower so you had more time to get into retaliation range. A lot of the balance ideas made natural sense, where they weren't created to counter a poored designed idea. They were the natural role that was required in terms of how the game was overall designed. Especially great was their airforce design. You can clearly see which ones were the air superiority fighters, the capital ships and the siege ships. The game design also felt a lot simpler. There weren't so many made up roles like "anti-armor" or anything like that. It was the short ranged do all marine, the long ranged siege unit, the melee flamer or the anti-air mech. For Toss, it was the high hp melee, the all rounded all terrain walker, the slow siege unit and great spell casters. For zerg, it's just a massable melee unit, a massable ranged unit, great harass unit that could turn into anti-air or anti-ground. Gives you great options.
You look at SC2 design. They've made up an "armored" feature, just so they can create -anti-armored units. I don't think this adds to the gameplay what so ever since it doesn't synergize with any of the other units other than mixing up your unit ball mixture. They should simply remove armored feature from all units, and rebalance the game using small, medium and large (massive) units. I feel all armored does is complicate the game design and makes balancing a nightmare. The small, medium and large units, you can easily tell which are small, medium and large unit. More so in SC2's scale.
Judging from some of your comments, it seems that you are oblivious to the Explosive/Concussive/Normal damage system and Small/Medium/Large armor types. The SC2 Light/Armored system is actually just a simplified version of the original armor relationship in SC1.
The "armored" type is not made up, it's entirely analogous to the "heavy" armor type in SC1, down to the fact that analogous units still have the same types/bonuses.
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I very much agree with all of your observations
I also REALLY like your manual vs automatic car comparison to brood war and sc2
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I don't believe you actually ever "truly" played Broodwar
No offense, but I strongly disagree with many of your posts and the fact you're complaining about balance (and your version of going back to BW was BGH wtf?).
Just for reference, Iccup rank and sc2 league/elo/rank?
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I've been having a similar experience, although in my case I switched SC2 to Classic hotkeys as soon as I could to minimize the re-learning. The only thing that has been slightly weird to deal with is the size of the view window, but that is probably more from other RTS games rather than SC2. Also, I found for the most part my APM dropped a bit, but I seem to have fewer null actions, and I seem to avoid hotkey spam to build in favour of going back to build units and depots when I need them. I don't know if that is SC2's doing, since that was a goal of mine for a while, but it does mean the more restrictive interface isn't really getting in my way.
One thing to point out about armored/light vs. size: +Armored and +Light damage bonuses can be a lot more arbitrary than size bonuses. I've heard arguments that this allows for better fine tuning, which it probably can, but Blizzard seems to be relying on it too much for balance, by making units, mainly the Immortal, Hellion and Patch 13 Ultralisk, deal tons of damage to their assigned counter while being far less useful against everything else. I'll admit it isn't as egregious and shallow as Rise of Nations or Dawn of War, but it still feels forced. The size system forced more of a system-oriented design process (as opposed to a unit-oriented one that ignores system-wide effects) and damage bonuses could just be assigned or tweaked to make Unit A beat Unit B better but not touch Unit C, all three had to be considered together, which forces the developers to make the units mesh well.
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forget the first one after playing numero dos.
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On May 30 2010 14:29 Xenocide_Knight wrote:
I don't believe you actually ever "truly" played Broodwar
No offense, but I strongly disagree with many of your posts and the fact you're complaining about balance (and your version of going back to BW was BGH wtf?).
Just for reference, Iccup rank and sc2 league/elo/rank?
Uh, I'm just an average player. This post isn't really to point out the balance things but just overall how I felt. Not saying I'm a balance master, but at least to me, Starcraft 1's balance is a lot easier to understand (also granted I haven't played Starcraft 1 for about 5 years so you can consider me a SC2 player going to SC1)
The balance also feel more forgiving in SC1 than in SC2. For instance, you get a bunch of dragoons, there aren't really any counters to them other than siege tanks. Whereas in SC2, marauders and ghosts make quick job of stalkers. Different game I know but definitely harder to learn in SC2.
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Aggh, not another one of these posts. People need to understand that although SPECIFIC things are harder in BW than in SC2, that does not mean that, OVERALL, SC2 will be "shallow" or "easy" when it's dominated by people who are really, really good at it. Capice?
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Wankey, you complain about SC2's sounds on a daily basis on the SClegacy forums. I don't mean to Ad-hominem, but from that it just seems like your an extremely reactionary player, and it really hurts your credibility that your changing extremely strong opinions with posts like "
Blizzard why did you butcher sound" and "Okay, that's it. SC2 sound is crap, utterly crap.". Which were really redundant threads.
Ok, I do mean to Ad-Hominem, but I mean to do in a very valid way I guess. Sorry.
Now you''ve taken a complete 180. I mean, seriously. It just gives me the impression you're posting stuff without any kind of mental filter at all. Maybe in the blog section?
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armored really is garbage... i agree on that
that's my whole opinion *nod*
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Actually If you indeed read my post, I say that SC1 was easy to learn hard to master, while SC2 is a bit harder to learn... dunno how to master.
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On May 30 2010 14:40 wankey wrote:
Actually If you indeed read my post, I say that SC1 was easy to learn hard to master, while SC2 is a bit harder to learn... dunno how to master.
And I'd like to disagree on that too. I'm so confused, how is a game that lacks MBS, autocast, over 12 unit select, automing easier then a game that has all of those.
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As a game, starcraft 2 obliterates BW. It's better in every single way except map design. There's an incredible dynamic of strategy and plenty of room for micro, though perhaps not quite as gimmicky-complex as BW (but keep in mind the age difference in the game).
The addition of automine and MBS and smartcasting are the best things that could happen to SC. It makes the game much more about strategy at all levels, whereas broodwar was almost entirely about execution and mechanics until you hit around B level, and even then mechanics were probably the dominating factor. While this was good for creating a nice separation in skill levels it meant that most players could never execute their desired strategies because it was just too hard to do. (I myself never reached B level because it just took too much work to get my mechanics that good). SC2 still has a great base of fundamentals, but it is much more about strategy than BW was at low/mid level.
You claim that balance is a serious problem, but actually I feel that SC2 is exceptionally well balanced already (if small changes like roach supply cost are tipping the scales then clearly it's well balanced). A lot of balance issues actually stem from there being so many more decisions to make than in BW. In BW your unit compositions are pretty much set by the matchup (aside from TvZ where you can clearly mech or bio). The game was actually so poorly balanced that most units did not even have a role in standard armies. I feel like every unit in SC2 has a role or use and should be made at some point, even the mothership (lategame PvT I think they're a requirement to deal with tanks.)
All in all, the game is great. As we all know bnet is what the real problem is.
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On May 30 2010 14:40 Half wrote:
Wankey, you complain about SC2's sounds on a daily basis on the SClegacy forums. I don't mean to Ad-hominem, but from that it just seems like your an extremely reactionary player, and it really hurts your credibility that your changing extremely strong opinions with posts like "
Blizzard why did you butcher sound" and "Okay, that's it. SC2 sound is crap, utterly crap."
Ok, I do mean to Ad-Hominem, but I mean to do in a very valid way I guess. Sorry.
So you read my thread titles. Well done. And funny how you read by author. Who cares, read the thread. I didn't say zerg and protoss are okay, I said the sound is *on par*. Here's why.
I made 2 threads about sound, and they were valid concerns. However, rather than just voicing a stupid biased opinion, I actually did research to see if my opinion is valid. After going back to SC1 and taking the double blind test myself, the original idea that the sound is vastly inferior (same goes for many people who think SC2 is crap) may just be biased opinion due to 12 years of nostalgia.
So I really don't know what you're striving for? Someone to pin the target on or the real answer.
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I'm not sure your points are very valid. Have you tried playing on ICCUP instead of bnet? I mean, your average bnet player isn't really the type that would, say, visit a site like teamliquid or watch a proleague match.
The movement of units has gotten much better in SC2 compared to SC1 due to fluid motion, thereby allowing units to move smoothly around others instead of getting bugged and having seizures like in SC1. And for most of the body of your "balance" thread, you've evaded the fact that SC1 has different damage types and different damage reductions dependent on size as well.
What you've said about attacking in SC2 makes me wonder if you use control group hotkeys. I'm not trying to be an ass or anything; sorry if it appears that way.
Also, SC1 has a pretty damn high learning curve. I haven't played WC3 at anything more than a casual level of play, but I feel as if it takes a lot less of the actual multitask and APM skills that SC1 does.
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If you want a good laugh, look at the zealot / zergling icon in the build bar (bottom middle). It kind of just looks like someone smeared a paintbrush on a canvas.
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On May 30 2010 14:43 Floophead_III wrote:
As a game, starcraft 2 obliterates BW. It's better in every single way except map design. There's an incredible dynamic of strategy and plenty of room for micro, though perhaps not quite as gimmicky-complex as BW (but keep in mind the age difference in the game).
The addition of automine and MBS and smartcasting are the best things that could happen to SC. It makes the game much more about strategy at all levels, whereas broodwar was almost entirely about execution and mechanics until you hit around B level, and even then mechanics were probably the dominating factor. While this was good for creating a nice separation in skill levels it meant that most players could never execute their desired strategies because it was just too hard to do. (I myself never reached B level because it just took too much work to get my mechanics that good). SC2 still has a great base of fundamentals, but it is much more about strategy than BW was at low/mid level.
You claim that balance is a serious problem, but actually I feel that SC2 is exceptionally well balanced already (if small changes like roach supply cost are tipping the scales then clearly it's well balanced). A lot of balance issues actually stem from there being so many more decisions to make than in BW. In BW your unit compositions are pretty much set by the matchup (aside from TvZ where you can clearly mech or bio). The game was actually so poorly balanced that most units did not even have a role in standard armies. I feel like every unit in SC2 has a role or use and should be made at some point, even the mothership (lategame PvT I think they're a requirement to deal with tanks.)
All in all, the game is great. As we all know bnet is what the real problem is.
How can a game not out of beta be so completely balanced? Lets talk again when the first expansion comes out and then we'll see :D
MBS, I seriously didn't notice. And automine is pretty awesome I do agree. That's why I jot it down, it was really annoying.
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I wish I could go back to BW. Now that I have a 20" widescreen monitor its impossible to play BW 
I tried windowed mode, but then it gets to damn small. I tried the 2x mode, doesnt fit the height. I tried fullscreen, I cant see half of the HUD, neither the psi counter. I've googled some fix to this, but they are kind of complex, if someone knows a simple way to play BW on my monitor setup, please tell me (and no i cant go back to CRT).
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driving enthusiast prefer manual transmission.
if you drive a sports car with a manual transmission then you are missing out on all the control.
regardless, hows the weather in irvine?
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EPT
