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On December 29 2010 09:47 3xiLe wrote:
People saying that "hurr durr its mechanical, its not strategy" are completing missing the point, or are more likely pretending they don't understand. The reason why OP is saying he thinks it is bad is not because of mechanics, but because it causes imbalance because it is too easy and makes it far harder for the opponent.
well theres a reason why they lowered the area of effect and the damage significantly from BW to SC2
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On December 29 2010 09:42 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2010 09:28 Clickety wrote:
You shouldn't be amazed by carpet storms, you should be amazed by smart tactics and good strategies. Why do you value apm more than decision making? Hardly. It's an essential part of an esport and the people hailing "strategy games should be about strategy," fail to grasp the concept that strategy doesn't encompass the entire game, it's merely a facet of it. For a video games to succeed competitively, there needs to be a relatively high skill ceiling. Strategy is broken down quickly and becomes stale for long periods before innovation kicks in. Sorry, most strategies are merely copied from other people. If you're going to only be impressed by strategy you're going to be let down with nearly any video game. Even in BW, how often were you impressed by strategy? Every game? Hardly. You'd be hard pressed to find any "impressive" strategy in an entire Proleague day. It gets old, it won't keep you interested. Tactics are only exciting when they are hard to pull off. Otherwise, they are boring. I don't value APM more than decision making, necessarily. However, I don't place any value in things like carpet storming, which waters down the game into something stupid and not entertaining. Are you telling me you aren't impressed by things that professional athletes do in sports? Almost everything impressive in sports comes down to the athletes being miles ahead of average competition. When a hockey player dekes around 2 defensive players on the opposing team, the fakes out the goalie and gets an impressive shot, we are amazed because of how well he can control that puck. It is no different in SC2. We're impressed by APM, by control, by multitask, by strategy, by tactics, all of it combined. And it's all essential to a spectator sport. Show nested quote +On December 29 2010 09:37 Mr. Daisy wrote:
I'm all for making the game as competitive and "skill based" as it can be. But storm in BW is basically impossible to use (effectively) for anyone that wasn't a C+ or better. Looking at the highest level games, the best players still don't hit all of their storms/emps/fungals perfectly, and with unlimited units in a control group taking away smart casting would basically cripple casters, even if you buffed storm back to its BW power. Imagine frantically trying to clone your storms with 5-6 HTs against a big bio ball, which can easily stim out of it. I know I certainly couldn't do it well enough that I would feel comftorable going for storm, and I'm a mid level diamond player. It would be totally unreasonable to expect a bronze, silver, or gold level player to pull it off.
You have a reasonable idea that smart casting lessens the skill gap between the high and low level players, and it's true to an extent, but the other interface improvements balance it out. All players can micro more effectively than they could in BW with basically all their units because of control groups, MBS, and smart casting.
Starcraft 2 is a game that is meant to be played before it is a sport meant to be watched. I love the excitement of insane plays in BW, but new BW players can barely macro off of one base, let alone control a maxed army with templars and arbiters. I'd much rather have a highly competitive game with well designed controls and (relatively) diverse strategies at every level than one I can barely play but is awe inspiring to watch.
What? Storm was significantly more effective at lower levels than higher levels, you have everything backwards. It was ungodly hard to storm dodge in BW, and you'd end up letting almost all the units inside die. Considering your opponent's army is now made of bio than mech, it's going to be even stronger, not to mention forcefields on top of that. Did you even play BW? Spells were retardedly strong at lower levels, people leave a massive clump of MM idle --> perfect plague on the center, etc. Anyways, why do you think Protoss was "easymode" up until around C/C+ in BW? For the exact opposite of what you're saying.
very well put
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On December 29 2010 09:42 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2010 09:28 Clickety wrote:
You shouldn't be amazed by carpet storms, you should be amazed by smart tactics and good strategies. Why do you value apm more than decision making? Hardly. It's an essential part of an esport and the people hailing "strategy games should be about strategy," fail to grasp the concept that strategy doesn't encompass the entire game, it's merely a facet of it. For a video games to succeed competitively, there needs to be a relatively high skill ceiling. Strategy is broken down quickly and becomes stale for long periods before innovation kicks in. Sorry, most strategies are merely copied from other people. If you're going to only be impressed by strategy you're going to be let down with nearly any video game. Even in BW, how often were you impressed by strategy? Every game? Hardly. You'd be hard pressed to find any "impressive" strategy in an entire Proleague day. It gets old, it won't keep you interested. Tactics are only exciting when they are hard to pull off. Otherwise, they are boring. I don't value APM more than decision making, necessarily. However, I don't place any value in things like carpet storming, which waters down the game into something stupid and not entertaining. Are you telling me you aren't impressed by things that professional athletes do in sports? Almost everything impressive in sports comes down to the athletes being miles ahead of average competition. When a hockey player dekes around 2 defensive players on the opposing team, the fakes out the goalie and gets an impressive shot, we are amazed because of how well he can control that puck. It is no different in SC2. We're impressed by APM, by control, by multitask, by strategy, by tactics, all of it combined. And it's all essential to a spectator sport. Show nested quote +On December 29 2010 09:37 Mr. Daisy wrote:
I'm all for making the game as competitive and "skill based" as it can be. But storm in BW is basically impossible to use (effectively) for anyone that wasn't a C+ or better. Looking at the highest level games, the best players still don't hit all of their storms/emps/fungals perfectly, and with unlimited units in a control group taking away smart casting would basically cripple casters, even if you buffed storm back to its BW power. Imagine frantically trying to clone your storms with 5-6 HTs against a big bio ball, which can easily stim out of it. I know I certainly couldn't do it well enough that I would feel comftorable going for storm, and I'm a mid level diamond player. It would be totally unreasonable to expect a bronze, silver, or gold level player to pull it off.
You have a reasonable idea that smart casting lessens the skill gap between the high and low level players, and it's true to an extent, but the other interface improvements balance it out. All players can micro more effectively than they could in BW with basically all their units because of control groups, MBS, and smart casting.
Starcraft 2 is a game that is meant to be played before it is a sport meant to be watched. I love the excitement of insane plays in BW, but new BW players can barely macro off of one base, let alone control a maxed army with templars and arbiters. I'd much rather have a highly competitive game with well designed controls and (relatively) diverse strategies at every level than one I can barely play but is awe inspiring to watch.
What? Storm was significantly more effective at lower levels than higher levels, you have everything backwards. It was ungodly hard to storm dodge in BW, and you'd end up letting almost all the units inside die. Considering your opponent's army is now made of bio than mech, it's going to be even stronger, not to mention forcefields on top of that. Did you even play BW? Spells were retardedly strong at lower levels, people leave a massive clump of MM idle --> perfect plague on the center, etc. Anyways, why do you think Protoss was "easymode" up until around C/C+ in BW? For the exact opposite of what you're saying.
Uh, I was talking about storm dodging in starcraft 2 with an unlimited control group...
Also, a SINGLE storm was way effective at the lower levels, but low level players rarely if ever were actually able to drop multiple storms in a decent spread. Did YOU even play BW? If you did you probably saw a whole lot of protoss drop 4-5 storms on the exact same spot. And protoss wasn't easy mode until the higher levels because of storm, it was because the terran mech army required intense micro to control, and macroing with zerg larvae was way hard on top of having to control tons of units like zerglings with only 12 unit control groups. Protoss was easy because they used smaller numbers of powerful, easier to micro units and their macro was straight forward as well. I'm not sure what you mean by protoss was easy mode for the exact opposite of what I said. Maybe i didn't communicate myself clearly enough, but if you could elaborate on what you mean by that I think I'd understand better.
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On December 29 2010 09:45 Blyadischa wrote:The main problem with storm isn't smart casting, it's that high templar can hold 4 storms, and can storm right when they pop with amulet, and that they are cheap. I wouldn't mind storms being nerfed with by making them non smart castable though Show nested quote +On December 29 2010 09:28 Clickety wrote:
You shouldn't be amazed by carpet storms, you should be amazed by smart tactics and good strategies. Why do you value apm more than decision making? Yeah, because T-CLICK-T-CLICK-T-CLICK-T-CLICK-T-CLICK-T-CLICKing an army larger than yours that took better decision making, tactics, macroing, etc. to produce and winning the battle is amazingly good tactics and strategy?
Because 1aing with an army of marines into a bunch of templar is top notch play.
User was warned for this post
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Sc1 storms did stack, didn't they?
And yes, Sc2 is easier to controll than its predecessor and so is chess.
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On December 29 2010 08:55 proot wrote:
But proot, smart casting doesn't create any problems, it just lets newer players enjoy the game!
By this logic, we don't want newer players to enjoy the game? God, let's go back to having only Korea play it then.
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The skill ceiling in sc2 is lower IMO because it's hard to scout and predict what your opponent is going to do. This makes it more likely that the game doesn't reach late game. But definitely easier control mechanics don't lower the skill ceiling, they just make decisions count for more. In BW if you made a bad decision, you can still come back in the game assuming you have better macro and control than your opponent. In sc2, if you made a bad decision, you're fucked.
So proper understanding of timings and cost effectiveness of unit combinations is just more important in sc2, because you can 1a all of your units, where as in sc1 you needed like 300 amp to control a 150 supply army of m&m or ultraling.
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To be honest I don't think starcraft can be purely a strategy game, there has got to be a mechanical requirement, or else it wouldn't function as a spectator sport. The audience wants to marvel at the stuff pros do. BW provided it through insane mechanics that were so difficult to pick up. SC2 wants to bring the focus more towards the strategic elements, but I don't think it has the same WOW factor.
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Blizzard doesn't have the same idea of what a good spell is as we do. They want their game to be accessible to many people, so they make execution easier and improve its immediate appearance, i.e. graphics and sound effects. The "amazing" in a good spell, for Blizzard, comes from
1) graphical effects and
2) is it fun to use this spell or not.
While hardcore starcraft fans will easily agree that when observing a game all the emotion, the "awe" comes from the players, the tension of seeing how well they manage to place their units and spells, the suspension during the start of a battle until its end. Without smart casting the outcome is always unsure, it's a nailbiter. While with smart casting the outcome is more easily predictable. What matters most in this case is only whether the player is watching his units at all or not... it makes the game more shallow, not just skill cap wise for the players, but, what's more important, it makes it a lot more shallow and uninteresting for the observers as well.
The outcome becomes too easily predictable and the difference between landing a spell and missing it has less impact, because the spells needed to be nerfed because smart casting exists. Both make watching the game less exciting, it kills suspension and anticipation and it is quite possible that the people will grow tired of it once they realize that there is nothing new to see anymore - that the deloyment of spells becomes generic.
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I agree, this would only be good news for the game, it increases the skill cap and makes the game balanced around skill a bit more. Also this means t could have the seeker missle back again 
Having a higher skill cap and allowing moments of brilliants win matches will increase SC2's longevity, i would be all for it!
Though i would go as far to say that it could possibly have bad effects for lower level players not using storm or fungal as they are "too hard to use" but for the pro scene yes!
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its not even a question for me.
thats what amkes me always feel warm and fuzzy inside when i watch bw. the feeling of "whatever they do, i couldnt do it half as good". now you watch a match and outside of player 1 hitting timing X there isnt that muich to admire cause the control is so piss easy compared to bw.
id love if i could respect and admire good carpetstorming again. but it wont happen
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On December 29 2010 10:01 Lucid90 wrote:
The skill ceiling in sc2 is lower IMO because it's hard to scout and predict what your opponent is going to do. This makes it more likely that the game doesn't reach late game. But definitely easier control mechanics don't lower the skill ceiling, they just make decisions count for more. In BW if you made a bad decision, you can still come back in the game assuming you have better macro and control than your opponent. In sc2, if you made a bad decision, you're fucked.
So proper understanding of timings and cost effectiveness of unit combinations is just more important in sc2, because you can 1a all of your units, where as in sc1 you needed like 300 amp to control a 150 supply army of m&m or ultraling.
By definition, yes it does. You can't even argue that. Decisions counting for more is irrelevant. Because in BW you can always make those same decisions while having to do the mechanics at the same time.
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On December 29 2010 09:59 HaRuHi wrote:
Sc1 storms did stack, didn't they?
And yes, Sc2 is easier to controll than its predecessor and so is chess.
They didn't.
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Personally I would rather play this game rather than see how much punishment at the hands of game mechanics pros can endure.
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First of all. High quality post. I like how you emphasize your arguments with pictures and video's.
In my opinion smart casting makes some spells too easy and the storm ability is a very good example. ... But I havent really seen this put to use a lot. I think the future will really tell if protoss players can abuse this to a extend where smart casting should be rethought.
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Hmm, well will the Siege tank smart firing be removed? Everything seems valid but I think it would have to be valid for all the races. I do think that protoss would get hurt the most if they just remove smart casting, but it's not necessarily the end all be all. If emp had to be casted like storm then it would be fair, the only problem is that emp is 100 damage instantly, while you can still micro out of storms, especially since you can have more than 12 units in a control group. I would actually like this change but storm would have to do more damage, or emp would have to be like storm where it does damage over time so the protoss player has the ability to micro out of it like terrans can move out of storm.
Edit: I would also cry if smart casting was removed from forcefields/sentries
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10387 Posts
I think the best of both world would be to introduce a "delay" between each spell if you casted spells consecutively using the smartcast feature. So if you spammed storm across an army using smart cast, instead of the storms all appearing instantly, each storm would be casted w/ a second (or two) delay.
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On December 29 2010 10:06 Fiercegore wrote:
Hmm, well will the Siege tank smart firing be removed? Everything seems valid but I think it would have to be valid for all the races. I do think that protoss would get hurt the most if they just remove smart casting, but it's not necessarily the end all be all. If emp had to be casted like storm then it would be fair, the only problem is that emp is 100 damage instantly, while you can still micro out of storms, especially since you can have more than 12 units in a control group. I would actually like this change but storm would have to do more damage, or emp would have to be like storm where it does damage over time so the protoss player has the ability to micro out of it like terrans can move out of storm.
Edit: I would also cry if smart casting was removed from forcefields/sentries
Siege tank "smart firing" has nothing in common but name. It's a completely different, irrelevant topic to the discussion at hand.
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Removing this 'Smart-casting' would be like taking the game 1 step back, SC2 is a pretty conservative sequel if think about, after all these years it sticks relatively close to the Broodwar style of RTS (Only with some changes to the high ground mechanic, long grass and Xel' naga towers and such). Blizzard really just removed some of the hassles of the original, otherwise SC2 would be little more than a graphics update with some different units.
As for Smart casting creating imbalances and such, I think that's more of an overstatement, they're are plenty of pro level and even lower level replays of Terrens rolling the Protoss army with some super 'precise' or 'smart casted blanket EMPs' (Whichever you prefer) and vice versa. As a poster somewhere above stated the real skill and awe will come from people maneuvering around all these spells, with the whole feedback/cloaked EMP or snipe being apart of it.
Eventually SC2 games will have impressive micro and strategy that isn't necessarily impressive because it is ridiculously hard to control multiple casters or even larger armies of units, but because players used smaller/individual units in those armies to their max potential, or at least above the simple 'Attack-Move' command.
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10387 Posts
On December 29 2010 09:42 FabledIntegral wrote:
Strategy is broken down quickly and becomes stale for long periods before innovation kicks in. Sorry, most strategies are merely copied from other people. If you're going to only be impressed by strategy you're going to be let down with nearly any video game. Even in BW, how often were you impressed by strategy? Every game? Hardly. You'd be hard pressed to find any "impressive" strategy in an entire Proleague day. It gets old, it won't keep you interested
Beautiful. This sums up exactly why RTS needs a mechanical aspect, because strategy gets figured out so quickly (unless Blizz is introducing a lot of radical patches). If people wanted SC2 to be a truly strategic game, one would advocate for the removal of replays..
Also, regarding proleague last night+ Show Spoiler +Bisu mindfucked Jaedong with a new strategy ;o
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EPT
