There has been a lot of arguing about SC2's skill cap being much lower than BW's. There are a bunch of reasons for why, which I won't discuss, but there is one which gets overlooked quite frequently - smart casting. For those of you that didn't play Brood War, the casting mechanic didn't allow for players to cast spells evenly. If you had 5 templar selected and stormed an area, ALL of them stormed the same area. Casting overlapped, because back in the day, the AI didn't allow for smart casting.
this was pretty much impossible
The thing is, this feature, or lack of, shaped BW into the game it is now, with huge distinctions in skill. Watching progamer protoss' storm in BW was awe inspiring. It showed speed, it showed precision, it showed anticipation all at the same time. I couldn't even dream of my storms being as good as Reach's 'psychic' storms. In sc2, I can say with confidence my storms are just as good as Tester's or oGsMC's. Blanket storms simply don't have the same meaning anymore because they're so easy to use.
I used to scream like this
Protoss is the obvious example here because they were pretty reliant on psi storm, but the other races were also centered around precise, fast spell casting that was very difficult to use at full potential. Zergs with defilers, Terran when they needed EMP or irradiates. What was cool about no smart casting was that it allowed overpowered spells to be overpowered because they were hard to use. It also created an area of mastery that was difficult and noticeable between skill levels.
another clip for emphasis
But proot, smart casting doesn't create any problems, it just lets newer players enjoy the game! Actually, it is creating problems, and it will more create problems in the future development of the game. Late game PvT is seeing the effects of smart casting in full force. Amulet high templars are practically unstoppable at later stages when protoss tech is unleashed. They prevent terran's from making an assault without getting decimated as they move across the map. Protoss can throw pockets of forces with a high templar, force a stim, cause hundreds of points of damage and then just assault the weakened army if it keeps trying to move forward. Amulet high templar are like having mobile, practically instant PFs in a single unit as far as deterrents go.
and cause massive amounts of rage
There is a greater future problem with smartcasting. Many of us forget this is the first chapter of SC2. More units will be added, and long time favorites like the defiler and science vessel will most likely return...but they will be ridiculously imbalanced if they keep the abilities they had in BW. Blanket plagues, perfect dark swarms, fully irradiated armies will all be possible for the average player. These spells will have to be toned down significantly and lose the OOMPH they had. Psi storm has been nerfed a couple times already, and there is STILL talk bout modifying it even more. The hunter seeker missile is another example - it was nerfed because it was too powerful with multiple smartcasts and now it's practically useless. In SC2, you can't add a plague or an irradiate, these spells will flat out break the match-ups in later stages of the game.
Look at the trend of spells smart casting has created in the current game. There are amazing spells and there are boring, generic, underpowered spells present throughout the game. Blizzard can't introduce more interesting spells for fear of causing immediate balance issues. This problem is two-fold, some spells pretty much require smart casting to use properly such as forcefield, snipe and infested terrans. Compare these to the spells in BW. Every caster had AMAZING abilities...except for spawn broodling.
"fuck you"
So what's the solution? How can Blizzard change smart casting without breaking the game. There are two pretty straightforward and simple solutions that can be added that would probably improve the game and its skill cap significantly.
1) Have spells that cost more than 50 energy obey BW's spell casting mechanics. For example, EMPing or storming using a group of casters instead of individual selection would cause all the units in that group to overlap their spells in the same area. This prevents spells that require smart casting from being affected, like the ones I mentioned earlier. Spells like Yamato would need a small group selected for taking out a building like a nexus.
this instead of this
2) Blizzard could assign certain spells a sort of "super spell" status. This would prevent it from being smart cast, and would overlap if used in a group. For example, if storm was put into this "super spell" status, templars in a group that were asked to storm would overlap the spell. This would basically accomplish the same thing as option 1, but would bring public opinion into the picture(whether that's a good or bad thing).
I loved SC and I love SC2. I want SC2 to thrive and live as long as BW did, but it's obvious more skill needs to be added to the game for its longevity in E-sports. One of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is a change to how spell casting works.
TLDR: smart casting needs to be looked into because it decreases skill cap, makes spells less interesting and may hurt the future development of this game.
I would be fine with smart casting being removed, it is soo easy for protoss players to blanket storm. Pretty much forces a tech change on T if they go marines. Atleast Collosus were beatable by vikings. Storm with HT spread is way strong.
I agree, I haven't read the whole post yet but I wanna tell you that you dont need embed links, just post the link to the youtube video and it will embed :3.
i opened this expecting a debate about day9 versus husky or something.
i dont think you should implement something just because it makes it "harder." smart casting is fine. multi-select allows for you to reposition your whole army much easier.
Ever think some of us LIKE to listen to smart casters? So many casters are sooo dumb... I only listen to the smart ones because I'm actually intelligent.
I support this, protoss storming in BW (especially pvz and not as much in pvt) required a certain degree of skill, predicting and carpeting makes or breaks the the battle and often adds another level of depth.
But this would cause another issue on the zergs side because I often viewed BW pvz as where the protoss has to aim good storms to win where the zerg can just a-move the hydras/ling+ultras in.
This is a huge exaggeration but could also be a point to consider.
Basically, what do you want this game to be about? Do you want it to be about mechanical skill? Do you want it to be street fighter? Or do you want it to be a strategy game?
Personally I like street fighter but if I wanted to play street fighter, I would play street fighter instead of Starcraft.
Yes, making storm, emp, fungal etc. would make this game so much more awesome. I would totally love it. Obligatory poll:
Poll: Smartcasting
Smartcasting is fine - This is a different game (159)
65%
I would keep it on some spells(ie. force fields, etc.) but storm, emp.. should be like bw (53)
22%
It ruins the game, everything should be as in BW (32)
13%
244 total votes
Your vote: Smartcasting
(Vote): It ruins the game, everything should be as in BW (Vote): I would keep it on some spells(ie. force fields, etc.) but storm, emp.. should be like bw (Vote): Smartcasting is fine - This is a different game
I can see you clearly put a lot of work into this. However, you're still wrong. Ignoring the fact that this is just "Why BW is better than SC2" whine #1938 and "I can't spread my units or EMP HT's fast enough" whine #889. It is not a bad thing. Your main complaint seems to be "Skill cap is too low", Yet the whole point of this article is how Pro-gamers had to have amazing APM to do storms like you see in SC2... and they did... and it looked the same... Also, you neglected to mention how much WORSE the storms in SC2 are than BW. In BW, you could stack 2, had about double the Surface area, and they did 125 damage instead of 75.
Nobody will ever reach the ultimate skill cap.....
Let me repeat never........
SC2 players will get close,
but there willl always be a little bit better of play.
Smart casting is cool because if you get a ton of HT's you shouldnt have to click and split 5 million times. Yea its cool that pros can do it but cmon we do not need a debate here.
Lets say blizz sees this thread and goes okay sure well remove smart casting, tell me how protoss is gona micro split HT's and get the neccesary storms off on mobile bio(your vids are on immobile siege tanks btw) before getting emped?? Wouldnt work too well.
Did you see Kas vs I think it was WhiteRa in a HomerJ Sennheiser Cup? Kas was able to micro his bio away, even before the storms landed. He danced around all the time, predicted, where the next storms will go and moved his units clever. Its really not impossible to make storms much less strong.
I think, that the difference of "skill" between Brood War and SC2 will show up in other parts of the game in the future. If you dont use your APM and brain for hardoce casting, you will use it on micro, macro or something. The skill will be needed, but in another way.
This is exactly the same as auto-mining, MBS, etc.
Blizzard wants to make these things easier to allow for a different kind of game, with more focus on strategy than gosu mechanics.
Changing this is changing the whole theme of SC2 that Blizzard was trying to achieve.
This is basically another "I want SC2 to be more like BW" complaint.
And your entire post is basically about Psi Storm. You seem to want to change the entire mechanics of the game, to solve your issue with Psi Storm being OP. Which it probably isn't anyway.
It seems to me, if you break this post down to its roots, its another player who's unhappy with something in the game because its "OP", and is coming up with a "solution" for Blizzard to solve it, instead of trying to fix their own game.
This isn't a flaming, its just how this post reads to me.
I really don't understand why you want to fight the computer to make it do what you want it to rather than take some well balanced set of tools and fight your opponent.
I still don't get why clicking fast is considered more important than decision making. SC2 helps you with unnecessary annoyances so you can focus on the strategy in a strategy game, instead of having to mash your keyboard franticly.
On December 29 2010 09:09 Munk-E wrote: I can see you clearly put a lot of work into this. However, you're still wrong. Ignoring the fact that this is just "Why BW is better than SC2" whine #1938 and "I can't spread my units or EMP HT's fast enough" whine #889. It is not a bad thing. Your main complaint seems to be "Skill cap is too low", Yet the whole point of this article is how Pro-gamers had to have amazing APM to do storms like you see in SC2... and they did... and it looked the same... Also, you neglected to mention how much WORSE the storms in SC2 are than BW. In BW, you could stack 2, had about double the Surface area, and they did 125 damage instead of 75.
oh god there is some serious bullshit in this post he didnt neglect the fact that they suck compared to bw, he mentioned it, and even if he didnt, its pretty obvious coming from his arguments i really didnt think this was a why bw is better than sc2, for the love of god, hes trying to help sc2 and you post your blatant bullshit like you know whats up.. u dont
I think Smartcasting is fine but the balance of the races during specific periods in the game is broken, especially late late game and early early game.
Toss is a specific example of late late game, they are unstoppable, you might say dont let them get there, but that statement dried out during beta.
I'm fairly certain that if the game develops to a point where everything is figured out in a year, then blizz will throw some food for us hungry hungry dogs.
On December 29 2010 09:09 Munk-E wrote: I can see you clearly put a lot of work into this. However, you're still wrong. Ignoring the fact that this is just "Why BW is better than SC2" whine #1938 and "I can't spread my units or EMP HT's fast enough" whine #889. It is not a bad thing. Your main complaint seems to be "Skill cap is too low", Yet the whole point of this article is how Pro-gamers had to have amazing APM to do storms like you see in SC2... and they did... and it looked the same... Also, you neglected to mention how much WORSE the storms in SC2 are than BW. In BW, you could stack 2, had about double the Surface area, and they did 125 damage instead of 75.
oh god there is some serious bullshit in this post he didnt neglect the fact that they suck compared to bw, he mentioned it, and even if he didnt, its pretty obvious coming from his arguments i really didnt think this was a why bw is better than sc2, for the love of god, hes trying to help sc2 and you post your blatant bullshit like you know whats up.. u dont
He's not trying to help, he's trying to make it more like BW.
I disagree with this whole heartedly. To think that high tech(which is required) should be substantially harder to control than your low tech marine making "skills" is kind of rediculous. I hate that SC1 players take that game as the rts bible. Storm has its drawbacks and is not the PvT end-all-be-all.
I could also say that we need to limit control group numbers down to 12 again so that Terran bioball cant be micro'd so effectively against my gateway units. That sure would help me out in the early game. What do you say?
On December 29 2010 09:11 Subversion wrote: This is exactly the same as auto-mining, MBS, etc.
Blizzard wants to make these things easier to allow for a different kind of game, with more focus on strategy than gosu mechanics.
Changing this is changing the whole theme of SC2 that Blizzard was trying to achieve.
This is basically another "I want SC2 to be more like BW" complaint.
And your entire post is basically about Psi Storm. You seem to want to change the entire mechanics of the game, to solve your issue with Psi Storm being OP. Which it probably isn't anyway.
It seems to me, if you break this post down to its roots, its another player who's unhappy with something in the game because its "OP", and is coming up with a "solution" for Blizzard to solve it, instead of trying to fix their own game.
This isn't a flaming, its just how this post reads to me.
What people fail to understand is that BW was great BECAUSE it had OP units. That's why balancing by buffing is far better than nerfing.
How about all spellcasters start without smart casting; the user assigns spellcasters to a control group and then hits a button to activate auto-casting --- however if any unit in that control group gets hit, auto-casting automatically de-activates.
It's fine the way it is. As long as it is not impossible to counter these spells, great players will always find a solution. Do you remember when no one went pure marine against banelings because they would absolutely be decimated? Along came Foxer and MVP with their crazy splits to show it is possible with enough skill. I agree that storm is very powerful with khaydarin amulet but EmpireKas has shown it is possible to negate it by great micro.
On December 29 2010 09:11 Subversion wrote: This is exactly the same as auto-mining, MBS, etc.
Blizzard wants to make these things easier to allow for a different kind of game, with more focus on strategy than gosu mechanics.
Changing this is changing the whole theme of SC2 that Blizzard was trying to achieve.
This is basically another "I want SC2 to be more like BW" complaint.
And your entire post is basically about Psi Storm. You seem to want to change the entire mechanics of the game, to solve your issue with Psi Storm being OP. Which it probably isn't anyway.
It seems to me, if you break this post down to its roots, its another player who's unhappy with something in the game because its "OP", and is coming up with a "solution" for Blizzard to solve it, instead of trying to fix their own game.
This isn't a flaming, its just how this post reads to me.
What people fail to understand is that BW was great BECAUSE it had OP units. That's why balancing by buffing is far better than nerfing.
On December 29 2010 09:09 Munk-E wrote: I can see you clearly put a lot of work into this. However, you're still wrong. Ignoring the fact that this is just "Why BW is better than SC2" whine #1938 and "I can't spread my units or EMP HT's fast enough" whine #889. It is not a bad thing. Your main complaint seems to be "Skill cap is too low", Yet the whole point of this article is how Pro-gamers had to have amazing APM to do storms like you see in SC2... and they did... and it looked the same... Also, you neglected to mention how much WORSE the storms in SC2 are than BW. In BW, you could stack 2, had about double the Surface area, and they did 125 damage instead of 75.
What really irritates me is people go on and on and on about how easy SC2 is, but I don't see them winning 87,000 dollars in a GSL, or even placing top 20 at MLG.
If you're not at the highest level of SC2, you have no right to complain, because you obviously have plenty of room for improvement.
Why are there so many of these threads? It seems like every other day another BW player decides that SC2 wins aren't sufficiently determined by one's ability to press lots of buttons quickly. I agree that that was a big part of BW, but if that's really what you want to compete in, there are any number of cheap flash games you can play. SC2 is a different game. If you like starcraft for its strategy elements, you'll probably like it better than BW. If you like the mechanics of fast and accurate button pressing, you won't. This has been extremely well-established. It's a personal preference. It doesn't, however, mean that the game is "easy" or that the skill ceiling isn't high - it just means it's measuring a slightly different kind of skill.
Why try to make it a question of balance? Yes, if blizzard brings back science vessels and defilers and gives them exactly the same spells as before with absolutely no changes, they would be imbalanced.... so? That wasn't going to happen anyway.
On December 29 2010 09:11 Subversion wrote: This is exactly the same as auto-mining, MBS, etc.
Blizzard wants to make these things easier to allow for a different kind of game, with more focus on strategy than gosu mechanics.
Changing this is changing the whole theme of SC2 that Blizzard was trying to achieve.
This is basically another "I want SC2 to be more like BW" complaint.
And your entire post is basically about Psi Storm. You seem to want to change the entire mechanics of the game, to solve your issue with Psi Storm being OP. Which it probably isn't anyway.
It seems to me, if you break this post down to its roots, its another player who's unhappy with something in the game because its "OP", and is coming up with a "solution" for Blizzard to solve it, instead of trying to fix their own game.
This isn't a flaming, its just how this post reads to me.
What people fail to understand is that BW was great BECAUSE it had OP units. That's why balancing by buffing is far better than nerfing.
What the fuck, that doesn't even make sense.
u make no sense imo obviously never played bw? do you think a spell that renders all units inside immune to ANY ranged attack isnt op? well it is, but so is a storm that kills everything, a spell that basically kills a unit for 100 mana, or way better tanks for 2 food? yes, they are op, but every race has its own overpowered stuff that is hard to use, making it fun to watch and fun to paly
Yes, I also think this seems like a whine. That is, you worship the notion of 'clicking fast' or whatever mechanical BW nonsense is currently fashionable to rave about because it allows you to gain an advantage over your opponent without any thinking. Instead, you can gain an advantage over your opponent without strategy - this is, to be sure, a strategy game - but rather with quick, mindless clicking and mind-numbing hours spent practicing a skill which serves no purpose other than to overcome an inefficient UI.
Starcraft is a strategy game, and should be treated as such. Smart casting has nothing to do with "helping new players". It's simply the most efficient and practical means to allow the player, the strategist, to translate his thoughts into action without having to overcome meaningless hurdles in order to do so.
Its the same deal as mbs imo, the apm and skill are just going to shift into other aspects of play. This argument has been floating around since alpha and mbs and smart cast are still in the game and will remain. Deal with it.
Agree 100% with the OP. Certain "super" spells such as EMP, Psi Storm, Yamato, Seeker Missile, NP, would be removed from smart casting. Abilities like forcefield *need* smart casting.
Would completely make the game better without question imo. Storm is retarded as it is, EMP can be argued the same, you could easily make NP buffed if you disable smart casting (ie. increase range by 1), etc.
I've always thought this, still believe in this.
It's not even MILDLY impressive to see your opponent carpet storm in SC2. In fact, instead of getting a "wow" feeling, you get a "this stupid fucking game is broken" feeling. And the fact you can eliminate all that with a single EMP... even more stupid. You go from extreme to extreme with smart casting.
On December 29 2010 09:27 Wr3k wrote: Its the same deal as mbs imo, the apm and skill are just going to shift into other aspects of play.
Disagree entirely. One just aids macro to leave APM elsewhere (MBS), while smart casting is near game breaking with carpet storming everywhere. Also completely removes the "awe" factor from esports.
On December 29 2010 09:25 Musketeer wrote: Starcraft is a strategy game, and should be treated as such. Smart casting has nothing to do with "helping new players". It's simply the most efficient and practical means to allow the player, the strategist, to translate his thoughts into action without having to overcome meaningless hurdles in order to do so.
I wish I could speak as eloquently as you. I completely agree.
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?
Definitely agree. I was pretty shocked that people could possibly feel like Starcraft 2 is not as good as Brood War. After reading more responses it makes a lot more sense to me. The general division seems to be people who value Starcraft 2 as a strategy game, and people who want it to be BW and feel that deviation from this model means the game is worse.
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.
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.
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.
I normally disagree with people complaining about too easy mechanics, but I can kind of see a possible issue here (safest sentence I've ever used) It takes still as much APM to dodge storms, but it takes far less APM to use them. Things like that are dangerous, because even though they aren't imbalanced per se (like zerg takes arguably more APM to play than Terran or Toss on the same level), if there are a lot of abilities that are like that, it's really hard to get the game balanced. Also the difference in APM requirement may become too large.
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?
This is true, but the thing is SC2 doesn't offer much of smart decision-making, the way it's built now is Build X beats Build Y and Build Z loses to Y and beats X, if both players decide to go the same build (if the races are different try comparing the 3 builds to 1. Cheese, 2. Fast expand and 3. Early pressure) a short game or a macro game will ensue. Unless, _unless_ one player does stupid mistakes and/or the other player heavily outplays him/her.
Imo, there are two problems leading to this:
1. Damage bonuses (i.e + damage to armored) and 2. Retarded maps
If we could see an improvement to at least number 2. I think that smart casting will become a "problem" of the past.
Although i agree with this OP, it will never happen. Blizzard is all about generating profit, and right now more profit comes from sales to gamers than through eSports. So long as that is true, Blizzard will continue to make their games "accessible" (aka, easier).
Well in BW if they had smart casting it would still be balanced because all races had equally OP abilities. The only thing it would change is the disparity between skill groups because of mechanic practice time, making it harder and harder for people to go pro and reduce the potential player pool for pro players, which will result in less innovation because there are less skilled players.
Smart casting is a good thing for the health of this game because it increases the potential skilled player pool.
On December 29 2010 09:12 Clickety wrote: I still don't get why clicking fast is considered more important than decision making. SC2 helps you with unnecessary annoyances so you can focus on the strategy in a strategy game, instead of having to mash your keyboard franticly.
That's your opinion. Others may see the dexterity, speed, and precision required to execute your strategy ("clicking fast" as you call it) as a meaningful challenge that should be just as important as strategy. The beauty of the RTS genre really comes from its balance of thought and physical precision to make that thought reality. People always seem to be arguing about being limited by the interface, but the fact is that you're always going to be limited by one thing or another, whether it's the keyboard layout or your reflexes. So long as it's fair and we all have to deal with it, I really don't see what the problem is.
As for the OP, I would agree to an extent that the smart casting system needs to be examined again. My reason for this opinion is mainly because of the imbalace between the effort required for someone to cast effectively and the effort required for the player on the other end to dodge them. Basically they made it easier to spread your Psi Storms, but at the same time made it more difficult to minimize the damage due to the way units tend to clump up more. Also my disagreement with the current system is that it benefits Protoss more than any other race due to the Warp In mechanic and the Amulet-upgraded High Templars.
I would definitely like the casting to require a little more effort. I wouln't say I would like to see it at Brood War levels, but rather maybe make it less optimal by default. That way you keep the game accessible, but also leave room to reward a little extra effort.
You forgot a huge culprit -- [practically] unlimited units can be on 1 control group.
Imagine if Terran bio had their army on 3 control groups and dodged storms while taking on gateway units with every group. Now THAT would be SUPER impressive. Those are the kind of plays that will define SC2 once people stop putting everything onto the same number.
I know you put a lot of time/effort into this thread, but this hypothesis is pretty unsupported.
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
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?
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?
Why shouldn't you be amazed by both and why can't you value them equally?
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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..
Smart casting storm isn't impressive. Neither was it impressive in BW. I was only C- but I could still clone well enough to spread storms out.
What is impressive is being able to spread your templar so that they dont get roflowned by smart casted emp, while keeping them close enough to the front to storm on time.
No smartcasting in BW was just a limitation. You can make the exact same argument for wanting to only be able to select 16 units at one time like in BW. Smartcasting doesn't really decrease a skill gap, it lowers the stupid amount of apm required to cast spells.
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.
So it wouldn't be removed? I'm not sure how you answered the question. But if it wouldn't be removed, I think the general lower skill cap will still be there which is fine! Tanks have been balanced around having smart-firing, and I think that spells should just have to be balanced around smart-casting, and I think everything's very well balanced right now. If you were to change something as big as this, you have to make sure it doesn't make the game imbalanced because that would be a giant step backwards.
On December 29 2010 10:02 enzym wrote: 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 observers as well.
The outcome becomes too easily predictable and the difference between landing a spell and missing it has way 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 people will grow tired of it fast once they learn that there is nothing new to see anymore - that the employment of spells becomes generic.
If what you say is in fact true, then RTS gameplay is degenerate and should not be used as an eSport. If the only way to make the game lively and interesting is to deliberately and systematically gimp the interface, making it harder to do something for no reason other than to make it harder, then there's something seriously wrong with this kind of gameplay.
Interface is not and never should be a valid dimension of balance. No single ability or spell should ever be balanced by saddling it with a poor interface. And if that is the only way to make the game interesting for spectators, then the game is broken.
It's like saying that the way to make Team Fortress 2 into a better competitive game is to reduce everyone's mouse sensitivity to its lowest level. Or make it so that in order to fire sticky bombs you have to click 3 different buttons in rapid succession. These ideas may in fact work at making it a better competitive game. But they're not good ideas, so however much they may actually help in some respects, they hurt the game.
In any case, the main problem seems to be the amulet upgrade itself. Take that away, and HTs must be on the field for some time before throwing down Storms. Thus more opportunities to kill/EMP them, which cuts down on Storm spam. And that should make Storms more interesting by making them more rare. The tension will be on whether the non-Protoss can kill the HTs before they get into position to lay down the Storms. And personally, I like that tension more than whether the player can drop the Storms in the right place.
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.
hmm
let's look at the effect of a lowered skill ceiling. When a game has a lowered skill ceiling lowered skill players win more often against higher skilled players, and when the game has a higher skill ceiling players with lower skill do worse than players with higher skill.
But what exactly is skill? Is pressing buttons at 300 amp skill? Is controlling large amounts of terribly frustrating units with limited control resource that have bad ai (like controlling mass lings in bw) skill?
I guess you can say that sc2 got rid of a lot aspects of this skill set, because you don't need 300+ apm to control a large army. But does this mean that lowered skill players will start winning agaisnt higher skilled players? This means that players who coasted on their control and APM in bw are going to have a harder time in sc2, and players who had a bad APM but good decision making are going to excel in sc2.
This lowers the skill ceiling in controlling frustrating stupid units, but it doesn't lower the skill ceiling in the actual game. Things like timings, proper unit composition and scouting are just as relevant, even more so, because players can't rely as much on their APM to give them a leg up in the game.
Look at chess for example. Do you need 300 APM to do well in chess? No. Is it really easy to move the units in chess? Sure. But it's a very difficult game because it focuses on a different skill than unit control. Sc2 is similar in that regard because it doesn't punish you so much for worse unit control, it just rewards you more for proper decision making. SC2 got rid of a lot of the requirements for high maintenance unit control, but it's still just as difficult to make decision in the game, which is why the overall skill ceiling is just as high.
I don't see the problem with being able to put them all on the same key and target where all of the storms go... Let's also make it to where a protoss has to individually click all of their units to forcefield or guardian shield one at a time, or blink stalkers 1 click at a time, or use gravaton beam by clicking each individual fast-moving paper plane one at a time. I already have to have my spell casting groups separated in the late game anyways as protoss, so I have absolutely no room for more hotkeys. Not to mention that the templar is the smallest god damn unit in my whole army, so clicking on them individually in an army that has collosi covering them up is pretty tough. That will surely make the game more enjoyable!
Seriously, though, I never really played broodwar much, but it looks like 1 storm is the size of 4 sc2 storms and it kills tanks 1 in full duration. My storm can't even kill marauders. If you storm drop, you have to have 2 fkin templars to accomplish the same thing. Also, a downside of having them on one hotkey (here is to your "skill cap" complaint), is that one emp can fuck you over pretty badly if you do not properly spread them out and micro observers ahead of your army, so that you can position them correctly to hit key points. It's not so much no risk, all reward by being able to just slam them all to one hotkey and click a button in a line, clapping your hands like a little school child afterwards. I have seen plenty of impressive storm uses by pro players that make my jaw drop a little, like huk storming the edge of his army to create a storm forcefield from lings and broodlings against NesTea.
Smart casting isn't such a bad thing. Accept the fact that starcraft 2 is not just brood war with a face lift, but another game. What is best for Brood War, might not be best for Starcraft 2.
On December 29 2010 10:20 NicolBolas wrote: It's like saying that the way to make Team Fortress 2 into a better competitive game is to reduce everyone's mouse sensitivity to its lowest level. Or make it so that in order to fire sticky bombs you have to click 3 different buttons in rapid succession. These ideas may in fact work at making it a better competitive game. But they're not good ideas, so however much they may actually help in some respects, they hurt the game.
i don't want to start the deadly spiral of terrible analogies but imagine if the solly had a 8 rocket mag instead of 4. it's more fun and accessible for pubs to play with because they don't have to manage rockets but the downside to this is that rocket damage gets nerfed and now they do 50 damage a pop. imagine how much more spammy that would make the solly and how less critical it would be to manage rockets.
For me, smartcasting itself isn't too much of an issue, but 80 damage storms, no irradiate/plague/darkswarm is.
Like it says in the OP, we'd all love the return of the Science Vessel and Defiler... but how the hell would you make them balanced? 50% miss rate under swarm? nonononon, that just makes the spell less cool.
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.
So it wouldn't be removed? I'm not sure how you answered the question. But if it wouldn't be removed, I think the general lower skill cap will still be there which is fine! Tanks have been balanced around having smart-firing, and I think that spells should just have to be balanced around smart-casting, and I think everything's very well balanced right now. If you were to change something as big as this, you have to make sure it doesn't make the game imbalanced because that would be a giant step backwards.
Why would I answer your question when it's an entirely different discussion? Should we also talk about the strength of the Phoenix moving shot in this topic? Or Roach movement speed while burrowed?
On December 29 2010 10:07 ArvickHero wrote: 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.
We all know it would come to this.
This guy is a very smart man and I as well would like to see some sort of diminishing returns for using the feature that way everyone is happy.
As Blizzard said, they're trying to find a resolution to PvT late game. I think something like a cooldown on storm might work if the player tries to use smartcast from group X/tab instead of shift selecting each unit from group XY to cast.
This is part of the reason why watching SC2 games doesnt feel impressive at all, watching force field walls or blanket storms done through spamming a single key vs storms or mass irridiate done with individually selecting each unit is like day and night.
However, this will never change as it would push away the casual crowd.
It does feel like beating a dead horse with bringing a beta topic to life again..
On December 29 2010 10:19 Comprissent wrote: No smartcasting in BW was just a limitation. You can make the exact same argument for wanting to only be able to select 16 units at one time like in BW. .
You don't know what you are talking about. It was 12 buddy.
On December 29 2010 10:28 farseerdk wrote: For me, smartcasting itself isn't too much of an issue, but 80 damage storms, no irradiate/plague/darkswarm is.
Like it says in the OP, we'd all love the return of the Science Vessel and Defiler... but how the hell would you make them balanced? 50% miss rate under swarm? nonononon, that just makes the spell less cool.
Pretty dumb how the high templar is the only one of the three blatantly overpowered spellcasters to be still in the game, but I do guess that storm really is the only one of the three that isn't completely gamebreaking in SC2.
It's ridiculous how people say that fast clicking is not impressive. Fast clicking makes the feat beyond impressive and the fact that any old low diamond player can't do what the pros do makes it entertaining and much more fun to watch then "oh i'd rather have them work on strategy then waste apm spamming".
I love how every single one of these SC2 guys are implying that BW had no strategy, when it was one of the most strategy rich games ever made despite it being
On December 29 2010 10:19 Comprissent wrote:"a limitation."
It's all about chores. Starcraft 1 had a ton of chores - both macro (like sending workers to minerals and building units from many different buildings) and micro (such as attacking with more than 12 units or casting spells like psi storm).
Games can exist on either end. Look at Supreme Commander for the extreme of no chores - literally every strategic decision is one action (with the exception of reclaiming debris). You can create building templates (which are basically an automated build order), set buildings to auto-produce units in a particular order, set very complex rally and patrol points, etc. It is a valid game.
Starcraft 1 I would put at the other end of the spectrum. Players needed probably about 150apm of JUST chores in the late game in order to stay on top of everything. That's without unit micro, without any strategic decision or acts of aggression or defense. It's just keeping up with all your chores.
Starcraft 2 is in the middle. It has less macro chores and less micro chores than SC1, but more than Supcom. That's the direction Blizzard wanted to go, it's the direction they went, and it's still a valid game.
Arguments to restore chores are simply arguments to make SC2 more like SC1. Yes, eliminating the chores makes the game more different than SC1, but that's the point.
I am surprised by everyone talking about how blanket storms were more impressive to watch in BW because it was harder. It's true it was harder, but that doesn't make it look more impressive. It was only impressive to you because you played the game seriously enough to appreciate how hard it was. If you want esports to take off, they need to get to a point where even a casual player (or a non-player) can enjoy watching the game and appreciate the skill involved. I've seen a lot of comments to that effect on youtube and even here - people saying that they love watching the games even though they don't play much. That's the sort of reaction you need to create, and making the interface worse doesn't do that - it makes the game harder in a way that's completely imperceptible to the casual viewer.
if u remove alot of the changes such as smart casting then the game will limited in its accessibility to lower level players.
BW is different to SC2 and more senesible due to advanced technology that can be used does it show skill to select each HT and storm with them yes, is it a practical sensible solution no it would be most frustrating to the majority of players.
Also by implmenting things such as smart casting it frees up apm to do other things and allows the game to evolve more naturally by that i mean focused on tactics, strategy, resource managment and unit composition rather than the mechanical skill of the game
At end of the day i see that there is more skill in the things i have listed above than mechanical skill as one takes good decision making, and thought the other just takes alot of practise which serves to limit the spread of the game
On December 29 2010 10:19 Comprissent wrote: No smartcasting in BW was just a limitation. You can make the exact same argument for wanting to only be able to select 16 units at one time like in BW. .
You don't know what you are talking about. It was 12 buddy.
Yeah, because that COMPLETELY invalidates the point he was trying to make.
On December 29 2010 10:19 Comprissent wrote: No smartcasting in BW was just a limitation. You can make the exact same argument for wanting to only be able to select 16 units at one time like in BW. .
You don't know what you are talking about. It was 12 buddy.
Yes but the point is still there. Accomplishing an intensive micro tactic with limited controls is impressive, but that does not mean that the limited controls should be kept. Smart Casting, Multiple Building Hotkeys, etc. are certainly different from Brood War, but different is good. Back then it was the best the program could do. To impose those same limitations in a game released in 2010 would be adding roadblocks just to make the game inaccessible to casual players.
Obviously there is a point where it can go too far, like the people who suggest automating the first minute of the game because "all anyone does is mine". But there's a big difference between that suggestion and smart casting. The mechanics in Brood War made the game impressive, but they were not put there for that reason. They were only there because of game engine limitations.
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.
hmm
let's look at the effect of a lowered skill ceiling. When a game has a lowered skill ceiling lowered skill players win more often against higher skilled players, and when the game has a higher skill ceiling players with lower skill do worse than players with higher skill.
But what exactly is skill? Is pressing buttons at 300 amp skill? Is controlling large amounts of terribly frustrating units with limited control resource that have bad ai (like controlling mass lings in bw) skill?
I guess you can say that sc2 got rid of a lot aspects of this skill set, because you don't need 300+ apm to control a large army. But does this mean that lowered skill players will start winning agaisnt higher skilled players? This means that players who coasted on their control and APM in bw are going to have a harder time in sc2, and players who had a bad APM but good decision making are going to excel in sc2.
This lowers the skill ceiling in controlling frustrating stupid units, but it doesn't lower the skill ceiling in the actual game. Things like timings, proper unit composition and scouting are just as relevant, even more so, because players can't rely as much on their APM to give them a leg up in the game.
Look at chess for example. Do you need 300 APM to do well in chess? No. Is it really easy to move the units in chess? Sure. But it's a very difficult game because it focuses on a different skill than unit control. Sc2 is similar in that regard because it doesn't punish you so much for worse unit control, it just rewards you more for proper decision making. SC2 got rid of a lot of the requirements for high maintenance unit control, but it's still just as difficult to make decision in the game, which is why the overall skill ceiling is just as high.
What you're talking about doesn't have to do with the skill ceiling. Players that "coasted" on control and APM but didn't have the top tier decision making were not at the skill ceiling. They had possibly mastered one facet of the game, while the skill ceiling requires a mastery of all facets of the game. Thus your analogy is irrelevant.
Making something more relatively important, aka what you're arguing, does not mean the skill ceiling isn't changed.
For example, say there are arbitrary, measurable values in a game. They all max out a 100, which is the skill ceiling. Say there are three categories, mechanics, strategy, and timings. The total skill ceiling point value is 300. If you suddenly reduce the amount of mechanics in a game, yes, strategy and timings become more relatively important, but the overall skill ceiling of the game still dropped from 300 to 280. Consequently, those who had a score high in strategy but low in mechanics would benefit from this change, but saying such is still irrelevant to the skill ceiling discussion.
A ceiling means the absolute top, nothing below it. There are things like price ceilings in economics, which means that a price of a good cannot go above a certain amount. If the price would naturally be below the price ceiling, that price ceiling is not binding and becomes 100% irrelevant. Just like in this scenario, your analogy towards people "coasting" on APM and such causes those people to fall into the category "not at the skill ceiling."
Because you cannot actually achieve the skill ceiling in either BW or SC2, what becomes important is how easily you can approach it. Which is much easier in SC2.
On December 29 2010 10:19 Comprissent wrote: No smartcasting in BW was just a limitation. You can make the exact same argument for wanting to only be able to select 16 units at one time like in BW. Smartcasting doesn't really decrease a skill gap, it lowers the stupid amount of apm required to cast spells.
Sorry, but it does. If a progamer can land perfect carpet storms and you can't, that means there is a large skill gap between you and him.
Smart casting allows any noob to throw multiple storms on an entire army. There's no such thing as "Jangbi storms" in SC2 because anyone can pull it off. The game becomes stale to watch because everyone has near perfect mechanics, and a match is decided by build orders.
On December 29 2010 10:02 enzym wrote: 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 observers as well.
The outcome becomes too easily predictable and the difference between landing a spell and missing it has way 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 people will grow tired of it fast once they learn that there is nothing new to see anymore - that the employment of spells becomes generic.
If what you say is in fact true, then RTS gameplay is degenerate and should not be used as an eSport. If the only way to make the game lively and interesting is to deliberately and systematically gimp the interface, making it harder to do something for no reason other than to make it harder, then there's something seriously wrong with this kind of gameplay.
Interface is not and never should be a valid dimension of balance. No single ability or spell should ever be balanced by saddling it with a poor interface. And if that is the only way to make the game interesting for spectators, then the game is broken.
It's like saying that the way to make Team Fortress 2 into a better competitive game is to reduce everyone's mouse sensitivity to its lowest level. Or make it so that in order to fire sticky bombs you have to click 3 different buttons in rapid succession. These ideas may in fact work at making it a better competitive game. But they're not good ideas, so however much they may actually help in some respects, they hurt the game.
In any case, the main problem seems to be the amulet upgrade itself. Take that away, and HTs must be on the field for some time before throwing down Storms. Thus more opportunities to kill/EMP them, which cuts down on Storm spam. And that should make Storms more interesting by making them more rare. The tension will be on whether the non-Protoss can kill the HTs before they get into position to lay down the Storms. And personally, I like that tension more than whether the player can drop the Storms in the right place.
Any sport revolves around the execution of certain skills. For more physical sports one of those skills is forging your body and stamina, but just seeing an athlete's body isn't what gets you large audiences, except maybe for less popular and more specialized sports like bodybuilding.
And for strategy games you don't have just strategy. Maybe you can call it degenerate because of that - because strategy alone isn't enough to generate huge audiences - but I don't think it's degenerate at all as long as you don't reduce the game to just strategy. Execution is as much a part of the "fun to watch" experience in an RTS as it is in soccer or baseball. If you take the importance of good execution away you will be left with more of a movie like experience. That's not what I want to see as a fan.
Strategy simply doesn't happen fast enough in order to make for a good show, again, except for extremely specialized sports like chess, which focuses only on strategy and is turn based to that end. And chess won't make the audience scream their hearts out either.
Execution is a big part of any game and it is what has the biggest impact on the viewer. So I disagree with your evaluation of the use of a high skill cap.
On December 29 2010 10:19 Comprissent wrote: No smartcasting in BW was just a limitation. You can make the exact same argument for wanting to only be able to select 16 units at one time like in BW. .
You don't know what you are talking about. It was 12 buddy.
Yeah, because that COMPLETELY invalidates the point he was trying to make.
No, but it's not a valid point nonetheless. Grouping everything into one control group in SC2 makes things easier but does not achieve better results, it will actually achieve less than optimal results than if you had multiple control groups. On the other hand, smart casting will achieve nearly the most optimal results. In essence, the easiest, most simplistic way becomes the most effective.
Did you ever think of the fact that this allows for more ridiculous things to be done? Like now that being able to blanket storms perfectly is easy, don't you think harder things will arise? Like I can't think of anything, because if I could I'd be a progamer or a fuckin like soothsayer or some shit and make shit tons of money on the stock market. Like holy crap, give the game some time.
THERE'S NOTHING INTERESTING ABOUT BLANKET STORMS EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT IT IS HARD TO DO IN SC1.
Anything in SC2 that is equally hard to do and is pulled off in a tournament game will cause the same amount of cheering and female orgasming that those blanket storms caused. Wait till something sufficiently hard comes along, and then you'll be complaining when SC3 comes out that double archon rainbow dickslaps are too easy or something because AutoDickSlap was implemented and QQing the same amount you are now.
Blanket storms shouldn't be impressive. That's how the spell was supposed to be implemented. They were only impressive because hard things are impressive.
In my opinion they should just make it so that you have to TAB through each caster unit to at least make it more difficult but still be smart casting in a way.
Example: You have 3 templar all at full energy. You select them all and hit storm and click once. It will only storm once from one templar. If you tried to click storm multiple times it would try to storm all from the same templar until he is out of energy. However, if you pressed tab to cycle through the different templar each time (or a different key to not have this overlap with cycling through types of units? Such as ~), then you could storm from the different templars. This way you wouldn't have to individually select templars which I think is what is so difficult for beginners, but the speed in which you would be able to cast multiple spells would have a bit more skill involved.
On December 29 2010 10:34 fdsdfg wrote: It's all about chores. Starcraft 1 had a ton of chores - both macro (like sending workers to minerals and building units from many different buildings) and micro (such as attacking with more than 12 units or casting spells like psi storm).
Games can exist on either end. Look at Supreme Commander for the extreme of no chores - literally every strategic decision is one action (with the exception of reclaiming debris). You can create building templates (which are basically an automated build order), set buildings to auto-produce units in a particular order, set very complex rally and patrol points, etc. It is a valid game.
Starcraft 1 I would put at the other end of the spectrum. Players needed probably about 150apm of JUST chores in the late game in order to stay on top of everything. That's without unit micro, without any strategic decision or acts of aggression or defense. It's just keeping up with all your chores.
Starcraft 2 is in the middle. It has less macro chores and less micro chores than SC1, but more than Supcom. That's the direction Blizzard wanted to go, it's the direction they went, and it's still a valid game.
Arguments to restore chores are simply arguments to make SC2 more like SC1. Yes, eliminating the chores makes the game more different than SC1, but that's the point.
No, that's what you call a cop-out and very near-sighted. How about we get away from pulling the SC / SC2 card and talk about how to improve the RTS genre in general. I would like more thoughts on punishing smartcasting (with something like a cooldown) versus shift selecting cast relay.
yeah instead of letting the 2 contestants run a lap, lets handicap them by breaking their legs and then watch them crawl a lap because thats so much more impressive!! Just think of all of the multitasking they have to do!!! Oh yeah and lets put in a bike that they have to peddle with their hands because that would require so much more skill and be that much more impressive!!
If the problem is that the lower-APM player is coming out ahead in battles, that could imply a racial or unit imbalance. It may be the case that Terran does not have effective options vs Protoss once Protoss gets high templar with both upgrades out onto the field. Blizzard can review that and rebalance accordingly.
If the problem is that watching professional SC2 is less exciting than watching professional BW, then one is not looking in the right place. A single play can be just as game-breaking in SC2 as in BW. Huge battles still swing one way or the other based on minute, quick positioning or casting.
If the problem is that SC2 is just easier to play and that bothers you for some reason, I would say get over it. Just because a game is easier to pick up and play doesn't mean that it is easier to master. Furthermore, playing SC2 at the highest level still requires lightning quick fingers to go along with lightning quick thinking. 50 APM Protoss players are not going to be winning the GSL anytime soon by carpet storming their way across the map; I would even say that SC2 will become just as APM intensive as BW - after all, there is no downside to having a higher APM. The APM that is saved by smartcasting will not disappear, it will be spent elsewhere.
TLDR: If storm is imba, it will be fixed. SC2 is just as fun to watch as BW. The skill cap is still just as high (infinity).
On December 29 2010 10:45 lkjewq wrote: yeah instead of letting the 2 contestants run a lap, lets handicap them by breaking their legs and then watch them crawl a lap because thats so much more impressive!! Just think of all of the multitasking they have to do!!! Oh yeah and lets put in a bike that they have to peddle with their hands because that would require so much more skill and be that much more impressive!!
How about we give swimmers super awesome suits that increase buoyancy so they can swim faster! Oh wait... We don't do that.
The reason why your examples don't work is because running is running. Biking is Biking.
Smart casting is like bringing a bike to a cross country race. It magnifies the effects of a spell.
On December 29 2010 10:45 lkjewq wrote: yeah instead of letting the 2 contestants run a lap, lets handicap them by breaking their legs and then watch them crawl a lap because thats so much more impressive!! Just think of all of the multitasking they have to do!!! Oh yeah and lets put in a bike that they have to peddle with their hands because that would require so much more skill and be that much more impressive!!
No, bad analogy. Right now it is like two guys racing in a walk contest and making everything harder would make it a true running racing contest. Breaking their legs is like make you have to doubleclick the caster and make you unable to hotkey them; it is simply outrageous.
On December 29 2010 10:44 LolnoobInsanity wrote: Did you ever think of the fact that this allows for more ridiculous things to be done? Like now that being able to blanket storms perfectly is easy, don't you think harder things will arise? Like I can't think of anything, because if I could I'd be a progamer or a fuckin like soothsayer or some shit and make shit tons of money on the stock market. Like holy crap, give the game some time.
THERE'S NOTHING INTERESTING ABOUT BLANKET STORMS EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT IT IS HARD TO DO IN SC1.
Anything in SC2 that is equally hard to do and is pulled off in a tournament game will cause the same amount of cheering and female orgasming that those blanket storms caused. Wait till something sufficiently hard comes along, and then you'll be complaining when SC3 comes out that double archon rainbow dickslaps are too easy or something because AutoDickSlap was implemented and QQing the same amount you are now.
Blanket storms shouldn't be impressive. That's how the spell was supposed to be implemented. They were only impressive because hard things are impressive.
Your post makes no sense. Harder things won't magically arise, when BW was harder than SC2 in pretty much every way possible. People watch sporting events (Starcraft for this matter) because they want to be entertained and impressed. Being entertained is usually a result of witnessing something impressive.
I was agreeing with you but then I realized something. Even though its much easier now to send storms all over the place, units are a lot less clunky than they were in BW so its also much easier to try to micro out of the storm. The closest thing in BW to marines vs storms in sc2 would be hydras vs storm. Storm was really filthy vs hydras but zergs got pretty decent at trying to guess where the storms would go and then dodge them. With shiny new sc2, this is easier to do.
Though I would like energy upgrades to go back to how they were in BW, where you started with some % more energy (instead of 50, you would get 62 I think) but then you also got more max energy. This way you couldnt storm instantly when the HTs warp in but you could still storm pretty quickly (and storm 3 times on a full tank of energy).
tired of these BW is better than SC2 threads, can we just stop already? Balance is one thing but I hate how we keep comparing the two games. SC2 is a different game and should be balanced differently from BW, making it the same on a new engine with new AI and features won't make it better. Some say that SC2 has devolved, I think it's evolved from a clunky game that required too much emphasis on APM and is now a game about thinking and out smarting your opponent because less work is involved on your hands. I'm sorry but I don't want to play a game that induces carpel tunnel.
Besides, Toss has an AOE just like terran and zerg does. Toss might have the best AOE, but terran and zerg benefit more from unit clumping. Controlling mass amounts of lings in BW was a nightmare and marine clumping has made marines even more powerful, so in the end I believe it's all balanced.
On December 29 2010 10:50 Kennigit wrote: We've been talking about this since 2007. We've written articles all about it. It will NEVER change. EVER. Just leave it alone imo.
Shouldn't this be locked? This discussion is just a repeat of the thousands of thread pages we burnt through during beta.
everyone who argues for storm being smartcasted is a retard imo you want starcraft to have lower skill ceiling so that its easier to play and its easier for good players to lose ?
The thing is,there are other things which can just be easily changed aswell now can't we?
No multitargetting of buildings No infinite controlgroups(1a,2a,3a,4a) No smartcasting No overkill(Think siege tanks)
It is a different game, however it is hard to see if a skill ''cap'' is incredibly high atm in SC2, because nothing is IMO as impressive as ive seen in BW, people usually make the argument that BW has existed for years and SC2 for only a couple months. However SC2 has recieved much more attention then BW and people have sought for micro like Mutalisk balling etc, so far nothing has been really discovered. The max amount of wow I got was out of forcefielding or Fakeboxer his marine spread, which is IMO not nearly as impressive as anything I see in BW. Hopefully such things as Muta micro etc will be discovered in the future to make things more exciting. Now I'm not hating on SC2 atm, its a great game,
Changing the very fundemental mechanics of SC2 is not the way to make the game more skill-like. Also be mindfull that (yes money talks) that SC2 is way more marketed to casuals rather then to the hardcore people. BW was incredibly hard to play and virtually impossible to master, compared to SC2 which is easier to play yet also virtually impossible(I assume) to master. Things should stay the same and SC2 should pave their own way rather then be compared to BW on every step it takes.
On December 29 2010 10:45 lkjewq wrote: yeah instead of letting the 2 contestants run a lap, lets handicap them by breaking their legs and then watch them crawl a lap because thats so much more impressive!! Just think of all of the multitasking they have to do!!! Oh yeah and lets put in a bike that they have to peddle with their hands because that would require so much more skill and be that much more impressive!!
How about we give swimmers super awesome suits that increase buoyancy so they can swim faster! Oh wait... We don't do that.
The reason why your examples don't work is because running is running. Biking is Biking.
Smart casting is like bringing a bike to a cross country race. It magnifies the effects of a spell.
And SC2 is SC2, not SCBW.
Using your analogy, putting Smart Casting in SCBW would be like bringing a bike to a cross country race. Removing Smart Casting from SC2 is like running in a biking competition (impressive, but so not the point of a biking competition).
On December 29 2010 10:45 -orb- wrote: In my opinion they should just make it so that you have to TAB through each caster unit to at least make it more difficult but still be smart casting in a way.
Example: You have 3 templar all at full energy. You select them all and hit storm and click once. It will only storm once from one templar. If you tried to click storm multiple times it would try to storm all from the same templar until he is out of energy. However, if you pressed tab to cycle through the different templar each time (or a different key to not have this overlap with cycling through types of units? Such as ~), then you could storm from the different templars. This way you wouldn't have to individually select templars which I think is what is so difficult for beginners, but the speed in which you would be able to cast multiple spells would have a bit more skill involved.
good attempt but that barely makes things better. assume templars are on 6. 6, hold x (play grid so that's the hotkey), tab, click, tab, click, tab click, back to square 1 with maybe 3 additional apm added. even if they also disallowed you from holding the spell button, that's really just another 3 apm. within 20 practice games you have the hang of this type of thing, within 50 you're just making stupid mistakes if you aren't hitting it right. it's still far from what i'd call impressive, you know?
i think the main issue with this is that, in BW, storm could be fuckin POWER OVERWHELMING because player skill naturally capped the efficiency of storms. even if storms did 125 damage and could kill the living shit out of everything if only you could storm everything as accurately as in SC2, you couldn't against someone controlling their army with anything mobile. now that there is no player skill capping the efficiency, game balance has to take a step in and say, "no, this spell actually can't be this good because when it's used, it will consistently be used well almost every time and we have to balance the game around this spell being used as if anyone could do it perfectly." meaning, they'd nerf it so it doesn't break the game, which hurts the game, which is what the OP is trying to get at.
tired of these BW is better than SC2 threads, can we just stop already? Balance is one thing but I hate how we keep comparing the two games. SC2 is a different game and should be balanced differently from BW, making it the same on a new engine with new AI and features won't make it better. Some say that SC2 has devolved, I think it's evolved from a clunky game that required too much emphasis on APM and is now a game about thinking and out smarting your opponent because less work is involved on your hands. I'm sorry but I don't want to play a game that induces carpel tunnel.
Why do people keep saying this... It makes absolutely no sense at all. You do not have to think to macro or micro, it is all reflexes, speed, and accuracy. So what if the game requires more speed? I have not seen one thing about SC2 that makes it any more of a "thinking game" then SCBW except if extremely basic counters mean hard thinking to you then sure.
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