GSL Popularity - Page 46

BW is a Korean phenomenon, SC2 is a global one.

On January 08 2011 13:32 Helios.Star wrote:


I bought Starcraft three months after release (STARCRAFT, not Brood War) and I played Warcraft and both C&C games that were out at the time, people definitely knew what an RTS was. It makes me laugh how the first SC is referred to as BW all the time, but SC2 is dead before the first expansion even comes out. It isnt a dumb argument, because 6 months after release both games are/were still considered to be in their infancy.

On January 08 2011 04:21 mr_tolkien wrote:

I have a question to you Jinro : do people acknowledge that among the Korean community ?

I personnaly am stopping playing because of the maps... And won't play again until Blizz does something. The pb really isn't a GSL pb to me, the maps are just horribad, except Shakuras and Xel Naga. Too few to me !

On January 08 2011 13:47 Helios.Star wrote:


Expecting the entire BW fanbase to flock over to SC2 right away is a bit ridiculous.

On January 08 2011 13:50 DyEnasTy wrote:



Ok I see where your coming from. But BW is over a decade old. The point of this, is that unless blizzard stop
F-ing up, SC2 will never achieve what BW has achieved. And for your information, BW was a global phenomenon. It set the standard on what a competitive RTS is, and no other RTS, or any game for that matter have toppled it as far as esports is concerned.

On January 08 2011 13:47 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

Zenio yesterday:
"PLZ Blizzard, delete all ladder maps......"

On January 08 2011 04:02 Kaptein[konijn] wrote:
Blizzard made big mistakes on SC2. I've played wc, wc2 and particularly sc/bw for ages, and when I first played sc2, I noticed it had one of the most un-Blizzard-like things ever.... the game felt half-assed and rushed to completion.

A half-assed job part I
Batlle.net. Where the Hell are my chat channels? Half of what kept players hooked on bw after all those years was the interaction, meeting players and compete with them. It was the soil for competitive grounds. When the original Starcraft was released in the spring of 1998, just having an Internet connection was an achievement itself. Despite that, they had no problem fixing up a GREAT Battle.net interface that worked like a charm and proved it worth for over a decade, which equals a century in computer development time.

Then, fast forward to July 2010, where Internet is the medium for everyone. Even my grandmother knows how to send an e-mail. EVERYONE will use Battle.net and they manage to screw up it. At first it seemed like a temporary thing that will be fixed in the first patch. If it was a small thingy, then why not push the release date back a bit? These things are planned years ahead, literally. Well that soon became apparent: We are half a year later, and still no decent battle.net.

Just fucking ridiculous. It's unprofessional and that USED to be un-Blizzard-like.

A half-assed job part II

The sounds. Everybody has to listen to them for hours and hours and hours and hours. My first game, I get ling-rushed (incidentally, not dissimilar to my first online sc game on Blood Bath). The lings start tearing away at my units ... and.... what?? Silence?? A few games later, I meet the mutalisk, the heart of mid-game zerg in bw. I see that they attack my ebay, but I don't hear much so I just send one scv to repair. Then the ebay explodes because apparently there were 10 of them and they all were hitting the bay. WTF!? THE MUTAS ARE NOW "MUTES" ?? In sc/bw, lings sounded like a fucking sledge hammer. If mutas hit your main, just the sound of it would instantly get your adrenaline pumping. Zealots sounded like they were tearing something apart.

The sc2 sounds are fucking WEAK. Just weak.

For fucks sake, the sounds of Warcraft I (talking 1992 or something here) were better than sc2, technical limitations (sound quality) aside. In fact, take that back, even the sound of an archer in warcraft I, despite having the bit rate of a mobile phone sounds better than those fucking mute sounds from lings, mutas, ultras and hydras.

Terrible. Again, I was stunned by it because it's simply unprofessional. Un-blizzard-like.


Now, Blizzard has done an amazing job the last 18 years in all of their RTS games so I'm willing to cut them slack for those otherwise unforgivable mistakes.

But things don't get better when looking at the gameplay, which contains several fatal flaws:

Skill is much less rewarding in sc2 compared to bw

I'm sure experienced bw players can relate to what happened to me every week or so: You play an intense game, but your opponent has a unit composition/timing/positioning that catches you and you're forced to admit defeat. Well done. You watch the replay to see this impressive player and then you see that after as little as 6 minutes in the game, he has 4 idle scvs, is supply blocked, idle buildings, etc, etc. Basically you lose to a player well below your level who was somewhat lucky in strategic aspects, probably executing a build order from mind or the Internet without understanding it.

That sucks and pisses you off. But it happens only once in per week or so. In sc2, it happens to a quarter of all my fucking games!

This has several reasons, starting with:

Arbitrary-chosen build orders give a HUGE favor without requiring skill

In bw, you would get set back by having done a build-order that matches up badly with that of your opponent. You'd get knocked down, but you'd be FAR from knocked out. There were plenty of opportunities to get back in the game. Sure, the higher the level of play, the harder this becomes, but it was always bearable.

In sc2, most games are either over or completely decided after 8 minutes. After the often game-deciding Build-order Battle, if you will.

And again, having more skill than your opponent will net you more wins on average, but it's just that: on average. I don't want sc2 to be a more extreme version of poker, where you have to play a bo10 of games to beat a player who is quite below your level.


When wc3 was released, NTT complained that there weren't hard counters as there were in bw. For instance, bats destroy lings but hydras destroy bats. And I he had a good point (don't want to start a discussion on wc3's worth). But sc2 is the other way around. The hard counters are TOO hard. So hard, that builder orders - mostly arbitrary - decide the entire game.

Micro

Another factor on why it's so hard to come back: micro is ridiculously easy. So easy that a pretty good player, say 2500 diamond, can match a progamer's micro 90% of the time.

Marauders? A-move. Lings auto-surround the opponent. MMM automatically clumbs up to an a-move ball. Collosi are a-move units. Charge prevents micro. Concussive shells prevent micro. Fungal growth prevents micro. The thor is an unmicroable powerhouse. Multi-casting makes sure that a 7-year old can cast better storms in sc2 than Reach did in bw, which means that micro-ing against storms is nearly impossible when there are more than 2 templars (don't get me started on amulet and warp-in) and the opponent has half a brain..

The only fun micro mechanic of sc2 is marines vs blings. The bling is not as fun as the lurker, but I'm okay with it. They replaced a great unit with a very good unit - entertainment wise.

The reaper could also have been a fun unit, but it never functioned well. Pre-patch it was too strong, and post-patch not a soul makes them anymore. Which is a waste, because on paper they can be a very nice unit. It needs some radical changes like remove the ability to jump cliffs and no longer throw nuclear bombs against buildings every second, and to balance that, it could be made more durable and a damage boost vs melee units. That way it can be a nice harrassing unit early-on and still a viable addition mid/late game if the opponent goes ling/zealot heavy. I'm not saying this is the way it MUST be, but something along those lines has a lot potential to be good.

But at the same time, blings are the only units in sc2 (all races) that can create OHHHHHHH-moments. Scarabs killing 10 scvs or 0 is gone. Spider mines turning 6 dragoons into blue soup is gone - which, incidentally, is one of the game-turning abilities that sc2 lacks.


In bw, if you saw a slow lord unloading 2 lurkers in your main, it was a SHIT! moment, but even if you only had 4 marines and stim, you could make it if you microed well! Same with a reaver coming in, or when 6 vults came and all you had was 3 dragoons.

Even if a cloaked wraith hit your main in TvsT without detector, you could survive it by building the ebay right there and then. Yes, you'd be hurt, but if for instance you'd invested the money in containing the opponent or a fast-exp, there was a decent chance you could come back. In sc2, if a cloaked banshee hits you and you have no superlords (forgot the name), you're dead. Have no turrets and often you're toast as well. Etc, etc.

A lot of sc2 units and tactics are all-or-nothing by nature.

Macro is too easy

That's right. Being Idra and having better macro than 99% of the players out there gives you only a marginal advantage. Being able to hotkey multiple buildings and rally workers to mine means macro is too frigging easy.

This is yet another factor why 90% of the games are decided within 8 minutes. Even when your mechanics are in a different league than that of your opponent, it won't make much of a difference once the arbitrary Build-order Battle has set you back and your mediocre opponent can still macro at 80% of your efficiency with 10% of your mechanics/skill.

The argument is "Good, sc2 is a strategy game and this emphasizes strategy" is wrong.

On paper this actually looks like a good argument, but upon further inspection, the contrary is actually the case. Because proper scouting is so hard, this means that both players often have their build-orders semi-blind with respect to each other. Yes, they'll have a general clue, but rarely more than that. And after that, there's no turning back. But in bw, at that point the REAL strategy began. After the initial battle, you had to make crucial decisions: am I going to expand and turn this into a macro game and hope to turn the tide? Am I going to drop the zerg's greedy 3rd and get back? Am I doing a timing push due to his lacking army since he expects me to exp now?

These are all key elements of a good strategic game which bw embraces, but in sc2 they play a smaller role.

On top of that, sc2 is still a game where handspeed etc should matter. If you want to play a pure strategy game, then go play chess or checkers - they're great games in their own right.

I try to like sc2, I really do. And it's a very good game. But it doesn't measure up to Blizzard's standards, which were way higher than "very good". It's been half a year since the release and I don't find myself addicted to sc2 anymore, although I still like the game...

On January 08 2011 13:47 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

Zenio yesterday:
"PLZ Blizzard, delete all ladder maps......"