NOTE:Please read the full post before posting, I'm not trying to piss on SC2 and say there isn't e-sports happening. The title is there to just get people more interested in the thread and make my point about smart casting
I hear people on all sides on the isle when discussing SC2 balance go: 'ooh infestors are imbalanced, they buffed them and zerg are now stronger and the other side go - well use ghosts to beat them and before it was a discussion about High Templars and Ghosts both protoss players and terran players arguing which is more OP or more easy to use.
I'd have to say they are all right and wrong at the same time. The fact that everyone looks at the game from their own race perspective is blinding everyone quite a bit to the obvious imbalance that is smart casting. Yes ladies and gentlemen I'm going to argue the fact that Infestors, Ghosts, Sentries and all other caster units are imbalanced is because of smart casting.
Lets go back to Starcraft: Brood War to help us with this analysis. As you remember storm did 110 damage over 3 seconds in BW, a devastating spell and one that at newbie levels was always OP. Until you actually got a lot better at BW and probably watches some PRO games you would be under the impression that storm was imbalanced because its so strong, unless you were trying to use it yourself of course. This is what I mean by race specific balance whines and not looking at the problem at its roots. If you were playing Zerg in BW storm was OP, if you were playing Terran storm was OP as well, if you were playing Protoss and Zerg Terran siege tanks were OP and if you played Protoss, zerg dark swarm was OP. This was all true until you tried the different races yourself and find out its not so OP as you thought.
Everyone is again right and wrong at the same time, because even though realistically the spells and some units were OP the fact that no one can use them to their full extent made them balanced.
Remember the game where JangBi had the whole screen covered with storms destroying all of Nada's tanks, well that was skill and that was excitement, it was something special that not only can non pro not do it, but even pro players weren't able to do it. Even Bisu's storms were quite on that mark.
Again this leads us back to Starcraft 2 and its smart casting. I will bet everyone that if smart casting was not available infestors would actually become balanced and there would even be an outcry to buff them as they will look too weak.
I don't want this to trigger SC2 automation discussion on things like MBS, unlimited unit selection, auto-casting because lets be reasonable Blizzard will never remove those and there would be an outcry from casual players about it. But its quite reasonable to demand from Blizzard to at least remove smart casting because it won't really make casual players worse, since casual players use spellcasters only sporadically anyways, but what this will do is increase the skill ceiling at the top in the professional world.
This won't make SC2 unplayable for casual players, it certainly won't make SC2 skill-wise on par with Brood War, but I think cutting smart casting will make the game more enjoyable for spectators and more challenging for pros, but not only that it will actually balance out the various spell casters and spells right now by making them potent as they currently are, but more challenging to execute.
I feel that if SC2 is to really succeed as an E-sports it needs to be more challenging and the one way to do that that wont hurt the play of the average gamer and sales of SC2 or promotion of SC2 to new audiences, but actually help it is by removing smart casting which will make watching SC2 even more enjoyable and make all of us all be excited once again, since Brood War about things that pros can do and we can't. As it is right now I can place the perfect storms and perfect fungal growths as good as any pro player can and a lot of times even better.
Please be sure to talk about smart casting only and not balance or other automation talk. Thank you.
EDIT: Bonus content: Imagine if Brood War had smart casting. Now no amount or rationalizing or spinning it around will make SC2 casting not easy and the sooner we realize this and get Blizzard to fix the problem the better. And I've already made the point that removing smart casting won't hurt the game availability and easiness for new and casual gamers. The effect will mostly be at the top levels and would actually require skill to cast spells.
Considering pros at the highest level (GSL Winners) are still making wrong decisions and mistakes, I'd say the game must be challenging as they still are not perfect at it yet.
I would be okay with no smart casting if spells were made more OP. I don't know how ff would work though since the whole point of them is the ability to lay them down really quickly.
It just seems like there's no way to make a BIG move. Like, you can be effective and efficient, but you can't really turn the entire game upside down through a burst of genius.
The game is young. The pros will and are able to do more stuff than "ordinary" gamers all the time and as times go by, more and more "hard" key elements to success will be figured out. If you make something easier, it frees up space/apm for other stuff instead. The game will only get more challenging on the highest levels as time progresses. Wait and see.
Ravens have smart casting and they're not imba in the slightest. Forcefield would be impossible to use even at the pro level and all the aoe spells will have to be buffed.
Infestors are not really a problem. Give me a GSL game where someone massed Infestors and won.
Someone makes a well put together thread to discuss an interesting subject, and just because it's not raising SC2 up on a golden pedestal and raining praise all over it, people come in just to shit all over the thread. Typical.
Not saying I agree or disagree with his opinions, but you guys could at least discuss them in an intelligent fashion rather than the predictable ragefest at someone who thinks that the game could be improved in some way than its current state.
So in the end you are saying that the game is not hard enough due to smart casting and will therefore fail as an eSport? I cannot agree as the game is still young, it is still changing and growing, and with the advent of smart casting and other automations, this means that eventually other aspects of the game will become more and more important such as overall tactics and strategy instead of just control. I think the game will become harder and harder and instead of mechanics being as emphasized, insight and study will become strong. Overall we all feel that the skill cap has not been topped yet and I do not think that it will be for awhile to come.
On July 29 2011 17:41 thehitman wrote: As it is right now I can place the perfect storms and perfect fungal growths as good as any pro player can and a lot of times even better.
Then you should be a pro. Unless.. maybe.. perhaps.. there is more to the game than castings.. maybe?
Going to have to respectfully disagree with about everything you said. Sorry.
I think the title is a little stupid. This is essentially saying that smart casting makes the game take less skill. Then you go on to say that it makes it less exciting. Therefore SC2 can't be an e-sport? I don't really know why that's the only thing you're taking into consideration when there are plenty of other things that can potentially make SC2 not as exciting, thus leading it to fail as an e-sport. But then again SC2 is a competitive video game, and that's literally all you need to be labeled as an e-sport.
Wow, you've wasted a lot of time, writing something completly irrelevant. :D And, like said before: SC2 is already an Esport. Just because SC had worse mechanics than SC2 doesn't mean it was more challenging. It's like saying: "Watching football back in the days was more entertaining, because the TV only supported Black & White instead of colours and high def."
Did I just enter a discussion from a year ago? Silly topic is silly. Blizzard isn't going to undo all the balance work they've done over the past year to do remove a feature they put in for a reason. Terrible title also since SC2 is, by definition, already an e-sport.
Is this one of the few opportunities to treat a BW player the way Sc2 players get treated in the BW forum? Regardless, your critique leaves me unmoved to say the least, Sc2 is already an e-sport and to suggest that smart casting is somehow a key factor in its eventual downfall is insane.
He did it. He single-handedly ruined esports! damn you sir!
alright guys, go home, we had a good ride. the laughs, the excitement, even a few tears (mainly induced from nestea... and mainly artosis' tears), but it looks like in the end smart cast killed esports. Everyone was just tired of approaching the enigma of being right and wrong at the same time so we just cut it all off
Edit: also, don't bash the bee dub, cause most of those guys are quite lovely people. only op is douche
What would happen in BW if you got 12 HT all on 1 hotkey and clicked storm somewhere. Would there be 12 storms in that 1 spot? It forces you to individually hotkey each caster?
Seriously, if you have an issue with smart casting please address it as such. Why did you have to choose this exaggerated headline which hasn't anything to do with your problem.
On July 29 2011 17:57 Tachion wrote: What would happen in BW if you got 12 HT all on 1 hotkey and clicked storm somewhere. Would there be 12 storms in that 1 spot? It forces you to individually hotkey each caster?
Yes, they will all storm the same spot, you can either hotkey or box your casters to do storms.
Selecting spellcasters one by one in the middle of a fight is sometimes impossible and having a hotkey for each spellcaster is not at all practical. Moreover SC2 is already an esport and one single situational mechanic is not about to make or break the game. Try again.
On July 29 2011 17:57 Tachion wrote: What would happen in BW if you got 12 HT all on 1 hotkey and clicked storm somewhere. Would there be 12 storms in that 1 spot? It forces you to individually hotkey each caster?
yep,its annyoing,but we use magic box on our casters.
On July 29 2011 17:58 XenoX101 wrote: Selecting spellcasters one by one in the middle of a fight is sometimes impossible and having a hotkey for each spellcaster is not at all practical. Moreover SC2 is already an esport and one single situational mechanic is not about to make or break the game. Try again.
It's not exciting to see HuK cast like 8+ storms all over a bio army and watch nothing return alive?
It's not skill placing the storms and predicting where the Terrans army will walk off too?
Your post is just dumb.. Sorry man, any good fungal, storm, emp requires some type of skill, none of this "smart casting ruined sc2". You can't just 'be good' at the game when you pick it up. The games only been out for a year, give it some time before you bash on it. Remember it took blizzard 3 years to balance bw and it took roughly that many years to make it popular.
I would really love to see that. The OP has solid points, not only would it increase the skill that has to be involved into the micro, but also spectators had another reason to get excited because it would be so awesome to watch.
I'm emberassed by the answers here. This really shows how immature parts of the community can be. Yes it may not be "killing esports" or something like that but removing smartcasting would make the game a whole lot more exciting.
Instead of "ooh look he fungals the marines..again...and again..." we would hear "HUGE FUNGALS OHMIGAD DID YOU SEE HOW HE TRAPPED THE MARINES WITH CHAINED FUNGALS AND DIDNT LOSE ANY INFESTORS AT ALL!?"
Address the content and not the way it is presented, yes it's a misleading title etc. but the points he states are actually pretty reasonable.
What you are saying isn't fair. Just because you feel that smart casting is imbalanced doesn't mean it will ruin e-sports. If you have a issue with certain units then find other ways to deal with it properly, people who cry imbalance are people who don't know how to problem solve or just plain raging/trolling.
Give the game a chance to develop over time then assess whether it should be an e-sport and bring proper evidence/references to back your claims.
i agree with the op, but saying it can't be an e-sport is not right, more like it can never be as "mature" as its predecessor. People saying top players still making mistakes in sc2 and therefore, there's still a lot of skills cap to cover. To a certain extent this is true, but not entirely. Players who transition to sc2 are overall lower level players from bw and also sc2 pro teams generally have a much lower practice pressure, and come on, everyone makes mistakes. Also notice how volatile sc2 is? I doubt we gonna see anyone who's able to dominate the korean sc2 scene for more than 6 months, don;t even talk about being a new bonjwa for sc2. Why? Since the skills caps is much lower, lower level players will still have a much more chance in upseting the top players. Increasing the skill caps will reward the hardworking/talented players, not the lazy one, notice how tester is still in code S despite being lazy (not because he's playing bad, just that he''s still good by not practicing).
This comes up like once every 3 months. Smartcasting, MBS, etc are not the root of all evil and the skill cap of SCII is no where near figured out yet.
Also SC2 does not need to be BW to succeed. With smart casting, MBS, etc is is alreayd a larger INTERNATIONAL E-sport then BW. Korean maybe not, but it's obvious these things have not turned off the millions and millions of people that watch and play SCII every day.
NOTE: Please read the full post before posting, I'm not trying to piss on SC2 and say there isn't e-sports happening. The title is there to just get people more interested in the thread and that SC2 would be better as an e-sports if it had smart casting removed.
So the content of your OP, according to the title of your thread, is ?
this is actually a legit troll post, iv seen this exact post several times befor, this will be the third time iv watched that storm video in this same thread, and its still awsome, and op is still wrong
imo, maps are the real problem, the maps just suck
You state that you can cast as good if not better storms and fungal than pros? I'd love to see you forcefield like MC does. Because almost no one forcefields with his precision. It's a very small differences in the way he does it compared to others, but if you understand the game you would realize that he does it with extreme precision and speed unlike no other protoss I've seen do consistently. It may not be as hard as it was in BW to cast spells, but it that doesn't change the fact that your average scrub can't match MC.
Every protoss match up, except mirror, is in fact is so dependent on forcefields you can easily spot a good protoss from a pro just by watching their forcefields. It may not be something obvious to the average spectator that some players get so much more out of their forcefields than others, but to me it's really what sets apart the good from the best.
tldr; You can't cast spells with the speed and precision of a progamer. So stop claiming to have this ability.
NOTE: Please read the full post before posting, I'm not trying to piss on SC2 and say there isn't e-sports happening. The title is there to just get people more interested in the thread and that SC2 would be better as an e-sports if it had smart casting removed.
So the content of your OP, according to the title of your thread, is ?
lol, but it's the other way around, the title is misleading.
I think that you are misunderstanding something. You see, SC1 wasn't good because it was balanced. It was good because EVERY SINGLE UNIT AND SPELL IN THE GAME was imbalanced in one way or another, hence making balance arguments kinda pointless
On July 29 2011 18:02 brachester wrote: i agree with the op, but saying it can't be an e-sport is not right, more like it can never be as "mature" as its predecessor. People saying top players still making mistakes in sc2 and therefore, there's still a lot of skills cap to cover. To a certain extent this is true, but not entirely. Players who transition to sc2 are overall lower level players from bw and also sc2 pro teams generally have a much lower practice pressure, and come on, everyone makes mistakes. Also notice how volatile sc2 is? I doubt we gonna see anyone who's able to dominate the korean sc2 scene for more than 6 months, don;t even talk about being a new bonjwa for sc2. Why? Since the skills caps is much lower, lower level players will still have a much more chance in upseting the top players. Increasing the skill caps will reward the hardworking/talented players, not the lazy one, notice how tester is still in code S despite being lazy (not because he's playing bad, just that he''s still good by not practicing).
Nestea? on his way two a third title over 4- 5 gsl seasons? Its a year in and were already seeing consistent players and pros....
NOTE: Please read the full post before posting, I'm not trying to piss on SC2 and say there isn't e-sports happening. The title is there to just get people more interested in the thread and that SC2 would be better as an e-sports if it had smart casting removed.
So the content of your OP, according to the title of your thread, is ?
Lol better off saying sex and free alcohol to get everyones attention in the thread.
On July 29 2011 17:59 MonkSEA wrote: So it doesn't take skill to cast a storm in sc2?
It's not exciting to see HuK cast like 8+ storms all over a bio army and watch nothing return alive?
It's not skill placing the storms and predicting where the Terrans army will walk off too?
Your post is just dumb.. Sorry man, any good fungal, storm, emp requires some type of skill, none of this "smart casting ruined sc2". You can't just 'be good' at the game when you pick it up. The games only been out for a year, give it some time before you bash on it. Remember it took blizzard 3 years to balance bw and it took roughly that many years to make it popular.
You need to predict where he is going to move the army in Brood War as well and you couldn't just have 14 infestors in 1 control group and just ffffffffffffff kill whole armies.
On July 29 2011 17:51 Angra wrote: Someone makes a well put together thread to discuss an interesting subject, and just because it's not raising SC2 up on a golden pedestal and raining praise all over it, people come in just to shit all over the thread. Typical.
Not saying I agree or disagree with his opinions, but you guys could at least discuss them in an intelligent fashion rather than the predictable ragefest at someone who thinks that the game could be improved in some way than its current state.
Most people aren't bashing on him because he wasn't praising SC2 or anything like that. It's just the idea of smart-spell casting and its controversy of dumbing down the difficulty curve has been discussed to death already. The points in the OP have been made so many times already back when SC2 was announced, and guess what? Smart-casting is still a part of SC2.
While I'm sure people would be down to discuss all the possible implications of smart-casting, it's been done already to the point where you're beating a dead horse. It's like if someone started a thread about MBS and auto-mining and how it lowers the skill-ceiling of SC2. Been there, done that. It's just tiring repeating this kind of discussion, especially when SC2 has been out for over a year and it's clear that these core mechanics of the game are here to stay.
SC2 is also alot faster than BW. Getting of storm/feedback or getting your HT's sniped is a matter of minute timing. Also as the units are faster they can dodge the storms better, stimmed MM baiting storms is great to see.
This thread adds nothing new as we've already had the discussion about autocasting in other, more fleshed out threads in the past. Also naming the thread "Why SC2 can't be an e-sports" is just retarded if you actually wanted a civil discussion on the subject.
On July 29 2011 17:51 Angra wrote: Someone makes a well put together thread to discuss an interesting subject, and just because it's not raising SC2 up on a golden pedestal and raining praise all over it, people come in just to shit all over the thread. Typical.
Not saying I agree or disagree with his opinions, but you guys could at least discuss them in an intelligent fashion rather than the predictable ragefest at someone who thinks that the game could be improved in some way than its current state.
You kidding if you think all people do is praise SC2, just look around at everyone complaining about new maps, Bnet 2.0 and anything else. This thread makes me facepalm because the title is about as sensationalist as it can get (basically declaring what is and isn't an esport on whether or not it has smart casting) and then assuming you could solve the major balance issues with removing smart casting. You want an intelligent discussion thread? Then don't start with a B.S.title that implies that you decide what is and isn't an esport.
On July 29 2011 18:05 mnck wrote: You state that you can cast as good if not better storms and fungal than pros? I'd love to see you forcefield like MC does. Because almost no one forcefields with his precision. It's a very small differences in the way he does it compared to others, but if you understand the game you would realize that he does it with extreme precision and speed unlike no other protoss I've seen do consistently. It may not be as hard as it was in BW to cast spells, but it that doesn't change the fact that your average scrub can't match MC.
Every protoss match up, except mirror, is in fact is so dependent on forcefields you can easily spot a good protoss from a pro just by watching their forcefields. It may not be something obvious to the average spectator that some players get so much more out of their forcefields than others, but to me it's really what sets apart the good from the best.
tldr; You can't cast spells with the speed and precision of a progamer. So stop claiming to have this ability.
I can and I bet you can too, if you aren't say a bronze player. I mean I've even played in gold league in season 1 and no one has trouble casting good spells, maybe not perfect, but they fail to predict the movement of the army, but can cast storms and fungals as fast as any pro.
I mean what is so difficult? People have way more trouble sieging and unsieging tanks than casting spells.
On July 29 2011 17:51 Angra wrote: Someone makes a well put together thread to discuss an interesting subject, and just because it's not raising SC2 up on a golden pedestal and raining praise all over it, people come in just to shit all over the thread. Typical.
Not saying I agree or disagree with his opinions, but you guys could at least discuss them in an intelligent fashion rather than the predictable ragefest at someone who thinks that the game could be improved in some way than its current state.
Most people aren't bashing on him because he wasn't praising SC2 or anything like that. It's just the idea of smart-spell casting and its controversy of dumbing down the difficulty curve has been discussed to death already. The points in the OP have been made so many times already back when SC2 was announced, and guess what? Smart-casting is still a part of SC2.
While I'm sure people would be down to discuss all the possible implications of smart-casting, it's been done already to the point where you're beating a dead horse. It's like if someone started a thread about MBS and auto-mining and how it lowers the skill-ceiling of SC2. Been there, done that. It's just tiring repeating this kind of discussion, especially when SC2 has been out for over a year and it's clear that these core mechanics of the game are here to stay.
So you(not the personal you, talking in general here) have to respond with a shitstorm of trolls and flames and basically are not able to respond in an appropriate way? Oh wow, I never saw that.
Saying that we can't change the game to make it more exciting because it is what it is now is pretty..well.. stupid? Not saying it in a bad way, just can't think of another word. Why would making something better be bad? If we actually can find solid arguments as to why something is good, why should that be a bad thing?
I for myself like the idea of removing smartcasting, I won't shitstorm if it doesn't happen but I'm just saying that I think that this would make the game more exciting. Am I killing eSports now? Do people have the right to troll me now because of that opinion? I don't think so. But sadly, this is what people do.
Is SC2 a viable E-sport with it? Yes. Misleading title by a lot... What you want to do isn't making E-sport or not, it's seperating the good from the fucking awesome players. It's understandable but the title is, again, misleading.
On July 29 2011 17:59 MonkSEA wrote: So it doesn't take skill to cast a storm in sc2?
It's not exciting to see HuK cast like 8+ storms all over a bio army and watch nothing return alive?
It's not skill placing the storms and predicting where the Terrans army will walk off too?
Your post is just dumb.. Sorry man, any good fungal, storm, emp requires some type of skill, none of this "smart casting ruined sc2". You can't just 'be good' at the game when you pick it up. The games only been out for a year, give it some time before you bash on it. Remember it took blizzard 3 years to balance bw and it took roughly that many years to make it popular.
You need to predict where he is going to move the army in Brood War as well and you couldn't just have 14 infestors in 1 control group and just ffffffffffffff kill whole armies.
and if you have all your infestors control grouped into 1 control group they bunch up, and guess what's good against bunched up Infestors?
EMP.
It's not all "smart casting ruins sc2" like I said.
Behind all the trollage the main concern raised by OP seems to be the fact that everything that makes army control easier reduces the game skill cap, and thus leaves less room for amazing players to be amazing. I don't necessarily agree, but i see where he is coming from.
Why is this thread even being allowed to stay in the SC2 general?
Can't it be moved to blogs, to the BW section or just closed? I mean it's standing policy to close any complaining thread as Blizzard isn't going to change anything major about the game at this point and this is just more of the same, mixed with a nice dose of BW elitism and topped off with a sensationalist title.
Blizzard isn't going to remove smart-casting and his claims about SC2 not being an e-sport are pretty laughable so what exactly are we supposed to discuss here?
On July 29 2011 17:51 Angra wrote: Someone makes a well put together thread to discuss an interesting subject, and just because it's not raising SC2 up on a golden pedestal and raining praise all over it, people come in just to shit all over the thread. Typical.
Not saying I agree or disagree with his opinions, but you guys could at least discuss them in an intelligent fashion rather than the predictable ragefest at someone who thinks that the game could be improved in some way than its current state.
Most people aren't bashing on him because he wasn't praising SC2 or anything like that. It's just the idea of smart-spell casting and its controversy of dumbing down the difficulty curve has been discussed to death already. The points in the OP have been made so many times already back when SC2 was announced, and guess what? Smart-casting is still a part of SC2.
While I'm sure people would be down to discuss all the possible implications of smart-casting, it's been done already to the point where you're beating a dead horse. It's like if someone started a thread about MBS and auto-mining and how it lowers the skill-ceiling of SC2. Been there, done that. It's just tiring repeating this kind of discussion, especially when SC2 has been out for over a year and it's clear that these core mechanics of the game are here to stay.
So you(not the personal you, talking in general here) have to respond with a shitstorm of trolls and flames and basically are not able to respond in an appropriate way? Oh wow, I never saw that.
Saying that we can't change the game to make it more exciting because it is what it is now is pretty..well.. stupid? Not saying it in a bad way, just can't think of another word. Why would making something better be bad? If we actually can find solid arguments as to why something is good, why should that be a bad thing?
I for myself like the idea of removing smartcasting, I won't shitstorm if it doesn't happen but I'm just saying that I think that this would make the game more exciting. Am I killing eSports now? Do people have the right to troll me now because of that opinion? I don't think so. But sadly, this is what people do.
People are not taking this thread seriously as the argument has been presented better in old threads, this one adds nothing new... Oh yeah, it does add something; a stupid sensationalist thread title that has nothing to do with the actual content.
You you never made a argument that SC2 couldn't be a E-Sport, you just said "okai so infestors imba sentries imba ghosts imba all because 1 mechanic of the game, okay so fix that the they arn't imba."
Also to add to above: This is already a HUGE ESPORT primarily due to a couple of things:
- Automated things still require you to have to micro against it, keeping some level of skill For example: if you cast fungal growth the persons fault for not splitting is theres - Starcraft 2 is still young Do you know how long it took to figure out muta's could stack? And this is just one of the crazy mechanics that the game didn't create but that someone had to FIND
and the list could go on.
So I'd say we are just fine. We haven't gotten to HotS/LoV yet so who knows what crazy mechanic that Browder will introduce to make people find. I've always given Blizzard credit and I wont stop now. Just enjoy the game, Enjoy the community, and who cares if it is a great game for ESPORT or not. As long as you have fun it doesn't matter. And if you don't have fun then you can quit playing.
On July 29 2011 18:05 Shaetan wrote: What is smart casting? Not having to select an individual unit to cast it?
Not quite. Normal AI: If you give an order to a group of units, each individual unit attempts to follow that order.
Smartcasting: if you give an spellcasting order to a group of units, the AI selects one to carry it out, and ONLY issues the order to THAT unit.
This is very convenient for spells that don't stack well, like Fungal, EMP, and Storm, but because it's so easy to carpet an area with those spells, the spells themselves are nerfed to compensate.
It's also a pain in the ass for summoning Infested Terrans, since you only get one IT per click.
LOL! So I wanted to just post a few of the OPs recent TL posts for lulz:
My changes would be pretty radical in that I would remove banelings and replace them with lurkers and rebalance inject larva mechanic.
Yeah this map is imba as it can be. Really bad map design. Why doesn't Blizzard just use community maps, like IcCup and GSL maps? They would also save a bit on resources and actually use Kim and Matt to actually balance the game and not create imba maps.
Destiny winning no surprise for me there. Watch this next MLG how every Zerg from good to mediocre post great results and then we can hopefully have people admit that Zerg is imbalanced.
[Why are there so few terrans in higher leagues] Because terran is the hardest race to play.
I think he's having a hard time TvZ and TvP right now, let's just cut him some slack. lol.
Well he has a valid point, a point that was brought up a lot before SC2 beta with that long MBS, auto-mining discussion and all of that. My opinion back then still stands now, all these easy mechanics are making SC2 a boring game and not as exciting to watch. I don't think new SC players realize just how much more interesting SC2 as an esport could have been, instead we settle for big a-move fights with deathballs a bit of autocast elements (which gets boring after a while). However, beginners and casual players would not have liked it this way so Blizzard simply could not do it and we instead end up with a middle solution which is much more casual friendly but also much less exciting as an esport. It's a sacrifice Blizzard did.
On July 29 2011 18:16 untilMay wrote: You you never made a argument that SC2 couldn't be a E-Sport, you just said "okai so infestors imba sentries imba ghosts imba all because 1 mechanic of the game, okay so fix that the they arn't imba."
Also to add to above: This is already a HUGE ESPORT primarily due to a couple of things:
- Automated things still require you to have to micro against it, keeping some level of skill For example: if you cast fungal growth the persons fault for not splitting is theres - Starcraft 2 is still young Do you know how long it took to figure out muta's could stack? And this is just one of the crazy mechanics that the game didn't create but that someone had to FIND
and the list could go on.
So I'd say we are just fine. We haven't gotten to HotS/LoV yet so who knows what crazy mechanic that Browder will introduce to make people find. I've always given Blizzard credit and I wont stop now. Just enjoy the game, Enjoy the community, and who cares if it is a great game for ESPORT or not. As long as you have fun it doesn't matter. And if you don't have fun then you can quit playing.
Well to tell you the truth because I hate how all commentators and current SC2 players make it sound so hard and difficult.
I mean you'll see Incontrol, HDstarcraft, Day9, etc... all going omg perfect storms, omg such amazing fungal growth destroying the whole terran army when its not one bit hard or exciting to do.
I mean its like watching workers being put to mine in SC1 and even that was so much harder and one could argue exciting.
I'll ignore all the dumb answers on this thread. It's like people just don't read the OP and flame. It's like bnet's forums.
Anyway, I disagree with the OP. I mean, as far as i understood, OP says the game needs to be more challenging in order to grow more as an e-sport. And one way to make it more challenging would be to remove smart-casting. Did I get it right ?
Saying it would make the game more exciting or more likeable from a player perspective is debatable. Has anything happened in SC2 that would require blizzard to make the game more challenging to execute ? OP bring the things like this is what SC2 needs. It isn't. At least not right now. Should the skill ceiling be raised higher, this is not something we have to discuss on a 1 year old game, especially with HotS and LotV not even out yet. If the game needs to be more challenging in order to grow as an e-sport, you don't have to emphasize the mechanical aspect of the game. You can just as well emphasize the tactical aspect of the game.
Yeah this map is imba as it can be. Really bad map design. Why doesn't Blizzard just use community maps, like IcCup and GSL maps? They would also save a bit on resources and actually use Kim and Matt to actually balance the game and not create imba maps.
Destiny winning no surprise for me there. Watch this next MLG how every Zerg from good to mediocre post great results and then we can hopefully have people admit that Zerg is imbalanced.
On July 29 2011 18:05 Shaetan wrote: What is smart casting? Not having to select an individual unit to cast it?
Not quite. Normal AI: If you give an order to a group of units, each individual unit attempts to follow that order.
Smartcasting: if you give an spellcasting order to a group of units, the AI selects one to carry it out, and ONLY issues the order to THAT unit.
This is very convenient for spells that don't stack well, like Fungal, EMP, and Storm, but because it's so easy to carpet an area with those spells, the spells themselves are nerfed to compensate.
It's also a pain in the ass for summoning Infested Terrans, since you only get one IT per click.
This part of the post is the main point. Also, like someone said earlier, SC2 is so fast it rly has to have smartcasting, becouse without that it would be impossible to ever kill anything with storms or it would have to be nearly an insta-killing spell to actually have a place in this game.
Altough i don't like dumbing down the difficulty, i feel like smartcasting has to be implemented, there is no way SC2 would work with current spells without it .. :/
Destiny winning no surprise for me there. Watch this next MLG how every Zerg from good to mediocre post great results and then we can hopefully have people admit that Zerg is imbalanced.
[Why are there so few terrans in higher leagues] Because terran is the hardest race to play.
I think he's having a hard time TvZ and TvP right now, let's just cut him some slack. lol.
BUT Terran is hard to play, maybe the hardest to some people, only because hard is a relative term. Also he may be bad at the things Terran requires, Good micro/multitasking to split marines and methodically place and re-place siege tanks in good positions. If you don't have this you wont be a good Terran, which is my argument earlier in the post
On July 29 2011 18:16 untilMay wrote: You you never made a argument that SC2 couldn't be a E-Sport, you just said "okai so infestors imba sentries imba ghosts imba all because 1 mechanic of the game, okay so fix that the they arn't imba."
Also to add to above: This is already a HUGE ESPORT primarily due to a couple of things:
- Automated things still require you to have to micro against it, keeping some level of skill For example: if you cast fungal growth the persons fault for not splitting is theres - Starcraft 2 is still young Do you know how long it took to figure out muta's could stack? And this is just one of the crazy mechanics that the game didn't create but that someone had to FIND
and the list could go on.
So I'd say we are just fine. We haven't gotten to HotS/LoV yet so who knows what crazy mechanic that Browder will introduce to make people find. I've always given Blizzard credit and I wont stop now. Just enjoy the game, Enjoy the community, and who cares if it is a great game for ESPORT or not. As long as you have fun it doesn't matter. And if you don't have fun then you can quit playing.
Well to tell you the truth because I hate how all commentators and current SC2 players make it sound so hard and difficult.
I mean you'll see Incontrol, HDstarcraft, Day9, etc... all going omg perfect storms, omg such amazing fungal growth destroying the whole terran army when its not one bit hard or exciting to do.
I mean its like watching workers being put to mine in SC1 and even that was so much harder and one could argue exciting.
It's a casters job to try and make things exciting, even if some of us don't think it is all that exciting. Think of casters for Soccer or any other sport, pretty boring a majority of the time, yet they yell and scream when a player passes the ball.
What a stupid, stupid way to discuss smart casting. Sure if you ONLY think about the diffrent ways that you cast spells in the game, SC2 is way easier than BW. But this is ignoring basicaly everything else about the game. If you isolate just one thing and only one thing, it will always have an influence, except for graphics and music.
It seems like you are trying to fabricate an argument while ignoring a lot of other things. Not a good way to argue.
Also i would like to argue, that things like smart casting actually increase the viability of SC2 as a e-Sport. If you look at football(Dear Americans, i am talking about Soccer, which is the sport with balls and feet not with hands and eggs) its concept and its mechanics are really easy. Things like scoring a goal etc. are easy. No professional soccer player is doing something, that no one else can do, however they are doing the things everyone can do better. I know how to score a goal from 30 metres distance BUT i can't do it in the same way that Ronaldo does for example. If you look at SC2 the same way, you will see, that you know how to do the forcefields like MC, but you can't do it without proper training. Everybody can spam the forcefields everywhere but to use them efficiently it takes training.
tl;dr: OPs argument is bad and might even be the reason, why SC2 is more likely to become a possible esport, because people can immitate what pros are doing but not to the same "perfection".
On July 29 2011 18:16 untilMay wrote: Do you know how long it took to figure out muta's could stack? And this is just one of the crazy mechanics that the game didn't create but that someone had to FIND and the list could go on.
If someone ever finds a glitch to stack mutas, Blizzard will patch it for sure.
I agree that smart casting in bad. I don't agree that SC2 isn't an e-sports. It doesn't matter how good the game is, as long as sponsors flow, there will be an active community and a lot of tourneys. Obviously the more excitement you get when watching the games, the more viewers there will be, so the more sponsors there will be, but that the moment SC2 is very successful outside of Korea. Only thing that could make SC2 a better esport is an official structure like KeSPA for BW.
On July 29 2011 18:23 MandoRelease wrote: I'll ignore all the dumb answers on this thread. It's like people just don't read the OP and flame. It's like bnet's forums.
Anyway, I disagree with the OP. I mean, as far as i understood, OP says the game needs to be more challenging in order to grow more as an e-sport. And one way to make it more challenging would be to remove smart-casting. Did I get it right ?
Saying it would make the game more exciting or more likeable from a player perspective is debatable. Has anything happened in SC2 that would require blizzard to make the game more challenging to execute ? OP bring the things like this is what SC2 needs. It isn't. At least not right now. Should the skill ceiling be raised higher, this is not something we have to discuss on a 1 year old game, especially with HotS and LotV not even out yet. If the game needs to be more challenging in order to grow as an e-sport, you don't have to emphasize the mechanical aspect of the game. You can just as well emphasize the tactical aspect of the game.
You got it right. But HOTS and LOTV won't bring in magical units that make the game super tactical. In fact the best way for tactics to be more effective is to just execute them mechanically better.
You could argue it needs to be more strategic, but that would require the game to have at least 30 different building and at least 30 different units and tech pats so that making a strategic decision is more important than say tactical or mechanical skill.
SC2 certainly has a policy of reducing the 'difficult to control but highly rewarding' units. Smartcasting vastly simplifies spellcasters, the Reaver was replaced by Colossus, you can't stack air tightly, Carrier launch mechanics were changed to make them better at 1a and worse at active control, etc.
You can argue this is a good, but I certainly wouldn't.
On July 29 2011 17:51 Angra wrote: Someone makes a well put together thread to discuss an interesting subject, and just because it's not raising SC2 up on a golden pedestal and raining praise all over it, people come in just to shit all over the thread. Typical.
Not saying I agree or disagree with his opinions, but you guys could at least discuss them in an intelligent fashion rather than the predictable ragefest at someone who thinks that the game could be improved in some way than its current state.
Clearly this is the only explanation... Or, just maybe, it's because this topic has been beaten to death already?
Pff these threads are getting a bit tiring. "Please make the interface more retarded to use so the game is harder and it's really an e-sport and fun to watch!" And always the argument that what the pro's do isn't hard and that they can do it as well, well why aren't you up there competing for 50.000 dollars then?
I feel that if SC2 is to really succeed as an E-sports it needs to be more challenging and the one way to do that that wont hurt the play of the average gamer and sales of SC2 or promotion of SC2 to new audiences, but actually help it is by removing smart casting which will make watching SC2 even more enjoyable and make all of us all be excited once again...
If we removed Tastosis and Day9 from casting, we'd be left with.. Husky and the likes... Please don't remove smart casting. =[
On July 29 2011 18:34 Logros wrote: Pff these threads are getting a bit tiring. "Please make the interface more retarded to use so the game is harder and it's really an e-sport and fun to watch!" And always the argument that what the pro's do isn't hard and that they can do it as well, well why aren't you up there competing for 50.000 dollars then?
On July 29 2011 18:23 MandoRelease wrote: I'll ignore all the dumb answers on this thread. It's like people just don't read the OP and flame. It's like bnet's forums.
Anyway, I disagree with the OP. I mean, as far as i understood, OP says the game needs to be more challenging in order to grow more as an e-sport. And one way to make it more challenging would be to remove smart-casting. Did I get it right ?
Saying it would make the game more exciting or more likeable from a player perspective is debatable. Has anything happened in SC2 that would require blizzard to make the game more challenging to execute ? OP bring the things like this is what SC2 needs. It isn't. At least not right now. Should the skill ceiling be raised higher, this is not something we have to discuss on a 1 year old game, especially with HotS and LotV not even out yet. If the game needs to be more challenging in order to grow as an e-sport, you don't have to emphasize the mechanical aspect of the game. You can just as well emphasize the tactical aspect of the game.
You got it right. But HOTS and LOTV won't bring in magical units that make the game super tactical. In fact the best way for tactics to be more effective is to just execute them mechanically better.
You could argue it needs to be more strategic, but that would require the game to have at least 30 different building and at least 30 different units and tech pats so that making a strategic decision is more important than say tactical or mechanical skill.
To directly adress you once:
If you feel SC2 is such a bad game, don't play it. No one is forcing you. The way you are arguing is just inflammatory and you are not making any rational arguments. Especially the fact that you are arguning form ignorace, you have no idea what is going to come with HotS and LotV, however you are using them to fabricate the argument that the game will never change, when it comes to tactics.
Just look at chess, the most tactical game and in no way bloated with variance or hard mechanics.
On July 29 2011 18:31 Severedevil wrote: SC2 certainly has a policy of reducing the 'difficult to control but highly rewarding' units. Smartcasting vastly simplifies spellcasters, the Reaver was replaced by Colossus, you can't stack air tightly, Carrier launch mechanics were changed to make them better at 1a and worse at active control, etc.
You can argue this is a good, but I certainly wouldn't.
You forgot vultures laying mines. One of the small things that made Terran mechanics so unique. A small thing that made you shout MINE DAEBAK ! A small thing that made Nada famous for destroying 12 sieges tanks with a group of 12 vultures and mines.
Oh and what about the Consume ability ? Isn't really annoying to have to consume a zergling before having to cast a dark swarm or a playguu ? How come isn't that automatic....
On July 29 2011 18:28 Trumpstyle wrote: Smartcasting make the game more fun to watch, I watch the youtube video and I can see nothing special about it.
Sure on the surface it looks like a standard protoss-terran engagement that ends in victory for the protoss due to well-placed storms, but you have to consider the UI limitations of brood war at the time where there was
1. 12 unit-limit per hotkey
2. No smart-casting .Unless a group of spell-casters were magic-boxed, having a control group of spellcasters use a spell resulted in all of the spellcasters stacking a spell on one location.
When you factor in these limitations, the sight of the toss carpet-storming the terran in the heat of battle against that many tanks becomes a lot more impressive.
On July 29 2011 17:50 Micket wrote: Ravens have smart casting and they're not imba in the slightest. Forcefield would be impossible to use even at the pro level and all the aoe spells will have to be buffed.
Infestors are not really a problem. Give me a GSL game where someone massed Infestors and won.
How would not having smart casting make forcefielding, storming, fungaling, etc make it impossible to use? If they removed it, it would just be another level to the game and add a higher skill cap to using the spells.
On July 29 2011 18:23 MandoRelease wrote: I'll ignore all the dumb answers on this thread. It's like people just don't read the OP and flame. It's like bnet's forums.
Anyway, I disagree with the OP. I mean, as far as i understood, OP says the game needs to be more challenging in order to grow more as an e-sport. And one way to make it more challenging would be to remove smart-casting. Did I get it right ?
Saying it would make the game more exciting or more likeable from a player perspective is debatable. Has anything happened in SC2 that would require blizzard to make the game more challenging to execute ? OP bring the things like this is what SC2 needs. It isn't. At least not right now. Should the skill ceiling be raised higher, this is not something we have to discuss on a 1 year old game, especially with HotS and LotV not even out yet. If the game needs to be more challenging in order to grow as an e-sport, you don't have to emphasize the mechanical aspect of the game. You can just as well emphasize the tactical aspect of the game.
You got it right. But HOTS and LOTV won't bring in magical units that make the game super tactical. In fact the best way for tactics to be more effective is to just execute them mechanically better.
You could argue it needs to be more strategic, but that would require the game to have at least 30 different building and at least 30 different units and tech pats so that making a strategic decision is more important than say tactical or mechanical skill.
The thing is, it's not because SC2 isn't as mechanicaly hard as BW that it is hurting SC2's growth as an e-sport. When you come from a BW background, it may be a difficult thing to understand, but you don't need the most difficult mechanics for the game to be successful as an e-sport.
Sorry, there is so much wrong and kind of silly in the OP...
Didn't even read all, but I read the end as well, and statements like: "As casual gamers don't use spellcasters anyway/sporadically" just makes you look like you don't really know a lot about the game...
Starcraft 2 as already gone further in esports in a year then most games ever do...your title is misleading because your discussion isn't 'is it's an esport' it's more of a 'is it worthy of being an esport'.
No matter how you compare SC1 to SC2 the fact remains at the highest levels SC2 is competitive and the designers are striving for balance...it honestly doesn't have to even be close to broadwar in overall difficulty of use to still be just as hard to achieve mastery in.
I feel that if SC2 is to really succeed as an E-sports it needs to be more challenging and the one way to do that that wont hurt the play of the average gamer and sales of SC2 or promotion of SC2 to new audiences, but actually help it is by removing smart casting which will make watching SC2 even more enjoyable and make all of us all be excited once again...
If we removed Tastosis and Day9 from casting, we'd be left with.. Husky and the likes... Please don't remove smart casting. =[
This is actually what I thought the thread was going to be about when I read the title.
StarCraft 2 would be mechanically more difficult if you had to play Multitask to make your workers mine resources. It would also make the game vastly worse. Arguing that simply because something is easier it must be worse is ridiculous. Smartcasting and unlimited unit selection remove mechanical aspects of the game that were frustrating, pointless, and most importantly not fun. They allow you to use the unit in the way in which it was meant to be used without needless complications being there simply for difficulty's sake. Something like the Reaver being replaced with the Collosus, or the Corsair with the Phoenix, is different in that clever control could actually change how the unit functioned before. Reaver/shuttle micro gave the two units an entirely new role. The phoenix functions exactly the same no matter what you do with it now, rather than the skirmish/straight-forward fight distinction with Corsair micro.
In short, if you're going to complain about something, complain where they actually took something out of the game (Reavers, Corsairs, etc) rather than where they made something simply less frustrating.
Well, although at times smart casting feels stupid, I don't think that alone makes or breaks a game. You may say that it doesn't feel like "Starcraft", by comparing it to BW. But, saying it cannot be an esport due to this? You need a wider sample of RTS games that have gone popular like BW and SC2, which would also have smart casting, to say something like this.
My proposal: Keep smarcasting, but only allow 3-4 spell casters to be controlled at a time. Also, lower their energy pool so that each unit can cast one of each spell before going out of energy. That would balance some ridiculous casting we see right now.
On July 29 2011 18:34 Logros wrote: Pff these threads are getting a bit tiring. "Please make the interface more retarded to use so the game is harder and it's really an e-sport and fun to watch!" And always the argument that what the pro's do isn't hard and that they can do it as well, well why aren't you up there competing for 50.000 dollars then?
"Hey I think this could make the game more exciting. The pros look so good, they could do even more and that would be soo fun to watch and you could tell the difference between pros and joes even more."
Why can't you look at it this way and instead have to get on the personal level and try to avoid his argument and just outright address the author, not the content? Don't you agree that having to actually care even more about your casters would add a new level of excitement in battle? How about you actually talk about the idea instead of the author not being a pro?
Even if we don't get any results, which is likely, we can have a nice discussion. Or am I wrong here?
May I direct your attention to an almost carbon copy thread that has been closed by Kennigit in 2010, referencing an earlier same argument from 2007. This argument loop is on round 3, maybe 4, folks.
I'm sorry, but this is just yet another arrogant post trying to make a case that unless the game functions in a way that the OP in paticular thinks it should, it isn't balanced and doesn't require skill and isn't exciting to watch.
The irony there is that clearly none of those points are true. There has been enormous amounts of fluxuation between the domination of races and players, and SC2 is gathering in huge numbers of fans after only one year of release. To try and make these sorts of arguments in such an objective fashion just boggles my mind.
As for the title? Yeah I think my response to that is pretty obvious.
I don't really understand the point of just smart casting needing to be removed to display skill. The players don't need a million apm to cast spells well, what's wrong with that? The spells aren't nearly as strong and ranges are shorter with the exception of ghosts if we compare to brood war.
SC2, apparently not so obviously, is not brood war and simply because mechanics are easier doesn't invalidate it as a competitive game; that's just not the focus with SC2. Certain professionals are clearly better than others and practice machines like huk improve vastly so there must be lots of skill involved. Besides smart casting, there are so many other factors and honestly if you're looking for awesome mechanics in esports, just watch brood war. If I want to see incredible sniper shots, I'll go watch counter-strike highlights or something - not complain that ghost sniping in sc2 is pointless to watch. That's an exaggeration, but the point still stands; the games are different.
On the other side, I can say that without smartcasting, multiple unit selection,worker rally etc. BW is an obsolete game that needs to be revamped as it does not keep up with modern games. If not it will ruin e-sport. However that is not the case, they are both legitimate e-sports, neither are inferior or superior to the other.
On July 29 2011 18:34 Logros wrote: Pff these threads are getting a bit tiring. "Please make the interface more retarded to use so the game is harder and it's really an e-sport and fun to watch!" And always the argument that what the pro's do isn't hard and that they can do it as well, well why aren't you up there competing for 50.000 dollars then?
"Hey I think this could make the game more exciting. The pros look so good, they could do even more and that would be soo fun to watch and you could tell the difference between pros and joes even more."
Why can't you look at it this way and instead have to get on the personal level and try to avoid his argument and just outright address the author, not the content? Don't you agree that having to actually care even more about your casters would add a new level of excitement in battle? How about you actually talk about the idea instead of the author not being a pro?
Even if we don't get any results, which is likely, we can have a nice discussion. Or am I wrong here?
Because this idea has been discussed. Like I said before, there have been so many threads on this subject before. The OP just has to search for these threads and he'll find that all the points he's made have been made before. I'm simply not getting anything new out the OP that hasn't been said before.
On July 29 2011 18:28 Trumpstyle wrote: Smartcasting make the game more fun to watch, I watch the youtube video and I can see nothing special about it.
Above all the arguments and whatnot about BW and sc2, your post makes me quite sad.
If the title of the thread was named correctly I could have saved myself of wasting a few minutes of reading yet another one of these tiring worse-ai-better-game threads. Yawn upon you.
Wow, seriously your like a blast from the past... You should have seen 2 months before or even in beta stage, threads like this were all over the place, you missed the boat. NO its not the same game, YES its an esport! I totaly love both, 2 favorite games of all time.
P.S; Balance, they cry when its not balanced, they cry when its balanced, they want the imbalance to be balanced, the balance to be imbalanced. C'ant we just ask for a game we love and a great community to share it with ?? I think we already have that, you should try to make it better! Titles like this are horrible.
I may not agree with OP, but I think there are other reasons why sc2 isn't using full potential, one of those is attitude of company which made this game. There could be done much more steps towards hardcore gamers. I'm not going into details, but this needs to change else they will loose a lot of audience to other "skill" games.
Remember the game where JangBi had the whole screen covered with storms destroying all of Nada's tanks, well that was skill and that was excitement, it was something special that not only can non pro not do it, but even pro players weren't able to do it. Even Bisu's storms were quite on that mark.
here is what you need to make a controversial thread that gets X pages of answers : -a retarded title, as agressive as you can. -a stupid point that trolls or bw players often come up with -actually writing an article about it, otherwise you would be banned for the exact same post if it was a 10 liner, possibly including a bw video, to get the untouchable bw player aura -ending your post with a conclusion that has nothing to do with what you just discussed this is basically a sophism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism), often called a troll in online communities.
here i go with my own try DEMUSLIM NEVER WAS A PROGAMER
my point : demuslim broke his arm so many times, he is surely gonna get kicked out of EG, actually he NEVER was a progamer
article : summarize all the times he broke his arm and announced his return, state the inka removal as a proof that EG loves to kick players, add a video of a relay race, so i get the liquid fan aura.
conclusion : he broke his arm, I AM SURE HE CANT PLAY => they will kick him out, he wont find a new team : yeah, he never was a progamer.
to answer your actual thread, smart casting makes for more turnarounds and on the fly play. i rather see these moves by any average semipro than once in a blue moon when whitera or naniwa plays. this is a discussion of : would you rather see only good movies, and not appreciate the best ones at their real value, or would you rather see only bad ones and love the good ones? i guess we can go on with this forever. your point about esports makes basically no sense, so i wont give it one.
Getting tired of these "the mechanics are too easy, BW was better, SC2 sucks" posts. If the mechanics are more user-friendly, it allows the players to focus more on strategy. You know, in a strategy game. There's still a lot to come too, with more balance patches, hopefully better maps and two additional expansions.
On July 29 2011 17:43 Exigaet wrote: It's already an eSport.
Exactly was I was thinking. It has surpassed bw long ago. OP sees skill in one game that is not an issue in another game and assumes stuff.
war2 vs starcraft comes to mind
Just want to say that while his title isn't the greatest (as literally any game played competitively can be called an eSport) I like to think he meant an eSport in the same way that BW is.
Yes, SC2 is bigger outside of Korea than BW ever was. Yes, there are tons of tournaments, exposure, and money in SC2. And yes, there are even Korean pros and Korean tournaments that are a big part of the SC2 eSports scene.
But what SC2 isn't, and likely won't be, is a game that can have a following like that of an actual sport. It isn't impossible and it may very well happen one day but right now SC2 doesn't have squealing fan girls, huge sponsors for teams, or a number of other things that BW still has going for it. What SC2 hasn't done is broken into the mainstream of a country.
I'm not saying it won't and I'm not even saying that I agree with the OP as I honestly don't know what SC2 can do to have that. Maybe it is a higher skill ceiling. Maybe it just needed to be "in the right place at the right time." I'm not gonna pretend like it's an issue of skill or entertainment value because honestly no one knows why BW was so huge in Korea and why SC2 hasn't reached that status (at least not yet). I think that threads like this might not be the best way of discussing a topic as sensitive as this one though.
I hope I haven't offended anyone or stepped out of line. I'm just trying to offer some insight, I think it'd be great if SC2 broke into the mainstream as BW did in Korea but I personally don't see it happening. I would love to be proven wrong though!
Smart casting is annoying. I agree with that. When you see a haven of perfect storms, and the casters go "oh look at the storms", I can't help but feel anyone above platinum can do that with storms.
On July 29 2011 18:55 DM20 wrote: Bananas will never be a true fruit like oranges, to easy to peel. Please remove the stub so they are hard to peel like oranges.
If bananas became tastier to compensate, I'd be all over that.
You're trying to make a huuuuge point with a tiny argument using flawed logic.
Everyone is again right and wrong at the same time, because even though realistically the spells and some units were OP the fact that no one can use them to their full extent made them balanced
On July 29 2011 18:28 zocktol wrote: What a stupid, stupid way to discuss smart casting. Sure if you ONLY think about the diffrent ways that you cast spells in the game, SC2 is way easier than BW. But this is ignoring basicaly everything else about the game. If you isolate just one thing and only one thing, it will always have an influence, except for graphics and music.
It seems like you are trying to fabricate an argument while ignoring a lot of other things. Not a good way to argue.
Also i would like to argue, that things like smart casting actually increase the viability of SC2 as a e-Sport. If you look at football(Dear Americans, i am talking about Soccer, which is the sport with balls and feet not with hands and eggs) its concept and its mechanics are really easy. Things like scoring a goal etc. are easy. No professional soccer player is doing something, that no one else can do, however they are doing the things everyone can do better. I know how to score a goal from 30 metres distance BUT i can't do it in the same way that Ronaldo does for example. If you look at SC2 the same way, you will see, that you know how to do the forcefields like MC, but you can't do it without proper training. Everybody can spam the forcefields everywhere but to use them efficiently it takes training.
tl;dr: OPs argument is bad and might even be the reason, why SC2 is more likely to become a possible esport, because people can immitate what pros are doing but not to the same "perfection".
LOL, your post is just pure ignorance.
SC2 smart casting to football is like players using robot legs to run.
OPs entire train of thought is flawed. The idea that a game can only be an e-sport when it's challenging is false. If a sufficient amount of people would watch players play in competitive Hello Kitty online, it would be an e-sport. Never had the actual structure/concept of the game anything to do with the binary decision, yes or no. Communities make e-sports, not games.
Just want to say that while his title isn't the greatest (as literally any game played competitively can be called an eSport) I like to think he meant an eSport in the same way that BW is.
Yes, SC2 is bigger outside of Korea than BW ever was. Yes, there are tons of tournaments, exposure, and money in SC2. And yes, there are even Korean pros and Korean tournaments that are a big part of the SC2 eSports scene.
But what SC2 isn't, and likely won't be, is a game that can have a following like that of an actual sport. It isn't impossible and it may very well happen one day but right now SC2 doesn't have squealing fan girls, huge sponsors for teams, or a number of other things that BW still has going for it. What SC2 hasn't done is broken into the mainstream of a country.
I'm not saying it won't and I'm not even saying that I agree with the OP as I honestly don't know what SC2 can do to have that. Maybe it is a higher skill ceiling. Maybe it just needed to be "in the right place at the right time." I'm not gonna pretend like it's an issue of skill or entertainment value because honestly no one knows why BW was so huge in Korea and why SC2 hasn't reached that status (at least not yet). I think that threads like this might not be the best way of discussing a topic as sensitive as this one though.
I hope I haven't offended anyone or stepped out of line. I'm just trying to offer some insight, I think it'd be great if SC2 broke into the mainstream as BW did in Korea but I personally don't see it happening. I would love to be proven wrong though!
On July 29 2011 18:28 zocktol wrote: What a stupid, stupid way to discuss smart casting. Sure if you ONLY think about the diffrent ways that you cast spells in the game, SC2 is way easier than BW. But this is ignoring basicaly everything else about the game. If you isolate just one thing and only one thing, it will always have an influence, except for graphics and music.
It seems like you are trying to fabricate an argument while ignoring a lot of other things. Not a good way to argue.
Also i would like to argue, that things like smart casting actually increase the viability of SC2 as a e-Sport. If you look at football(Dear Americans, i am talking about Soccer, which is the sport with balls and feet not with hands and eggs) its concept and its mechanics are really easy. Things like scoring a goal etc. are easy. No professional soccer player is doing something, that no one else can do, however they are doing the things everyone can do better. I know how to score a goal from 30 metres distance BUT i can't do it in the same way that Ronaldo does for example. If you look at SC2 the same way, you will see, that you know how to do the forcefields like MC, but you can't do it without proper training. Everybody can spam the forcefields everywhere but to use them efficiently it takes training.
tl;dr: OPs argument is bad and might even be the reason, why SC2 is more likely to become a possible esport, because people can immitate what pros are doing but not to the same "perfection".
LOL, your post is just pure ignorance.
SC2 smart casting to football is like players using robot legs to run.
WHAT?????????? Sure, it would be like that if the cast the spells for you, or wait. Yeah OP is right, fuck SC2 it is way too easy, im going back to playing BW with my knees cause fingers are for those who have no skill.
Just want to say that while his title isn't the greatest (as literally any game played competitively can be called an eSport) I like to think he meant an eSport in the same way that BW is.
Yes, SC2 is bigger outside of Korea than BW ever was. Yes, there are tons of tournaments, exposure, and money in SC2. And yes, there are even Korean pros and Korean tournaments that are a big part of the SC2 eSports scene.
But what SC2 isn't, and likely won't be, is a game that can have a following like that of an actual sport. It isn't impossible and it may very well happen one day but right now SC2 doesn't have squealing fan girls, huge sponsors for teams, or a number of other things that BW still has going for it. What SC2 hasn't done is broken into the mainstream of a country.
I'm not saying it won't and I'm not even saying that I agree with the OP as I honestly don't know what SC2 can do to have that. Maybe it is a higher skill ceiling. Maybe it just needed to be "in the right place at the right time." I'm not gonna pretend like it's an issue of skill or entertainment value because honestly no one knows why BW was so huge in Korea and why SC2 hasn't reached that status (at least not yet). I think that threads like this might not be the best way of discussing a topic as sensitive as this one though.
I hope I haven't offended anyone or stepped out of line. I'm just trying to offer some insight, I think it'd be great if SC2 broke into the mainstream as BW did in Korea but I personally don't see it happening. I would love to be proven wrong though!
Blizzard would have realized many things like smart casting and queuing in BW, if they back then were aware that this features are good and allow you to concentrate on more important things.
In Warcraft you could only group 4 units, in Warcraft 2 9 units and 12 units in BW, so is that good or worse for esports? I would say it's more a programming issue then anything else.
Most gameplay features of SC2 (except graphics) could have been implemented in BW too. The reason they didn't do it is awareness, early game engine design limitations and performance. It's not that easy to correct these things with a small patch, you have to do a lot of coding.
Maybe casters scream over perfect storms as they are getting more rare, at least in PvT, due to EMP and snipes on HT's. It's easier to cover a screen with storms in SC2, it's not easy to keep your templars alive and generate enough energy to get to that point.
What SC2 needs is a few years of life, an x-pac with units to plug any real holes in balance Blizz has discovered so far (i don't know any so don't ask), it's own Slayers.BoXeR with his own second always pushing him forward.
Rivalry, drama and emotions in general are the things i find lacking in current scene. You can't have large viewership and cult following without that. And these things take some time to develop. We already have some cool Idra vs MC fun going on )
Higher skill cap is not what SC2 really needs at this point. Maybe later, but not now.
What a terrible thread. You take some random abilities in the game, compare them with BW and proceed to make a thread about it named 'Why SC2 can't be an e-sports'? Then you edit ur topic that u are not pissing on SC2 and SC2 e-sports? Well maybe, just maybe you shouldn't name ur thread like that then. (just a suggestion)
On July 29 2011 18:26 Kenpachi wrote: This thread makes me want to cry.
Truth, this thread makes me want to tear my hair out with a frustrated SC2 player trying to leverage BW mechanics as a reason to hate. Too many people can't properly dissociate that there are SC2 balance trolls trying to hide under the skirts of BW mechanics to rage at imbalance, whiners with too much time not spent playing BW raging at the thought of "SC2 Y U NO BE MORE LIKE BW", and generally simple-minded newbies who equate any mention of BW as heresy to SC2.
On July 29 2011 19:09 Jakkerr wrote: What a terrible thread. You take some random abilities in the game, compare them with BW and proceed to make a thread about it named 'Why SC2 can't be an e-sports'? Then you edit ur topic that u are not pissing on SC2 and SC2 e-sports? Well maybe, just maybe you shouldn't name ur thread like that then. (just a suggestion)
get out
Yeah this whole thread that SC2 can't be esports because of smart casting and comparing once again to bw seems quite, meh. Then again I already also thought Starcraft 2 was eSports.
wow wow wow .. let me first list the problems of your assumtions before i can get around the the post's statements 1)Starcraft 2 is less of an E-Sport than Brood War = false . no argument 2)Low league players cannot properly cast spells = this was maybe true once upon a time... but FALSE now a days when many players are focusing on one strat (often revolving around one unit) to progress themselves through ladder 3)People can be right and wrong about the same thing. : This is not true and you better chose a side based off of what you know because guess what,! the infestor cannot be OP and UP at the same time (vs the same race) For Starcraft 2 to be a successful e-sport all it needs is logical and mathmatical feedback about changing anything which doesnt make sense between races (and better maps)
While the post seems like flame bait, esp with the tltle, the addition of smart casting alone does not define the skill cap of the game. Yes, it's a easier than BW SPECIFICALLY in the area of casting but the two cannot be compared otherwise, as they are very different games, and BW was a game that took 10 YEARS to develop, and just now has SC2 hit 1y.
And I fail to see how the title is appropriate to the OP.
I love how this is always the same statement over and over again, it will never be an e-sport, it will never get big. Look at what the MLG guys said, they said oh starcraft will never overtake Halo, half a year later the people at the live events for MLG multiplies by at least 50 for SC2 and the streams go INSANE with 10x the amount of viewers for SC than other games. SC2 is ALWAYS grabbing more players and more viewers and it has been doing it very CONSISTENTLY I do not understand why you say it cannot be an e-sport when it is so consistent. And yes an e-sport does need to reflect skill and hard work and training on the players, I partly believe that is why BW was so successful it took so much skill and time. SC2 I do not feel is completely there just yet I feel like it is still missing a few pages, but hell SC1 was not complete without BW. I am hoping the expansions will help push the bar for the skill required to be at the top top level of the game and help reflect players skill even more.
so if you can do things better than a pro gamer why arent you one?
this op is kinda bad imho because its so one sided can you see a reason for pro players losing to other pro gamers if the game is just soo easy and you can do everything perfectly ?
makes no sense at some points but good that people think about the game in a smart way and not only about imbalance and such
Anyway on topic, when I play SC2 myself and use high templars, sentries or infestors when I play Zerg the use of smart cast takes the most of the fun and skill out of using casting units. Whenever I watch BW and several storms go down, I know that the player executing the move needed precision and a great amount of skill to get multiple down in such a short amount of time. With SC2 however, if I see severals storms going down I go: "Oh okay, he was just on his HT control group and pressed T and M1 several times real fast." And.... title is misleading :/
Control groups? What is this casual rubbish? Players should have to command every unit individually! Also, hotkeys! The ability to issue commands using the keyboard makes the game too easy.
Imagine how impressive and awe-inspiring it would be to spectate a game knowing the players have ground their wrist joints to dust by the 20 minute mark! This truly separates the pros from the joes!
Just want to say that while his title isn't the greatest (as literally any game played competitively can be called an eSport) I like to think he meant an eSport in the same way that BW is.
Yes, SC2 is bigger outside of Korea than BW ever was. Yes, there are tons of tournaments, exposure, and money in SC2. And yes, there are even Korean pros and Korean tournaments that are a big part of the SC2 eSports scene.
But what SC2 isn't, and likely won't be, is a game that can have a following like that of an actual sport. It isn't impossible and it may very well happen one day but right now SC2 doesn't have squealing fan girls, huge sponsors for teams, or a number of other things that BW still has going for it. What SC2 hasn't done is broken into the mainstream of a country.
I'm not saying it won't and I'm not even saying that I agree with the OP as I honestly don't know what SC2 can do to have that. Maybe it is a higher skill ceiling. Maybe it just needed to be "in the right place at the right time." I'm not gonna pretend like it's an issue of skill or entertainment value because honestly no one knows why BW was so huge in Korea and why SC2 hasn't reached that status (at least not yet). I think that threads like this might not be the best way of discussing a topic as sensitive as this one though.
I hope I haven't offended anyone or stepped out of line. I'm just trying to offer some insight, I think it'd be great if SC2 broke into the mainstream as BW did in Korea but I personally don't see it happening. I would love to be proven wrong though!
My thoughts exactly.
Cause Broodwar had that one year after release?
It did a lot in its first year. It would be hard to compare SC2 to BW and like I said it's very possible that SC2 will build into what BW has and maybe even replace it in Korea one day. The first StarCraft helped create PC Bangs and fostered tournament play in its first year unlike any other game did. By 2000 big tournaments were already happening, including televised StarLeagues.
It became a national phenomenon by at least it's second year. I don't think anyone expects SC2 to do what BW had done in its first two years and that's fine. It might take five years and SC2 could overtake BW and become huge in Korea or break into the mainstream in some other country.
I don't really want to continue this discussion much. No one knows what the future will hold for SC2 so it's all just biased speculation at this point.
You know what i am just going to go ahead and say, I think once pro play is perfected for Sc2 it will have a higher skill cap then BW. Now instead of having to make sure a drone is mining or fighting a unit to do what you want it to do because of stupid AI/pathing, Pros will be able to take that micro and use it for other stuff like handing 3 drops wile also pushing into you nat. Image if we can get to a point where say a zerg player is splitting his lings so that only like 1-2 are getting hit by tank volleys instead of 4-5, that would be some micro to see. Right now pro play is far from perfect, hell more game are decide by who makes more mistakes then two players playing near perfect games with one player playing just a little bit better. Once pros are using all the tools that sc2 offers them to the highest level we could see some epic game in the future.
I actually somewhat agree with what you wrote. Its hard to truly appreciate what is happening in a game most of the time, because a lot of it is simply not hard to pull off. Despite casters trying to convince us every game that whatever is happening is 'truly amazing!' Put that 'most storm ever' scenario into sc2, and you know that every gold player can do it. The beauty is now more in the subtleties, i.e. ghost versus ht, good (shift clicked..) drops, etc. But a lot of these things are harder to appreciate, as I think you need a bigger grasp on whats going on.
In a way SC2 is somewhat wc3esque. Especially on smaller maps, perfect play is possible. And perfect play was NEVER possible in BW. With bigger maps though, this is slowly disappearing.. except for the dumb PvP matchup y_y
On July 29 2011 18:58 Yiska wrote: OPs entire train of thought is flawed. The idea that a game can only be an e-sport when it's challenging is false. If a sufficient amount of people would watch players play in competitive Hello Kitty online, it would be an e-sport. Never had the actual structure/concept of the game anything to do with the binary decision, yes or no. Communities make e-sports, not games.
Yup! But that wouldn't make me happy about it, nor make me want to support it.
Anyway, the diffculty of SC2 is far above most games out there (though certainly not above bw - niether mechanically, nor strategically) and should be perfectly able to work as a ESPORT, but I see Korea's BW culture and MMOs in general as a huge danger for the future of SC2 and other inferior RTS games.
Also, to people comparing the korean BW scene with the international SC2 scene - and calling the internation SC2 superior: You're missing the fact that BW is so much more established than SC2, and that all of this is in such a compact area (though we are a alot of foreign fans). SC2 is spread out all over the world with roughly the same amount of fans. This in itself makes for an unstable business, but don't forget who the majority of you fans actually are. Now, this is gonna sound like I'm shitting on you, but most of you are here simply because Blizzard made SC2. You're basically looking where the wind blows - "what's the big game now"-kind of thing. SC2 is still in a state of craze - It's still the big thing. I'll be happy to eat my words later, but I highly doubt SC2 will be anywhere near the same popularity in about five years' time (not even getting close to the ~12 years of BW, which is still going strong).
SC2 smart casting to football is like players using robot legs to run.
First: both sides have robo legs. Equal chances for all. Second: Stop comparing sports to esports. Its not the same. You can't be faster then the user interface allows you to be. Your marines will not run faster then programmed.
Think of core race differences in bw/sc2, and now tell me if this design is on purpose or imbalance that a race can build all kind of units at one building, or initiate buildings without a worker or float buildings.
BW was the game of a generation, now a new generation mixed with old players is playing the game, and only the future will show the success. Pls stop these nonsense threads. SC1 wasn't even that successful when it was one year old. Other game, with same story background.
the reason casters are so strong is because they are good vs all. templar feebdack perfect against casters and big terran units. Storm good against masses. Archon morph good against giant zerg units. Guess i don't have to explain fungal and neural and when they are good now. Well snipe and emp is kinda the same. Since they are 2 supply as long as they have full energy they win, because they are supply efficient.
So you have a super supply effectiv, effectiv against every unit, unit. yeah smartcast nice and all, in bw i had to select one caster to cast one time to do the damage, 4 casters doing with 6 casts in sc2 now, yeah they really managed to mess up to balance out the smartcast. Hehe kidding the game got more comfortable, but the casters don't benefit from smartcast, its more the other way round.
So yeah casters are damn imba if you win the fight before their energy hits 0. But not as imba as in bw, so i don't see an issue there. Sc2 is faster then bw, that makes it harder to deal with casters effectifly. In other words sc2 looks like its easier to play like bw. But with the speed increase blizzard did to the game (to make up for all the benefits you have from better control). the skill ceiling is actually higher then bw can ever be. (though i doubt its humanly possible to reach the levels above bw, that are possible in sc2, which means there will always be people saying bw needs more skill)
Anyway in regards of easy to learn hard to master Blizzard made a successor to bw, its just my opinion on it and there is hardly any proof for either side. All we can do is wait and see. But the epic moves are harder in sc2, so we might have to wait more then 7 years for them . See you then ;(
And people need to realize that it is not about the amount of people that play it, but also how it is perceived by the viewers. Because everything is so easy, its hard for something to truly be amazing
Just want to say that while his title isn't the greatest (as literally any game played competitively can be called an eSport) I like to think he meant an eSport in the same way that BW is.
Yes, SC2 is bigger outside of Korea than BW ever was. Yes, there are tons of tournaments, exposure, and money in SC2. And yes, there are even Korean pros and Korean tournaments that are a big part of the SC2 eSports scene.
But what SC2 isn't, and likely won't be, is a game that can have a following like that of an actual sport. It isn't impossible and it may very well happen one day but right now SC2 doesn't have squealing fan girls, huge sponsors for teams, or a number of other things that BW still has going for it. What SC2 hasn't done is broken into the mainstream of a country.
I'm not saying it won't and I'm not even saying that I agree with the OP as I honestly don't know what SC2 can do to have that. Maybe it is a higher skill ceiling. Maybe it just needed to be "in the right place at the right time." I'm not gonna pretend like it's an issue of skill or entertainment value because honestly no one knows why BW was so huge in Korea and why SC2 hasn't reached that status (at least not yet). I think that threads like this might not be the best way of discussing a topic as sensitive as this one though.
I hope I haven't offended anyone or stepped out of line. I'm just trying to offer some insight, I think it'd be great if SC2 broke into the mainstream as BW did in Korea but I personally don't see it happening. I would love to be proven wrong though!
My thoughts exactly.
Cause Broodwar had that one year after release?
I don't really want to continue this discussion much. No one knows what the future will hold for SC2 so it's all just biased speculation at this point.
Truer words migth have not been spoken in this thread ^.^
On July 29 2011 19:20 Existential wrote: Anyway on topic, when I play SC2 myself and use high templars, sentries or infestors when I play Zerg the use of smart cast takes the most of the fun and skill out of using casting units. Whenever I watch BW and several storms go down, I know that the player executing the move needed precision and a great amount of skill to get multiple down in such a short amount of time. With SC2 however, if I see severals storms going down I go: "Oh okay, he was just on his HT control group and pressed T and M1 several times real fast." And.... title is misleading :/
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get one storm or fungal of against a tournament level terran/toss. When i watch BW i think, wow that looks basic but i know it takes a shitload of APM just due to everything being very ineffective control wise. In SC2 the actual casting of spells is simple but protecting the casters from feedback/snipe/emp against a good opponent is the hard part.
The thread title is stupid. I do agree with some of your points about smartcasting thou, having 12 infestors on 1 hotkey and spamming F is not skillful.
So, removing smart casting that requires skill, makes pro's use more skill? Its not luck based, its who can get their shit done first and position well enough to do it.
Thats such a stupid idea its untrue, i actually believe he's trolling because he lost to a damn storm or some shit
I have a hard time saying something as over the top as "smart casting disqualifies esports," so the title should be changed to say the least. Using a sensationalist title to whip up interest is a really, really shitty thing to do. Fox-y if I may say so.
This really just goes into the larger discussion of control mechanics and how difficult does a game have to be so that it can be considered skill-centric, and you've just picked smart casting as your flag, but it's the same argument that's been said since before beta even launched.
Remove MBS! Remove auto-mining! Remove smartcasting! 60% more ogres!
Maybe removing smart casting would help... or maybe it wouldn't make an excess difference on the pro end who already have hundreds of APM and will surely improve their control greatly as time goes on. If their control is great with intuitive game mechanics (like smart casting) I think we have the potential to see some amazing stuff. A decent bit of BW awesomeness is rooted in overcoming the absolute retardery of the units; it's fun to watch, but I'm not ever going to join the camp that says easier mechanics = easier game.
I think smartcasting is making sc2 more an esport title than without. I mean without smartcasting, most of the casuals and lower skill players would stop playing the game and lose interest in the game. without the big audience sc2 would be only a niche computer game. because the game is more open for most of the people it makes success as esport than bw in the foreign scene. good example would be soccer. I mean I can play soccer but I will never be as good as Messi or other pros.
Bigger (srsly) and more creative/interesting maps, 20 units per one "button" cap (I know it was 12 in BW but ok, lets make it 20 now...), but mostly TIME will make SC2 a real, legit esport just like BW was/is. At least I hope so, cause if we all cant just be back to BW with the same money involved as in SC2, then we just have to support SC2 as the only Starcraft esport out there.
I reall hope that this game aint gonna die in 4-5 years just like Warcraft did...
On July 29 2011 19:30 Miefer wrote: I think smartcasting is making sc2 more an esport title than without. I mean without smartcasting, most of the casuals and lower skill players would stop playing the game and lose interest in the game. without the big audience sc2 would be only a niche computer game. because the game is more open for most of the people it makes success as esport than bw in the foreign scene. good example would be soccer. I mean I can play soccer but I will never be as good as Messi or other pros.
Indeed, people don't want to agree, everything has to be as hard as possible, but NO way we would be close to the amount of tourneys/community size we have today.
regarding all the arguments saying "LOL well SC2 IS an Esport"
i beg to differ. if you're defining esports by the number of tournaments in the west, the number of online viewers on gomtv, justintv, livestream, etc., the number of hardcore gamer/nerd audience, then that simply means the game is very popular in my book.
it may reach a certain popularity to become part of mainstream culture among GAMERS/NERDS but until it becomes part of mainstream culture among the general public like BW in korea, SC2 is not an Esport.
but i'll leave it up to you however you wish to define esport to satisfy your ego.
I don't understand how smart casting means it can't be an eSport? Yeah, SC2 isn't BW and it never will be and some of us LOVE it that way. Anyway, here are some reasons why your post (the original post) is absurd:
1. You're making a big assumption that SC2 is "easy" and needs to be "more challenging" for pros. It's up to you, by making the claim, to prove it with evidence. I haven't heard of any pro thinking the game is too easy or that they've hit the skill ceiling or that they have nothing left to improve on. It's frankly rather arrogant and ignorant for you to say what the pro players are doing is too easy.
2. The skill variance even among pros is enormous. The difference between NesTea and the 2nd best player in the world (whoever that may be) is noticeably large. The skill gap of Koreans compared to foreigners in general is exceptionally wide. If this was easy, if the skill ceiling was too low, if there weren't enough factors involved, then one would not expect such a huge amount of variance in skill levels.
3. The pros still make a lot of mistakes that even a Diamond like me can identify. I point simply to Zerg players who accidentally rally Overlords into the enemy's army (even though rallying is something that's supposed to make the game super easy, right?). We see this mistake even in GLS matches. How about pros that have trouble splitting up their units and the fact that certain players are far better and faster than other at it? This applies to splitting marines, workers, etc. What about all the little micro moves that we *don't* see. Yes, bigger control groups can make you lazy in certain respects, but eventually a player will come along and revolutionize that kind of micro and everyone will be force to adapt. You can't assume what happens now will be how it always works. Truly intricate and complicated unit micro will happen with time.
Basically, smart casting is a complete non-issue at this point and it doesn't make any sense to pinpoint that one feature and conclude SC2 isn't an eSport or takes no skill or whatever. It's proven as an eSport already and BW is dead except in Korea, where the death naturally will be slower.
On July 29 2011 19:34 Beef Noodles wrote: I played BW and now I play SC2, and I have to say I completely agree with the OP.
If something doesn't change to make SC2 more "awe inspiring," then I think people will lose interest.
I haven't played BW in a year and a half, but I'm flying to Shanghai to watch the Proleague Finals. I would never do that for SC2.
I was at the DH invitational and i've watched most finals in the last 6 months. People seem to find alot of things to be in awe about in SC2 as there's lots of cheers and people going wild when a player does something awesome.
Feels like you prefer BW and your subjective opinion doesn't really reflect what many people feel. I've played BW before and i wouldn't even travel a couple of hours to watch JD and Flash play, does that mean BW is dying? No, it means i'm not really that into BW. Subjective opinions aren't really that interesting to anyone beside the one having them.
Sc2 is player versus player no? If one player can use smart cast the other plyaer can too. It's not like WoW where it's mainly PvE, even so noobs won't wanna play WoW if they made it any harder
On July 29 2011 19:29 vol_ wrote: The thread title is stupid. I do agree with some of your points about smartcasting thou, having 12 infestors on 1 hotkey and spamming F is not skillful.
Since when was wasting the infestor energy of 12 infestors cost effective vs using well targeted energy of 4 infestors indicate anything ... just because too many infestors were made and the army comp was fked to begin with does not indicate anything about skill level ...unless infestors are op?
if sc2 does not approach korean levels of popularity (in non-korean countries) thats because that is impossible. you have to know that SCBW exploding in popularity was a result of many factors in S Korean demographics and culture and economy and that it they are awesome games
but it didnt reach national sport status because the game didnt have smartcasting or MBS or anything like that
units are generally faster and pathing is obviously much better in starcraft 2
without some improvements - things like smart casting - casters would be too micro intensive for the DPS they put out.
the game is a year old how mature was the SC scene a year after release? come on it seems like almost all these posts about how SC2 needs to be more like bw are more wannabe elitist lecturing than anything else
good players already split their units up and hotkey separate grps to cut down on damage from AOE or single-target spells and then cycle through those groups in a battle, this in my opinion is really only slightly less effective APM than was needed in BW
i dont think the arguments coming from the OP are very well thought out, BW is a great and amazing game it had years to mature give SC2 time as well, especially the mapmaking community i think there is a huge amount of potential for creating maps that encourage good games with good battles
How come this already have over 10 pages of replies? It is not like we have not had this discussion before, right? You know, artificially remove a UI feature to increase the skill cap?
On July 29 2011 19:35 hmmm... wrote: regarding all the arguments saying "LOL well SC2 IS an Esport"
i beg to differ. if you're defining esports by the number of tournaments in the west, the number of online viewers on gomtv, justintv, livestream, etc., the number of hardcore gamer/nerd audience, then that simply means the game is very popular in my book.
it may reach a certain popularity to become part of mainstream culture among GAMERS/NERDS but until it becomes part of mainstream culture among the general public like BW in korea, SC2 is not an Esport.
but i'll leave it up to you however you wish to define esport to satisfy your ego.
You kow, by that logic BW is the only esport in the whole world. a thing about games in the western is that they are simply not taken serious to become mainstream. was quake ever mainstream? or UT? or counterstrike? or warcraft 3? So you say neither of those wasn't a esport either then.
On July 29 2011 19:34 Beef Noodles wrote: I played BW and now I play SC2, and I have to say I completely agree with the OP.
If something doesn't change to make SC2 more "awe inspiring," then I think people will lose interest.
I haven't played BW in a year and a half, but I'm flying to Shanghai to watch the Proleague Finals. I would never do that for SC2.
"Why are you wasting a whole bunch of money to fly to anther country to watch some kids play video games?"
I know this is off topic, but it is the attitude that is shown towards video games, which is why it would be incredibly hard for a game to become mainstream in a country.
so your saying that sc2 can never be an e-sport because it is more accessible to casual gamer, thous bringing in a bigger community, making it as an e-sport stronger?
"Why are you wasting a whole bunch of money to fly to anther country to watch some kids play video games?"
I know this is off topic, but it is the attitude that is shown towards video games, which is why it would be incredibly hard for a game to become mainstream in a country.
Actually i second that, but that applies not just to Starcraft 2. Incidentally, what allowed Brood War to overcome this - if only within Korea?
On July 29 2011 18:19 NotSupporting wrote: Well he has a valid point, a point that was brought up a lot before SC2 beta with that long MBS, auto-mining discussion and all of that. My opinion back then still stands now, all these easy mechanics are making SC2 a boring game and not as exciting to watch. I don't think new SC players realize just how much more interesting SC2 as an esport could have been, instead we settle for big a-move fights with deathballs a bit of autocast elements (which gets boring after a while). However, beginners and casual players would not have liked it this way so Blizzard simply could not do it and we instead end up with a middle solution which is much more casual friendly but also much less exciting as an esport. It's a sacrifice Blizzard did.
I agree with this, although this probably isn't worth discussing any more. I am often finding myself getting bored with watching "the best players in the world" play out the same games over and over. Watching big tournament games sometimes feels like I'm watching regular ladder games or something and isn't exciting enough to hold my interest for very long, sadly.
I think the OP has the right idea but comes to the wrong conclusions. It's not smartcasting that's the problem, it's the way how blizz didn't implement more skill-requiring spells at all.
What I mean by that? Say if you'd reduce the aoe of fungal, storm, etc. increase the damage and decrease mana-requirements. Suddenly you need to really "hit" stuff perfectly and do it quickly. The problem with especially fungal is, every bronze-noob manages to get ONE fungal off that hits EVERYTHING. In BW the spells worked because there was no smartcasting. Now with smartcasting Blizz has to re-work the spells themselves to make them more demanding overall.
Blizz just nerfed aoe because it was too easy to use, instead of letting it stay strong and make it harder to use...in different ways.
On July 29 2011 19:35 hmmm... wrote: regarding all the arguments saying "LOL well SC2 IS an Esport"
i beg to differ. if you're defining esports by the number of tournaments in the west, the number of online viewers on gomtv, justintv, livestream, etc., the number of hardcore gamer/nerd audience, then that simply means the game is very popular in my book.
it may reach a certain popularity to become part of mainstream culture among GAMERS/NERDS but until it becomes part of mainstream culture among the general public like BW in korea, SC2 is not an Esport.
but i'll leave it up to you however you wish to define esport to satisfy your ego.
Thank god you came by and enlightened us all of what the real definition of Esports is.
On July 29 2011 19:44 fellcrow wrote: Why are these threads still allowed?
I really don't know. It's the same old regurgitation of arguments seen over and over again yet as long as it's shitting on SC2 it seems ok. Shitting on BW on the other hand...
On July 29 2011 19:35 hmmm... wrote: regarding all the arguments saying "LOL well SC2 IS an Esport"
i beg to differ. if you're defining esports by the number of tournaments in the west, the number of online viewers on gomtv, justintv, livestream, etc., the number of hardcore gamer/nerd audience, then that simply means the game is very popular in my book.
it may reach a certain popularity to become part of mainstream culture among GAMERS/NERDS but until it becomes part of mainstream culture among the general public like BW in korea, SC2 is not an Esport.
but i'll leave it up to you however you wish to define esport to satisfy your ego.
Oh, interesting. So you define what a "sport" is not by the *actual* definition of the word, but by some strange definition you made up by yourself based on "mainstream" popularity? I guess that makes things a lot easier in life when you can just make stuff up to fit your worldview. Well, let me introduce you to some facts and some examples which show how absurd this is.
First, some definitions:
Wikipedia: Electronic sports, abbreviated e-sports is used as a general term to describe the play of video games competitively
Wikipedia: A sport is an organized, competitive, entertaining, and skillful activity requiring commitment, strategy, and fair play, in which a winner and loser can be defined by objective means.
Hmm, looks like StarCraft 2 fits both definitions! Funny that I don't see anything about "mainstream culture" in either of those definitions.
So now to show why your definition is absurd. Ask yourself: was Basketball not a sport before achieving mainstream popularity? Is Cricket a sport in some countries but not a sport in others, depending on mainstream acceptance? Is American Football less of a sport in England than it is in America? Would you look a pro Putt-Putt player (http://proputters.com/) in the face and tell them what they do isn't a sport because it isn't broadcast on TV?
I'm sorry sir, but it seems as if the only person defining things incorrectly to satisfy their own ego is you.
Also smartcasting would make some Spells ridiculously OP. Imagine if Ghost's snipe didnt have smartcasting... Just make 2 control groups of like 8 ghosts and have fun one shotting ultras broodlords etc. Obcviously you could change the amount of ghosts for other enemies like roaches or mutas. Would work with EMP as well, we wouldn't have to manually EMP the same are twice for example. My point is, that although it would make some spells harder to use, it would make the ghosts spells much easier to use, which would represent an imbalance
On July 29 2011 19:35 hmmm... wrote: regarding all the arguments saying "LOL well SC2 IS an Esport"
i beg to differ. if you're defining esports by the number of tournaments in the west, the number of online viewers on gomtv, justintv, livestream, etc., the number of hardcore gamer/nerd audience, then that simply means the game is very popular in my book.
it may reach a certain popularity to become part of mainstream culture among GAMERS/NERDS but until it becomes part of mainstream culture among the general public like BW in korea, SC2 is not an Esport.
but i'll leave it up to you however you wish to define esport to satisfy your ego.
SO is lacross not a sport .. are roller derbies not a sport ... Mainstream is what defines something as a fking esport .. gtfo so thoughtless and arrogant
On July 29 2011 19:34 Beef Noodles wrote: I played BW and now I play SC2, and I have to say I completely agree with the OP.
If something doesn't change to make SC2 more "awe inspiring," then I think people will lose interest.
I haven't played BW in a year and a half, but I'm flying to Shanghai to watch the Proleague Finals. I would never do that for SC2.
However the reason I think SC2 has exploded in popularity is precisely because it's much simpler mechanically allowing players to really get into the strategic elements of the game without being frustrated because they're spending all their time directing workers to mineral patches and grouping their units into 1,2,3,4,5.
The downside is we'll never see crazy shit like boxer blinding 6 observers or locking down 7 bcs in the span of a second.
On July 29 2011 19:30 Miefer wrote: I think smartcasting is making sc2 more an esport title than without. I mean without smartcasting, most of the casuals and lower skill players would stop playing the game and lose interest in the game. without the big audience sc2 would be only a niche computer game. because the game is more open for most of the people it makes success as esport than bw in the foreign scene. good example would be soccer. I mean I can play soccer but I will never be as good as Messi or other pros.
Indeed, people don't want to agree, everything has to be as hard as possible, but NO way we would be close to the amount of tourneys/community size we have today.
Look bronze and silver players don't use spells and spellcasters much anyways, so its not like smart casting is what is making them play the game, that can't be further from the truth.
Second of all you already have the MBS, auto-mining and stuff, so its not like we are bringing SC2 to BW levels of skill. The point is removing smart casting won't affect casual players so they want to stop playing the game, but it will affect the high level players and make for more skillful and exciting games.
Lets be honest for once and admit that casting spells in SC2 is EASY and there is no amount of spinning it around or rationalizing it that will make it require any skill.
Goodness Gracious. Guys, can we mature up and stop spamming this thread with "LOL THIS IS ALREADY AN E-SPORT" One is enough. And can you please put some proper discussion instead of just blatantly flaming the OP? He made a good try and its his opinion. We're a friendly community and we should respect each others values and opinions.
In my opinion, taking smart casting won't make any difference but cause hindrance to casual players such as myself. SC2 is completely different from SCBW therefore thats why it's fanbase is not as popular
On July 29 2011 19:55 SEA_GenesiS wrote: Goodness Gracious. Guys, can we mature up and stop spamming this thread with "LOL THIS IS ALREADY AN E-SPORT" One is enough. And can you please put some proper discussion instead of just blatantly flaming the OP? He made a good try and its his opinion. We're a friendly community and we should respect each others values and opinions.
In my opinion, taking smart casting won't make any difference but cause hindrance to casual players such as myself. SC2 is completely different from SCBW therefore thats why it's fanbase is not as popular
Why do you consider repeating something discussed countless times before and chosing a horrible thread name "a good try"?
On July 29 2011 19:50 Daedaluz wrote: Also smartcasting would make some Spells ridiculously OP. Imagine if Ghost's snipe didnt have smartcasting... Just make 2 control groups of like 8 ghosts and have fun one shotting ultras broodlords etc. Obcviously you could change the amount of ghosts for other enemies like roaches or mutas. Would work with EMP as well, we wouldn't have to manually EMP the same are twice for example. My point is, that although it would make some spells harder to use, it would make the ghosts spells much easier to use, which would represent an imbalance
What on earth are you talking about? For starters I believe (and hope for the game) that it isn't cost effective to snipe ultras, but are you actually arguing that 1e click 2e click 3e click 4e click 5e click etc.. is easier than 1 shift-e click click click click click etc..?
SC2 can't be an e-sports because there's no really talented "e-athletes". What surprises me the most from the SC2 scene (and i follow it alot) is the lack of talent of the player pool. We are still seeing the same washed-up ex-proamateurs from Broodwar. Most of today's pros were B+/A+ amateurs from the ICCup server. That means that they were consistently beaten by 12 years old koreans from the Brain server. Another bunch of the players came from Warcraft 3, even if they were slightly better, they still were a level below Korea (except for Grubby or ToD). What surprises and worries me the most, is how little new talent SC2 has: Vibe? Destiny? A handful other players? People keeps saying SC2 already is an e-sports when it hasn't been able to nurture new pros. You just have the old BW bunch trying to live the life they couldn't had with BW (see Idra).
And what about Korea? They certainly have lots and lots of talent there. But BW still is the most popular and prestigious game in South-Korea. SC2 has a smaller pool. And the pool of player is not growing, it's becoming smaller as there's little support for SC2 in Korea. Haven't you realized that GomTV runs thanks to foreigner money? Sponsors for BW are all Koreans. Sponsors for SC2 are foreign companies with small subsidaries in South Korea. Viewers are also foreign. They have made wonders for the foreign viewers, and i thank them for that. But it also means they see the foreign scene as the only market they can develop. Most coaches and koreans players alredy said it: there's not enough tournaments to support the korean scene. That means that we are going to see less new talent from Korea.
On July 29 2011 19:57 Olsson wrote: What is smart casting maybe you should explain?
5) Smart Casting
Another improvement to the normal (as of StarCraft 1) behavior of units. Previously, a group of the same units with a special ability who were given a command to use the ability would all activate it together. This would result in 12 Ghosts all locking down a single Carrier, a group of Templars Psi-Storming a single spot on the field, or Queens using up valuable energy by casting ensnare on a single position.
In StarCraft 2, “Smart Casting” would allow the player to use abilities when selecting a group – only this time, only one of the units (the closest one, no less) would use it. A smart player would select a group of Templars, shift click a few locations on the field, and cover a huge area with a devastating super Psi-Storm.
Coming from someone who has been through the hole "omg a new game is out, let's compare it to the last one and bitch about it all day long" thing about 3 or 4 times now: Just stop it, SC 2 is SC2 and even though it may feel ages easier than the previous game, the mechanics of SC 2 are still a lot more difficulty than those of an average game, just because BW is harder doesn't mean SC 2 is easy. Plus one feature doesn't turn the game from being "eSports" to not being that, and you are not in place to decide, there are professional tournaments run with a prize pool and shit, in my books that makes it eSports already, even with smartcasting.
On July 29 2011 19:57 Olsson wrote: What is smart casting maybe you should explain?
I think they are referring to your ability to select multiple casters and still issue individual casting orders.
In BW, selecting multiple Templars and telling them to Storm would have them all storm the same place. And multiple storms don't stack their damage, it'd be an epic waste.
On July 29 2011 19:57 Olsson wrote: What is smart casting maybe you should explain?
Smart casting refers to the ability to hold shift and spam cast a spell all over your opponent's army, whereas without it you typically individually select casters. In other words without smart casting it takes gosu micro just to use spell casters to their full potential.
the articles main point is beyond stupid. halo is easy to pick up and play but was still the biggest esport for 10 years. broodwar is EASY to pick up and play. the op is picking some arbitrary line and saying this is hard enough this isnt. pro players are miles ahead of even high masters players and even within the pro scene theres a huge variation. no matter what the people bitching about sc2 say, skill is by far the number 1 factor in winning a game and having a relativly low entry level for skill is irrelevant.
On July 29 2011 19:44 fellcrow wrote: Why are these threads still allowed?
I really don't know. It's the same old regurgitation of arguments seen over and over again yet as long as it's shitting on SC2 it seems ok. Shitting on BW on the other hand...
i agree, but thats just the way it is 'round these parts
Okay, old tired argument, not so hidden balance whine included inside it, a sensationalist headline and useless grandstanding that refutes his own point?
I don't think you've convinced me.
Oh and as an aside, making something more difficult to do does not reduce the effectiveness of it when done.
To celebrate this thread, I'm going to watch nanashin's stream and forget I ever spent time here.
On July 29 2011 19:51 SoSexy wrote: Excuse my ignorance, but whats the difference between a smartcast and a normal cast?
Smart casting: 1: allows you to cast even while having non-cast units or other cast units selected 2: it always cast with the caster closest to the target and only uses one spell at a time
No smart casting: 1: you have to individually select one type of caster to be able to caster its spells 2: if you have more that two (say high templars) selected with more than 75 energy, both high templars will cast their storm. (You can do some nifty magic boxing for multiple caster selection to be effective, but that's quite difficult)
Edit: Actually I reread the OP and realized that it's far from well written, your point is obscured by the fact that you contradict it multiple times, and you're making flawed conclusions based on false premises and guesses. Also it's already an e-sport and an extremely successful one so far.
On July 29 2011 19:57 Olsson wrote: What is smart casting maybe you should explain?
Smart casting refers to the ability to hold shift and spam cast a spell all over your opponent's army, whereas without it you typically individually select casters. In other words without smart casting it takes gosu micro just to use spell casters to their full potential.
which is archaic and totally true (god bless bw and fk it to hell)
I think you have some valid points, but the point I have the most gripe with is when you say that "[One thing to help SC2] is by removing smart casting which will make watching SC2 even more enjoyable and make all of us all be excited once again". First of all, I think the vast majority of us are still more than a little bit excited about SC2, so just because you might not be getting excited about it all don't presume that everyone else isn't. Secondly, in no way would removing smart-casting help me to enjoy watching SC2 any more. I like watching a ton of storms rain down on a terran bio-ball... I like watching a ton of clutch emp's rain down on some infestors right before a huge TvZ engagement... I fail to see how making this harder to do for me when I play will make it any more enjoyable to watch when a Pro does it. I see plenty of impressive stuff including amazing micro and amazing split second decisions that get me excited when pro's do it because it really is "pro", the game mechanics help the pro's concentrate on other impressive pieces of play such as multi-pronged attacks with all of them being microed etc. The game mechanics, in my opinion, make the game better to watch and more fun to play, I really dislike the argument that because a game has complex mechanics to do basic things, it is more fun to watch because it takes so much skill.
On July 29 2011 19:58 legaton wrote: SC2 can't be an e-sports because there's no really talented "e-athletes". What surprises me the most from the SC2 scene (and i follow it alot) is the lack of talent of the player pool. We are still seeing the same washed-up ex-proamateurs from Broodwar. Most of today's pros were B+/A+ amateurs from the ICCup server. That means that they were consistently beaten by 12 years old koreans from the Brain server. Another bunch of the players came from Warcraft 3, even if they were slightly better, they still were a level below Korea (except for Grubby or ToD). What surprises and worries me the most, is how little new talent SC2 has: Vibe? Destiny? A handful other players? People keeps saying SC2 already is an e-sports when it hasn't been able to nurture new pros. You just have the old BW bunch trying to live the life they couldn't had with BW (see Idra).
And what about Korea? They certainly have lots and lots of talent there. But BW still is the most popular and prestigious game in South-Korea. SC2 has a smaller pool. And the pool of player is not growing, it's becoming smaller as there's little support for SC2 in Korea. Haven't you realized that GomTV runs thanks to foreigner money? Sponsors for BW are all Koreans. Sponsors for SC2 are foreign companies with small subsidaries in South Korea. Viewers are also foreign. They have made wonders for the foreign viewers, and i thank them for that. But it also means they see the foreign scene as the only market they can develop. Most coaches and koreans players alredy said it: there's not enough tournaments to support the korean scene. That means that we are going to see less new talent from Korea.
Koreans have admitted themselves that the foreigners can be just as good and that it is merely the strict training regimes that has set Koreans apart for so long. So many people just seem to think if SC2 isn't widely accepted in Korea it will never have major success. With team houses starting up in the US and EU anything is possible, alot of money is being poured in to the foreigner scene and it is entirely possible for it to eventually overtake the Korean scene.
You make it sound like nothing is possible in SC without Koreans which is not the case, just the methods that they use are needed, which can be taken from any dedicated athlete from any sport.
It doesn't have the skill ceiling of mechanical brood war but it doesn't mean it can't be an E-Sport, it actually is already. Also remember before making topics like this which you know will make people rage out remember that Starcraft is only a year old. The timing and game is still being figured out, when it becomes more refined and less volatile the skill ceiling will increase as well. Brood War has had over 10 years of experience so gimmick plays like all ins exct. where much less effective since tells and exact reactions had been discovered.
It just astounds me that some people think that just because one certain part of the game might be "easier" to do, that it means that the game is "easier" or that the skill cap is lower. To me it just means that is either: 1. One less thing to focus on mechanically so that you can raise the bar in other categories such as Build-order, strats, multi-tactical plays. 2. If it is easier to do because of smart casting, then the opposite side of the coin becomes harder, defending against it. Also, your argument that SC2 as a sport will fail because of this is just silly and does not hold water.
Balance issues wont affect it in the slightest. Is it fun to watch for a large audience? Then something can become an esport. Wether or not esports will grow in the coming years is the only question that matters.
The day I see someone play a perfect game of starcraft 2, I will agree that the game should be made harder. Untill that I see no reason to remove smart casting.
hahahahaha... no. It can't be an e-sport because of a simplified casting system? Hate to break the big news to you buddy, but it already is an e-sport. In fact, much simpler and faaaar less challenging games already are e-sports. Heck, Trackmania is an e-sport. COD is an e-sport. This OP is stupid.
On July 29 2011 20:07 turdburgler wrote: you learn to walk before you can even talk and yet running is the number 1 sport at the olympics
difficulty of entry is irrelevant
its the skill ceiling that matters. all this talk about smart casting and stuff is a waste of time
its like saying we should have lisps to make the games better .. guess fking what ... i have a lisp and i talk fine ... and any decent pro would cast just fine w/ or w/out smart cast (basically you are talking about regular players and how they will play) True That turdburgler
On July 29 2011 20:12 TheAmazombie wrote: It just astounds me that some people think that just because one certain part of the game might be "easier" to do, that it means that the game is "easier" or that the skill cap is lower. To me it just means that is either: 1. One less thing to focus on mechanically so that you can raise the bar in other categories such as Build-order, strats, multi-tactical plays. 2. If it is easier to do because of smart casting, then the opposite side of the coin becomes harder, defending against it. Also, your argument that SC2 as a sport will fail because of this is just silly and does not hold water.
This. The topicposter should look for the definition of sport and "e-sport" first before posting.
Idiot article with an idiot topic. You're wrong and what you wrote didn't make sense. Stupid BW=GOD-complex that keeps plaguing the discussions. While you're at it, revert graphics too derp derp
How exactly does smart casting affect storm? You do the same function as BW emp and fungal wouldnt be affected by smart casting either. Tanks are the only thing you talked about that would be affected. Someone tell me if im being incredibly stupid.
I do agree with smart-casting. Makes this game much easier, but so does multiple building hotkeys, unlimited amount of unit hotkeys, smarter AI, Auto-mine and everything else. Everyone knows SC2 is a much easier game.
Smartcasting, mbs etc. lower the skill cap a lot. I dont think anyone can argue against this. But I think the faster pace at which SC2 is played makes up for that.
I agree with OP in that smartcasting/mbs/etc are really fucking stupid and terrible additions to the game (in terms of gameplay), however that makes the game no less exciting to watch. Sc2 is and will be a great "esport" for a long time.
First of all, purposefully sensational title. No good.
Second, statements like this are pure conjecture and fabrication and offer no insight as to why it would improve SC2 as an ESPORT or even what your definition of improvement is.
I feel that if SC2 is to really succeed as an E-sports it needs to be more challenging and the one way to do that that wont hurt the play of the average gamer and sales of SC2 or promotion of SC2 to new audiences, but actually help it is by removing smart casting which will make watching SC2 even more enjoyable and make all of us all be excited once again, since Brood War about things that pros can do and we can't.
When I see Demarcus Ware flatten somebody, do I think "that was really enjoyable because I could never do that" ?
Third, this is one of those "I don't like how the game is, and this is how I wish it would be" posts, that Chill complains about. We generally don't allow those, especially when they're just an unsubstantiated rant like this is.
EPT
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