I feel Starcraft 2 is very passive. - Page 14

On November 23 2011 13:00 eSuBuildings wrote:
@AnachronisticAnarchy,

Watch this TvT between Flash and Fantasy

Now watch this TvT between Boxer and Rain http://tv.majorleaguegaming.com/videos/72872-winners-semis-boxer-vs-rain-g1

Sure, the Boxer vs Rain game will have it's moments in the early to mid game that will have crowds jeering out of their seats, but in the late game it becomes (like I pointed out in my OP) nothing but a waiting game whereas Flash and Fantasy's late game has so much movement going on inside it.

On November 23 2011 23:57 ceaRshaf wrote:


I bet that when sc2 will have 9 years and people (may) complain about it there will be one dude like you that will say, "hey, why do you compare a 10 year old game with a 9 year old one".

Also, IF NO ONE IS COMPLAINING NOTHING WILL GET FIXED. so shut the f up, it's called feedback.

When blizzard said "we did not get anyone complaining that they want name changing enabled so we did not see any reason to do so" you were all "WTF?"

So, it's a good thing that people talk about what can be done better in this game, because this is how it can evolve. I don't want the community to listen to Dustin Bowder but vicerversa since we are the ones that make esports happen.

On November 23 2011 23:49 floor exercise wrote:
What interests me most in these debates is the attempts to compare date/times when it comes to the respective games. People saying you can't compare because BW has been played for 10 years, and SC2 needs to develop, or you can't compare before the first expansion, etc, or they need a similar number of balance patches (even though I'm pretty sure sc2 has already had more than bw)

SC2 was announced in 2007. They started planning SC2 after War3, but according to Blizzard was put on hold in 2005 for WoW. So it's reasonable to assume that the real development began in 2006 and finished in 2009/10.

At this point BW was at the height of its esport popularity. Everything during the design of SC2 and everything that preceded it are things they could have drawn on in the development of the sequel. For that reason I would never compare any previous version of Starcraft to SC2 as if they had to restart from point A, because that's a lie. You don't take multiple steps back when you design a game, were that the case would we compare every FPS game to Wolfenstein? Competitive ones would surely be compared to Quake 3 at the height if its popularity. They wouldn't be expected to be released in a worse state and then have people defend its honor and say it needs several years to go from Q3test or even before that to Q3 at whatever point it was at its most competitive.

The first Korean tournaments and leagues popped up in 2000, 1.5 years after BW was even released. Comparatively SC2 tournaments began before the game was even released. For some reason this never factors into discussion either. At what point did all our gaming minds turn to figuring out the most optimal builds and when did competition factor into how we look at the game and the drive to be better? People certainly played SC1 competitively before that, if only for honor and to settle shit talking on disputes on bnet. You can find battlereports of people playing vanilla, but when did "esports" for Starcraft truly begin? Isn't that a good timeline to use in comparing the games? Apparently that's how many people think SC2 works, at some point we will have played enough hours of the highest level play that it will evolve to a similar level of brood war, as if it's foregone that that capacity is already built into the game and we haven't unlocked it yet.

If someone wanted to really plot the games they could look at the number of high level competitions in BW over the years (starting at maybe the kor scene start in the 2000s) and the number we've had in SC2. With the sheer volume of tournaments in SC2 I think we would be surprised where their timelines would match up. A couple events every year vs a couple events every month. Does the amount of competition in a game drive innovation in how it's played? Would we catch up that way?


Ultimately I think the timeline debate and when/how SC2 will magically catch up to BW is a stupid one, there might be something to be gleaned from it but it seems like no one is really interested in tackling it with any sort of logical approach. They simply say "BW is older, therefore SC2 will become better when it's as old" which just makes no sense to me at all. To me that's willful ignorance, expecting everything to sort itself out after a given amount of time.

On November 24 2011 00:21 Assirra wrote:

Then how about giving feedback to blizzard instead of posting on teamliquid?
Posting it to them directly has way more chance they actually read it.
But nooooo, every week we get a thread how starcraft 2 sux compared to brood war and while i don't really disagree we know it by now and go tell it to blizzard for a change.

On November 23 2011 12:52 neobowman wrote:
All the matchups in SC2 tend to last until 200/200 in a macro game. This is because of various elements. You need more workers to saturate to a decent level, and there's 2 gas instead of one (twice as many gas miners). Units in SC2 also tend to cost more supply. Tanks cost 3 supply, Immortals cost 4, roaches cost 2. In BW, tanks costed 2 supply, I don't recall a massable 4 supply unit and the equivalent to roaches, hydras, were 1 supply.

In BW, the only matchup that regularly went to 200/200 is TvP.

On November 23 2011 13:35 Ver wrote:
sc2 is not remotely like chess.

The difference you noted between bw and sc2 is a combination of simplicity and the superiority of offense over defense. The reason you see so much dancing of armies jockeying for a tiny increase in position in sc2 is because there's so few ways to gain an advantage. Many sc2 games literally come down to the positioning before a fight because nothing else matters remotely as much as winning a battle. In bw engaging correctly was just one of many, many factors in determining victory. Certain players like Jaedong were known for their consistent ability to engage right, while others like iloveoov were particularly bad at it but could win through a variety of other means. In sc2 if you can't engage very well you will never be among the best. When you remove all the nuances of bw that determined skill, you are left with a select very few factors, most notably engaging, but also blind build order luck, that massively determine the outcomes of games because there's so little else to influence the outcome.

The other reason for favoring big battles and massive 1a armies is the ease of movement. Movement in bw is much more subtle and difficult to organize and execute. Position (like high ground) meant much more, all races had various tools which favored defense over offense (reavers/storm in pvz, tanks/mines, scourge/swarm/lurker vs vessels, better static defense, etc). Furthermore, the smooth a.i in sc2 means that it's really easy to attack bases without bothering to micro and do insane damage. Plus there are a number of tools which effectively fight defensive setups (banelings, infested terrans, forcefields, immortals, colossus, marines, marauders) These reasons are exactly why backstabs so good in sc2 compared to bw and why you get many, many more base trades. Ironically, base trades and backstabs happen the most in the matchups most like BW in terms of skill, defense, and positioning: tvz and tvt.

How does this lend itself to big 1a armies? Because if you are devoting say 15-20 supply to a distraction or secondary maneuver, that means your main army will have that much less supply. Therefore it's much easier for you to just get run over by a-move, and that will lose you the game outright in most cases because it's so hard to comeback. You can overcome this advantage to some degree as defense isn't entirely meaningless, particularly in tvz and tvt, but an extra 20ish supply is a lot more meaningful in most cases than a good position. In bw, position is much more important than army size, and you'd routinely see large armies improperly wielded be defeated or warded off by well employed tactics or setups. Someone like Flash couldn't make a fraction of the comebacks he did in bw playing sc2 because it's just too easy to bully your opponent around once you have a lead and you don't have much leverage to 'outplay' someone when behind. Furthermore there are a number of mechanics in place which very effectively dissuade spread out forces in favor of gathering one big army: Terran drops in tvp are absolutely terrifying, but these are more than "balanced" out by feedback, warpins, and blink. Trying to harass past a certain point is often just going to lead to wasted units, which could in turn lower your main army strength for a critical moment and make you vulnerable to getting a moved to death. In TvT the combination of vikings, sensor towers, great mobility of marines and hellions, and powerful turrets has made it very difficult in general to effectively harass behind a certain point.

No this problem isn't going to be fixed with time. It has nothing to do with how young the game is, only a little bit with how bad players are, and everything with how the game is designed. Until that is addressed, the only way things can change is by drastically altering maps to promote more defense and large-scale combat which can help but only to a small degree. Blizzard designed the game to favor offense and ease of use: these are the results of such decisions.

On November 23 2011 13:00 eSuBuildings wrote:
@AnachronisticAnarchy,

Watch this TvT between Flash and Fantasy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m71uQWQE1F8

Now watch this TvT between Boxer and Rain http://tv.majorleaguegaming.com/videos/72872-winners-semis-boxer-vs-rain-g1

Sure, the Boxer vs Rain game will have it's moments in the early to mid game that will have crowds jeering out of their seats, but in the late game it becomes (like I pointed out in my OP) nothing but a waiting game whereas Flash and Fantasy's late game has so much movement going on inside it.

On November 24 2011 00:21 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:


Please don't cite a TvT as a counter-point. It is well known that TvT is the most passive of all matchups because seige tanks kill ANYTHING within a massive range.
Not refuting your point or anything, would just like to see a better example.