On November 23 2011 17:00 DamageControL wrote: Basically, Ver is right. The reduction of position advantage (i.e. Sieged Tanks, Lurkers, Reavers) have led to the demise of tactics in favor of macro balls rolling into each other.
I must be watching a different Starcraft 2 than you are. I spent all weekend watching MLG, and I can't for the life of me remember any macro balls rolling into each other.
Perhaps it is a fallacy to say that SC2 does not have a lot of position jockeying; it definitely does, and some of Leenock vs Nani really demonstrated it. But there are few advantages to the "entrenched" player which leads to the inability to divert resources for fear of just being rolled over.
And I personally think that makes for more entertaining games. The one matchup where "entrenchment" is often rewarded is TvT, and it often leads to boring stalemates. Aside from the pretty lightshow at the end, Boxer vs Rain was just amazingly dull.
I don't think it's true that there's an inability to divert resources. Good players will find the timings and the resources, and they will drop/do runbys. Even in deathball vs deathball we've seen innovation, like Kiwikaki using a mothership to turn his deathball into highly mobile attack force.
At any rate, it looks like you'll get your wish in HotS, as Terran/Zerg get more space control and Protoss will get recall in every single game.
This is more pointing out why the games are different. I think you think I prefer BW. I think SC2 is actually sometimes more fun to watch, although BW is also awesome simply because it's more developed.
@The guy above. The game was chosen at random. I did not "pick" it. It was one of the first on the Nevake page, the games happened to be a bit old, but BW in '09 was fairly developed as a game. There are certainly nuances that I missed, of course. You did exactly what I was trying to avoid doing: picking the very best BW game you could find to fit what you wanted to see.
On November 23 2011 14:33 raf3776 wrote: Im sure i could find examples of a random early Sc1 game that doesnt have that much aggression compared to a random game in sc2
Please do.
<embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1540187220819592210&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed> There you go. Stork vs Nada from the 2007 proleague. I didn't really pick this game at random, as I chose it because the calibre of the players illustrates that SC1 can be just as boring as SC2 at the highest level. It's really easy to dig up examples =/
I don't really see the point of this though. Aren't we talking about general tendencies in games?
I go to barcrafts sometimes, and they are interesting (Random SC2). However I can just open up a BW stream (even from some random C+ player) and find it exciting for the most part.
I know this logic is hated, but the fundamental BW mechanics and strategies are so deeply worked out that a C+ player today in BW could have been Pro-level during the first year of the game. A while many concepts do carry over to SC2, the big picture is different enough that players do not yet need to break the game down a tightly as BW in order to do really well. Even pro's are still figuring out and developing the kind of high level muscle memory macro that is needed to support to the crisp micro play your expecting. For those who have watched SC for ages, becoming accustom to the current state of BW as the average is underselling BW and setting an unrealistic expectation for SC2.
In all likelihood, BW is probably "better" for spectators in the most general of RTS terms, but SC2 has not yet shown the full array of skills it can support. The pressure isn't there yet for pros to need those skills. You can get damn far in amny tournaments with damn good macro and questionable micro still. The same cant be said with BW.
Just wait until better players start playing the game or the existing players get better. Better multitasking = exploit your mechanical advantage over the other player by harassing; also disrupts their gameplan/build etc.
Quite simply, you can't compare the current SC2 pros with BW pros.
On November 23 2011 17:00 DamageControL wrote: Basically, Ver is right. The reduction of position advantage (i.e. Sieged Tanks, Lurkers, Reavers) have led to the demise of tactics in favor of macro balls rolling into each other.
I must be watching a different Starcraft 2 than you are. I spent all weekend watching MLG, and I can't for the life of me remember any macro balls rolling into each other.
Perhaps it is a fallacy to say that SC2 does not have a lot of position jockeying; it definitely does, and some of Leenock vs Nani really demonstrated it. But there are few advantages to the "entrenched" player which leads to the inability to divert resources for fear of just being rolled over.
And I personally think that makes for more entertaining games. The one matchup where "entrenchment" is often rewarded is TvT, and it often leads to boring stalemates. Aside from the pretty lightshow at the end, Boxer vs Rain was just amazingly dull.
I don't think it's true that there's an inability to divert resources. Good players will find the timings and the resources, and they will drop/do runbys. Even in deathball vs deathball we've seen innovation, like Kiwikaki using a mothership to turn his deathball into highly mobile attack force.
At any rate, it looks like you'll get your wish in HotS, as Terran/Zerg get more space control and Protoss will get recall in every single game.
This is more pointing out why the games are different. I think you think I prefer BW. I think SC2 is actually sometimes more fun to watch, although BW is also awesome simply because it's more developed.
One of the reasons I think you're making a "SC2 sucks" argument is that you use phrases like "the demise of tactics". I'm glad that you actually don't hold that position, but this is one of those threads, and you seemed to be walking like a duck and quacking like a duck
On November 23 2011 14:33 raf3776 wrote: Im sure i could find examples of a random early Sc1 game that doesnt have that much aggression compared to a random game in sc2
Please do.
<embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1540187220819592210&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed> There you go. Stork vs Nada from the 2007 proleague. I didn't really pick this game at random, as I chose it because the calibre of the players illustrates that SC1 can be just as boring as SC2 at the highest level. It's really easy to dig up examples =/
I don't really see the point of this though. Aren't we talking about general tendencies in games?
I go to barcrafts sometimes, and they are interesting (Random SC2). However I can just open up a BW stream (even from some random C+ player) and find it exciting for the most part.
I know this logic is hated, but the fundamental BW mechanics and strategies are so deeply worked out that a C+ player today in BW could have been Pro-level during the first year of the game. A while many concepts do carry over to SC2, the big picture is different enough that players do not yet need to break the game down a tightly as BW in order to do really well. Even pro's are still figuring out and developing the kind of high level muscle memory macro that is needed to support to the crisp micro play your expecting. For those who have watched SC for ages, becoming accustom to the current state of BW as the average is underselling BW and setting an unrealistic expectation for SC2.
In all likelihood, BW is probably "better" for spectators in the most general of RTS terms, but SC2 has not yet shown the full array of skills it can support. The pressure isn't there yet for pros to need those skills. You can get damn far in amny tournaments with damn good macro and questionable micro still. The same cant be said with BW.
How is it unrealistic to expect a successor of starcraft broodwar to be as good as the old game broodwar which did provide countless joy and fun to many of us who are fans of the original sc1 and broodwar ? It's pretty simple you for example you are a top scholar in your university and you have been producing good grades and so , than suddenly you have been producing quite low grades and almost failed your semester . People who have known you for years will question your actions , what has happen to you , what's wrong , these is the same thing as for sc2 . The analogy do apply in these situation because of expectation of previous high benchmark and entertaining factor from broodwar despite it's simplicity and like you said , Figured out mechanics .
On November 23 2011 17:00 DamageControL wrote: Basically, Ver is right. The reduction of position advantage (i.e. Sieged Tanks, Lurkers, Reavers) have led to the demise of tactics in favor of macro balls rolling into each other.
I must be watching a different Starcraft 2 than you are. I spent all weekend watching MLG, and I can't for the life of me remember any macro balls rolling into each other.
Perhaps it is a fallacy to say that SC2 does not have a lot of position jockeying; it definitely does, and some of Leenock vs Nani really demonstrated it. But there are few advantages to the "entrenched" player which leads to the inability to divert resources for fear of just being rolled over.
And I personally think that makes for more entertaining games. The one matchup where "entrenchment" is often rewarded is TvT, and it often leads to boring stalemates. Aside from the pretty lightshow at the end, Boxer vs Rain was just amazingly dull.
I don't think it's true that there's an inability to divert resources. Good players will find the timings and the resources, and they will drop/do runbys. Even in deathball vs deathball we've seen innovation, like Kiwikaki using a mothership to turn his deathball into highly mobile attack force.
At any rate, it looks like you'll get your wish in HotS, as Terran/Zerg get more space control and Protoss will get recall in every single game.
This is more pointing out why the games are different. I think you think I prefer BW. I think SC2 is actually sometimes more fun to watch, although BW is also awesome simply because it's more developed.
One of the reasons I think you're making a "SC2 sucks" argument is that you use phrases like "the demise of tactics". I'm glad that you actually don't hold that position, but this is one of those threads, and you seemed to be walking like a duck and quacking like a duck
Well, I meant the demise of a very specific type of tactics, but I can see why that seems pretty pejorative. I only meant the tactics that revolve around "stall'n harass". It would be foolish to say tactics as a whole are absent from SC2; at MLG, particularly, it became apparent to me how far tactics have come.
This is off topic, but one thing that DOES irritate me about SC2 is the tendency to base trade, and I can't figure out why people try to do it so often, or why it's more common than BW....
I have nothing against developing SC2 so that it involves more action, or so that it is more difficult to play, but inputting forced unit limits for control groups is a poor idea in my opinion.
It is an arbitrary and irritating way of making a game more difficult "guess what now you can only select x number of units at a time! gogo!". I think other ideas like increasing the mining rate or lowering the supply of units are both more suitable ways of increasing difficulty. A higher mining rate means faster economic development and requires faster mechanics to be able to keep up with it. Lower supply units doesn't change the 1a 'problem', but it does allow players who have the skill to micro a greater volume of units to do so, effectively raising the skill cap.
Just browsing through this thread, one of the main complaints I'm seeing is that the armies in SC2 aren't as big as in BW... How awesome would it be if HoTS came with a supply increase to 300?
On November 23 2011 17:00 DamageControL wrote: Basically, Ver is right. The reduction of position advantage (i.e. Sieged Tanks, Lurkers, Reavers) have led to the demise of tactics in favor of macro balls rolling into each other.
I must be watching a different Starcraft 2 than you are. I spent all weekend watching MLG, and I can't for the life of me remember any macro balls rolling into each other.
Perhaps it is a fallacy to say that SC2 does not have a lot of position jockeying; it definitely does, and some of Leenock vs Nani really demonstrated it. But there are few advantages to the "entrenched" player which leads to the inability to divert resources for fear of just being rolled over.
And I personally think that makes for more entertaining games. The one matchup where "entrenchment" is often rewarded is TvT, and it often leads to boring stalemates. Aside from the pretty lightshow at the end, Boxer vs Rain was just amazingly dull.
I don't think it's true that there's an inability to divert resources. Good players will find the timings and the resources, and they will drop/do runbys. Even in deathball vs deathball we've seen innovation, like Kiwikaki using a mothership to turn his deathball into highly mobile attack force.
At any rate, it looks like you'll get your wish in HotS, as Terran/Zerg get more space control and Protoss will get recall in every single game.
This is more pointing out why the games are different. I think you think I prefer BW. I think SC2 is actually sometimes more fun to watch, although BW is also awesome simply because it's more developed.
@The guy above. The game was chosen at random. I did not "pick" it. It was one of the first on the Nevake page, the games happened to be a bit old, but BW in '09 was fairly developed as a game. There are certainly nuances that I missed, of course. You did exactly what I was trying to avoid doing: picking the very best BW game you could find to fit what you wanted to see.
Your expectation to watch every game having a come back is seriously flawed because it isn't , Different players have different skills and players who have much better control of the flow of the game have higher chances to make a come back in to the game and that is why , we do root for players who did the impossible.
I understand the citing of the Boxer vs Rain game at MLG as an example of boring late game TvT but the problem is theyd didnt play it right. I think that was one of the first pro level games where pure mech transitioned into seige tank/sky terran and Boxer honestly did not seems like he had a feel for it(a statement that he would later give in an interview said much the same).
Rain had a slightly better understanding of what to do in the situation but wishing no offense to the man did not execute it very well. The ghost nuke to push back the tanks and gain territory was quite well done and was clearly the correct choice in that situation but the fact that he only did that while turtling an air army instead of for example nuking both fronts and taking the position you gain faster. Though at the time it looked a little like "hmm let me try this...oh its working let me keep doing it" the other late game sky terran TvTs are signifigantly more action packed than there predecessors.
On November 23 2011 17:00 DamageControL wrote: Basically, Ver is right. The reduction of position advantage (i.e. Sieged Tanks, Lurkers, Reavers) have led to the demise of tactics in favor of macro balls rolling into each other.
I must be watching a different Starcraft 2 than you are. I spent all weekend watching MLG, and I can't for the life of me remember any macro balls rolling into each other.
Perhaps it is a fallacy to say that SC2 does not have a lot of position jockeying; it definitely does, and some of Leenock vs Nani really demonstrated it. But there are few advantages to the "entrenched" player which leads to the inability to divert resources for fear of just being rolled over.
And I personally think that makes for more entertaining games. The one matchup where "entrenchment" is often rewarded is TvT, and it often leads to boring stalemates. Aside from the pretty lightshow at the end, Boxer vs Rain was just amazingly dull.
I don't think it's true that there's an inability to divert resources. Good players will find the timings and the resources, and they will drop/do runbys. Even in deathball vs deathball we've seen innovation, like Kiwikaki using a mothership to turn his deathball into highly mobile attack force.
At any rate, it looks like you'll get your wish in HotS, as Terran/Zerg get more space control and Protoss will get recall in every single game.
This is more pointing out why the games are different. I think you think I prefer BW. I think SC2 is actually sometimes more fun to watch, although BW is also awesome simply because it's more developed.
@The guy above. The game was chosen at random. I did not "pick" it. It was one of the first on the Nevake page, the games happened to be a bit old, but BW in '09 was fairly developed as a game. There are certainly nuances that I missed, of course. You did exactly what I was trying to avoid doing: picking the very best BW game you could find to fit what you wanted to see.
Your expectation to watch every game having a come back is seriously flawed because it isn't , Different players have different skills and players who have much better control of the flow of the game have higher chances to make a come back in to the game and that is why , we do root for players who did the impossible.
...I didn't actually expect every game to have a comeback. I suppose this it's more that one player gained an extremely decisive advantage and it was pretty clear who would win. But the game sorta lasted a lot longer.
edit: I was merely pointing out every game wasn't the most extreme wonder of wonders.
On November 23 2011 14:33 raf3776 wrote: Im sure i could find examples of a random early Sc1 game that doesnt have that much aggression compared to a random game in sc2
Please do.
<embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1540187220819592210&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed> There you go. Stork vs Nada from the 2007 proleague. I didn't really pick this game at random, as I chose it because the calibre of the players illustrates that SC1 can be just as boring as SC2 at the highest level. It's really easy to dig up examples =/
I don't really see the point of this though. Aren't we talking about general tendencies in games?
I go to barcrafts sometimes, and they are interesting (Random SC2). However I can just open up a BW stream (even from some random C+ player) and find it exciting for the most part.
I know this logic is hated, but the fundamental BW mechanics and strategies are so deeply worked out that a C+ player today in BW could have been Pro-level during the first year of the game. A while many concepts do carry over to SC2, the big picture is different enough that players do not yet need to break the game down a tightly as BW in order to do really well. Even pro's are still figuring out and developing the kind of high level muscle memory macro that is needed to support to the crisp micro play your expecting. For those who have watched SC for ages, becoming accustom to the current state of BW as the average is underselling BW and setting an unrealistic expectation for SC2.
In all likelihood, BW is probably "better" for spectators in the most general of RTS terms, but SC2 has not yet shown the full array of skills it can support. The pressure isn't there yet for pros to need those skills. You can get damn far in amny tournaments with damn good macro and questionable micro still. The same cant be said with BW.
How is it unrealistic to expect a successor of starcraft broodwar to be as good as the old game broodwar which did provide countless joy and fun to many of us who are fans of the original sc1 and broodwar ? It's pretty simple you for example you are a top scholar in your university and you have been producing good grades and so , than suddenly you have been producing quite low grades and almost failed your semester . People who have known you for years will question your actions , what has happen to you , what's wrong , these is the same thing as for sc2 . The analogy do apply in these situation because of expectation of previous high benchmark and entertaining factor from broodwar despite it's simplicity and like you said , Figured out mechanics .
Its not unrealistic to expect the game will eventually be as good as BW, but it is unrealistic to expect it to immediately be as good as BW.
This has been talked to death but SC2 is a new game and players need time to adapt and then provide a consistent enough challenge to one another to necessitate the development of SC2 versions of the subtle BW strategies that people love so much.
Using your example, the first student goes through university with amazing grades, and comes hope telling his little brother about what he learned, then the little brother goes to university and doesn't do as well. Two different people, with different but perhaps similar skill sets, that need to develop at their own pace and methodology. Certain things will be easier for the little brother because of what he was told, but other maybe not be useful or possible because while the older brother kicked ass at geology, the little brother is more adept at meteorology...or something.
On November 23 2011 14:33 raf3776 wrote: Im sure i could find examples of a random early Sc1 game that doesnt have that much aggression compared to a random game in sc2
Please do.
<embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1540187220819592210&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed> There you go. Stork vs Nada from the 2007 proleague. I didn't really pick this game at random, as I chose it because the calibre of the players illustrates that SC1 can be just as boring as SC2 at the highest level. It's really easy to dig up examples =/
I don't really see the point of this though. Aren't we talking about general tendencies in games?
I go to barcrafts sometimes, and they are interesting (Random SC2). However I can just open up a BW stream (even from some random C+ player) and find it exciting for the most part.
I know this logic is hated, but the fundamental BW mechanics and strategies are so deeply worked out that a C+ player today in BW could have been Pro-level during the first year of the game. A while many concepts do carry over to SC2, the big picture is different enough that players do not yet need to break the game down a tightly as BW in order to do really well. Even pro's are still figuring out and developing the kind of high level muscle memory macro that is needed to support to the crisp micro play your expecting. For those who have watched SC for ages, becoming accustom to the current state of BW as the average is underselling BW and setting an unrealistic expectation for SC2.
In all likelihood, BW is probably "better" for spectators in the most general of RTS terms, but SC2 has not yet shown the full array of skills it can support. The pressure isn't there yet for pros to need those skills. You can get damn far in amny tournaments with damn good macro and questionable micro still. The same cant be said with BW.
How is it unrealistic to expect a successor of starcraft broodwar to be as good as the old game broodwar which did provide countless joy and fun to many of us who are fans of the original sc1 and broodwar ? It's pretty simple you for example you are a top scholar in your university and you have been producing good grades and so , than suddenly you have been producing quite low grades and almost failed your semester . People who have known you for years will question your actions , what has happen to you , what's wrong , these is the same thing as for sc2 . The analogy do apply in these situation because of expectation of previous high benchmark and entertaining factor from broodwar despite it's simplicity and like you said , Figured out mechanics .
Its not unrealistic to expect the game will eventually be as good as BW, but it is unrealistic to expect it to immediately be as good as BW.
This has been talked to death but SC2 is a new game and players need time to adapt and then provide a consistent enough challenge to one another to necessitate the development of SC2 versions of the subtle BW strategies that people love so much.
Using your example, the first student goes through university with amazing grades, and comes hope telling his little brother about what he learned, then the little brother goes to university and doesn't do as well. Two different people, with different but perhaps similar skill sets, that need to develop at their own pace and methodology. Certain things will be easier for the little brother because of what he was told, but other maybe not be useful or possible because while the older brother kicked ass at geology, the little brother is more adept at meteorology...or something.
I was using a single established scholar for that example and not two .
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.
I've also noticed the dancing of armies and jockeying for position in SC2. I also agree that this "decisive clash" is vital in SC2. However, there is still definitely a defenders advantage and my reasoning why players don't devote supply to a secondary maneuver is more their inability to multi-task. Because of this, the risk/reward is to jockey for position to win this decisive battle.
However, I do suggest to increase the supply from 200/200 to maybe 300/300 in 1v1 to help alleviate this army jockeying.
They could just make it easier to kill armies. In SC BW armies die in a few seconds. I played a few PVZ where I was doing really good but the second they attacked my army and I wasn't paying attention half my units were dead before I could storm. lol
On November 23 2011 15:26 DarkMatter_ wrote:
On November 23 2011 15:03 Larsa23 wrote:
On November 23 2011 15:02 Sawamura wrote:
On November 23 2011 14:59 Larsa23 wrote:
On November 23 2011 14:58 sluggaslamoo wrote:
On November 23 2011 14:54 Larsa23 wrote: [quote]
Yeah but that's just small harrassment.
No one actually sends an entire army without risking a counter attack. Also TvT has always been boring from what I remember and ZvT is more mobile and back and forth.
PvZ and PvT are about small harrassments and waiting for your opponent to fuck up a big attack.
Which is exactly what he said.
Huh? He said BW was passive. o_O
Hurrr
I didn't say it's passive I just said it can be late game and if you have a huge army vs a huge army or in TvT
Because it's the nature of TvT , Siege tanks with large attack range and the ability to deal heavy damage to units, stops people from playing full frontal attack , hence the need for dropship play, wraith harassment, map control , dividing the map into two .
I agree and that's why I don't think his examples were any different than BW because in PvZ if I lose my army I get overran in like a few minutes or less. I remember losing a lot of my games that way so I was always more passive about using my army. There's a ton of pro gamer videos for that too.
And that is also how PvT works and so I don't understand what he means. Don't really care either. Below is an extremely passive PvZ and what I'm talking about.
In the case of PvZ, that's just flat out false. Even if a zerg destroys most of the protoss army, it's nearly impossible to take out a protoss expo defended by cannons/reavers/storms. The zerg's best option in that scenario is to just get complete map control, expand, deny further expos for the protoss and just try to starve the opponent. Trying to bruteforce a protoss (even when you're ahead) is the perfect way to hand the game to your opponent
Unless you are a D+ at best player who doesn't have reavers and storm everywhere. What about when they come to your expo with 50 ultralisks because they killed your main army with nothing but hydralisks.
There is no freaking way you are D+ I'm sorry. Try playing Zerg and see how many times Protoss can just a-move his army and win at any point in the game.
(I used to be a D+ race picker)
On November 23 2011 16:06 Larsa23 wrote:
On November 23 2011 15:53 DarkMatter_ wrote:
On November 23 2011 15:28 Larsa23 wrote: Unless you are a D+ at best player who doesn't have reavers and storm everywhere. What about when they come to your expo with 50 ultralisks because they killed your main army with nothing but hydralisks.
If we're considering low skilled players, then a-moving and overrunning your opponent is possible in every matchup. If a player is incapable of properly utilizing the tools available to his race, then that's just an aspect of his game he needs to improve. It's not a flaw of the game itself.
Mass hydras can only work in the early midgame portion and mass ultras are only possible in late, late game. You said they can just overrun your base once they've killed your army. Where exactly is the zerg gonna pull 50 ultras from? And even with mass ultras, it's generally not a good idea to a-move into a protoss base defended by mass cannons + 2/3 reavers.
By outmicroing the shit out of me with mass hydra that's how.
They basically figure out they can beat me with hydra and ling so they reserve their ultralisks while pumping more lings and then they overrun me when my army size is low and my main choke is vulnerable to an ultralisk ling attack.
So instead I like to dance around a lot in the middle of the map and try to get as much economy as I can.
That is a style that works and some protoss players do that. But just because an aggressive style doesn't work for you, doesn't mean it that is the entire metagame of PvZ.
Aggressive PvZ involves attacking from the time your first zealot is made, and constantly keeping drone count down extremely low by attacking and harassing all the time. If you just let Zerg do what he wants because you just sit back and macro then you are stuck having to do your style of play.
I was easily D+. When I was probably at my best I was beating D people and D- like they were nothing. I would purposely play sloppy vs the D- at one point. I was D+ it would have taken a bit but it's not like D+ is harder than beating D and D-. Problem solved.
It's not like it takes much except really good efficiency and basic knowledge which I have.
By the way you didn't ask me against who. Most of those losses were on fish server vs koreans who had the entire map by the time I attacked or hackers on USEast. I know exactly when people are hacking? Why? I was a pretty avid one myself just not in 1v1. Vs D- kids I used to just get an army and win. There were pvps where I just a clicked and won. The max I did was drop reavers behind my dragoons.
In ZvP all it takes is a good defense and a flank from behind and the protoss cant do anything. You then dodge the storms and when their army is overwhelmed and cant retreat because you burrowed lurkers behind all my shit and by the time my units get back to base they are mostly gone you just send all your ultralisks that were waiting at 9 o clock when I attacked 11 o clock and all the lings you had hatching at the time and I am dead.
Happened to me a lot.
There were also the times when they just had a much superior game play to mine and when I'd attack they wouldn't even need their entire army to steam roll mine and then just attack.
The fact that armies are harder to kill you'd think would make it easier to just do attacks because in SC1 there are a lot of situations where you can't afford to lose what you have and when that happens you are done. So like in SC2 I thought that it was because you could just have a really strong army and send some men to harrass but I guess the battles take a million years and so it actually matters or something even though I could see ways of sending reinforcements with a pylon.
I just made the mistake of thinking that since they are stronger armies you would have an easier time sacrificing.
Because in SC1 if you're terran and you lose everything you're fucked too and the same for protoss most of the time like in PVT and PVP
I PVZ'd with bongmicro and only lost due to a strategic mistake because he was a lot better and I was being cautious.
I also had a really hard time recovering in PVT when I would make an attack and get raped by terran tank lines and then he would just come over and steam roll me.
It was actually when I was passive with a 12 nexus that I did good enough to just throw away units until they gave in.
I am not that great at micro unless it's all I focus on so that's why I wouldn't try it with zerg. Zerg has a huge advantage if you know how to flank all over the place and macro better.
I think that psi storm is basically useless unless you're really good or defending anyway. I saw most people just lose their templars or kill practically nothing regularly when I played BW.
In PvP once I was behind unless they didn't attack I was also screwed when I would retreat and they would just follow me all the way home and then it was domination. Because they would be macroing just as hard as me except they wouldn't be worried about retreating and having to recover enough forces to match the enemy. Got owned a lot that way too.
I bet if they increased the production rate of units and made them easier to kill sc2 would be better for sacrificing units whenever.
In SC1 people didn't even play Terran because of how easy they were to kill. They would turtle the whole time and I think that if they made everything weaker in SC2 it would be just like that but then it would have to develop a lot over about 10 years.
remove the damn xelnaga towers, it will enrich army movements and uncertainty, so you will have to move your armies non-stop or you may get into trap, its to easy to track movements with xelnaga tower, also players are afraid to move their army into tower radius also you cant really move your drops throughout the map because of it... i dont like the idea of xel naga towers to be on EVERY competition map. Bring us variety, in BW there were mineral walls, temple(rocks) walls that require DIFFERENT strategies and different timings.
I dont like that SC2 is all about being omniscient, a little bit of uncertainty would enrich the play, and possible new strategy/tactics.
Why not make maps and remove them.
Sc1 or broodwar , because on the korean level terran is really strong and not easy to kill at all, who would want to turtle all the time ? If i did that the zergs,protoss will take multi expansions like no tomorrow and steam roll me -_- , besides high templar psi storm useless ? Dropping a few of them on a zerg expo's and watch them melt to psi storms , I think from your standard , it's mostly Low D not even a D+ on iccup , Rarely Do i see people messed up their high templars storm unless they are really bad at predicting zerg's attack movement .
When I think of psi storm , I think of JangBi and for you to call it useless , it's unacceptable .Basing on the bolded parts of your statement , so just because you can warp in units from pylon makes it more easy to reinforce huh ? If i want to reinforce my units , I would rally all my factories to the designated area simple as that no need fancy pylon warping mechanics ,.
Other than that the only time , Terran usually die is in a TvP where they get out of position and they are on two base without a third , if they have a third and so , they can turtle to kingdom come and protoss can't do anything except if they have carriers and ground army ,plus high templars to storm the hell at the tank line .
I meant turtling at the start of BW and SC1.
Okay well about the templars that's what I've seen B level players doing with their templars and I meant in battle. When that's all there is to use it's really easy.
Terran can also die if they lose their army and you still have a bunch of zealots to take out mines with.
I don't care about this conversation anymore, they probably were a lot of grinding D-'s. Only a few of the D and D+ I played were actually good enough to make me play for like 30 minutes and I usually started the ladder late.
Someone quote my hacking habits already. They are hilarious ways to spend time you know.
I agree with some of the OP, and strongly disagree with the "lets wait and see" POV.
For one, "lets wait and see" is no longer relevant in today's esports culture. It took years to master wavedashing in SSBM to levels that showed fox was the best character, it took me like 3 days to figure out that metaknight was ridiculously OP. It was basically a mystery what you were going to fight when you first went into Molten Core in Vanilla WoW, now people probably have a bossmod that tells them the script for Deathwing(?how far along is WoW now?) before they set foot inside. The culture is different, its silly to argue that if we have no patches from today until HOTS's release that the game won't be relatively stable for most of that time.
Two, there are too many workers. Lots of people have said this, but damn it changes the game's calculus a lot. You always have to be thinking about workers (arguably the most boring aspect of the game). It makes ridiculous AOE drop strategies that should make no sense (think the old warp-in-storm tactic where you basically sac 1-2 high templars to storm a mineral line) viable, but also random. Storm drops could kill 20 workers (1k minerals) or 0 (and you lost a Prism + 2 Templars), some of that is skill, some of it is luck. Additionally it favors AOE drops over other types (blueflame hellions should not be 10x as good as stalkers at harassing workerlines).
Three warpgates screwed up Protoss (arguably) beyond repair.
And lastly, the "cheese" hate has gone way too far. 1 in 3 TL threads starts with "I generally prefer macro games" and if you don't say that people flame the hell out of you. If you create a way to win games in 6 mins, hate. 12 minute timing push? Hate. I honestly loved when MC was winning GSLs because so much delicious hate was flowing about his builds. "Timing Push" is now just the PC version of "Cheese" honestly I am glad to flame a bit about macro games because there is nothing worse than 5 base Zerg vs. 3 base Protoss.
Whats up with BW fans , and their special need to come to SC2 forums and whine about something that is less good then BW.
If you going to get one thing from this post take this Giving an example does not prove the rule never ever ,that is very stupid thing to do.
given: passive TvT - rain vs boxer counter: Active TvT - MvP vs MMA
given: passive PVt - socke counter: sage / hero
i can do it with Z players as well... with ease
what does it tell me ? more about the style of the players then anything else for now...
why the hell do you link games for BW ? i find tennis quite boring personally , but i can link you from the last 10 years some very interesting games, does it say anything about tennis as a game as a spectator sport for me ?
I think this thread belong with the - "SC2 can never go more then one base" , "Sc2 has very low ceiling - everyone will cap it in half a year" , "SC2 have no micro , AI is too good" "In SC2 everyone will have perfect macro - its too easy!" "I need my units to be unable to go from A to B without babysit each and every one of them , and UI and control and graphics which belong to the stone age in order for a game to it to be any good ,fuck blizzard!" And i have one common though about those threads today - very stupid statements.
If you cannot enjoy SC2 i personally feel truly sorry for you , its a beautiful game and getting better repeatedly I wish BW will be there forever for you , but please less silly threads ...
really i would think that BW will have the most patience and brains to give SC2 its time to grow , but i guess its too hard to expect it from nostalgia vision people to actually see the progress and know that as BW grew , so will SC2. and its very silly to expect sc2 meta game to be at bw level at this age ...
And i think the huge amount of spectators and fans is really the only proof you need that SC2 has great potential and produce some beautiful games.
On November 23 2011 14:33 raf3776 wrote: Im sure i could find examples of a random early Sc1 game that doesnt have that much aggression compared to a random game in sc2
Please do.
<embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1540187220819592210&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed> There you go. Stork vs Nada from the 2007 proleague. I didn't really pick this game at random, as I chose it because the calibre of the players illustrates that SC1 can be just as boring as SC2 at the highest level. It's really easy to dig up examples =/
I don't really see the point of this though. Aren't we talking about general tendencies in games?
I go to barcrafts sometimes, and they are interesting (Random SC2). However I can just open up a BW stream (even from some random C+ player) and find it exciting for the most part.
I know this logic is hated, but the fundamental BW mechanics and strategies are so deeply worked out that a C+ player today in BW could have been Pro-level during the first year of the game. A while many concepts do carry over to SC2, the big picture is different enough that players do not yet need to break the game down a tightly as BW in order to do really well. Even pro's are still figuring out and developing the kind of high level muscle memory macro that is needed to support to the crisp micro play your expecting. For those who have watched SC for ages, becoming accustom to the current state of BW as the average is underselling BW and setting an unrealistic expectation for SC2.
In all likelihood, BW is probably "better" for spectators in the most general of RTS terms, but SC2 has not yet shown the full array of skills it can support. The pressure isn't there yet for pros to need those skills. You can get damn far in amny tournaments with damn good macro and questionable micro still. The same cant be said with BW.
I kinda agree and disagree. I disagree with the mechanics part for obvious reasons, its not a valid point because basic mechanics have nothing to do with creating exciting battles, it does have a lot to do with skill differentiation, comebacks, and certain tactics however. The second point being that we have 818 apm JulyZerg moving straight into SC2, there were no mechanical monsters pre BW. I agree in that mechanics have dropped down a bit and strategies are less worked out, however this also doesn't affect how games play out that much.
However I'd say a lot of new strategies aren't being developed because of culture as well. Just look at the top foreigners in BW, they were highly creative in comparison to the Koreans. Strategic play is under-valued in Korean Starcraft, and its obvious when a rookie such as Reality played strategic against Titans like Jaedong, Jaedong played like a D rank scrub. Or even look at Jangbi's OSL run.
Now we are getting the clashes of two cultures together, and don't forget the constant patching is also changing the game the way its played a lot. I could imagine if Blizzard never patched, and we only had the GSL, that things would be a lot more stagnant. Its tantamount to BW's game design, that even when the same strategies are being used, it still produces sick games more than 10 years from its inception.
A lot of it has to do with what ver said, I could go further to say there is also a problem with single-role (hence gimmicky) units. You shouldn't need 10 vikings for the sole purpose of taking down colossus, what other purpose does making that many vikings serve? What's worse is that if you decide to do a drop with them, you have to use them all because of warp-in, and if you lose them, you lose the game because you can't snipe colossus.
Lets look at a similar scenario. SKTerran vs Zerg, requires a lot of science vessels to control lurker/defiler/ultra numbers. Already I can use this unit against 3 other units in a normal army comp (I don't include guardians or broodlords), not 1. Second of all if I make too many, I can spread them out and harass bases with erasers (irradiate my vessels and erase drones). Or I can keep them for defense matrix instead of irradiate.
Issue is that Protoss and Zerg struggle to produce viable pokes and prods that don't overcommit. Low damage output of Protoss and Zerg drops relative to the investment necessary to execute them makes them not as popular, and the existence of Fungal, Concussive, and Forcefields means that engagements are always forced. No backing off. Terran doesn't have this issue, what with MM and Hellion drops and Banshees. What this means is that games against Terran turn into the non-Terran race essentially turtling while Terran attacks, and that PvZ is BOTH races holding back until one of them hits a timing. Deathball and all-in play, essentially. Can be very dull.
I kind of agree with you (OP). This is why player like Boxer do not put the results they used to do imo. I think the time and expensions will help but that's just a suposition.
It's true that they were rarely maxed army in BW. And fights all over the place. You can't see some crazy stuff like "allied mines" or "invicible marine" in SC2. But i think we will see some of it later in their own form.
But that's true that i want to watch some SC2BW tournaments because it's horrible to watch BW on a 40" screen. Brood War was just crazier overhall. But i like SC2 too.
On November 23 2011 17:46 Adreme wrote: I understand the citing of the Boxer vs Rain game at MLG as an example of boring late game TvT but the problem is theyd didnt play it right. I think that was one of the first pro level games where pure mech transitioned into seige tank/sky terran and Boxer honestly did not seems like he had a feel for it(a statement that he would later give in an interview said much the same).
Rain had a slightly better understanding of what to do in the situation but wishing no offense to the man did not execute it very well. The ghost nuke to push back the tanks and gain territory was quite well done and was clearly the correct choice in that situation but the fact that he only did that while turtling an air army instead of for example nuking both fronts and taking the position you gain faster. Though at the time it looked a little like "hmm let me try this...oh its working let me keep doing it" the other late game sky terran TvTs are signifigantly more action packed than there predecessors.
But you're discussing their play once they switched to heavy air. I was more referring to the turtle vs turtle mech play that led to them going air, because the ground was entirely locked down.
EPT
