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Hello,
This is CrazyJim, a #1 ladder in both Broodwar and Starcraft Van back in 1998-1999 as Protoss and Terran. I was a top zerg too, but didn't enjoy the feel as much as P/T.
I quit Broodwar in the end of 1999 because of win trades, hackers, and was so upset, I studied how to stop this. I emailed blizzard back in the day talking about a "Player police tool to report possible offenders, and arranged match making system." I wasn't aware tournaments were even going on in Korea for years. I thought hackers and win traders killed the game. I was playing Asheron's Call and selling loot on ebay : ) I was the guy who wrote the original macro bots that got people automatically playing the MMO when they slept so when they woke up they had more experience/skills.
I got the Broodwar remastered, but did not like it and I'll explain why:
#1 Small maps or at least rush distances are imperative to keep early pressure on your opponent so they don't do what everyone does in Starcraft 2 of making 3 bases, 200 supply army while defending and drinking an iced tea. Ask casters like Nathanias why he doesn't play SC2 much anymore. It ain't fun to just mine out the whole map for an hour or more and win.
The rush is integral for Starcraft's tech system and macro system to be limited. No pressure, and you have infinite tech and macro. Game designers take things to extremes to weigh if it is good or bad. Imagine a map 20x as big as the largest map you ever played. Would you open the game cutting probes and send your first zealot wandering around for 15 minutes scouting? Nah, you just take like 5 bases while teching like a mad man. That ain't Starcraft. Large maps in 1v1 is one reason why I don't like SC2 and one reason SC1 is not as fun for me any more.
#2 Spider cannons(aka spider mines). Spider mines should be Destroyable by 1 Dragoon almost 100% of the time if the Dragoon is nearby. Right now, Vultures can launch spider cannons right at dragoons to such effect that if the Dragoon does not micro like a crazed idiot, the 75 mineral unit decisively wins vs the 125 mineral 50 gas unit designed to counter Vulture's basic attack type.
The problem is that you combine the longer rush distances we had back in 1998 like River Styx to these 6 player yolo maps, and no one is doing the t1 6marine+4scv vs 3-4 zealot dances anymore. It is almost a universally bad game design to have a higher tier tech be so op that people skip lower tech to rush to it and it always be the right choice. So people are skipping out on zealots and rines, cuz spider cannons are so flippin op.
Solution: Spider mines should be armed with +2 to 3 second burrowing and +2 second before arming when burrowed. In this manner cannot be used "IN YO FACE" offensively.
Terran would take a hit in power, so you'll need to buff them elsewhere. I have a really detailed rundown of how to do this, but it'd make this post too spammy, and besides, I wouldn't trust modern Blizzard to balance a bicycle let alone a brush up a masterpiece.
#3 Faster/Fastest. People think the faster the game, the more skill it takes, right? Wrong. Imagine if the game was 100000x faster than it is now. Then by their logic, it'd take more skill, but the way to win would just be to rally probes to every starting position with attack move. GG. No Re.
When I played on Fast, I literally built my base at the EXACT same time I microed very large battles. The technique was to trick their focus into the battle and slowly retreat , but stay stickied to them so they needed to pay attention. By choosing the ebb and flow of battle with your base building, extended nonsense battles normally meant they had nothing built in base. Of course this was conditional on the game state, but it was super powerful.
Now when fastest came around, people just focused on cranking out army, then chose when to come all in and attack like nubs. I still won a lot on fastest/faster, but it was really a lower skill level game. Just like larger maps is a lower skill cap game. Just like all the rush defense they put in SC2 makes it a lower skill cap game.
These are the problems I see with Modern Broodwar vs 1998 broodwar. Broodwar is still kinda an okay game. But bring back fast mode, or at least just small maps, and nerf spider cannons, and I'd actually play the beast again.
,CrazyJim
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#StarCraftVan
#bringbackfastmode
#nerfspidercannons
I have to believe that this individual has never actually seen modern Brood War FPV because if they see a top Korean player hitting 300 APM and managing multiple bases and armies on fastest and their take-away is "meh, lower skill cap game, bring back fast speed" then that makes it just too painfully obvious that their opinion means nothing at all and is just nostalgia. Actually, it could still be that either way. Oh wait, it is.
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I think we should go back to the original beta implementation of mines, where they weren't required to burrow at all before chasing enemies. Vultures are limited to only 3 mines ever, why shouldn't those mines be as powerful as a reaver scarab?
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Whats your ladder rank now tho
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Katowice25012 Posts
Hi Jim, thank you for the share! Did you experience any crazy miracles while playing Starcraft Van or Broodwar?
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Not sure if this is a very well crafted troll post or 100% serious. Either way though, amazing post. Thanks for sharing your insights!
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Uh, one of the great thing about broodwar is the non rock-paper-scissor balance that very few games achieve. Having vultures able to deal with dragoons in a battle of micro is absolutely necessary for it not to become stale like early SC2. Hard to say if your post is serious tbh.
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On October 22 2021 02:58 Essbee wrote:
Uh, one of the great thing about broodwar is the non rock-paper-scissor balance that very few games achieve. Having vultures able to deal with dragoons in a battle of micro is absolutely necessary for it not to become stale like early SC2. Hard to say if your post is serious tbh.
It's 100% serious, the problem is that it is 100% seriously stupid.
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United States10328 Posts
Thanks for your perspective, CrazyJim.
(1) I haven't been following very closely recently, but in the past there have definitely been maps in the map pool with short rush distance, but they often had major balance issues. It's also likely that with a short enough rush distance, rush builds would become by far the dominant strategy on that map, leading to less variety in the games played there. Modern maps are certainly created with macro in mind, but I think on most of them, early-game aggression is still a viable tactic to pull off (especially in a multi-game series).
It would be interesting to think of ways to create maps that promote aggressive early-game strategies while still allowing the possibility of an interesting late-game macro situation, though.
(2) Good luck getting a balance patch on the game 23 years in... 
(3) As you say, it's probably easier for us old people to optimally perform actions on a slower game speed, but I think understanding how difficult it is to have the APM to play the game at the highest level gives us a better appreciation for what the top players do. Plus, Fastest has been standard for 20+ years now, so I doubt anyone's going to seriously consider anything different for competitive play. (Maybe we can have an "old grandpa" league )
Edit:
When I played on Fast, I literally built my base at the EXACT same time I microed very large battles. The technique was to trick their focus into the battle and slowly retreat , but stay stickied to them so they needed to pay attention. By choosing the ebb and flow of battle with your base building, extended nonsense battles normally meant they had nothing built in base. Of course this was conditional on the game state, but it was super powerful.
Pros do this, you know!
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I think I may actually remember a CrazyJim on ladder during that time. Liquid`Drone you remember that name as well?Your memory has always been so good.
Remember that little icon we got for laddering back then? It was made up of stars and numbers, as I recall.
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On October 22 2021 03:28 TeamThinkQuick wrote:
I think I may actually remember a CrazyJim on ladder during that time. Liquid`Drone you remember that name as well?Your memory has always been so good.
Remember that little icon we got for laddering back then? It was made up of stars and numbers, as I recall.
You can see Drone's input on the matter here:
https://tl.net/blogs/579684-anyone-remember-me-crazyjimim-making-a-mmorpg
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Thanks Jealous. Hey all matters of skill and who is best aside, we all love(d) this game, which is what's important. Good teenage memories and fun, right?
You guys remember the gaming community was so big back then that a large number of people didn't actually play BW (the expansion). I know because I switched back and forth from BW and SC original. Some of you might remember the channel toyland for SC players back then. Ah nostalgia ;-)
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Man you played on fast mode with a 56k modem... That was the worst ladder time ever created by mankind.
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interesting, cool
always got a feeling that fastest wasn't as good as fast back in the day also, although I imagine the main drawback is that the very early game (first 2-3 minutes) may feel a bit slow/long but.. that's ok
it would actually likely relieve any health problems as well for players who play a lot for a long time
of course blizzard abandonning ladder (which you had to play on fast) to hackers meant the quick death of it which got taken over by WGT and stuff, and then basically by warcraft 3 shortly after
I had a similar feeling with skipping T1 to higher techs being a bad removal of possibilities in War3 as it suffered the same type of issue, and also in BW ofc macro games tend to happen a lot due to closed in nat being required to balance nowadays. Also agree blizzard probably aint gonna balance a bicycle etc
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On October 22 2021 02:34 tec27 wrote:
I think we should go back to the original beta implementation of mines, where they weren't required to burrow at all before chasing enemies. Vultures are limited to only 3 mines ever, why shouldn't those mines be as powerful as a reaver scarab?
they cost 75minerals 2 supply and the tech to them is also cheaper : P and mines also don't individually cost any minerals. Also they miss less : P etc. I mean sure vultures are OP for their cost in that regard, there isn't a statistical balance problem in PvT but P can barely attack T at all till 200/200 and mines are part of the reason eheh
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I've been advocating to try BW at "Faster" speed before and CrazyJim has made a good point I hadn't thought of.
While the skill-level has increased exponentially since the beginnings, it's not like players today or in the Kespa-era were playing BW to its full potential. I think there's a lot of layers in the game that could be brought out better if game-speed was reduced.
The problem is that today's play and maps are also based on much longer game-times than in the early stages of SC and BW. This relates to CrazyJim's point about map sizes and rush distances. It has become "cheese" and "all-in" to rush, while it was the norm 20 years ago.
What bores me about today's game is that it has become more predictable. In most matchups some sort of fast expansion-variation is a must. Except ZvZ almost all games are based on heavy worker-production after the very early-game. Often I find matches unwatchable in the first 7 minutes, because basically nothing's happening.
The low-economy style based on harassment and constant pressure has become extinct and that's a great loss. It was very entertaining to watch and play it.
(I think it's one of the main reasons why Boxer and BW got so famous in the first place.)
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You could almost predict that playing BW on fastest would be too fast after trying Warcraft 2 on the fastest speed, it's hilariously fast! You have no chance to control half of what goes on in battle haha. The fastest speed in these games seemed to have been included by blizz as a way to play a quicker game but not as the best default speed to play at. It's not called "normal" after all. But war3 wasn't really like that..
Guess they figured players would default to the fastest proposed speed so they toned it done more appropriately.
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Well sieged tanks are permanently stickied, so thats my cue to macro ^^
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EPT
