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There were a few relatively fresh arguments in this thread but now we're pretty much back at the beginning again: anti-MBS insists that the game will inevitably be easier and less competitive, while pro-MBS is more open-minded and thinks about how the gameplay might change for the better.
Since this isn't going to change, I think it's time to stop caring about this discussion, and time to wait until beta or release.
If SC2 turns out to truly suck as a competitive game and Blizzard isn't going to do something about it, then SC1 still has a future.
But because I don't think so, I keep my opinion that we have the same situation as with WC2->SC1: many players complaining about the easier UI but then it turns out to be a refreshing new game experience which is just as competitive, and no one will ever want to look back again...
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Blizzard could at least give us the multiplayer demo with just 2 races that are pretty much finished now so we could test everything thoroughly and give more feedback, for now I can just quote one guy from gamer's hell: Until SC2 comes out I'll be playing AoX.
Manit0u signing out, thanks for listening.
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On November 17 2007 20:17 Brutalisk wrote:
There were a few relatively fresh arguments in this thread but now we're pretty much back at the beginning again: anti-MBS insists that the game will inevitably be easier and less competitive, while pro-MBS is more open-minded and thinks about how the gameplay might change for the better.
oh shut up. that argument is meaningless unless you put something concrete behind it, which you cant.
i think they should remove one of the races for sc2. sure it might make the game more one dimensional and boring for both the players and the fans, but they might add cool new units and abilities to the remaining races. players wouldnt have to spend time learning how to play vs a third race, so they could focus more on the two remaining races and perfect the matchups much more. overall that would make for more exciting, higher quality play. dont you agree?
there are any number of idiotic things that theoretically 'could' make the gameplay change for the better. unless you have solid reasoning behind HOW its gonna improve, its not worth talking about.
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On November 17 2007 10:49 teamsolid wrote:Beautiful post Tasteless, thanks for writing it. Although, I don't agree with some of the logic. What about CS or any other FPS? All of them are incredibly easy to get into and play. You just point and shoot. What about Kart Rider, the 2nd most popular televised game in Korea? You just drive. I think it's mainly the competitive human nature that drives the skill level of those games to such heights. Show nested quote +On November 17 2007 08:34 MyLostTemple wrote:
He is not just a strategist, he is a calculator (timing out his pylons), a piano player (macroing on his keyboard), a sword fighter (microing with his mouse), a poker player (choosing what openings to play, when to bluff etc), an economist (choosing how to utilize expos), a psychologist (analyzing the other players decisions) and many more things. Aspects such as these are what make this game appealing as a sport. He's still a calculator, a piano player (by microing w/keyboard), a sword fighter, a poker player, an economist and a psychologist even with MBS, assuming that Blizzard does a good job with the game.
Whoever "he" is, he's only a piano player as long as he has to move his hand like one ("Hand" Singular because it's the keyboard-hand only).
With the unit-selection-cap at 100-150 plus MBS he is definitely not a piano-player anymore. Most (~60-70%) actions for the keyboard-hand come from the 12-unit-selection-cap and from SBS. The rest comes from other macro actions and spell-casting and such. The worst thing possible for a game like SC/SC2: an inactive keyboard-hand. Why is that bad? Because of the competition. There's only one hand left to be really active, and our mind. What else?
All this makes me really sad. Blizzard is about to implement 4 features that all hurt the competition: extremely high unit-selection-cap (to keep the multitasking on a competitive level it must be somewhere below 20, maximum 20), MBS, automining, smartcasting. Only automining can be tolerated because it actually can be outbalanced, the rest cannot. May god bless them if they remove the other new features and make SC2 more qualitative. And no, it's not enough to remove just 1 or 2 of them. All or nothing, you can't fool the competition.
PS: CS is a bad example imo, lets take Quake 3/4 instead. That game actually takes skill for the keyboard-hand. And features like strafe-jumping make it an even more competitive game.
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CS is a muhc more succesfull game which would make it a much better example than Quake 3/4. Regardless I get a feeling that there is to much exageration in this thread because regardless of what Blizzard decides to do it won't kill the game. I just hope people will give the beta a fair chance. I
'm almost positive that we'll see one side screaming their balls of regardless of how the game actually plays but one can hope.
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That has been posted a 100 times already, get finished.
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On November 20 2007 03:33 Manit0u wrote:
Handspeed =/= skill
If being able to teach your hand to move extemely quickly over a keyboard and being able to consistentley hit the proper keys time after time isn't a skill... then what is it?
So the guy in the guiness book of world records for being able to type 180 words a minute doesn't have a skill?
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You guys are forgetting that SC2 is supposedly emphasizing mass units, which is the reason for the smoother controls to be able to handle the higher number of units you're going to be playing with.
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On November 20 2007 04:34 yangstuh wrote:
You guys are forgetting that SC2 is supposedly emphasizing mass units, which is the reason for the smoother controls to be able to handle the higher number of units you're going to be playing with.
SC also deals with mass units... from all accounts the games will have the same supply limit (200 food worth of units)
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No, I mean in a few interviews and previews they were mentioning a higher emphasis on mass units (look at the early zergling attack screenshot).
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Can you link a source? In the original Protoss demo, they said that SC2 "is still a game where massive armies fight massive armies" or something, but that is more directed at criticisms of War3 which focused on small armies. Can you link a different source than that?
edit: and the point is that it should be hard to control these masses of units, to create a bigger skill difference between players. It's much more impressive to be able to move 120 Zerglings without being able to select all of them...
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On November 20 2007 04:42 yangstuh wrote:
No, I mean in a few interviews and previews they were mentioning a higher emphasis on mass units (look at the early zergling attack screenshot).
watch a mass of zerglings in sc. the animations are just more active in sc2 so it looks like more of them swarming around. theyve said in interviews that theyre still holding the 200/200 supply cap.
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On November 20 2007 05:15 SoleSteeler wrote:
Can you link a source? In the original Protoss demo, they said that SC2 "is still a game where massive armies fight massive armies" or something, but that is more directed at criticisms of War3 which focused on small armies. Can you link a different source than that?
edit: and the point is that it should be hard to control these masses of units, to create a bigger skill difference between players. It's much more impressive to be able to move 120 Zerglings without being able to select all of them...
The devs mentioned it in some of their old video interviews.. its been a while so I don't remember where sorry.
The difference in skill is that the rookie player will "select all units and attack move," the good player will have many sub groups to perform flank maneuvers, guerrilla tactics, and terrain utilization. Its all relative.. in WC3 because of the emphasis on smaller armies (less units) and heroes.. most armies you handle can be completely selected. But naturally, the good players break their army up into sub groups so that you can execute more micro, maneuver, and tactical controls. Furthermore, there seems to be more abilities given to Starcraft2 units than before (passive or active).. which further emphasizes the importance of subgrouping units to more properly utilize their individual skills. In WC3 you had more fluid controls than SC, but this did not make WC3 more newb friendly, people failed to account for all the increase in skill needed for item management/heros/creeping/spells/leveling experience/etc..so it was a successful compromise.
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
yangstuh i don't see what this has to do with mbs, although i'm not to fond of the selection cap simply because it will make worker harassment much less effective. There wont be more units in the game than the original SC... the unit psi limit will remain the same, units in general won't be costing more or less psi so nothing will be different on that front. I also don't think there will be more special abilities in SC2, it seemed to have the same amount, just a few that were more interesting and could lead to more unique styles.
most of the Anti MBS crowd embrace the macro skills in SC and worry that SC2 will turn into War3 (way too much emphasis on micro) with no heros. There has also been no indication from blizzard as to what these 'new' features the gamer will be occupied with actually are. When i played it at blizzcon it was just a very easy version of Starcraft with new fancy units. That's not good. I'm worried Blizzard is making the same ignorant assumption Manit0u has made stating that hand speed is not a skill, or at least not one that should be incorporated with an esport. Every SC pro out there agrees that hand speed plays a large and important role in SC and they want it in the new game. There is something incredible about seeing a player who's entire brain is bound to his hands and can execute so many commands at once, and if we can keep that factor we'll have an awesome esport.
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My comment was in response to SoleSteeler's comment about skill. Thats all.
I'm pretty sure there are more abilities in Starcraft2.. zealot charge, ghost, high templar (maybe), and the battlecruiser just to name a few. And a lot of these new abilities were added in later.. as we have all seen through their weekly updates.
Anyways I'm not arguing againt hand speed =/= skill and whatnot.. I'm just saying there will be plunty of other new features/options/variables that will be available for pro/skilled players to utilize. Don't forget too.. people weren't playing in a competitive arena.. just against casual players.. of course its gonna be easy man.
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
On November 20 2007 06:47 yangstuh wrote:
My comment was in response to SoleSteeler's comment about skill. Thats all.
I'm pretty sure there are more abilities in Starcraft2.. zealot charge, ghost, high templar (maybe), and the battlecruiser just to name a few. And a lot of these new abilities were added in later.. as we have all seen through their weekly updates.
Anyways I'm not arguing against hand speed =/= skill and whatnot.. I'm just saying there will be plunty of other new features/options/variables that will be available for pro/skilled players to utilize. Don't forget too.. people weren't playing in a competitive arena.. just again casual players.. of course its gonna be easy man.
there may be a few more, but not so many that it will adequately replace the massive macro skills required in SC1. I also think, like many of the other proMBS people, your just asserting with no evidence whatsoever that there will be enough features for pro/skilled players to utilize. I definitely did not see enough.
I am well aware that there will be new players and non starcraft RTSers who want to pick this game up, that's why i've proposed keeping MBS and other setting that lower the skill celling as a setting rather than a feature that can not be toggled. This way we keep the competitive scene competitive and keep newbies happy.
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On November 20 2007 06:54 MyLostTemple wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2007 06:47 yangstuh wrote:
My comment was in response to SoleSteeler's comment about skill. Thats all.
I'm pretty sure there are more abilities in Starcraft2.. zealot charge, ghost, high templar (maybe), and the battlecruiser just to name a few. And a lot of these new abilities were added in later.. as we have all seen through their weekly updates.
Anyways I'm not arguing against hand speed =/= skill and whatnot.. I'm just saying there will be plunty of other new features/options/variables that will be available for pro/skilled players to utilize. Don't forget too.. people weren't playing in a competitive arena.. just again casual players.. of course its gonna be easy man. there may be a few more, but not so many that it will adequately replace the massive macro skills required in SC1. I also think, like many of the other proMBS people, your just asserting with no evidence whatsoever that there will be enough features for pro/skilled players to utilize. I definitely did not see enough. I am well aware that there will be new players and non starcraft RTSers who want to pick this game up, that's why i've proposed keeping MBS and other setting that lower the skill celling as a setting rather than a feature that can not be toggled. This way we keep the competitive scene competitive and keep newbies happy.
Of course we can't use any tangible evidence when the game hasn't been released or fully beta tested yet, we can only use assumptions based on past experiences, past games, and current tidbits of info we get. That goes for people who are anti this or pro that. I don't see the point in arguing over that fact.
WC3 made similar advancements and is a great game. The skill difference is huge..if you ever played WC3 ladder consistently. Its why people like 4kgrubby has 85%+ with 1000+ games in ladder while the vast majority of players are only 50% or less with that many games played. Its the full manifestation of blizzard's rule of game development: "easy to get into, hard to master." And I am pretty confident that SC2 is taking this even further.. making it easier to get into, but harder to master, this is based on how I perceive the progression of the game development through their updates. I mean just recently, they added creeps to expansion sites making it harder to expand.. they just keep adding in more variables.. I think that much is evident.
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On November 20 2007 06:47 yangstuh wrote:
My comment was in response to SoleSteeler's comment about skill. Thats all.
I know, but sometimes it's not necessary to do a ton of maneuvers with say, a large group of Zerglings, yes you will likely flank, you might separate your force in half (if it's just Zerglings) but overall, you want your force to "attack move". It'd be trivial if it only took a few clicks, instead of being able to only select 12 (or whatever) at once.
I really want Blizzard to show us all where the extra clicks are going to come in. That's why I'm reserving judgment until beta on the issue of MBS and other aspects they're simplifying....
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Why was SC1 at least as competitive, if not even more, than WC2, although the UI is easier?
Because gameplay was optimized/balanced for the new UI, and the gameplay got much more diverse.
Why shouldn't the same be true for SC2?
The UI is just a tool to control the game. The game respectively your opponent dictates the difficulty and the skill level needed to beat him.
About the zergling discussion: as has been said, if you want to flank properly, you must use several groups anyway. But if you want to move all of them then you should be able to select them all.
Just like Protoss can usually select his whole army with 1 or 2 clicks (because Protoss usually has the fewest units).
Anything else is not skill-based or great or whatever, it's just fucking tedious and results in many dead lings because no one, not even pros, can micro them well enough.
The SC1 UI restricts the players. It's not appropriate anymore for the high skill level nowadays. It was OK back in 1998 but we need a better UI now so that players can execute what they want properly.
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EPT
