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In fact, some of the greatness of competing in Starcraft stems from being able to overcome the faults of the AI. Goons killing mines they can’t spot (and often not doing so because they’re dumb – which is why watching someone do it flawlessly is great), vultures jumping past pylons because their pathing gets screwed up for a second when they lay mines, building pylons outside an opponent’s gateway right before his goons spawn because they follow a predictable spawn-pattern which cannot be decided by the player controlling the gateways. The usefulness of Mutalisks suddenly multiplied when someone accidentally noticed that you could stack them if you had them hotkeyed together with a far-away unit. These are all examples of unintentional manipulation of a flawed AI which enabled players to pull of awesome moves. (Not to toot my own horn too hard. )
all so true
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Great post by Drone. I agree on most parts, though I still feel a lack in unit dynamics, ie. how they interact with each other during battle.
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On March 02 2010 09:49 synapse wrote:Haha the fact that "glitches" like muta-stacking make the game so much more intense reminds me of gunz 
Haha "GunZ The Duel", oh i really miss that game, slashot, half step, butterfly, what a good times were those sniff sniff ;_;
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Norway28706 Posts
On March 02 2010 11:28 Chillz wrote:
It's good to remember those days of Starcraft's initial release. You have a much better memory than I do!
this is actually pretty funny - and I guess a little disheartening
I still remember my first game of starcraft, which was now almost 12 years ago.
not everything of course, but a lot of details, like map, starting locations, losing reavers vs zerglings and thinking reavers were crappy specifically against zerglings, not mining out my main base for 30 minutes despite not losing any probes.
I don't remember my first game of starcraft 2 beta, not whom it was against, not the matchup, not the map or the starting locations, even though that was 5 days ago.
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thanks so much, this was nice. You have the heart of a critic.
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Eri's pylon prison was fucking awesome, there, I pointed the obvious!
This was a great read!
I feel that harcore BW fans are a little confused about what they want. There will never be another game just like Starcraft, it is too unique.
I think instead we should be expecting another brilliant strategy game, which will be something more of a game with it's own flavor than a remake of perfection
Should we compare Sc2 to SC? I think not, at least not for a few years. What we should expect, and help Blizzard create, is an amazing strategy game that is surely superior to, let's say, WC3 for example.
Great Read!
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I always thought that, in a vacuum, most of the micro tricks in SC1 aren't so hard either. Maybe it's hard to figure them out, but once someone shows them to you, it's not VERY hard to make a clump of mutas, or jump your vulture across a pylon. What's hard is doing those things while you're multitasking 10 other things, and making the correct strategic decisions about when you should do them.
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Awesome read, eri so baller!
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Good read Was fun playing with you riptide
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Disregarding content completely (and of course that was great too), that was great writing, Drone. Kudos.
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I still disagree that the flashy micro from SC:BW was entirely dependent on bad pathing/glitches.
In some cases that is true (mutas) but in other cases I think it has to do with the way the unit was designed. A vulture needs flashy micro because it is very fast, very weak, and shoots in large intervals. This means that you can kill infinite zealots with proper micro, but will lose a one on one battle with a zealot with no micro. All of that has nothing to do with pathing or glitches, just the way the unit was designed. If you put a vulture into SC2, I am sure it would work in a very similar fashion.
That is what I hope to see from SC2, units whose effectiveness is only maximized with proper micro. I think a lot of units have a whole lot of potential from this perspective (like the hellion) but a lot of them are also kinda boring from this perspective.
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Very good read. Makes me feel a whole lot better about sc2!
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That was a very interesting read. I can't wait to try out the macro aspect of SC2!
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Very nice read there. I loved both you guys insight on the games. On the release of SC1 I can just state that I remember playing it in 1.0 on a good old 33Mhz Pentium with Speed Button to boost it to 66Mhz. That were the good old times. :D I remember seeing the games lag as it was, at that time, state of the art in graphics. Oh my god, was that really so long ago?
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Baltimore, USA22256 Posts
Insanely interesting read, from both of you. Major props, guys. 
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Excellent write up, definetly my favorite one so far. I loved it. This is the kind of article that makes me sad that I never stepped into Bnet with BW in 2001/2002 when I first played SC + BW. I dont even know what made me pick up the game again in jan 2007(before SC2 was announced by 3-4 months) and played campaign once more then stepped into bnet, and it was one hell of a ride so far.
Thanks Drone/Waxangel
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Excellent read...."the TeamLiquid staff will continue to flog themselves for nothing" LOL
We salute you TL team!
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Well i have to disagree with that the unit AI is to good, if you group all your units in your group one and a move your positioning will be screwed up beyond repair(for example take protoss where your stalkers will be blocking off your zealots while getting raped). Sure it won't be to difficult to get proper positioning, but with the units clumping up like they do in sc2 you'll have to deploy proper micromanagement of army positioning as well.[edit: in warcraft 3 the unit AI has no glitches at all, but the micro in warcraft 3 is pretty impressive if you do it well, and those army's are way smaller)
And as for starcraft1 glitches and ai bugs making the game great, have to disagree with that as well. The reason the game is great is because people have been figuring out new variations on strategies for the last 12 years and the game hasn't become to stale yet. The strategies have very little to do with the mechanics, seeing as all the good professional players have mostly similar micro mechanics anyway. For instance, no zerg player on an a team will not be muta stacking because it's to difficult.
At least, thats what i think.
The read was great though, even if i don't wholely agree with the analysis! Thanks for giving me something to read/write on this drudgy tuesday morning.
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Another awesome article As a SC & SC:BW beta tester I can totally relate to what you write about the early days. I'm enjoying SC2B as well but I fear they will have to settle for 2nd best RTS of all time. Which is disappointing but then again: deep down we probably already knew this.
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EPT
