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I fail to see how SC2 lacks micro. Sure it is not the weird micro BW has, like muta stacking or drone drilling, but I've seen a Lot of melee unit micro to get free hits.
On top of any "normal" micro that also existed in BW, we now have waypoint queues for spellcasting and load/unload (the better you micro these, the most time you get for macroing... and scouting, since it's much harder to keep your scout alive now). Other than that we have a bunch of micro-rewarding strategies for all races:
Terran has offensive bunker&turret construction + salvage, Protoss can bring in a phase prism that will have to keep switching modes with an army for warp-ins, Zerg has to keep the creep-pouring overlords in extremely good positioning in order to support the army and not become too vulnerable.
And those are just examples, there's a crapload of micro-intensive strategies in this game, even if they are not glitchy by nature.
Also I noticed that many units can be quite dumb on which target to pick (i.e. immortals attacking zealots and not the colossuses, Vikings firing on banshees instead of BCs...), you need to use that attack queue to ensure that each unit type will target the ones it does good damage against, and you need to keep remaking the attack queues if the opponent retreats the right units. You obviously can't do this with one giant group selected.
So yeah, even if SC2 turns out to have no exploitable glitches, as long as it rewards good unit micro it'll be great. Just look at those move>siege>attack queues used with siege tanks, if you can't call that a "visually impressive micro", I wonder what does.
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You are all saying "oh but sooner or later people are gonna discover ways to micro the units!"
Yeah right, how are you supposed to boxer micro Colossi or Thors?
Starcraft 2 micro seems to revolve more around focus firing than actually moving the units...
Another big flaw of SC2 in my opinion is the rock-paper-scissor gameplay. Immortals, Colossi... it just seems like some units were made specifically to hard-counter another unit
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Norway28895 Posts
On March 03 2010 02:48 starcraft911 wrote:Show nested quote + I can confidently say that I am already a better Starcraft 2 player than I was a Starcraft 1 player in early 2000 I liked the overall article, but I think that's pretty strange you would come up with that assessment I've quoted. Seems a bit early to say this. I can count on one hand the number of times people have upgraded their units attack/armor. When they do it's almost always air dmg for warp rays. I've faced ultras probably 15 times and guess what, they've been 0-0 EVERY time. I have a 64% win ratio in SC1 at A-/A rank as Z and a 61% at A- as T. I have a 93% win ratio playing random in SC2. I don't think you can compare your abilities effectively between SC1 and SC2. You're basically stomping noobs right now. I really have no memorable losses where it was a close game. I've lost to being totally dumb and trying to tripple hatch and losing to void ray timings, I've lost to my internet/computer dying, I've lost games not realizing what units counter what, but I think once I got a firm grasp on what each unit was it's been smooth sailing on the noob basher express. It's not SC2's fault though. Every beta is like this. Pillars is one of the people I see in every obscure RTS beta and he does very well in every RTS beta because he is a strategist and most people who pickup a new beta can't keep up with him.
I think this segment might not make sense to you if you did not play starcraft at the very beginning. you are correct about the strategic aspect - I had a better grasp of strategy after the first two years of starcraft than I have of the beta at the moment. but the execution is not even close. I was not a world class player at this time, but I beat players like NTT (granted this was probably more like 2001 or 2002), everlast and zileas. however, I used a trackball (ridiculously horrible for gaming), and probably had around 80 APM. I didn't hotkey my buildings, and not always my units.
Playing starcraft 2, I already have a great hotkey setup, I really understand the importance of economy, my micro and macro are both a LOT better than my micro and macro was at starcraft in early 2000. strategy is significantly less important than mechanics.
either way, yes, I can't with complete accuracy compare my abilities between sc1 and sc2, but my point was merely that the general skill level has increased tremendously. I am pretty certain that if someone with virtually no RTS experience (which was the case for most people during the early days of starcraft) played me in the starcraft 2 beta right now, I would win 50 games in a row, even while sharing vision. this isn't even strange - I have played starcraft for a couple thousand hours. if you slightly alter the rules but keep the framework in place, this gives me an enormous benefit.
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On March 03 2010 04:10 Cheezy wrote:
You are all saying "oh but sooner or later people are gonna discover ways to micro the units!"
Yeah right, how are you supposed to boxer micro Colossi or Thors?
Starcraft 2 micro seems to revolve more around focus firing than actually moving the units...
Another big flaw of SC2 in my opinion is the rock-paper-scissor gameplay. Immortals, Colossi... it just seems like some units were made specifically to hard-counter another unit
How you can micro colossi? Making sure that their aoe that is a line hits as many units as possible. Positioning is very important. If you hit the enemy from the wrong angle they can be a lot less effective. Also if you are near a cliff you can hit and run up/down the cliff vs units with shorter range or melee units. Kind of how people micro carriers over cliffs in BW. Also the positions where you chose to attack or defend can be influenced by where there are cliffs. A group of colossi with upgraded range on a cliff are extremely powerful vs a ground army. Also if your opponents army is mainly composed of units that only attack ground then microing the colossus together with a phase prism might be a good idea.
All that is only one unit. Now look at units like Sentries, Ghosts, Ravens, Banelings, Pheonixes etc. and tell me there is no possible opportunity for micro.
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Good read, enjoyed it, hope for the best
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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  TBH, I don't think Blizzard will be able to make SCII as good as BW on purpose. It's up to the players to discover clever ways of exploiting "mistakes" in the game.
I definitely think this is true, but with 2 expansions coming out it will be a long time before "glitches" or "mistakes" become a staple of the meta game and are left alone by Blizzard.
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Ah, that makes more sense to me. I understand what you meant. I did play SC from day one, but I played WC2 before that so I was used to playing at an uncomfortably fast pace prior to playing SC.
Also I threw up a little in my mouth when I saw the mention of Zileas. I remember him refusing to play me any map other than Dire. I'm pretty sure he defined the term one hit wonder for Starcraft.... The mention of NTT counteracted my throw up reflex though so I'm still good.
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Norway28895 Posts
well, I beat zileas zvp on dire straits and lost zvp lost temple 
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good read 
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I enjoyed the read.
And i am pretty sure that, give it a few years, that game is gonna be the way we all want it to be.
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Excellent post.
The only thing i dont like so far in SC2 are the sounds.
Other than that, I love it as much as BW
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Very nice read. I'm more impressed by Liquid'Drone's ability to write so well than by the what you can read. :D
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On March 03 2010 06:12 Art.FeeL wrote:
Very nice read. I'm more impressed by Liquid'Drone's ability to write so well than by the what you can read. :D
lol same. I can read many pages of writing before getting board(haven't even started HS yet so thats pretty good for me)and at the same time remember the info. I only have to go back and re-read stuff every once in a while but never more than once or twice.
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Eri-the-feared, how bout that tvt on Dire Straits. vanilla
Quite pleasant and nostalgic read, thanks. I envy your uncanny memory :D
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great article, i really enjoyed it
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On March 02 2010 16:03 samachking wrote:
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.
I have very similar experience with SC
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amazing articles, great read
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On March 03 2010 04:10 Cheezy wrote:
You are all saying "oh but sooner or later people are gonna discover ways to micro the units!"
Yeah right, how are you supposed to boxer micro Colossi or Thors?
Colossi has been answered. About the Thors: Medivac. Similar to how you micro that BW slow but extremely powerful unit called the Reaver fyi.
I find the rock-paper-scissors-like unit designs good, as they make mixes of troops generally stronger than mass 1 kind of unit (and the latter strat will always have a speed advantage over the first).
And of course positioning and movement is as important as before. It will always be as long as the units have a wide variety of size, movement speed, range and area of effect.
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Man I wish they would have made a totally new game.
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Quality OP. I enjoyed reading it immensely. Thx very much.
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EPT
