My opinion about SC2 so far comes from watching streams and reading other people's opinions on TL.
I do perceive that SC2's intelligent unit movement and AI, unlimited unit selection (to a smaller degree), and hands-off style unit mechanics (or non-mechanics) have together been the death of some integral ingredient of what made SC so entertaining and athletic. Very high levels of athleticism are truly thrilling to watch and, from my experience with other computer games that I have actually been good at, to execute. For an example of what I mean by 'entertaining and athletic' refer to this: . The recent game between Stork and Jaedong in the Proleague is amazingly entertaining. Watching someone like Bisu carry out harass at 3 locations simultaneously on top of managing his macro tasks is frankly more impressive and fun to watch than any sport out there. The high level that Starcraft is played at nowadays, unparalleled in any computer game ever, took a decade to reach.
So far SC2 streams have shown many rather short, anticlimactic games (by comparison to SC) from whomever happens to be streaming. No one is really all that good right now, and this isn't a surprise as the game has only been out for 2 weeks. A lot of games seem to consist of a period of no action followed by a handful of engagements in which two large armies gliding seamlessly across the map in perfect formation quickly line up to trade volleys. They stay lined up in this way until one army is gone. Overly simple unit mechanics and the fact that units don't require attention and time in order to function well at all as part of your army (the way that defilers, lurkers, vessels, tanks, vultures, etc did) means that there is almost no variation in what an engagement between two armies of any given race will look like in SC2--i.e. 'boring'. In SC however, many interesting features of an engagement between two armies emerge as a result of each army consisting of a combination of units, each type of which has its own mechanics (and at this point we may as well be clear that unintelligent AI counts as a unit mechanic). These games are clearly far less entertaining and athletic than a close, high level game of SC. The graphics in particular in SC2 are really nice and really fun to watch though.
But it is really obvious that the current lack of knowledge and metagame about timings, build orders, unit counters, etc is a big part of why early games of SC2 will not be as great as games of SC today. Also, there is currently no one anywhere near as skilled as a top Korean SC progamer streaming SC2 beta games.
My point is that the army micromanagement essential to what made SC so exciting as a spectator sport and to play seems to be largely gone. However, this one loss does not necessarily mean that SC2 will not someday be on par with SC when it comes to being 'entertaining and athletic'. In what I would guess would be a period of a few years, we may see a game that has been developed very far the way that SC was. If SC2, once it is developed, turns out to be as entertaining and athletic as SC is, I speculate that it will be due to very high levels of multitasking. In a sense, the APM once used for micro in SC may be redirected towards multitask such that there is a comparable return in excitement for the spectator or player. I'm imagining multi harass a la Bisu, or the possibility for multiple 'normal' (i.e. non harassment) battles to occur across the map. Simultaneous 'normal' battles was something that we did not see in SC but that SC2's decreased room for micro may allow for. And the result of this may be that SC2 is on par with SC in awesomeness.
Continuing with this speculation, it is possible that the potential for increased multitask in SC2 relative to SC to return a similar level of excitement for the spectator may be dampened by limitations on an observer to follow all of the action. However, I'm not sure that it makes sense to say that an observer is too limited to follow all of the multitasking that a player is capable of executing since the demands for observing are almost certainly less than those required by the player to execute all of the multitask.
Also, since the OP claims that a similar amount of APM to SC is being used by players playing SC2 currently, it may be that we will not be seeing the hyper multitasking about which I'm speculating, in which case (barring some other source of entertainment and athleticism) SC2 may just never be as great as SC.
Either way, the unit mechanics of SC will certainly be missed.
I think many people have a bias against things they put in a bucket called 'bugs' or 'glitches'. If something enhances the game (like many bugs from SC1 did) then it enhances the game and it's good. I don't care if it's a feature or a bug. I realize that a lot of these bugs and UI limitations make it a lot harder for newbies, but they also are what create a long lasting game that's played for decades rather than months.
I dunno, I'm not expressing this very well. I come mostly from FPS games and I do not like any FPS games today because they took away game enhancing bugs. I realize that the reason they do it is probably because the more things like this that exist in a game, the harder it is for newbies to get into it. But it seems to me that many of you just put something in the category of bug (and therefore either bad or shouldn't be replicated) if it's not realistic, and I think that's a mistake. Where in the real world does it say that Bishops must move diagonally at all times? It's a game, it doesn't have to be real, it needs to be fun and deep. If that means making the game super realistic then fine, if that means adding or leaving in bugs that people find fun and deep, that's also fine. I see no reason to suspect that the particular physics of our universe and quirks of our technology form a basis for the best possible game.
in the original post u said sc1 has no equals in rts , and then u say sc2 is alot better , well this is not logical , btw those bugs from sc1 and the things that the players found out makes the game so balanced , u can say it was dumb luck it cam out this way and the patches i played a lot of the early rts's warcraft 2, total anihilation , kknd,red alert, and so one but the reason they all dissapeard was that they didn't have the balance of sc1 and after broodwar , except wc3 i really don't recall any strategy game (maybe c&c and red alert sequels who nobody played) , cause the publishers where two scared , that they can not achieve balance so from this fact i conclude that it's a 1 in a milion rts games that can achieve balance betwen races, sc2 was delayed and will be delayed for a long time imo , cause they can't leave up to hour expectation (those of us who played or are playing sc1) , also if u say that after 5 days u are better sc2 player then sc1 then something is not right so finaly , i think sc2 will be a game that will take your eys away (every kid will like it ,cause it's new and shiny), but in terms of gameplay , and balance will fail
p.s i would really like to see a remake to starcraft 1 keeping everithing as it is , just puting sc2 graphics ,maybe that will prove something to blizzard
On March 03 2010 22:34 Kincs wrote: in the original post u said sc1 has no equals in rts , and then u say sc2 is alot better , well this is not logical , btw those bugs from sc1 and the things that the players found out makes the game so balanced , u can say it was dumb luck it cam out this way and the patches i played a lot of the early rts's warcraft 2, total anihilation , kknd,red alert, and so one but the reason they all dissapeard was that they didn't have the balance of sc1 and after broodwar , except wc3 i really don't recall any strategy game (maybe c&c and red alert sequels who nobody played) , cause the publishers where two scared , that they can not achieve balance so from this fact i conclude that it's a 1 in a milion rts games that can achieve balance betwen races, sc2 was delayed and will be delayed for a long time imo , cause they can't leave up to hour expectation (those of us who played or are playing sc1) , also if u say that after 5 days u are better sc2 player then sc1 then something is not right so finaly , i think sc2 will be a game that will take your eys away (every kid will like it ,cause it's new and shiny), but in terms of gameplay , and balance will fail
p.s i would really like to see a remake to starcraft 1 keeping everithing as it is , just puting sc2 graphics ,maybe that will prove something to blizzard
I am sorry but it seems you were not able to fully comprehend my post.
I said sc1, the way it has been for the last 2-3-4-5-6-7~something years, has no equal. but starcraft 2 is already a lot better than starcraft 1 was when starcraft 1 was released. if people were aware of a game as great as starcraft 1 is today, and starcraft 1 had been re-released and people had to play vanilla sc with the 1.00 patch without bw units with the old maps played back then etc.. nobody would even contemplate changing.
basically the gist of my post is ; bw wasn't built in one day. we can't expect sc2 to be great from the beginning, because no multiplayer games are.
i'm fully aware that sc1 was made in like 3,4 years, and after that 8 more of hardcore gaming,i'm just saying i don't think sc2 will achieve what sc1 did ,considering it was so much luck involved imo in that sc1 became the game we know today
and of course sc2 beta is a lot better then it was sc1 beta, common we have rocket technology now , and 12 years in developing starcraft, ofcourse sc2 was born with new technology and a lot of things learned from sc1 (it's normal , it's not something to cheer for !)
p.s what u say about the idea of a sc1 with sc2 graphics ? (if it is even possible to transpose everything into 3d whithout ruining it)
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 could be wrong, but I think that while the new queue system reduces the need for some micro, it also adds a lot of micro capability to the game.
If I can do simple stuff like select roaches, burrow them, move them to the back of my army, and unborrow them all in one queue order (not that I could micro that well at the moment, just started playing SC2). Imagine what the pros can do.
Maybe I'm wrong, I just think that it adds a ton of potential in terms of micro. A really talented player could probably do twice as many things at once in SC2 as they could in SC1.
It's not like the micro skills that exist now were anywhere to be seen when SC1 first came out. I'm sure cool little tricks will be discovered in SC2.
Not sure if this deems meritable under this article, but this is what I thought while reading it, after a long day of work, and a couple cocktails.... I know I am going to be flamed/or i am flaming (i am not sure of this terminology), but sc2 seems great, it seems like its a great game. I dont have the beta, but I have been playing starcraft since 98-99. I just want to ask/say 1 thing. To me, starcraft 2 doesn't look like starcraft-but-better as a viewer, it looks like WC3-ish to me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure it looks a lot better playing it, and with a brand spanking new computer and all, but the raw element of the graphics/sound of starcraft are just not there in sc2. Just look at the drone in sc2 then look at wc3, then look at the drone in sc1. The same could be said about the minimap. Maybe I'm just scared of change for something I loved for so many years. Maybe. But I really appreciate an aricle like this, gives me a diff. mindset, to think of starcraft2 as a completely new game, don't even connect it with sc1. Looking at what sc2 is/will be, I probably will never stop playing sc1. It's just too perfect to me, in game play, even in shitty gritty graphics and all. I love it.
On March 04 2010 00:22 Kincs wrote: i'm fully aware that sc1 was made in like 3,4 years, and after that 8 more of hardcore gaming,i'm just saying i don't think sc2 will achieve what sc1 did ,considering it was so much luck involved imo in that sc1 became the game we know today
and of course sc2 beta is a lot better then it was sc1 beta, common we have rocket technology now , and 12 years in developing starcraft, ofcourse sc2 was born with new technology and a lot of things learned from sc1 (it's normal , it's not something to cheer for !)
p.s what u say about the idea of a sc1 with sc2 graphics ? (if it is even possible to transpose everything into 3d whithout ruining it)
You are aware rockets have been around for thousands of years right?
It's not the bugs or glitches so much as it was how units could move and be controlled. The glitches that pertained to unit movement is what made them so great (mineral-jumping, muta-clumping). SC2 units just don't handle the way SC1 units do, which is a shame.
It's like comparing an auto to a manual. Normal consumers prefer automatic transmission because it's more convenient, but others prefer manual transmission because it allows for more control and requires more "knowledge" to handle. Obviously manual transmission is a thing of the past, but why do professional drivers use manual transmission, I wonder?
Also I think overindulgence in unit mobility has to do with making army control boring, but there's already been a lot of discussion surrounding that and I think that ship has sailed, unfortunately.
On March 02 2010 14:32 petered wrote: 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.
Totally agree. To attribute most of SC micro to dumb AI is a bit unfair IMO. In fact I think 90% of the micro aspect of SC was pre determined by the geniuses at Blizzard.
EPT
Stork and 
Jaedong in the Proleague is amazingly entertaining. Watching someone like 
,cause it's new and shiny), but in terms of gameplay , and balance will fail
