As an old hand in the Starcraft community, Team Liquid has the unique opportunity of looking at SC2 through the eyes of Starcraft veterans. Today, we do just that. Last week, Waxangel took us back in time, and this week he's going to use that background to compare SCBW and SC2. Is the sequel more of the same? Is it better, or worse? Find out below.
Then, we're going to sit back and enjoy as Liquid`Drone enters the fray, playing non-stop since receiving a beta key so you guys can have insight from one of the SC community's oldest competitive players. Eriador has been around since SC 1.0, and really, what better way to look at SC2 at the moment than to compare it with how Broodwar looked in its infancy? Scroll right down for Starcraft: Then and Now.
First though, here's our Resident Korean #1 with Long Live the King
Long Live the King!
by Waxangel
After a hundred odd games of Starcraft II, I can say with certainty that it is very fun. I can also say to everyone who wanted Starcraft: BW – but better – it’s not gonna happen.
With Starcraft II, it looks like Blizzard has tried hard to make a game that’s a true successor to Brood War. That’s very different from Warcraft III, where they tried to do something fundamentally different from Warcraft II. As far as sequels go, Starcraft II is as un-innovative as they get. You mine resources almost the same way, there are many parallels between the units in both games, the damage/HP ratios are similar, the theory of map making is similar, etc. It’s practically an homage to Starcraft 1. All this similarity is intentional, because Brood War-but-better really is the goal. Unfortunately for Blizzard, with all their talent and power, that’s something they cannot achieve.
Sequels sown in succession, surely some should succeed?
Over ten years of successful competitive play have proved that Brood War isn’t your ordinary video game. Other games live out a robust two year life and are replaced by their sequels. Televised shows, professional gamers, and silly non-Koreans who play an ancient relic of a game prove that Brood War is something else completely. While Brood War might not yet compare to long-running competitions like chess or basketball, it has become one of those establishments that are defined by their immutability and permanence. Brood War is a game of such stature that it transcends succession.
Even the flaws are considered to be a venerable tradition. One big difference between Starcraft I and II is that the sequel is just too smart. Starcraft: Brood War is a game full of stupidity that you have to overcome through quick wits and fast hands. There are no alerts when dark templars one-hit your workers, melee units refuse to acquire targets intelligently, reavers will shoot duds when told to shoot the wrong targets, and a plethora of other annoying things happen on a regular basis. Yet, we enjoy overcoming these inconveniences, call it skill, and say that Starcraft II sucks because it’s not stupid.
An immortal says goodbye to its idiot cousin, the dragoon.
But I’m not saying Starcraft II sucks. It’s not even a matter of one game being better or worse, and beyond being objective or judging. It’s just the fact that there is a difference with the original at all. Starcraft 1 and 2 are like baseball and softball, rugby league and rugby union, or football and futsol. One may have inspired the other, but they should be treated as completely different games in competition. Forget the “Starcraft” in “Starcraft II,” and give it a shot on its own merits. Two means new, and nothing else.
Parallel competition is probably what will end up happening in Korea. The history of game leagues in Korea has shown us there is room for any amount of games as long as they are popular. Until they stop getting paid, the Brood War progamers will continue to play Brood War, OnGameNet will sell commercial time during Brood War games, and KeSPA will keep selling the broadcast rights they invented during a crack dream. In the meanwhile, the people who aren’t making money off of Brood War will see if they can make money off Starcraft II instead (the TeamLiquid staff will continue to flog themselves for nothing).
I was excited when I heard Starcraft II was coming out, but I didn’t know why. Now that I’ve tried the beta test, I realize that I was excited because I wanted to play another excellent Blizzard game. I never needed a sequel to Starcraft, because it was perfect all along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0NZam1V3L0&feature=player_embedded Being a Starcraft fan is the practice of taking amazing for granted.
Alrighty, it's time for more time travel. Let's go back to 1998, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and the mighty Eriador grazed the lush planes of Battle.net!
Starcraft: Then and Now
by Liquid`Drone
When Starcraft was first released in March 1998, few could have imagined that it would remain competitive in 2010. However, even disregarding Korea, the greatest tournament outside Korea through those 12 years just finished hours prior to writing this. In fact, having been around since the very beginning, I can recount several moments where the death of starcraft was announced, perhaps most prominently prior to the release of Blizzard’s previous RTS game – Warcraft 3. None of these predictions came to fruition – our great beloved game is as alive as ever. Or at least it was, until about 10 days ago, when the Starcraft 2 – Wings of Liberty Beta test was officially opened. I personally did not get my key until five days ago, and I did not play it until four days ago, because apparently I did not have enough RAM and the computer store was closed because it was after 5 pm on Tuesday. Ever since I walked home with a brand new computer on Wednesday, my thoughts and actions have been completely occupied with Starcraft 2, and after the first 160 games or so, I feel somewhat qualified in commenting on how it differs from its precursor – and more importantly, how good is it?
Few who read this will have played Starcraft during its 1.00 patch. You did not miss out on a lot. Especially in public games, the game largely revolved around zerg players creating invincible drones through a bug and doing whatever with those. Some players had discovered 4-pooling, and before anyone had a clue how to micro peons, this was pretty deadly. Cannons dealt explosive damage, sunkens had a slower fire rate than sieged tanks, there were no medics, lurkers, corsairs, dark templars, or those other three brood war units that are hardly ever used. In fact, months after release, many players were massing scouts, as these units fired almost twice as fast as they do today, and people generally (ignoring a small community of Kali players who had experience with Warcraft 2 –more on this later) had no clue how to play and thus allowed people to live long enough to actually assemble a fleet of them. The invincible drone bug was fixed reasonably fast, but not too long after, terran players discovered how to float command centers right next to their minerals enabling them to mine at almost twice the rate of zerg’s or protosses. Frankly the game was so imbalanced at this point, to terran’s disfavour, that this evened things out more than anything, but it still shows what Starcraft players had to deal with in 1998. Yet, we continued playing.
We played this game. A lot.
The Starcraft we eventually grew to love came in two hugely significant updates. First: The 1.04 patch and the Brood War addon gave some much needed balance and seven brand new units. Second: The 1.08 patch, which included both the final balance changes as well as the absolutely integral replays. This patch was not released until May 2001, and believe me, Starcraft pre-1.08 was a vastly inferior product. Even so, there certainly wasn’t anything better, and we happily played it for three years. Since then the actual game has stayed the same (even with ten or so patches - these have been bug fixes or changes to Battle.Net), but Starcraft has evolved a lot. This however, has been the product of the player-base evolving strategies that both awe the audience and balance the game, non-playing programmers developing extremely valuable addons (Lan-latency being the most influential), Iccup combining the efforts of WGTour and PGTour to create the most perfect ladder ever, and mapmakers ensuring we would have new grounds to combat on every couple months. Essentially – Starcraft as we know it today is not the game Blizzard published in 1998. What they published back then was a much, much less finished game than the beta I have been enjoying for the past four days, but due to blizzard continuing to polish their game three years after the initial release, and fans of starcraft caring more than a decade later, computer game perfection was achieved.
The main difference between playing Starcraft back in 1998 and the Starcraft Two beta in 2010 is not the difference between the games. It is the difference between the players. As I mentioned, when Starcraft was first released, almost nobody knew RTS games. Now, the higher ranks in the different ladder division are dominated by people with thousands of hours of RTS gaming experience. Although I played a lot of Starcraft the first two years of Starcraft, I can confidently say that I am already a better Starcraft 2 player than I was a Starcraft 1 player in early 2000. This is not unique to me – my win ratio so far in the beta is below 70%, and I notice that mostly everyone I play are well aware of all the integral basics of RTS games.
The players also had different demands Then and Now – back then, we wanted a fun reasonably balanced real time strategy game. Now, we want a game where it will be possible to continue improving after playing for a decade. We want Blizzard to recreate Starcraft, without realizing that the Starcraft we love was, more than anything, a fluke which turned into something absolutely incredible through years of effort from thousands of players and followers. 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. )
Stacked mutalisks explain the importance of micro to an unsuspecting Terran.
Noobification? I have noticed a lot of good Starcraft players complaining about Starcraft 2 being too dumbed down. Complains about MBS and automining have been more prominent than any other, but frankly, I feel these are entirely misguided. Blizzard has done an absolutely tremendous job listening to the wishes of the Starcraft community of adding redundant clicks to make the game more difficult while maintaining the expectations all non-Starcraft players have with regards to the interface. While they have enabled MBS and automining, the Chrono Boost from the Nexus, the Queen and the combined scan-mule of the command centre succeeds in both requiring an immense amount of speed to fully utilize and in giving some sense of strategic choice. With regards to base management, which was the biggest fear I had, I absolutely love Starcraft 2. In fact, I love the game in general. Playing it is immensely fun, the music is stunningly great for all three races (so far I have exclusively been randoming), and it really feels like the better player wins – although there are some imbalances at the moment and some build orders that have particular momentum. Comparing this – and let us remember that we are at the very beginning of the beta phase – with the actual release of Starcraft 1, there is not a shadow of doubt in my mind. Starcraft 2 is a vastly superior game.
The Money is in the Micro However, and bear in mind that this is stated with very limited experience... (And we do need to consider that we are in the first two weeks of the beta test.) As a long-lasting competitive game, Starcraft 2 might have less ”Awe-factor” than Starcraft did. It lacks flashy micromanagement. Walking up and down cliffs with reapers raping peons, it feels awesome. But it’s easy. I could pull it off quite decently the second game I played with Terran. Obviously it improves, but most of the micromanagement has the same feel to it. Blizzard has improved the AI to such an extent that the units actually behave the way you tell them to – but this also means that anyone is able to pull off what they are trying to do. Watching someone shoot a perfect free kick in football would not be impressive if you knew he just had to decide to do this, it is impressive because even though he knows exactly what to do, it is really difficult to execute it. This allegory can be transferred to mostly all sports, especially any involving a ball: if it is easy, it’s not impressive.
Macronation Now – the macro aspect is wonderful. This is what most people were afraid of; that there just wouldn’t be enough to do. I myself expected that while writing this, I would find myself stating that despite my inexperience, I felt like there were more things I wasn’t able to find time for doing in Starcraft 1 than in starcraft 2. This is not even remotely close to the truth. Starcraft 2 is absolutely riddled with constant tasks that need to be done for optimal play. In Starcraft 1, I’ve had many games where my minerals constantly stayed below 500 despite being on 4 saturated bases. In starcraft 2, it appears like everyone is struck by the yellow syndrome – me included. People just don’t seem to be able to maintain good macromanagement when they have more than two saturated expansions, and frankly, it’s rare to even run into someone mining from more than two bases at the same time. (Quite possibly for this reason.) Whereas the micro is from my perspective not sufficiently demanding, constantly landing mules, charging whatever building needs to be charged (especially if you have three nexus’.. ), injecting larvea into every hatchery you own, is an aspect of the game where the room for improvement is enormous.
Some final comments, at least for now; Starcraft 2 feels great. Blizzard genuinely attempted to remake Starcraft just the way we want it. They have updated the interface to meet the demands of a new generation – which is absolutely necessary to enthrall an audience consisting ”not solely of ex-Starcraft players”. While doing this, they have supplied us with enough additional tasks, and ones that are actually strategically relevant (although they certainly need some alterations – the supply boost is completely useless, you usually know when you should use the mule, and I think a good 98% of the time I have used a queen or seen a queen be used, it has been used to inject larvae.) , to make speed continue to be an important factor. In fact I am quite certain you will need at least equally high APM to succeed in Starcraft 2 as you need in Starcraft, probably even higher if you play protoss. There are however, unfortunately, significant problems as well, and I am not sure Blizzard can (nor wants to) do anything about these, because they essentially stem from the game being properly programmed. I am not even certain it’s possible to intentionally replicate the ”charming flaws” of Starcraft. And to be fair: Starcraft happened over ten years. We are currently at the end of the first ten days of the beta. Expecting the world’s greatest computer game to be replicated at this stage is perhaps demanding a little much, even from Blizzard. If you compare what we have now to what was released in 1998, applause is the only option.
That wraps up our Week 3 opening. We hope it was a good read and that you'll be back midweek as we bring you more from the wonderful word of beta! Till then, good luck and good games.
This post was made by the Team Liquid Starcraft 2 Coverage Team. For more of TL's coverage, please visit the Team Liquid Starcraft 2 Beta Page.
Haha the fact that "glitches" like muta-stacking make the game so much more intense reminds me of gunz (It's interesting that the people who started delay/walljump cancelling were koreans... hence K-styling)
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.
Drone completely summed up my thoughts on SC2. An excellent game in its own right which may develop into a phenomenal RTS. One that will exist alongside SC1, without replacing it.
Brood War is indeed something else entirely, even as a fluke.
SC II still remains fun as hell and I'm sure there will be crazy amazing moves that no one has thought of yet. The point of those amazing moves is that they're so insane that you can't conceive of them within the first 2 weeks of beta.
That fact that everyone at a high level understands the basic rts stuff really is the difference between early sc1 and early sc2.
I'm hoping that blizzard hasn't yet quashed all the bugs yet, and that we haven't found the bottom of the rabbit hole yet. That's the important part - that the game is deeper than what we see right now, and we're not going to know that's true until....well at least until the other two expansions of sc2 come out, and we've had time to explore the whole depth of the game.
i liked Liquids the best, but both are fantastic and realistic. I think addressing the complaints of SC2 not being a BW clone was very important to point out and to emphasize that its important that SC2 isn't BW all over again
For me, Starcraft 2 is Brood Wars but better and I'll probably never play Brood Wars again.
I enjoy being able to focus on micro battles, unit counters, macro, and strategy rather than doing boring and unenjoyable tasks such as setting workers to mine, separating my templars with energy from ones that don't have it etc. and so on.
I wont miss AI bugs, glitches, and luck elements (dud scarab anyone?).'
They're both great games and a ton of fun but I'll be moving on completely and sticking with SC2.
On March 02 2010 11:30 siNdreAd wrote: I disagree completely.
For me, Starcraft 2 is Brood Wars but better and I'll probably never play Brood Wars again.
I enjoy being able to focus on micro battles, unit counters, macro, and strategy rather than doing boring and unenjoyable tasks such as setting workers to mine, separating my templars with energy from ones that don't have it etc. and so on.
I wont miss AI bugs, glitches, and luck elements (dud scarab anyone?).'
They're both great games and a ton of fun but I'll be moving on completely and sticking with SC2.
It's Brood War, noob.
Fantastic read Drone. Now I'm looking forward to SC2's release. I'm not too disappointed about being excluded from the beta because I know the game will change tremendously and can only improve.
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. )
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Great read. So far, I love SC2 in the beta stages. I agree with the underlying example of SC and how much it has grown thanks to its strong community and consistent patches. Like the authors have said, SC2 isn't even a month old. People are still learning the game and creating new strategies to counter other people. Despite all the fuss about SC2 from demanding 'retards', I feel it has a lot potential in the upcoming years, and although it may feel like 'Starcraft' with upgraded graphics to some folks, just give it time people.
On March 02 2010 11:30 siNdreAd wrote: I disagree completely.
For me, Starcraft 2 is Brood Wars but better and I'll probably never play Brood Wars again.
I enjoy being able to focus on micro battles, unit counters, macro, and strategy rather than doing boring and unenjoyable tasks such as setting workers to mine, separating my templars with energy from ones that don't have it etc. and so on.
I wont miss AI bugs, glitches, and luck elements (dud scarab anyone?).'
They're both great games and a ton of fun but I'll be moving on completely and sticking with SC2.
So you're basically saying you love the fact that the game plays for you?? You can literally just highlight the entire screen, send workers to mine, select CC/Nexus/Hatchery right click on a mineral patch and just sit while you're spamming your hotkey for your workers. Separating templars didn't take much skill but it took your ability to keep track of which templar had energy and which didn't. When a game started, splitting your workers was so fun but automine is just catering to casuals so hard. The dud scarabs only happened because most of the time the other player would already have his workers running away or you would drop your reaver behind the mineral patches which would cause the scarab to take longer to get to the target. If you had dropped right on top of the workers you would almost always get a hit. It's just those changes that make me sad. Please don't get me started on having a unlimited amount of units in one hotkey.. that's too much. I mean where's the fun in that? They've cut multitasking in half or even more for that matter. Overall I'm just disappointed that SC2 is so easy to learn right now, it'll get harder for sure but those little things that made the game fun are gone =\
It's fascinating how everyone (including myself) was worrying so much about the macro aspect of the game and assumed that micro would be essential since that's what they did with wc3. We should have been worrying about the micro aspect because that can't be changed as easily. Spectacular control has allways been what's made sc1 such a good spectator game. Even though focus is alot on macro now adays the control still shows in every game and it's impressive because of the multitasking required. Anyone can learn jaedong muta micro in 2-3 weeks of hardcore practise but it's take 2-3 years atleast of hardcore practise to learn to multitask at a comparable rate and still have that micro. This will be totally non existant in sc2 unfortunately.
I'll play starcraft again because, let's face it, there's nothing like starcraft.
But, even though I agree that all the small bugs in sc make it a better game (somehow); I still feel that the quality of a game should not depend upon there being bugs that only some people know how to use (in a good way).
That seems backwards to me somehow. I've wondered long if mineral jumping should have it's place or not. When you look at it, it really shouldn't... But it makes the game better somehow...
Still, I hope the success of sc2 won't depend upon there being bugs in there somewhere.
Reading this post and watching Day9tv/random matches has gotten me pretty anxious to start playing, I just hope its not months until that's a possibility.
I hope they fix it. I also hope the game develop as SC1 has done, I must say I'm not too confident that it's gonna be as awsome as BW though... Then again I know that I thought that TFT would make WC3 worse .. A few years later I understand that it made a broken game a little less broken.
On March 02 2010 09:38 Liquid`Drone wrote: 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.
That someone would be Shark unless I am misstaken.
The old faults and strategies of sc1 will be replaced with new ones at different spots in the game. Wether they will be satisfactory in a long term is yet to see. Maybe they will be of a more strategic kind than "quirky". One thing is certain though: perfection is never reached while being human so there's no need to worry about the game being too easy. Always the fun part on the line...always the fun...
I don't think comparing SC2 Beta to Starcraft at release is that relevant - there have been so many changes in these 12 years in video game production in general, you would expect all 2010 betas by big names to be above Starcraft at release, at least production-wise, wouldn't you? Companies can afford more resources now than before and the process is more streamlined instead of going by the feel and hoping something works.
About Waxangels comment that SC2 will never be "BW but better" - it certanly will be for some, just like War3 was considered by a minority an improvement over BW and not just a new game. There's also no doubt that no matter how well they design SC2, there will be some that will refuse to accept it no matter what, and stick with BW to the end. So, while there won't be an unanimous consensus, why wouldn't it be entirely possible for a large majority of players (including non-BW players) to view SC2 as "BW but better"? Pointing out some differences like some bugs becoming part of the game's experience as opposed to trying to iron out all bugs is fair, but will that really be the most important aspect by which players will feel whether or not they are still playing a BW game? You hear players constantly pointing to what they feel makes BW unique, and it's things like fast pace, the need to multitask, balance, cut-throat gameplay, strategic depth and variety, tension and hard to master, not "great flaws" or "the need to overcome the game's bugs". Surely there's a way to keep the good stuff and the general feel of the game without bugs.
Overall, macro being as or more demanding than BW is fantastic news! The lack of lurker-like positional units or reaver-like siege units makes units blend into one another and lack identity, at least at first sight. I'm pretty sure blink and force fields will create some memorable scenes, but the general impression that units seem to resemble one another too much for interesting micro or positional situations to arise often enough is very worrying.
But I can't help but look at SC2 as an intentionally incomplete game, despite Blizzard stating they're not leaving anything out for the initial release. Why are we even demanding exquisite balance if there will be new units added a year or so after release? Would you demand perfect balance in vanilla SC or wait for the expansion and see what happens?
Since Blizzard is not going to change it's plans for 2 expansion sets, I think we have no choice but to be content with a fun, somewhat balanced, incomplete game for SC2 release and expect to only have in the final expansion proper battle net features, perfect balance, equally interesting races (Z is so boring right now), positional units, etc. That being said, SC2 looks like it's been ready for release for a few months now.
SC: BW The Legend will never die. But SC2 is just so much fun, the game is just brilliant to watch and listen to, won't stop watching the Pros play SC:BW, but as for me I'm moving all the way to SC2. There's a plethora of so many new and inventive strats that it will be hard to put down.
Blizzard has improved the AI to such an extent that the units actually behave the way you tell them to – but this also means that anyone is able to pull off what they are trying to do.
I don't know what your opinion is on this, but I for one will not miss the stupid dragoon AI, workers getting stuck in minerals and buildings, etc. Also, you mentioned free kicks in soccer as something that is hard to execute, and it sure is, but I'm not so much impressed by such things because there is not much thought that has to go into it, just very much practice.
SC/BW was played BEFORE Mutastacking and all these other glitches and it was, at the time of the development of many of these glitches, already *over* the time most RTS really last.
You know what? Does glitches did change Starcraft, but they never were and never will be what made SC/BW great... SC/BW would still be played if Mutastacking, Probe jumping or whatever never would have been developed (but someone would have to solve ZvT another way ).
I don't want or could judge if SC2 will last... But if it won't last a lack of glitches and buggy units will not be the reason.
Right now i would say the lack of units like Reavers, Mines and Lurkers is the bigger Issue. As i see it SC2 right now lacks the "YOU SHALL NOT PASS"-Units :p.
Btw: I remember my very first SC/BW game also... Team Meele 1on1... I thought Dragoons were the shittiest unit ever (so BIG but weak for their size and hated Ultras for not being able to Burrow.. Shit :p).
but blizzard need to add thing who require micro like you say .
starcraft 1 so good because pro gamer can produce amazing move and micro and you only think to play like them .
in starcraft 2 im playing vs player and nothing they do are totaly amazing , they move unit back when they get dmg and that all . but that also true the game only in beta since 1 week , so who know ?
In fact I am quite certain you will need at least equally high APM to succeed in Starcraft 2 as you need in Starcraft, probably even higher if you play protoss.
Well that's a welcome relief...
Well summed up, Drone. Can someone fill me in on what exactly he means by tooting his own horn? I'm not aware of anything he discovered. -.-
On March 02 2010 17:09 Sufr1r wrote: I think this will be like Counter-Strike v1.6 and Counter-Strike:Source, two separate communities and differents competitions.
That's really scary, I certainly hope that it won't be and this thought hadn't even crossed my mind... I have an inherent trust in Blizzard to develop a competitive game, but looking back I realize that I have almost the same level of trust in Valve and yet they completely butchered the "sequel" to their 12-year-strong competitive game.
I agree that u cant comprar a 2 weeks old to a 12 years old. And agree that the star 2 beta is more complete then the star 1 release.
I guess that blizzard is doing is send a semi complete game to the public and with the feedback add some things that ll make the game feel more complete. I guess they ll add 2 or 3 units, or some massive rework, to make some possibites of micro.
To all of you who whine about mbs and unlimited units per group, you should go and play Dune 2, that has none of that "multiple unit selection" bullshit. I mean any noob can coordinate an attack with 10units now by simply selecting them and then ordering them with a single click. But in Dune 2, real pros had to select and order each unit separately and that what made the game fun to watch. It was amazing to see coordinated attacks by 10 devastators on the enemy base.
For all of you who whine about automining, you should also demand none of that "auto attacking bullshit". Any noob can leave their units unattended and those units will actually automatically attack enemy units that get close, wtf??? This is an insane noobification. Units should never attack unless they are ordered too, otherwise noobs will have a HUGE edge over pros.
In other words, stfu please. Games evolve and they get better. I am the first one who cries about noobification of modern gaming but sc2 isnt noobified. Autoque on age of mythology titans was a huge noobification and a mistake but mbs and automining are hardly reasons to cry "OMG NOOBIFIED", especially since Blizzard added new, more interesting, game mechanics that increase micro(scanner or mule(huge tactical decision), chrono boost, larva/tumours).
And on top of that, armies are a lot more mobile on sc2 than they were on sc1. Pylon/warp prism teleportation, blink, colossus, worm network, faster movement on creep+overlord vomit+creep tumours, medics that fly and can also carry units, reapers, etc. So you have to pay a lot more attention to the game and act/react a lot faster.
great read. i agree on almost everything although i do think that SC2 can become the great game that BW has become. once the pro's start to understand the units better and better they will start to alter the way they play with those units and micro will become more interesting.
starcraft needed bw to fix a lot of holes before in became a truly great game. WC3 needed TFT before it could be played competitively. SC2 already is a better game than those original games but we might need an expension pack (or two) before it will become the polished product SC:BW is. it might take some time but i have still high hopes that SC2 can become an equally epic game as BW.
The invincible drone is back and better than ever! It can read, it can mine, it can take the place of a cerebrate, and it can write the best article of SC2 compared to SC:BW! Fantastic job drone!
EDITOR PLZ FIX: in the picture of Super Mario2 it says "Sequels sown in succesion", its supposed to be shown(I think)!
I totally agree that starcraft's greatness was/is somewhat a fluke; but, I'm hoping, I'm confident, that Blizzard can improve upon its roots through intention and design.
On March 02 2010 09:38 riptide wrote: Even the flaws are considered to be a venerable tradition. One big difference between Starcraft I and II is that the sequel is just too smart. Starcraft: Brood War is a game full of stupidity that you have to overcome through quick wits and fast hands. There are no alerts when dark templars one-hit your workers, melee units refuse to acquire targets intelligently, reavers will shoot duds when told to shoot the wrong targets, and a plethora of other annoying things happen on a regular basis. Yet, we enjoy overcoming these inconveniences, call it skill, and say that Starcraft II sucks because it’s not stupid. (...) I was excited when I heard Starcraft II was coming out, but I didn’t know why. Now that I’ve tried the beta test, I realize that I was excited because I wanted to play another excellent Blizzard game. I never needed a sequel to Starcraft, because it was perfect all along.
----
(...)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.
(...) As a long-lasting competitive game, Starcraft 2 might have less ”Awe-factor” than Starcraft did. It lacks flashy micromanagement. Walking up and down cliffs with reapers raping peons, it feels awesome. But it’s easy. I could pull it off quite decently the second game I played with Terran. Obviously it improves, but most of the micromanagement has the same feel to it. Blizzard has improved the AI to such an extent that the units actually behave the way you tell them to – but this also means that anyone is able to pull off what they are trying to do. Watching someone shoot a perfect free kick in football would not be impressive if you knew he just had to decide to do this, it is impressive because even though he knows exactly what to do, it is really difficult to execute it. This allegory can be transferred to mostly all sports, especially any involving a ball: if it is easy, it’s not impressive.
I quoted my favourite parts above, very well said. Very important aspects, and I think you came surprisingly close to wording the magic that is the unique charm of Brood War.
I rarely respond to articles, but Drone's section is exactly what I wanted to read and it makes a lot of sense.
I've been longing to know what early Starcraft was like because a lot of people seem to be being very unreasonable when critiquing SC2, as if Starcraft was balanced right from the get-go. It's good to know about the balance issues and strategies that seem incredibly strange to someone following the scene now. People seem to be forgetting that a lot of what kept Brood War going and makes it so great is yet to come. Things like Maps, balance, really strong strategies and top level play won't exist yet. There's a lot of impatience among the Brood War fans and I think Drone's point about it being three years before the balance got to what it is now is something very important to think about. I'm not sure how many people would wait three years with Starcraft 2, but that is something that depends on a lot of other factors that are near impossible to predict right now.
Either way, everything Drone has said makes a lot of sense and very accurate. Very good read.
Good read. However, I have to disagree on one point. The glitches and bugs do not, for me, add fun/spice to the game. They feel like cheating to me. Compare to chess, as you sort of did in the article. There are no bugs/glitches that can be taken advantage of...it is that polished and elegant a game. There are myriad strategies and tactics to use or be aware of, but that is what makes the game so great, and for my money, ultimately made SCBW so good. There were tons of strategies and options available, but there was no need for a glitch or bug. Another reason you wouldn't really ever want to rely on a glitch/bug is that it is safe to assume Blizzard might someday remove or fix it, so why not work on improving the things you know will be there for the lifetime of the game.
This was an excellent read. I think it fairly represents the two viewpoints on SC2. I personally side with the later, and the view that, "Hey its still beta.". This just really gets me motivated to explore SC2 and develop strategies etc.
Ha wow. I agree completely with what both articles said. Starcraft was essentially a bundle of coincidences. SC2 just lacks the... Charm of SC. There's just something missing that I feel can't be replicated.
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.
On March 03 2010 01:07 Bonewalker wrote: Good read. However, I have to disagree on one point. The glitches and bugs do not, for me, add fun/spice to the game. They feel like cheating to me. Compare to chess, as you sort of did in the article. There are no bugs/glitches that can be taken advantage of...it is that polished and elegant a game. There are myriad strategies and tactics to use or be aware of, but that is what makes the game so great, and for my money, ultimately made SCBW so good. There were tons of strategies and options available, but there was no need for a glitch or bug. Another reason you wouldn't really ever want to rely on a glitch/bug is that it is safe to assume Blizzard might someday remove or fix it, so why not work on improving the things you know will be there for the lifetime of the game.
Its pretty hard to define "glitch", and your approach seems very keen on that. What is a glitch, something thats "clearly" not meant to work that way? Either according to the rules of physics or common sense? Do you consider mutalisk stacking a bug/glitch? What about worker stacking on minerals, and workers passing through units when in gathering mode? What about several siege tanks targeting a single zealot right between 4 friendly tanks? What about scarabs not dealing friendly splash damage? What is the difference between a glitch and an arbitrary out of the ordinary rule? I think the above "glitches" (just for example) are a very important part to a lot of strategies, and as such, are integral to the current state of starcraft. You really cant list that many options and strategies that dont involve glitches of some kind.
As a real Starcraft fan from the very beginning all I can say is "Yes.. this is exactly it" It felt great to read your write-up and it brought back memories, you touched my heart, hehe
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think what makes Blizzard good is that unlike most companies who have large development teams and churn out 1 product per year Blizzard have small development teams and then spend a ton of time on each product. To make a good game you do need a lot of time, not just a lot of manhours.
And it doesn't even cost that much more to make games this way either.
i guess the beauty of sc1 is that it the hardest game to master , but if 2 noobs play they will have a lot of fun , as well when 2 pro's meet , so it's fun at any lvl
very good analogy about the micro having to be difficult to be impressive, but ask yourselves this: does this kind of stuff really belong in a strategy game, or is rts its own genre that demands this kind of speed? That's really a matter of personal preference, but think of what would contribute to the growth of rts into something more.
I think rts should focus exclusively on strategy, and the reason it worked to make scbw great is because scbw is precisely its own genre, but in order for the rts genre to grow beyond computer gaming and beyond scbw's already impressive accomplishments, it needs to separate from the speed-intensive contemporary rts, sacrificing micro in favor of strategic depth.
[edit] I only got a chance to play beta briefly at friend's house, and loved everything about it. However, it felt like bringing scbw into the 20th century, and not taking rts to the absolute next level. But we'll see...
On March 02 2010 09:49 synapse wrote: 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.
well said, this is the only way to stop sc2 from getting boring after a while. Broodwar is still evolving and this is required for a game that want's to be popular for a high period of time.
Definitely a great article. The people today are spoiled by all of the RTS greatness they've been able to experience in the past 10 years and expect the impossible with SC2. As the author said, SC1 was sooo crazy the first couple years. I remember when Zerg Hatcheries were like 200 minerals. The Zerg were taking the whole map and producing insane amount of units. The pool I think was only 100 minerals too. There were a crazy amount of adjustments in those years. Too many crazy bugs to list. Had to love the ridiculousness of the sliding CC, invincible drones, and teleporting drones.
I have SC2 beta and the polish on this game in beta is just incredible compared to SC1 on release. I like how the author said that we need to look at SC2 as though it's a new game and try not to compare it to SC1. SC1 is everything that the author said when it comes to it's flaws and quirks that make it the game that we love today.
I remember the first day SC1 came out. I ran over to the store and bought SC1, then ran home freaking out because I was so excited and had waited for 6 months of delays. SC was supposed to have been released fall of 1997. I opened it up and tried to install it and found out I had a faulty CD. Could anything in life be worse at that moment? Was I the only one in the US to run home and find out I had a faulty CD? I had to run back over to the store and get another copy haha. I remember being so wired, like I had just done a line of coke or something. I was just bouncing off the walls in anticipation of what I might find once I got online.
Again, this was way back when most people were complete RTS noobs like myself. I logged online, never looking at the single player campaign and went straight to my first multiplayer game. I chose Terran and again being completely clueless on how to even build units, I started pumping out workers. I was just so freaking excited that I wasn't even reading descriptions on what the buildings did. I was in heaven. After about 20 minutes I decide that it's time to find the other person. The funny thing is that my first game ever was on an island! I didn't know how to build air units! I had all these Marines and Goliaths stuck on this little island haha. I eventually lost since the other person figured out how to get off his island and expand rofl.
My second game was almost 2 hours long with this huge epic battle of my Goliaths vs toss Carriers. I must say that one of the coolest things I've ever experienced in SC1 was when I seen those massive ships and their interceptors come tearing into my base. I was soooo scared and at the same time so amazingly excited to see the most epic unit I've ever see in an RTS!
I've never had anything in a video game top the pure excitement from my first years of playing SC1. Thanks for the memories!
TLDR: SC1 is irreplaceable and look at SC2 as a new game. Best memories I've ever had playing video games were from my early SC1 years. This article was nastalgic for me!