[GSL 2021] Super Tournament 2 - Day 1

On May 18 2021 04:11 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Ok I really need to talk about that sOs vs TY match. This is a long ass post and I don't expect people will read it, but I love this game too much and for the sake of its future I feel I need to share my opinion about what we can do to make SC2 produce more exciting games like that more consistently.

That was probably one of the best games in recent years, and the kind of game that I really want to see more often. I feel like recently, especially in GSL, we keep getting games that end in 1 timing push after someone's opening harass goes poorly or after 1 player gets a small advantage. As Starcraft fans I think it's safe to say that while variety is good, we want to make sure we see a good amount of longer macro games that are much more back and forth too.

For quick context, I'm very dismayed that the Blizz balance team hated mech. They made efforts to make it work, but eventually said that mech wasn't what they wanted for the game and they preferred to focus on making bio and mech units work together well and that bio based comps were more "active" and better for spectating.

With the right design, I strongly believe mech is a great addition to the game, rounding out much of its weaknesses, and produces the kinds of macro games that are rare to see in SC2, but so common and praised in BW. This game is a great example of the constant, epic back and forth action and positional battles that can take place. And the map is also big enough to allow that kind of macro game to happen. The gripes Blizzard may have had with turtly mech often leading to really passive play by both players are valid, but it doesn't mean that mech or turtle mech itself is bad and needs to be weak, it just means that they needed to tweak the design of the game slightly so that passive play by both players wasn't the go-to option. More on that at the end.

I want to talk about maps. I posted about this in some threads recently. But I think we need to stop having such small maps, which help lead to pushes that end the game after 1 fight. Often times you see players do poorly with their opening harass, or a player will secure a small advantage in some way, and they just opt to do 1 big push to end the game rather than trying to take more bases and keep getting more ahead. I think the main reason is because the smaller maps makes moving out with 1 big push much, much more viable. It's not just that the distance to attack is short, but there is much less counterplay to a big push like that when the map is small.

Tastosis say that SC is at its best when players have that "spread out" feeling and are "constantly putting out fires". I agree. Because what makes SC such a great and highly entertaining RTS esport is its intense level of interaction between both players, and with the pacing of the game, the time it takes to perform those actions is balanced in a really tight way. When players are spread out and constantly trying to keep their shit together, they are placed heavily under the "restrictions" that is time, and when you see people placed under immense pressure and restrictions, is when you get to see creativity really shine.

When things are spread out, armies naturally split off into smaller forces, since balling your army up doesn't let you do enough things at once, and trying to end the game with a death push is much more risky so it's not worth balling your army up. When players are spread thin multitasking multiple forces across the map, they have to decide how many greedy corners they want to cut to try to sneak advantages in, and sacrifices to make. It also leads to the game "slowing down" (in terms of how fast the game ends) because while there may be many more things happening around the map, with attention spread thin, it gives both players more time to respond to each thing and many chances to fight back. This is one of the coolest parts of SC that we don't get to see when we get small maps with players comfortably balling their armies up and able to watch it constantly. When the latter happens, ending the game with 1 push after securing a small advantage is too viable as moving your whole army out doesn't have enough risk to it. There is not enough space/time for the player who is behind to try to make interesting counter plays, they HAVE to stay home and defend, or try to base race.

While the more slow paced and "strategic" games of SC2 are also a treat to watch, especially when a commentator with as much in depth knowledge as Artosis explains what's going on, they are a large majority of games now, and it's not too climactic as a spectator seeing a game of mostly not fighting, and then suddenly the game ending after 1 fight.

Big maps like Romanticide and 2000 Atmosphere spread players out more and round out the "flaws" of SC2's gameplay. Distance/time becomes much bigger of a factor, so if the opponent gets a good play in, what might be a devastating build order or tactical loss can be mitigated with creative counter play utilizing the size of the map and stay in the game longer. For a very simple example, unlike small maps where your bases are all taken on 1 side and grouped together closely, on large maps it's harder to end a player because you can expand in the far corners of the map. You don't lose the game after just losing 1 big fight, because they can't choke off and kill all your bases immediately. This is why we got great games on Tal'Darim Alter in WoL, even with WoL having much more boring unit compositions and being much less complete design wise as LotV. It's much more interesting seeing the factors of distance and time it takes to do things come into play. It's not just attack and defend. The positional factor becomes huge, and creative plays can shine.

I don't think we want to see games ending after just 1 push, and in GSL we rarely see long epic macro games like this, when strangely enough we got much more of those long macro games in WoL. I know there isn't any official map design committee, it's just passionate map makers who want to make good maps. So it's not their fault if the map pool happens to pick a lot of smaller maps for a season. That said, I'm curious to see if anyone else agrees or disagrees, and whether we can show more support for larger maps. One of the biggest concerns of large maps in WoL/HotS is that Terran is a bit weaker as they are less mobile than P/Z, but now that Terran has BCs with Jump which scales better the bigger the map is, and things like Speed Banshees, I think any perceived Terran disadvantage is effectively mitigated, including for Mech.

However, I'm VERY HAPPY that we got to see PROOF of that potential in this game, by one of the top Terrans who believes mech TvP is viable, right before he has to go to the military. He got to show off the speed banshees that he taught in his streams, and the strength of Mech in the lategame which sOs rightly recognized and thus was constantly trying to interact/engage with TY to beat him down. And even though I wish Blizzard accepted mech and made adjustments to make sure mech games were exciting and dynamic with positional battles all over like this, I'm happy that the state of SC2 is still so good and that mech is at least viable on certain maps at top level and CAN produce great games. And I'm happy that there is still SO much unit comp variety and variety in styles in LotV across the board, with Zoun and Dark's games being amazing macro PvZs when so often it feels like PvZ just ends in 1 push.

(Maru vs Stats was also a crazy good mech series too, with the more active style with Cyclones). As a mech player who always believed much of the community/devs hated mech for the wrong reasons and didn't quite understand the issues and give it a proper chance, today was a huge, huge win for me. Thank you sOs and TY for the legendary game!!!

(On that note of sOs constantly engaging TY and understanding how to play vs Mech/BCs SO well, I want to dispel the myth that a style being strong defensively is NOT what leads to boring, passive games. Turtle mech does NOT have to lead to passive games. If the dynamic between the 2 styles/races is defined and consistent, with 1 style needing to pressure the other, then it will lead to constant action, for example Bio vs Mech in TvT in WoL, like MMA vs MVP's games. The issue with mech games getting very passive in WoL/HotS is because the dynamic was NOT clear, as in Terran had very strong late game mech but P and Z also had very strong lategame, and when that happens then it can lead to both players wanting to turtle and never engage each other until endgame. This game showed very well, with the threat of BCs being able to Jump and take out a ton of Nexuses and being able to win a straight up fight, that sOs knew he had to stay in the driver seat and control TY and never allow him to have the Jumps available to use for what he wanted, but rather only use them defensively).

Thanks for reading and I hope to see others' thoughts on this!