Esports World Cup 2025 - Page 43

On July 26 2025 00:31 Nasigil1 wrote:
Where are those "no it's not just Serral" people? Why can't Solar use those super OP spell casters to destroy Cure?

On July 25 2025 23:10 SHODAN wrote:


infinite storms, as long as you had infinite resources. well guess what? you had very finite resources in WoL. early WoL economy looked a lot closer to Warcraft 3 than it does to modern-day sc2

Khaydarian Amulet existed in a version of the game where you had, at best, 2 comfortable expansions within your sphere of control. you're talking about really old maps like Tal'Darim Altar and Xel'Naga Caverns, on which the 3rd base could be considered a lategame / endgame economy.

in reality, protoss players of this era rarely ever reached a lategame of any description. the meta was instead dominated by gateway all-ins and aggressive terran all-ins. games were usually decided by breaking or holding a natural expansion. incredibly rare that you'd ever see 3-base vs 3-base

this is what "infinite storm" looked like in lategame WoL:



a casual review of era matches should persuade you that every high templar on the field is precious, even with the Amulet upgrade. I certainly don't remember seeing anypro or MC expending 6+ storms to kill a single pesky medivac floating in their deadspace. that would have been an extravagant waste of energy within the limits of a WoL economy.

in modern-day sc2, it is no longer a "waste" to use high templars like that. it's completely legitimate to spend psi storm on tiny victories. high templar energy is not a precious resource that you have to think too long and hard about. apparently, it is also not game-ending to clump up your high templar and eat perfect EMPs.

despite the fact that terran had robust counter-play in the shape of the old ghost, Amulet was still deemed too problematic to exist in the game.

what is the counter-play to energy overcharge? sneak into your opponent's base with a ghost and EMP their nexus?



the previous balance council seemed to be filled with knowledgeable characters. problem is, they didn't earn any of that knowledge for themselves. Harstem, Pig and others weren't in the room for legacy balance discussions from the game's long history, and therefore lacked some of the hindsight and wisdom that had been realized under the long-standing Blizzard dev team. to paraphrase Malcolm from Jurassic Park: their power didn't require any discipline to attain. who among the balance council would have noticed that some West African frogs are known to spontaneously change sex in a single sex environment? "protoss bullshit... finds a way."

competitive sc2 has outgrown the fundamentals that it was built on. as you say: burst damage and AoE damage abilities get messier with scale, and absolutely brutal when the army comps get filled out. I also think the same messy scaling applies to things like map control. once you have a map covered in creep, or (the old) widow mines, or swarming with high templars, it feels almost impossible to do anything about it. the explosiveness and one-sidedness of sc2 is part of the game's identity. I also believe it's the reason why it fell off so sharply. sc2 burned way too brightly for its own good. watching cracked bio balls + widow mines melting an army (or a worker line) in a micro-second was fun in the beginning. watching storms melt armies (or worker lines) in a micro-second is fun for a while. but it gets old real fast, and I feel that the current storm meta is another chapter of sc2's long sickness: the chronic "terrible, terrible damage" fatigue. I'm completely desensitized to psi storm, to the point psi storms fill me with the same level of excitement as watching a peon chop wood.

I think anyone who truly has their ear to the ground in the sc2 community can sense the negativity towards the state of the game - one that goes far beyond the usual balance whining. have you noticed the unprecedented levels of visible frustration from the pros during this EWC? every time I look at Reynor, Byun or Clem on cam, they are grimly muttering to themselves, grimacing or rolling their eyes. Astrea also seemed to be tilted out of his mind. a few of the typically stoic Korean pros have taken to twitter to vent about their least favourite units to play against. an outside observer might easily assume that they aren't having much fun, except that the casters do a phenomenal job of painting a calm veneer over the proceedings.

competition is the ecstasy of victory and the agony of defeat. when the game stops feeling competitive, then both of those feelings are lost and replaced with tedium. the skillfulness of your opponent's efforts should be plain, obvious and satisfying. when the outcome start to feel "too easy" (as it has constantly been throughout this EWC), or when the games seem to be decided long before gg is called, then it's no fun for anyone. there have been way too many one-sided stomps in this tournament.

I have long been in favour of a radical re-calibration of competitive 1v1. a heavily modded version of sc2 is the best way to secure sc2's future. one idea that I don't see mentioned often is the implementation of a formation toggle. that in itself would completely change the way sc2 is played. imagine how much easier it would be to accommodate powerful AoE damage abilities if players had a 1-button control to automatically spread their army into Brood War style clumps? of course, there should be upsides and downsides to using it. with formation enabled, all units in the control group might take a movement speed debuff. I also agree with radical changes to stuff like warp gate that introduces a penalty (or risk / reward) for using it. sc2 needs a more robust decision-making tree in order to have any integrity as an actual strategy game. for now, it's stuck being an explosive real-time shooter wrapped in a real-time strategy game skin.

On July 26 2025 00:31 Nasigil1 wrote:
Where are those "no it's not just Serral" people? Why can't Solar use those super OP spell casters to destroy Cure?