One common observation about this game is how fast it feels, both while playing and spectating. Yet overall game lengths really aren't too different than SC1 - the midgame still starts around 10 minutes in, the late game around 20 minutes in. Indeed, the production of the army is about on par with SC1.
So what accounts for this difference in perceived game speed? All the units move and kill too quickly! The clashing of full armies is resolved within a quarter of a minute, maybe half a minute with good micro from both sides. Smaller forces? Give them 5 seconds tops. It's ridiculous! A dropship sneaks to your expo, and you didn't scout it when it was loading up? Sorry, you've lost all your workers and possibly your hatch/nexus/command.
In 1, a Zerg seeing a control group and a half of medic marine and firebats going in for a sparks terran timing attack would lay down sunkens and start hatching out lings for the upcoming attack. These sunkens would morph just in time, and the first wave of lings would already be in position by the time the terran force reaches the front door. And what would follow is a tense 1-2minute micro/macro battle as the terran sends in the firebats to absorb the sunken hits and burn those lings... all the sunkens go down and the marines manage a few drone kills before the second wave of lings hatch and finish them off. A good timing push, did its damage and allowed terran to expo, but not big enough to end the game.
In 2? By the time you see the marauder marine force, it's far too late. The terran laughs as he two shots the morphing spine crawlers and your lings are exterminated as they pop out of their eggs two by two. He stims and knocks off your natural within seconds. Alternatively, zerg had made his units/defences in advance and was able to subdue the terran push and counter for the win.
tl;dr (sort of) Now I understand that StarCraft 2 != StarCraft: Broodwar. But this feels like a step in the wrong direction. Both as a player and spectator.
I mean, I can understand the reasoning, Blizzard wants unit production and offensive tactics to have high priority so games have more action and a lesser focus on heavy econ on macroing, but in doing so, the altered that magical balance between the production time and the lifespan of a unit that SC had down to a science.
Your points are part of the mara/immo/roach discussion. Its not about defense buff moreover than offense nerf of some units. But your dropship example is meaningless because M&M dropships demolish zergs also in SC1 in no time.
It seems like speed of economy in SC2 is the same as BroodWar but speed of battles is about 1.5 faster. Most of battles end so fast that u cant feel the battle itself. I love Warcraft3 for long battles when u dont know who will win until the very end though i dont like War3 overall.
Why it is so: 1. damage of units in SC2 is higher than in SC1 2. smart AI and autosurrounding 3. more cohesive army which takes more AoE damage 4. smartcasting
2nd and 4th points are kind of ok i think because of evolution of User Interface. But 1st and 3rd points need to be changed somehow.
Hey man, Raynor here. Them units these days kill each other faster than my darlin' got infested by the zerg if you know what I mean. Maybe the stim dosage's been too much or somethin'?
I have been thinking the same thing about everything dying so fast, especially buildings. You can just run in and focus down a hatchery or nexus in seconds. Command centers are abit more tricky since you can repair it at a high rate.
In general, units in this game seem to have more HP, not less, than units in BroodWar. I can't imagine how you'd get the impression that battles happen at an acceptable speed in BroodWar, but they are over too fast in SC2.
A good point is the armor/countering. Counter units kill the units they counter really well which leads to fast deaths/perceived fast battles. Otherwise it is quite slow/normal speed.
When I first played I tried hatching spine crawlers when I saw the terran infantry coming, and you're right, it wasnt in time. I always assumed that this was due to Blizzard's maps, they seem closer in proximity (or the units are all faster) compared to some of the other ones.
I have a feeling the hard counters in this game have more effect on battle outcomes rather than individual micro right now. Whoever I play, our units don't seem even enough in terms of strength so that micro alone could determine the outcome. As a result, battles end rather quickly. This is of course due to the balancing not being finished, but is also why I think battle seem faster. Thats what I think anyway.
In BW and SC if your opponent wanted to kill off your FE instead of rushing into your main, he would loose precious time since that Nexus/hatchery/CC would take some time to die. (unless stimmed marines); now EVERY unit is like stimmed marines and brings down buildings in a few seconds. This enable hit and runs and generally changes the overall feel in a direction that I think is bad for SC.
damn right the game is faster, you start with more workers, near perfect splits 100% of the time, smarter ai, and just people getting units faster then usual because its the beta and people haven't figured out the strats and timings of all the builds so to be safe you just mass warp gates or roaches or marauders and go. while in a BW game you know what to expect when you see the zerg going 2hatch muta, you know a early sunk bust will prob fail because the zerg player knows to get sunkens which turns the game into a yawn till around 6-7minute mark where the zerg gets mutas and SOMETHING HAPPENS. its just not the same. people are comparing SC2 to BW and are expecting the same results. well it just ain't gonna happen. at least not for a bit.
Not only that, but battles seem to last the same, especially in TvP, in Brood War battles were over generally in about 10 seconds and it's not really any different here.
On April 06 2010 15:57 Waxangel wrote: it's more like, things that counter things kill them too fast
if not you never kill them in a million years
Yeah I would agree that its more like this. Certain units can kill off their counterparts too rapidly for my taste while otherwise they're unstoppable. As a spectator I would prefer soft counters instead of hard ones.
On April 07 2010 01:36 Qikz wrote: Not only that, but battles seem to last the same, especially in TvP, in Brood War battles were over generally in about 10 seconds and it's not really any different here.
Yes but thats because they have made counterparts on both sides. But when it comes to buildings (which remains kinda unchanged since BW) youll see big difference in speed.
Armored buildings and units that do so much bonus to Armored like Roaches, Marauder and Immortal does seriously reward ninja drops etc.
IDK what to do about it, the game is still fun- but the OP makes a great point, if you don't scout your mini map like a pro, you can lose buildings long before you can come back to defend... compared to, say, the time it would take for a Drop Ship of MnM to snipe a Hatchery in SC1 vs the time it would take a Medivac full of Maruaders... must be half time.
It's mostly true, units and building tend to die very quickly and it's a much "faster" game then BW. It make's microing to save an important unit difficult, and expos get cleared out very fast if not defended. It also makes it harder for new players because if they look away or don't pay attention, they'll find their amry or base gone quickly.
But I'd rather have it this way, then the much slower WC3 style, although it could be slowed down a bit from how it is now.
Doesn't seem like there's a easy solution to this though.
pathing AI has made damage a lot higher and unit damage hasn't been reduced to account for this. also, stimpack marauder and regular immortal have sick high dps. roach also has really high dps for it's cost.
imo all 3 units need serious balancing if blizz want the game to succeed as an esport.
I don't think that units die too fast, but I agree that there is way too little time to react to an attack which means that you have to be ready to defend at any point in time.
I mostly blame the maps for this. Look at steppes of war, the distance from nat to nat barely is longer than the distance from your main to your nat. Some maps are ok on cross positions, but not on close positions, and desert oasis is just an awful map despite the good nat to nat distance. It's a good thing that all the current maps are labeled "small", so we can hope to have larger maps in the future. But who knows how the balance will turn out on completely untested map sizes.
On April 06 2010 16:00 k!llua wrote: i think you still need to give the game time. you're basically comparing a finished, perfectly refined product in BW to the SC2 beta.
it might be fairer comparison to compare SC in beta to the SC2 beta. i think you'll find that sc2 would stack up quite well.
Why do people keep talking this shit?
Yes, the game is at beta. That means things will change. Now, what is the point of the beta test if not to show what things need to be changed...
just be like me and play BW, wait till the game is actually released and polished, hell maybe half the shit in the beta will be changed you never know.
imho most of that relates to the fact that the game is mostly a huge massBallA vs massBallB.
in broodwar it was all about flanking positional fights and huge fights over mapcontol. ofc a battle take way longer when you are trying to break a terran push from 3 angles with a constant stream of units.
in sc2 you have 2 massive balls engaging eachother with all units beeing in range to fire most of the time. so evrything dies much faster cause evrything can hit and is beeing hit all the time. also since alot of the pushing and "i throw wave after wave at you till you crumble!" just doesnt exist anymore it happens very often that one fight decides the whole game (just watch idra play. macro up 15 minutes then attack with 100 roaches and its over 99% of the time).
cause really, BW was SICK fast. half a second of fucking up could mean you lose loads of units. but since most battles were of a bigger scale and across a way bigger area it still took more time overall .
aaand the real macro games dont happen anymore. when you watched a lategame pvt or zvp you usally saw constant action for 10 minutes straight with hundreds of supply dying all the time for both sides. in sc2 a macro battle very often is just mass up and wait till 1 engages. 1 big fight (which is over super fast cause of the clumping) and the great macro battle is over.
/edit and i mostly disagree that its related to counters killing units too fast (some exceptions aside)
just look how storm,lurks,sairs,tanks,archons etc etc could rape millions of units in splitsecs. oh you have 50 marines running into lurks? you just lost 50 food in 1 second. oh you ran 40 hydra past 8 tanks on a cliff? you just lost 40m food in 2 secs. oh your 15 mutas flew over his mm force? 30 supply gone in 2 secs. this actally all happened in a WAY shorter time then anycounter works in sc2.
but ofc all that was very avoidable and came often down to micro which isnt possible in sc2. no matter how good you are, collosi WILL massrape your marines/hydras in secs.
so its not directly that units kill other units too fast but that the counters are unavoidable and that all units clump like crazy and that flanking and positional play is almost nonexistant.
On April 07 2010 01:43 Ricjames wrote: How are people that are not in the beta supposed to compete with people that are in the beta and played like 700 games already..this sucks
Units stack so closely in Sc2. Most units of both armies can attack any time during the battle.
Compared to BW: Units blocked each other because they had kinda large hitboxes, it seemed to be quite an effort to bring as much units as possible into a position where they actually can attack, instead of having loads of units just watching the battle from some distant position because it is blocked. Also made longe-ranged units kinda cool. Compared to WC3: Other Damage/HP-Balance and smaller armies led to longer fights with micro required.
Since you have nearly a 100% damage output of your units during a fight, it's over so quickly and low-hp units such as marines become extremely weak to AoE such as storms. So I think there are two ways of making battles slower: Rebalancing HP and Attackspeed/Damage Making units larger compared to the terrain so you can't always attack with all of your army.
So yeah overall i can only agree with BeMannerDuPenner 2 posts above
That way every unit still behaves exactly the way its meant to, just they attack slightly slower, allowing you to micro slightly easier. A small decrease by 5% is tiny and hardly noticeable but it would allow for much greater control of your units.
ohh and of course defensive structures would also need to have a 5% decrease in attack speed to match the units new speed
No, that would affect the ability of units to run away as well.
They can just decrease the game speed. I think faster is 33% faster than fast? Simply make it 25%. So it affects your micro abilities? So what? It's beta. Now is the time to do it. If they wait until retail we will have to live with the high speed.
I have a suggestion and I thought I would share it with the TL community and see if I can provoke some discussion. I have been trying to pinpoint the difference in feel of gameplay between Brood War and SC2. A few of my feelings from which I will extrapolate:
-Brood War evolved into the single greatest RTS of all time. - SC2 lacks the tension/drama that Brood War can evoke. - A single moment/decision/engagement/mistake can utterly cripple a player more frequently in SC2. - Engagements in SC2 are more prone to a '1A' style, are decided faster and lack the micro-intensivity of Brood War. - Like Idra has stated, in Brood War someone could "hard counter" your build and through superior mechanics/tactics, it was possible to win. I feel it's more of a guessing game, but not impossible, in SC2. There are very few true impossibilities in an RTS. - SC2 maps feel much smaller than Brood War maps.
Please note these are my opinions, not facts. By no means am I complaining about SC2, rather I only want what is best for it. SC2 should not be the exact same as Brood War, but rather should build upon the exceptional qualities that Brood War embodies. The above statements can be debated, and it is important to include that SC2 is still very young and will continue to develop. These opinions could quickly change as the game evolves, or perhaps are unwarranted and a product of my own limited perception. Perhaps Flash will make the switch to SC2 and shatter the meta-game.
Here is my suggestion, albeit quite an audacious one: Slow gameplay down a very small percent. I mean a very small percent, just so much that at the top level of gameplay, pros could feel a difference. I'm not talking 'normal' speed, I'm talking a hair slower than the standard 'faster' speed. Obviously I'm making this suggestion without the ability to actually see the results on a mass pro level, so this is completely hypothetical.
- Situations would evolve more slowly, heightening the build-up and drama leading up to game-changing events. - There would be a bigger window to recognize a single mistake or unfortunate happening, such as a mis-rally. Players would have the opportunity to recognize a bad engagement sooner and pull back with less losses. - There would be an increased emphasis on unit positioning and movement. (This I feel is one of the greatest differences between Brood War and SC2 right now and I want more of it in SC2). Small engagements would become more frequent therefore becoming maxed would not be such a given (as in Brood War). - There would be more opportunity to micro during battles, and micro would play a bigger role in deciding the outcome of the battle. Lowering the APM needed to micro your units would make micro-ing simpler yes, but that would not result in lowering the skill involved, as there would be more of it on both sides of the engagement and doing it better than your opponent would be important. - Giant battles would occur over a longer period of time, rather than all at once. - There would be an increased emphasis on timing. - Subtleties such as building placement and spotters would increase in significance. - Maps would stay the same size, but the time it takes to traverse them would increase, as well as the ability to adjust your troops within the given spaces.
Certainly this could have a initially negative effect on certain SC2 mechanics. Being able to blink individual stalkers perfectly, for example, could possibly become too strong an ability. Being able to spread marines perfectly against banelings could be an issue. Such issues could be addressed on an as-needed basis and after these wrinkles are ironed out (perhaps make banelings a little cheaper, etc), I would hope to be left with an improved game.
I believe it was Day9 who said decreasing difficulty (in this case speed) of a game only makes the game simpler if there isn't anything else you could be doing. In Starcraft 2, there is always something else you could be doing; whether it is sending out small squads of units to keep a late-game attack lane open or carefully dancing colossi just out of viking range while you spread your zealots out to minimize tank damage. I feel slightly slowing the pace could give players a greater opportunity to think, strategize and react, and could actually increase the depth of the game, and thereby improve it for players and spectators alike.
Decreasing the speed of the game decreases the amount of skill required to play well. I think many here would argue that the 'skill ceiling' of SC2 is already lower than BW and perhaps too low in general.
Decreasing the speed of the game decreases the amount of skill required to play well. I think many here would argue that the 'skill ceiling' of SC2 is already lower than BW and perhaps too low in general.
See what happened there? I make a statement: slowing the game down a fraction may increase the skill level required to play it. I supply several paragraphs explaining why I think so. Then you make the statement: Slowing the game down would make it easier. No explanation or rebuttal to my post.
I don't want to make SC2 easier, in fact I believe slowing the game down a touch may in fact make it harder.
I think the idea of slowing the game down is not a bad one. It could work but people will bitch and moan as change is seen as bad. I like/love the game as it is tbh but I wouldn't be averse to small changes if Blizz see it as needed.
Lots of testing would be required though but Blizz could do all that in house etc.
I'm of the opinion that at some stage Blizz decided on a game speed but changed things up as it wasn't working the way it was expected. How else can you explain they release the game and everyone plays on faster?
If they wanted it at that speed to start with then it would be called 'normal' and we wouldn't have a clock in game that actually runs to fast, the clock would have been synced.
I don't know if you get what I'm trying to say, but I do
I think the idea of slowing the game down is not a bad one. It could work but people will bitch and moan as change is seen as bad. I like/love the game as it is tbh but I wouldn't be averse to small changes if Blizz see it as needed.
Lots of testing would be required though but Blizz could do all that in house etc.
I'm of the opinion that at some stage Blizz decided on a game speed but changed things up as it wasn't working the way it was expected. How else can you explain they release the game and everyone plays on faster?
If they wanted it at that speed to start with then it would be called 'normal' and we wouldn't have a clock in game that actually runs to fast, the clock would have been synced.
I don't know if you get what I'm trying to say, but I do
EPT
