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Hello TL, frequent lurker here!
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Starcraft 2's Lurker. Wait. Where did it go?
I have played BroodWar since release (my childhood!) and Starcraft 2 since early Beta. I LOVE watching competitive BW / SC2 and I probably spend more time watching the game being played at the top level than actually playing it myself. (Go xHydrax / Day9 / CellaWerra!) Unfortunately, the more and more I watch Starcraft2 the more I realize that it's not as fun for me to watch as Brood War was. I've thought a lot about why it seems like this to me. In this thread, I'm going to try to explain one of the most important reasons that (in my opinion) makes SC2 less appealing as a spectator sport.
As most of you realized by now, Starcraft 2's "XYZ Damage vs. Light / Armored" damage system is very very similar to Brood War's Explosive / Concussive / Normal damage types, but with a new coat of paint and yellow highlighted text that says cute words like "50", "VS", and "ARMORED".
For reference, this is how it worked in Brood War:
- Normal does listed damage vs everything. (Zealot)
- Explosive does 100% to large units, 75% to medium, and 50% to small. (Hydralisk)
- Concussive does 100% to small units, 50% to medium, and 25% to large. (Vulture)
- Splash deals damage to all units in a certain radius (Seige Tank Seige Mode)
Starcraft Brood War Dragoon. 20 Explosive Damage.
Instead of getting a unit that displays 10 damage and only deals 7.5 to medium and 5 to small like the Hydralisk of Brood War-
We see units that display 10 damage with a "bonus" displayed to the side, such as the Marauder, that proudly boasts 10 Damage (20 vs Armored). In Starcraft 2, instead of "Large" we have "Massive" (Ultralisk, Colossus, Thor), and "Medium" units are now called "Armored".
That's all fine and dandy until you consider the fact that in Starcraft 2, all Massive units are Armored. Meaning that your Stalker, which says 10 Damage (14 vs. Armored) also does 14 to Massive, despite the fact that the Stalker has no listed damage for vs. Massive units.
So in Starcraft 2 the damage system looks like this:
- Listed damage against everything (Zealot)
- Listed damage vs Light with bonus damage vs Armored AND Massive (Marauder, Immortal)
- Listed damage vs everything with bonus damage vs Light Units (Helion, Reaper, Phoenix)
- A few oddballs like Archon with bonus damage to Biological
Starcraft 2 Protoss Immortal. The equivalent of 50 Explosive Damage?
Needless to say, this system is a lot more one dimensional than what we had in BW.
There is no longer a 100% / 75% / 50% Explosive for units with big damage. There is no longer 100% 50% 25% damage penalties for units that are good at killing "Small" targets. Now it's just BAM 10 damage, NO penalty, with a BONUS vs X for fun. It just seems to me like DPS has gotten way out of control as a result.
This lead me to think that many of the cries and whines we have been seeing about balance since Beta / Release are because of Blizzard going in the wrong direction with this "new" approach to the damage system, which results in Starcraft 2 units hard-countering their "countered unit" to the point where things die in seconds and battles don't last at all, especially not with the right unit compositions.
To me it seems like the transition between the damage systems is incomplete, and now that (as far as damage is concerned) Massive = Armored, we're left with units that just don't have a very well defined role. And now we get to HP inflation because since everything now counters Armored and Massive, "large" units have seen an HP increase.
What is a Corruptor? What's it supposed to do? Counter capital ships?
What is an Ultralisk? What's it supposed to counter? Armored units? But the Ultralisk IS itself Armored (Because it's Massive, and in SC2 Massive gets hit by + dmg vs Armored), so it gets annihilated by the units that it's supposed to be good at killing, despite the fact that they needed to give it +100 HP with all the + Armor flying around.
Ultralisk HP in Brood War: 400
Ultralisk HP in Starcraft 2: 500
Battlecruiser HP in Brood War: 500
Battlecruiser HP in SC2: 550
Medic HP in BW: 60
Firebat HP in BW: 50
Marauder HP in SC2: 125 (Obviously, he's armored, that's why he now needs nearly the same HP of a):
Seige Tank HP in BW: 150
Seige Tank HP in SC2: 160
I've gone off in a tangent now. Anyways, to end this rather long post, I feel like the new stats and damage systems in SC2 contribute to it's quality as a spectator sport, but not necessarily in the best way. In Brood War, you had units that performed well over others, yes. But you didn't have this completely one sided mechanic of "either it counters it or it doesn't, and is generally now useless against X unit.
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funny way to see it but I think you can think of it this way:
Normal damage is what it does maximally (with bonus)
And it suffers penalties for things that it doesn't do (remove the bonus)
So it's basically 2 ways of looking:
You can see things as 100%, 75%, 50%
Or you can see things like
50%, 50%+25%, 50% + 50%
Or if you fancy
100%, 100% - 25%, 100% - 50%
The actual representation doesn't really matter imo. However, what I do miss is the finer grainularities of the 100, 75, 50 system. There are some intermediate values to go about, now it's too 1 dimentional, either bonus or no bonus. No such thing as bonus, half bonus, no bonus.
: (
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I actually agree that battles are too short because units do too much damage.
Another game from another genre "guild wars" was killed by massive buffs to offensive skills which lead to tons of gimmicky builds that killed everything way too fast.
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The actual representation doesn't really matter imo. However, what I do miss is the finer grainularities of the 100, 75, 50 system. There are some intermediate values to go about, now it's too 1 dimentional, either bonus or no bonus.
OP here.
100% Agree.
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On October 14 2010 18:51 Felix_mk wrote:
I actually agree that battles are too short because units do too much damage.
Another game from another genre "guild wars" was killed by massive buffs to offensive skills which lead to tons of gimmicky builds that killed everything way too fast.
no don't make it like w3 ..
maps are just too small + chokes are just useless to defend on sc2
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I mean battles are rather short now because forces are so mobile. There's no siege tank line that holds for long time, and the turtle ass terran is getting rather mobile...
but that's totally another discussion.
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After reading your post, I don't understand why "new stats and damage systems in SC2 contribute to it's quality as a spectator sport, but not necessarily in the best way."
I think you are just confused by the new system. I think you may find this topic interesting:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=119407
Also, it's Large that is Armored now. For example Siege Tanks are Large in BW and Armored in SC2.
Wraiths and Goliaths are Large -> Viking in both modes is Armored.
Same goes for Overlords, Shuttles and Warp Prisms, Devouers and Corruptors, Dragoons and Stalkers / Immortals...
Few units being Massive affects the game only in a good way:
It makes sense that Marauders can't slow Ultras, Thors and Colossi.
It makes sense that Phoenix can't use Graviton Beam on them.
It helps Zerg to deal with capital ships and Colossi without the need for overpowered AA.
and that's it. I don't get why it's not good.
edit: and about % of base attacks versus base attack +N, both system can be very easily converted into each other. All you can say is you read them in a different way. For Stalkers it's much clearer way, when you check Dragoon's damage in BW it doesn't say how much damage it does to small size units until you check it on the web. On the contrary you know exactly how much damage Stalkers deal to what.
I don't think that BW system is more sophisticated because you divide and multiply instead of adding. That is maybe sophisticated for children in elementary school O_o
BW Medium size isn't lost. New Medium is just units that aren't affected by damage bonuses to armor and light. Those are Banelings and Queens.
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sc2 to watch as a spectator sucks every day more and more , the dmg system is only one of the things that are bad imo . Me personally i don't agree about the fact that only terran can put up pressure in the beginning with his various openings (i don't mean here chess) , the other 2 races have to defend the first 10 minutes to get a fair fight . In bw every race had openings that could pressure the other races , so even the mighty terran had to watch out for dts ( in sc2 i think terran gets his scan to easily , so dt's are totaly useless vs terrran ), reavers mutas, hydra/lurker bust, ...
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not this thread again. Maybe all the other ones were badly worded or just closed but hasnt this been done to death during the beta? Or maybe I'm hugely mistaken.
Edit: I may come off as bitter or whiney(maybe both :D) and I dont think OP is an idiot or anything heck the post by OP is great, just that's it been done over and over. Just wanted to clarify 
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On October 14 2010 19:22 lastreason wrote:
sc2 to watch as a spectator sucks every day more and more , the dmg system is only one of the things that are bad imo . Me personally i don't agree about the fact that only terran can put up pressure in the beginning with his various openings (i don't mean here chess) , the other 2 races have to defend the first 10 minutes to get a fair fight . In bw every race had openings that could pressure the other races , so even the mighty terran had to watch out for dts ( in sc2 i think terran gets his scan to easily , so dt's are totaly useless vs terrran ), reavers mutas, hydra/lurker bust, ...
How the damage system is bad? You can point at some units and say they are overpowered or underpowered. But those are your feelings regarding certain units, not whole damage system.
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I think what makes sc2 boring too watch is just what lastreason said, but also things like "blue goo" and I've always liked spider mines and the insane amount of damage it does sometimes. same goes for tanks, the damge they do to other but also to them selfs.
So the things sc2 has done good is units like banelings, acid death animation, burn death animtion.
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that's also the bad design of many units (roach, marauders) that keep the game boring.
Tell me what's so fun about marauder as a unit... it's kiting micro ? it's Stimpack speed ? ah ah ah
I simply stopped playing zerg because is so boring, and i play terran without making marauders at all because i hate them.
The only race i can play with fun are protoss... but only vs Z or T... because PvP macro is a ridicolous colossus fest now... the result of introducing such a powerful dps unit destroyed the match up... do you like watching PvP ? I don't like watching AND playing them anymore.
Plus SC2 lacks powerful gamechanging powers like (spidermines, dark swarm, storms)
Please don't compare THIS 80 damage storm with inflated HP units of SC2 with the old 120 damage storm against units with much less hp. Last terran i have fought i had to use almost 50 storms to kill it... and it was a noob.
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sc1 ling hp: 35
sc2 ling hp: 35
lol :-\
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On October 14 2010 19:46 tacrats wrote:
sc1 ling hp: 35
sc2 ling hp: 35
lol :-\
*hugs*
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On October 14 2010 19:56 Darksoldierr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2010 19:46 tacrats wrote:
sc1 ling hp: 35
sc2 ling hp: 35
lol :-\ *hugs*
What was awesome stays awesome.
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one of the many reasons i was so inspired to make a brood war mod.
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On October 14 2010 19:43 alkampfer wrote:
Please don't compare THIS 80 damage storm with inflated HP units of SC2 with the old 120 damage storm against units with much less hp. Last terran i have fought i had to use almost 50 storms to kill it... and it was a noob.
Maybe covering opposite army in storms is the way it's meant to be used now. It sucks that a single storm isn't as strong but there are many things in place to make size storms happen:
faster energy regen for all units, smartcasting and upgrade that allows HTs to throw storms as soon as they warp in.
Being able to warp in HTs is pretty huge itself imo.
On October 14 2010 20:11 MavercK wrote:
one of the many reasons i was so inspired to make a brood war mod.
Maybe you can tell me what is OP's point? Because it still doesn't make sense to me.
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On October 14 2010 19:46 tacrats wrote:
sc1 ling hp: 35
sc2 ling hp: 35
lol :-\
sc1 hydra hp: 80
sc2 hydra hp: 80
Now compare the speeds.
*weeps*.
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Dustin Browder (SC2 lead designer) has officially stated he considers the new system (light/heavy-hard counter) an improvement over the old 50% 75% 100%.
All this coming from the guy who thought stim and marauders would a "cool" addition to Terran.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
You misunderstand "Massive" as a higher tier of "Armored". They are different things and all Massive units by pure coincidence also have the Armored trait.
SC2 weapon system is entirely different from SC1. Whereas SC1 had weapon types (and you have to have one distinct type for every weapon) and armor types (the same thing, you have to have one distinct type of the three), in SC2 units may deal damage vs other units with specifical traits. A trait is not a type, it's just a boolean flag. A unit is massive or it is not massive. Completely unrelated, it is light or not light (not being light DOES NOT equate to being 'heavy' or even 'armored'). You can have a unit that has no traits at all (Queens and Archons are neither Light nor Armored, although they still have Psionic), and you can have a unit with a combination of traits that defy logic, like Massive-Light. And that unit will burn in Hellion fire at the same time being demolished by Corruptors.
Same thing, while there are actually none at the moment, Blizzard or any mapper can introduce units that do bonus damage to Psionic etc. I'm not sure, but probably you can add other kinds of traits to units in the editor.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.joelrdurham.com/Artwork/%20Dragoon.png)
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