EPT[Spoilers] Is SC2 too volatile ? - Page 4
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samboi
England69 Posts
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0neder
United States3733 Posts
Noone has really figured everything out yet. Especially Terrans who only had to be familiar with early-mid game until recently. Now the onus is on Terrans to understand their race and matchups and maps a little better and adapt. Probably one of the main reasons is scouting. Most players are unwilling to sacrifice more than one unit if it means knowing what they need to. Sometimes in BW, Protosses would send multiple overlords or observers to the same area to make ABSOLUTELY sure they know EXACTLY what their opponent is doing. And it pays off for them. Another reason is that SC2 economies scale much faster than BW. You have less time to figure out what's coming before it's too late. I don't know what the answer to that is, but I suspect it lies in a combination of racial balance and map design, and maybe even the food cap/macro mechanics. | ||
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IdrA
United States11541 Posts
blizzards gone halfway between sc1 and chess and done a shitty job of it sc1 had limited scouting and information but you could still hold a high winrate because the game was so difficult in terms of execution that it was possible to outplay your opponent in a million different ways. mbs, smartcasting, improved unit ai has changed that. we havent hit the skill ceiling yet, but it's low enough that theres not nearly as much differentiation between players already and thats only going to get worse as everyone improves. people will say now its more of a pure strategy game, and that would be ok. except we still have limited information. a strategy game where its really hard to know what your opponent is doing, especially in the early game where everything is most fragile, fucking sucks. it guarantees theres always going to be a big guessing/luck factor in games. | ||
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shell
Portugal2722 Posts
You can compare this to tennis for instance, Federer dominated for many years, then came Nadal and started to win some, then Nadal started dominating, then both of them had a chance and right now it's anybodys game because many guys can win it if given a chance. SC2 went to heavy patching and that changed the game, the one trick poneys go down with the patches, the top guys can go thru a slump because they have a hard time but eventually they will come back. The game is new we just have to give it time. | ||
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haruk
216 Posts
On March 16 2011 21:21 Maynarde wrote: Couldn't have said it better myself. Besides, I prefer to watch a sport where there's no one player / team that just can't be stopped. Makes it interesting. \Yes and yes. | ||
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Sega92
United States467 Posts
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m3rciless
United States1476 Posts
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Iamyournoob
Germany595 Posts
On March 17 2011 00:00 IdrA wrote: yes it is too volatile and its not going to change blizzards gone halfway between sc1 and chess and done a shitty job of it sc1 had limited scouting and information but you could still hold a high winrate because the game was so difficult in terms of execution that it was possible to outplay your opponent in a million different ways. mbs, smartcasting, improved unit ai has changed that. we havent hit the skill ceiling yet, but it's low enough that theres not nearly as much differentiation between players already and thats only going to get worse as everyone improves. people will say now its more of a pure strategy game, and that would be ok. except we still have limited information. a strategy game where its really hard to know what your opponent is doing, especially in the early game where everything is most fragile, fucking sucks. it guarantees theres always going to be a big guessing/luck factor in games. 4 questions regarding this: 1.) would improved scouting options for any race improve this situation? 2.) if yes, how can scouting be improved? 3.) do you think that there are may be undiscovered cookie-cutter strategies (with little adaptions depending on scouting) that might be good at repelling anything your opponent throws at you? 4.) Talking about zerg: To me it seems that Zerg kinda has lots of "specialist units" which are specific counters to specific unit compositions resulting in the situation that if you as a Z didn't scout the right unit mix of your enemy, you lose (e.g.: you build roaches, when banelings would have been better). Do you think that switching the Hydra with the Roach would help Zerg games to be less volatile since the Hydra would serve as an allround unit like the Stalker or the Marine which Zerg doens't have imho? | ||
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Diks
Belgium1880 Posts
On March 17 2011 00:00 IdrA wrote: yes it is too volatile and its not going to change blizzards gone halfway between sc1 and chess and done a shitty job of it sc1 had limited scouting and information but you could still hold a high winrate because the game was so difficult in terms of execution that it was possible to outplay your opponent in a million different ways. mbs, smartcasting, improved unit ai has changed that. we havent hit the skill ceiling yet, but it's low enough that theres not nearly as much differentiation between players already and thats only going to get worse as everyone improves. people will say now its more of a pure strategy game, and that would be ok. except we still have limited information. a strategy game where its really hard to know what your opponent is doing, especially in the early game where everything is most fragile, fucking sucks. it guarantees theres always going to be a big guessing/luck factor in games. Very interesting point. I hope blizzard spotted that problem (wich i highly doubt). I guess they have to choose a direction : - Will they try to mimic SC1 and increase the mechanic difficulty ? - Or will they start to make SC2 a pure strategical game and rebalance all the game with that principle in mind.... Pretty sure it will be option 3 : - They don't spot the problem or realise that it won't boost sells and do nothing about it. One thing is sure : we don't play starcraft for the randoms part in it. This is everything we hate : Losing because of a luck factor. SC1 history showed that luck can be diminished with very strong understanding of the game and timings. In SC2, you very often have to make a guess. | ||
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gruff
Sweden2276 Posts
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IdrA
United States11541 Posts
On March 17 2011 00:16 Iamyournoob wrote: 4 questions regarding this: 1.) would improved scouting options for any race improve this situation? 2.) if yes, how can scouting be improved? 3.) do you think that there are may be undiscovered cookie-cutter strategies (with little adaptions depending on scouting) that might be good at repelling anything your opponent throws at you? 4.) Talking about zerg: To me it seems that Zerg kinda has lots of "specialist units" which are specific counters to specific unit compositions resulting in the situation that if you as a Z didn't scout the right unit mix of your enemy, you lose (e.g.: you build roaches, when banelings would have been better). Do you think that switching the Hydra with the Roach would help Zerg games to be less volatile since the Hydra would serve as an allround unit like the Stalker or the Marine which Zerg doens't have imho? well all your questions are about improving the strategy portion and personally i think itd be better to bring back the mechanical difficulty of sc1, but that aside 1) yes every race needs better scouting, except perhaps protoss as the new observer and hallucinate are pretty good. 2) make overlord speed 50/50 and hatch tech or make base overlord speed significantly faster and make scan and mules both 25 mana, maybe move the observer to cyber core or make hallucination faster 3) unlikely for zerg since hatch tech zerg is so poor offensively. so if you invest in army but they were doing a safe fast expansion you shouldnt be able to put any meaningful pressure on them. this is exaggerated by zerg's units but it holds true for other races as well. if you do an all purpose defensive build while your opponent is playing economically but safe enough to defend your excess of units you'll end up behind. 4) ya, ive said a number of times before that switching the hydra and the roach and modifying each unit accordingly would probably be a good change. | ||
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Novalisk
Israel1818 Posts
Is it hurting the game? Possibly, but if there are changes that need to happen then they should happen. | ||
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sleepingdog
Austria6145 Posts
Nevertheless this only becomes (or is) a problem because the maps make one base play or even 2 base pushes way, WAY too powerful. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be the possibility of rushes...at all....but given the poor scouting options it should at least be possible to defend one basing unless you are playing super greedy. This may come off as a balance-QQ right now, but I'm just trying to make my point more clear. Let's say I, as protoss, play 2 gate robo expo. This isn't an especially greedy build at all. Still, if I don't prepare properly, a timed marine/raven/banshee push off one base will CRUSH me hard. Rushes and one base timing attacks should only work vs especially greedy openings, they shouldn't be that effective vs "standard" play. Otherwise all the races (including toss imo, since the observer is cheap but SLOW as hell and easy to take out for skilled terrans) would need way better scouting options; so that they could spot any strategy early enough to have sufficient time to react accordingly. | ||
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Thrill
2599 Posts
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Chise
Japan507 Posts
On March 17 2011 00:00 IdrA wrote: yes it is too volatile and its not going to change blizzards gone halfway between sc1 and chess and done a shitty job of it sc1 had limited scouting and information but you could still hold a high winrate because the game was so difficult in terms of execution that it was possible to outplay your opponent in a million different ways. mbs, smartcasting, improved unit ai has changed that. we havent hit the skill ceiling yet, but it's low enough that theres not nearly as much differentiation between players already and thats only going to get worse as everyone improves. people will say now its more of a pure strategy game, and that would be ok. except we still have limited information. a strategy game where its really hard to know what your opponent is doing, especially in the early game where everything is most fragile, fucking sucks. it guarantees theres always going to be a big guessing/luck factor in games. I agree. Another way to make the guessing factor less important might be to rebalance units. At the moment, most units have a hard counter, which means that no matter how much better your unit control is than your opponents, you lose if you have the wrong units. If units don't counter each other that hard anymore, unit controll becomes more important, which might result in the better player winning more often. | ||
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Redmark
Canada2129 Posts
On March 17 2011 00:42 Thrill wrote: Agree with OP. This is why casters are and will remain bigger stars than the players. Come on guys, at least put some effort into your posts. This is like the one thread where I've liked Idra's posts, everyone else could at least put some reasoning into theirs. | ||
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loveeholicce
Korea (South)785 Posts
On March 16 2011 23:51 tomatriedes wrote: I've seen BW games where exactly the same thing has happened with DTs killing about 30 drones or probes. Dts vs terran and protoss were really stupid in brood war too lol. Making DTs work vs Zerg tho required crazy multitasking and micro On March 16 2011 23:09 eviltomahawk wrote: Perhaps volatility did play a role in MVP's demise, though from what I've heard in the LR thread (since I didn't watch the games), MVP just flat out didn't play well in his up and down matches. I need to watch the games for further confirmation, but I think many of the recent upsets are not due to volatility but instead due to players just not playing their best during the most volatile round of GSL. Volatility doesn't play a role in all upsets, so a close examination of the particular matches is required before discounting the upsets as proof of SC2 being too volatile. Maybe, maybe not, I'm just speaking very generally here. I feel the biggest problem is the easier mechanics. Any mid masters player can execute a rush almost perfectly while keeping their macro consistent, so its easier to beat better players just cause ur strat or build happened to be better and it'll only come down to that. But in brood war everything was so hard to execute that u could overcome big disadvantages just by being way better than the other person. Like say u get any televised terran progamer to do a 2 fact all in vs an A+ toss on iccup. If the toss goes 2 gate range --> observers its pretty much the ideal counter build to a 2 fact but the progamer is gonna win 100% of the time just because of a difference in execution that isnt there in sc2 | ||
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xbankx
703 Posts
I also agree early game is very fragile for all races. 3 rax, raven-based(very annoy for toss to deal witth) all in, scv all in, 4 gate, and ling/roach/bling bust puts all race on edge. Should all these be taken out of the game? Definitely not cause if all games are 30 min macro games then it will become very boring. High micro low econ games are very fun to watch. | ||
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Edmon
United Kingdom259 Posts
he Might Vanish Perminantly :D | ||
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red_b
United States1267 Posts
On March 17 2011 00:00 IdrA wrote: yes it is too volatile and its not going to change blizzards gone halfway between sc1 and chess and done a shitty job of it sc1 had limited scouting and information but you could still hold a high winrate because the game was so difficult in terms of execution that it was possible to outplay your opponent in a million different ways. mbs, smartcasting, improved unit ai has changed that. we havent hit the skill ceiling yet, but it's low enough that theres not nearly as much differentiation between players already and thats only going to get worse as everyone improves. people will say now its more of a pure strategy game, and that would be ok. except we still have limited information. a strategy game where its really hard to know what your opponent is doing, especially in the early game where everything is most fragile, fucking sucks. it guarantees theres always going to be a big guessing/luck factor in games. well dead or alive 4 (the most guessing game of all the serious fighters) had a pro scene... for like 18 months. when I played counterstrike I NEVER felt like I lost to a worse opponent. If I lost, it was because the other person was just better than me. I was never confused why my team lost, I mean sometimes I was confused by some **** people did but that very rarely worked out well for them. with SC2, especially playing Zerg for the good portion of my time playing this game, this was a common feeling upon reaching late game against Protoss. I felt really hopeless after Leenock's Code S up/down matches. | ||
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). We see upsets in BW too but definitely not as much
