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I agree with the intent of this OP, but...
I have since distanced myself from SC2, realizing its not my game anymore,
and have since devoted my time to BW in its waning years.
I think we, me and others who share the OP, are simply being too old timers.
I mean that in a good way. BW existed on a different context,
and the skills and the epicness that all comes with it.
That i truly enjoy and cherish.
But let's face it, we are old dogs in this new game.
Blizzard has different intentions for this, and it is turning out just to be the case.
They call it BW elitism, and heck it is. But we cant force our "idea" of how SC should be played
on this new game. As far as I know, all of my students (most vaguely know BW Gods like Boxer and Jaedong) have no problem with SC2. They are perfectly ok with it. Maybe some QQ about balance and specific units/abilities, but they have no problem with the "setup/build up" before the attack. I can see that they genuinely like the non micro intensive all-inish nature of SC2 where battles are determined by the strength of the army and not the management. Now I don't know about foreigner kids, but Im sure they're more or less the same.
As you pointed out though, spectatorship is one major issue here.
Like I said, I havent been following the sc2 scene,
much less playing it, but it looks relatively healthy.
The only "problem" is when we more seasoned SC veterans
with particularly fine-tuned taste point out what SC2 lacks compared to BW.
We can protest here and there, but don't expect any changes soon.
And If you're as old as I am, let them kids enjoy it, we've had/still have our BW4LYF! (Fuck Yeah!)
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On April 16 2011 13:34 Faze. wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 10:02 Torpedo.Vegas wrote:
I am going to perhaps disagree with your post about mechanics. The mechanical requirements of Starcraft: Brood War were indeed partly due to design, but mainly because a minimal standard of expectation was set for pro players I think.
There are a set number of strategies and micro related skills that every player of a certain race needed to be able to do almost intuitively in order to remain competitive at the highest level. And these expectations developed over time such as unit/building timing various, certain micro skills, etc.
Once this baseline was established in the competitive community, the best players needed to find ways to go beyond the expectations of the community and perform at higher levels. They needed to poke holes in strategies that didn't seem to have holes before. A easy way to see that is the increase in APM to increase the effectiveness of units (like vultures). The increase came because there was a need to play faster and more accurately against an increasing baseline of what you could expect your opponent to be capable of.
In starcraft2, pros are still having trouble managing fundamental aspects of the game like consistent and effective use of nexus energy, queen energy, orbital energy, as well as things like unit positioning (i.e. Zealots in front) and timing. With these and other variables in play, the baseline has not really been formed yet and thus no need to go beyond improving ones own fundamentals.
When the time comes that in order to play for example Protoss competitively you need to have absolute intuitive mastery over nexus energy in as familiar a way as we expect them to have control over supply management and worker production, we would then see a formation of that needed baseline and the need to find new ways to improve ones self beyond the basic strategy or mechanics of the game. Using old units in new ways will likely require a lot of creativity and probably a bit more APM.
It might not end up looking like a good ole Brood War game, but the skill and strategic requirements of the game will be high enough to be comparable. What is and isn't "effective" (death balls) will in all likelihood change over time to suit the standard of play. I agree with this, and I also agree with the OP. I think what the OP is saying is right considering what the game looks and feels like at the moment. But it could be explained with what I quoted. I'm sure things will change a lot with the expansions, and I think it's something kind of "planned" by blizzard. If we take a look at any SC2 pro games right now, we can see several flaws in general management of stuff. Like it has been mentioned already, mules/chrono/injects etc are a bunch of things that aren't fully mastered yet. Along with a lot of unit control and whatnot, I mean we can still see a lot of pro gamers putting everything in only 1 or 2 control groups, resulting in ravens flying over the enemy's army, zealots stuck in the back, zerglings blocking banelings etc. Now imagine what it would be like if people had to do all that AND micro dark swarms, vultures and position lurkers and etc etc. To me it looks like the release of expansion is a learning curve for SC2 progaming. Players have to learn and master what we have now, and then more will be added to the game, new playstyles will appear, and SC2 will slowly look more and more like BW. Maybe in a couple years we will look at the game and say "damn that's crazy, and we could actually do that when SC2 came out but we never knew"... Because honestly, no one knows everything about the game yet, even if it looks like someone does, who could be so sure? No one. That also relates to the fact that it's kind of weird to compare a very well understood and old games, against a young and barely explored game that is still evolving. We could all be wrong (maybe not, but it's not impossible) about which game is the best, all we can do is judge, based on what we see. And what we currently see is extremely limited.
Yeah, I think there could certainly be tweaks done, but at the same time feel that Blizzard didn't design Brood War to be what it became. The players and map makes had a much larger impact as the status quo of the competitive scene became more and more intricate and rigorous. You can simply ship that kind of thing. Players need to become accustom and develop that intuitive sense of fundamentally controlling their race before they can really apply themselves to manipulating the designs and abilities of the units to their fullest extent
I really don't think you can understate what 12 years of competitive development and emotional investment did to Brood War. It didn't ship in the state it is now, that is for sure. The way units are used in Brood War today are efficient and refined, and might as well look like night and day compared to early competitive Starcraft. And while many fundamental skills may transition moderately well between games, the fact of the matter is they only look the same and are really two different beasts under the hood.
Flash and Jaedong, two of some of the greatest players to participate in Starcraft and show what really could be done with Terran and Zerg, were only 8-9 years old at the release of the game. It could be a while yet before we see SC2's versions.
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Also, for the OP, do you actually have any new abilities or units or changes you would make to existing SC2 units that would satisfy the criteria you discussed in the OP? Obviously, in writing this article you must have spent a lot of time thinking about it. I highly doubt they will ever bring back the reaver or the defiler, even though I wish they would (since colossus/infestor overlap too much), although the lurker could potentially come back in HotS.
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HOTS will make or break the game for sure. they could introduce something like spider mines that will reinvent terran play or just continue on the current path of death balls over strategic map control.
i just feel that they need more dynamic units for each race. terran has a bunch of niche units that seemingly don't mesh well. protoss has much better synergy but lacks harassment based play.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
On April 16 2011 15:16 Torpedo.Vegas wrote:
Maybe in a couple years we will look at the game and say "damn that's crazy, and we could actually do that when SC2 came out but we never knew"... Because honestly, no one knows everything about the game yet, even if it looks like someone does, who could be so sure? No one.
I hear this argument alot but I think it is flawd, SC2 is moving at a far more rapid pace then BW is right now, most things when it comes to micro are already figured about, think about it. What apart from marine micro banelings micro has been found out so far? SC2 has a far greater community dedicated to find each and every little thing which could lead to a semblence of an APM power unit such as a vulture, yet it is not found.
I also believe that the Ball mechanic is core to what SC2 is missing, in BW you have skirmishes all over the map, in SC2 you have entire deathballs hitting each other where the fight(and the game frankly) is decided in less then 12 seconds. Idra VS cruncher comes to mind(or was it Cruncher IDK, that game on Xelnaga) ~20-25min macro, with little to no skirmishes AT ALL. Then 1 big battle and game over.
And the Deathball AI clumping is HIGHLY unlikely to EVER go away.
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i steer very clear of game design suggestions because i don't want this thread to become a spamfest of people who make stupid suggestions and never read anything and end up arguing over the suggestions rather than the core issues.
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On April 16 2011 15:26 mahnini wrote:
i steer very clear of game design suggestions because i don't want this thread to become a spamfest of people who make stupid suggestions and never read anything and end up arguing over the suggestions rather than the core issues.
While true, the core issues were presented using BW units/abilities and people will (and already have) spent a good amount of time arguing about those either way. I do know what you mean though. Maybe we need a different thread for actual ideas for changes.
Without any concrete ideas, this is just another of those extremely well written articles about what SC2 lacks that pops up every few months that (mostly) everyone agrees with, but ultimately doesn't accomplish anything.
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On April 16 2011 15:26 mahnini wrote:
i steer very clear of game design suggestions because i don't want this thread to become a spamfest of people who make stupid suggestions and never read anything and end up arguing over the suggestions rather than the core issues.
It is kind of hard to ignore game design when you are talking about future competitive development since it is through the most basic aspects of the game that the professional gamers will have to learn to master. While saying a fundamental feature is right or wrong is a bit too harsh and polarizing, stating them as examples of aspects of the game not fully realized is pretty necessary based on the tactical discussion you proposed. (If I understood the OP correctly).
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not to derail any discussions here but split-map 200/200 snorefests from BW are probably not an example of something that's missing. one of the most exciting parts of sc2 for me is that each race has viable unit compositions that are mobile and can keep constant action going. also, lower mechanics don't create a lowered skill ceiling by any means, and if anything emphasize the importance of other aspects of the game (which, in turn, has made foreigners more competitive on the highest level). call me crazy, but i don't miss watching robot b-team koreans smash the best foreigners.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
On April 16 2011 15:38 benjammin wrote:
not to derail any discussions here but split-map 200/200 snorefests from BW are probably not an example of something that's missing. one of the most exciting parts of sc2 for me is that each race has viable unit compositions that are mobile and can keep constant action going. also, lower mechanics don't create a lowered skill ceiling by any means, and if anything emphasize the importance of other aspects of the game (which, in turn, has made foreigners more competitive on the highest level). call me crazy, but i don't miss watching robot b-team koreans smash the best foreigners.
Except that such a 200/200 TvT snorefest has constant skirmishes going on, repositioning etcetera, it is not that exciting but the alternative is SC2 where you have giant battles and no hardly any skirmishes, there was an image somewhere which described it perfectly, the map is divided in I am here and you are there, in BW it was all over the place.
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whether it's making sc2 more like bw or through some different way,
blizzard needs to make the game harder to play at the highest level. the lack of a formidable skill gap means sc2 cannot be a viable platform upon which esports can exist.
blizzard doesn't really care about growing an esports industry. they just want to make the most money out of their product, which means they're only going to make the game more accessible and hence easier. sure they're spending alot on the gsl but that's to promote their product, not esports. look at how they're being so greedy in the trial against ogn/mbcgame, despite the legality. and look at how they're balancing the game; all they're doing is nerfing the shit out of everything, making the game very bland and frustrating.
another thing i haven't seen many people comment on is the sound and music in sc1.
the effect sounds and voicing were MUCH better and less childish in sc1. the music in sc1 is supreme over the music sc2.
honestly, i don't understand why ppl in korea would want to be full time professional gamers in sc2 if they are in korea. at least in korea, a professional sc1 gamer is much more rewarding and stable. yes sc1 is harder but if you don't have the skills to make it in sc1, you probably won't be winning sc2 tournaments in korea anyways.
that lends to the question: what about foreigners? if sc2 stays volatile like it is right now, the sc2 tournaments won't sustain in europe/america for even 2-3 years. then when sc2 loses all sponsorships and funding, what are foreign progamers supposed to do? move to a different game where they can be "professionals" for a brief time then move on to a different game?
sc1 is where it's at. it's the only game time has proven to be a legitimate sport in the area of esports. it's the only game where the economic model of its industry has at least been self-sustaining. we have major korean corporations which OWN, NOT SPONSOR, the bw teams.
and i think the master's sc2 player unable to get into C- on iccup speaks for itself the laughable difficulty of sc2 compared to sc1.
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On April 16 2011 14:27 GagnarTheUnruly wrote:
When you use FF you aren't just splitting your opponent's army arbitrarily, you're splitting it in a way that prevents it from retreating from zealots or colossi or that traps ranged units back so that you can gain a better concave. If you pre-emptively split your army into a large concave there is nothing to FF and you will have a huge advantage if the sentry-having player gets agressive (I'm thinking TvP here). The reason you haven't seen people do it much is because people are not microing as much as they could be
Maybe. I'm more talking about ZvP, since I play mech in TvP and thus have absolutely no experience with force fields in that matchup (have fun FFing against tanks and thors). Every ZvP I play/see in which the Protoss knows how to force field they're used to cut off part of the army so the Protoss can take advantage of their superior range. You arrange your army into a perfect concave to destroy the pitiful Protoss force, then he throws down a bunch of force fields and rearranges your army so that half of your roaches are twiddling their little roach thumbs (or would be if they had any) on one side of the FF wall while the other half are dying a horrible death. Hydras are slightly better off thanks to their superior range, but the moment a single collosus comes out that advantage is gone. The only sort of fancy positioning that stops those FF walls is to flank, in which case your opponent just throws down FFs to block off one group of your army while he kills the other. Short of using the various FF counters, which in turn make force fields absolutely useless no matter what you do, there is no way for a Zerg to out-think force fields. Your army gets split, your stuff dies. gg.
On April 16 2011 14:27 GagnarTheUnruly wrote:
And if he's not reacting to your feints you can stim in for a kill move or distract him while you drop or flank. If he responds correctly then he wins and if not he loses. In other words, micro skill and reaction time determines the outcome of the battle. How is that a bad thing?
I'm not following you here.
Situation 1: Terran doesn't feint, he instead stims, charges in and starts to kill stuff. Forcefields are thrown down, collosi go bzarp, marauders turn stuff into goo, blah blah blah.
Situation 2: Terran feints and Protoss doesn't react. Terran senses weakness, stims, charges in and starts to kill stuff. Forcefields are thrown down, collosi go bzarp, marauders turn stuff into goo, blah blah blah.
Force fields are never thrown down before the battle begins. If you could have stimmed in and killed him after he didn't react to your feint you could have stimmed in and killed him without feinting. If he just doesn't react until you stim there is no possible way for you to gain by feinting, and since they both have range 9 you expose yourself to collosus fire every time you come close enough to tempt him to drop FFs. The Protoss player's micro skill and reaction time determines the outcome of the fight. The Terran player's has no impact. That is the problem, and it's twice as bad for Zerg, who have less range than the Protoss. How are they supposed to bait force fields? By running their whole army through collosus fire before simply running back out through collosus fire? Not to mention that if they try that the Protoss player will force field, and suddenly their whole army is stuck within that 9 range distance of the collosus and gets fried. The only way to deal with forcefields is to charge in and hope that you have enough d00ds.
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Canada13378 Posts
We do have Heart of the Swarm and newer strategies involving more micro based units come to mind. I mean banelings are a great example of a high micro unit where if player A micros better than Player B Player A comes out on top. Be it the Z player that is player A or the T the one who has better micro does win in almost all situations involving a lot of banelings.
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On April 16 2011 15:38 benjammin wrote:
not to derail any discussions here but split-map 200/200 snorefests from BW are probably not an example of something that's missing. one of the most exciting parts of sc2 for me is that each race has viable unit compositions that are mobile and can keep constant action going. also, lower mechanics don't create a lowered skill ceiling by any means, and if anything emphasize the importance of other aspects of the game (which, in turn, has made foreigners more competitive on the highest level). call me crazy, but i don't miss watching robot b-team koreans smash the best foreigners.
You are really contradicting yourself aren't you ? first you said you are not derailing and than you hop on to smack talk about bw 200/200 f**king snorefest have you ever watch a msl or osl i bet you don't because you just love to assume that bw is a macro game and boring because you can't even reach D rank in bw even in iccup ? seriously aren't you trolling now but than again back on to the topic overall I do realised that not only sc2 lacks map control or unit that has actual potential to do such . In my opinion the graphic it self in sc2 hinders it spectator enjoyment especially seeing blob vs blob on the big screen is really not that very exciting but that again i hope sc2 actually gets better in hots or in lov expansion till than goodluck.
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Very nice post, I agree with most of the above.
I started to follow the tournaments etc. with SC2, but I still watch BW games sometimes from streams or Youtube, and they are definitelly much more exciting most times. One game that had me excited a ton in SC2 was qxc vs NEXGenius in TSL on Xel'naga Caverns, that game had the effect of "holding breath" as you said, because qxc didn't really have a standing army to contest NexGenius (until he had 3/3 upgrades) so he used Reapers, Nukes, Cloaked Ghosts to harrass Genius every where until he had enough stuff to fight Genius. Besides from that, Select vs Incontrol in MLG was amazing because Select's harrassment and multitasking was superb, he was everywhere. Another game I remember is Adelscott vs I think Naniwa (or HuK? some protoss but can't remember) from Assembly, Adelscott attacked his opponent with multiprong attacks which eventually led to a pincer movement which won him the game. It was amazing. SC2 has its moments too.
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More and more player are beginning to play a more mid game aggressive style, the game will get more "active" in time.
I mean common sc2 is out for half an year, in bw it took em the first 2 years to figure out how to hold of 5 pool.
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On April 16 2011 15:47 hmmm... wrote:
honestly, i don't understand why ppl in korea would want to be full time professional gamers in sc2 if they are in korea. at least in korea, a professional sc1 gamer is much more rewarding and stable. yes sc1 is harder but if you don't have the skills to make it in sc1, you probably won't be winning sc2 tournaments in korea anyways.
Because everyone was talking about Iron, ZergBong and Clare and their amazing mindblowing skills and how they're going to be the next bonjwas, amirite?
On April 16 2011 15:47 hmmm... wrote:
and i think the master's sc2 player unable to get into C- on iccup speaks for itself the laughable difficulty of sc2 compared to sc1.
No, that speaks for the average skill of the players. If someone with little skill in game A can easily reach the highest levels of competition in game B, that shows that game B doesn't have many good players. If everyone who played BW was a noob who went 1 base battlecruisers with only his 6 starting SCVs every game, the average SC2 silver player would be a top-level pro player. That doesn't mean BW is a skilless game, it means the community has a low skill level.
If the average bronzie who plays the game casually could take the occasional game off a highly competitive masters player who spends all his time playing and strategising, that would show that the game is easy and requires no skill. That's pretty clearly not the case. There's nothing wrong with liking BW, it is the single greatest RTS ever made (which of course makes it the best game ever made), but you don't need to insult everyone else just because you're part of the BW-playing elite.
EDIT: Also, I do agree that most the BW music, quotes and such were better, but nothing compares to the SC2 Terran music. I'm listening to it right now, and it's giving me nothing but eargasms.
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i agree w/ the dark swarm part under player-unit interactions. i had a lot of similar thoughts when fungal and swarm were compared to one another in the beta. i mostly feel the same way about force field and even conc shells, too. once they are on you/around your units, those units are committed to the fight, and if you're going to lose that fight, there's not much you can do about it other than not get caught again. it's not necessarily a bad thing for balance, but it's pretty boring to watch and hard to appreciate, at the moment anyway. to me, it's almost the equivalent of watching someone get caught helpless in a crowd control chain while getting attacked in other games.
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On April 16 2011 15:47 hmmm... wrote:
whether it's making sc2 more like bw or through some different way,
blizzard needs to make the game harder to play at the highest level. the lack of a formidable skill gap means sc2 cannot be a viable platform upon which esports can exist.
blizzard doesn't really care about growing an esports industry. they just want to make the most money out of their product, which means they're only going to make the game more accessible and hence easier. sure they're spending alot on the gsl but that's to promote their product, not esports. look at how they're being so greedy in the trial against ogn/mbcgame, despite the legality. and look at how they're balancing the game; all they're doing is nerfing the shit out of everything, making the game very bland and frustrating.
another thing i haven't seen many people comment on is the sound and music in sc1.
the effect sounds and voicing were MUCH better and less childish in sc1. the music in sc1 is supreme over the music sc2.
honestly, i don't understand why ppl in korea would want to be full time professional gamers in sc2 if they are in korea. at least in korea, a professional sc1 gamer is much more rewarding and stable. yes sc1 is harder but if you don't have the skills to make it in sc1, you probably won't be winning sc2 tournaments in korea anyways.
that lends to the question: what about foreigners? if sc2 stays volatile like it is right now, the sc2 tournaments won't sustain in europe/america for even 2-3 years. then when sc2 loses all sponsorships and funding, what are foreign progamers supposed to do? move to a different game where they can be "professionals" for a brief time then move on to a different game?
sc1 is where it's at. it's the only game time has proven to be a legitimate sport in the area of esports. it's the only game where the economic model of its industry has at least been self-sustaining. we have major korean corporations which OWN, NOT SPONSOR, the bw teams.
and i think the master's sc2 player unable to get into C- on iccup speaks for itself the laughable difficulty of sc2 compared to sc1.
Pop up a video of a SC2 progamer, though, and you'll see that even the best of them have macro errors. Even players who are considered mechanically strong (IdrA and Nestea come to mind) miss injects, and donate units to tank lines by move commands. Most games I see with progamers using Infestors often involve them running into the opposing army not casting a single spell. And Zerg is not better than Protoss or Terran in this regard.
Right now, as it is, the best players in the world are probably the equivalent of C or so on ICCup. Does this mean that there is no potential for them to ever get better, and this is as far as the game will develop? I don't think that's true. Just for fun, I opened up an old VOD of BoxeR, played in 2001 (I believe you can find it on TL someplace). Compared with the play of Flash and Jaedong, BoxeR looked awful. Compared with the people at the time, he looked pretty damn good. Likewise, I went and watched the finals of the first GSL in SC2, with the finals between Fruitdealer and HopeTorture. Compared with pro-gamers we have today, they looked awful. I saw Marines just flat-up run as a group from Banelings, no splitting at all.
Skills between the two games do not transfer 100%, as they simply aren't the same game. Someone who is talented at microing Dragoons and Speed Zealots doesn't immediately gain the skills to manipulate them in SC2. In SC2, because of the different units, having Stalker/Zealot control isn't going to help nearly as much as being strong with Forcefield placement.
The long and short of this - as much as I hate to state this, being so similar to the "the game needs more time to develop" argument, you need to give the pro-gamers time to become better. Just because BW had 10 years to develop amazing players, doesn't mean that SC2 will immediately have them. They need time too.
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Pretty much agreed.
Simply put, sc2 needs more mechanics that reward skillful micro. There aren't too many ways you can distinguish yourself in sc2, 200 vs 200 food fights look too similar for different skill levels.
Really hoping Blizzard takes articles like this seriously and work very hard on these expansions to get sc2 the same "it" factor that BW or even WC3 had.
Also a question to BW enthusiasts, I never watched much pro BW:
In BW matches, were there a lot of games where both players passively macro up for 15minutes with very little action and then just push out to see who's army wins? This is one think about SC2 that I hate and I would like to know if it existed in BW at all.
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