On April 17 2011 02:23 blamous wrote: No disrespect, but I'm a little tired of these kinds of discussions.
The reason you are even able to write a thread like this is because BW had a decade of gameplay to get it to where it is right now. I don't disagree with the points made about BW, they are absolutely true. But why not wait until the game is finished and playing for a few years before we decide its not good enough.
The designers are not the people who made BW great, it was the players doing great things with what they had. Don't count on the dev team to make another BW, that is not going to happen. It's going to be up to you and me to do amazing things with the game. And if we can't, then the game will die.
It's as simple as that.
This is true.
The more frequently and dramatically a game is changed, the less time there is for the pros to explore every inch of it. I remember in another topic such as this, GunZ was discussed, and the exploits people had found, and getting good at the exploits became THE game. Still following through on the fundamentals while going through the minor exploit movements became very difficult. They removed this, and the games popularity dropped drastically.
I suppose as far as examples, I heard these same cries of doomsday about the competitive scene with a game I was previously involved in competitively, Super Smash Bros. The Melee community (old) was trying to say that Brawl (new) could never be competitive. And yet, Brawl was taken to a very competitive edge. So much so that the same people that started out playing and had success, are relatively the same people, from melee, into brawl, and from the start of brawl till now. The tournaments still go on weekly despite the doomsday sayers. They all said that Metaknight would win every tournament (forgetting that Jiggly puff had won every major tournament for the better part of over 2 years, and marth/fox all the years before that generally). We have seen a national tournament with the top 8 having 3 sonics, I mean that wasn't predicted by anyone, sonic was seen as a weak character. There are many new varied ways of playing; technical, flow based, reading, buffering inputs constantly, etc.. Some people try to combine all, some focus on one aspect.
The reason why I delve into this is, the arguments appear the same within the Starcraft community, the only difference being, that the Starcraft community is much more organized and intelligent appearing, but yet a lot of the old school are still saying the same thing. Did the actions of players in the first year of SC1 (not BW) impress anyone to the level of year 8 of BW? I would think not. It goes the same for Super Smash, the melee community still continues to add new blood, it's still large, brawl is much larger however, and yet melee gets more and more competitive, and so does brawl. It just how it goes. Usually the people who complained the most, had some sort of emotional connection to melee, some sort of psychological motive, and were not just being objective.
i always feel like this idea that things will improve with time is a cop out of an argument. in things concerning builds and timings it is always a relevant point, but how much time is needed before colossus gains setup time? how much time is needed before roaches can effectively hold ground? i understand calling this a fundamental flaw is a huge claim, but saying give it time is completely disregarding my entire post and all the arguments i've presented in a huge general sweep.
That's kind of how your points should be treated though. Your OP is an extremely long and well written "They changed it, so it sucks".
The "give it time" people might be annoying, but we've consistently been right. The game has been getting better. Macro games are no longer an event in and of themselves, harass is more common, etc etc etc. Players are getting better, and the games are getting better as a result.
Besides, look at your idea that there are no units that are great defensively and require a setup time.
Terran: Seige Tank.
Zerg: It turns out that spine crawlers are, like, really good, especially with a queen or two behind them to transfuse. Throw down a couple of spines and a spore or two around an expo, and that shit it untouchable, and you can even move them around. Look at the Spanishiwa build, which gets a lot of early spines to get an economy roaring fast. If this catches on, players are going to start moving those spines to the third or fourth once they have their army going. People were shying away from Static D because it was bad in BW. But SC2 Zerg Static D is a.) Stronger, and b.) Not static. Crawlers are basically units, and they fill your desired role. And if they're underused because they're not worth it, that's not so much a fundamental design flaw as it is a patch.
Protoss: None, but what did they have in BW? And SC2 DTs are better at securing map control than SC1 DTs, because scans cost money to use and Terrans thus don't want to scan from an orbital the way BW Terrans scanned from all their comsats all the time. When the Colossus gets its promised damage nerf, we'll start seeing Protoss play change quite a bit.
On April 17 2011 02:23 blamous wrote: No disrespect, but I'm a little tired of these kinds of discussions.
The reason you are even able to write a thread like this is because BW had a decade of gameplay to get it to where it is right now. I don't disagree with the points made about BW, they are absolutely true. But why not wait until the game is finished and playing for a few years before we decide its not good enough.
The designers are not the people who made BW great, it was the players doing great things with what they had. Don't count on the dev team to make another BW, that is not going to happen. It's going to be up to you and me to do amazing things with the game. And if we can't, then the game will die.
It's as simple as that.
This is true.
The more frequently and dramatically a game is changed, the less time there is for the pros to explore every inch of it. I remember in another topic such as this, GunZ was discussed, and the exploits people had found, and getting good at the exploits became THE game. Still following through on the fundamentals while going through the minor exploit movements became very difficult. They removed this, and the games popularity dropped drastically.
I suppose as far as examples, I heard these same cries of doomsday about the competitive scene with a game I was previously involved in competitively, Super Smash Bros. The Melee community (old) was trying to say that Brawl (new) could never be competitive. And yet, Brawl was taken to a very competitive edge. So much so that the same people that started out playing and had success, are relatively the same people, from melee, into brawl, and from the start of brawl till now. The tournaments still go on weekly despite the doomsday sayers. They all said that Metaknight would win every tournament (forgetting that Jiggly puff had won every major tournament for the better part of over 2 years, and marth/fox all the years before that generally). We have seen a national tournament with the top 8 having 3 sonics, I mean that wasn't predicted by anyone, sonic was seen as a weak character. There are many new varied ways of playing; technical, flow based, reading, buffering inputs constantly, etc.. Some people try to combine all, some focus on one aspect.
The reason why I delve into this is, the arguments appear the same within the Starcraft community, the only difference being, that the Starcraft community is much more organized and intelligent appearing, but yet a lot of the old school are still saying the same thing. Did the actions of players in the first year of SC1 (not BW) impress anyone to the level of year 8 of BW? I would think not. It goes the same for Super Smash, the melee community still continues to add new blood, it's still large, brawl is much larger however, and yet melee gets more and more competitive, and so does brawl. It just how it goes. Usually the people who complained the most, had some sort of emotional connection to melee, some sort of psychological motive, and were not just being objective.
i always feel like this idea that things will improve with time is a cop out of an argument. in things concerning builds and timings it is always a relevant point, but how much time is needed before colossus gains setup time? how much time is needed before roaches can effectively hold ground? i understand calling this a fundamental flaw is a huge claim, but saying give it time is completely disregarding my entire post and all the arguments i've presented in a huge general sweep.
That's kind of how your points should be treated though. Your OP is an extremely long and well written "They changed it, so it sucks".
Where did the OP express that it sucks? He's expressed the complete opposite throughout this thread.
- Remove the colossus. It's the easiest, most thoughtless unit to use in the game. It actually kills fun.
Personally, I think if the colossus was slower, it would simply be less thoughtless and attractive as opposed to templar.
On April 17 2011 03:02 R0YAL wrote: Great post, well written and even more accurate with your points.
On April 16 2011 09:48 Dusty1337 wrote: I think SC2 just needs more time. Granted I didn't read the entire post but I read a good amount of it, future expansions might make sc2 even better than bw some day.
Theres tons of people saying that sc2 just needs more time and although that may to true to an extent, theres only so much you can do when all the units are hopelessly one dimensional.
Really, you think phoenixes are more one-dimensional than corsairs? Seriously? Stalkers more one-dimensional than dragoons? Roaches even aren't that one-dimensional now that we're seeing a lot more burrow-micro tactics and timings.
Again, now that certain things are easier, that means that pro players will be able to other things at the same time. Players just aren't good enough yet. Burrow-roaching while baneling dropping or transfusing. Blink-microing while storming. Nuking/Emping while setting up mech. And these kinds of crazy things take time.
Grand scheme of things. Just because a mage in WoW has a million abilities doesnt make it less one dimensional.
Uhm. It's not about the number of abilities. Stalkers are still way more interesting than dragoons and personally I think Phoenixes are still more interesting than corsairs, even when you consider they have the same amount of abilities and phoenix can attack while moving. And come on, Shuttles are certainly more one-dimensional than Warp Prisms. This is total Nostalgia-Glasses talking.
The Grand Scheme of things implies that there will be more impressive play with tons more going on than in BW. Things are easier, so more things can be done at the same time. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.
Um I know its not about the number of abilities, that was my point. The point is how race x works as a whole vs race y as a whole. Not unit x vs unit y.
Lurkers could force a Science vessel before the terran can move out while you could still attack into banelings and they won't delay the terran to buy some time for the zerg.
micro vs spidermines ( the toss is keeping up with macro while manually targeting spiders that popup with the dragoons and running back immediately until the cooldown was ready again ) there's like literally 500 apm in this one
he's like all over the map in this
fungal growth has the same radius as the old psionic storm and only 2 were needed for the mineral line, but it would also disable units from moving one of the things that was really good in sc2 would be MC's first game vs July in gsl5 on xelnaga where MC FF's the exit and entry points and then blinks his stalkers out of the box while putting psionic storms on the units trapped inside the box and moving colossi south while stalkers shot at the corruptors
On April 17 2011 02:27 [Atomic]Peace wrote: Excellent post. Here's an encouraging thought though: in BW Zerg received both the Lurker and the Defilier. Image what Zerg must have been like in vanilla SC without those units? One can hope that the game designers pay careful attention to threads like this and make careful selections for what units to add in HotS. I wonder what SC2 would look like if the Goliath, Reaver, and Lurker were added back into the game?
they always had the defiler, but the lurker, devourer, medic, valkyrie, dark archon, corsair were added
Oov vs ipxzerg, there are no lurkers and swarm at the same time, so your whole description doesn't actually fit the game(lol), in the first attack there's no swarm and in the second attack ipx doesn't use lurkers. Stork vs fantasy, fantasy losses his tanks, his 2 base timing push is completely ruined and he's very much behind(stork's 4th has already finished, while fantasy just started his 3rd behind the push), stork has plenty of units to hold off pure vultures, which can only harass a bit. There's no "Trade. Delay. Crush.", there's "Destroy tanks, win game". It doesn't really exemplify the paragraph(or it's description), though it does show that tanks suck if caught unsieged.
On April 17 2011 05:35 Ribbon wrote: That's kind of how your points should be treated though. Your OP is an extremely long and well written "They changed it, so it sucks".
The "give it time" people might be annoying, but we've consistently been right. The game has been getting better. Macro games are no longer an event in and of themselves, harass is more common, etc etc etc. Players are getting better, and the games are getting better as a result.
Besides, look at your idea that there are no units that are great defensively and require a setup time.
Terran: Seige Tank.
Zerg: It turns out that spine crawlers are, like, really good, especially with a queen or two behind them to transfuse. Throw down a couple of spines and a spore or two around an expo, and that shit it untouchable, and you can even move them around. Look at the Spanishiwa build, which gets a lot of early spines to get an economy roaring fast. If this catches on, players are going to start moving those spines to the third or fourth once they have their army going. People were shying away from Static D because it was bad in BW. But SC2 Zerg Static D is a.) Stronger, and b.) Not static. Crawlers are basically units, and they fill your desired role. And if they're underused because they're not worth it, that's not so much a fundamental design flaw as it is a patch.
I don't mean to take too much away from the 'give it time' argument. It is valid because a lot of BW games were interesting because the builds and timings had a lot of refinement to them, and the overall gameplay was stronger. This prevented someone from getting an advantage and just breaking the other player's neck. However SC2 has some fundamental flaws that seem to work against this even as the game starts to get figured out. SC1 wasn't really 'great' until the expansion. My biggest hope right now is that Blizzard makes a miracle fix with the upcoming expansions. I wont hold my breath too much for that though.
Protoss: None, but what did they have in BW? And SC2 DTs are better at securing map control than SC1 DTs, because scans cost money to use and Terrans thus don't want to scan from an orbital the way BW Terrans scanned from all their comsats all the time. When the Colossus gets its promised damage nerf, we'll start seeing Protoss play change quite a bit.
Anyone in their right mind expects the games to get better with time. The most annoying part about the 'give it time' argument is that no matter how much time you give SC2, there will still be no way for a zerg to micro against colossus. They outrange every ground unit and deal massive, unavoidable damage. I don't know about this colossus damage nerf you are talking about, but I am interested.
Spine crawlers are good until the first colossus is out. People didn't shy away from static D in BW. I've seen many savior, and other high level zerg games that utilized a lot of sunkens to block bio timing attacks. The static defense is also somewhat weaker than it was in BW. Sure the spines can move, but sunkens didn't have to worry about stimmed marauders flooring it in a few seconds. Sunkens had to worry most about tanks and reavers, both of which required setup time in one way or another. Sunkens also built faster if I'm not mistaken. Don't get me wrong... I think spines will turn out to be more interesting, but units just MELT buildings in SC2 compared to BW.
- Remove the colossus. It's the easiest, most thoughtless unit to use in the game. It actually kills fun.
Personally, I think if the colossus was slower, it would simply be less thoughtless and attractive as opposed to templar.
On April 17 2011 03:02 R0YAL wrote: Great post, well written and even more accurate with your points.
On April 16 2011 09:48 Dusty1337 wrote: I think SC2 just needs more time. Granted I didn't read the entire post but I read a good amount of it, future expansions might make sc2 even better than bw some day.
Theres tons of people saying that sc2 just needs more time and although that may to true to an extent, theres only so much you can do when all the units are hopelessly one dimensional.
Really, you think phoenixes are more one-dimensional than corsairs? Seriously? Stalkers more one-dimensional than dragoons? Roaches even aren't that one-dimensional now that we're seeing a lot more burrow-micro tactics and timings.
Again, now that certain things are easier, that means that pro players will be able to other things at the same time. Players just aren't good enough yet. Burrow-roaching while baneling dropping or transfusing. Blink-microing while storming. Nuking/Emping while setting up mech. And these kinds of crazy things take time.
Grand scheme of things. Just because a mage in WoW has a million abilities doesnt make it less one dimensional.
Uhm. It's not about the number of abilities. Stalkers are still way more interesting than dragoons and personally I think Phoenixes are still more interesting than corsairs, even when you consider they have the same amount of abilities and phoenix can attack while moving. And come on, Shuttles are certainly more one-dimensional than Warp Prisms. This is total Nostalgia-Glasses talking.
The Grand Scheme of things implies that there will be more impressive play with tons more going on than in BW. Things are easier, so more things can be done at the same time. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.
Um I know its not about the number of abilities, that was my point. The point is how race x works as a whole vs race y as a whole. Not unit x vs unit y.
The claim is that the units are "hopelessly one-dimensional." I disagree. There are plenty of SC2 units that have many different facets to it. One example is the Blink Stalker.
It's true we lost vultures, lurkers, and reavers. But it's not like banelings, phoenixes, and the new ghost are so completely uninteresting that you can say SC1 > SC2.
All former SC1 players will agree and understand what the OP is talking about, we could talk for hours why SC1 was so nice to play and watch, and why SC2 is not. The dynamic and the units of SC1 were just a lucky winning combination that made the game so great, so trying to reiterate that success was kinda impossible. However I still don't understand why the OP feels the need to justify himself. Why don't you just admit that you miss SC1 and that you know SC2 will never reach the level of his father? What's so wrong with that? It's kind of a taboo for the TL admins / pro players right? And I know why, but let me tell you that trying to protect SC2 in order to defend esport in general is not the right choice, in the end it will hurt even more.
Anyway, I also would like to say that all people who keep repeating "the game is still young, give it some time or it will die", are in fact working to kill the game. If you refuse to face the truth and don't listen to the people who have been playing RTS for years, then, yes, SC2 is going to slowly die: in two years (not more imo) the game will start lacking of players because more and more (semi-pro and pro players) are already bored with that "ball vs ball" game.
But it may also be something good, because all game producers now know that there's a free slot for a new RTS. One year ago, it was impossible to came with a new game, SC1 and Warcraft 3 were controling the place, and SC2 was about to be released, so it would have been suicide. But now the competition for the best RTS on the market has been re-oppened, and it can only bring good things, I really think so
On April 17 2011 01:31 buscemi wrote: I have to add that this mentality really bothers me. This thread is full of myopic reasoning and facetious arguments. How can one have a reasonable discussion comparing two games when one game is reduced to a caricature? SC2 is not "1a vs 1a", at least not the SC2 I see on the GSL and TSL and Dreamhack and MLG.
That is some deep thoughts you put into this, mahnini. I always had the same feeling, the feeling that SC2 lacked something(s), but I couldn't cut it down to the reasons behind that. Your reasoning is very clear, I especially liked the parts about the non-battle aspects of the game - map control and delaying pushes. This was one big reason why so much thought and finesse had to be put into BW to make a great player.
On April 17 2011 01:31 buscemi wrote: I have to add that this mentality really bothers me. This thread is full of myopic reasoning and facetious arguments. How can one have a reasonable discussion comparing two games when one game is reduced to a caricature? SC2 is not "1a vs 1a", at least not the SC2 I see on the GSL and TSL and Dreamhack and MLG.
I think most of the elements named in that thread are indeed present in sc2 but simply not as crystal clear as it was in BW. The game is still young and those key elements will just start to show more and more as people get better.
I also kinda think that comparing SC2 to BW is kind of pointless, it's 2 different games, plain and simple.
There are lots of good points in here, and I agree with almost all of it. Your points about SC2's lack of more positional advantage units (lurker, etc) was echoed in another post on TL a while ago which was talking about how SC2 has much less of a defender's advantage than Brood War had. It's much more difficult to manipulate chokes and to hold off a larger push. Hopefully we will see some more diverse units in HotS so that we can fiddle with even more things. I do think that in the next few years SC2 will become much more interesting as far as unit control and overall flow.
Edit: In my opinion TvT has the most potential to feel like Brood War matches, due to the power of the tank in that matchup.
You are comparing SC:BW with ten years of maturation vs. a game that has been out a year. You are comparing players that have mastered a game vs. players still figuring out how things work (Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, 10k hours.) I understand that from a competitive stand point SC2 isn't where a lot of us would like it to be. That said, neither was SC1 at release. Were you around when 99% of SCBW competitive games were played on Lost Temple, because every other map stunk? Remember when River Styx was a ladder map? _River Styx_! Were you around for that? When the first big invitational tournament played had Thresh as a player? (Because they couldn't find 16 players with enough name cache to invite).
I think the OP lacks perspective. SC1 took a long time to become a game that could support high level competitive play. Were you around for that period of SC1's development you'd realize that the changes you'd like to see take time.
On April 17 2011 01:31 buscemi wrote: I have to add that this mentality really bothers me. This thread is full of myopic reasoning and facetious arguments. How can one have a reasonable discussion comparing two games when one game is reduced to a caricature? SC2 is not "1a vs 1a", at least not the SC2 I see on the GSL and TSL and Dreamhack and MLG.
Surely that isn't the fault of the game, it's the players?
I've found using multiple hotkeys makes battles much easier and it makes unit control much smoother. If people are choosing to use one hotkey, then that's their choice. A good microing player with more than one hotkey will most likely outmicro someone who just uses one.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/nJxLO.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/bp21o.png)
Hopefully it will get better! 
