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On April 17 2011 08:48 IntoTheWow wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2011 07:53 Qikz wrote:On April 17 2011 07:31 IntoTheWow wrote:On April 17 2011 07:09 Qikz wrote:On April 17 2011 06:25 IntoTheWow wrote: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. + Show Spoiler + 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. Yeah, and that's why those players are in the ro16 of the TSL and people who micro smoothly like you are not. I'm sorry, but I don't understand the point you're trying to make. It's early in the game and although they are at "pro level". Are they playing perfectly every single game? No, I've not seen one game of Starcraft 2 where a player has played at the sort of perfection level of standards of the likes of Flash and Jaedong. The game is still being figured out and the metagame is still shifting every single day. There's been new builds in every season of the GSL so far and the game is constantly changing. I've seen tournament players make plenty of mistakes which is bound to happen at this time in the games life. As this all changes, so will the playstyle and most likely quite a lot of the "pro" players we have now might not even be around this time next year. I would quite happily say that just because the likes of Morrow and Idra were non-korean pros in Broodwar does not mean that they're the sort of players that are excelling at Starcraft 2 right now (and we should not be using them as some kind of benchmark of play for Starcraft 2), they're just the people who are actively in tournaments right now, but that can change very drastically. Until the game develops, threads like this are in my personal opinion very silly discussions as quite simply the outcome will always be the same. Brood War players will say that Broodwar is better and newer players and people who didn't maybe get the time with Broodwar as much will say the opposite. As a broodwar player myself I personally feel we should be giving the time for the game to develop. Was it going to be perfect when it was first released? No. Starcraft wasn't even a good game until Broodwar and became a progame by complete accident. Do you really think that people who are making money of the game did not try to hotkey units in different control groups? I don't see why you have to type a 3 paragraph post to justify anything like that. It's not an exception, I only picked a random game that was being played, but we have seen it over and over in SC2. Mistakes happen all the time, in BW too. Grouping units together is not "a mistake", or something players forgot to do once or a couple of times.
There is absolutely no advantage to grouping all of your units together other than the fact that it is easier.
Obviously if someone were good enough to hotkey their zealots, sentries, stalkers and immortals to different hotkeys and control them separately that would be better.
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I would agree though that I feel zergs need their lurker back.
Or at least a new unit which allow some sort of contain.
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As far as the "1 control group syndrome" goes, I've seen plenty of PvX games in BW where the Protoss player moves their entire army around in a ball as though it was 1 control group. If unlimited unit selection was in BW, I'm sure that they will continue to do that. Of course, the BW Protoss ball is nowhere near as frightening as the Colossus+stuff combo, but it was still pretty formidable to engage a ball of Dragoons and Zealots supported by Reavers, HTs, and/or Archons.
Although there are plenty of scrappier BW games where the Protoss goes for more multi-pronged, small-army engagements, I just feel like the singular ball syndrome is a norm even in BW even though it's not as invincible as its SC2 equivalent.
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On April 17 2011 09:02 Exhale- wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2011 08:39 Nevuk wrote:
The one thing I really miss in sc2 is zerglings. SC2 Zerglings are so useless compared to their sc1 equivalent and it really makes zvp have a much different feel. They attack absurdly slow and seem to deal 0 damage to anything. Zerglings were a huge part of why PvZ could feel very imbalanced towards the zerg... the issue is twofold, really. Stalkers do extra damage to light, meaning they actually are good vs lings while dragoons vs zerglings is a complete no contest... the ball composition toss are aiming for is just mass stalkers and a few collossus. Zerg has no real answer to this besides a perfect unit composition vs it. It seems to discourage toss from having to think about unit composition - if zerg gets buffed in some fashion, I would really prefer to see lings get buffed as opposed to some weird t3 or t2.5 buff.
. I will agree that zerglings are definitely weaker in Sc2 than they were in bw. But stalkers don't do bonus to light (do you even play sc2?) and if you have ever watched an equal supply of pure ling vs pure stalker, unless the zerg is engaging in a choke or the stalkers are in a huge clump against a wall or something, the lings will DEMOLISH the stalkers. I think you have some good points but you exaggerate a lot and your not thinking of the other races at all. The reason why toss and terran have to wall in against zerg is because if they didn't every zerg would go 14 gas 14 pool and as soon as that first inject of lings came out they would run into the toss or terrans base and rofl over there small amount of marines/marauders or zealot/stalker/sentry.
I thought they buffed light damage a while ago. They actually buffed armored. I watch more than I play, which was true in sc1 as well. And yes, I'm exaggerating some - it's true. But it's more hyperbolic sorts of things, I'm not a pro player who is qualified to really say exactly accurate stuff. Anyways. I'm just saying things to get people to think. This thread is just about tossing out random ideas - whether or not my justification for them is right is a different matter, they can always be expounded on or altered or criticized into something useable. Regardless, I think most people would agree that stalkers are better vs lings than dragoons are by a pretty huge margin.
In sc1 simcities are key vs zerg as toss if you two base. So it's exactly the same. However, FE in sc2 is MUCH easier than in sc1 due to the building grid and the weaker lings.You can FE on a map you haven't played on without too much effort, while in sc1 you pretty much had to practice every spawn point on the map.
However the reason why this can happen vs 1 basing has nothing to do with larva inject and everything to do with wider ramps. in sc1 a ramp was two zealots wide - they could block off a massive amount of lings due to how narrow they were. If you buffed lings and made ramps the same width....
I have never seen any zerg ever try and counter stalkers with lings. (Or at least successfully try).
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Some good points there. What i haveto criticise OP about, is that this post reeks of nostalgia and needless hating of SC2 as direct result. SC BW had its good sides and bad sides, as does SC2.
SC2 has much better code than SC BW had, unit pathing issues playing a major role troughout the game, from prolonging the battles into several minute long dances of death, to making microing alot harder. SC2 holds players hand on certain things, if you let it do so, but in most cases player interaction is what gives the best results.
What i wonder, is that do players use the new tools they have given to their fullest? We still see people with 1 control group for all their units - even when there are casters in the control group - we see less drops and less nydus play than in BW. Examples like these do pop up when you start thinking of it, and because of this, id say that SC2 players are not using all the tools to their fullest extend.
SC2 is not as figured out as SC BW is, so how could you expect SC2 pro players to be as dashing as BW pros are?
Now, about mechanics( i use this term loosely ) of SC2 vs BW... For example: Marine pathing and clumping. Marines in BW just dont work as smoothly as in SC2. Even if we ignored the increased damage per shot, they also clump up much, much faster, allowing to get more out of your marines, resulting in faster battles. Or how about comparing Dragoons with stalkers? Whitch one micro better? My point is, even if the DPS of the units were the same when we compare BW and SC2, SC2 units get to where they were wanted sooner, they clump up faster, they get stuck on edges less and thus their damage output is much, much higher.
TLDR: All you can do is to wait till the game matures more. Due to the new technology used in making SC2, it cannot be SC BW without making some of its mechanics seemingly worse. The players have not figured out SC2 yet and its full potential - even without any further patching or expanding - has not been tapped yet so claiming that SC2 is worse than BW in so many ways is a very, very bold claim. Infact, i doubt anyone can make that claim without it being merely a matter of taste or opinion, in this case mixed with nostalgia.
Much of this was already said before i posted, but i wanted to put it on my own words. The whole thread feels appaling to me in many levels. The clash of fanboyism is not a beatiful sight to see, and having moderators taking clear sides makes it almost a horror show.
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SC2 has much better code than SC BW had, unit pathing issues playing a major role troughout the game, from prolonging the battles into several minute long dances of death
i'd just like to point out that pathing was not the reason battles in bw were so drawn out.
the pathing in bw is actually fine. people exagerate the hell out of how bad it was.
i just finished uploading a vod yesterday of an SC2BW match where a battle started and lasted 5 minutes. dragoons and hydras dancing back. lurkers repositioning constantly. shuttle/reaver also repositioning. observer flying around. overlords trying to help snipe it. etc.
also i really think MBS and unlimited unit selection are issues. all they've done is make players lazy frankly.
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On April 17 2011 09:31 IntoTheWow wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2011 09:17 benjammin wrote:On April 17 2011 08:48 IntoTheWow wrote:On April 17 2011 07:53 Qikz wrote:On April 17 2011 07:31 IntoTheWow wrote:On April 17 2011 07:09 Qikz wrote:On April 17 2011 06:25 IntoTheWow wrote: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. + Show Spoiler + 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. Yeah, and that's why those players are in the ro16 of the TSL and people who micro smoothly like you are not. I'm sorry, but I don't understand the point you're trying to make. It's early in the game and although they are at "pro level". Are they playing perfectly every single game? No, I've not seen one game of Starcraft 2 where a player has played at the sort of perfection level of standards of the likes of Flash and Jaedong. The game is still being figured out and the metagame is still shifting every single day. There's been new builds in every season of the GSL so far and the game is constantly changing. I've seen tournament players make plenty of mistakes which is bound to happen at this time in the games life. As this all changes, so will the playstyle and most likely quite a lot of the "pro" players we have now might not even be around this time next year. I would quite happily say that just because the likes of Morrow and Idra were non-korean pros in Broodwar does not mean that they're the sort of players that are excelling at Starcraft 2 right now (and we should not be using them as some kind of benchmark of play for Starcraft 2), they're just the people who are actively in tournaments right now, but that can change very drastically. Until the game develops, threads like this are in my personal opinion very silly discussions as quite simply the outcome will always be the same. Brood War players will say that Broodwar is better and newer players and people who didn't maybe get the time with Broodwar as much will say the opposite. As a broodwar player myself I personally feel we should be giving the time for the game to develop. Was it going to be perfect when it was first released? No. Starcraft wasn't even a good game until Broodwar and became a progame by complete accident. Do you really think that people who are making money of the game did not try to hotkey units in different control groups? I don't see why you have to type a 3 paragraph post to justify anything like that. It's not an exception, I only picked a random game that was being played, but we have seen it over and over in SC2. Mistakes happen all the time, in BW too. Grouping units together is not "a mistake", or something players forgot to do once or a couple of times. are you really arguing that having all your units on one hotkey is the same thing as 1a vs 1a? Im arguing the same thing mahnini is saying. The current unit composition in battles + unit design favours pure DPS combos in battles. Because of that most battles in SC come down to forming a good arc and attacking your opponents and pulling out injured units. While that's not necessarily bad, it gets old fast, at least for me. Some units take from that type of play (the baneling for example, the tank, etc). But as of now, yeah I'm seeing players 1Aing a lot. Coming out ahead then having map control. Bringing army balls running around the map to engage. There's isn't much spreading around, setting up pushes / contain, except with tanks.
Does showing that the army is on one hotkey somehow prove that they're a-moving?
Have you ever watched a pro stream? They micro small groups with their mouse -- manually -- in order to target down specific units, retreat certain units, etc. The screenshot you used of Morrow was also not especially fair because it was hydra-roach -- in a lot of situations, there's simply no reason to have multiple control groups of hydra-roach, unless you want to make sure the hydras are in the back. And even then, pathfinding is good enough that you can just set your ball up that way, then put them on one control group, then go.
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Good post, a lot of valid points but I as a whole, disagree. Comparing a game that players have had time to refine for years and years and years Versus a year of SC2 of course the differences and battles aren't going to be up to par.
When people find out how to maximize effectiveness of every unit, and they have to APM to do it, things will start shaping up and taking longer, you already see this with good players. If two players decide to just engage each others armies, of course the battle will end in 10 seconds, its up to the players to make the better decisions, not the game. Watch a good P or Z go against a Tank push in SC2, they don't engage it and die right away, the fight takes 5 minutes of the Zerg repositioning and trying flanks...
Give it more time... jeeze.
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nobody mentioned this so far... but I think this is one of the most crucial factors that is missing from the game... higher ground advantage.
In bw, you don't dare go attack a position the opponent has setup where he is on the higher ground because of the miss mechanic. In sc2, there's is probably no such thing as higher ground advantage because all the units have 100% accuracy when it comes to shooting things in high ground. The only thing is that you need vision and that is so easily attained. There was the breath holding moment when a protoss attacks into a terran's siege tank line esp when the terran is holding higher ground. Dragoons would shoot and shoot and shoot but sometimes the tank just takes 30 shots and doesnt die because most of them missed. This is same with lurker vs dragoons.
A player with a significantly weaker army has a chance to hold off a significantly large army with a bit of luck. In sc2, nothing is volatile. Everything is pretty calculated and expected and that results in pretty boring games.
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There seems to be an abundance of arguments about the 1a syndrome, and the argument is becoming diluted through personal insults and odd focusing on irrelevant details.
Simply put, because of the unit structure and because of the easiness of mechanics, there is little incentive to NOT 1a your units or maybe 2 hotkeys (for flying units / melee units - more or less the same thing as 1a). For the observer, this makes the game play unimpressive and less exciting (especially since we get that "I could easily do that" feeling), and leads to battles that contain absolutely no micro whatsoever (comparatively). You shouldn't blame the pros - they really are only doing what is best (1a) - instead, its just a byproduct of a less exciting game. I think part of the solution would be having the unit compositions / types of game play from scbw to make battles more exciting (also probably making 1a less relevant) - you could also argue for not having all-in-one hotkeys, but i'll leave that debate for another day.
Simply put, the units are uninteresting and 1a is uninteresting.
Great article though  .
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On April 17 2011 10:02 Comeh wrote:There seems to be an abundance of arguments about the 1a syndrome, and the argument is becoming diluted through personal insults and odd focusing on irrelevant details. Simply put, because of the unit structure and because of the easiness of mechanics, there is little incentive to NOT 1a your units or maybe 2 hotkeys (for flying units / melee units - more or less the same thing as 1a). For the observer, this makes the game play unimpressive and less exciting (especially since we get that "I could easily do that" feeling), and leads to battles that contain absolutely no micro whatsoever (comparatively). You shouldn't blame the pros - they really are only doing what is best (1a) - instead, its just a byproduct of a less exciting game. I think part of the solution would be having the unit compositions / types of game play from scbw to make battles more exciting (also probably making 1a less relevant) - you could also argue for not having all-in-one hotkeys, but i'll leave that debate for another day. Simply put, the units are uninteresting and 1a is uninteresting. Great article though .
Of course, in the vast majority of cases, you CAN'T actually do what the sc2 pros are doing -- and often know that.
For example, 5rax reaper was sooo easy to beat, if your opponent wasn't morrow-calibre. And lord knows how easy it was ti baneling down mass marine play after MKP got popular.
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is awesome32277 Posts
On April 17 2011 09:35 eviltomahawk wrote:
As far as the "1 control group syndrome" goes, I've seen plenty of PvX games in BW where the Protoss player moves their entire army around in a ball as though it was 1 control group. If unlimited unit selection was in BW, I'm sure that they will continue to do that. Of course, the BW Protoss ball is nowhere near as frightening as the Colossus+stuff combo, but it was still pretty formidable to engage a ball of Dragoons and Zealots supported by Reavers, HTs, and/or Archons.
Although there are plenty of scrappier BW games where the Protoss goes for more multi-pronged, small-army engagements, I just feel like the singular ball syndrome is a norm even in BW even though it's not as invincible as its SC2 equivalent.
This is false. Observers would die easily, zealots would run ahead of dragons, it would be impossible to clone storms, shuttles would run ahead of your army and die and it would be hard to target with reavers around sometimes.
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I think the issue comes down to people expecting to watch Brood War when they are watching Starcraft 2.
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great post. the one thing that makes me sad about sc2 is the fact that most games result in 2 clumps of units crashing into each other and the game usually being over immeiately after that, the victor, however marginal, usually has no problem a-moving into his opponents base. i feel the reason for this is that, at present, its most rewarding to have you army in one clump. having a small force move to pressure an expo usually means your main is going to be countered and you are going to lose. without lurkers and spider mines, and with tanks and storm being nerfed so hard, defending with anything less than your entire army is almost impossible.
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What you mentioned about fungals and ff are obviously correct, but I think you're looking at it a bit too glass half empty.
Think about this. While plague and swarms, you are able to interact with it post cast, stuff like fungal and FF cause a player to interact with it pre cast. I think this makes for much more interesting micro and unit movements because a player who is mindful of the two spells that are on the field will be able to control his units accordingly.
But on the other hand, FF can be micro'd against post cast through the use of massive unit positioning or drop micro. I haven't seen much of that yet, but that is certainly a possibility that I am excited to see in the future. Even with fungals, a quick player will be able to bust out a ghost to EMP or atleast have some units stim in and snipe. Of course I come from a terran perspective, but I think you see what I mean.
It's not all lost. I think your first few paragraphs about game flow and unit interactions were more on the money.
We still have 2 more expansions to go, so lets just see what happens =]
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Wow this is bringing me right back to before sc2 beta was released...
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On April 17 2011 10:43 IntoTheWow wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2011 09:35 eviltomahawk wrote:
As far as the "1 control group syndrome" goes, I've seen plenty of PvX games in BW where the Protoss player moves their entire army around in a ball as though it was 1 control group. If unlimited unit selection was in BW, I'm sure that they will continue to do that. Of course, the BW Protoss ball is nowhere near as frightening as the Colossus+stuff combo, but it was still pretty formidable to engage a ball of Dragoons and Zealots supported by Reavers, HTs, and/or Archons.
Although there are plenty of scrappier BW games where the Protoss goes for more multi-pronged, small-army engagements, I just feel like the singular ball syndrome is a norm even in BW even though it's not as invincible as its SC2 equivalent. This is false. Observers would die easily, zealots would run ahead of dragons, it would be impossible to clone storms, shuttles would run ahead of your army and die and it would be hard to target with reavers around sometimes.
Hmmm... perhaps a BW player wouldn't keep absolutely everything in 1 control group considering the mechanics of Reaver+Shuttle, fast Obs, and non-smartcasting HTs. However, I imagine that they would still keep the bulk of their army moving around in an intact ball, perhaps using multiple control groups for their dragoons, zealots, and support units to account for speed differences and spellcasting mechanics. I do see a lot of SC2 players who keep their Stalkers in a separate control group due to their speed difference from slow Zealots and Colossi.
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Some changes certainly need to be made - the game is very young, and there is great chance for the potential evolution of micro (as MusiK says two posts above me, pre-cast interaction is cool and we have yet to see some of the more obvious interactive micro), but I honestly think the smartcasting is ridiculous.
If Blizz just cleaned up a few of the hand-holding options (MBS and infinite-unit selection are not the issue here, though).
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so is anyone actually against having more units like the siege tank added to sc2 or is everyone just mad that i used bw as an example?
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On April 17 2011 11:28 mahnini wrote:
so is anyone actually against having more units like the siege tank added to sc2 or is everyone just mad that i used bw as an example?
Not sure how I feel, honestly. I think one-shot massive damage units are sort of boring if every race has them... Although obviously "space control" and "set-up time" are, to some extent, interesting ideas...
But I do think you should enjoy BW for what it is, and leave SC2 to be something different. Don't try to make it what BW is. Most of us don't even want that.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/nJxLO.png)
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