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On April 16 2011 10:42 SARgeant47 wrote:
I agree with everything he says. But I also believe this is just another qq thread just long and drawn out. SC2 is a great game and is more appealing to the common gamer. Yes, watching BW and all its mechanics were great but only if you knew the difficulty of doing those tactics. I think everyone who played BW is expecting SC2 to be as comparable or better than BW. I also think that Blizzard has plans to have 'siege units' in the future expansions. How about every just play the game for how it is right now and complain whenever that last expansion comes out. There is still plenty of micro involved in SC2 it's just more fast paced to keep up with the speed of the game. You have to remember that BW took much longer to build up a max army and that usually most armies stayed between 130-180 food.
The whole '1a an army to win in SC2' or however you phrased that is a understanding that you have complained to early. I believe that the best of the best will be determined by having multiple army groups. Not only by having multiple groups but army positioning, multitasking, mechanics, and cleverness. BW was more about mechanics than any kind of cleverness, except for maybe TvT, and that's why so many Koreans were at the top. It's time for the foreigners to shine and SC2 is going to do just that because I believe that the quick decision making is more important in an entertaining game than just raw mechanics.
I have always loved BW since I was introduced back in 1999. It will always be the best game because it's the classic game. Much like any movies, the first one is always the best (at least imo). But it's time for me to move on and I believe SC2 fits me much better because it's less thinking about mechanics and more about the raw decision making. SC2 feels more like a chess game to me than a memory game. They each have their place in my heart and I still go back to BW about once a month because the memory game every once in a while pleases me. But in the long run I feel much more satisfied with a chess game.
P.S. I remember back in a time before BW expansion came out and zerg had no lurkers. I'm just saying stop crying over something when it hasn't even been completely developed.
Outside of TvT, it will be very hard for sc2 to be a chess game. Why? Because splitting your army up means that if your opponent decides to 1a, you lose. This is of course assuming equal macro and no units which can control space. A zerg can be as clever as they want using nydus, drops, zergling counters. But this matters not if the death ball is now free to 1a you.
Also, Koreans will dominate regardless of whether sc2 is mechanics focussed to decision focussed. Hard training and practice is the most important. You may feel that being worse mechanically means you are better strategically but this is simply not true. I can assure you that bw pros were better than in every conceivable way. Decision making, mechanics, builds and game sense.
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Very well thought out post. Someone else said that this seems like a topic that was made back even during the beta stages of SC2, and maybe it is similar, but this is a really great post that addresses a lot of things that I find unsatisfactory with SC2.
I know it's my opinion, but after following BW professionally and playing it for years, I just can't see the appeal in shiny graphics and stale, one-dimensional gameplay.
My hat is off to you for writing this all up complete with specific examples to illustrate your points. I hope somebody who is in a position to fix some of these flaws will read this.
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Tbh i think you're missing some important points;
Firstly you seem to think that SC2 should try to be SC:BW Reloaded or something. Just accept the fact that the game is different.
SC2 is very young still. Looking at the latest GSL and NASL games, people are only starting to realise they can counterattack. This alone has the potential to completely change the current state of the game as a lot of pushes and timing attacks are found to be vulnerable to counterattacks.
The game still suffers from deathball syndrome but already it is evolving to be more oriented to small skirmishes around the map. In bw the game is about "look how well he is managing this attack" in sc2 it will become more like "look at the clever positioning and timings of all these attacks"
Also, it's not like the pro players have much spare time once the game gets going. The picture you paint is of people just macroing up and walking an army across the map and just watching what happens, when in reality this is not even close to what happens at the pro level.
A lot of your points are just plain wrong. You can't 1a an army to maximum effectiveness, the whole paragraph you wrote about sc2 battles being simplistic was only true in early beta.
Colossus vs reaver? Baneling vs lurker? Viking vs wraith? Thor vs goliath? Phoenix vs corsair? Immortal vs dragoon? Muta vs muta? Hydra vs hydra? There's just no contest.
Look at this stuff. Firstly it's just your opinion and secondly i'd say that only the reaver, hydra and muta were noticeably cooler in bw. So many of the sc2 units we haven't seen the full potential of yet.
Baneling vs lurker? imo banelings have more depth. You can use them all game, can be burrowed like lurker, require similar marine micro to lurker in bw, can potentially make 400 of them at one time. Viking vs Wraith - you conveniently forgot that the banshee exists, plus vikings are better vs ground than wraiths, their long range makes for some interesting dynamics in pvt and tvt especially. Thor vs Goliath? Pretty similar imo, except the thor is less massable and maneovreable and has aoe (imo harder to use than goliaths would be). Phoenix vs Corsair? Corsair has aoe and negates static defenses, phoenix has moving while attacking and grav beam (micro potential). Immo vs dragoon? Immortals have similarly bad pathing but have the cool shield mechanic and an instant attack - also works well combined with warp prism.
People complain about FF, fungal and conc shells removing micro potential. Well, not really. For forcefields there's massive units, burrow and drops, also juking them out to lower sentry energy.
Fungal you have spreading, target firing or emp-ing the infestors. Conc shells, yes its annoying for the guy on the receiving end, but for the guy doing it and the spectators it's pretty cool.
It seems you have very little factual or constructive to say at all and are just backing up your own opinion with the banhammer.
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As someone who never watched BW, my friends and I absolutely love watching SC2. BW has great stuff but it's way too old for us - we never got into it, and we all agree that SC2 is better. And there's a lot of people getting into SC2 that don't know who Jaedong and Flash are and they're having a great time watching it. I prefer the less complicated style, and by the way, storms are not at all useless. That's just absurd. SC2 is just super polished mechanically and visually, and I honestly think it is the best RTS of all time. This thread needed an SC2 fanboy to balance out all of this BW stuff. It's not the same game, and there's just so much nostalgia going on here that it's impossible for SC2 lovers to even get a word in. Imo, SC2 is the perfect balance between complicated as hell and simple - that way, everyone can enjoy it, not just mr. super ultra hardcore bw fan. It's about getting new fans and making it enjoyable for everyone.
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For a lot of people on this site they see SC2 as a successor to Brood War and are disappointed that Blizzard changed so much in everything the OP says. I think Blizzard saw SC2 as a chance to reboot the franchise to a whole new generation. Part of that thought process included in removing a lot of what the OP says. This was done for an easier learning curve. I have no doubt in my mind that with each expansion the difficulty and mechanics will increase with each unit that is added.
Blizzard did not want to spoil this opportunity to bring in a whole new audience by serving them up BW with better graphics and just have new entrants be frustrated. SC2 will evolve closer and closer to what BW was with each year that passes. Just gotta give it time like everyone did to BW.
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I wasn't every active in the BW scene, what was the difference between BW Psi Storm and SC2 Psi Storm that made it much more difficult to pull off in BW?
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good read
Hopefully the game will continue to evolve in the future though. I believe a supply cap increase and continuing focusing on large maps will make the game better though. I feel like with a game like SC2 mining efficiency throughout the game should be of the utmost importance. The bigger the economies and the faster they can develop the better IMO. Supply should be 300 to give room for more workers.
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One thing that I dislike about SCII in comparison to Brood War is the macro mechanics. MULES, Chronoboosts, and Larvae Inject in my mind remove some of the beautiful economy management I saw in Brood War. I remember the first time I watched a Day9 Daily; Day was talking about a game of his vs G5, and he talked about how he noticed he had X amount of money and by pooling this larvae here and here, and don't make this one set of zerglings, I can build a fourth hatch and take a third gas and make a mutalisk play work versus a corsair opening. My mind was blown. It was SO cool to hear how every single larvae was a huge deal, as opposed to getting a flood of larvae every 45 seconds such that you can really waste a bunch of them. There was a science to droning versus unit production as opposed to SCII's build 80 drones then start slamming out units until you or your opponent is dead. I think the brilliant economy management of someone like best just isn't possible in Starcraft II. Everyone's maxxed and on their full bases by 15 minutes easily. It was so difficult to keep up on your economy in Brood War, it was impressive the first time you managed to stay below 500 minerals/gas the entire game for the first time. I think that by adding these macro mechanics they just sped the game up so much that they removed so much depth of thinking, it's more important just to get a lot of shit out really fast, as opposed to planning expansions and transitions and timings.
I agree with all of the points made, of course, but the economy management is the part of Brood War I'm missing.
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Agree 100% with the OP. There are times in SC2 when the outcome of a battle is just inevitable and there's nothing the defender can do but cop a beating while the aggressor 1a moves into the base. The best mu in SC2 at the moment is ZvT because IMO it retains the most volatility in predicting battle outcomes ie. z army flank, t rine spread vs banelings, tanks targetting down banelings, mutas magic boxing to avoid thor splash. Any mu involving P is extremely boring because of the pivotal role of the colossus. It is an extremely boring unit with a one-dimensional role, and it requires almost no skill to use. It's the most newbie friendly siege unit as it has no set-up time, it has a massive timing window to cancel the cool-down animation on its attack, and it can't even get stuck on your other units because it literally walks over the top of them -.-
In BW ZvT, two armies of equal supply cost and tech equivalencies could clash, and you would never know who is going to win because the outcome could skew either way with 90% of the Z or T units surviving while the other army is completely decimated. A similar phenomenon existed in the ZvP mu. You can argue archaic mechanics all you want (and I would actually disagree) but the fact is, player skill played a much larger role in determining the outcome of battles in BW than in SC2.
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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 think this is a very wise post because in the history of most competitive games, it does take a pretty long time (5+ years) until actual solid players are developed. Players today are good, but still make a lot of fundamental mistakes. Until a lot of these mistakes are ironed out, the games won't be as good as they could be because nobody is playing as good as they should (compared to BW). Think about how many times you watch a game and a player just suddenly wins. A lot of factors may cause it, but it can't be denied that things like worker production, supply, eco management and army movement still plague top players and can cause them to lose games.
Although I will concede that a lot of units in SC2 do suffer from lack of ability to anything but attack and sometimes not even very well. Hopefully Blizzard can identify why SC2 seems so bland compared to BW, be it units or player skill, and deliver us the game we all hoped we would be playing.
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On April 16 2011 10:59 Laboof wrote:
I wasn't every active in the BW scene, what was the difference between BW Psi Storm and SC2 Psi Storm that made it much more difficult to pull off in BW?
You couldn't have your templar grouped with your army, or even together and spam t, thus it was much harder to pull off, and much more powerful, whereas storm in sc2 (I play zerg so I dont have tvp perspective) mainly tickles my units.
Honestly I think sc2 is pretty much fine the way it is, I just wish players who are far more mechanically superior could get rewarded a bit more. Or maybe I'm just greedy  .
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I don't quite agree that the mechanics level of SC2 needs to be increased, I personally feel it limits strategies from developing/good players.
I do agree with units that require a set up time though, I don't think that there is enough of that kind of positional play in SC2 (barring TvT)
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Great read, and I agree with pretty much everything OP said.
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I wish this stuff was fixed in the beta:
1) lurker back in sc2 (idc about HoTS atm)
2) replace fungal growth with plague/dark swarm
3) fix the colossi vs HT problem
4) make the reaper upgrade slower and cost 100/100 rather then make it factory required
5) buff carriers/battlecruisers (wish they kept the upgrade each bc with lasers or yamato)
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On April 16 2011 10:58 ExcessEnemy wrote:
As someone who never watched BW, my friends and I absolutely love watching SC2. BW has great stuff but it's way too old for us - we never got into it, and we all agree that SC2 is better. And there's a lot of people getting into SC2 that don't know who Jaedong and Flash are and they're having a great time watching it. I prefer the less complicated style, and by the way, storms are not at all useless. That's just absurd. SC2 is just super polished mechanically and visually, and I honestly think it is the best RTS of all time. This thread needed an SC2 fanboy to balance out all of this BW stuff. It's not the same game, and there's just so much nostalgia going on here that it's impossible for SC2 lovers to even get a word in. Imo, SC2 is the perfect balance between complicated as hell and simple - that way, everyone can enjoy it, not just mr. super ultra hardcore bw fan. It's about getting new fans and making it enjoyable for everyone.
firstoff you say you all agree that sc2 is better but dont know bw. that makes not much sense.
and your view is not the view of a player or a longterm view. sure you might now enjoy that " haha look those lazers really killed lotsa stuff lol :D:D:D:D" feeling but at one point you saw that 2000 times. and most of the time the battle looks exactly the same cause there just isnt much depth to the fights.
what now? now youre bored and stop watching.
or how about explaining someone whats so awesome? when i explained stuff in broodwar to anyone who ever played a rts or any game somewhat decently will understand very fast whats so exciting about those fights. see korea.are all those kids and "old people" hardcore high level players? no but they still can appreciate the magic the players make happen once they understood the basics of the game or played just once themselves.
now look at sc2. my younger 19yo old brother which missed bw but played quite some wc3 watches a sc2 vod with me. and constantly he asks " well he just aclicked all his units and the other guy did too.. whats exciting about that?" . when i showed him some old bw pimpest plays material his jaw literally dropped.
in a sense its harder to get nontrivial (-> "hurrr stuff dies! pretty cool huh?") enjoyment out of sc2 since the most of the things that show skill are very subtile.
no matter how you look at it, sc2 is in no aspect even half as exciting as broodwar. be it the skillcap, skill needed or just depth of the game.
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A curious corollary; I never hear much from pro players in terms of "BW was so much better", etc. Have I missed this, or do pros not bother with it simply because their living is in SC2 now and not BW? I've heard plenty of discussion about how it's different from a pro gamer point of view, and about how it's mechanically easier, but never about the games compared in terms of quality. Why is this? Is it simply because they don't view the game so much as a game as spectators do?
Just curious ;p
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Excellent post, though I'm not sure I agree on all points. I don't really think that one can definitively say one game is more interesting that the other from a spectator's point of view. I played quite a bit of BW but I never really watched much of it. It was only when SC2 came out that a really became a fan of E-Sports. Maybe I've been desensitized too much by flashy explosions and whatnot but I find SC2 games to be much more heart racing and exciting than BW.
I do agree that spells in SC2 are way less interesting than in BW. BW spells rewarded excellent micro while many SC2 spells limit or completely prohibit micro (concussive shells, forcefield, fungal growth, etc.) When on the receiving end of these spells you feel as if there is nothing you can do to improve your situation, you can only hope that your opponent doesn't do a good job. I would really like to see blizzard rework spellcasting so that it encourages micro instead of inhibit it (PDD, hunter seeker missile, stim, blink, emp, feedback and psi storm are examples of what I would consider spells that encourage micro.)
I feel as if WoL was designed to give the game a strong set of base units so that future expansions could add support units to give the game more depth. That is my hope at least. Nearly every DPS roll has been filled in WoL which leads me to believe the future expansions will focus on more spellcaster/specialty units that can drastically change how the battle occurs.
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I'm kind of agreeing with Jibba, but I understand if it is hard to see his point due to the early game volatility in the game. All-ins are too effective and common. This hinders us on exploring the late game options because of all of the powerful timing attacks.
It seems that you (the OP) are jumping too far ahead. All of the awesome moments you described are mid-late game situations, and getting to late game is simply too difficult right now. First we'd need to make all-ins and timing pushes easier to hold off. How to do that would be another topic though.
Once we get to a point where late game scenarios are common, then we can change some spell casters to become more awe inspiring . Even with the current spell casters, I think they definitely have potential in mass, but we never got to see that kind of play yet because too many attacking units are needed to hold off a timing attack.
With the new maps and Infestor buff, we're getting a little taste of what SC2 could become. We need to deal with the barriers that are preventing us from even getting to scenarios where could utilize more interesting units. I think micro in SC2 would start to be more about spreading and avoiding the 1a syndrome. Forcefields, Fungal, Mass Psi Storm, Seeker Missile, and EMP can all be mitigated by spreading, and the new interface doesn't help you to spread much.
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On April 16 2011 10:25 mahnini wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 10:20 Antisocialmunky wrote:
I think there is game-flow type play but people aren't utilizing them fully yet especially because things go boom quite quickly in SCII. After all things like creep and pylon warp in require 'setup' time. it's somewhat similar, but kind of misses the mark. if we are playing PvZ in SC2 and i come out slightly ahead, i can IMMEDIATELY attack you creep or no creep. there is no position you can hold if you don't have a unit advantage. with units like lurker or siege tank, i can more effectively hold ground so a slight advantage doesn't turn into a snowball steamroll.
Well to be fair, zerg had no lurker until BeeDub and Protoss had no such unit.  Of course Protoss had SO MANY STORMS. You are right of course that SCII weakens positional play. However, I don't think all hope is lost, the game is still new and certain units are ridiculous against other units.
For example, banelings and speedlings on creep can push break as well as delay bio (run in, force stim, run out) much like a more expensive version of what the lurker did. They can't really contain in the sense that you set up and its hard to break and this is one of the great weaknesses of zergs. :\
I also think you exaggerate the instant steam roller effect, the only match up where that really happens in PvP or late game PvZ. And it wasn't like this didn't happen in BW. Zerg loses too many lurkers and is toast against an MM ball.
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agreed with OP 1000%
exactly how i feel
when i think of idra i dont think he means it when he says the game is broken/imbalanced. i feel like hes just feeling the frustration of his skill level not being properly represented.
anyway. props to you my good man. i wish i could write articles this good.
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EPT
