On April 16 2011 09:35 mahnini wrote:
A fundamental design flaw.
In ZvP how do you prepare for an upcoming battle? ZvT? PvT? PvZ? TvP? Chances are the answer everyone gives to that question is exactly the same. You minimize or maximize surface area, what else can you do? Units in this game don't require setup time. The function of nearly every unit in this game is simple and one dimensional, reduce or improve DPS. One of the few exceptions to this is the siege tank, I'll touch more on this later.
What exactly is your counter example from BW? Vultures laying mines, lurkers and what else? Perhaps Consume, but no one ever got excited over that.
Pre-fight unit positioning is more important in SC2 because there are more units in each composition with more roles, and once you're into a battle, there are actually more abilities to micro, as well as more decisions to make regarding targeting. People just aren't doing it yet, so it sucks when two people 1a2a two larger armies into each other, but eventually it won't be that way.
Do you know what game flow is?
We used to have a term that was used abundantly on this board that described a pivotal aspect of competitive play. Controlling the game flow is, in essence, controlling the pace of the game. In ZvT, if a Terran wanted to push out and kill your third, you exercised your map control to slow down the Terran push by slowly moving back lurkers as they got in tank range. Conversely, if you wanted to force an engagement as Terran you unsiege and attack towards another position or drop harass his bases, forcing the Zerg to completely reposition. When you're controlling the flow, the only things that can happen are the things you allow to happen. If he wants a big fight, you drop everywhere. If he wants a macro game, you attack him constantly.
How is game flow any different? I feel like you're just using it as a non-descript buzzword and expecting people to think the BW way was automatically superior.
"When you're controlling the flow, the only things that can happen are the things you allow to happen."
We don't see this happen all the time when July, qxc or AdelScott take their opponent on a tour? It doesn't always work out that way, but it didn't always work out in BW either. Players are still capable of forcing their "game flow" (again, whatever that means in your example) on the other player and on the game as a whole.
The importance of map control.
Map control isn't really how much of the map you are literally covering with buildings and units, rather it is how much area can you freely move without contest. Put simply, just because you have a unit in a certain area doesn't mean you have map control of that area, it's that fact that you can actively deny movement in that area that makes it map control. It seems to me like all these ideas build upon one another and that if you want to be able to control the flow of the game you need to have map control, and if you want to have map control you need units that can do more than add DPS. You need units with map prescence. BW had units like lurkers, siege tanks, and vultures that could very effectively control sections of the map. Can you name one other than the siege tank that SC2 has?
Infestors and sentries. Map control isn't as static as lurkers and spider mines once were, but why don't you see how BW Protosses feel about it? Because there are no more lurkers and spider mines, there's a lot more potential backstabs and pokes in SC2 which are exciting in their own right.
Positioning and setup time.
I don't really know how to explain positioning, but thankfully there are units that personify the idea of positioning perfectly: siege tanks and lurkers. If you've ever been a victim of a lurker or siege tank contain you know how powerful these units are when they are properly setup. 5 properly setup siege tanks can mow down twice the amount of dragoons and 5 properly positioned lurkers could deny an infinite amount of marines from touching your expansion.
Why does positioning make these units exciting? Unless it's lurkers at the top of a ramp. Waiting for the Irradiate vs Lurker stage of a BW game was usually the worst part. In BW there were zerg and terran sieges. In SC2, terran sieges still exist and certain variants of Z play have sieges as well (IdrA's hydra/spine crawler push comes to mind.) There's still plenty of contains that go on in SC2 and they're still just as exciting when they get broken.
Another unique aspect of the siege tank and lurker was that they required time before they were useful, tanks had to siege and lurkers had to burrow. This introduced a unique dynamic in which armies weren't always doing 100% DPS and introduced the idea that you can actively seek to cost-effectively trade units BEFORE tanks or lurkers were setup.
What? This the same. There's still a critical mass of certain units, where it's important for different races to pick them off before there are too many or they gain too much energy. How much tension is there when a 2rax is pushing into a zerg base while everyone is waiting for banelings or hooks to finish?
This gave micromanagement a larger role to play other than simply pulling away damaged units. If you're attacking into a Terran army as Zerg, you are using lings to tank the majority of the damage and buy time for your lurkers to burrow in addition to trapping marines and killing tanks. Of course, your Terran opponent isn't just sitting there, he's microing his marines back, dodging spines, escaping lings, and picking off the lurkers that you are still advancing. As a zerg or terran in ZvT it was entirely possible to attack into the opposing army and kill almost nothing while losing everything if your control was worse.
This 100% exists in SC2. Pros don't do it because current pros are bad, but there is a ton of stuff for units to do and targeting is a lot more involved in SC2 because it's ambiguous. In BW, you know exactly what unit should get killed first, while in SC2 that varies a lot more depending on the numbers and composition.
What this adds up to is that it gives the person with proper positioning a significant defender's advantage so, even if you come out somewhat behind in an engagement, your opponent can't immediately attack into your remaining army without severe repercussion. This also introduced a way to delay your opponent by slowly giving up ground rather than doing what most SC2 player have to do, which is run back to their nat and turtle until they have a unit advantage. It also meant it required some finesse to get the most out of your attack. If your opponent was low on unit count, you couldn't just 1a into his army, micro a little, and still come out on top. What it really comes down to is that unit relationships were far more complex and, as a result, proper engagements required a higher level of control.
Again, you're simply arguing that the requirements on a current BW pro are higher than that of a current SC2 pro. That's absolutely true, but that's not necessarily due to the game. An obvious example is July. He's been playing SC2 for 6 months now, yet if you watch his game he is
awful with banelings and it took him 4+ months to start doing runbys with zerglings. He even did runbys in BW, but he didn't pick them up immediately in SC2. This point is on the players, not the game.
Player-unit interaction.
If we take a moment to consider BW spellcasters, we can see that not only did BW spellcasters involve massive player-unit interaction to use properly but also player-unit interaction to combat. Psi storm required tons of apm to use effectively or to dodge; irradiate could be used to massacre high value zerg units but it could also be turned against you; and dark swarm required exquisite levels of control on both sides. When you see a dark swarm get thrown up in a TvZ you don't go, "well that sucks, I need to kill defilers faster", you unsiege your tanks, run out of lurker range and keep raining shells because dark swarm assists zerg units rather than directly hindering terran units. I mean, obviously it hinders terran units to an extent, but you are able to mitigate damage and micro out of it, there's not an instantaneous downpour of lasers down on your army because staple damage dealers required setup time. It's not like it was easy for the zerg to use properly either, it wasn't a fire and forget spell like forcefield. After it was casted both players were microing their asses off.
You're glorifying BW spell casting too much. Irradiate's main purpose was an instant, long range "fuck you" to clumps of mutalisks, lurkers, defilers and ultras. The only situation where it was turned against you was with ultras, but that happens all the time with storm and is beginning to happen with siege tank fire. It's not like there was ever a decision to be made on whether or not to use Irradiate because of that. It was just a side effect, that has essentially been replaced by ultralisk's innate AoE ability.
PDD/FF is the modern Swarm.
Take plague vs fungal growth. If all my front marines plagued, I can run them behind healthier units and still use them to some degree. If I get my front marines fungal'd I get to sit there watching them die stuck in place and there's almost nothing I can do to avoid a second fungal other than running headlong into more fungals. More importantly, plague required a large amount of time to research and you could only cast one per defiler before you had to consume, and many times dark swarm was a better choice. On the other hand, fungal is the primary infestor spell and is smartcasted.
This is just a micro issue, and I don't see how it adds to the excitement of BW at all. Consume made defilers instantly powerful, so no, they didn't need much time to set up. The fungal thing is the exact thing that happened with Irradiate, so I don't see how it's a downside in SC2 but not in BW. There is nothing you can do to save your initial zerglings after an ultra gets Irradiated. If anything, I think the dynamic of fungal + infested terran vs dropship is more exciting. If you're a second too slow or they're in too good of a position, all of the drop ships will fly off slightly damaged. If it's done perfectly, they're all dead. Either way, you're staring at those eggs and waiting for them to pop.
Psi storm vs psi storm? A psi storm in SC2 is almost meaningless. In BW, the beauty of psi storm was purely because of the mechanics required to cast it. I don't think there is any debate here. In SC2 smartcast forced a nerf on psi storm to the point where a single psi storm means almost nothing and it requires the screen to be carpeted for it to even be effective. In BW, sequential psi storms were extremely difficult to pull off mid-battle, but had a tremendous payoff. In SC2, not only is it not impressive to see 4 psi storms casted, it's damn stupid to micro against. Microing against a storm almost always means running into 3 more storms because it's so ridiculously easy to cast.
If microing against multiple storms in SC2 is so difficult, then why isn't
that impressive?
Even staple units were replaced by less interesting, less interactive versions of themselves. 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.
How is there no contest? Reaver/shuttle is obviously one of the coolest mechanics ever, but what is impressive about 6 +1 sairs flying around and killing anything that comes within 5 range? Why are Goliath and Dragoons so great, when they were kind of retarded and didn't have any abilities. Thor plays such a big role in battles,
even without doing damage. It's a giant road block that can nullify another unit for 5 seconds. Wraith was awesome because of the 1 vZ and a few vT builds it got used in? Viking is so much more versatile and plays a bigger role where it is used.
The high mechanical requirement enabled extremely skilled players to use their units in ways no one ever could. It made large engagements an event in itself because of how difficult it is to maintain your composure when you are controlling 200/200 armies with a 12 unit limit. Huge army fights were a means to and end, and not and end within themselves. The final battle wasn't a formality to end the game that you knew ended minutes ago, it was a direct contest between players. It was the moment when both players go, "I don't care how big your army is, I have mine and I'm going to kill you with it". Have you noticed that during SC2 battle commentators can't say anything other than, "SO MUCH STUFF IS DYING!!", it's because there's nothing for players to do during fights other than pull back damaged units. There's no clutch psi storms, elegant spine dodging, ruthless zealot bombing, flyby reavers, or gross surrounds. It's a variation of 1a vs another variation of 1a.
Because players are bad compared to where they will eventually be. IdrA is arguably the #1 mechanical Zerg in the world and what did he do in his last two matches against MC and Cruncher? He fucked up unit control and donated large portions of his army. There is a lot to be done, players just aren't doing it yet. Most of them don't use more than 3 hotkeys for units and that's the fault of them, not the game.
You can't just 1a BW units and have then attack at full effectiveness.
Yeah, you can't in SC2 either.
What does any of this have to do with spectators?
I'm not going to go into the subjectivity of your spectating SC2 games, but you are giving far, far too much credit to the AI in SC2. Have you played zerg yet? Because even with the fancy new AI, zerglings are fucking retarded on their own. Same goes for zealots, when 16 of them decide to charge 2 or 3 units.
I think the biggest tension builder that's lacking in SC2 is in the casting. There's no loud, magnificent Kim Carrier style orations (besides TB) and the public's insistence on seeing the Production tab destroys a lot of the tension that was in BW. You can't flip to a base and see 4 carriers anymore, because everyone saw the Fleet Beacon go down. Honestly, I think changing these two things would have a profound effect on everyone's excitement. I know everyone says they want the production tab open and full information all the time, but there would be a lot more drama if they weren't.
And that's a particular expertise that has to be learned by casters. There are times to show different tabs, times to show players' perspectives and time to unveil the big surprises. I know I've ranted about players in most of this post, but the casters need to improve as well if you really want games to be as big and exciting as they can be.
EPT
. If the unit is slow you need to position it good 
