On April 18 2011 20:33 sleepingdog wrote: Such a huge thread....many correct things have been stated, the only thing I wanna contribute is to simplify it the following way:
SC2 requires surprisingly LOW SKILL to play quite efficiently. This is where I think most of the rage is coming from. When I lose to an 80 APM terran who executes an a-move timing attack, I wanna punch a kitten.
We all know that 80 APM necessitates worse micro and multitask, amiright?
EDIT: Oh shit I should have kept reading. Do you really think that your ability to scout and adjust to your opponent's build is just as good as MCs?
Lol that's my whole, like 100% frickin point.... that the game actually doesn't REQUIRE high APM. Sjow is an amazing player with low APM. Why? Because high APM is NOT NEEDED (sorry for caps) to have good multitasking. This is exactly what I critizise, that being a "fast" player doesn't really help you until the lategame.
For my - also misunderstood - MC-example: In a "standard" PvZ sentry-expo build, there's literally NOTHING special you do until a certain point in time. Unless of course your opponent does something that indeed requires a special response, like - say - mass lings early on, a ling/bling build or whatnot. Of course, in these scenarios my gamesense is leagues beyond that of MC, let alone execution.
Nevertheless if both my opponent and I play the standard PvZ then there's nothing I CAN do differently. This is what the OP mentioned, what Lalush mentioned but what I wanted to especially emphazise because I deem it to be of the utmost importance. That you can watch your own - in this case PvZ - games and pretty much skip the beginning since you have no options to "outplay" your opponent.
Regarding APM: It was possible outmicro and outmacro bad players in BW with less APM as well. I frequently outmicro'd and outmacro'd 250 APM C terran players with 150 APM as Z. Could anyone have done the same against flash? Hell no. But then again, I doubt that anyone will be able to compete in SC2 with 80 APM against top koreans within a few years. The fact that lower APM players, such as axslav and sjow, can compete with top players doesn't prove anything about APM skillcap, anymore than 1st~Tsunami's ability to win with 80 APM in BW proved that APM wasn't required at the tip-top level in BW.
In the end, it's not the game's fault that your strategy is so much inferior that you're losing to not so high calibre players who are slower than you. It's your fault for having an inferior strategy and/or multitasking poorly.
Your PvZ argument is just completely wrong. If you completely ignore every possible engagement, zergling aggression, zealot/stalker harassment, and so on, then yeah, obviously you can play as well as MC. Anyone can fucking follow a build order as well as MC, congrats. Even ignoring all of those, I would bet that MC and other top protoss players scout a lot better, by knowing how to hide their probe, micro it against zerglings, etc.
But if you ignore all of that then how are BW openings difficult? If you say "yo terran lets go 14cc and I go 12 nexus and lets just follow standard build orders and not harass at all," then anyone can play as well as Bisu and Flash for the first 7 minutes. Wow, that's so insightful.
On April 18 2011 23:38 War Horse wrote: I think Zerg needs a positional defense unit like the Lurker. Baneling filled the splash role but it doesn't really hold a position like a lurker, and it offers no "skill" really (you just roll banelings at their army, basically) P has forcefields and T has tanks but Z really has no equivalent.
Smartcasting, MBS, automine, etc is never going away so you might as well forget about that.
Also, talking about Sjow "being amazing" with low APM - Sjow wouldn't even make it out of Code A, so don't act like APM isn't meaningful.
Once again this mind set of "we have seen everything already." No, you havent seen everything. Players might not have figured out how to properly use units like banelings.
Sjow dosent seem to need more raw APM as hes beating hes opponents with that low APM: he has no insentive to improve hes APM. Instead he might want to scout a litle bit better, be more active on the map, etc. These things directly effect APM, even tho they arent doing what they do just so they can brag with their massive APM. Pros dont have these notepads next to their computers reading "Achieve and uphold 400 APM from beginning" or such nonsence.
APM gets better once pros get better in their strategies, they will get faster once they haveto start doing more things at same time, and it will gradually increase as people refine their strategies and fit more and more stuff that makes their opponents life miserable. This also improves opponents APM as they have to be doing counter measures against the stuff thats thrown at em.
I always find it hilarious when people have HUUUUUGE APM at the start of the game, but once something - anything - hapens on the map their APM drops to 0, still averaging something absurd from the early spamfest.
Great analyisis. I never played BW much so i can't compare those two games good, however seeing those bw pro games really shows the difference in the micro intensity of these two games, they are just way more tense to watch.
I agree with a lot of what was said, I still feel that sc2 is missing the tension bw had. I don't know if that's a result of the game being not as developed or maps or w/e, but if someone went for a reaver opening in PvT every toss player was cheering for 10 scvs to die so the aggressive opening pays off while every T player knows if that shuttle dies it's over.
It's this transition of units from an offensive role to a defensive one that sc2 lacks. If you ever want to be aggressive with colossus, you better win the battle with a strong attack cause they move at battlecruiser speeds and does not make it back to your base alive. The reaver in the shuttle exercised map control because you can't move out of your base without the reaver threatening the worker line. (I actually think dts are a great example of the map control aspect in sc2, too bad they're useless defensively/push breaking once T gets enough scans/raven)
Another thing I dislike is how long units with high food counts take to build. It adds to the concept of 'super units' where losing 2 colossus meant the game was probably over cause that's 600 min 400 gas down the drain. (4 zeals and 4 sentries, with 4 gate those 8 units take less time to build) Same with 3 food tanks etc. Each unit having more value (in terms of both time and money) is not fundamentally bad, but it creates the scenario where once you really, really don't want to lose those units so you use all your cheap units to shield those high value units because losing them would mean turltling for 10 min while rebuilding them.
On April 18 2011 20:33 sleepingdog wrote: Such a huge thread....many correct things have been stated, the only thing I wanna contribute is to simplify it the following way:
SC2 requires surprisingly LOW SKILL to play quite efficiently. This is where I think most of the rage is coming from. When I lose to an 80 APM terran who executes an a-move timing attack, I wanna punch a kitten.
We all know that 80 APM necessitates worse micro and multitask, amiright?
EDIT: Oh shit I should have kept reading. Do you really think that your ability to scout and adjust to your opponent's build is just as good as MCs?
Lol that's my whole, like 100% frickin point.... that the game actually doesn't REQUIRE high APM. Sjow is an amazing player with low APM. Why? Because high APM is NOT NEEDED (sorry for caps) to have good multitasking. This is exactly what I critizise, that being a "fast" player doesn't really help you until the lategame.
For my - also misunderstood - MC-example: In a "standard" PvZ sentry-expo build, there's literally NOTHING special you do until a certain point in time. Unless of course your opponent does something that indeed requires a special response, like - say - mass lings early on, a ling/bling build or whatnot. Of course, in these scenarios my gamesense is leagues beyond that of MC, let alone execution.
Nevertheless if both my opponent and I play the standard PvZ then there's nothing I CAN do differently. This is what the OP mentioned, what Lalush mentioned but what I wanted to especially emphazise because I deem it to be of the utmost importance. That you can watch your own - in this case PvZ - games and pretty much skip the beginning since you have no options to "outplay" your opponent.
Regarding APM: It was possible outmicro and outmacro bad players in BW with less APM as well. I frequently outmicro'd and outmacro'd 250 APM C terran players with 150 APM as Z. Could anyone have done the same against flash? Hell no. But then again, I doubt that anyone will be able to compete in SC2 with 80 APM against top koreans within a few years. The fact that lower APM players, such as axslav and sjow, can compete with top players doesn't prove anything about APM skillcap, anymore than 1st~Tsunami's ability to win with 80 APM in BW proved that APM wasn't required at the tip-top level in BW.
In the end, it's not the game's fault that your strategy is so much inferior that you're losing to not so high calibre players who are slower than you. It's your fault for having an inferior strategy and/or multitasking poorly.
Your PvZ argument is just completely wrong. If you completely ignore every possible engagement, zergling aggression, zealot/stalker harassment, and so on, then yeah, obviously you can play as well as MC. Anyone can fucking follow a build order as well as MC, congrats. Even ignoring all of those, I would bet that MC and other top protoss players scout a lot better, by knowing how to hide their probe, micro it against zerglings, etc.
But if you ignore all of that then how are BW openings difficult? If you say "yo terran lets go 14cc and I go 12 nexus and lets just follow standard build orders and not harass at all," then anyone can play as well as Bisu and Flash for the first 7 minutes. Wow, that's so insightful.
Well, that's one way to look at the argument. Another way is that there is such a huge linearity in responses to certain unit compositions that you really don't get a chance to out-play your opponent. This is a direct result from one dimensional units and shallow unit:unit interactions. You can't out-micro equal cost marauders with stalkers. It just doesn't work. Neither does roach vs stalker or roach vs zealot. In brood war, there were so many dynamic unit matchups that you could delay and hold off until a proper response was generated. Goons could dance around lings, vultures could delay a lurker push until vessels, etc...
In SC2 PvZ, if the opponent goes early roach aggression there is no possible way to defend it using zealot/sentry. The protoss either gets stalkers (maybe immos) or dies. There isn't a way to outmicro the roaches with zealots. Roach hydra forces a colossus response, etc... There are countless examples of this in SC2. This is clearly seen in units like the corruptor / viking and how they are designed around countering the colossus.
However, in brood war, if the opponent decides to go hydra/ling there are multiple ways to combat it without having to rely on making a tech decision ahead of time. If you were going robotics facility, you can use shuttle/reaver & zealot composition to effectively deal with it. If you went the templar tech you could use speed zealots, DT, and storm. Hell, you could even out-muscle the composition with zealot/dragoon & upgrades. There are a lot of strategies that you can use that don't streamline your choices.
I dunno I think I'm just rambling, but I just reinstalled brood war after this thread. It basically vocalized what I felt was missing from SC2.
I agree that the complexity and depth of BW is far superior than SC2, but you must realize the age difference in the games. BW had years and years of development and manipulation as well as patches to make it into the successful game it is in Korea. But I also believe that the complexity and depth of BW is what does not make it popular to the west. For example CS is a popular western game and an out dated game similar to BW in terms of release and graphics. But why is it some much more popular outside in the West than say BW? It is due to its simplicity. To make a game viable as a entertainment platform akin to a sporting event it needs to be a game that can be followed relatively simple, look good, and have only some tension.
I believe SC2 will become a great success globally than BW ever did because of how easy it is to follow and watch as a spectator. In BW there is a million bazillion things going on at once, and sure it highlights the players skills but from an outsider’s standpoint it look confusion and hard to follow. Also how the game looks, the fluidity of unit movement, and other similar issues make BW not a very promotable game outside of Korea, where it has become an institution. SC2 currently looks great and can really be seen as a spectator sport due to the quality of the graphics, fluidity of movements, cool looking terrain, ect.
Bottom line is that if you do not know how to play, the unit interactions, unit combos, the use of each unit, micro of each unit, how this all relates to the overall game, and the subtleties of the game, it is extremely hard to follow. In SC2 the game is much simpler where the units do X and the result is why and unit a counters unit b, which makes for an easier game to follow. I mean SC2 is more similar to checkers since X move will prompt your opponent to do Y move like how each jump in checks prompts the opponents next jump, while BW is more like chess where units are maneuvered, strategies, and do have their counters but they can be over come by use of strategy, maneuvering and other mechanics.
On April 18 2011 23:38 War Horse wrote: P has forcefields
Just wanted to comment especially on that. Originally, I loved forcefields, I thought that this was gonna be "the" micro-intensive skill needed to get ahead, get small edges. As it is right now, forcefields function as "all or nothing". You either place them correctly and win (or stay level) or you screw them up and lose. Forcefields don't give you small edges, they are GAMEBREAKERS. This makes them very, very bad and I don't see any way how you can fix this. Because if you took them away, then you essentially would have to rebalance the whole toss gateway-unit-arsenal.
Think about the vulture in comparison. Clever vulture micro would only "win" games outright if the user of the vultures were of insane nada-like skill. Otherwise, good vulture micro would give you an edge because some mines would hit, while others wouldn't. With forcefields it's different. This is, why there's the tendency to build mass sentries early on, because then you are able to spam the forcefields to be 100% safe.
Personally I think it's the opposite. The fact that forcefields are so gamebreaking is a GOOD thing. That's the way casters are supposed to be dammit. If you're going to rely on forcefields, you better know how to use them. People build mass sentries because they're high on gas so they have minerals for an expansion as well.
You brought up vultures, which is confusing because maybe you forgot about mines and mine-dragging. That could also be extremely devastating.
Well, that's one way to look at the argument. Another way is that there is such a huge linearity in responses to certain unit compositions that you really don't get a chance to out-play your opponent. This is a direct result from one dimensional units and shallow unit:unit interactions. You can't out-micro equal cost marauders with stalkers. It just doesn't work. Neither does roach vs stalker or roach vs zealot. In brood war, there were so many dynamic unit matchups that you could delay and hold off until a proper response was generated. Goons could dance around lings, vultures could delay a lurker push until vessels, etc...
In SC2 PvZ, if the opponent goes early roach aggression there is no possible way to defend it using zealot/sentry. The protoss either gets stalkers (maybe immos) or dies. There isn't a way to outmicro the roaches with zealots. Roach hydra forces a colossus response, etc... There are countless examples of this in SC2. This is clearly seen in units like the corruptor / viking and how they are designed around countering the colossus.
But that's only the very early game kind of interactions, and that's how BW is. And while some of them I agree with (mainly Hydra vs Colossus), you're acting like everything is so simple, but neither game works like that.
For instance, roach vs stalker is really not cut and dry. One side needs to kite the other needs to reverse-kite. Then when you throw in burrow and blink it becomes crazy.
It just seems like the early game interactions are simplistic, but after that it becomes a lot more confusing.
On April 18 2011 20:33 sleepingdog wrote: Such a huge thread....many correct things have been stated, the only thing I wanna contribute is to simplify it the following way:
SC2 requires surprisingly LOW SKILL to play quite efficiently. This is where I think most of the rage is coming from. When I lose to an 80 APM terran who executes an a-move timing attack, I wanna punch a kitten.
We all know that 80 APM necessitates worse micro and multitask, amiright?
EDIT: Oh shit I should have kept reading. Do you really think that your ability to scout and adjust to your opponent's build is just as good as MCs?
Lol that's my whole, like 100% frickin point.... that the game actually doesn't REQUIRE high APM. Sjow is an amazing player with low APM. Why? Because high APM is NOT NEEDED (sorry for caps) to have good multitasking. This is exactly what I critizise, that being a "fast" player doesn't really help you until the lategame.
For my - also misunderstood - MC-example: In a "standard" PvZ sentry-expo build, there's literally NOTHING special you do until a certain point in time. Unless of course your opponent does something that indeed requires a special response, like - say - mass lings early on, a ling/bling build or whatnot. Of course, in these scenarios my gamesense is leagues beyond that of MC, let alone execution.
Nevertheless if both my opponent and I play the standard PvZ then there's nothing I CAN do differently. This is what the OP mentioned, what Lalush mentioned but what I wanted to especially emphazise because I deem it to be of the utmost importance. That you can watch your own - in this case PvZ - games and pretty much skip the beginning since you have no options to "outplay" your opponent.
Regarding APM: It was possible outmicro and outmacro bad players in BW with less APM as well. I frequently outmicro'd and outmacro'd 250 APM C terran players with 150 APM as Z. Could anyone have done the same against flash? Hell no. But then again, I doubt that anyone will be able to compete in SC2 with 80 APM against top koreans within a few years. The fact that lower APM players, such as axslav and sjow, can compete with top players doesn't prove anything about APM skillcap, anymore than 1st~Tsunami's ability to win with 80 APM in BW proved that APM wasn't required at the tip-top level in BW.
In the end, it's not the game's fault that your strategy is so much inferior that you're losing to not so high calibre players who are slower than you. It's your fault for having an inferior strategy and/or multitasking poorly.
Your PvZ argument is just completely wrong. If you completely ignore every possible engagement, zergling aggression, zealot/stalker harassment, and so on, then yeah, obviously you can play as well as MC. Anyone can fucking follow a build order as well as MC, congrats. Even ignoring all of those, I would bet that MC and other top protoss players scout a lot better, by knowing how to hide their probe, micro it against zerglings, etc.
But if you ignore all of that then how are BW openings difficult? If you say "yo terran lets go 14cc and I go 12 nexus and lets just follow standard build orders and not harass at all," then anyone can play as well as Bisu and Flash for the first 7 minutes. Wow, that's so insightful.
Well said.
As far as moving shot etc. is concerned, i think that although the game is obviously easier on both micro and mechanics compared to BW, as it develops we are seeing less coin-flip - bo wins. I mean who won the past 3 GSLs? Why MarineKing has been 3 times a finalist? Top players have been really consistent in the past months in winning tournaments and no, i don't care about ladder. Anyone can be fucking around in ladder, in tourneys though we see the better players consistenly win. How do you explain that if the game is such a coinflip? I like the game and i'd really love the expansions to add more depth, but some of the things the OP and the supporters of that opinion are suggesting, is to make the game more like BW and excuse me but i can't see why this is required for it to be great.
edit: I do agree though with the damage inflation comment, i think if this was absent we would see even more great games for sure and blizzard should look at this (although its not at all simple).
On April 18 2011 23:38 War Horse wrote: I think Zerg needs a positional defense unit like the Lurker. Baneling filled the splash role but it doesn't really hold a position like a lurker, and it offers no "skill" really (you just roll banelings at their army, basically) P has forcefields and T has tanks but Z really has no equivalent.
Smartcasting, MBS, automine, etc is never going away so you might as well forget about that.
Also, talking about Sjow "being amazing" with low APM - Sjow wouldn't even make it out of Code A, so don't act like APM isn't meaningful.
Once again this mind set of "we have seen everything already." No, you havent seen everything. Players might not have figured out how to properly use units like banelings.
Sjow dosent seem to need more raw APM as hes beating hes opponents with that low APM: he has no insentive to improve hes APM. Instead he might want to scout a litle bit better, be more active on the map, etc. These things directly effect APM, even tho they arent doing what they do just so they can brag with their massive APM. Pros dont have these notepads next to their computers reading "Achieve and uphold 400 APM from beginning" or such nonsence.
APM gets better once pros get better in their strategies, they will get faster once they haveto start doing more things at same time, and it will gradually increase as people refine their strategies and fit more and more stuff that makes their opponents life miserable. This also improves opponents APM as they have to be doing counter measures against the stuff thats thrown at em.
I always find it hilarious when people have HUUUUUGE APM at the start of the game, but once something - anything - hapens on the map their APM drops to 0, still averaging something absurd from the early spamfest.
I just wanted to emphasize this, especially the "we haven't seen everything," part.
And since we're keen on making the BW comparisons in this thread, do you guys think there were people back when SC1 was a year old saying the same thing? "We've seen it all, this is where skill plateaus!"
The things being done in that thread surpass, by a fucking enormous margin, the limits of what is humanly possible. However, if people are executing the micro from those videos as well as humanly possible, don't you think it's highly advantageous to do so? What is being shown in that thread is that the skill ceiling is FAR beyond what is humanly possible.
What's more, nobody could have even conceived any of that a year ago, and yet here we are. Are we, as a community, honestly going to be arrogant enough to assume that there isn't more hidden potential just because this game isn't a direct remake of BW? I, for one, am convinced that this game has PLENTY of room to grow, and we are very far from hitting any kind of plateau. If you want to argue against that, I think you have to either prove A) That the kind of micro (or rather, a fraction) of what is exemplified in that thread isn't going to significantly differentiate a high-skill player from a lower skill one, B) That the skill ceiling is below the threshold of what is humanly possible (which I think is a pretty impossible argument to make, but go ahead and try), or C) That we, in all of our wisdom, know for certain that those are only isolated situational examples and thus can't be used to determine that player skill will not plateau based solely upon game mechanics being too easy.
Again, folks, watch the game develop instead of insisting that it's flawed, that it's too inherently too easy. Nobody made the "SC1 can never be as good/competitive as WC2 argument because it's just not skill intensive enough" argument when SC1 was in its infancy, they just watched, and focused on getting better. Development came rapidly at first, then slowed dramatically, and then came in significant bursts as people learned how to manipulate hugely important nuances until the end result is what we know now as current day BW. I have a feeling we're going to be looking at SC2 in 2021 saying, "yeah, what a fucking ridiculous debate this was," as we marvel at the next generation of bonjwas separating themselves from the pack.
tl;dr: Chill out, and watch the game progress instead of trying to spread the doom-and-gloom "it will always be inferior, easier, and less competitive than brood war unless the game gets changed," nonsense.
absolutely agree with this post and think blizzard needs to very carefully examine their game before jumping into changes with HotS. I really think the game is missing some very vital aspects that it requires to go nearly as far as BW did as an eSport, but I am confident that those aspects can be added in one of the 2 remaining expansions.
Corsairs, medics and lurkers were all added in the Brood War expansion (as well as the goliath's range upgrade, if I remember correctly, but correct me if I'm wrong). Let's just see what HotS brings us; maybe it'll make this thread unneccessary.
On April 19 2011 01:31 Shiladie wrote: absolutely agree with this post and think blizzard needs to very carefully examine their game before jumping into changes with HotS. I really think the game is missing some very vital aspects that it requires to go nearly as far as BW did as an eSport, but I am confident that those aspects can be added in one of the 2 remaining expansions.
Outside of Korea it's already gone further than BW has in 12 years, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
On April 19 2011 01:31 Shiladie wrote: absolutely agree with this post and think blizzard needs to very carefully examine their game before jumping into changes with HotS. I really think the game is missing some very vital aspects that it requires to go nearly as far as BW did as an eSport, but I am confident that those aspects can be added in one of the 2 remaining expansions.
Outside of Korea it's already gone further than BW has in 12 years, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
And yet SC2 is still laughable in terms of the overall industry when compared with Korea's scene - there aren't any SC2 players making huge salaries like BW pro's, there aren't leagues with not only a massive following but a huge infrastructure for intricate seasonal play that resemble the leagues of physical sports. SC2 may be more popular globally, but in terms of overall success it still has a very long way to go and the OP analyzes some of the things that may cause some problems if SC2 ever wants to reach that level of success.
On April 19 2011 01:31 Shiladie wrote: absolutely agree with this post and think blizzard needs to very carefully examine their game before jumping into changes with HotS. I really think the game is missing some very vital aspects that it requires to go nearly as far as BW did as an eSport, but I am confident that those aspects can be added in one of the 2 remaining expansions.
Outside of Korea it's already gone further than BW has in 12 years, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
And yet SC2 is still laughable in terms of the overall industry when compared with Korea's scene - there aren't any SC2 players making huge salaries like BW pro's, there aren't leagues with not only a massive following but a huge infrastructure for intricate seasonal play that resemble the leagues of physical sports. SC2 may be more popular globally, but in terms of overall success it still has a very long way to go and the OP analyzes some of the things that may cause some problems if SC2 ever wants to reach that level of success.
When was the first SPL team leagues? Like, 2003-04? 6 years after SC1 came out? That requires corporate sponsors and a lot of money, and you have to prove to them that it will be successful via the individual leagues. The GSTLs are a good start.
On April 16 2011 09:35 mahnini wrote: 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.
I personally feel like this is the biggest piece that the game is missing.
Unit control, positioning, all that stuff is POSSIBLE in SC2, people just aren't doing it very much at this point in time.
But when a Terran decides its time to push out, he can literally walk his way across 2/3 of the map and I can't do shit about it. There is no cost-effective way to slow down his push without actively engaging. I either have to kill the push, or it will kill me.
The lurker did SOOO much for the flow of the game in BW, and now I have nothing in SC2.
And its not just ZvT that has this issue.
The lack of mines for TvP and the way the HT was used in PvZ had the same effect.
You didn't actually need any army to hold the guy back, just a couple key units.
The lack of ability to slow the other guy down when you can't kill him is what makes death balls so powerful IMO.
The main problem I have with these "give it time!" arguments is that they really aren't much better than people who insist SC2 will never get better.
On one side you have people who think SC2 will forever be inferior to BW, and on the other side you have people who seem utterly convinced that SC2 will be better than BW if we wait a certain number of years. Both sides are equally unreasonable because both statements are completely baseless with no logic behind it. I guess the problem is that people who bring up "give it time" argument always seem to have this sense of having the "moral high ground" when in reality their argument is just as baseless as those who insist the opposite.
The main point I'm trying to make point is that it's not enough to just say give it time. You have to give us REAL reasons why the game will get better over time, not just vague promises. We've seen plenty of games that reach a skill cap and never grow no matter what. No amount of time will make Tic-tac-toe more in-depth than poker. No amount of time will make Checkers have more depth than Chess or Go. Games don't get better because of time; they get better because they have fundamental game aspects that encourage competitive play. I'll repeat this since it's extremely important.
Games don't get better because of time; they get better because they have fundamental game aspects that encourage competitive play
Many people in this thread seem to think that since BW got better over several years, then it somehow means that it got better because of time rather than the fact that BW is a complex game. Correlation != causation if you will. Time was simply a byproduct of discovering that depth, and the reason why it took so long to discover it was because the RTS community wasn't nearly as knowledgeable as it is now. It took several years before people even started to grasp what micro and macro were back in 1998. That obviously didn't happen in SC2. Now that the community is armed with 10+ years of knowledge, we can thoroughly analyze both BW and SC2 and see precisely what factors made BW good, and whether SC2 kept those factors or not. That's basically what threads like this are for, and if we come to a consensus that BW has something that SC2 either lacks or has in a lesser degree, then that's cause for concern since BW and SC2 are fundamentally similar games (what works for one will almost always work for the other). To see the community's 10+ years of research and analysis thrown under the rug in favor of a wishful "give it time!" response is both insulting and ignorant.
We're a pretty smart community you know. Perhaps moreso than any other game because it's full of extremely dedicated people who take competitive gameplay seriously and a willingness to do whatever it takes to learn what makes it tick. And once Blizzard starts making the expansions, I can 100% guarantee you that whatever they make will be heavily influenced by the feedback we gave from threads like this. Remember that the macro mechanics you see in SC2 today exist purely because communities like this one raised a huge stink over the game lacking macro. I'm not saying this to be smug, I'm saying this because it's only natural and beneficial for game developers to take fan feedback in account.
SC2 literally has almost nothing to lose by having most of the things we're suggesting. Hell, most of them don't even make the game all that casual-unfriendly. I certainly don't think casuals will complain if they have more in-depth unit relationships, better defensive units, less anti-micro abilities, and so on. And it also has the side effect of making games more fun to spectate. A win-win situation for everyone.
On April 18 2011 23:38 War Horse wrote: I think Zerg needs a positional defense unit like the Lurker. Baneling filled the splash role but it doesn't really hold a position like a lurker, and it offers no "skill" really (you just roll banelings at their army, basically) P has forcefields and T has tanks but Z really has no equivalent.
Which is a good thing as it keeps the playable races different. Zerg relies on other game mechanics.
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/732 Air units shooting without deacceleration ( with good micro ) vs mutalisks ( TvZ ) he loses the game and could probably have produced more units... ( overlords are detectors in this ) skip to 7:00 and anything beyond that
mutalisks can do the same thing, and both require micro as opposed to the phoenix looks better for aesthetics too
EPT
