[D] What SC2 is missing? - Page 55

On April 19 2011 03:03 darmousseh wrote:
I think dustin browder addressed this issue at a past blizzcon. He said something along the lines of "We want the action to happen right away" and thus they gave the agressive players an advantage.

On April 19 2011 04:11 heligebob wrote:
Does it really feel like starcraft to you? Not 'you can see it cause of this and this', do you feel like its starcraft in the way starcraft brood war did? If you do, fine, we disagree.
I think the feeling that its starcraft, of course slightly different cause its a new game, is a really important thing for a sequel. I don't think i'm the only one with that feeling btw.

On April 18 2011 09:57 LaLuSh wrote:
I personally don't think the development team at Blizzard had enough insight and realisation of which subtle mechanics it was that made BW into such a great esports game.

I said it in my moving shot thread in the beta, and I'll repeat it now: BW hasn't been patched for balance since 2001 (!). Just imagine all the revolutions of gameplay that took place during that vast time period. Sure there were periods of minor "imbalances". But somehow they would always work themselves out without intervention from Blizzard.

I'm absolutely certain in my belief that Blizzard's balancing team aren't the ones to thank for Broodwar's perfect balance. Nor was it a fluke that Broodwar turned out to balance itself. The game design of Broodwar simply allowed for such immense freedom within the game that the limits of human performance quite literally became one of the most important balance factors.

All the things the OP discusses were things that worked together in making the game HARD AS HELL to play. In making human performance a factor of balance. Being offensive took immense effort. Defending required all your powers. Whatever you did within the game -- it wasn't perfect. There was so much room for control that execution could always be improved upon.


Already from the moment that we were getting the first sneak peaks of SC2, I was worried Blizzard game designers would not realize how much a well designed engine and perfect control of one's units meant for Broodwar as a game and potentially for the future gameplay of SC2. I was honestly of the belief that someone who didn't play or follow broodwar at a high enough level, would be unable to see, comprehend and "understand" such sublety within an RTS game.

That's also why I was so very critical of Dustin Browder in that first article. I didn't think that he, nor pretty much anyone at Blizzard had the potential to see what it was that seperated Broodwar from other RTS' of its time. They all somehow seemed to give the impression that they thought balance was all a matter of tweaking around settings and deciding upon cool unit concepts/designs.

For me writing the thread about moving shot became really important once the beta was out and air units behaved like oil tankers. To be honest, I felt sort of insulted that these guys designing the sequel to the game i loved had no understanding of how air units should behave. That they didn't have enough experience from playing/watching Broodwar that they would immediately be able to say: "Air units feel like shit man, they're not agile at all, I can't muta-micro without losing control", in early stages of the development of the game.

It may not seem like a big deal to many, but in my eyes no moving shot is a contributing factor (among other core game design decisions) to damage inflation in the game. It's a contributing factor to what makes SC2 feel more like a game of coin flips than it does Broodwar.

In Broodwar, the commonly used air units all share the traits of being extremely mobile and having pretty low damage. In small numbers, though they may be effective, they will not end games. 2 wraiths will not be the reason the game ended. Truly amazing control from the player using the wraiths and bad defense from the opponent will.

Also, the traits speed and agility rather than damage, create a buffer towards luck being a deciding factor in the outcome of the game. You have to build up 3 wraiths before you can 2 shot drones. And they cost just as much as banshees do...

In SC2, the loss of mobility has been compensated in various ways. Primarily by granting air units increased damage and increased range. So what happens now when a cloaked flying unit enters the base of an unprepared opponent? The design of the game proves to decide the outcome rather than the performances of the players. I think this is why the community's whine never stops in SC2. They whine about units and balance, but the issue lies in the fundamental design of the game.

Implementing moving shot wouldn't magically fix everything though. But it would be a step in the right direction. There are many other game design features that I personally believe indirectly affect balance and gameplay. I don't think it can ever be fixed by merely tweaking unit stats.

Another huge factor I believe is the economical system of SC2 which I believe influences gameplay in a volatile direction early game, while providing a cap/roof in the lategame. I already discussed that in my last thread so not gonna recap. But I believe it to be another case of "game design influencing the outcome of the game rather than performance".

I didn't include my thoughts on macro mechanics in that thread though. But I believe they need to be "balanced" and revised in the future expansions for a healthy unit diversity to be able to exist in the game without creating total chaos. Larva inject, imo, is a mechanic that prevents zergs units from being balanced with the stats they would actually deserve to be viable in the later parts of a game (especially referring to #1hydralisk and #2roach here).

The current design of larva inject will also forever prevent zerg from getting any sort of useful spellcaster without being crazily imbalanced.

I also think that Blizzard game designers sort of misunderstood how zerg functioned in Broodwar. While they may have appeared "swarmy", they were always the race that was behind in supply. Usually their economy was inferior. In fact, I'd probably classify zerg as the most cost efficient Broodwar race in the early- and midgames.

Versus terran, zerg is generally expected to be 20-50 supply behind. Oftentimes even more! In that matchup, you could almost say terran are more swarmy than zerg. In broodwar, once you saw zerg catch up or surpass the other races in supply, that usually meant zerg was about to seal the deal and take home the game.

Watch how many mineral mining drones a zerg can afford in ZvT... and you'll be shocked.

Vs. protoss, zerg played more of a mineral heavy style and could rightfully be called swarmy. But nonetheless, they were expected to be 10-30 supply behind protoss in an even game. If the zerg surpassed the protoss in supply, that usually meant protoss was in big trouble (unless it was the latest stages of the game).



In SC2, the entire concept and design of zerg was unwittingly changed with the introduction of the queen. Blizzard labelled zerg "swarmy". And a swarmy macro mechanic meant unlimited larva.

Only now, zerg instead became the race that needed to supersaturate their bases. Zerg became the race that needed to make the most workers the fastest in all matchups. Zerg were the ones that needed to play like Protoss in lategame broodwar PvT. Expand everywhere. Outproduce your opponent. Throw your cost inefficient army at the opponent, expect it to die and remax as quickly as possible.

That's why zerg are so hard to balance in SC2 too. Once you tweak something that tilts games in zerg's favor. It is usually really evident that there's an imbalance, because they will completely run the opponent over in certain stages of the game. 2 armor roach? Imba early game, okay mid and lategame. 90hp hydra (plus higher fire rate)? Imba midgame, ok lategame. 1 supply roach? Probably ok in early and midgame, imba lategame. A spellcaster half as good as the defiler? Imba lategame, because all zerg would need to do is survive until lategame, sort of like Protoss now.

And it's all connected in one way or another. One of the reasons protoss are so strong lategame, is because they need their units and their abilities to be as strong as they are to deal with zerg and terran macro mehanics in early and midgame.

It's a fragile balance. And it contributes to damage inflation where there should be none, and likewise damage deflation where sometimes there should be none (hydralisk).

Zerg units are bad by necessity.

On April 19 2011 04:21 tedster wrote:


This right here defines the entire problem. The aggressive player already gains an advantage in any situation in RTS by gaining map control and having more options available, assuming his aggression succeeds in some way. The defensive player, on the other hand, gets to assure safety and tech options while producing less total units, which creates a tug-of-war situation and promotes things like harassment, pincer attacks, terrain optimization and very, very tight timings.

In SC2, the aggressive player receives an artificial advantage because Dustin Browder and his design team were not able to recognize that there is already an inherent advantage to controlling the map. Now the defensive player has only one real option: get more supply than the opponent and roll over their ball, because otherwise the aggressor has literally every advantage and can roll over your army if it ever falls behind in unit count.

Furthermore, since defender's advantage is so terrible in SC2, aggression cannot ever let up once it has begun. The death ball is utterly ubiquitous and cannot be reasonably stopped by anything other than a full army. There is no midgame "contain", such as in BW, that is there only to keep the opponent back for a specific amount of time while you get things up and running: your contain is more like a permanent mobile siege of their base because if you ever let them roll over the 1/3 of your army that you are leaving as a deterrent/slowdown they will easily roll over the other 2/3 army you have elsewhere.

On April 19 2011 04:11 heligebob wrote:
Does it really feel like starcraft to you? Not 'you can see it cause of this and this', do you feel like its starcraft in the way starcraft brood war did? If you do, fine, we disagree.
I think the feeling that its starcraft, of course slightly different cause its a new game, is a really important thing for a sequel. I don't think i'm the only one with that feeling btw.

On April 19 2011 04:26 karpo wrote:


I think it's Starcraft. And i believe that i share that feeling with alot of people too. So again, point can't be that solid? ;D

On April 19 2011 04:30 Gara wrote:
I think a lot of the topics discussed in the OP come down to advances in game mechanics (better unit AI, unit stacking, smartcasting, semi-infinite selection, less bugginess in general). In BW, the skill cap was higher because players almost had to play against the game AI as well as their opponents. In SC2, the far more fluid game mechanics make things more cut-and-dried. It's just the natural evolution of the game, and artificially introducing more complexity won't make the game more elegant or whatever, as inevitably the game will get "solved" and all other options will be discarded in favour of the best build.

On April 19 2011 02:17 [F_]aths wrote:
Which is a good thing as it keeps the playable races different. Zerg relies on other game mechanics.

On April 19 2011 04:29 karpo wrote:


Boxer vs Sen game 2 had boxer contain Sen, getting 50 supply down on Sen but almost makes a complete comeback. He had a contain, lost it but rebuild and contained again to try and get back into the game.

On April 19 2011 04:56 skipdog172 wrote:
I wonder if some of you complaining about SC2 are having fun. I am having absolutely more fun playing SC2 than I ever did playing brood war. To me, that is what matters.

Games are entertaining to watch. Are we not seeing far more people watching SC2 compared to BW in the foreign scene? I personally can't stop watching SC2 and it is the same with so many friends I know who have never watched any form of esports in their lives, and they LOVE watching SC2. Most of them barely play any SC2.

We've seen the same top players constantly dominating Code S. There is no lack of skill gap at the top.

There is only a lower skill gap between Diamond and Masters and I think this is why so many here feel threatened and nostalgic about BW. Their sick control from all of their BW days, just isn't as valuable, as messing up pre-fight positioning, or not having the correct unit composition is far far more punishing. All of their little micro tricks and in-battle micro does them little good compared to how pure superior unit control could easily win them games by themselves in BW. They see themselves lose to players with less skillful micro skill, and rage about how SC2 isn't as good of a game. SC2 is very punishing in terms of making strategical blunders and you can't micro yourself out of many more situations. If you mess up and lose an engagement, you are probably done. Why is that so horrible? You made a mistake and lost because of it. You can't make mistakes and win because your opponent has worse micro than you. You shouldn't get chance after chance to micro your way out of losing situations.

There is lots of nostalgia going on in this thread and I think much of it is causing some short-sightedness.

On April 19 2011 04:56 skipdog172 wrote:
There is only a lower skill gap between Diamond and Masters and I think this is why so many here feel threatened and nostalgic about BW. Their sick control from all of their BW days, just isn't as valuable, as messing up pre-fight positioning, or not having the correct unit composition is far far more punishing. All of their little micro tricks and in-battle micro does them little good compared to how pure superior unit control could easily win them games by themselves in BW. They see themselves lose to players with less skillful micro skill, and rage about how SC2 isn't as good of a game. SC2 is very punishing in terms of making strategical blunders and you can't micro yourself out of many more situations. If you mess up and lose an engagement, you are probably done. Why is that so horrible? You made a mistake and lost because of it. You can't make mistakes and win because your opponent has worse micro than you. You shouldn't get chance after chance to micro your way out of losing situations.

On April 19 2011 04:44 Demonaz wrote:
I've never played or watched BW, only got into starcraft when 2 was released, but this thread is making me really want to start watching BW! I've really enjoyed watching SC2 tourneys these past few months but BW sounds incredible.

I love SC2 and all but I have noticed some of these issues myself despite having never gone near BW in my life, particularly how large battles are over too quickly meaning that games just suddenly end without enough buildup. I think the biggest thing though is how difficult it is for a player to come back when behind, far too often one player gets ahead even slightly by one battle and they literally can't lose unless they make a really stupid mistake. The other tries to hang on but 90% of the time it a forgone conclusion. TvT and TvZ are my favourite matchups by far since they have a lot more back and forth action which is what make a competitive match of anything so fun to watch.

I've had a look at a few BW vids and the battles seem so long and drawn out, with the players kind of feeling each other out rather than 5 seconds and everything is dead as in SC2 quite often in mid-late game battles.

Don't get me wrong, SC2 is great fun to watch but I'm going to look into following some MSL and the like in the future. Just need something to explain to me what all the units mean hehe.

On April 19 2011 05:23 drcatellino wrote:
I was awful at BW. And yes, I have more fun with SC2 and I am improving much faster.

BW and SC2 are two different games. You can discuss and point out differences that makes you rage as much as you want, yet the games will never be the same.

If you want to see SC2 as a BW with better graphics, it just never will be up to your standards.

You guys should see this as movie sequels. When movie producers try to make a sequel that is exactly like the first one but with more action and whatever, it is just bound to fail. The best sequels are those who can bring something with their own identities and differences but with a similar core of ideas.

And remember that BW didn't cease to exists, you can go back to it whenever you want.

Also, if SC2 is so boring to watch, why is the Esports scene growing so fast ?

On April 19 2011 05:23 drcatellino wrote:
I was awful at BW. And yes, I have more fun with SC2 and I am improving much faster.

BW and SC2 are two different games. You can discuss and point out differences that makes you rage as much as you want, yet the games will never be the same.

If you want to see SC2 as a BW with better graphics, it just never will be up to your standards.

You guys should see this as movie sequels. When movie producers try to make a sequel that is exactly like the first one but with more action and whatever, it is just bound to fail. The best sequels are those who can bring something with their own identities and differences but with a similar core of ideas.

And remember that BW didn't cease to exists, you can go back to it whenever you want.

Also, if SC2 is so boring to watch, why is the Esports scene growing so fast ?