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Maybe iam some kind of masochist, but i had a much harder time at BW then in SC2, but BW was much more fun to me.
Coming from a more Warcraft'ish background, i like micro battles. In Broodwar, i could turn around big fights with good lurker positioning, well placed Swarms and Plagues & Ling/Hydra flanks - i dont see any of this in SC2.
Rolling a bunch of Banelings into a Marineforce isnt fun, even if i completely obliterate the terran with it, its just meh.
@drcatellino : I think the scene grows so fast cause every 12 year old kid ( for example Maru ) can execute something like a Rine/Rauder Stim-Timing Attack. There are players out there who are complete nonames, never anybody hear of them in the BW, maybe WC3 days but they are abled to dominate with 1a'ing marines into the enemy, that sucks.
excuse my english
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On April 18 2011 13:49 rotegirte wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2011 13:25 ploy wrote:
I think the points in the OP are valid and all... but so many people on this thread are talking/acting like SC2 is terrible or doomed or something. Couldn't we argue that it's already bigger than BW ever was on a global scale? As indicated from my post count, I am obviously part of the "new audience". Admittedly, I am a "pure spectator". Neither do I play the game myself nor am I uncapable of grasping it. I find this thread highly interesting, coming from heavy theory-craft strategy and simulation games. Economical success and userbase don't quite correlate with good game design though. From an outsider's view, I think many responders have misunderstood OP's intention (to the point of not even bothering reading the excellent posts of LaLush). There is reason to be concerned about SC2 (as with all businesses) burst its own bubble. I have been following SC2 since the beta. And for what it's worth, I find myself more often feeling that the game may hit its ceiling soon.
The post by Lalush (if you're reffering to his famous economy OP) is already dated, as you as zerg get bases for gas rather than for more mineral income.
I honestly don't understand the point of the OP. I read through it all, and all I saw was comparisons between the two games, and the OP's opinions on what was best. Apologies if I missunderstood something. I don't understand why the hard core fans of SCBW can't just let it go, and not be patronizing to all die hard sc2 fans out there.
Personally I like SC2 because the skill cealing is far from met, it's a hard game, and it looks stunningly beautiful. I understand that people like BW, but I won't make a post on the BW forums and shove my SC2 opinions down their throat. Not to mention it'd get me banned instantly. Imo it's not civil.
Just my two cents.
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On April 19 2011 05:13 tedster wrote:
That's a good general start. I'll try to post about specific matchups if you're still interested.
Extremely basic matchup info with some unit analysis begins here:
TvZ: Probably the most dynamic matchup in BW (followed by TvP), the game essentially boils down to a tug of war with each race grabbing temporary control and trying to eke out an advantage before the next "stage" of the game is reached.
phase 1: Expansion and buildup: Because Terran can wall in so effectively and because zerglings slaughter marines in the open field, Terran will typically play safe while zerg will take 1 or 2 expansions. Zerg needs gas very badly to do effective things, as well as additional hatcheries to produce larva for units, while Terran can afford to sit a base behind Zerg (or protoss) but still really needs to get an expansion up to allow for an effective midgame. Generally once Terran has an expansion going up and zerg has established a second and/or third gas, the game moves onto phase 2.
phase 2: Marine/medic vs. ling/sunken push: Terran will typically opt for marine/medic play while teching for science vessels (this is known as "SK Terran" for reasons that don't really matter, but you'll hear it mentioned and often the announcers will say it during a game). Zerg doesn't really have anything to stop SK terran at this phase of the game, as they typically will tech directly to Mutalisks in a standard game (more on that in phase 3). While it is possible for Zerg to rush for lurkers, this is quite dangerous as it essentially requires the Zerg to kill off the Terran's expansion before Science Vessels or Tanks come into play, both of which will decimate a lurker-heavy early game Zerg that does not have Defiler support (and Defiler tech is hard to get when you get quick Lurkers, who eat up your gas and do not naturally flow into tier 3 play on their own). Instead, Zerg will build just enough lings to poke at the Terran Medic&Marine ball as it advances across the field (or sometimes turtles at home), which allows the Zerg to delay making sunken colonies for as long as possible. If the Terran makes enough M&M, they will push towards the Zerg base as soon as Stim finishes researching, forcing the Zerg to make several sunken colonies and sacrifice several zerglings to slow the Terran down. If the zerg fails to make enough defenses (this almost never happens with good scouting) then the Terran can win outright. If the zerg makes too many defenses, their economy will fall behind in phase 3 and beyond. If the zerg is not forced to make any defenses at all, they will be able to rush their tech and make more Drones, which is extremely dangerous for the Terran player. The goal of each side is to minimize losses and mess with opponent timings.
phase 3: Mutas and turrets into lurkers until Sci vessels (and maybe tanks): Zerg has finally made it to mutalisk tech and immediately hatches as many mutas as gas allows to create a hotkey capable of 1shotting SCVs. Terran must now pull troops back to base, as the zerg will keep adding mutalisks for a while in order to create a nasty ball of flying death that can take down most unsupported base defenses and devastate an SCV line while still being capable of flying home and help defend. Mutalisks with zergling support also do well against small Medic/Marine forces until the marine level hits critical mass and range/+1 damage is upgraded. Regardless, the mutalisks will fly in circles around the Terran base, picking off stray units and SCVs, shooting at structures, and forcing Terran to make as many Turrets as possible to keep the mutas away. THE ZERG PLAYER WILL ALMOST NEVER WIN AT THIS STAGE, but if enough damage is done by the mutalisks the Terran player will be in a very deep hole. This is the often first stage of the game where, as an observer, you can sometimes make a very informed decision about who is likely to win or at least go into the midgame with a big advantage. The Terran player, after weathering the Muta attack for a while, will have built up a huge ball of medics and marines, forcing the Zerg player to pull his mutas back or at least be more careful with them. However, it is extremely risky for the Terran player to attack at this point, because the zerg typically has researched Lurker tech and placed a few lurkers at key areas around the map. If the terran accidentally runs his marines over a lurker or two, he could lose the entire army: especially if the Zerg player is using the Stop Lurker trick (see http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Hold_Lurker for explanation and videos).
The terran player responds to this issue by producing a Science Vessel with Irradiate: this solves several problems at once; a single Irradiate can often kill or weaken an entire group of mutalisks at no danger to the Vessel, forcing the mutas to stop harassing the Terran base entirely, and Vessels can detect burrowed lurkers, allowing the Terran player to micro his stimmed marines to kill lurkers and push towards the zerg base relatively safely. While scourge can be used to slow down a vessel/marine push, along with good lurker/ling micro, the Terran player will eventually succeed in pushing towards the zerg base. Terran may or may not have included a tank or two in the push, for various reasons: Tanks do very well against lurkers and sunkens, but are much less mobile for fighting lings and mutas (and slow down the Terran push by a bit). Some players favor tanks (Flash), while others favor pure SK Terran and do not get tanks unless Ultralisks come into play.
phase 4: Defilers attempt to halt the Terran push: Zerg has only 1 weapon for halting the defiler push at this stage of the game: tier 3 and Defilers. Defilers have Dark Swarm, quite possibly the strongest single ability in the game, causing ranged weapons to miss targets under the swarm and letting a single zergling or lurker hold back an infinite stream of Terran troops underneath the swarm. Defilers can also research consume, allowing a defiler to eat zerglings for essentially infinite mana, meaning one defiler can hold off a Terran army pretty much indefinitely if left alone.
Now, if everything has gone right for the Zerg player, the defilers will be ready before the Terran army reaches the zerg base. If things have gone REALLY well, the defiler will be ready before the terran even manages to push, letting zerg simply walk across the map, lay down dark swarms, and end the game with zerglings, though this is rare. If things went poorly for the zerg, the defilers will pop after terran has reached and devastated the zerg natural expansion, putting the zerg way behind and probably spelling their doom. What is most likely to happen, however, is that the Terran will slowly push across the map, fighting lurker and scourge/ling fallbacks, and reach the zerg base at almost the exact time that defilers come online and can throw down a timely Dark Swarm to save the expansion and push the terran back. Terran will begin producing dropships at this point and start threatening zerg expansions all around the map with medic+marine drops (each of which can tear down an expansion in short order and takes a good amount of work for the zerg to fight off without losses) while zerg tries to reach critical mass of gas expansions, allowing Ultralisk play.
At this point, lategame play has begun. Science Vessels and Defilers play a major role in the game, with Dark Swarm and Plague matched up against Irradiate and Detection from the vessels. Tanks and Ultras can come into play, and zerglings gain their tier-3 upgrades along with attack speed boost, making them exceptionally deadly under a dark swarm or when dropped into an opponent's base (cracklings do significantly more damage in SC1 than in SC2 and can tear a base to pieces in seconds). Terran will continue to drop zerg expos while trying to control the middle, attempting to deny zerg a 5th gas while taking a 3rd and 4th himself if possible. The game soon becomes a battle of "stuff", where each side is trying to force mistakes by the other while making a really big, upgraded army to win the eventually big battles that will take place. There will generally by 2 to 4 largescale, full-army fights before an eventually winner is cemented, with several more skirmishes at expansions and main bases in an attempt to force an error or capitalize on overextension.
And that's assuming terran doesn't go mech early!
edit: oh god these take a while to write, if you or random people are still interested im going to have to make a thread for it and take a few days to get it all down
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Did anyone else mention that this game is aimed towards a different audience as well? It's been made extremely noob friendly on purpose, and I don't see how a noob-friendly game can become a competitive game as well. They're both fun, but the fun we get from winning in SC2 is practically nothing.
The only reason this game is growing in the Esports scene is because Blizzard is investing huge promotion and also by attempting to take out it's main competitor -- Brood War.
As everyone has pointed out, everything "fun" in sc2 is generally something pretty stupid. Everything "fun" in BW was something that took skill to use. Should blizzard learn from Final Fantasy and throw limit breaks in there? Should blizz take a step backwards and risk losing their main, noob audience?
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Well it's essentially a newb audience or no audience. Brood War's explosive popularity in Korea was virtually a perfect storm of circumstances and a game that difficult would most likely never find the same degree of popularity in the rest of the world.
Blizzard should be commended, on one level--sc2 is easily the most popular ESPORTS game at this level of complexity--but they definitely need to add more skill-intensive units or mechanics in the expansions.
Fortunately, I don't see a way that they can avoid doing so--pretty much every conceivable type of attack-move unit is already in SC2, so they're going to have to add something interesting. And I hope they're reading this thread because it is the first sc2/bw comparison thread I can remember that has something interesting to say.
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On April 19 2011 05:48 tedster wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 05:13 tedster wrote:
That's a good general start. I'll try to post about specific matchups if you're still interested. Insert monster analysis here
I'd be quite interested in that. As a SC2 player that has dipped into playing some SC2BW occasionally, I'd appreciate the history lesson.
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edit: oh god these take a while to write, if you or random people are still interested im going to have to make a thread for it and take a few days to get it all down
But I'd love you to do a ZvP one!
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On April 19 2011 05:50 imBLIND wrote:
Did anyone else mention that this game is aimed towards a different audience as well? It's been made extremely noob friendly on purpose, and I don't see how a noob-friendly game can become a competitive game as well. They're both fun, but the fun we get from winning in SC2 is practically nothing.
The only reason this game is growing in the Esports scene is because Blizzard is investing huge promotion and also by attempting to take out it's main competitor -- Brood War.
As everyone has pointed out, everything "fun" in sc2 is generally something pretty stupid. Everything "fun" in BW was something that took skill to use. Should blizzard learn from Final Fantasy and throw limit breaks in there? Should blizz take a step backwards and risk losing their main, noob audience?
Opinion, opinions and more opinions. "the fun we get from winning in Sc2 is practically nothing". Speak for yourself.
This noob friendly game is already competitive and competitions are just getting better and better.
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On April 19 2011 05:47 Euronyme wrote:
The post by Lalush (if you're reffering to his famous economy OP) is already dated, as you as zerg get bases for gas rather than for more mineral income.
Really? What pro games was this tactic featured in recently?
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On April 19 2011 05:00 Kipsate wrote:Show nested quote +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. The direction you want SC2 to go from your post implies that it will be a pure strategy game, where only preparing and unit compisition matters, basically you prepare yourself for a fight, then both A-move yourself in the battle. During the battle you can not do anything to improve your chances of winning(over exegerrating but you get the point). Should Starcraft 2 be a game where only macro and strategy is important?Or should Starcraft 2 be a game where apart from macro and strategy there is also micro. How you control the units you produce should in my opinion just be as important as creating the right units. If you don't understand this, then well I can't help that. What I mean by this is that Starcraft 2 as of now is lacking units which become MUCH more potent if the players controll them well.
Some micro tricks in sc2:
Marine spread,
Phoenix lifting
Blink micro
Forcefields
Burrow micro
Two pronged attacks, surrounds and sandwiches
Storm dodging
Muta micro
Early game unit control, especially in PvP
There are tonnes of aspects in SC2. It's not chess, and execution is extremely important.
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On April 19 2011 03:06 karpo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 02:25 sleepingdog wrote:On April 19 2011 00:11 PJA wrote:
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. By this you pretty much prove my point and I don't need to add much more. If these are the only things were huge skill can give you an advantage, then there's something fundamentally wrong. And by saying that "everyone can fucking follow a build-order" you are spot-on correct, yet still strangely incapable of understanding how your own points pretty much perfectly correlate which what I have written. If huge skill don't give you an advantage, why are we already seeing top players winning decisively and staying at the top in the GSL. If it was as easy as you make it out to be we'd have totally random code S players every season, yet we don't. Show nested quote +
When was the last time you saw a zealot/stalker harass that had a huge impact on the game?
I've seen Jinro and a couple of other pros straight up lose to zealot+stalker early harass. I've seen MC win due to weakening marines in the early game. Show nested quote +
Yeah right. Now compare it with the amount of games where the toss simply goes zealot/sentry/sentry/sentry or zealot/stalker/sentry/sentry and does nothing. Exactly.
When was the last time you saw a successful early ling harassment (that wasn't semi-all-in-ish)? Exactly.
Julyzerg did some amazing early ling pressure against HuK's early expand on Xel'naga Cavens in Korea vs World. Show nested quote +
Again - I know I'm repeating myself - this is my whole, 100% frickin point. Everyone can follow a build-order. Nevertheless THIS is (at least for PvZ) what's currently yielding the best results. A playstyle with no multitasking-requirements whatsoever. All the skill, APM, gamesense, probe-vs-ling-micro (??) etc. don't matter, if after all a single BO that "everyone can follow" (using your words) is pretty much always the best way to play.
It's the best way to play, just like it was the best way for a terran to just go early marine+marauder and straight up kill protoss for two whole seasons of the GSL and just like the best way to play was 2-rax all in for TvZ. Stuff gets figured out and solved eventually and if it doesn't we get some kind of fix. BTW didn't protoss have it bad against zerg for like a year or more in BW until someone figured that machup out? Show nested quote +
EDIT: just to be 100% clear: A competitive RTS game must have dominant strategies that NOT everyone can execute while half-asleep. The strongest strategies MUST be those that are the hardest to execute. The strongest strategies should require the most multitasking and should have the highest skill-cap. So that newbs and mediocre players like me would probably stick even with inferior strats if we are incapable of executing them properly. But strategies that can be inspiring, strategies that give an incentive to further and further improve to be - maybe - at some point able to execute them good enough to also be able to profit.
I think we've already seen some very impressive micro/macro games in SC2. Games you would never, ever come close to in execution. I don't really like using the expression but "give it time" seems to be the perfect response to your post.
That's a good post. The OP post is garbage and people wont say it just because its long and formatted well.
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?
First of all, protoss had no such map control in BW and they were just as balanced as Terran and Zerg so that obviously didn't make or break the race. Also SC2 has no map control mechanic? I think you are forgetting about Zerg creep, burrowed banelings, proxy pylon being able to warp-in units gives you control as well.
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.
Once again you come back to the lurker that didnt really have much of a real setup time, just a lot of micro and its only 1 unit that isn't a gamebreaking unit. If you don't think SC2 army positioning is just as important as in BW, i don't know what to tell you. There are some very cool setup things that you can do in Sc2 such as charging up voidrays before you go into a fight etc.
Player-unit interaction.
One of the only sources of player-unit interaction in SC2 are spellcasters because they are one of the only units that require actual micromanagement to use properly. The problem with the spellcasters, though, is that they themselves don't promote a player involved response. Think about the sentry and the spells it has, if a guardian shield or forcefield goes up, as the opposing player what are you doing differently? Chances are you aren't doing anything or you are in full retreat. What about the infestor? What's your response to the infestor besides maximizing surface area or neutralizing it before the battle? When a fungal goes off there is literally nothing you can do to avoid further damage, you just sit there thinking, "well this kinda sucks, I need to spread more".
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.
If you see a forcefield going up you can micro your FF'ed roaches to burrowmove and bypass the F. If you just sit there after FF is casted and be like "this sux" and do nothing to maneuver around it, then you have other problems and you are going to have trouble getting out of bronze. Similiarly spreading your marines against fungal growth takes ridiciously apm that only high level players are able to do. I don't know what you are talking about. You are acting like top SC2 players just A-move in and then watch till the dust clears..
Mechanics were more than a skill gap.
Having a mechanics requirement was what made things in BW impressive. Saying an RTS player only wins because he's faster is like saying a boxer only wins because he's stronger and not a better fighter. It's just stupid. The high mechanical requirement enabled extremely skilled players to use their units in ways no one ever could.
There is still a very high mechanic requirement in SC2 at high levels such as marine splitting etc. What makes SC2 much more impressive than BW that you diminishing returns for higher APM. You hit a ceiling on APM after that point and it weather you win or not depends on your strategy and decision-making. BW was ass in that aspect because mechanics mattered so much more than strategy and decision-making. If you think the mechanical requirement for SC2 is not high enough when most top players are clocking in atleast 100apm then you need to look into more FPS games.It's really impressive that some of these players with 100 apm can decisively win over players with 200apm and that's what makes it a much better strategy game than broodwar where a guy could roll over a much better strategist and superior army just because has faster hands which is more reminisce of FPS games.
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I find it amusing and sad at the same time that while sc2 fans generally agree that TvZ and TvT (in sc2) are by far the two best match-ups and not coincidentally play out just like BW match-ups, they get so uptight whenever someone makes a valid suggestion that blizzard should make the other match-ups like TvT/TvZ in sc2 aka make them/the game more like BW in certain aspects.
Amusing, because it's funny that so many sc2 fans can't see past their prejudice/inferiority complex (not saying all sc2 fans are like that, and we have given those who are some reason to as BW fans). Sad, because it makes any sort of discussion on basis of content impossible.
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On April 19 2011 06:06 Dragar wrote:Show nested quote +edit: oh god these take a while to write, if you or random people are still interested im going to have to make a thread for it and take a few days to get it all down But I'd love you to do a ZvP one!
Alright, I'll work on this next I suppose (though I was planning on going through all the Terran ones first). I'll post it in this thread, though I'll probably make a new thread tonight and start getting everything in one place. A few of these (like TvP which has about one million opening builds with slightly different interactions) might take a while, but ZvP is pretty straightforward to explain, at least, despite there being a lot going on.
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On April 19 2011 06:11 maybenexttime wrote:
I find it amusing and sad at the same time that while sc2 fans generally agree that TvZ and TvT (in sc2) are by far the two best match-ups and not coincidentally play out just like BW match-ups, they get so uptight whenever someone makes a valid suggestion that blizzard should make the other match-ups like TvT/TvZ in sc2 aka make them/the game more like BW in certain aspects.
Amusing, because it's funny that so many sc2 fans can't see past their prejudice/inferiority complex (not saying all sc2 fans are like that, and we have given those who are some reason to as BW fans). Sad, because it makes any sort of discussion on basis of content impossible.
And it's also sad that there's loads of BW fans that come here using hyperbole and exaggerations to try and prove their points instead of using rational arguments. I don't know how many times i've seen personal opinions sprouted as some kind of universal truths.
I want more TvT/TvZ kinds of games too, and i hope well see more as the game progresses.
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Id just like to say games you played when you were young will always retain this extra "magic" because everything as a child was more magical.
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 19 2011 05:48 tedster wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 05:13 tedster wrote:
That's a good general start. I'll try to post about specific matchups if you're still interested. Extremely basic matchup info with some unit analysis begins here: TvZ: Probably the most dynamic matchup in BW (followed by TvP), the game essentially boils down to a tug of war with each race grabbing temporary control and trying to eke out an advantage before the next "stage" of the game is reached. phase 1: Expansion and buildup: Because Terran can wall in so effectively and because zerglings slaughter marines in the open field, Terran will typically play safe while zerg will take 1 or 2 expansions. Zerg needs gas very badly to do effective things, as well as additional hatcheries to produce larva for units, while Terran can afford to sit a base behind Zerg (or protoss) but still really needs to get an expansion up to allow for an effective midgame. Generally once Terran has an expansion going up and zerg has established a second and/or third gas, the game moves onto phase 2. phase 2: Marine/medic vs. ling/sunken push: Terran will typically opt for marine/medic play while teching for science vessels (this is known as "SK Terran" for reasons that don't really matter, but you'll hear it mentioned and often the announcers will say it during a game). Zerg doesn't really have anything to stop SK terran at this phase of the game, as they typically will tech directly to Mutalisks in a standard game (more on that in phase 3). While it is possible for Zerg to rush for lurkers, this is quite dangerous as it essentially requires the Zerg to kill off the Terran's expansion before Science Vessels or Tanks come into play, both of which will decimate a lurker-heavy early game Zerg that does not have Defiler support (and Defiler tech is hard to get when you get quick Lurkers, who eat up your gas and do not naturally flow into tier 3 play on their own). Instead, Zerg will build just enough lings to poke at the Terran Medic&Marine ball as it advances across the field (or sometimes turtles at home), which allows the Zerg to delay making sunken colonies for as long as possible. If the Terran makes enough M&M, they will push towards the Zerg base as soon as Stim finishes researching, forcing the Zerg to make several sunken colonies and sacrifice several zerglings to slow the Terran down. If the zerg fails to make enough defenses (this almost never happens with good scouting) then the Terran can win outright. If the zerg makes too many defenses, their economy will fall behind in phase 3 and beyond. If the zerg is not forced to make any defenses at all, they will be able to rush their tech and make more Drones, which is extremely dangerous for the Terran player. The goal of each side is to minimize losses and mess with opponent timings. phase 3: Mutas and turrets into lurkers until Sci vessels (and maybe tanks): Zerg has finally made it to mutalisk tech and immediately hatches as many mutas as gas allows to create a hotkey capable of 1shotting SCVs. Terran must now pull troops back to base, as the zerg will keep adding mutalisks for a while in order to create a nasty ball of flying death that can take down most unsupported base defenses and devastate an SCV line while still being capable of flying home and help defend. Mutalisks with zergling support also do well against small Medic/Marine forces until the marine level hits critical mass and range/+1 damage is upgraded. Regardless, the mutalisks will fly in circles around the Terran base, picking off stray units and SCVs, shooting at structures, and forcing Terran to make as many Turrets as possible to keep the mutas away. THE ZERG PLAYER WILL ALMOST NEVER WIN AT THIS STAGE, but if enough damage is done by the mutalisks the Terran player will be in a very deep hole. This is the often first stage of the game where, as an observer, you can sometimes make a very informed decision about who is likely to win or at least go into the midgame with a big advantage. The Terran player, after weathering the Muta attack for a while, will have built up a huge ball of medics and marines, forcing the Zerg player to pull his mutas back or at least be more careful with them. However, it is extremely risky for the Terran player to attack at this point, because the zerg typically has researched Lurker tech and placed a few lurkers at key areas around the map. If the terran accidentally runs his marines over a lurker or two, he could lose the entire army: especially if the Zerg player is using the Stop Lurker trick (see http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Hold_Lurker for explanation and videos). The terran player responds to this issue by producing a Science Vessel with Irradiate: this solves several problems at once; a single Irradiate can often kill or weaken an entire group of mutalisks at no danger to the Vessel, forcing the mutas to stop harassing the Terran base entirely, and Vessels can detect burrowed lurkers, allowing the Terran player to micro his stimmed marines to kill lurkers and push towards the zerg base relatively safely. While scourge can be used to slow down a vessel/marine push, along with good lurker/ling micro, the Terran player will eventually succeed in pushing towards the zerg base. Terran may or may not have included a tank or two in the push, for various reasons: Tanks do very well against lurkers and sunkens, but are much less mobile for fighting lings and mutas (and slow down the Terran push by a bit). Some players favor tanks (Flash), while others favor pure SK Terran and do not get tanks unless Ultralisks come into play. phase 4: Defilers attempt to halt the Terran push: Zerg has only 1 weapon for halting the defiler push at this stage of the game: tier 3 and Defilers. Defilers have Dark Swarm, quite possibly the strongest single ability in the game, causing ranged weapons to miss targets under the swarm and letting a single zergling or lurker hold back an infinite stream of Terran troops underneath the swarm. Defilers can also research consume, allowing a defiler to eat zerglings for essentially infinite mana, meaning one defiler can hold off a Terran army pretty much indefinitely if left alone. Now, if everything has gone right for the Zerg player, the defilers will be ready before the Terran army reaches the zerg base. If things have gone REALLY well, the defiler will be ready before the terran even manages to push, letting zerg simply walk across the map, lay down dark swarms, and end the game with zerglings, though this is rare. If things went poorly for the zerg, the defilers will pop after terran has reached and devastated the zerg natural expansion, putting the zerg way behind and probably spelling their doom. What is most likely to happen, however, is that the Terran will slowly push across the map, fighting lurker and scourge/ling fallbacks, and reach the zerg base at almost the exact time that defilers come online and can throw down a timely Dark Swarm to save the expansion and push the terran back. Terran will begin producing dropships at this point and start threatening zerg expansions all around the map with medic+marine drops (each of which can tear down an expansion in short order and takes a good amount of work for the zerg to fight off without losses) while zerg tries to reach critical mass of gas expansions, allowing Ultralisk play. At this point, lategame play has begun. Science Vessels and Defilers play a major role in the game, with Dark Swarm and Plague matched up against Irradiate and Detection from the vessels. Tanks and Ultras can come into play, and zerglings gain their tier-3 upgrades along with attack speed boost, making them exceptionally deadly under a dark swarm or when dropped into an opponent's base (cracklings do significantly more damage in SC1 than in SC2 and can tear a base to pieces in seconds). Terran will continue to drop zerg expos while trying to control the middle, attempting to deny zerg a 5th gas while taking a 3rd and 4th himself if possible. The game soon becomes a battle of "stuff", where each side is trying to force mistakes by the other while making a really big, upgraded army to win the eventually big battles that will take place. There will generally by 2 to 4 largescale, full-army fights before an eventually winner is cemented, with several more skirmishes at expansions and main bases in an attempt to force an error or capitalize on overextension. And that's assuming terran doesn't go mech early! edit: oh god these take a while to write, if you or random people are still interested im going to have to make a thread for it and take a few days to get it all down
SC2 TvZ?
2 rax (all-in or expand)
Marine Tank Medivac vs. Ling Bling Muta
rinse + repeat.
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On April 19 2011 06:11 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 05:00 Kipsate wrote: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. The direction you want SC2 to go from your post implies that it will be a pure strategy game, where only preparing and unit compisition matters, basically you prepare yourself for a fight, then both A-move yourself in the battle. During the battle you can not do anything to improve your chances of winning(over exegerrating but you get the point). Should Starcraft 2 be a game where only macro and strategy is important?Or should Starcraft 2 be a game where apart from macro and strategy there is also micro. How you control the units you produce should in my opinion just be as important as creating the right units. If you don't understand this, then well I can't help that. What I mean by this is that Starcraft 2 as of now is lacking units which become MUCH more potent if the players controll them well. Some micro tricks in sc2: Marine spread, Phoenix lifting Blink micro Forcefields Burrow micro Two pronged attacks, surrounds and sandwiches Storm dodging Muta micro Early game unit control, especially in PvP There are tonnes of aspects in SC2. It's not chess, and execution is extremely important.
Early game unit control is a micro trick? Lol cmon you don't need to exaggerate to make a point. You're actually trying to include 'two pronged attacks' aka flanking as a TRICK? You could flank in every RTS ever. The only good example of dynamic unit micro that a lot of people want to see is banelings vs marines, and it's replaced lurkers vs marines anyway.
On April 19 2011 06:39 gr8ape wrote:
Id just like to say games you played when you were young will always retain this extra "magic" because everything as a child was more magical.
People are watching and playing the game right now. Get past nostalgia, watch some BW yourself prehaps; If you are even partaking in this argument then you should be active in watching BW or how can you even make any points in the first place, you are just immediately being completely one-sided and defensive-at-all-costs.
SC2 doesn't need you to defend it. It should stand on it's own merits, and if enough of us agree it could definitely involve more than it probably could. We're all STARCRAFT fans here. It's not like we're arguing Game X vs Game Y, we want the game to be a successful sequel and eSport in it's own right, and for that to happen long term we believe so far it isn't enough. It's not an unreasonable statement and theres enough examples of things we miss in BW to make a point here.. sure you can say forever 'Its not the same game' and repeatedly say 'give it time' but it doesn't change facts we can plainly see like units that will never require any more micro or any tricks than what is evident such as the Colossus. An example of a boring unit to use in BW would be the devourer... to me it reminds me a lot of some of the new units.
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A lot of this is just BW fanboys vs SC2 fanboys.
Personally going back to brood war is very hard (not fun) even though some of the unit dynamics are superior. I don't mind control group limits but lack of automining/idle probe count and MBS drives me nuts.
I'm torn on smart-casting. I recall being pretty mystified by templar/shuttle micro in brood war, but making a game where you had such a stupid feature where you'd cast 10 storms on top of eachother ( which there's no logical reason to do ) .... in 2010 just doesn't make sense. But also I was a pretty shitty player (D-) and was still able to individually cast storms, irradiates, d-webs, etc.
If you think about it, templar storm drops out of warp prisms on tank lines still takes the same amount of apm, nobody does it because psi storm sucks or because of "smart" tanks and the lack of overkill.
Also, I'm going to call out the pros. ZvT was really boring until marineKing was like 'hey i dont need to actually counter banelings, i can just split my marines'. Suddenly every terran is doing it, or losing. TvZ becomes this epic micro/macro fest of muta/tank bling/marine. White Ra decides to do a warp prism/zealot drop in PvP and now i'm seeing a lot of people doing it. It seems like at some point, the pros decided they could get by without doing any heavy micro work, and that sc2 was a macro game. But whenever someone does some very micro-heavy play that blows your mind, everyone else gets challenged like "oh, good idea... I can do that too."
And I don't understand that, why weren't more of these mechanics translated over from brood war. If anything since macro is easier that ought to leave more room for micro, but most of the time we're not seeing that. And I'll admit some of this is blizzard's fault. Thor drops and colossus drops were viable until blizzard ****'d up the attack rates on those units. Storm/Shuttle doesn't happen during battles because psi storm sucks.
Also, the SC2 high ground mechanic is shit. This is probably one of the biggest and least logical flaws in starcraft 2. Also graphically it looks like shit... There are so many flaws in the high ground vision mechanic I feel like writing a minor essay on it. But I think someone already has.
Anyway. I like SC2, I like watching SC2, it needs improvement, but I feel like it has way more potential than brood war. I also acknowledge that there are a lot of poor design choices both in units and game mechanics. And HOPEFULLY blizzard will adjust, but right now i'm sure they're waiting on the game to flesh out before they do anything radical.
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On April 19 2011 05:13 tedster wrote:Show nested quote +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. Hey Demonaz, I'll take a stab at explaining some SC unit/matchup stuff to get you started. So a few basic concepts to understand that are different in SC1 than SC2: 1. Defense is much better. There are a variety of reasons, such as: a. Hotkey groupings are limited to only a handful of units. This means that it is very difficult to send more than 36-48 units to one location at a time and even harder to control them mid-battle. For extremely tight micro, a single hotkey of 12 or so units is all you can reasonably control. For casters, you have to individually select each caster to cast a spell, and cannot use abilities like Stim while having non-stimmable units selected as part of the hotgroup. b. Exansions come on line significantly faster. Basically in SC2 where you have a fairly linear progression of minerals from adding an expo, in BW your mineral production would basically go up by 66% or more as soon as your expansion came online due to probe transfer and efficiency rates. Probes were way less efficient past the 1-per-patch ratio and thus getting up a fast expo or two and defending had a much smaller timing window for getting punished and made quick all-ins less viable. c. Early gas units are extremely specialized and allow for very, very powerful defenses or offenses that required positioning, pincer attacks, and other specialized units to punch through. Tanks, lurkers, Science Vessels, Mutas Reavers, and even Corsairs do some things so well with only a minimal initial expenditure that you simply MUST prepare for them and cannot simply run around the map freely, ignore defense, skip your scouting, push up ramps with no detection, etc. without losing even a superior army. d. Harass is much better and more meaningful, as harassing units are more powerful in general than in SC2, are better throughout the game, are very mobile, having moving shot (see LaLush's posts earlier in the thread or his old link to moving shot explanations), and because defenses are good enough that spending time/money on harassing units doesn't automatically set your deathball back by a huge amount like it does in SC2. In Broodwar, i can sometimes win a game by just making great use of harass while producing the bare minimum defense to hold back an opponent push until I am way ahead, and the result is an incredibly tense and micro-intensive game with action all over the map. 2. An individual unit is much stronger on average. A single lurker can kill an entire marine force without support if detection is absent. One or two tanks on a cliff can stop a Protoss death ball if positioned properly and covered by a few mines. A single arbiter or high templar or dark templar can spell death for a terran army if they manage to catch the T out of position. A defiler can singlehandedly reverse an entire push. 3. As a corollary of the previous 2 statements, timing pushes have very small windows, unlike the huge ones in SC2. Because my first Science vessel can repel ALL your mutalisks, you have to do your damage before I get my Vessel online. Because your 1 defiler can rape my entire Medic and Marine force (or at least push them back to my base), my timing push needs to damage your expansion in the few seconds before the defiler comes on line. Timing pushes are generally a matter of seconds in pro BW: there is virtually never a 1- or 2-minute window where your opponent is weak to something and stays so. A 30 second window for a timing attack is a very long time. 4. Most actions are not intended to win a game outright. They are instead intended to force a response from the opponent, which should be sufficient to counter the action but if left undone WILL result in a win. For example, in TvZ the terran will often load up 7 marines and 1 medic into a few dropships and send them to various Zerg expansions. While it is not particularly difficult for the Zerg to stop any one of the drops, the Terran will also be doing hit-and-runs with his army as these take place, forcing the zerg to try to react to multiple "semi-effective" attacks at the same time, often taking more damage than he can afford and occasionally losing several expansions outright when he is overextended and unable to respond in time. The Terran army is not trying to kill the Zerg army: the Terran player is instead trying to hit the Zerg with so many minor blows that something gives and the Terran can then slowly constrict for the kill. That's a good general start. I'll try to post about specific matchups if you're still interested.
Wow, thanks so much for that. I've saved it in a text file for future reference. Will definitely help with my understanding of the game as a starting point. Requoting on this page in case anyone else is interested. About to check out that Jedong vs Flash supposed 'best game ever' posted before in a LaLush post that was quoted.
SC2 is still great and I'm looking forwards to GSL May, but after reading a fair bit of stuff in this thread BW seems like it could be very entertaining to watch. Makes me sad that I didn't know what starcraft was until recently. Damn my younger FPS days!
edit: Just seen the other post and its great stuff too, appreciate the effort. If you want to make a thread go ahead, I would be very interested to hear any more about how the game works, in particular how this differs from an SC2 perspective. I can't be the only person who has followed the SC2 scene intently having never even seen the original starcraft and is now intrigued by how BW works.
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I love playing Starcraft 2, and I love watching it just as much. However the big battles are over too fast and it's impossible to see whats going on (both when playing and watching). Alot of times you just have to hope that you come out on top. Increasing health pools or nerfing damage output on most units would be cool, if possible.
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EPT
