Refining build orders, in-game decision making, sense of positioning and controlling space, unit control, multitasking, these are examples of things that played a huge role in Brood War and still do in SC 2, and in which the former BW pros have an advantage over their competitors.
That's actually the reason I feel BW has more strategic depth. The lack of area controlling units (such as lurker, vulture or even "good" siege tanks) is a big problem concerning the complexity of an RTS game I feel and tend to encourage blob vs blob battles...
On July 13 2011 23:21 SugarBear wrote: Apples to apples please. If you're going to compare SC2 to SC then compare 1998 competitive SC scene to the first year SC2 competitive scene, not 15 years later when players have had a decade to perfect brood war mechanics and timings.
That argument doesn't really hold as alot of the RTS knowledge does transfer over and people now know alot more about how to play good, yet not optimal. I agree that comparing a game with a huge knowledge base and long competitive scene to a fresh new game is flawed though.
It does hold water as the builds and macro mechanics are entirely different from BW, resource collection is different, we now have 2 gases per base (on most maps) which requires twice the number of workers mining gas, the time to max an army is much shorter, the units are different, large control groups, etc.
The name is the same and some throwback units exist but by and large they are two different games.
Before BW there was no thing such as Build orders, there was no thing such as micro, there was no thing such as macro. Strategy, decision making, tactics all of it was devolped in Brood War(admimttedly other games too, but BW was and is an E-sport, hence it was utilized to the maximum here), that knowledge carried over to SC2, when the beta hit people were rapidly devolping strategies, buildorders(As simple as 15hatch 14pool or 4gate pushes)
Timing windows were researched(Stim timing pushes, banshee cloak timing, 2base mutalisk timing, 1 base mutalisk timing) as simple as these may all seem, they were not simple when Starcraft I hit the field, NOONE knew this.
People used mathmathics as soon as they could to devolop optimal saturation, theorycrafting.
These are all key things which are nowaydays simple yet were unknown 10 years ago.
Its like science, more inventions were made in the past 100 years then in the past 2000 years.
None of the things you talk about is dependent on the fact that BW was hard to physically play. That you needed to send each worker to the mineral line manually was not the reason that timing attacks and build orders were invented.
Those were invented because the scene was large and highly competitive. Not because it was harder to click. That actually supports SC2 defenders and detracts from BW loyalists.
Also, you sound silly to think that there wasn't that much scientific progress in the past 2000 years when MOST of what we know and believe today was literally invented by those "backwards folks from 1000+ years ago +/- 1000 years"
How we count things How we build things Engineering Mathematics Agriculture etc....
You know, the base line things we use to "invent" stuff which realistically are just fancier versions of stuff we already have to begin with.
Sorry, I don't want to derail the thread, but please don't insult human history.
I will stop saying about science thing, It might be my bad.
But people who say that 1 year of BW=1 year of SC2 is just stupid, SC2 evolves way faster then BW ever did, and part of it is because of what I stated, timings, build orders etc were made and perfected in BW, this knowledge of doing it simply carried over to SC2. That is why SC2 evolves faster then BW, each patch on the PTR even people are theorycrafting about all sorts of things. This has nothing to do with mechanics indeed, but the 1 year of SC2=1 year of BW holds argument holds little value because of the aforementioned in my opion.
As for mechanical skill, there are some ''useless'' tasks such as macroing, but people are forgetting that Blizzard also took out moving shot (a huge part of micro) and that there is now clumping, while an argument can be made that the AI was retarded in BW, the game makes arcs and concaves FOR you in SC2. Mechanical skill such as micro is a much smaller part of SC2 then it is of BW, it is not just the macro part, the meaningless clicks, the 12 control groups, it is also the micro that is reduced and thus the mechanical skill and thus the skill gap.
That doesn't make SC2 easy, as it is still an incredibly complex game but the reduction in mechanical skill does not only lie with macro, also with micro.
On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Note: This is my response to The Elephant in the Room. This wasn't written to support or condemn that article, but just provide an alternate conclusion. + Show Spoiler +
Awful graphics by aimless. Because if you want it done poorly, ask me.
The Elephant in the Room gave birth to this Rhino. Or at least the concept it represents. (I'm not sure I want to think too long about an elephant actually giving birth; to a rhino or otherwise, but feel free to enjoy the mental image now that you're thinking about it). After reading the article, I had a nagging idea. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone discuss this idea, so here goes nothing. What if StarCraft2 competitors can't be as good as their Brood War counterparts?
And what if this has nothing to do with the players at all, but the game itself that has changed the nature of the competition? Note that before you claim the competition in StarCraft2 is already just as good, watch a few Brood War replays. If I agreed with anything in The Elephant in the Room, it was that Brood War has higher quality game play. It just does. Watch them play. There, now that we dispelled that myth, let me elaborate on my point.
As far as I understand everything, in Brood War, the "strategy" part of the game was a secondary concern. Mechanics are the driving force behind skill development for everyone up to the very top players. You didn't worry about strategy until you had incredibly solid mechanics and could actually play the game at a fast pace. Due to the enormous physical and mental output needed to sustain constant production and resource management, it was a skill to just keep constant production. Only the best pro players could think and react and develop a strategy and keep their macro and micro going. It was just too hard for everyone else.
To put it another way, there is an almost-unattainably high skill ceiling in Brood War, and that ceiling spans multiple dimensions of game play. You want to be better at macro? Practice keeping constant worker production and always send them to mine right as they come out (and building structures and checking that they are all making units and expoing and so on). You want to be better at micro? Practice keeping those dragoons from running in a single file zigzag toward the enemy (and drop harassing and burrowing lurkers and so on). Everything required lots of clicking and button pressing.
But what Blizzard has done with StarCraft2 was they pulled that ceiling down a little. Need another worker? Press two hotkeys and wait. The game will do the rest. Automatically sent to mine. Heck, you can change which hotkeys you have to press to get the worker out. You can put them right next to each other (instead of the pre-defined locations of BW that are all over the keyboard). Want to build out of all your buildings? Just control+click on and hold down a key. Now you're macroing gosu-style.
While it's great for normal people and certainly makes average games more entertaining, at the very highest levels, it creates a logjam of talent. Players who used to struggle to keep up their macro and couldn't spot drops while rallying units and checking upgrades and scouting expansions? Well, now they can do that. SC2 all players a bunch of free time. The game took some of the heavy lifting off players' shoulders. Just look at the tournament results
Intrigue argued that poor quality of players was responsible for the revolving door that is GSL Champion. But I think the reason GSL champs keep rotating (and why players go from the top of Code S on out to Code B and back up again) is the lower skill ceiling. It turns the outcomes into more a dice roll. The units are more efficient at killing each other and more spells/abilities can be automated. A good player, caught out of position at one unlucky moment, can lost his entire army in 10 seconds. Poof. The poor unit AI in Brood War meant just getting into position was a APM spamming struggle. So bad BW players have a harder time just wandering up and killing good players' armies. In SC2, there aren't as many ways a good player can be head and shoulders above your opponent. Sure, better players have an small edge, but in Brood War, that edge was a cliff and the great ones could drop opponent after opponent off it.
Just take it to its logical extreme. Imagine if macroing were just a toggle button. One click and the insane computer AI took control of your workers and structures. You simply toggled which units you wanted and the computer built them as efficiently as it could. The only thing that separated you from your opponent was unit control. Unit control and unit selection. Do you really think Flash would still be Flash and Jaedong would still be Jaedong? Sure they would win games, but the margin of error would be razor thin. Normal players would become much, much better. Pros who who already do everything flawlessly? Doesn't help them as much.
I don't know if it matters to pro players, whether or not the game is fundamentally easier to play. don't know if it ever factors into a pro players decision to stay or leave Brood War. But it's my suspicion that SC2 can't have players who are beyond dominant. It's just not part of the game.
Credit to HawaiianPig, because I borrowed Elly as a template
Am I convinced this position is necessary true? No, not entirely. StarCraft2 could, in fact, be more strategically complex since players have more free energy to expend on tactics and thinking about the game while it's happening. But I absolutely think that SC2 cannot be great in the same way BW is. The very top players in BW can mechanically outplay virtually anyone, while still maintaining all the other facets of the game. For SC2 pros it doesn't matter as much because so many more people will be able to mechanically play at the highest level. SC2 pros will have to utilize more intelligent plays, more outsmarting opponents rather than outplaying them.
Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not. So what do I think?
I think everyone should stop pretending that BW is anything like SC2. It's not good for either game. Being a BW pro is a gradual ascent; you get better and better and better until finally you sit on top of the ESPORTS mountain. The SC2 learning curve is not as steep or long; it's much more like king-of-the-hill. I think that the community should embrace SC2 for the ups and downs, the constant changing of leaders, the up-and-comers winning. I don't think SC2 will be anything like BW, where the "bonjwas" of the game took turns controlling the scene before passing the torch to the next juggernaut. SC2 isn't designed to have unstoppable force-of-nature players. It was designed to update the times, to bring everyone closer together and let the underdog have a real shot at toppling the better player.
Thanks for making it to the bottom. Greatly appreciated. :-)
APM is important but it is not all. In SC2 tactical/strategical planning is much more important than APM. I have limited APM count (around 120) but it is more that enough to lure/catch my opponent of possition. I manage this by playing intelligently.
Logistical + Strategical + Tactical thinking > APM. In bw the guy who could press buttons the fastest usually won. Now the smartest guy wins.
Refining build orders, in-game decision making, sense of positioning and controlling space, unit control, multitasking, these are examples of things that played a huge role in Brood War and still do in SC 2, and in which the former BW pros have an advantage over their competitors.
That's actually the reason I feel BW has more strategic depth. The lack of area controlling units (such as lurker, vulture or even "good" siege tanks) is a big problem concerning the complexity of an RTS game I feel and tend to encourage blob vs blob battles...
This is a valid argument to pit BW vs SC2. The tactical differences forced onto the players due to the unit options available to them.
The lurker and Vultures were not great for the game because they were hard to use, they were great for the game because they opened up avenues of game play that is currently not present in today's SC2 metagame outside of TvT.
I repeat. The user interface being harder is not what makes Lurkers and Vultures good units.
Refining build orders, in-game decision making, sense of positioning and controlling space, unit control, multitasking, these are examples of things that played a huge role in Brood War and still do in SC 2, and in which the former BW pros have an advantage over their competitors.
That's actually the reason I feel BW has more strategic depth. The lack of area controlling units (such as lurker, vulture or even "good" siege tanks) is a big problem concerning the complexity of an RTS game I feel and tend to encourage blob vs blob battles...
static defense comes in many forms, such as spore crawlers, spine crawlers, cannons, sensor towers, turrets, nydus
oh, and what else? thors make a pretty good siege tank for FLYING units :O
You can say, any slow moving unit can give you a sense of positioning and controlling space from how you describe it, like infestors, broodlords, mothership, nuclear bombs etc.
starcraft 2, you need perfect postioning to counter the unit mechanics (such as clumping and anti-retard movements) which is way more difficult to pull off because the game mechanics is easier than bw. The skill ceiling is low for the average player, but higher for professionals, because you have to beat what is easy to do, which is difficult, as in requiring a lot of skills, even more than bw.
On July 13 2011 23:37 Spitfire wrote: The up and comers who are challenging them are mostly players who were considered promising up-and-comers in BW, Bomber and Puma being prime examples.
Huh?
Bomber is 23, Nsp_Fancy? Never heard of him.
Puma turns 20 on the 23rd. I only remember him because of Nal_ra's documentary. I might have briefly seen his name a couple of times on proleague. He is probably the best player to move across to SC2 besides MVP, but hes barely an A-teamer, barely.
Flash just turned 19, 1 week ago.
So what's this about promising up and comers in BW?
Refining build orders, in-game decision making, sense of positioning and controlling space, unit control, multitasking, these are examples of things that played a huge role in Brood War and still do in SC 2, and in which the former BW pros have an advantage over their competitors.
That's actually the reason I feel BW has more strategic depth. The lack of area controlling units (such as lurker, vulture or even "good" siege tanks) is a big problem concerning the complexity of an RTS game I feel and tend to encourage blob vs blob battles...
This is a valid argument to pit BW vs SC2. The tactical differences forced onto the players due to the unit options available to them.
The lurker and Vultures were not great for the game because they were hard to use, they were great for the game because they opened up avenues of game play that is currently not present in today's SC2 metagame outside of TvT.
I repeat. The user interface being harder is not what makes Lurkers and Vultures good units.
I'd go further to say the UI being bad was what made the Lurker and Vulture good units.
Hold Lurker was a glitch but produced epic moments.
Vulture micro is also very necessary, its also a glitch that causes them to shoot while moving using patrol. But it allows a much wider variety of openings because you can kite lings all day.
Yes they would improve SC2 a lot, but if the "glitches" were programmed in (so they became actual game features), it would be even better.
On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Note: This is my response to The Elephant in the Room. This wasn't written to support or condemn that article, but just provide an alternate conclusion. + Show Spoiler +
Awful graphics by aimless. Because if you want it done poorly, ask me.
The Elephant in the Room gave birth to this Rhino. Or at least the concept it represents. (I'm not sure I want to think too long about an elephant actually giving birth; to a rhino or otherwise, but feel free to enjoy the mental image now that you're thinking about it). After reading the article, I had a nagging idea. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone discuss this idea, so here goes nothing. What if StarCraft2 competitors can't be as good as their Brood War counterparts?
And what if this has nothing to do with the players at all, but the game itself that has changed the nature of the competition? Note that before you claim the competition in StarCraft2 is already just as good, watch a few Brood War replays. If I agreed with anything in The Elephant in the Room, it was that Brood War has higher quality game play. It just does. Watch them play. There, now that we dispelled that myth, let me elaborate on my point.
As far as I understand everything, in Brood War, the "strategy" part of the game was a secondary concern. Mechanics are the driving force behind skill development for everyone up to the very top players. You didn't worry about strategy until you had incredibly solid mechanics and could actually play the game at a fast pace. Due to the enormous physical and mental output needed to sustain constant production and resource management, it was a skill to just keep constant production. Only the best pro players could think and react and develop a strategy and keep their macro and micro going. It was just too hard for everyone else.
To put it another way, there is an almost-unattainably high skill ceiling in Brood War, and that ceiling spans multiple dimensions of game play. You want to be better at macro? Practice keeping constant worker production and always send them to mine right as they come out (and building structures and checking that they are all making units and expoing and so on). You want to be better at micro? Practice keeping those dragoons from running in a single file zigzag toward the enemy (and drop harassing and burrowing lurkers and so on). Everything required lots of clicking and button pressing.
But what Blizzard has done with StarCraft2 was they pulled that ceiling down a little. Need another worker? Press two hotkeys and wait. The game will do the rest. Automatically sent to mine. Heck, you can change which hotkeys you have to press to get the worker out. You can put them right next to each other (instead of the pre-defined locations of BW that are all over the keyboard). Want to build out of all your buildings? Just control+click on and hold down a key. Now you're macroing gosu-style.
While it's great for normal people and certainly makes average games more entertaining, at the very highest levels, it creates a logjam of talent. Players who used to struggle to keep up their macro and couldn't spot drops while rallying units and checking upgrades and scouting expansions? Well, now they can do that. SC2 all players a bunch of free time. The game took some of the heavy lifting off players' shoulders. Just look at the tournament results
Intrigue argued that poor quality of players was responsible for the revolving door that is GSL Champion. But I think the reason GSL champs keep rotating (and why players go from the top of Code S on out to Code B and back up again) is the lower skill ceiling. It turns the outcomes into more a dice roll. The units are more efficient at killing each other and more spells/abilities can be automated. A good player, caught out of position at one unlucky moment, can lost his entire army in 10 seconds. Poof. The poor unit AI in Brood War meant just getting into position was a APM spamming struggle. So bad BW players have a harder time just wandering up and killing good players' armies. In SC2, there aren't as many ways a good player can be head and shoulders above your opponent. Sure, better players have an small edge, but in Brood War, that edge was a cliff and the great ones could drop opponent after opponent off it.
Just take it to its logical extreme. Imagine if macroing were just a toggle button. One click and the insane computer AI took control of your workers and structures. You simply toggled which units you wanted and the computer built them as efficiently as it could. The only thing that separated you from your opponent was unit control. Unit control and unit selection. Do you really think Flash would still be Flash and Jaedong would still be Jaedong? Sure they would win games, but the margin of error would be razor thin. Normal players would become much, much better. Pros who who already do everything flawlessly? Doesn't help them as much.
I don't know if it matters to pro players, whether or not the game is fundamentally easier to play. don't know if it ever factors into a pro players decision to stay or leave Brood War. But it's my suspicion that SC2 can't have players who are beyond dominant. It's just not part of the game.
Credit to HawaiianPig, because I borrowed Elly as a template
Am I convinced this position is necessary true? No, not entirely. StarCraft2 could, in fact, be more strategically complex since players have more free energy to expend on tactics and thinking about the game while it's happening. But I absolutely think that SC2 cannot be great in the same way BW is. The very top players in BW can mechanically outplay virtually anyone, while still maintaining all the other facets of the game. For SC2 pros it doesn't matter as much because so many more people will be able to mechanically play at the highest level. SC2 pros will have to utilize more intelligent plays, more outsmarting opponents rather than outplaying them.
Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not. So what do I think?
I think everyone should stop pretending that BW is anything like SC2. It's not good for either game. Being a BW pro is a gradual ascent; you get better and better and better until finally you sit on top of the ESPORTS mountain. The SC2 learning curve is not as steep or long; it's much more like king-of-the-hill. I think that the community should embrace SC2 for the ups and downs, the constant changing of leaders, the up-and-comers winning. I don't think SC2 will be anything like BW, where the "bonjwas" of the game took turns controlling the scene before passing the torch to the next juggernaut. SC2 isn't designed to have unstoppable force-of-nature players. It was designed to update the times, to bring everyone closer together and let the underdog have a real shot at toppling the better player.
Thanks for making it to the bottom. Greatly appreciated. :-)
APM is important but it is not all. In SC2 tactical/strategical planning is much more important than APM. I have limited APM count (around 120) but it is more that enough to lure/catch my opponent of possition. I manage this by playing intelligently.
Logistical + Strategical + Tactical thinking > APM. In bw the guy who could press buttons the fastest usually won. Now the smartest guy wins.
That's retarded as shit... Read god of war article if you believe that bw player are retarded button spammers.
Refining build orders, in-game decision making, sense of positioning and controlling space, unit control, multitasking, these are examples of things that played a huge role in Brood War and still do in SC 2, and in which the former BW pros have an advantage over their competitors.
That's actually the reason I feel BW has more strategic depth. The lack of area controlling units (such as lurker, vulture or even "good" siege tanks) is a big problem concerning the complexity of an RTS game I feel and tend to encourage blob vs blob battles...
That's a really good point, units like that don't exist in SC2 except the siege tank which is arguably less powerful. I hope Blizzard does something in the expansion to get away from the constant blob vs blob battles. Maybe it's as simple as adding some units like that.
As far as I know Puma was a practice bonwja, while he choked in television games he was exceptionally good in practice, it is why he was the chosen practice partner of the only God himself, Flash. I don't know of his actual record or how good he was, but one does not simply become the preferred practice partner of Flash.
On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Note: This is my response to The Elephant in the Room. This wasn't written to support or condemn that article, but just provide an alternate conclusion. + Show Spoiler +
Awful graphics by aimless. Because if you want it done poorly, ask me.
The Elephant in the Room gave birth to this Rhino. Or at least the concept it represents. (I'm not sure I want to think too long about an elephant actually giving birth; to a rhino or otherwise, but feel free to enjoy the mental image now that you're thinking about it). After reading the article, I had a nagging idea. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone discuss this idea, so here goes nothing. What if StarCraft2 competitors can't be as good as their Brood War counterparts?
And what if this has nothing to do with the players at all, but the game itself that has changed the nature of the competition? Note that before you claim the competition in StarCraft2 is already just as good, watch a few Brood War replays. If I agreed with anything in The Elephant in the Room, it was that Brood War has higher quality game play. It just does. Watch them play. There, now that we dispelled that myth, let me elaborate on my point.
As far as I understand everything, in Brood War, the "strategy" part of the game was a secondary concern. Mechanics are the driving force behind skill development for everyone up to the very top players. You didn't worry about strategy until you had incredibly solid mechanics and could actually play the game at a fast pace. Due to the enormous physical and mental output needed to sustain constant production and resource management, it was a skill to just keep constant production. Only the best pro players could think and react and develop a strategy and keep their macro and micro going. It was just too hard for everyone else.
To put it another way, there is an almost-unattainably high skill ceiling in Brood War, and that ceiling spans multiple dimensions of game play. You want to be better at macro? Practice keeping constant worker production and always send them to mine right as they come out (and building structures and checking that they are all making units and expoing and so on). You want to be better at micro? Practice keeping those dragoons from running in a single file zigzag toward the enemy (and drop harassing and burrowing lurkers and so on). Everything required lots of clicking and button pressing.
But what Blizzard has done with StarCraft2 was they pulled that ceiling down a little. Need another worker? Press two hotkeys and wait. The game will do the rest. Automatically sent to mine. Heck, you can change which hotkeys you have to press to get the worker out. You can put them right next to each other (instead of the pre-defined locations of BW that are all over the keyboard). Want to build out of all your buildings? Just control+click on and hold down a key. Now you're macroing gosu-style.
While it's great for normal people and certainly makes average games more entertaining, at the very highest levels, it creates a logjam of talent. Players who used to struggle to keep up their macro and couldn't spot drops while rallying units and checking upgrades and scouting expansions? Well, now they can do that. SC2 all players a bunch of free time. The game took some of the heavy lifting off players' shoulders. Just look at the tournament results
Intrigue argued that poor quality of players was responsible for the revolving door that is GSL Champion. But I think the reason GSL champs keep rotating (and why players go from the top of Code S on out to Code B and back up again) is the lower skill ceiling. It turns the outcomes into more a dice roll. The units are more efficient at killing each other and more spells/abilities can be automated. A good player, caught out of position at one unlucky moment, can lost his entire army in 10 seconds. Poof. The poor unit AI in Brood War meant just getting into position was a APM spamming struggle. So bad BW players have a harder time just wandering up and killing good players' armies. In SC2, there aren't as many ways a good player can be head and shoulders above your opponent. Sure, better players have an small edge, but in Brood War, that edge was a cliff and the great ones could drop opponent after opponent off it.
Just take it to its logical extreme. Imagine if macroing were just a toggle button. One click and the insane computer AI took control of your workers and structures. You simply toggled which units you wanted and the computer built them as efficiently as it could. The only thing that separated you from your opponent was unit control. Unit control and unit selection. Do you really think Flash would still be Flash and Jaedong would still be Jaedong? Sure they would win games, but the margin of error would be razor thin. Normal players would become much, much better. Pros who who already do everything flawlessly? Doesn't help them as much.
I don't know if it matters to pro players, whether or not the game is fundamentally easier to play. don't know if it ever factors into a pro players decision to stay or leave Brood War. But it's my suspicion that SC2 can't have players who are beyond dominant. It's just not part of the game.
Credit to HawaiianPig, because I borrowed Elly as a template
Am I convinced this position is necessary true? No, not entirely. StarCraft2 could, in fact, be more strategically complex since players have more free energy to expend on tactics and thinking about the game while it's happening. But I absolutely think that SC2 cannot be great in the same way BW is. The very top players in BW can mechanically outplay virtually anyone, while still maintaining all the other facets of the game. For SC2 pros it doesn't matter as much because so many more people will be able to mechanically play at the highest level. SC2 pros will have to utilize more intelligent plays, more outsmarting opponents rather than outplaying them.
Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not. So what do I think?
I think everyone should stop pretending that BW is anything like SC2. It's not good for either game. Being a BW pro is a gradual ascent; you get better and better and better until finally you sit on top of the ESPORTS mountain. The SC2 learning curve is not as steep or long; it's much more like king-of-the-hill. I think that the community should embrace SC2 for the ups and downs, the constant changing of leaders, the up-and-comers winning. I don't think SC2 will be anything like BW, where the "bonjwas" of the game took turns controlling the scene before passing the torch to the next juggernaut. SC2 isn't designed to have unstoppable force-of-nature players. It was designed to update the times, to bring everyone closer together and let the underdog have a real shot at toppling the better player.
Thanks for making it to the bottom. Greatly appreciated. :-)
APM is important but it is not all. In SC2 tactical/strategical planning is much more important than APM. I have limited APM count (around 120) but it is more that enough to lure/catch my opponent of possition. I manage this by playing intelligently.
Logistical + Strategical + Tactical thinking > APM. In bw the guy who could press buttons the fastest usually won. Now the smartest guy wins.
That's retarded as shit... Read god of war article if you believe that bw player are retarded button spammers.
That's how puma won vs MC. He negated all the advantages MC had as a better player (He is indeed much better player than puma) playing intelligently.
On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Note: This is my response to The Elephant in the Room. This wasn't written to support or condemn that article, but just provide an alternate conclusion. + Show Spoiler +
Awful graphics by aimless. Because if you want it done poorly, ask me.
The Elephant in the Room gave birth to this Rhino. Or at least the concept it represents. (I'm not sure I want to think too long about an elephant actually giving birth; to a rhino or otherwise, but feel free to enjoy the mental image now that you're thinking about it). After reading the article, I had a nagging idea. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone discuss this idea, so here goes nothing. What if StarCraft2 competitors can't be as good as their Brood War counterparts?
And what if this has nothing to do with the players at all, but the game itself that has changed the nature of the competition? Note that before you claim the competition in StarCraft2 is already just as good, watch a few Brood War replays. If I agreed with anything in The Elephant in the Room, it was that Brood War has higher quality game play. It just does. Watch them play. There, now that we dispelled that myth, let me elaborate on my point.
As far as I understand everything, in Brood War, the "strategy" part of the game was a secondary concern. Mechanics are the driving force behind skill development for everyone up to the very top players. You didn't worry about strategy until you had incredibly solid mechanics and could actually play the game at a fast pace. Due to the enormous physical and mental output needed to sustain constant production and resource management, it was a skill to just keep constant production. Only the best pro players could think and react and develop a strategy and keep their macro and micro going. It was just too hard for everyone else.
To put it another way, there is an almost-unattainably high skill ceiling in Brood War, and that ceiling spans multiple dimensions of game play. You want to be better at macro? Practice keeping constant worker production and always send them to mine right as they come out (and building structures and checking that they are all making units and expoing and so on). You want to be better at micro? Practice keeping those dragoons from running in a single file zigzag toward the enemy (and drop harassing and burrowing lurkers and so on). Everything required lots of clicking and button pressing.
But what Blizzard has done with StarCraft2 was they pulled that ceiling down a little. Need another worker? Press two hotkeys and wait. The game will do the rest. Automatically sent to mine. Heck, you can change which hotkeys you have to press to get the worker out. You can put them right next to each other (instead of the pre-defined locations of BW that are all over the keyboard). Want to build out of all your buildings? Just control+click on and hold down a key. Now you're macroing gosu-style.
While it's great for normal people and certainly makes average games more entertaining, at the very highest levels, it creates a logjam of talent. Players who used to struggle to keep up their macro and couldn't spot drops while rallying units and checking upgrades and scouting expansions? Well, now they can do that. SC2 all players a bunch of free time. The game took some of the heavy lifting off players' shoulders. Just look at the tournament results
Intrigue argued that poor quality of players was responsible for the revolving door that is GSL Champion. But I think the reason GSL champs keep rotating (and why players go from the top of Code S on out to Code B and back up again) is the lower skill ceiling. It turns the outcomes into more a dice roll. The units are more efficient at killing each other and more spells/abilities can be automated. A good player, caught out of position at one unlucky moment, can lost his entire army in 10 seconds. Poof. The poor unit AI in Brood War meant just getting into position was a APM spamming struggle. So bad BW players have a harder time just wandering up and killing good players' armies. In SC2, there aren't as many ways a good player can be head and shoulders above your opponent. Sure, better players have an small edge, but in Brood War, that edge was a cliff and the great ones could drop opponent after opponent off it.
Just take it to its logical extreme. Imagine if macroing were just a toggle button. One click and the insane computer AI took control of your workers and structures. You simply toggled which units you wanted and the computer built them as efficiently as it could. The only thing that separated you from your opponent was unit control. Unit control and unit selection. Do you really think Flash would still be Flash and Jaedong would still be Jaedong? Sure they would win games, but the margin of error would be razor thin. Normal players would become much, much better. Pros who who already do everything flawlessly? Doesn't help them as much.
I don't know if it matters to pro players, whether or not the game is fundamentally easier to play. don't know if it ever factors into a pro players decision to stay or leave Brood War. But it's my suspicion that SC2 can't have players who are beyond dominant. It's just not part of the game.
Credit to HawaiianPig, because I borrowed Elly as a template
Am I convinced this position is necessary true? No, not entirely. StarCraft2 could, in fact, be more strategically complex since players have more free energy to expend on tactics and thinking about the game while it's happening. But I absolutely think that SC2 cannot be great in the same way BW is. The very top players in BW can mechanically outplay virtually anyone, while still maintaining all the other facets of the game. For SC2 pros it doesn't matter as much because so many more people will be able to mechanically play at the highest level. SC2 pros will have to utilize more intelligent plays, more outsmarting opponents rather than outplaying them.
Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not. So what do I think?
I think everyone should stop pretending that BW is anything like SC2. It's not good for either game. Being a BW pro is a gradual ascent; you get better and better and better until finally you sit on top of the ESPORTS mountain. The SC2 learning curve is not as steep or long; it's much more like king-of-the-hill. I think that the community should embrace SC2 for the ups and downs, the constant changing of leaders, the up-and-comers winning. I don't think SC2 will be anything like BW, where the "bonjwas" of the game took turns controlling the scene before passing the torch to the next juggernaut. SC2 isn't designed to have unstoppable force-of-nature players. It was designed to update the times, to bring everyone closer together and let the underdog have a real shot at toppling the better player.
Thanks for making it to the bottom. Greatly appreciated. :-)
APM is important but it is not all. In SC2 tactical/strategical planning is much more important than APM. I have limited APM count (around 120) but it is more that enough to lure/catch my opponent of possition. I manage this by playing intelligently.
Logistical + Strategical + Tactical thinking > APM. In bw the guy who could press buttons the fastest usually won. Now the smartest guy wins.
That's retarded as shit... Read god of war article if you believe that bw player are retarded button spammers.
That's right, you tell him.
The button mashing is not what makes BW good, it's the strategy. Which must mean that you believe that that is true for SC2 as well. Less button mashing more strategy. I'm glad you support that SC2 is a good game.
Refining build orders, in-game decision making, sense of positioning and controlling space, unit control, multitasking, these are examples of things that played a huge role in Brood War and still do in SC 2, and in which the former BW pros have an advantage over their competitors.
That's actually the reason I feel BW has more strategic depth. The lack of area controlling units (such as lurker, vulture or even "good" siege tanks) is a big problem concerning the complexity of an RTS game I feel and tend to encourage blob vs blob battles...
static defense comes in many forms, such as spore crawlers, spine crawlers, cannons, sensor towers, turrets, nydus
oh, and what else? thors make a pretty good siege tank for FLYING units :O
You can say, any slow moving unit can give you a sense of positioning and controlling space from how you describe it, like infestors, broodlords, mothership, nuclear bombs etc.
starcraft 2, you need perfect postioning to counter the unit mechanics (such as clumping and anti-retard movements) which is way more difficult to pull off because the game mechanics is easier than bw. The skill ceiling is low for the average player, but higher for professionals, because you have to beat what is easy to do, which is difficult, as in requiring a lot of skills, even more than bw.
My point is that in BW most MU's revolved mainly around those area controlling units but it's not the case in star2 (a part from TvT and to a lesser extend TvZ wich are by the way the most entertaining MU for a lot of people..). And please don't bring spore crawlers and canon in the area controlling unit category...
On July 13 2011 23:55 Kipsate wrote: As far as I know Puma was a practice bonwja, while he choked in television games he was exceptionally good in practice, it is why he was the chosen practice partner of the only God himself, Flash. I don't know of his actual record or how good he was, but one does not simply become the preferred practice partner of Flash.
This actually happens a lot though, and Flash has a lot of practise partners, I'm pretty sure Jaedong was the preferred practise partner of Flash.
Apparently the STX B-Teamers were supposedly all really promising according to July. In reality, none of them ever got close. Hell look what happened to Pokju, played his 4th proleague game and then quit after being humiliated by Bisu.
So what you're suggesting is that BW will be more competitive because of its bad ai and bad game mechanics? This just doesn't make any sense, sorry.
Understandably the macro ceiling is lower in SCII compared to BW. However, this does not mean that the overall gameplay ceiling is lowered too. Not only can new micro tricks become revealed, pro players still get supply blocked and que up too many units all the time.
Currently SCII is still an adjusting game and needs time to prove itself. Speaking for myself, I am impressed with the way the SCII competitive scene is growing and expect nothing more of it.
If anyone has read anything about the 10,000 hours required to become an expert, they'll realize that by the end of this month, no Pro gamer can be considered an expert in SCII by this standard. It's not that there can't be a bonjwa - it's that until the conditions are right, there will not be a bonjwa.
tl;dr give SCII more time and stop trying to shoot it down by stating arbitrary hypothetical limits that cannot be measured.
On July 13 2011 14:14 rift wrote: I completely agree and have been thinking this since the beta began and we saw competitive play.
If FlashJaedongBisu et cetera switched they would immediately be among the best, but weaker players could take games from them more often than expected.
We may never see a true bonjwa in StarCraft 2. Can anyone honestly see a player completely dominating for over a year?
loled.. Sc2 is not out one year , dont have expansion set like BW in Sc , and you say we may never see a true bonjwa . Why BW lover's all the time forgot , that sc 2 is still a baby ? , its like Sc WHITOUT BW. I love BW to.. but you all expect from sc2 some miricle..
After year or two ... after HOTSM will come out , blizzard gonna make few more patches , for balance etc.. THEN you can think of bonjwa or some player domination .. even few months..( like MC right now)
On July 13 2011 14:14 rift wrote: I completely agree and have been thinking this since the beta began and we saw competitive play.
If FlashJaedongBisu et cetera switched they would immediately be among the best, but weaker players could take games from them more often than expected.
We may never see a true bonjwa in StarCraft 2. Can anyone honestly see a player completely dominating for over a year?
loled.. Sc2 is not out one year , dont have expansion set like BW in Sc , and you say we may never see a true bonjwa . Why BW lover's all the time forgot , that sc 2 is still a baby ? , its like Sc WHITOUT BW. I love BW to.. but you all expect from sc2 some miricle..
After year or two ... after HOTSM will come out , blizzard gonna make few more patches , for balance etc.. THEN you can think of bonjwa or some player domination .. even few months..( like MC right now)
Its these threads that go the extra little step into making sure the expansion will be as good as, or better than BW was. Imagine if we left Blizzard to their own devices, we'd still have steppes.
On July 13 2011 23:57 Lokian wrote: Has anyone watched the game TLO vs supernova(i forget the korean, was it TOP?)
Where TLO used nuclear bombs to control space and positioning?
I have to keep reminding myself that this is a troll, or I am in some alternate universe.
On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Note: This is my response to The Elephant in the Room. This wasn't written to support or condemn that article, but just provide an alternate conclusion. + Show Spoiler +
Awful graphics by aimless. Because if you want it done poorly, ask me.
The Elephant in the Room gave birth to this Rhino. Or at least the concept it represents. (I'm not sure I want to think too long about an elephant actually giving birth; to a rhino or otherwise, but feel free to enjoy the mental image now that you're thinking about it). After reading the article, I had a nagging idea. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone discuss this idea, so here goes nothing. What if StarCraft2 competitors can't be as good as their Brood War counterparts?
And what if this has nothing to do with the players at all, but the game itself that has changed the nature of the competition? Note that before you claim the competition in StarCraft2 is already just as good, watch a few Brood War replays. If I agreed with anything in The Elephant in the Room, it was that Brood War has higher quality game play. It just does. Watch them play. There, now that we dispelled that myth, let me elaborate on my point.
As far as I understand everything, in Brood War, the "strategy" part of the game was a secondary concern. Mechanics are the driving force behind skill development for everyone up to the very top players. You didn't worry about strategy until you had incredibly solid mechanics and could actually play the game at a fast pace. Due to the enormous physical and mental output needed to sustain constant production and resource management, it was a skill to just keep constant production. Only the best pro players could think and react and develop a strategy and keep their macro and micro going. It was just too hard for everyone else.
To put it another way, there is an almost-unattainably high skill ceiling in Brood War, and that ceiling spans multiple dimensions of game play. You want to be better at macro? Practice keeping constant worker production and always send them to mine right as they come out (and building structures and checking that they are all making units and expoing and so on). You want to be better at micro? Practice keeping those dragoons from running in a single file zigzag toward the enemy (and drop harassing and burrowing lurkers and so on). Everything required lots of clicking and button pressing.
But what Blizzard has done with StarCraft2 was they pulled that ceiling down a little. Need another worker? Press two hotkeys and wait. The game will do the rest. Automatically sent to mine. Heck, you can change which hotkeys you have to press to get the worker out. You can put them right next to each other (instead of the pre-defined locations of BW that are all over the keyboard). Want to build out of all your buildings? Just control+click on and hold down a key. Now you're macroing gosu-style.
While it's great for normal people and certainly makes average games more entertaining, at the very highest levels, it creates a logjam of talent. Players who used to struggle to keep up their macro and couldn't spot drops while rallying units and checking upgrades and scouting expansions? Well, now they can do that. SC2 all players a bunch of free time. The game took some of the heavy lifting off players' shoulders. Just look at the tournament results
Intrigue argued that poor quality of players was responsible for the revolving door that is GSL Champion. But I think the reason GSL champs keep rotating (and why players go from the top of Code S on out to Code B and back up again) is the lower skill ceiling. It turns the outcomes into more a dice roll. The units are more efficient at killing each other and more spells/abilities can be automated. A good player, caught out of position at one unlucky moment, can lost his entire army in 10 seconds. Poof. The poor unit AI in Brood War meant just getting into position was a APM spamming struggle. So bad BW players have a harder time just wandering up and killing good players' armies. In SC2, there aren't as many ways a good player can be head and shoulders above your opponent. Sure, better players have an small edge, but in Brood War, that edge was a cliff and the great ones could drop opponent after opponent off it.
Just take it to its logical extreme. Imagine if macroing were just a toggle button. One click and the insane computer AI took control of your workers and structures. You simply toggled which units you wanted and the computer built them as efficiently as it could. The only thing that separated you from your opponent was unit control. Unit control and unit selection. Do you really think Flash would still be Flash and Jaedong would still be Jaedong? Sure they would win games, but the margin of error would be razor thin. Normal players would become much, much better. Pros who who already do everything flawlessly? Doesn't help them as much.
I don't know if it matters to pro players, whether or not the game is fundamentally easier to play. don't know if it ever factors into a pro players decision to stay or leave Brood War. But it's my suspicion that SC2 can't have players who are beyond dominant. It's just not part of the game.
Credit to HawaiianPig, because I borrowed Elly as a template
Am I convinced this position is necessary true? No, not entirely. StarCraft2 could, in fact, be more strategically complex since players have more free energy to expend on tactics and thinking about the game while it's happening. But I absolutely think that SC2 cannot be great in the same way BW is. The very top players in BW can mechanically outplay virtually anyone, while still maintaining all the other facets of the game. For SC2 pros it doesn't matter as much because so many more people will be able to mechanically play at the highest level. SC2 pros will have to utilize more intelligent plays, more outsmarting opponents rather than outplaying them.
Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not. So what do I think?
I think everyone should stop pretending that BW is anything like SC2. It's not good for either game. Being a BW pro is a gradual ascent; you get better and better and better until finally you sit on top of the ESPORTS mountain. The SC2 learning curve is not as steep or long; it's much more like king-of-the-hill. I think that the community should embrace SC2 for the ups and downs, the constant changing of leaders, the up-and-comers winning. I don't think SC2 will be anything like BW, where the "bonjwas" of the game took turns controlling the scene before passing the torch to the next juggernaut. SC2 isn't designed to have unstoppable force-of-nature players. It was designed to update the times, to bring everyone closer together and let the underdog have a real shot at toppling the better player.
Thanks for making it to the bottom. Greatly appreciated. :-)
APM is important but it is not all. In SC2 tactical/strategical planning is much more important than APM. I have limited APM count (around 120) but it is more that enough to lure/catch my opponent of possition. I manage this by playing intelligently.
Logistical + Strategical + Tactical thinking > APM. In bw the guy who could press buttons the fastest usually won. Now the smartest guy wins.
That's retarded as shit... Read god of war article if you believe that bw player are retarded button spammers.
That's right, you tell him.
The button mashing is not what makes BW good, it's the strategy. Which must mean that you believe that that is true for SC2 as well. Less button mashing more strategy. I'm glad you support that SC2 is a good game.
I believe that what make BW really good is the combination of mechanical skill and strategic thinking. And of course SC2 is a really good game don't get me wrong.
Refining build orders, in-game decision making, sense of positioning and controlling space, unit control, multitasking, these are examples of things that played a huge role in Brood War and still do in SC 2, and in which the former BW pros have an advantage over their competitors.
That's actually the reason I feel BW has more strategic depth. The lack of area controlling units (such as lurker, vulture or even "good" siege tanks) is a big problem concerning the complexity of an RTS game I feel and tend to encourage blob vs blob battles...
static defense comes in many forms, such as spore crawlers, spine crawlers, cannons, sensor towers, turrets, nydus
oh, and what else? thors make a pretty good siege tank for FLYING units :O
You can say, any slow moving unit can give you a sense of positioning and controlling space from how you describe it, like infestors, broodlords, mothership, nuclear bombs etc.
starcraft 2, you need perfect postioning to counter the unit mechanics (such as clumping and anti-retard movements) which is way more difficult to pull off because the game mechanics is easier than bw. The skill ceiling is low for the average player, but higher for professionals, because you have to beat what is easy to do, which is difficult, as in requiring a lot of skills, even more than bw.
You completely missed the point altogether. Controlling space doesn't mean slow moving units. A-moved units aren't space controlling units because they are still mobile.
A prime example is the siege tank. Siege tanks in BW were even more powerful than in SC2. Siege tanks require setup times. An unsieged tank is much weaker than a sieged one. You can't constantly siege and unsiege a tank in the blink of an eye.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hUYAa.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LMBJo.png)
bonjwa 
