On July 14 2011 17:29 Suisen wrote: No indeed you don't understand. In an RTS that tests the ability of the player to control units, 'bad' AI is 'good' and 'good' AI is 'bad'.
What is stupid about BW AI anyway? Not sure what exactly you mean? The AI in BW was extremely simple and basic. Very predictable and very easy to improve on even by bad and low apm players. This is essential for good RTS AI. Micro needs to play a role even for the most basic players. If trying to micro only makes you play worse than the default AI, that's bad.
Do you mean the pathfinding of SC BW? If you are used to SC BW you will never intentionally give a command that will cause a pathfinding bug. Also, the pathfinding bug is still there in SC2. It's not fixed. It just takes more complex pathing before the AI bugs out.
The person that wrote SC2 AI was clueless about competitive RTS. He just wrote what to him would be the most impressive and advanced AI. He did a 'good job'. That's why we have unit AI right now that's bad for the game. Because the Blizz dev team didn't understand how and why competitive RTS as a game model even works, as professed by Browder himself.
In SC BW you never overcome stupid AI or fight the AI. The AI was very simple and predictable. in SC2 the AI has a mind of it's own and is hard to improve over.
What does all the stuff you write about have to do with a Real Time Strategy game is beyond me.
Sc2 is a good game, probably the best in the last years. But it could be improved (and i hope Blizz will do it woth the next expansions). For example, the units that push each other is just awful shit. It makes controlling single units useless. And I'd like the big battles would last more, and be less dependant on being catched off guard. Sure, the player who got caught off guard must be penalized, but not by losing the entire army/game... And to all the people who say "OMG SC2 IS ABOUT STRATEGIES, BW IS JUST CLIKSPAM OMGOMGOMG!!!11!" go and watch BW, because it's obvious you don't even know what a BW match looks like. I'm not saying BW strategy>SC2 strategy, but people saying SC2 strategy>BW strategy should just STFU and get information about BW, because it's obvious they're talking about something they don't know. And i even play more SC2 than BW, so i don't think SC2 is bad, but I think it can be improved a lot.
On July 14 2011 16:25 Slago wrote: I completely disagree with the OP, I haven't felt this rhino in the room, or even considered it till now, yes there are soooooo many amazing BW games, and alot of the GSL games have been lacking in entertainment, but overall SC2 has had unreal games, you just have to look in the many many many, other places than GSL or even MLG. As far as I'm concerned there were way better SC2 games this year than BW, alot of the high anticipated BW games were very disapointing, even last night the Flash Vs Hydra games was a disapointment to me, and alot of jaedongs games were hyped so much and lacked, but than I go to Steven's stream after that disapointing game, and I watch some of the best PvZ I've ever seen, Destiny Vs Huk was unreal just watch this game and say SC2 isnt epic
I understand where you're coming from, but BW has been around for so lang, in ten years I feel SC2 will have waaaaaaaay more epic games, the reason there are so many, is there are way more SC2 players at an extremely high level.
If anything that game was an argument for the OP. HuK, a Code S player who has recently won multiple big tournaments, gets an early disadvantage against a worse player and loses.
your statement isn't about the OP, you just think destiny is bad, when Huk and Destiny were talking, Huk said destiny was really good, and he was playing on lag while huk wasn't, Huk admited he was giving his all not saying Destiny is better cause Huk did win more games but your point is you think destiny is bad when he is a really strong player and just doesn't perform that well in pressure situations, so he has bad tourny showings, but he's beat bomber and Huk some of the best players in korea, not an argument for the op but against it, there are way more excellent SC2 players than BW
Chill out dude. I didn't say Destiny is bad, he just clearly isn't as good as HuK.
Huk has the highest ELO in the international tlpd right now. He is in code S and recently won 2 big tournaments that both had korean players in attendance.
In the game you linked Destiny did some ling pressure that was really effective, delaying HuK's 3rd and killing a lot of probes. Shortly after that HuK moved out and lost his whole army. The game continued on for a long time but HuK was never able to come back from his early disadvantage and he lost. That game is an excellent example of the OP's point about SC2 having less opportunities for better players to mechanically outplay lesser ones.
My personal opinion is: While there is no doubt that it is easier to macro in SC2, I believe it just gives better players more time to micro. This is especially true for terran, where multi-pronged attacks are awesome, and less time on macro means you can micro more battles at the same time.
This isn't the first thread that brings SC1 skill ceiling > SC2 skill ceiling up, but I personally think this one is a bit late, since I feel we're at the point in SC2, where we're starting to see that we were wrong all along, the skill ceiling for SC2 is much higher than originally thought.
I also think the OP isn't the best, since it just focuses so much on macro. Personally what I feel a lot more interesting are the strategies the players are going for. What I feel BW has going for it over SC2 is rather that the gameplay of BW is rather slow. If that was the same for SC2, I think it'd make SC2 a lot better, be it via bigger maps, more expansions or whatever. Just make the suspense build up, rather than have a reaper in the opponents base almost before he has his first production building up.
i got a warning in my post for just stating that i dont agree with OP. so here is a more detailled version why:
edit after the warning let me explain this a little more:
O was in a little bit of hurry - guess I should not have posted anything at all :
So the reason why I said this is the following:
You are arguing about the mechanics of BW beeing much more important in sc2 to provide a better level of competition.
Well just imagine Blizzard deciding to to bring out SC2 with the level of mechanics they had in BW. This game would not have been sold. If blizzard would have known 13 years ago about the possibilities of how to ease the gaming experience for the casual gamer - they would certainly have done it. In addition to that - having SC2 the way it is right now in terms of mechanics etc. allowes the game to be broadcasted much more easily. This game is still very young and there is so much more room for Improvement for every single player.
And only god (and blizzard people lol) knows what will be changed for the multiplayer part with HotS - The transition from SC1 to BW was quite significant. Let's see what the future brings.
Speaking of tournament results: From my personal experience as a spectator (gsl, nasl, and whatnot) I can say - yes we had a lot of different winners. But still (beside) from 2-3 exeptions its always the same people who get very very far into the tour.
And from a casters perspective its pretty much the same. On these weekly european tours I cast, there are basicly always the same people participating and with a few exceptions its always the same people winning. The overall skill might be lower compared to the highes international /korean standarts. But the outcome is still the same.
And that the gap between KR and the rest of the wold isnt that big anymore has got way more to to do how the game was developing in its early stages. For example with people watching husky starcraft videos who didnt really were involved into BW at all, allowing for SC2 to be seen by a much wider audience just brings a good amount of viewers. And where viewers are there is a lot of money. So with more involved, more people try to get better and compete on a professional level.
In the past only a few foreign people could make a living of Starcraft. Now in SC2 many more people can and with more people playing. The chances are higher for more people to be better that average and compete with the koreans.
Finally saying:
think everyone should stop pretending that BW is anything like SC2. It's not good for either game.
hmmmmm - this is what makes me a little angry esp the part " BW is(n't) anything like SC2 "
On July 14 2011 17:12 Suisen wrote: I don't know what all the fuss is about. This was predicted by the TL community and even by more casual SC BW communities long before the beta started. We had known people like Idra, Tasteless, Nony, go out of their way to try to convince Blizzard. I remember Tasteless described that the dev team including Browder didn't understand. Now a while ago we had Browder tell us he didn't understand RTS.
Now we are at a point where we the majority of the SC2 people here are new to RTS or come from C&C4 or some other game. We used to look down on WC3 as a game that was too easy. Things have changed so much, but the predictions were accurate.
It was realized that just strategy would only differentiate the skill level of players so far. It was realized it wasn't enough to create a huge spectrum of skills. SC BW was similar to chess and go in that there were so many levels between you and the best players. There were so many players that would crush the guy just below them in skill level but get crushed by the guy just above him in skill level. SC2 added safety nets execution wise and now the differences are much smaller.
The best analogy remains F1 where they added traction control to assist the drivers. When this debate was biggest, F1 had traction control. Today traction control was removed in 2008 so driving once again takes more skill. You want to add things like traction control to a car you are going to sell to consumers. But you don't want to add it to F1 cars. SC2 was made for casual players and TL is now filled with casual players that picked up on SC2 seriously. They don't want their game to have the things we liked most about SC BW 4 years ago. Right now people are driving F1 races in their consumer cars and having a blast. Their skills don't get tested thoroughly, but that's not what they want. Who wants to go back to SC BW doing mundane tasks that make you spin off the circuit when you make a mistake? Their perception of fun is completely different and often the opposite of the perception of fun of SC BW people.
And really SC2 has bigger problems than the safety nets added. The bigger problems are no lan latency and ball vs ball AI. It makes no sense to remove automining and MBS until you fix those things. Personally it also shocks me to hear people group all their army into 1 control group. So silly. Often I see people trying to micro their army apart, but the AI just wants to ball up so much it's basically a waste to try to get it to do something else.
People are going to be arguing the same thing as in poker. As long as extremely good players on average win more often that really good players, it will be ok for most people. In the end SC2 will be in the spirit of poker while SC BW will be in the spirit of chess.
Many people prefer poker over chess. Many people prefer a game where mindgames and strategy dominate and where mechanics and execution are a pretty shallow playing field. And most of the SC2 people on this forum right now are in that category.
As for those that prefer SC BW, most former SC BW people like Idra, Ret and who not would prefer if the gameplay of SC2 was more similar to SC BW. They just prefer to play SC2 because the scene exploded. You can't blame them. Basically they now work for Blizzard so we won't see them criticize Blizzard anymore. We can't expect them to bite the hand that feeds them.
We can just hope that some other company will make a true successor to SC BW. An RTS only aimed at competitive play. We have the DotA/HoN/LoL style games right now and those are only about competition and not about casual players playing it. They are bigger than SC2. I no longer believe in single players RTS. But I do believe that mutliplayer RTS still has a lot of potential. I would like to see an abstract RTS fine tuned for competitive play. Maybe a company like S2 or some Korean company can do it? Making it abstract would remove any lore constraints. There are a lot of talented people in the RTS scene thanks to SC BW. Blizzard left open the hole of an RTS finetuned for competitive play and esports. Eventually some company will make it. It doesn't require so much effort as most of the money in making SC2 went into the single player game. I actually heard they had 50 people working on the game and then also 50 people working on the cinematics. Then also Blizzard spend a huge amount on marketing. Then I am sure people like Browder are also overpaid. One can make a better successor to SC BW for a fraction of the money Blizzard took to make SC2.
I lost my faith in Blizzard after Diablo 2. I remember in high school after Diablo I started to champion their games among my friends. Things have changed a lot. At this point I basically don't have faith in any game developer. Hardcore gaming on the PC? Civ5 was a good example. Also, how Will Wright stopped making new Sim City games because improvements would make it too complex. So instead he makes the Sims and Spore. That's PC gaming for you today.
So many assumptions, so much negativity and such a elitist attitude. If it's that bad why even visit the SC2 forums and post this junk? I'm not visiting the BW section spewing shit all over.
Also you posts about the AI are laughable. Someone posted a BW game where a terran rushed a toss, there was huge AI bugs there, marines running around getting stuck on eachother etc. Also scarab AI, a uncontrollable thing that's totally random and can win or lose a game. To me fighting a buggy AI is not impressive nor interesting. Vids below of some hilariously buggy pathing.
On July 13 2011 14:45 Vaporak wrote: If the only reason the best players can outplay the good players is mechanics then your game has less strategy than the typical fighting game has. That mechanics is the major differentiation between top players, or that it should be, is a premise that I completely reject; both for Broodwar and Starcraft2. If mechanics is the main difference between great and good players then your game is a bad strategy game, period.
so .. your saying broodwar.. the greatest REAL TIME strategy game off all time was bad period.
I dont see anything wrong with having the skill level of a strategy game be decided by the strategic plays that the player makes in the game... In chess nobody cares how fast you can move the peices, yet there are "bonjwas" in chess. There are so many tactical plays just waiting to be made, Nestea was the closest to this IMO, the fact that he has a few GSL wins under is belt helps out too, SC2 is about knowing when to do what and how to deal with what your opponent is doing. That being said my personal opinion is that the highest skill cieling is will zerg, next with terran, and third with protoss, I expect Zergs to eventually rule the tournaments. Protoss is too timing push based and really doesnt leave much flexibility in build orders, most games are won nowadays by some form of all in by protoss whether it be a 7 gate or a nexus cancel 4 gate, or the 4 collosus = win button. Terran can trasition much faster and thus have the capability of making much more strategic plays, they also dont suffer from "deathball syndrome" and are capable of defending and dropping at the same time. Zerg I feel has the most to gain from game sense, as their tech paths are easiest to produce mass units out of, imagine if you could switch from hellions sraight into mass banshee in terran... it would be ridiculous, but you can switch from roach into muta in the blink of an eye, droning and larva management are also skills that are very difficult to perfect, drops can be utilized similarly to the terran drop mechanic especially given how cheap overlords are and how expendable late game roaches and zerglings are.
TL:DR - a bonjwa will come from zerg because of brilliant tactical play, which is a good thing in my eyes, but also truly is different from BW.
The main aspect from high level Broodwar players that fascinated me was their dexterity, physical execution , speed, and multitasking.
The mechanics that can only be attained through hard and diligent practice combined with natural talent. Earned skill- Just like in real sports. That is what I can respect and admire.
People honestly don't think this type of skill should be present to separate the most driven players from the ok ones in a serious competitive arena? Should it be a game based solely on build order losses and surprise tech switches?
I don't understand how people can disagree with the OP.
I think we can sum up this thread by SC2 fans thinking that BW require just mindless and useless spaming with no brain at all (again go read the last TL edit "god of the battlefield" if you believe so ...) and BW fans thinking that the control part of an RTS game is still really important (otherwise go play chess). On that particular aspect the only difference between both game is that BW is "a bit" harder to master concerning mechanics and the real concern is: does SC2 reward good mechanical play enough?
I don't know what all the fuss is about. This was predicted by the TL community and even by more casual SC BW communities long before the beta started. We had known people like Idra, Tasteless, Nony, go out of their way to try to convince Blizzard. I remember Tasteless described that the dev team including Browder didn't understand. Now a while ago we had Browder tell us he didn't understand RTS.
Now we are at a point where we the majority of the SC2 people here are new to RTS or come from C&C4 or some other game. We used to look down on WC3 as a game that was too easy. Things have changed so much, but the predictions were accurate.
It was realized that just strategy would only differentiate the skill level of players so far. It was realized it wasn't enough to create a huge spectrum of skills. SC BW was similar to chess and go in that there were so many levels between you and the best players. There were so many players that would crush the guy just below them in skill level but get crushed by the guy just above him in skill level. SC2 added safety nets execution wise and now the differences are much smaller.
The best analogy remains F1 where they added traction control to assist the drivers. When this debate was biggest, F1 had traction control. Today traction control was removed in 2008 so driving once again takes more skill. You want to add things like traction control to a car you are going to sell to consumers. But you don't want to add it to F1 cars. SC2 was made for casual players and TL is now filled with casual players that picked up on SC2 seriously. They don't want their game to have the things we liked most about SC BW 4 years ago. Right now people are driving F1 races in their consumer cars and having a blast. Their skills don't get tested thoroughly, but that's not what they want. Who wants to go back to SC BW doing mundane tasks that make you spin off the circuit when you make a mistake? Their perception of fun is completely different and often the opposite of the perception of fun of SC BW people.
And really SC2 has bigger problems than the safety nets added. The bigger problems are no lan latency and ball vs ball AI. It makes no sense to remove automining and MBS until you fix those things. Personally it also shocks me to hear people group all their army into 1 control group. So silly. Often I see people trying to micro their army apart, but the AI just wants to ball up so much it's basically a waste to try to get it to do something else.
People are going to be arguing the same thing as in poker. As long as extremely good players on average win more often that really good players, it will be ok for most people. In the end SC2 will be in the spirit of poker while SC BW will be in the spirit of chess.
Many people prefer poker over chess. Many people prefer a game where mindgames and strategy dominate and where mechanics and execution are a pretty shallow playing field. And most of the SC2 people on this forum right now are in that category.
As for those that prefer SC BW, most former SC BW people like Idra, Ret and who not would prefer if the gameplay of SC2 was more similar to SC BW. They just prefer to play SC2 because the scene exploded. You can't blame them. Basically they now work for Blizzard so we won't see them criticize Blizzard anymore. We can't expect them to bite the hand that feeds them.
We can just hope that some other company will make a true successor to SC BW. An RTS only aimed at competitive play. We have the DotA/HoN/LoL style games right now and those are only about competition and not about casual players playing it. They are bigger than SC2. I no longer believe in single players RTS. But I do believe that mutliplayer RTS still has a lot of potential. I would like to see an abstract RTS fine tuned for competitive play. Maybe a company like S2 or some Korean company can do it? Making it abstract would remove any lore constraints. There are a lot of talented people in the RTS scene thanks to SC BW. Blizzard left open the hole of an RTS finetuned for competitive play and esports. Eventually some company will make it. It doesn't require so much effort as most of the money in making SC2 went into the single player game. I actually heard they had 50 people working on the game and then also 50 people working on the cinematics. Then also Blizzard spend a huge amount on marketing. Then I am sure people like Browder are also overpaid. One can make a better successor to SC BW for a fraction of the money Blizzard took to make SC2.
I lost my faith in Blizzard after Diablo 2. I remember in high school after Diablo I started to champion their games among my friends. Things have changed a lot. At this point I basically don't have faith in any game developer. Hardcore gaming on the PC? Civ5 was a good example. Also, how Will Wright stopped making new Sim City games because improvements would make it too complex. So instead he makes the Sims and Spore. That's PC gaming for you today.
You compare SC2 to poker and BW to chess and Go so as to emphasize the difference in their levels of competition due to the mechanical skill required to play BW. Chess and Go require no mechanical skill, only deep strategic understanding. You would be better off saying that SC2 is chess and BW is MMA or boxing, where you must spend significant amounts of time training just to be able to compete with your opponent in terms of raw physical power.
The AI is retarded in both games. In one game it is almost impossible to get units from A to B as a union. In the other it is almost impossible to get them from A to B as not a clump.
You cannot really argue that the AI deficit in one game improves it while it hurts it in another. With Fungal, Storms, Tanks, Colossi, Banelings and EMP around, having your units in a Ball is very rarely what you want, yet players are still not able to maneuver their units while having them spread constantly.
So your shocked to hear that people group their units into one control group. Well, those are not the players at the top and it is clearly not the best way to achieve results. So how can you view this of all things at the skill ceiling? Apparently we are not even close to being there yet.
Just look at the recent Losira vs.Top games, the multitasking was insane especially in game two. Imagine what it will be like a few years from now. When the mechanics in SC2 are easier than in BW, you don't spend 8 hours a day practicing the same redundant mechanics that you can already perform flawlessly. You practice the same mechanics while also adding as much as possible on top of that so your opponent will have a hard time keeping up. This honestly should be obvious, but it is people in this thread acting like they have some deep understanding of BW who are actually the ones who have no idea how and why BW play developed to what it has.
On July 14 2011 17:12 Suisen wrote: I don't know what all the fuss is about. This was predicted by the TL community and even by more casual SC BW communities long before the beta started. We had known people like Idra, Tasteless, Nony, go out of their way to try to convince Blizzard. I remember Tasteless described that the dev team including Browder didn't understand. Now a while ago we had Browder tell us he didn't understand RTS.
Now we are at a point where we the majority of the SC2 people here are new to RTS or come from C&C4 or some other game. We used to look down on WC3 as a game that was too easy. Things have changed so much, but the predictions were accurate.
It was realized that just strategy would only differentiate the skill level of players so far. It was realized it wasn't enough to create a huge spectrum of skills. SC BW was similar to chess and go in that there were so many levels between you and the best players. There were so many players that would crush the guy just below them in skill level but get crushed by the guy just above him in skill level. SC2 added safety nets execution wise and now the differences are much smaller.
The best analogy remains F1 where they added traction control to assist the drivers. When this debate was biggest, F1 had traction control. Today traction control was removed in 2008 so driving once again takes more skill. You want to add things like traction control to a car you are going to sell to consumers. But you don't want to add it to F1 cars. SC2 was made for casual players and TL is now filled with casual players that picked up on SC2 seriously. They don't want their game to have the things we liked most about SC BW 4 years ago. Right now people are driving F1 races in their consumer cars and having a blast. Their skills don't get tested thoroughly, but that's not what they want. Who wants to go back to SC BW doing mundane tasks that make you spin off the circuit when you make a mistake? Their perception of fun is completely different and often the opposite of the perception of fun of SC BW people.
And really SC2 has bigger problems than the safety nets added. The bigger problems are no lan latency and ball vs ball AI. It makes no sense to remove automining and MBS until you fix those things. Personally it also shocks me to hear people group all their army into 1 control group. So silly. Often I see people trying to micro their army apart, but the AI just wants to ball up so much it's basically a waste to try to get it to do something else.
People are going to be arguing the same thing as in poker. As long as extremely good players on average win more often that really good players, it will be ok for most people. In the end SC2 will be in the spirit of poker while SC BW will be in the spirit of chess.
Many people prefer poker over chess. Many people prefer a game where mindgames and strategy dominate and where mechanics and execution are a pretty shallow playing field. And most of the SC2 people on this forum right now are in that category.
As for those that prefer SC BW, most former SC BW people like Idra, Ret and who not would prefer if the gameplay of SC2 was more similar to SC BW. They just prefer to play SC2 because the scene exploded. You can't blame them. Basically they now work for Blizzard so we won't see them criticize Blizzard anymore. We can't expect them to bite the hand that feeds them.
We can just hope that some other company will make a true successor to SC BW. An RTS only aimed at competitive play. We have the DotA/HoN/LoL style games right now and those are only about competition and not about casual players playing it. They are bigger than SC2. I no longer believe in single players RTS. But I do believe that mutliplayer RTS still has a lot of potential. I would like to see an abstract RTS fine tuned for competitive play. Maybe a company like S2 or some Korean company can do it? Making it abstract would remove any lore constraints. There are a lot of talented people in the RTS scene thanks to SC BW. Blizzard left open the hole of an RTS finetuned for competitive play and esports. Eventually some company will make it. It doesn't require so much effort as most of the money in making SC2 went into the single player game. I actually heard they had 50 people working on the game and then also 50 people working on the cinematics. Then also Blizzard spend a huge amount on marketing. Then I am sure people like Browder are also overpaid. One can make a better successor to SC BW for a fraction of the money Blizzard took to make SC2.
I lost my faith in Blizzard after Diablo 2. I remember in high school after Diablo I started to champion their games among my friends. Things have changed a lot. At this point I basically don't have faith in any game developer. Hardcore gaming on the PC? Civ5 was a good example. Also, how Will Wright stopped making new Sim City games because improvements would make it too complex. So instead he makes the Sims and Spore. That's PC gaming for you today.
There's so much "wut" in this post.
Chess takes 0 mechanics and execution. Zero. None. Chess is pure thinking and stratrgy. You need an apm of like 0.5. I LOVE Chess, don't get me wrong. But it's a fantastic, deep, and compelling game for far different reasons than BW is.
SC2 is reasonably competitive and really fun. I think the mechanics they changed from BW added a new layer to the game because players are left with much more time to do other things thus encouraging thoughtful and intelligent play rather than quick play. Not saying BW didn't require strategy of course.
I mean, SC2 could've been much much more casual. Blizzard did design it to be competitive. Look at Supreme Command, it was fucking hard. Then SupCom 2 came out and well...it's just SupCom to me, it's so ridiculously different and tons easier.
There's a lot of elements present in common place RTSs that Blizzard chose not to add to keep it reasonably competitive (Christ, if they add cycle production in HOTS...)
Automining and MBS are more removal of tedium than anything.
Lastly, what was wrong with Diablo 2? I loved Diablo 2 and Diablo 1. Both were fantastic. Hell I'd say Diablo 1 is drastically inferior to Diablo 2. But this is isn't a Diablo forum so I withhold any comments
Seriously, do you think SC2 has more strategies than BW? I'm not saying BW strategy>SC2 strategy, but SC2>BW strategically is just retarded... I want some proof to actually see that SC2>BW strategically
On July 14 2011 23:47 IGotPlayguuu wrote: Seriously, do you think SC2 has more strategies than BW? I'm not saying BW strategy>SC2 strategy, but SC2>BW strategically is just retarded... I want some proof to actually see that SC2>BW strategically
You want proof that one games strategy is more pleasing to you than another? That is just a retarded question, there is no proof it is all relative to what you like.
I'm not saying that BW>SC2 or taht SC2>BW STRATEGICALLY (which actually you can verify, e.g. chess>tic tac toe strategically). But in this thread there is a bunch of people that are saying that SC2>BW strategically because SC2 has less mechanic (retarded reason, if you are used to macro, you have time to think, and often in pro matches it's the strategy that make you win the game)
EPT
