On July 15 2011 14:44 On_Slaught wrote: Since the mods are clearly fine with this being a SC2 vs BW debate i'll throw something in.
I do think that SC2 has plenty skill ceiling potential to make it a great game for years to come. I don't think that it loses out in strategy in any way, save of the fact that the current metagame has so much 1base/allin play which is just shit to watch.
The real thing SC2 lacks compared to BW isn't strategy or the ability to micro at a high level, it's that it has horrible fucking units. Colossi, marauders, stalkers and roaches are fucking atrocious. Blizzard felt every race needed a dragoon so there you go. Then you go and remove every interesting and unique class from BW (lurker, reaver, arb, vessel, DA, defiler, etc). Almost every single interesting and fun unit in all of BW was removed for SC2 and replaced with, imo, categorically worse, less interesting and less dynamic units.
That is the real area where SC2 fails and the one area that has a chance to get majorly fixed with the uncoming expansions. Hopefully they remove multiple units and give us some new ones.
(I enjoy both games thoroughly but I do think many sc2 defenders in this type of debate are at a huge intellectual (can't think of a better word) disadvantage since many seem to have never played BW or never followed BW play for any serious amount of time whereas many BW players watch both)
The bolded portion is something even players who know nothing of BW complain about.
There are many things wrong with SC2, many. A lot of BW supporters think it's that it's easier--and they don't listen to any logic against that statement. But they're wrong.
Difficulty of execution does not make the executed action better.
However, there things wrong with SC2, such as the point you cited. The answer is not to bring back old units like Lurkers and Spidermines because that doesn't solve the actual problem--unit dynamics. What would the lurkers do in SC2? The terran would scan and one shot them with Maruaders. What would Shuttle/Reaver do against 9 range Vikings? Defiler? To do what? Smart casting on Siege tanks actually spreads out the AoE of splash so efficiently SC2 tanks had to have a massive damage nerf to them just to prevent anarchy.
It's not that SC2 is missing BW units, it's that the unit dynamics have not been fully figured out yet. We are still stuck trying to either replicate BW or follow the +damage modifiers to a T. Do you think the game designers thought Banelings would carpet bomb stalkers? That Phoenixes would be used to kill small packs of Hydralisks? Or that the Immortal would mainly be used for DPS and not as a tank?
The further away from the BW unit mentality SC2 gets, the better it will be for the SC2 metagame.
I agree and disagree.
Defilers, Lurkers, Reavers, etc all improve the game immensely in SC2, even just one of them. Lurker, Scourge, Defiler completely annihilates the Protoss Stalker Colossus deathball. However Lurkers and Defilers are slow, especially without defensive nydus, this allows Protoss to use harass tactics to counter that. There, deathball issue solved.
Also Zerg and Protoss don't have vikings, and Protoss and Zerg don't have marauders. Sure vikings would be OP against Prisms, but that doesn't mean I can't use Reavers against the other races.
I have been advocating for a long time that unit design is horrible in SC2. BW had well designed units, sure the players made the situation even better, but template in which BW was designed was much more disciplined than SC2.
On July 15 2011 08:31 lorkac wrote: BW: macro was hard but the game forgives you for making mistakes.
SC2: Macro is easy but the game rewards perfect play.
I wonder which sounds more appealing?
The game isnt what forgives you... your good play after making one mistake is what forgives you.
What good play? If you're not only making mistakes, but playing tactics whose design is to counteract the mistakes you already knew you were going to make, then where is the good play?
"Since I know I'll mess up I'll make some lurkers just in case"
that's you're "good play after making one mistake"
Is it a bad thing that the game design and the map design of BW maps allows you the "Oh Shit!" button? No, of course not. It's called being a DIFFERENT game. BW players like feeling safe. SC2 players enjoy perfecting execution.
LOL i suggest you stop talking about BW since you obviously never played it or know nothing about the game at all. (for your own good, really)
On July 15 2011 14:44 On_Slaught wrote: Since the mods are clearly fine with this being a SC2 vs BW debate i'll throw something in.
I do think that SC2 has plenty skill ceiling potential to make it a great game for years to come. I don't think that it loses out in strategy in any way, save of the fact that the current metagame has so much 1base/allin play which is just shit to watch.
The real thing SC2 lacks compared to BW isn't strategy or the ability to micro at a high level, it's that it has horrible fucking units. Colossi, marauders, stalkers and roaches are fucking atrocious. Blizzard felt every race needed a dragoon so there you go. Then you go and remove every interesting and unique class from BW (lurker, reaver, arb, vessel, DA, defiler, etc). Almost every single interesting and fun unit in all of BW was removed for SC2 and replaced with, imo, categorically worse, less interesting and less dynamic units.
That is the real area where SC2 fails and the one area that has a chance to get majorly fixed with the uncoming expansions. Hopefully they remove multiple units and give us some new ones.
(I enjoy both games thoroughly but I do think many sc2 defenders in this type of debate are at a huge intellectual (can't think of a better word) disadvantage since many seem to have never played BW or never followed BW play for any serious amount of time whereas many BW players watch both)
The bolded portion is something even players who know nothing of BW complain about.
There are many things wrong with SC2, many. A lot of BW supporters think it's that it's easier--and they don't listen to any logic against that statement. But they're wrong.
Difficulty of execution does not make the executed action better.
However, there things wrong with SC2, such as the point you cited. The answer is not to bring back old units like Lurkers and Spidermines because that doesn't solve the actual problem--unit dynamics. What would the lurkers do in SC2? The terran would scan and one shot them with Maruaders. What would Shuttle/Reaver do against 9 range Vikings? Defiler? To do what? Smart casting on Siege tanks actually spreads out the AoE of splash so efficiently SC2 tanks had to have a massive damage nerf to them just to prevent anarchy.
It's not that SC2 is missing BW units, it's that the unit dynamics have not been fully figured out yet. We are still stuck trying to either replicate BW or follow the +damage modifiers to a T. Do you think the game designers thought Banelings would carpet bomb stalkers? That Phoenixes would be used to kill small packs of Hydralisks? Or that the Immortal would mainly be used for DPS and not as a tank?
The further away from the BW unit mentality SC2 gets, the better it will be for the SC2 metagame.
I agree and disagree.
Defilers, Lurkers, Reavers, etc all improve the game immensely in SC2, even just one of them. Lurker, Scourge, Defiler completely annihilates the Protoss Stalker Colossus deathball. However Lurkers and Defilers are slow, especially without defensive nydus, this allows Protoss to use harass tactics to counter that. There, deathball issue solved.
Also Zerg and Protoss don't have vikings, and Protoss and Zerg don't have marauders. Sure vikings would be OP against Prisms, but that doesn't mean I can't use Reavers against the other races.
I have been advocating for a long time that unit design is horrible in SC2. BW had well designed units, sure the players made the situation even better, but template in which BW was designed was much more disciplined than SC2.
And what I'm saying is that those units you're talking about are only good because of how they interacted with the other units around them. Dark Swarm was only so good because Terran armies were so dependent on having range units. Scourge and Reavers were good because they were high burst dps units in a game with overall low DPS compared to a lot of more modern games.
TLDR those units were good in BW because of the units they had to deal with, not because they are inherently good. What Blizzard needs to do is not design their units with such specific parameters. Marauders, Roaches and even Stalkers would murder Lurkers. Not because Lurkers suck--but because Lurkers did not have to deal with cheap high DPS vs armor units from Terran. Lurkers never had to fight a dragoon that could outmanuever a Zergling, etc...
On July 15 2011 08:31 lorkac wrote: BW: macro was hard but the game forgives you for making mistakes.
SC2: Macro is easy but the game rewards perfect play.
I wonder which sounds more appealing?
The game isnt what forgives you... your good play after making one mistake is what forgives you.
What good play? If you're not only making mistakes, but playing tactics whose design is to counteract the mistakes you already knew you were going to make, then where is the good play?
"Since I know I'll mess up I'll make some lurkers just in case"
that's you're "good play after making one mistake"
Is it a bad thing that the game design and the map design of BW maps allows you the "Oh Shit!" button? No, of course not. It's called being a DIFFERENT game. BW players like feeling safe. SC2 players enjoy perfecting execution.
LOL i suggest you stop talking about BW since you obviously never played it or know nothing about the game at all. (for your own good, really)
I actually do watch BW. Sorry, but the fun part about watching BW games is not that the mechanics are hard but that the strategies are fun to watch. SlayersBoxer placing turrets in the middle of Lost Temple to help him maintain map awareness changed my life. Watching him blind a pack of Observers as Carriers filled the air with interceptors was kind of boring because visually it was just a bunch of medics tossing whatever at slightly faded orbs.
BW is immensely fun to watch. But trust me, it's not because their workers mine minerals.
On July 15 2011 11:01 masami.sc wrote: So, just out of curiosity - who here has actually even played Brood War? Because I've played SC2 for 3-4 months or so to formulate my opinions about the game (ie. it's easy as balls).
Anyway, I was terrible at Brood War (C- at best) but I got to a decent level in SC2, and I barely ever practiced or watched replays. I think that says something. Or maybe I'm just an SC2 genius, right?
If you're even going to argue about SC2 vs BW, you should have at least played both games.
This to me feels like a realistic post. Most people either want their SC2 skills to matter or havnt played BW :D
Basically everyone defending SC2 hasnt gotten above D+/C- in BW or never even played it at all :/
I'd say its more to do with watchers than players. Most players who watch both SC2 and BW avidly, and I mean who are subscribed to nevake and watch most of his vods but also keep up with the SC2 scene will tell you they prefer BW. Even if they can't stay above E rank.
Which is why the OP says go watch some BW VODs before forming an opinion. I would go further and say subscribe to nevake. Of course not every BW game is awesome, and a lot of games that get shown as "good games" aren't interesting to people new to BW.
Instead of showing Boxers comeback which is boring if you don't know the game, if they were shown things like the 72 kill reaver of Snow, of the 42 kill dragoon, things would be different.
I think his point was that the SC2 arguements are bred in ignorance
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.
This guy is telling the truth and you call it shit? You probably also dont understand the AI part you responded to.
Ai deathball is terrible, you cannot micro it because it clumps, makes auto-arch and only thing u can realistically do in game is moving it forward/backward, moving small clumps of units is painful because when you leave them and move them they again auto clump and so on and so on. Also the fact that your deathball doesnt exist after 5 sec of battle due to ridiculous dps is not helping at least from zerg perspective. So good AI yeah?
The difference beetween BW and SC2 that BW had "bad" AI that could be easily improved by actions you took, in SC2 the AI is so "good" that u cant do anything in large scale battles. In fact microing in SC2 is harder but control is easier (no 12 unit ctrl groups, better pathfinding etc) Do not mistake both things.
On July 15 2011 12:01 Yaotzin wrote: BW trolls are so boring. Saddening that they survive bans for some reason.
Not really, seeing as a lot of the criticism is objectively correct
If I commented in BW forums that BW has shit graphics/ui etc, it would be objectively true and would also - rightly - get me banned.
Stop shitting up forums for a game you apparently don't like. It's stupid.
It's fucking retarded that people get dropped during tournaments because B.net 0.2 is so bad and there are no alternatives/LAN. It's not trolling, it's a fact.
It's off topic and nobody gives a shit. It's trolling.
Also, the SC2 skill ceiling is lower. That's a fact. It's not trolling, it's providing an explanation to the current proscene scenario
That's opinion, not that I expect you to understand the difference.
Your an angry nerd clearly, just to push some buttons here. 3000 posts and you joined about a year ago. How is that even possible? I thought you had some BW experience or something based on that post count only to find out you have no idea what your talking about most likely and that your 3000 posts have all just been a waste of space like these.
Angry accusations from someone trying to talk logically, all be it negatively, about sc2.
On July 15 2011 14:44 On_Slaught wrote: Since the mods are clearly fine with this being a SC2 vs BW debate i'll throw something in.
I do think that SC2 has plenty skill ceiling potential to make it a great game for years to come. I don't think that it loses out in strategy in any way, save of the fact that the current metagame has so much 1base/allin play which is just shit to watch.
The real thing SC2 lacks compared to BW isn't strategy or the ability to micro at a high level, it's that it has horrible fucking units. Colossi, marauders, stalkers and roaches are fucking atrocious. Blizzard felt every race needed a dragoon so there you go. Then you go and remove every interesting and unique class from BW (lurker, reaver, arb, vessel, DA, defiler, etc). Almost every single interesting and fun unit in all of BW was removed for SC2 and replaced with, imo, categorically worse, less interesting and less dynamic units.
That is the real area where SC2 fails and the one area that has a chance to get majorly fixed with the uncoming expansions. Hopefully they remove multiple units and give us some new ones.
(I enjoy both games thoroughly but I do think many sc2 defenders in this type of debate are at a huge intellectual (can't think of a better word) disadvantage since many seem to have never played BW or never followed BW play for any serious amount of time whereas many BW players watch both)
The bolded portion is something even players who know nothing of BW complain about.
There are many things wrong with SC2, many. A lot of BW supporters think it's that it's easier--and they don't listen to any logic against that statement. But they're wrong.
Difficulty of execution does not make the executed action better.
However, there things wrong with SC2, such as the point you cited. The answer is not to bring back old units like Lurkers and Spidermines because that doesn't solve the actual problem--unit dynamics. What would the lurkers do in SC2? The terran would scan and one shot them with Maruaders. What would Shuttle/Reaver do against 9 range Vikings? Defiler? To do what? Smart casting on Siege tanks actually spreads out the AoE of splash so efficiently SC2 tanks had to have a massive damage nerf to them just to prevent anarchy.
It's not that SC2 is missing BW units, it's that the unit dynamics have not been fully figured out yet. We are still stuck trying to either replicate BW or follow the +damage modifiers to a T. Do you think the game designers thought Banelings would carpet bomb stalkers? That Phoenixes would be used to kill small packs of Hydralisks? Or that the Immortal would mainly be used for DPS and not as a tank?
The further away from the BW unit mentality SC2 gets, the better it will be for the SC2 metagame.
I agree and disagree.
Defilers, Lurkers, Reavers, etc all improve the game immensely in SC2, even just one of them. Lurker, Scourge, Defiler completely annihilates the Protoss Stalker Colossus deathball. However Lurkers and Defilers are slow, especially without defensive nydus, this allows Protoss to use harass tactics to counter that. There, deathball issue solved.
Also Zerg and Protoss don't have vikings, and Protoss and Zerg don't have marauders. Sure vikings would be OP against Prisms, but that doesn't mean I can't use Reavers against the other races.
I have been advocating for a long time that unit design is horrible in SC2. BW had well designed units, sure the players made the situation even better, but template in which BW was designed was much more disciplined than SC2.
And what I'm saying is that those units you're talking about are only good because of how they interacted with the other units around them. Dark Swarm was only so good because Terran armies were so dependent on having range units. Scourge and Reavers were good because they were high burst dps units in a game with overall low DPS compared to a lot of more modern games.
TLDR those units were good in BW because of the units they had to deal with, not because they are inherently good. What Blizzard needs to do is not design their units with such specific parameters. Marauders, Roaches and even Stalkers would murder Lurkers. Not because Lurkers suck--but because Lurkers did not have to deal with cheap high DPS vs armor units from Terran. Lurkers never had to fight a dragoon that could outmanuever a Zergling, etc...
Fix the interaction, that's all.
And my point is I've tried these units in SC2, have you?
On July 15 2011 14:44 On_Slaught wrote: Since the mods are clearly fine with this being a SC2 vs BW debate i'll throw something in.
I do think that SC2 has plenty skill ceiling potential to make it a great game for years to come. I don't think that it loses out in strategy in any way, save of the fact that the current metagame has so much 1base/allin play which is just shit to watch.
The real thing SC2 lacks compared to BW isn't strategy or the ability to micro at a high level, it's that it has horrible fucking units. Colossi, marauders, stalkers and roaches are fucking atrocious. Blizzard felt every race needed a dragoon so there you go. Then you go and remove every interesting and unique class from BW (lurker, reaver, arb, vessel, DA, defiler, etc). Almost every single interesting and fun unit in all of BW was removed for SC2 and replaced with, imo, categorically worse, less interesting and less dynamic units.
That is the real area where SC2 fails and the one area that has a chance to get majorly fixed with the uncoming expansions. Hopefully they remove multiple units and give us some new ones.
(I enjoy both games thoroughly but I do think many sc2 defenders in this type of debate are at a huge intellectual (can't think of a better word) disadvantage since many seem to have never played BW or never followed BW play for any serious amount of time whereas many BW players watch both)
The bolded portion is something even players who know nothing of BW complain about.
There are many things wrong with SC2, many. A lot of BW supporters think it's that it's easier--and they don't listen to any logic against that statement. But they're wrong.
Difficulty of execution does not make the executed action better.
However, there things wrong with SC2, such as the point you cited. The answer is not to bring back old units like Lurkers and Spidermines because that doesn't solve the actual problem--unit dynamics. What would the lurkers do in SC2? The terran would scan and one shot them with Maruaders. What would Shuttle/Reaver do against 9 range Vikings? Defiler? To do what? Smart casting on Siege tanks actually spreads out the AoE of splash so efficiently SC2 tanks had to have a massive damage nerf to them just to prevent anarchy.
It's not that SC2 is missing BW units, it's that the unit dynamics have not been fully figured out yet. We are still stuck trying to either replicate BW or follow the +damage modifiers to a T. Do you think the game designers thought Banelings would carpet bomb stalkers? That Phoenixes would be used to kill small packs of Hydralisks? Or that the Immortal would mainly be used for DPS and not as a tank?
The further away from the BW unit mentality SC2 gets, the better it will be for the SC2 metagame.
I agree and disagree.
Defilers, Lurkers, Reavers, etc all improve the game immensely in SC2, even just one of them. Lurker, Scourge, Defiler completely annihilates the Protoss Stalker Colossus deathball. However Lurkers and Defilers are slow, especially without defensive nydus, this allows Protoss to use harass tactics to counter that. There, deathball issue solved.
Also Zerg and Protoss don't have vikings, and Protoss and Zerg don't have marauders. Sure vikings would be OP against Prisms, but that doesn't mean I can't use Reavers against the other races.
I have been advocating for a long time that unit design is horrible in SC2. BW had well designed units, sure the players made the situation even better, but template in which BW was designed was much more disciplined than SC2.
And what I'm saying is that those units you're talking about are only good because of how they interacted with the other units around them. Dark Swarm was only so good because Terran armies were so dependent on having range units. Scourge and Reavers were good because they were high burst dps units in a game with overall low DPS compared to a lot of more modern games.
TLDR those units were good in BW because of the units they had to deal with, not because they are inherently good. What Blizzard needs to do is not design their units with such specific parameters. Marauders, Roaches and even Stalkers would murder Lurkers. Not because Lurkers suck--but because Lurkers did not have to deal with cheap high DPS vs armor units from Terran. Lurkers never had to fight a dragoon that could outmanuever a Zergling, etc...
Fix the interaction, that's all.
And my point is I've tried these units in SC2, have you?
Your version of SC2 has Defilers and Lurkers? Does Blizzard know? Or did you make custom maps and played it with your friends?
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.
This guy is telling the truth and you call it shit? You probably also dont understand the AI part you responded to.
Ai deathball is terrible, you cannot micro it because it clumps, makes auto-arch and only thing u can realistically do in game is moving it forward/backward, moving small clumps of units is painful because when you leave them and move them they again auto clump and so on and so on. Also the fact that your deathball doesnt exist after 5 sec of battle due to ridiculous dps is not helping at least from zerg perspective. So good AI yeah?
The difference beetween BW and SC2 that BW had "bad" AI that could be easily improved by actions you took, in SC2 the AI is so "good" that u cant do anything in large scale battles. In fact microing in SC2 is harder but control is easier (no 12 unit ctrl groups, better pathfinding etc) Do not mistake both things.
In case you didn't know--they only clump if you cram them all into one control group. If you spread your army across multiple control groups they don't do that.
Don't blame the game for having inexperienced players.
On July 15 2011 01:44 Parsistamon wrote: I still think you can make this skill ceiling unreachable. The macro ceiling is lowered, true. But the emphasis is thus put on outsmarting your opponents (strategy) and tactics (micro). Sure, this is a different kind of skill. But we are seeing good players make the game harder executing more complicated attacks and positioning, which ups the level of multitasking. Whether you enjoy this style or the broodwar style is up to you.
The micro ceiling is also lowered; mechanics in general is easier in SC2, period. SC2 got unlimited unit selection, smart cast, auto target etc. Since micro is much easier, a lot of units have been nerfed which makes the game less interesting to watch imo. In BW practically all units are imbalanced in the hands of a skilled player which makes the micro much more dynamic. SC2 is more focused on counters while BW focuses on how the players utilize their units. There are obviously micro in SC2 and counters in BW but to a lesser extent.
Also, there seems to be a big misunderstanding among SC2 players; that less mechanics implies more strategy. This is not true and should be pretty obvious for anyone who watched BW. Brood War is more strategically complex if anything, since the game is so much older and has been evolving for 13 years compared to 1 year for SC2. There is no different set of skills in SC2 that does not exist in BW, there is just less mechanical skills.
This article is a farce, unlike the competition in SC2. The mechanics are easier because the fat was cut out. Artificially inflating difficulty doesn't make the game better. Who in the world WANTS that artificially inflated difficulty? This is akin to people wanting games to be more old school because you died more, even though the game developers artificially inflated the difficulty so it would extend the play time.
Just because you have to send your scvs manually to mine doesn't mean the game's better. Just because you can't hotkey your units properly doesn't make broodwar better. By almost every standard, Starcraft 2 is a better game. The competition will get more and more consistent and enjoyable as time goes on. People had a decade to refine and manage their play at the highest level. Give sc2 a few years and the play will look radically different. Every tournament I have watched has produced at least a few amazing series.
This sentiment of "Please don't pretend this is as good as BW" is ridiculous. The mechanics being streamlined is a really really good thing for the game. It's a real time STRATEGY game, and the emphasis should be on strategy not multitasking. It is really frustrating - the game's 12 years old - Let it go and move on like the rest of us. If you don't, that's fine - but just don't insult everyone who enjoys watching sc2 by just assuming, one year in, that it will never be as "good as broodwar."
On July 15 2011 14:44 On_Slaught wrote: Since the mods are clearly fine with this being a SC2 vs BW debate i'll throw something in.
I do think that SC2 has plenty skill ceiling potential to make it a great game for years to come. I don't think that it loses out in strategy in any way, save of the fact that the current metagame has so much 1base/allin play which is just shit to watch.
The real thing SC2 lacks compared to BW isn't strategy or the ability to micro at a high level, it's that it has horrible fucking units. Colossi, marauders, stalkers and roaches are fucking atrocious. Blizzard felt every race needed a dragoon so there you go. Then you go and remove every interesting and unique class from BW (lurker, reaver, arb, vessel, DA, defiler, etc). Almost every single interesting and fun unit in all of BW was removed for SC2 and replaced with, imo, categorically worse, less interesting and less dynamic units.
That is the real area where SC2 fails and the one area that has a chance to get majorly fixed with the uncoming expansions. Hopefully they remove multiple units and give us some new ones.
(I enjoy both games thoroughly but I do think many sc2 defenders in this type of debate are at a huge intellectual (can't think of a better word) disadvantage since many seem to have never played BW or never followed BW play for any serious amount of time whereas many BW players watch both)
The bolded portion is something even players who know nothing of BW complain about.
There are many things wrong with SC2, many. A lot of BW supporters think it's that it's easier--and they don't listen to any logic against that statement. But they're wrong.
Difficulty of execution does not make the executed action better.
However, there things wrong with SC2, such as the point you cited. The answer is not to bring back old units like Lurkers and Spidermines because that doesn't solve the actual problem--unit dynamics. What would the lurkers do in SC2? The terran would scan and one shot them with Maruaders. What would Shuttle/Reaver do against 9 range Vikings? Defiler? To do what? Smart casting on Siege tanks actually spreads out the AoE of splash so efficiently SC2 tanks had to have a massive damage nerf to them just to prevent anarchy.
It's not that SC2 is missing BW units, it's that the unit dynamics have not been fully figured out yet. We are still stuck trying to either replicate BW or follow the +damage modifiers to a T. Do you think the game designers thought Banelings would carpet bomb stalkers? That Phoenixes would be used to kill small packs of Hydralisks? Or that the Immortal would mainly be used for DPS and not as a tank?
The further away from the BW unit mentality SC2 gets, the better it will be for the SC2 metagame.
I agree and disagree.
Defilers, Lurkers, Reavers, etc all improve the game immensely in SC2, even just one of them. Lurker, Scourge, Defiler completely annihilates the Protoss Stalker Colossus deathball. However Lurkers and Defilers are slow, especially without defensive nydus, this allows Protoss to use harass tactics to counter that. There, deathball issue solved.
Also Zerg and Protoss don't have vikings, and Protoss and Zerg don't have marauders. Sure vikings would be OP against Prisms, but that doesn't mean I can't use Reavers against the other races.
I have been advocating for a long time that unit design is horrible in SC2. BW had well designed units, sure the players made the situation even better, but template in which BW was designed was much more disciplined than SC2.
And what I'm saying is that those units you're talking about are only good because of how they interacted with the other units around them. Dark Swarm was only so good because Terran armies were so dependent on having range units. Scourge and Reavers were good because they were high burst dps units in a game with overall low DPS compared to a lot of more modern games.
TLDR those units were good in BW because of the units they had to deal with, not because they are inherently good. What Blizzard needs to do is not design their units with such specific parameters. Marauders, Roaches and even Stalkers would murder Lurkers. Not because Lurkers suck--but because Lurkers did not have to deal with cheap high DPS vs armor units from Terran. Lurkers never had to fight a dragoon that could outmanuever a Zergling, etc...
Fix the interaction, that's all.
And my point is I've tried these units in SC2, have you?
Your version of SC2 has Defilers and Lurkers? Does Blizzard know? Or did you make custom maps and played it with your friends?
On July 15 2011 19:46 Loodah wrote: This article is a farce, unlike the competition in SC2. The mechanics are easier because the fat was cut out. Artificially inflating difficulty doesn't make the game better. Who in the world WANTS that artificially inflated difficulty?
Look, you just don't understand. This has nothing to do with if you like SC BW over SC2 or if SC2 can go back to a SC BW interface. Regardless, the problem remains.
It is a real problem for the RTS genre to make a game have a high skill curve (not ceiling because a ceiling will never be reached even in an extremely easy RTS) based primarily on decision making. Execution used to be the main gameplay element of all games in the past. It used to be the main idea behind the RTS genre when it was designed.
Execution is what made SC BW difficult and what made SC BW esports possible and special. If you judge 'struggling with the interface', or whatever you want to call it in straw man terms, bad for modern RTS games, the problem remains. One can't make a game with an interface like SC BW for the casual market. Fine. But then you need to solve a problem. And that is a big problem to solve indeed. You need to invent a new style of RTS. You need to invent a third path or third dimension to the game that makes it more difficult. You can't decide to make SC2 more difficult decision making wise. That is just because of the 'shallow' nature of decision making. Decision making is always a meta-layer on top of the core gameplay. And RTS core gameplay is always execution because that is what you interact with. SC2 was made easier mechanically. You can't compensate this by making it more difficult decision making wise. People who argued that 'more free time to do stuff means good players will be better' made a fallacy that was recognized to be a fallacy back in 2008 and we don't really need to discuss it any more. The problem remains the effect making the game easier has on the skill spectrum of all the players. It has narrowed by definition. I think I can say chess had a wider skill spectrum than SC BW. Ideally SC2 would have a larger spectrum of skill compared to SC BW. A game that has a larger spectrum of skill is better at testing player skills and by definition is thus better at what competitive games are supposed to do. Back then it was before Flash exploded with his crazy win percentage and the win percentages of the best SC BW players wasn't very high at like 62%. Compare that with chess or go. It's not good. A game needs to have a Kasparov or a Flash because that shows the game is successful at testing skills even at the highest level. That is what makes the game impressive and meaningful.
Any game is artificial. So when you say a game is made artificially more difficult, what does that mean? SC2 was artificially made easier. Also, why do you fall for the trick of the SC2 maco mechanics? They just added more mundane arbitrary tasks with that but dodging any critique on the interface not being powerful enough. Starcraft when released was actually criticized for it's interface. Single player was praised and multiplayer was questioned.
A game is a deliberately designed system that tests skills. People new to competitive RTS can't accept modern games test skills the way SC BW did. Fine. But accept the consequences. Don't be in denial. SC2 removed the main skills that were tested in SC BW but they added none. Again, in decision making, you can accidentally make the right decision. You can't accidentally have really really good multitasking. You can't have near perfect macro because you misclick. You can make a game winning decision to attack right now when given the information you have attacking would be wrong. It's like how in poker you can bluff a bad player, hoping he thinks you have a straight or a flush when your opponent doesn't even notice the board allows for both a straight and a flush. Instead of calling because he thinks you are bluffing he will call because he thinks his hand is good. A winning mistake. This happens in purely decision making games.
SC2 is a 1 vs 1 game. Team games can always depend on teamwork and don't need solid gameplay mechanics that test skill. Making a 1vs1 game that tests skills in a serious and rigorous manner is not easy.
In chess you can accidentally open up the right column. But it won't do you any good. If you are bad you won't see a 3 move deep combination and lose. This is why a decision making based RTS will always have a lot of variability and deviation. When people get really good and get reasonably near the skill ceiling, games will always be close to 50/50.
SC2 isn't a pure decision making RTS. But it was predicted before beta started that a purely decision making RTS would be bad for esports for the exact reasons given in this article. The fact this was predicted is powerful. It was predicted SC2 would be mechanically easier. This was correct. It was predicted how this would affect competition. This was correct. This is a deep understanding and a very powerful sign. The fact that predictions turned out true proves the theory is sound, just like in science.
Another thing you need to understand is people who like SC BW like SC BW for the reasons you dislike it. People who dislike SC2 dislike it for the reasons you like it. They aren't wrong. Personally I find such a decision making RTS really boring. To me there is no challenge when the mechanics part is so much easier. I like an RTS where I can out-execute my opponent and where I get out-executed by my opponents. I got so many boring annoying wins in SC2 late beta. Every game I played was about how much drones to make and when to switch to units. That was the only skill the game tested from me. I would either lose because they attacked when I didn't have enough units or I would autowin because they let me macro. Never was it a mechanics vs mechanics challenge. Never when I didn't have the right drone timing I could still win through execution. And when I had enough macro going, which was absurdly easy, there was no mechanical challenge either.
It's fine you don't care about esports or don't care that a number of top players, who compared to SC BW don't really have to practice, all go 50/50 against each other. But that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. People were fine with how WC3 esports turned out. But we in the SC BW esports didn't like it and people like Grrr... quit because of the larger statistical deviance in WC3.
In a 'perfect' game the better player will win 100% of the times. In a perfect game if you have a best of 101 games then it will always be 51-0 or 50-51. Any other result is not possible. Either the players are equally good and the result is 50-51 or the game is 51-0 because the lesser player loses every time. Every time when the result is anything else, this is because of luck or randomness allowing the lesser player to steal a game. SC BW is not a perfect game. But SC2 by making execution so much more of a level playing field made it worse. We wanted SC2 to be better than SC BW. We didn't care about new graphics. We wanted a game designed with esports in mind. SC BW wasn't designed with esports in mind and a bit of a fluke. SC BW was balanced by maps and personally I think cloaked units and spells like dark swarm were bad for gameplay. Also, I didn't really like the way SC BW was balanced. I see people criticize SC2 for what I think SC BW has plenty of. For example large swings on what race has the edge based on tech level/stage of the game.
Blizzard wanted to make a casual game. They didn't want to make a niche game. They also didn't want to have a competitive game mode for the SC BW niche. They also didn't understand the fundamentals of competitive SC BW RTS. SC2 is the result. Right now it is big. But there will be newer games out soon that can compete with SC2. There are already tournaments that drop SC2 for LoL because apparently LoL is bigger. There is going to be newer RTS games developed. Those will have superior graphics, more powerful interfaces and have more mass appeal. I hear DoW3 is being developed. SC2 is not special like SC BW was.
So my conclusion is that an RTS either has to have high execution demands or find a third path that can legitimately replace execution and work alongside decision making. If you know of a third path, your idea may be worth hundreds of thousands or euro. But no SC2 defender accepts it is a problem that they or Blizzard don't know about this third path and that this can be an issue for those who care about hardcore competition..
On July 15 2011 19:46 Loodah wrote: This article is a farce, unlike the competition in SC2. The mechanics are easier because the fat was cut out. Artificially inflating difficulty doesn't make the game better. Who in the world WANTS that artificially inflated difficulty?
Look, you just don't understand. This has nothing to do with if you like SC BW over SC2 or if SC2 can go back to a SC BW interface. Regardless, the problem remains.
It is a real problem for the RTS genre to make a game have a high skill curve (not ceiling because a ceiling will never be reached even in an extremely easy RTS) based primarily on decision making. Execution used to be the main gameplay element of all games in the past. It used to be the main idea behind the RTS genre when it was designed.
Execution in SC2 isn't anywhere near where it could be. We still see players way below the optimal execution, even the best around can achieve so much more. To me there's really no problem when execution and micro/macro isn't stellar even for the best players in the world.
On July 15 2011 20:43 Suisen wrote: Execution is what made SC BW difficult and what made SC BW esports possible and special. If you judge 'struggling with the interface', or whatever you want to call it in straw man terms, bad for modern RTS games, the problem remains. One can't make a game with an interface like SC BW for the casual market. Fine. But then you need to solve a problem. And that is a big problem to solve indeed. You need to invent a new style of RTS. You need to invent a third path or third dimension to the game that makes it more difficult. You can't decide to make SC2 more difficult decision making wise. That is just because of the 'shallow' nature of decision making. Decision making is always a meta-layer on top of the core gameplay. And RTS core gameplay is always execution because that is what you interact with. SC2 was made easier mechanically. You can't compensate this by making it more difficult decision making wise. People who argued that 'more free time to do stuff means good players will be better' made a fallacy that was recognized to be a fallacy back in 2008 and we don't really need to discuss it any more. The problem remains the effect making the game easier has on the skill spectrum of all the players. It has narrowed by definition. I think I can say chess had a wider skill spectrum than SC BW. Ideally SC2 would have a larger spectrum of skill compared to SC BW. A game that has a larger spectrum of skill is better at testing player skills and by definition is thus better at what competitive games are supposed to do. Back then it was before Flash exploded with his crazy win percentage and the win percentages of the best SC BW players wasn't very high at like 62%. Compare that with chess or go. It's not good. A game needs to have a Kasparov or a Flash because that shows the game is successful at testing skills even at the highest level. That is what makes the game impressive and meaningful.
Again just because SC2 mechanics are easier doesn't mean players are anywhere close to the optimum atm. Improvements are seen month by month since release. We've already seen a few players stand out of the crowd even with the balance changes and new builds/mindgames that change rapidly. Some slack of like MVP yet players like MC, Nestea and MKP have done good in every tournament so far. They are nowhere near as stellar in their play as Flash/Jaedong and will improve OR be bypassed by newer better players.
On July 15 2011 20:43 Suisen wrote: Any game is artificial. So when you say a game is made artificially more difficult, what does that mean? SC2 was artificially made easier. Also, why do you fall for the trick of the SC2 maco mechanics? They just added more mundane arbitrary tasks with that but dodging any critique on the interface not being powerful enough. Starcraft when released was actually criticized for it's interface. Single player was praised and multiplayer was questioned.
Many feel it's artificially increased as players fight the bad AI to do good. I'm not impressed by a game where part of the appeal is that the game pathing/AI is bad and needs to be minutely controlled to to well.
On July 15 2011 20:43 Suisen wrote: A game is a deliberately designed system that tests skills. People new to competitive RTS can't accept modern games test skills the way SC BW did. Fine. But accept the consequences. Don't be in denial. SC2 removed the main skills that were tested in SC BW but they added none. Again, in decision making, you can accidentally make the right decision. You can't accidentally have really really good multitasking. You can't have near perfect macro because you misclick. You can make a game winning decision to attack right now when given the information you have attacking would be wrong. It's like how in poker you can bluff a bad player, hoping he thinks you have a straight or a flush when your opponent doesn't even notice the board allows for both a straight and a flush. Instead of calling because he thinks you are bluffing he will call because he thinks his hand is good. A winning mistake. This happens in purely decision making games.
Great multitasking sets SC2 players apart too, just like in BW. Saying that people just attack and win based on that can be silly but as the game progresses we will probably see more cautious play and better defensive play due to people having more experience and playing better overall, as we've already seen in the last 6 months.
On July 15 2011 20:43 Suisen wrote: SC2 is a 1 vs 1 game. Team games can always depend on teamwork and don't need solid gameplay mechanics that test skill. Making a 1vs1 game that tests skills in a serious and rigorous manner is not easy.
In chess you can accidentally open up the right column. But it won't do you any good. If you are bad you won't see a 3 move deep combination and lose. This is why a decision making based RTS will always have a lot of variability and deviation. When people get really good and get reasonably near the skill ceiling, games will always be close to 50/50.
SC2 isn't a pure decision making RTS. But it was predicted before beta started that a purely decision making RTS would be bad for esports for the exact reasons given in this article. The fact this was predicted is powerful. It was predicted SC2 would be mechanically easier. This was correct. It was predicted how this would affect competition. This was correct. This is a deep understanding and a very powerful sign. The fact that predictions turned out true proves the theory is sound, just like in science.
How can you say that with a straight face? Did older games have dominant players so early into the game? You compare your predictions to science yet you have no statistical analysis or anything beside a subjective opinion on why we have several different big tournament winners. Your analysis is more like the total opposite of science. We start to see layers of player skill now, to me it's way to early to tell if players lose due to the cieling being hit or if it's just new builds and the ever shifting metagame messing with peoples approach to the different matchups.
On July 15 2011 20:43 Suisen wrote: Another thing you need to understand is people who like SC BW like SC BW for the reasons you dislike it. People who dislike SC2 dislike it for the reasons you like it. They aren't wrong. Personally I find such a decision making RTS really boring. To me there is no challenge when the mechanics part is so much easier. I like an RTS where I can out-execute my opponent and where I get out-executed by my opponents. I got so many boring annoying wins in SC2 late beta. Every game I played was about how much drones to make and when to switch to units. That was the only skill the game tested from me. I would either lose because they attacked when I didn't have enough units or I would autowin because they let me macro. Never was it a mechanics vs mechanics challenge. Never when I didn't have the right drone timing I could still win through execution. And when I had enough macro going, which was absurdly easy, there was no mechanical challenge either.
It's fine you don't care about esports or don't care that a number of top players, who compared to SC BW don't really have to practice, all go 50/50 against each other. But that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. People were fine with how WC3 esports turned out. But we in the SC BW esports didn't like it and people like Grrr... quit because of the larger statistical deviance in WC3.
You talk about your beta experience as pure decision making yet i see lots of TvZ and PvZ where execution makes a huge difference in games. To me your play sounds kinda bad as a great player should be able to scout, keep safe from attack AND go for the mid/late game. You say you either lost directly to a attack or won the macrogame. Maybe it was like that in beta but it sure isn't like that in competitive play now.
On July 15 2011 20:43 Suisen wrote: Blizzard wanted to make a casual game. They didn't want to make a niche game. They also didn't want to have a competitive game mode for the SC BW niche. They also didn't understand the fundamentals of competitive SC BW RTS. SC2 is the result. Right now it is big. But there will be newer games out soon that can compete with SC2. There are already tournaments that drop SC2 for LoL because apparently LoL is bigger. There is going to be newer RTS games developed. Those will have superior graphics, more powerful interfaces and have more mass appeal. I hear DoW3 is being developed. SC2 is not special like SC BW was.
I don't agree with any of this and BW was special in one country only. I've worked as a video game store manager and have more or less never heard of anyone interested in competitive BW as it was a small niche thing outside of one single country on earth.
On July 15 2011 20:43 Suisen wrote: So my conclusion is that an RTS either has to have high execution demands or find a third path that can legitimately replace execution and work alongside decision making. If you know of a third path, your idea may be worth hundreds of thousands or euro. But no SC2 defender accepts it is a problem that they or Blizzard don't know about this third path and that this can be an issue for those who care about hardcore competition..
And i have no problem with how SC2 works now. If there's no way to separate the best from the good players i hope blizzard introduces new and more exciting things to separate these players.
I have to agree full heartedly, it is not the players it’s the game, sure the players can and will improve, but there skill cap is so much lower than sc/bw that so many other factors will play a larger role, stuff like who have a good day, how you prepare mentally and even luck will have a much larger roll, this will lead to a lot of different people winning tournaments, as a sport I can see how this might be annoying that you can’t improve to the brink where you can crush your opponents almost every single time, but as a spectator it makes it a bit more interesting you will see more upsets and there will be more “stories” that will make it more interesting for the media coverage which will help to improve sc2 as a spectator sport , if more people have a chance to win more sponsores would want to get involved as well if only the same 4 players could win there would be less willingness to invest in other players as well so this will spread the sponsorships as well so I don’t mind in that regards, all through I would love blizzard to add just a bid more of a macro mechanic in one of the 2 coming expansions that would make the difference just a little bigger than it is now.
Suisen - I would be willing to put 1,000 dollars on the line that SC2 will be the biggest competitive RTS in North America for QUITE a while, probably 3 more years AT LEAST. Do you know why people think LoL is bigger? Because more people play it first of all - and also because it's free... Their community is fantastic - and it's also not an RTS.... So I'm not sure why you brought it up.
Statements like "Sc2 isn't special like broodwar was" basically just screams "I want my childhood back." Toy story 3 isn't special like the original. See how childish that sounds? It's just a silly statement.
I don't see how you can argue with the consistency of the top players so far in sc2. MC has won 2 gsl championships, Nestea 3, IMMVP 2 - How is there not some level of consistency there? All three of these players have win percentages COMPARABLE OR BETTER THAN FLASH IN EVERY MATCHUP- think about that for a second. Think about it...
Let's also not forget one of many huge logical fallacies in your post - since you like to mention those in others (wrongly, too, which makes me question if you have basic knowledge of logical fallacies) - You say that foreigners weren't as good at BW as Koreans but now they are in SC2. First of all, that's not true - Koreans dominate everything they participate in, with the exception of two tournaments recently (Huk winning both, but Koreans still doing really really well across the board). Second of all, even if that was true, you can't discount the growing popularity of Starcraft 2 in North America. Many North American events allow more players to become dependent on SC2 for their earnings - it also means more sponsors are involved, and teams get more out of it - It's a great situation for everyone involved - The players get a whole lot better when their teams know they can provide for their players financially and send them to a variety of tournaments.
One final reason, if you can't see how ridiculous your statement was in the first place, is that the game is relatively new. Even if only Korean players can be the most talented players, we have a long way to go before the game is going to stabilize. There are two more expansions that need to come out... Strategies are changing weekly, and the ladder is always fresh with new builds and creative ideas.
This whole, "Blizzard only cares about the casual!" thing got old really really fast. Virtually every competitive game has a small (but vocal) crowd that makes this claim. It reminds me of WoW when players were complaining because they had raided 4-5 hours a day and now players who didn't do that had more access to gear. It's like computer programmers getting really angry about how it's so much more accessible now. It honestly doesn't make sense to me - SC2 is doing great things for E-sports and the foreign scene - regardless of what the obnoxious, vocal, minority of people say about how it can never be "Special" like BW. It's a different game - get over it. If you don't want to watch it, then don't. BW is still alive and kicking in Korea - watch that if you want. I like Broodwar, too. But PLEASE don't insult everyone who loves SC2 by saying it will never be as good as ________ (Insert any really old RTS here) - The game's been out for a year. The fact that people are even making posts like this makes me cringe, and I hope in a few years when SC2 is booming across the globe - that people look back on posts like this and not only laugh but realize how idiotic they are.
On July 15 2011 08:31 lorkac wrote: BW: macro was hard but the game forgives you for making mistakes.
SC2: Macro is easy but the game rewards perfect play.
I wonder which sounds more appealing?
The game isnt what forgives you... your good play after making one mistake is what forgives you.
What good play? If you're not only making mistakes, but playing tactics whose design is to counteract the mistakes you already knew you were going to make, then where is the good play?
"Since I know I'll mess up I'll make some lurkers just in case"
that's you're "good play after making one mistake"
Is it a bad thing that the game design and the map design of BW maps allows you the "Oh Shit!" button? No, of course not. It's called being a DIFFERENT game. BW players like feeling safe. SC2 players enjoy perfecting execution.
LOL i suggest you stop talking about BW since you obviously never played it or know nothing about the game at all. (for your own good, really)
I actually do watch BW. Sorry, but the fun part about watching BW games is not that the mechanics are hard but that the strategies are fun to watch. SlayersBoxer placing turrets in the middle of Lost Temple to help him maintain map awareness changed my life. Watching him blind a pack of Observers as Carriers filled the air with interceptors was kind of boring because visually it was just a bunch of medics tossing whatever at slightly faded orbs.
BW is immensely fun to watch. But trust me, it's not because their workers mine minerals.
Do not presume to speak for others regarding why they find BW fun to play and/or watch.
Personally, I love that the mechanics and macro is challenging in BW. It gives me "nerd-chills" when I think of that fact as I see hundreds of units streaming in and clashing against each other from all sides, and simply imagine the mental tenacity and raw speed involved which causes this highly pressurized situation where both parties need to perform to the utmost of their ability, or they will simply perish. It's a completely emergent fact that the players playing are insanely good; it is something anyone can see. When either insanely good player wins, it has nothing to do with luck or blind countering, and no one would disagree.
I think it's a common mistake to simply think of macro as "workers mining". Macro is about the masses of units which the superior economy allows for. This allows for greater strategical depth, more evolved positional combat and deeper tactical thinking than in the simple "follow this build order to the 9 minute mark" type games.
On July 15 2011 23:02 Loodah wrote: I don't see how you can argue with the consistency of the top players so far in sc2. MC has won 2 gsl championships, Nestea 3, IMMVP 2 - How is there not some level of consistency there? All three of these players have win percentages COMPARABLE OR BETTER THAN FLASH IN EVERY MATCHUP- think about that for a second. Think about it...
This argument is still completely wrong... You cannot compare Flash's stats and MC's, Nestea's and MVP's because there is load of factors to take into account such as the fact that Flash as way more games played and against a more competitive selection of players...
EPT
