On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not.
I'll elaborate a bit more on why this and the elephant article suck, by focusing on this part I quoted right here, where the author submits his admittedly opinionated form of proof.
The problem with it is it's ignorant. It lacks so much obvious context. Brood War, when it came out, wasn't treated as a serious e-sport of competition by the "foreign" scene right away. The Koreans embraced it as such, and it was a gradual process that "foreigners" caught on to the whole idea of pro-level Starcraft competition. A lot of foreigners, such as myself, played Brood War very casually without any knowledge of the Korean scene.
On the other hand, Starcraft 2 had a foreign e-sports following before the BETA was even released. Foreigners from all over were watching pro matches of the Beta, before the game even came out.
So with Brood War, Koreans had a massive headstart. With Starcraft 2, we've started on much more equal footing.
I don't see how anyone could even argue with. It's a very plain fact that Brood War and SC2 fans alike can acknowledge.
And yet the TC ignores this context completely, because it doesn't let him make his stupid and simplistic comparison between the two games.
And yet, despite the more equal footing that Starcraft 2 has given foreigners, foreigners are still greatly lagging behind the Koreans in every applicable tournament. NASL? MLG? IEM? FXO at the GSTL team league? Koreans are winning by gross margins, because they have a more regimented and disciplined approach to practice. So there is a skill-ceiling, and there is a skill-gap between the Koreans and foreigners. It isn't as big as it was in Brood War -- but rather than be a moron and assume that's just because of the game, try looking at the other possible reasons for that.
Thanks.
There's obviously a gap, as you said, but when players like Destiny (who streams for money and spends his time harassing a 17 y/o ddosing kid) can beat players like Bomber (pro that practices 10 hrs a day every day in a team house) in a Bo3, it's definitely the game's problem. As in the skill gap is not wide enough to distinguish between good and great players.
On July 16 2011 00:26 MidKnight wrote: Oh this thread is back again? At any case, SC2 is less mechanically demanding, that's a fact and anyone who played SC:BW should understand that immediately.. If that's a good or a bad thing is another discussion altogether.
It seems most of these SC2 elitists never played BW at all least semi-competitive level. That game is HARD, man. Between stupid AI and thus the requirement to constantly pay attention to your units in order for them to not bug out and be effective, smaller field of vision, 12-max control groups, smartcasting etc. etc., heck, even trying to get rid of a scouting worker requires a lot of attention, because the way AI works you ACTUALLY have to predict your opponents juking patterns and can't simply right-click with your lings and be done with it, the skill ceiling can't even be comparable. Talking from personal experience here.
Again, if that's a negative or a positive thing depends on the preferences, facts still remain facts
Using a sword is HARD compared to using a gun. Why do armies use guns when swords obviously show of skill?
I could understand arguments from a strategic standpoint, and how SC2 isn't there yet while BW has been evolving for much longer and is, therefore, currently the more strategic game. That I'd buy, though I wouldn't agree that it makes one better than the other, just that one has more metagame behind it. SC2 will evolve into that.
The idea that BW pros are inherently better than SC2 pros because they play with dumb AI is... absurd. Both players play with the same ideas, it's just harder for BW players to do because the game restricts them. Does that make them a better player? Mechanically, maybe. Strategically, it's the same damn thing.
Well, BW is so appealing because it combines both the physical aspect of being fast/multitasking AND immense strategic depth. It totally depends on what one thinks the direction RTS games should take. We don't want 100% strategy game like Chess, but also not something like, I don't know, running, which is 100% "mechanical". It's somewhere in between.
I think BW has that perfect balance in that regard.In SC2 units are not really microable, the fights are so generic, there's none of that epic feeling of two armies clashing. That's just the way I see it.
/shrug
Agree to disagree then. I just think that there are still very microable units. Marine splits are super hard to pull off perfectly, only the best pros can do it while only losing 2-3 Marines to Banelings. Snipe, Feedback and NP are hard to land on small units (QXC's sniping of individual Marines for a big lead, NP'ing a Ghost to EMP other Ghosts, etc). That type of Micro oriented game is quickly overtaking the "1a" style that was all the rage 5+ months ago. The AI being smarter just means that you don't *have* to micro the units for them to work well, not that you *can't* micro them for greater effect.
Plus, you can't tell me that MMA or PuMa style drops in 3 places at once while controlling an army doesn't require a certain amount of mechanical skill. Korean Terrans know what's up.
On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not.
I'll elaborate a bit more on why this and the elephant article suck, by focusing on this part I quoted right here, where the author submits his admittedly opinionated form of proof.
The problem with it is it's ignorant. It lacks so much obvious context. Brood War, when it came out, wasn't treated as a serious e-sport of competition by the "foreign" scene right away. The Koreans embraced it as such, and it was a gradual process that "foreigners" caught on to the whole idea of pro-level Starcraft competition. A lot of foreigners, such as myself, played Brood War very casually without any knowledge of the Korean scene.
On the other hand, Starcraft 2 had a foreign e-sports following before the BETA was even released. Foreigners from all over were watching pro matches of the Beta, before the game even came out.
So with Brood War, Koreans had a massive headstart. With Starcraft 2, we've started on much more equal footing.
I don't see how anyone could even argue with. It's a very plain fact that Brood War and SC2 fans alike can acknowledge.
And yet the TC ignores this context completely, because it doesn't let him make his stupid and simplistic comparison between the two games.
And yet, despite the more equal footing that Starcraft 2 has given foreigners, foreigners are still greatly lagging behind the Koreans in every applicable tournament. NASL? MLG? IEM? FXO at the GSTL team league? Koreans are winning by gross margins, because they have a more regimented and disciplined approach to practice. So there is a skill-ceiling, and there is a skill-gap between the Koreans and foreigners. It isn't as big as it was in Brood War -- but rather than be a moron and assume that's just because of the game, try looking at the other possible reasons for that.
Thanks.
There's obviously a gap, as you said, but when players like Destiny (who streams for money and spends his time harassing a 17 y/o ddosing kid) can beat players like Bomber (pro that practices 10 hrs a day every day in a team house) in a Bo3, it's definitely the game's problem. As in the skill gap is not wide enough to distinguish between good and great players.
Bad example, really. Destiny is actually a pretty darn good player. The fact that he streams for money means that he's playing full time, just like the other high-level players. He's got a really interesting Infestor and Zergling into Ultralisk style that not many people are using and, therefore, don't really have a way to counter quite yet.
Besides, he made it into Grandmasters despite not being a cheeser or DDOS'er. That takes no small amount of skill, so it's a bit silly to just write him off because of his attitude.
We may have had 12 years to learn broodwar but we've had 1 year to learn Starcraft 2. You act like perfect macro/micro etc. is so easy now. In fact not even NaDa/MC/Nestea/etc. have mastered the mechanics of starcraft 2 and all three of those players have played broodwar at pro levels (NaDa at a god level).So what is my point yet? In Broodwar the highest skill levels STILL haven't been accomplished, even JD, Bisu, and Flash aren't perfect players (but damn close if I do say so myself). Give Starcraft 2 a chance dude, I mean if you compare GSL 1 to GSL July you can see an immense difference in fact people thought that the only thing to Starcraft 2 was cheesing early on. The game hasn't even been completely balanced! The game needs to be a complete product to be developed completely by the professionals. ANd we still have 2 more expansions and a ton more patches. But I can tell tha Starcraft2 might have more potential in what you can do.
To be honest, none of the BW micro looks impressive unless you remind yourself that the AI bugs the units. So it isn't that you're controlling the unit, you're simply stopping it from doing nothing. Which actually means that it's not really micro but just compensation. Maybe there's a reason that Boxer, Savior and Flash dominated the most convincingly without having the best mechanics.
The SC2 micro tricks *looks* impressive so even if you've never touched an electronic device in your life you see how different the unit moves, how much faster and kinetic it looks once a player starts abusing them.
Watching a vulture and dragoon fight is boring unless you remind yourself that it took 200apm to get the vulture to shoot like that. Then you tell your friends that Koreans spent several hours a day for months to get that unit to shoot twice and run away. Then they look at yo and say "that sounds like a waste of time, doesn't it just shoot and then you tell it to run away?"
It's like baseball vs football (American). Baseball looks boring unless you tell yourself that what they're doing is hard. Football looks kinetic so even if you don't know the subtelties you could still see the big guys ram each other.
And that's just talking about the aesthetics of micro between BW and SC2. The fact that SC2 is more punishing means that micro in SC2 is even more essential than it is in BW.
On July 16 2011 08:35 lorkac wrote: To be honest, none of the BW micro looks impressive unless you remind yourself that the AI bugs the units. So it isn't that you're controlling the unit, you're simply stopping it from doing nothing. Which actually means that it's not really micro but just compensation. Maybe there's a reason that Boxer, Savior and Flash dominated the most convincingly without having the best mechanics.
The SC2 micro tricks *looks* impressive so even if you've never touched an electronic device in your life you see how different the unit moves, how much faster and kinetic it looks once a player starts abusing them.
Watching a vulture and dragoon fight is boring unless you remind yourself that it took 200apm to get the vulture to shoot like that. Then you tell your friends that Koreans spent several hours a day for months to get that unit to shoot twice and run away. Then they look at yo and say "that sounds like a waste of time, doesn't it just shoot and then you tell it to run away?"
It's like baseball vs football (American). Baseball looks boring unless you tell yourself that what they're doing is hard. Football looks kinetic so even if you don't know the subtelties you could still see the big guys ram each other.
And that's just talking about the aesthetics of micro between BW and SC2. The fact that SC2 is more punishing means that micro in SC2 is even more essential than it is in BW.
Oh really?
The good ol BoxeR vs YellOw (at least it is impressive for some people, quite a lot actually)
You can't really say that SC:BW has a higher skill ceiling than SC2, because no one has reached the skill ceiling in either yet. The idea presented by the OP that says that the higher skill floor required makes SC:BW better or whatever only is a byproduct of the fact that SC2 is still a new game :/
As time goes on the differentiation between pros and the common player will grow tremendously.
On July 13 2011 14:25 Primadog wrote: This article is terrible.
It is terrible because it consists entirely of conjectures and false analogies with no evidence or data to back it up. The central premise: that the skill ceiling is low, completely counters all existing tournament results everywhere. The one "evidence" you point to, that foreigners are beating koreans (on rare occasions), relies on a false pretext that all koreans necessarily are better than all foreigners.
Elephant was bad, but this was infinitely worse. There are plenty of resources available if you know or bother to look to which to back your assertions, but no effort were made. Shame on you.
On July 16 2011 08:35 lorkac wrote: To be honest, none of the BW micro looks impressive unless you remind yourself that the AI bugs the units.
Not really. Perhaps to yourself, with hindsight, but there's a reason the game was getting 100,000+ live crowds at one point. At least a big part of why that happened was because people were impressed by the players control of the units (ignoring the other confluence of factors that worked in the game's favor).. not the lack of MBS (lol).
So it isn't that you're controlling the unit, you're simply stopping it from doing nothing. Which actually means that it's not really micro but just compensation.
Thats what Micro is.. Its using your mechanics/spare actions to make your units more effective than they would be if you just a-moved them.
Maybe there's a reason that Boxer, Savior and Flash dominated the most convincingly without having the best mechanics.
Those reasons are things like game sense, innovative strategy, etc. Not sure exactly what your trying to imply.. thats probably for the best though.
On July 16 2011 08:35 lorkac wrote: To be honest, none of the BW micro looks impressive unless you remind yourself that the AI bugs the units. So it isn't that you're controlling the unit, you're simply stopping it from doing nothing. Which actually means that it's not really micro but just compensation. Maybe there's a reason that Boxer, Savior and Flash dominated the most convincingly without having the best mechanics.
The SC2 micro tricks *looks* impressive so even if you've never touched an electronic device in your life you see how different the unit moves, how much faster and kinetic it looks once a player starts abusing them.
Watching a vulture and dragoon fight is boring unless you remind yourself that it took 200apm to get the vulture to shoot like that. Then you tell your friends that Koreans spent several hours a day for months to get that unit to shoot twice and run away. Then they look at yo and say "that sounds like a waste of time, doesn't it just shoot and then you tell it to run away?"
It's like baseball vs football (American). Baseball looks boring unless you tell yourself that what they're doing is hard. Football looks kinetic so even if you don't know the subtelties you could still see the big guys ram each other.
And that's just talking about the aesthetics of micro between BW and SC2. The fact that SC2 is more punishing means that micro in SC2 is even more essential than it is in BW.
Oh wow. I can't believe you mean this serious, your ignorance hurts.
I'm sorry, but most of the BW micro looks more impressive, even if you don't know how hard it is to pull off. There are 2 micro situations where it's visually visible that it's not easy to pull off in Sc2. Blink Micro and Infantry splitting. I can't think of any other micro "tricks", i'm sorry.
On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not.
I'll elaborate a bit more on why this and the elephant article suck, by focusing on this part I quoted right here, where the author submits his admittedly opinionated form of proof.
The problem with it is it's ignorant. It lacks so much obvious context. Brood War, when it came out, wasn't treated as a serious e-sport of competition by the "foreign" scene right away. The Koreans embraced it as such, and it was a gradual process that "foreigners" caught on to the whole idea of pro-level Starcraft competition. A lot of foreigners, such as myself, played Brood War very casually without any knowledge of the Korean scene.
On the other hand, Starcraft 2 had a foreign e-sports following before the BETA was even released. Foreigners from all over were watching pro matches of the Beta, before the game even came out.
So with Brood War, Koreans had a massive headstart. With Starcraft 2, we've started on much more equal footing.
I don't see how anyone could even argue with. It's a very plain fact that Brood War and SC2 fans alike can acknowledge.
And yet the TC ignores this context completely, because it doesn't let him make his stupid and simplistic comparison between the two games.
And yet, despite the more equal footing that Starcraft 2 has given foreigners, foreigners are still greatly lagging behind the Koreans in every applicable tournament. NASL? MLG? IEM? FXO at the GSTL team league? Koreans are winning by gross margins, because they have a more regimented and disciplined approach to practice. So there is a skill-ceiling, and there is a skill-gap between the Koreans and foreigners. It isn't as big as it was in Brood War -- but rather than be a moron and assume that's just because of the game, try looking at the other possible reasons for that.
Thanks.
There's obviously a gap, as you said, but when players like Destiny (who streams for money and spends his time harassing a 17 y/o ddosing kid) can beat players like Bomber (pro that practices 10 hrs a day every day in a team house) in a Bo3, it's definitely the game's problem. As in the skill gap is not wide enough to distinguish between good and great players.
Wow, I can't believe you actually pulled this example up.
Destiny is actually a ridiculously good player, he uses builds that Koreans aren't used to; And his actually intellectually smart, know what to expect, what'll work, what to transition into and how fast he should do it, he is a good player because his smart, and he streams like.. what, 8 hours a day? Most of that is 1v1, and the rest is just mucking around.
I'm not saying Bomber is bad - but when you encounter a build for the first time, you don't know what to expect. It helped Destiny a lot in this case because I don't think Infestors are used that much in ZvT on the KR ladder, let alone pro games. Destiny caught Bomber with his pants down, and was able to win just by Bombers lack of experience with the build.
Both players are good - but Destiny won because of his harassment, and transitions, all of which caught Bomber off-guard giving him the win. I don't see how this is an auto-win for Bomber, despite Destiny not being as good as Bomber in peoples minds. I could understand if you were comparing a pro player losing to some random diamond player but this wasn't the case. Destiny is a pro, despite what you may think. It's hardly the games fault.
Okay, let me start this post by stating I never played BW.
From my current understanding, the "Mechanics" that you need in brood war were the ability to overcome crappy AI such as workers and keep good macro with limited hotkey setups and a limited number of units you can select. While that does make it harder does it really make it better? -.-
I see that as pointless difficulty that doesn't add anything to the game. Simplifying things by making the UI easier is a good thing, as long as it's not doing things for you, like being able to select more than 12 units.
On July 13 2011 14:25 Primadog wrote: This article is terrible.
It is terrible because it consists entirely of conjectures and false analogies with no evidence or data to back it up. The central premise: that the skill ceiling is low, completely counters all existing tournament results everywhere. The one "evidence" you point to, that foreigners are beating koreans (on rare occasions), relies on a false pretext that all koreans necessarily are better than all foreigners.
Elephant was bad, but this was infinitely worse. There are plenty of resources available if you know or bother to look to which to back your assertions, but no effort were made. Shame on you.
On July 13 2011 14:08 aimless wrote: Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not.
I'll elaborate a bit more on why this and the elephant article suck, by focusing on this part I quoted right here, where the author submits his admittedly opinionated form of proof.
The problem with it is it's ignorant. It lacks so much obvious context. Brood War, when it came out, wasn't treated as a serious e-sport of competition by the "foreign" scene right away. The Koreans embraced it as such, and it was a gradual process that "foreigners" caught on to the whole idea of pro-level Starcraft competition. A lot of foreigners, such as myself, played Brood War very casually without any knowledge of the Korean scene.
On the other hand, Starcraft 2 had a foreign e-sports following before the BETA was even released. Foreigners from all over were watching pro matches of the Beta, before the game even came out.
So with Brood War, Koreans had a massive headstart. With Starcraft 2, we've started on much more equal footing.
I don't see how anyone could even argue with. It's a very plain fact that Brood War and SC2 fans alike can acknowledge.
And yet the TC ignores this context completely, because it doesn't let him make his stupid and simplistic comparison between the two games.
And yet, despite the more equal footing that Starcraft 2 has given foreigners, foreigners are still greatly lagging behind the Koreans in every applicable tournament. NASL? MLG? IEM? FXO at the GSTL team league? Koreans are winning by gross margins, because they have a more regimented and disciplined approach to practice. So there is a skill-ceiling, and there is a skill-gap between the Koreans and foreigners. It isn't as big as it was in Brood War -- but rather than be a moron and assume that's just because of the game, try looking at the other possible reasons for that.
Thanks.
There's obviously a gap, as you said, but when players like Destiny (who streams for money and spends his time harassing a 17 y/o ddosing kid) can beat players like Bomber (pro that practices 10 hrs a day every day in a team house) in a Bo3, it's definitely the game's problem. As in the skill gap is not wide enough to distinguish between good and great players.
Wow, I can't believe you actually pulled this example up.
Destiny is actually a ridiculously good player, he uses builds that Koreans aren't used to; And his actually intellectually smart, know what to expect, what'll work, what to transition into and how fast he should do it, he is a good player because his smart, and he streams like.. what, 8 hours a day? Most of that is 1v1, and the rest is just mucking around.
I'm not saying Bomber is bad - but when you encounter a build for the first time, you don't know what to expect. It helped Destiny a lot in this case because I don't think Infestors are used that much in ZvT on the KR ladder, let alone pro games. Destiny caught Bomber with his pants down, and was able to win just by Bombers lack of experience with the build.
Both players are good - but Destiny won because of his harassment, and transitions, all of which caught Bomber off-guard giving him the win. I don't see how this is an auto-win for Bomber, despite Destiny not being as good as Bomber in peoples minds. I could understand if you were comparing a pro player losing to some random diamond player but this wasn't the case. Destiny is a pro, despite what you may think. It's hardly the games fault.
Yes, Destiny streams NA ladder games 8 hours a day and /commercials for income, while Bomber lives and breathes Starcraft for 8-10 hours every day and practices, talks to, and discusses strategy with 10 other housemates for no salary, who are also in the same situation as himself. That's a huge difference.
It's ridiculous that players can even take games off people that put in that much efficient practice. That's just my opinion. I still like to watch both BW and SC2 though, but we can agree to disagree here.
@elefanto forcefields, stutterstep, blanket storms, emps, baneling splits, hellion harass, marauder kiting, stalker kiting, Phoenix harass, voidray charge up tricks, burrow micro, multipronged drops, baneling carpet bombs, the slow expansion of creep, banshee kiting, reaper harass (jumping up and down cliffs), etc....
They are all bright, shiny and have lots of graphics to make visible what's going on. Even your grandmother could see that something is happening.
And none of this is even counting weird trick plays like neural parasite a ghost to emp the other ghosts, archon toilet (nerfed, I know), forcefield donut, etc...
The lights are brighter and there are more of them. Literally more visible.
On July 16 2011 09:29 lorkac wrote: @elefanto forcefields, stutterstep, blanket storms, emps, baneling splits, hellion harass, marauder kiting, stalker kiting, Phoenix harass, voidray charge up tricks, burrow micro, multipronged drops, baneling carpet bombs, the slow expansion of creep, banshee kiting, reaper harass (jumping up and down cliffs), etc....
They are all bright, shiny and have lots of graphics to make visible what's going on. Even your grandmother could see that something is happening.
And none of this is even counting weird trick plays like neural parasite a ghost to emp the other ghosts, archon toilet (nerfed, I know), forcefield donut, etc...
The lights are brighter and there are more of them. Literally more visible.
I think you're grasping at straws when you're listing units intended purposes as "micro tricks".
Micro exists in both games, whether you think something is more visually appealing is an opinion, and people will always see it differently.
With blizzard adding expansions game will be extermly volatile, however, after expansions are set(1/3), we probably get also slower patches and so on, which leads to game being less volatile ofcourse. This is the time I belive where we can start making final judgements of SC2 being way too easy to master, or something like that.
It's still fun to speculate little details of future. ^^
On July 16 2011 09:20 AustinCM wrote: Okay, let me start this post by stating I never played BW.
From my current understanding, the "Mechanics" that you need in brood war were the ability to overcome crappy AI such as workers and keep good macro with limited hotkey setups and a limited number of units you can select. While that does make it harder does it really make it better? -.-
I see that as pointless difficulty that doesn't add anything to the game. Simplifying things by making the UI easier is a good thing, as long as it's not doing things for you, like being able to select more than 12 units.
EPT
