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BW: 80/20 micro vs strategy as previously stated
SC2: 20/80 micro vs strategy not 50/50 as previously stated
This is very good from a business standpoint as the barrier for entry into the game is much lower. People see themselves improving and are more likely to play without getting as discouraged. It's significantly easier to be decent at the game but the cost is a lowered ceiling.
Also, it makes it much easier for a worse player to beat a better player - this rarely happened in BW. This may be good or bad depending on how you look at it. People love to "root for the underdog" etc. etc. I prefer to see the better player win.
Probably the best thing to come out of SC2, is a growing western scene like the OP said. Unfortunately, the reasons for this probably also have to do with what the OP stated.
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On October 26 2011 09:56 opisska wrote:
The general success of SC2 is given by the fact, that it is simpler to play on a reasonable (whatever that means for you) level than BW.
If BW was as easy to play as SC2, which would you play?
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Browder kinda addressed this in his interview with Kennigit; BW is THE standard for RTS games so comparisons between to the two are inevitable no matter what comes out of the Blizzard design team.
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On October 26 2011 10:59 Zamkis wrote:
Why you would want the sequel to one of the greatest game of all time NOT have most of its best features is beyond me. BW was amazing, and trying to keep what made it so good should be a priority. The questions were right on spot. Bring back the Starcraft in Starcraft 2.
If SC2 was a BW remake with just better graphics/UI would you be happy? If not then the question of what changes becomes one of degree. There are a lot of similarities between these games people just focus on the differences.
On October 26 2011 10:59 The Void wrote:
try it this way:
if you have a great race-game with great physics...
would you ruin the physics in his successor just to have a different game?
Because the great physics was a mistake. Remember Blizzard is trying to sell a game in 2010/11 not 1998. You may argue that microing individual dragoons is exciting to watch but if a newbie didn't know what was going on, they may disagree. They are also unlikely to get engaged in the game.
no problem with copying things from bw if they were great.
there is no need to invent a totally new game. if you want new units no problem but they must work at some point in time. i like that they are testing but they shouldnt lose the track.
for exsample the cliff mechanics are still a bit broken in sc2. if they would change it in the way it was in bw this would actually ADD more tactical deepness. this is a case where they made something different for no reason and its bad... so..
As mentioned above, the question becomes what do you keep and what do you leave out. Your argument about cliff-mechanics is that they are broken. Well is that because of the way cliffs work, or because of the units, or because of the way players are using units around cliffs? It is not an easy question to answer.
On October 26 2011 11:01 BrosephBrostar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 09:56 opisska wrote:
But here comes my question: what is the point of recreating something, even if it was good? BW is still a perfectly working piece of software, with servers to play on and a large playerbase. What is the point of having another game very similar to it, when we already do have BW? Because BW has basically been thrown under a bus and a lot of BW fans feel the only possibility of seeing more BW is by having SC2 become BW++.
I don't understand this. How exactly has BW been thrown under a bus? It is not like Blizzard was doing much for it before? I would argue that SC2 has done a lot to raise awareness of BW.
Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 09:56 opisska wrote:
The general success of SC2 is given by the fact, that it is simpler to play on a reasonable (whatever that means for you) level than BW. Thanks to this fact, more non-koreans can really enjoy playing it and more non-koreans can enjoy watching other non-koreans play it. (Wait, OP, are you really that simple-minded? No, I am not, but I think that it is unnecessary to explain this statement with political correct words. Everyone gets the point, right?). It leads to SC2 lacking some aspects of BW but also filling some that BW never had - namely a vivid, lively western ESPORTS scene. Being easier might make it more popular as a game, but that has little bearing on how popular it is as a spectator event. There are tons of fat and unathletic people who watch regular sports. You're basically arguing for the WNBA, and we all know no one watches women's basketball. I'd also like to point out that the western SC2 scene only really took off after tournaments started inviting Korean players.
This argument only makes sense if there is little room for improvement in current play. There are so many ways pros could be doing better. The depth of the game has not been explored. Yes the game may end up being WNBA but it is has the potential to be a NBA as well. We simply don't know yet.
On October 26 2011 11:02 red4ce wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:05 neSix wrote:
I think you're missing the point of those arguments: It's not the game itself we wish to copy, but rather it's the characteristics that made the game so great that we hope to see more of in SC2.
I don't think the (legitimate) goal for anyone is to mimic Brood War. Instead, I think it's to use a game that we loved a benchmark for comparison. It's not that we want the game to be identical, but rather we would like the sequel to make use of aspects that we found exciting, such as space control, drawn-out, spaced-out large battles, the ability to turn an advantage into a victory outright as opposed to just expanding, etc. Pretty much this. SC2 fans always talk about how SC2 isn't Brood War, yet every time we see a game with BW characteristics (lots of back and forth small engagements, multipronged harass, sick marine splits, insane multitasking) the games get 98% recommended votes. Whether you like to admit it or not, you DO want SC2 to be more BW-esque, just not BW 2.0.
This is true. I would also point out that these things are happening in SC2 with more frequency. Whether this is do to the design of the game or the way players are developing is unknown.
The point is once there were whole-sale changes to BW it became impossible to know whether the lack of BW feel was due to the game design or the way players competed. There are tools available to play SC2 like BW, they just haven't been explored to there fullest
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Lets assume that the pro BW players in Korea ALL decide to switch to SC2 and in turn which results in complete domination of the the western scene.. That is no non-korean can be a korean because it is just too tough and that Koreans are at another level that non-koreans cant. I see HOTS looking more WC3 orientated with a bit of SC2 and minus the heroes, maybe all the WC3 korean pros and SC-BW pros will transition in HOTS and kill the non-korean eSport scene...
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Simply put, if I wanted to play BW, I'd just play BW. I wanted to try something new, so I tried something new. Although MBS, while a great feature, just doesn't feel the same to me as the old factories.
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United States1213 Posts
sc2 needs to be easy to learn but hard to master. bw on the other hand, was hard to learn, and even harder to master.
blizzard did a great job at making it easy to learn, hence the huge fanbase
now they need to find a way to make it as hard to master as bw was
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On October 26 2011 09:56 opisska wrote:
In the following few paragraphs, I would like to address a subject, that is being discussed on TL for a long time, but from what I hope is a different point of view. I truly hope this will not lead to a SC2 vs. BW discussion, as one of the pivotal points af the argument is that such discussion is nonsensical. I am an avid reader of the SC2 section of TL and I have not seen this kind of reasoning to be shown here, at least in recent past, so I hope this thread is not duplicit.
With new units in HoTS, we again more often see topics discussing game design of SC2. Very often, the units are judged on the basis of their comparison to BW units and there even seems to be increasing content with the feeling that the new units are more BroodWary than most of the units in WoL. This can be obviously understood as people here liked BroodWar (as I did, as a low-level player) and so they want to be SC2 as good as BW arguably was.
But here comes my question: what is the point of recreating something, even if it was good? BW is still a perfectly working piece of software, with servers to play on and a large playerbase. What is the point of having another game very similar to it, when we already do have BW? (One possibility, obviously, would be that we would like to have BW with a modern graphics, flashy and nice, but to this end, we do already have SC2BW and I believe that we all can agree that we do not want the whole SC2 to come down to this, so let us ignore this option). I believe, that for SC2 to be meaningful, it has to be significantly different from BW. Otherwise, its just a cheap marketing with not mouch added value: we could all play BW and be happy with that.
More money for the company making the game?
Renewed interest in a damn old game?
Nicer graphics?
You could say the exact same thing for DotA, yet there's DotA 2.
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ih8Australia
On October 26 2011 11:29 ih8Australia wrote:
Lets assume that the pro BW players in Korea ALL decide to switch to SC2 and in turn which results in complete domination of the the western scene.. That is no non-korean can be a korean because it is just too tough and that Koreans are at another level that non-koreans cant. I see HOTS looking more WC3 orientated with a bit of SC2 and minus the heroes, maybe all the WC3 korean pros and SC-BW pros will transition in HOTS and kill the non-korean eSport scene...
I'm not sure what your point is. If Koreans get so good that they completely dominate all the time then there is a legitimate goal to aim for. Beat koreans. I doubt this would affect the number of tournaments outside Korea. How many are there currently that are too small to invite the top guys.
Edit: Grammar 
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My first major criticism of the OP is that Starcraft 2 did not develop in a vacuum. In fact, Starcraft 2's earliest developments involved the recreation of BroodWar in the starcraft 2 engine. If i recall correctly, early interviews with Dustin Browder had him suggesting that the development process involved removing broodwar units and adding new units to see the way in which the game's progress should develop. This is to say that BroodWar is the basis and the very foundation from which Starcraft 2 developed. It is not just 'a different game', or a 'new game', and it is frankly offensive to respond to criticism raised by BW fans to tell them to just 'go play BW then'.
On that note, my second criticism is that no one seriously suggests that Starcraft 2 should be BroodWar 2.0. The criticism is always that BroodWar has elements (such as positional control, etc.) which are successful, and that Starcraft 2 should adopt these elements and grow and develop them as necessary. This is a sound argument because BroodWar has had over a decade of development. It has undergone very rigorous testing and hundreds if not thousands of RTS veterans have literally devoted their lives to this game. The maturity of RTS theory and the large body of knowledge in this area cannot be dismissed so glibly and so carelessly. Starcraft 2 should therefore see the development of BroodWar as a source from which to draw ideas.
Starcraft 2 is obviously free to grow and evolve, but it cannot do so without its roots firmly planted in its BroodWar origins.
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On October 26 2011 11:15 Alpino wrote:
I just want space control and less "ball on ball" action. And what the post above me says :D .
I am in full agreement with this.
But here comes my question: what is the point of recreating something, even if it was good? BW is still a perfectly working piece of software
It isn't a perfectly working piece of software for me. It is well known that BW functions less than optimally on new operating systems like Windows 7. I know there is a thread dedicated to trying to fix it, but I haven't looked into the issue too much. I haven't checked too recently, but last I knew there wasn't a very solid fix. Maybe there is now and I don't know about it. I really would like to have BW in SC2 (I know there is the SC2:BW maps by Maverck but they don't/(can't?) completely replicate BW).
BW had a lot more strategy and small constant battles that made the game interesting. In SC2 the general thing that works is attacking with your whole army at once and maybe doing some harass with 4 zealots somewhere else or 8 marines.
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I didn't read the whole thing (sorry, I should be doing homework so I can't dedicate too much time) but one thing worth noting is that people often bring up the positive aspects from Brood war. That is not to say that all people who bring up BW are suggesting that SC2 should be the same, but for example I think it would be great if SC2 was designed to encourage several battles going on around the map, rather than large death balls. Does that mean I want BW recreated? No. Can I look at some positive aspects of BW that I think would make SC2 more interesting to play and watch, and bring them up? I don't see why not.
And to add to my point, even Blizzard has done the same as they have wanted to remove the death ball from the game as much as they can as well. They said they are looking for solutions, though they also said they don't think they will bring it to the level of BW.
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
This thread doesn't make sense to me. Is it just a cheap attempt to start another BW v SC2 debate going? In which case that's not helpful.
But assuming it's not, I take it your argument is as follows (condensed and simplified for ease of reading):
- The new units in HotS have a BW Vibe to them
- SC2 is not BW
- Therefore we should not have these units
However, I think that is completely the wrong way to be looking at game design. It shouldn't be about BW or SC2. Instead, we need to consider: Are these additions actually useful to the game? So, what we need to consider more are concepts such as depth, fun and options. Any addition to a game must fulfil these three criteria. What do I mean by them?
Depth and Options
These two are very closely related. In essence, it is about making sure that new additions to your game increase the scope of play. If you add something that is redundant or too similar to an existing option, it means that you will end up in a straight up comparison against the pre-existing thing. Given that competitive play is all about "the best/min-maxing/mathcraft" it then leads to the problem that either you use the new addition, or you ignore it completely. Therefore, any new addition must have some form to them that has a clearly defined role and sets them apart from what currently exists.
With the new additions in HotS, I feel that these units do try to achieve this goal. For instance, the Viper is something that pulls units towards the Zerg swarm. That's remarkably different to the existing spellcaster for zerg (Infestor). It offers a viable alternative and more choice for the zerg player by expanding the scope of play. That is a good thing. The units may be partly inspired by BW, but that should not be a point of contention. Overall, what needs to be considered is: "Does this properly add more depth and options to SC2 in a reasonable manner?" If the answer is yes, then that is good. They could add in Gandalf as a unit in SC2 and I would not care one bit if it was a viable option that created depth for players in SC2.
Fun and Anti-Fun:
This is a beloved concept championed by Tom Cadwell, who some may know as Zileas. What this principle states is that any option or depth created in a game, not matter how viable or interesting, should not have their antifun component exceed their fun component. Overall, they can be summed up as follows:
- Options Should Be Clearly Optimized. If you can't tell why you want to do something, it's probably not a good option. If a spell sometimes makes you wish it didn't exist, that's also bad.
- You Need To Feel Power. If you can't see the benefit of performing an action, you're less inclined to do that action.
- Options Should Not Anti-Combo. This basically means you don't want to do something that messes you up. Examples include the old warrior talent trees in WoW, where revenge would give you a stun which then meant stunned enemies couldn't hit you and cause rage gain and reduced your tanking capability a lot in some sense.
- Never Have False Choice. Let's say you're presented with a tank line and tanks also have the ability to slow you when they hit. You could run away. But since they slow you they get even more free dps on you and kill you. So running away is actually a bad idea. So the choice of running away was false. The tanks may as well just have infinite damage instead and the outcome would be the same. Bad design!
- Never Have Artificial Difficulty. Don't make things hard on purpose just to make things hard. Things should be hard as a natural concept and genuinely interesting. It should not be an artificial wall you put in front of your players just for the sake of having a wall. Arguably, the BW interface can be argued to be artificial difficulty, but then again you must consider it was made a long time ago and was not intentional.
- Fun Must Exceed Antifun. This is the most important rule! Every other rule can be broken if it can justify this rule. Any ability that's fun for you will makes the other person feel bad. So when you make something, it needs to justify the antifun created and compensate for it. It must also have a way for the other player to play around that option. Instant-win buttons are not fun for anyone. Buttons that are fun to press, have a way of playing around them, and don't generate as much antifun for the other person are good.
So when we look at the new HotS units, we need to measure them up against those criteria. On the whole, I don't spot any egregious problems with them. So there is nothing wrong there.
So overall, I must say that you shouldn't be worried about them. Change isn't necessarily bad and needs to be properly evaluated. 
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i just like space control, and base races were so rare in broodwar because of how good a small group of units could hold off a large group of units depending on position. I just want a game where bases races are rarer and units can hold space, as well as a bit of micro with some units.
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I like how SC2 is a more strategic game and less dependent on mindless mechanics, i love both games and I have grown to love how they are both different.
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What i think SC2 provides that BW didnt (i played BW for a long time though i will admit i was young and crap at it so i DO NOT speak as if i was good at it.. i wasent)... well anyways... SC2 i find is alot like chess in the way that it is very easy to pick up and learn the basics and how to play but there is also soooo much more depth behind it than just the basics that make it so much more dynamic.... however unlike chess SC2 has awesome explosions and i would also argue it is more strategic but that is another discussion... With BW i found it was a lot harder to learn and get the hang of it all.
Also i think there is alot of nostalgia about BW... i love it still and i remember all the fun i had on it but i think i love SC2 alot more... but i always look back on BW with one of the RTSs i grew up with and there is nothing that can tarnish those memories.
-Ardure
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You have very good points
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On October 26 2011 11:50 AudionovA wrote:
I like how SC2 is a more strategic game and less dependent on mindless mechanics, i love both games and I have grown to love how they are both different.
Mindless mechanics.. are you kidding me? Did it ever occur to you that BW could actually have the same depth as SC2, but also requires extreme mechanics as well? Yes, mechanics were very important to judge ones skill by, but what separates the best of the players is their strategic brilliance. If you played BW on a competitive level then you would know that BW is a much more dynamic game than the current version of SC2.
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On October 26 2011 11:47 MoonBear wrote:+ Show Spoiler +This thread doesn't make sense to me. Is it just a cheap attempt to start another BW v SC2 debate going? In which case that's not helpful. But assuming it's not, I take it your argument is as follows (condensed and simplified for ease of reading): - The new units in HotS have a BW Vibe to them
- SC2 is not BW
- Therefore we should not have these units
However, I think that is completely the wrong way to be looking at game design. It shouldn't be about BW or SC2. Instead, we need to consider: Are these additions actually useful to the game? So, what we need to consider more are concepts such as depth, fun and options. Any addition to a game must fulfil these three criteria. What do I mean by them? Depth and OptionsThese two are very closely related. In essence, it is about making sure that new additions to your game increase the scope of play. If you add something that is redundant or too similar to an existing option, it means that you will end up in a straight up comparison against the pre-existing thing. Given that competitive play is all about "the best/min-maxing/mathcraft" it then leads to the problem that either you use the new addition, or you ignore it completely. Therefore, any new addition must have some form to them that has a clearly defined role and sets them apart from what currently exists. With the new additions in HotS, I feel that these units do try to achieve this goal. For instance, the Viper is something that pulls units towards the Zerg swarm. That's remarkably different to the existing spellcaster for zerg (Infestor). It offers a viable alternative and more choice for the zerg player by expanding the scope of play. That is a good thing. The units may be partly inspired by BW, but that should not be a point of contention. Overall, what needs to be considered is: "Does this properly add more depth and options to SC2 in a reasonable manner?" If the answer is yes, then that is good. They could add in Gandalf as a unit in SC2 and I would not care one bit if it was a viable option that created depth for players in SC2. Fun and Anti-Fun:This is a beloved concept championed by Tom Cadwell, who some may know as Zileas. What this principle states is that any option or depth created in a game, not matter how viable or interesting, should not have their antifun component exceed their fun component. Overall, they can be summed up as follows: - Options Should Be Clearly Optimized. If you can't tell why you want to do something, it's probably not a good option. If a spell sometimes makes you wish it didn't exist, that's also bad.
- You Need To Feel Power. If you can't see the benefit of performing an action, you're less inclined to do that action.
- Options Should Not Anti-Combo. This basically means you don't want to do something that messes you up. Examples include the old warrior talent trees in WoW, where revenge would give you a stun which then meant stunned enemies couldn't hit you and cause rage gain and reduced your tanking capability a lot in some sense.
- Never Have False Choice. Let's say you're presented with a tank line and tanks also have the ability to slow you when they hit. You could run away. But since they slow you they get even more free dps on you and kill you. So running away is actually a bad idea. So the choice of running away was false. The tanks may as well just have infinite damage instead and the outcome would be the same. Bad design!
- Never Have Artificial Difficulty. Don't make things hard on purpose just to make things hard. Things should be hard as a natural concept and genuinely interesting. It should not be an artificial wall you put in front of your players just for the sake of having a wall. Arguably, the BW interface can be argued to be artificial difficulty, but then again you must consider it was made a long time ago and was not intentional.
- Fun Must Exceed Antifun. This is the most important rule! Every other rule can be broken if it can justify this rule. Any ability that's fun for you will makes the other person feel bad. So when you make something, it needs to justify the antifun created and compensate for it. It must also have a way for the other player to play around that option. Instant-win buttons are not fun for anyone. Buttons that are fun to press, have a way of playing around them, and don't generate as much antifun for the other person are good.
So when we look at the new HotS units, we need to measure them up against those criteria. On the whole, I don't spot any egregious problems with them. So there is nothing wrong there. So overall, I must say that you shouldn't be worried about them. Change isn't necessarily bad and needs to be properly evaluated.
Great post!
Any thoughts on how much of the difference in feel between the games is due to design or current play styles? It is pretty clear that blizzard wants to move from ball-on-ball action (who doesn't). How much of that can be fixed by design without breaking the game or recreating BW?
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It's not about the units themselves, it's about the concept of the units.
For example, Lurkers as a concept gave Zerg a very reliable and time-sensitive way to stall terran from performing a timing attack on their 3rd. You needed a few siege tanks and a vessel before you could move out, otherwise you get decimated by Lurkers. By the time the terran got that unit composition out, it would be your defiler timing that either determined whether your 3rd would get destroyed or if it would live and you would transition safely.
The lurker, as a concept, allows you to control your natural/3rd choke areas by being efficient at killing marines coming up a ramp/in a choke, as well as being burrowed, forces terran to wait until get get a form of mobile detection. This concept is the basics of timings/transitions, and how you can cut corners on unit production by building powerful units to stall in time for additional tech, army, econ etc. to kick in. This makes it much more exciting to watch since you know that one player needs to hold off this attack (using a bit of skill and luck combined), in order to survive the timing.
In Starcraft 2, you don't get a sense of that, only massing up units and throwing armies at each other. There's no concept of transitioning safely or using a small amount of "power units" to help you get through to the next stage of the game, it's mostly just hoping your opponent doesn't kill you/damage you enough for you to transition properly, instead of being able to control whether or not you transition properly through the use of concepts of power units like lurkers
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EPT
