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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.
Anyway, let's think about why do people not keep playing BW, even though many people that play (or at least passionately discuss) SC2 are apparently of the opinion that BW is superior? For me, the reason is simple: I suck at BW, because of its mechanical difficulty and playing SC2 is much more fun for me.
OK, but I am a noob, right? So why do we have a whole ESPORTS scene around SC2, if it is inferior to BW? The reason is, again, simple: because the pros (non-korean) suck at BW - at least compared to their korean counterparts.
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.
The think that we have to understand is that we now have something different than what we had in BW and that by making SC2 being more like BW, it will be ruined and essentially another version of BW will be made. Why would we want that? Isn't BW the best "version of BW" we could ever hope for?
This situation has another, for many unwelcome, consequence: we cannot really have even the units feel too much BWy. The reason why BW is balanced with just the units and statistics it has, has much to do with its mechanical difficulty. Putting BW units into SC2 with all the UI improvements is a complete disaster. But removing these improvements would be a disaster as well, a disaster for the existence of SC2 as a separate entitty from "just a shiny BW remake".
The question I would like to see ultimately discussed in this thread is: if you argue that something should be "more like in BW", what is you goal? What do you want to achieve with that? Does any desirable outcome of such a developement even exist? Isn't it better for SC2 to be just as different from BW as possible (while still having ESPORTS potential - Angry Birds are obvously more different from BW than SC2)?
Again, the reason for having SC2 different from BW is not that one or another approach is better than the other, but that we already kinda do have a very nice realisation of the BW one.
EDIT: after reading many interesting responses, I was able hopefully to refine my thougths a litle in response to them at page 13.
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I am with you 100%
Good luck with that thread though. 
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There are units similarities, but they really are very different compare to BW
They just wants make a unit slightly similar to BW to sell you that nostalgia. But as long as the unit pathing for sc2 is so advance, it won't go toward the way of BW. I do agree with Blizzard moves to try to spread out the deathball though
back and forth game is always the best to look at. Introducing powerful casters and siege units will achieve them
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i sort of agre, i am so tired of all the ppl asking questions like "Back in BW we had"
go fucking play BW if you love it.
i like SC2 the way it's designed and i like that it is really different from bw.
that's why i feel it's a shame when kennigt asked DB questions that were all Bw centric...
waste of time/questions imho
"in BW we had units stretching out for screens and screens" etc.
jesus, i do not want to see that shit in SC2 personally -.-
i feel all this obsession to have SC2 looking like BW is something not THAT popular.
if you go around TL it may appear that way but thank god there's tons of people who agree SC2 shouldn't be more BW-y
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SC2 generated a huge influx of new players to the foreign community - something I was looking forward to. But I was disappoint it wasn't the game I loved anymore. Now I know it will never be, so I've stopped complaining and with this mindset I agree with the OP.
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Great Read. Agree 100%. Having more foreigners playing SC2 is definately helping ESPORTS grow and thrive because foreign players aren't getting smashed by Korean pros. Instead, we have intense rivalries like that of IdrA vs MC.
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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.
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sorry but im so BW nostalgic right now... i really recommend to all sc2 players watch some bw games and play some for better understanding the sorrow of many
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Played SC, SC:BW and now SC2 I love both but prefer SC2. Broodwar got to be too 80% mechanical and 20% strategy I feel like SC2 is closer to 50/50 with yes you can eek out edges here and there but if you can out think your opponent you also can win the game.
I also played WC3 and TFT its been a slow evolution for the game UI design of allowing players to focus more on microing battles provided they can macro back home while watching the battles. This is admittedly harder for zerg larva injects. = \
Edit: The more time that goes by the fonder and more nostalgic you are for said item. Just a thought.
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On October 26 2011 10:04 XsebT wrote:
SC2 generated a huge influx of new players to the foreign community - something I was looking forward to. But I was disappoint it wasn't the game I loved anymore. Now I know it will never be, so I've stopped complaining and with this mindset I agree with the OP.
That was the mentality of many of us that played Brood War- we were expecting a clone, or something very similar, and it turned out to be the game it is today. Nothing wrong about that. Making comparisons between the two is not something that should be done except in cases of cross-game functionality(siege tank pushes, zealots tanking damage).
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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.
Bingo.
You have to ask why a game like BW is good - because those are the characteristics that would make any RTS good. Not copying good game design because it's a different game is pointless logic.
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i like this post.
but when making an rts, you look towards the best rts. you take aspects of bw and try to apply it it your game.
im not saying copy units, but do stuff like emulate things that are awesome in rts games like long epic battles, unique and skill intensive units. bw has that.
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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.
This is a valid view point and not one I suspect people have a problem with. The thing is that those concepts are simply dealt with in a different manner. How do you compare the approach to space control between games when the units that provide that control are completely different?
The other side is that perhaps these are things that BW is known for but SC2 will have a different focus. It is really just silly to compare the two because they come from completely different places. I agree that the concepts you mentioned can be used to inform changes in SC2 but whether they should is a decision up to the game designers.
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I'm more of a fan of BW than SC2, but I play SC2 as well. I don't see any reason for both games not able to co-exist.
BW has some intangibles that I think SC2 more or less have to have eventually. SC2 is different, so in order to do it right, you have to just wait and see if it'll turn out alright. I'm just afraid, considering that I'm a Toss (always have been.) SC2 is going to be turning into another Terran/Zerg war with Toss struggling behind trying to get what they can. SC2 really needs to find the balance. I don't care what Blizzard says, I look at tournament for results. Tournament tells it all and that's all I look for. Blizzard needs to find the results and honestly ask themselves what they can finally do to balance the game.
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On October 26 2011 10:02 sunman1g wrote:
i sort of agre, i am so tired of all the ppl asking questions like "Back in BW we had"
go fucking play BW if you love it.
i like SC2 the way it's designed and i like that it is really different from bw.
that's why i feel it's a shame when kennigt asked DB questions that were all Bw centric...
waste of time/questions imho
"in BW we had units stretching out for screens and screens" etc.
jesus, i do not want to see that shit in SC2 personally -.-
i feel all this obsession to have SC2 looking like BW is something not THAT popular.
if you go around TL it may appear that way but thank god there's tons of people who agree SC2 shouldn't be more BW-y
I disagree entirely. The army balls in sc2 are not even close to as spectator friendly as the pathing in bw was. It looked much better, it was more clear, and it felt almost infinitely more epic. I actually can't conceive someone thinking that a blob on one screen is more appealing than masses upon masses of units stretched out over the map.
I personally only reference bw units as a benchmark for comparison between units. Take the new Warhound for example, I don't like the AOE AA it has. Terran does not need help against flying light units, it would be more beneficial if its AA was more like the Goliath, long range and solid damage. When I compare units it's because of the purpose that unit fulfills, how it complements that race and what it forces your enemy to do.
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When people say that something should be like Brood War, it's not because of the fact that it was Brood War. In SC1, there were these really fantastic concepts that helped make for a really strategically in-depth game. And it's those concepts that would actually make SC2 a better game and give it a higher skill cap.
SC2 has its merits, obviously. But there are some things that just seem really off about it and can take away from the game.
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agree 100%
i like that some things are like in BW we play the same races after all. but with every patch people scream for BW units and compare everything to broodwar
and like you said: soooo many things that were awesome in BW would be totaly broken, shitty,... in sc2 or wouldn't work outright
i like the approach blizzard takes with sc2 design (like dustin browder stated in the blizzcon tl interview) that they don't try to make this game broodwar 2.0 but make it into an awesome STARCRAFT game which stands on his own and has an own identity
and i also agree 100% too with dustin when he said "if u like broodwar go play it. it is awesome!" there is nothing wrong or bad or offensive in that statement
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I don't see why we can't have similar things from brood war, there are lessons from brood war when it comes to game design and I fail to see why we can't learn from them or apply them.
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We definitely dont want BW, thats why we all migrated from it. We, however, want sc2 to have the great characteristics bw had. Positional advantage (read minefields, tank spreading, observers spreading, lurkers), back and forth motion in games (scourge+lurk vs observers+goons, lurker+defiler vs mnm) and more are available on BW and made the game as epic as it was. With the kind of players we have now, the coverage of a new game, plus the popularity sc2 has, it is no noones inconvenience that Blizzard must seek this aspects of the game. When u see a battle in bw, u see looads of units come into the fight, or last a looong ass time, but in sc2 we see ball vs ball at times, which is no fun, in comparison. I get your point, but really, saying sc2 is ok as it is cuz its a new game and foreigners are actually competing vs koreans is far from what id call a perfect game. WE, the community, have to make ourselves be heard. Being a very avid scbw fan, i YEARN for a lot of things, yet i still play sc2. nostalgia != good games
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its like saying quake is a good game but lets add recoil to make it different Öo.
i see where you coming from
but i never pleayed bw mp
and im on the side with many other peoples
because some things make in bw so much more sense.
And i dont think BW would be that much harder than Sc2 with auto mining the selection shit etc.
I dont want BW2 but that dosent mean that you have to make a game totally different only because you wanna be different.
Thats a Stupid Reason.
But im just a casual and im satisfied with sc2 but i can understand people @higher lvl
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BW was a better game than SC2 hands down. The problem is that BW was a lot better for competitive players and not necessarily for building a marketable product. BW was extremely hard, and as such getting into it as a new player was extremely difficult. SC2 is not hard, or at least not in the same way BW was. If you have a desire to become really good at SC2, you can do that as long as you put in the hard work and dedication.
You couldn't do that in BW at all. If you wanted to be a top player you HAD to move to Korea and you had to play 14+ hours a day because the game was pure speed and the ability to combine that speed with good strategy, tactics and unit control. In SC2 the game does almost all of this for you, so players that will never actually be good at the game can still play it at a certain level and feel like they have an understanding of the game and why pros do what they do.
BW is a game competitive gamers appreciate, but SC2 is an e-sport. It's similar to Counter-Strike 1.6 in the sense that for competitive gamers, it was the perfect shooter. Nothing will top it, ever, hands down. 1.6 is not a marketable e-sport though, and something will come along and eventually beat it out in the e-sports market just like SC2 did to BW.
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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.
Exactly.
A little bit off topic, but personally I think the one absolute biggest difference that makes SC2 feel so different (and not as likable to many people) from BW isn't in the units at all, but rather, the fact that unit hitboxes/sizes are SO TINY compared to BW. This makes a 200/200 army able to slip through choke points, walk up ramps, and die to aoe attacks in a matter of seconds. It was completely different in BW and it DEFINITELY was what allowed such powerful spells to exist, and allowed map control to be a much bigger deal, because large armies took much longer to travel around the map no matter what race.
The sad thing is this will never happen because Blizzard will never change the way their game works. They will only ever change numbers, and it makes me sad.
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Ok here is a different slant on the "bring ideas from BW" idea...
How much of the difference from BW is due to the style of play as opposed to the units? For example when the game first came out banelings were ridiculous until MKP showed the awesomeness of marine splitting. Not only did this allow the back and forth battle to take place, but also allows someone with superior micro to beat supposed counters. It also rewards players who put the effort in to counter the ball affect and use appropriate positioning.
The protoss deathball went a similar way, as soon as zerg learnt how to use their units appropriately it stopped being a problem. BW units/ideas seem like solutions because they worked in BW but whether they will work in SC2 is an unknown. Blizzard does use some of the same concepts but is also trying others. As much as I hate to say it, we are just going to have to work with what we have an see how things pan out.
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So because BW exists, SC2 should be as different as possible? What kind of an argument is that?
Since BW was great and balanced, I guess SC2 should be terrible and imbalanced, right?
Since if you tried to make it great and balanced it would be "BWy" and we can't have that, right?
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I don't necessarily agree with absolutely everything you wrote, but certainly making SC2 resemble BW too heavily would be a waste of everyone's time. That said, are you really that concerned that SC2 is suddenly going to be so similar to BW? I could see it being slightly more similar unit-wise, but certainly the look, mechanics, and overall strategy associated with SC2 (in general) are very different from BW, at least to the experienced RTS player.
It shouldn't be offensive to say that SC2 is more fun for the average person than BW ever was for the simple reason that it's more playable (And don't start bitching me out, I played BW all my life.) I do also think there's a certain core of people that makes out the differences between the two games to be greater than they really are.
To be completely honest, I think HotS will be awesome and even if SC2 never "lives up" to the hype, the professional scene outside of Korea is proof of just how good a game SC2 is, even if it doesn't have the old-school appeal BW does.
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On October 26 2011 10:33 lololol wrote:
So because BW exists, SC2 should be as different as possible? What kind of an argument is that?
Since BW was great and balanced, I guess SC2 should be terrible and imbalanced, right?
Since if you tried to make it great and balanced it would be "BWy" and we can't have that, right?
Nice hyperbole you have there.
How is that even close to what people are saying. According to your logic, we either have a BW remake or a game that has no resemblance to BW at all. All the OP is saying is that this game is different. It didn't have to be but it is. There is no point trying to make things the same as BW because the game is not BW. Yes some things have been incorporated but not everything. There is a middle ground here.
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On October 26 2011 10:29 Angra 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. Exactly. A little bit off topic, but personally I think the one absolute biggest difference that makes SC2 feel so different (and not as likable to many people) from BW isn't in the units at all, but rather, the fact that unit hitboxes/sizes are SO TINY compared to BW. This makes a 200/200 army able to slip through choke points, walk up ramps, and die to aoe attacks in a matter of seconds. It was completely different in BW and it DEFINITELY was what allowed such powerful spells to exist, and allowed map control to be a much bigger deal, because large armies took much longer to travel around the map no matter what race. The sad thing is this will never happen because Blizzard will never change the way their game works. They will only ever change numbers, and it makes me sad.
Size has no influence with this. In BW the units take a path and takes into consideration all of the other units in its way, so the unit would take the fastest path as if the other units were a part of terrain. This caused units to naturally spread out more because they had to find a path around the other units. In SC2 they take the fastest path regardless of where other units are, and even push units out of the way. Since all of the units are going straight to a location, they bunch up.
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On October 26 2011 10:38 Probulous wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:33 lololol wrote:
So because BW exists, SC2 should be as different as possible? What kind of an argument is that?
Since BW was great and balanced, I guess SC2 should be terrible and imbalanced, right?
Since if you tried to make it great and balanced it would be "BWy" and we can't have that, right? Nice hyperbole you have there. How is that even close to what people are saying. According to your logic, we either have a BW remake or a game that has no resemblance to BW at all. All the OP is saying is that this game is different. It didn't have to be but it is. There is no point trying to make things the same as BW because the game is not BW. Yes some things have been incorporated but not everything. There is a middle ground here.
The hyperbole is not from my side, nobody wants SC2 to be a rerelease of BW.
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Kennigit's interview with Dustin made his view quite clear.
"If you want it to be like Broodwar, go play Broodwar."
I'm glad the devs share your and my point of view.
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I agree. Nostalgia runs far too rampant in the community, and SC2 is not and never will be BW. I can see people's points with the gameplay characteristics that BW had, but reintroducing units is not the way to go about things. Armies will spread out eventually as player skill increases, the balance team is already trying to take supply out of balls, and positional play DOES exist in SC2, I have no idea what we are talking about. Lurker vs Obs is strikingly similar to viking vs colossus, for the guy who brought up the point. As well as Muta vs tank, tank vs brood lord, gateway units vs MMM, the list goes on. Also, the game still has 2 expansions and a lot of time to develop. So please, stop begging for the lurker and reaver.
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Don't worry bro. After TL's interview with Dustin Browder it looks like this isn't the case. He keeps on saying "Broodwar is a great game. If you want Broodwar go play it.". He wants to make his own game, his own "huge esports game" but with the name starcraft :D.
He doesn't even want to use dynamic pathfinding to fix the deathballs, but instead, keep the balls and try to make them smaller by including new units, which I like(the idea not the units). What do we know? Maybe by the end of it all, we could have a more fun and competitive game with loads of strategies and tactical fighting. But we might also need Bisu's multitasking to appreciate it. Oh well we'll see.
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-.- this thread is just waiting to go up in flames about BW v SC2....
I honestly don't feel that SC2 has to be BW... For instance, as someone relatively scrubby, I appreciate auto-mine and MBS. On the other hand, hell yes I don't like to see deathball v deathball and like to see some high intense micro. I don't think that being like BW precludes SC2 from being good, and that being different does not preclude SC2 from being bad. Its just that BW has had its successes because of its bright characterstics and emulating that or wishing for some mechanic not yet added is definitely good
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Expand on bw by updating old units that don't work anymore- seems to be what blizz is doing.
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SC2 is nothing like BW Right now.... What are you talking about?
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this bw >< sc2 discussion is nonsense
BUT
its just that we see sc2's great potential and we dont want to get that fucked up
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Very well said, I was not even aware of falling into this trap (thinking about SC2 vs BW) until Dustin answered that question in his interview with TL.
SC2 was always, in my mind, an attempt to make a better starcraft. Better balance, better game design, better graphics/UI/interface, and ultimately, more and better strategies.
But because game design needs to change, you're right there is no point comparing it to BW. If we wanted a 3D version of BW with better UI/graphics/interface as well as better strategies, it would have to be different. To have a better strategy game while being BW is impossible.
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I feel the reason why SC2 is compared and contrasted with BW is that, we hold high expectations of SC2 to capture the beauty from BW. I sort of get nostalgic as well, wanting some of the old units from BW to return. It is true however they cannot bring back some of those units, otherwise we'd just be playing a BW remake but in HD with better pathing and interface. =/
You bring up some good points I suppose.
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On October 26 2011 10:39 lololol wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:38 Probulous wrote:On October 26 2011 10:33 lololol wrote:
So because BW exists, SC2 should be as different as possible? What kind of an argument is that?
Since BW was great and balanced, I guess SC2 should be terrible and imbalanced, right?
Since if you tried to make it great and balanced it would be "BWy" and we can't have that, right? Nice hyperbole you have there. How is that even close to what people are saying. According to your logic, we either have a BW remake or a game that has no resemblance to BW at all. All the OP is saying is that this game is different. It didn't have to be but it is. There is no point trying to make things the same as BW because the game is not BW. Yes some things have been incorporated but not everything. There is a middle ground here. The hyperbole is not from my side, nobody wants SC2 to be a rerelease of BW.
That in itself is hyperbole. There is a minority of people who explicitly say that they want this, and a larger group who always clamor for lurkers, reavers, scourge, old high ground, tank AI etc.
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I don't think sc2 can ever become bw just by way of the engine itself. sc2 will be easier because of the unit pathing. because of the interface, because of automine and multiple building select and stuff like that. sc2 will always be different no matter how much they try to make it like bw. they cannot be anywhere near the same.
Nobody is saying we should have the exact same units in sc2 as bw either.
but to look at units out now. Its easier to 1a2a3a to victory in too many circumstanses. Making units more position based will make the game a bit harder and make the game have (possibily) more epic moments that are more common in bw.
Yes it will be slightly more "bw-y" in the way you are describing it. but its like going from a 180 from bw to a 165. Its not much and might just lead to a harder but more enjoyable to watch esport.
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no problem with copy things from bw if they worked great.
it's not about a different game, it's just about make a fucking good eSport-Titel.
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Honestly the only reason I don't play BW is because of the smaller community and the lack of tournaments. If the starcraft community would switch back to brood war I would in a heartbeat.
That being said I agree with you to an extent. Sc2 should not be 100 percent like brood war. Have you seen the post about the sc2 pro mod April fools joke? Look it up if you have not because there are some very good points that are made in the posts. Namely, that recreating brood war is not what we should seek to do with sc2. In this you are correct, but I have to severely critique you here for your lack of insight beyond this point.
You seem to be annoyed at the fact that people are trying to make sc2 more like brood war and you believe that these people are all trying to bring back some sort of lost nostalgia by bringing back the brood war user interface (12 unit selection, shitty pathing, one building selection, etc...) and by bringing back the units (lurker, deflier, corsair, etc...)
In reality it is you that is completely missing the point and you show this by IMO what is a completely anti BW post dressed up to not appear so bad. What people are trying to recreate by mentioning BW is the magic of the game that seems to have been lost upon sc2. Many of you are going to say that you feel just as much magic when watching an sc2 game as watching a brood war game. Let me tell you this: If you've been an active participant in both scenes (active participant meaning you were as active in bw as you are now in sc2), then I challenge one person here to tell me that sc2 has the same magic that BW has. What's wrong with wanting this back?
To answer your question of why more people play sc2 than played BW I have this to say. I'm of the opinion that the reason that sc2 is more popular is because of a combination of 3 factors: easy unit control, the battle.net ladder, and critical mass.
1. Easy unit control - no explaination necessary. Easier unit control makes the game easier to play. Making a less steep learning curve. This is one of the things that Sc2 got right over BW.
2. Battle.net ladder - Always winning 50 percent of the time is nice because it makes you feel that you're really good at something. If I logged onto Iccup and played right now I'd loose 90 percent of my games. People don't like to loose all the time.
3. Critical mass: Sc2 has enough fans now that the whole "friends tell other friends" concept is now in place.
Don't get me wrong. I love this game, but something about it just doesn't feel right. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it has something to do with the fact that armies just don't feel big any more. When I play with a maxed 200/200 army I feel like I'm playing with a warcraft III TFT 100/100 army. Sc2 got a lot of things right that BW didn't - I agree with this 100 percent. But there are certain elements that BW got right that shouldn't have been taken out of the game.
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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.
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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?
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..
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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++.
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.
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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.
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I always thought that sc2 is a different game NOT BW. I'm annoyed for those people who keep saying BW is better and more skilled whilst playing sc2 themselves. BW is past and it will remain there just like other classic games. It thanks to these games that games evolve to what is it now and not to mimic or copy the originals.
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On October 26 2011 10:54 Redmark wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:39 lololol wrote:On October 26 2011 10:38 Probulous wrote:On October 26 2011 10:33 lololol wrote:
So because BW exists, SC2 should be as different as possible? What kind of an argument is that?
Since BW was great and balanced, I guess SC2 should be terrible and imbalanced, right?
Since if you tried to make it great and balanced it would be "BWy" and we can't have that, right? Nice hyperbole you have there. How is that even close to what people are saying. According to your logic, we either have a BW remake or a game that has no resemblance to BW at all. All the OP is saying is that this game is different. It didn't have to be but it is. There is no point trying to make things the same as BW because the game is not BW. Yes some things have been incorporated but not everything. There is a middle ground here. The hyperbole is not from my side, nobody wants SC2 to be a rerelease of BW. That in itself is hyperbole. There is a minority of people who explicitly say that they want this, and a larger group who always clamor for lurkers, reavers, scourge, old high ground, tank AI etc.
People want these, because there are better than what we have right now, they don't want an exact copy of BW, because they already bought one years ago, they just want the stuff that is better.
You know, they want a game that is improved and better, not one that is different, if they want one that is different, they can buy a million other cheap bad rts games, which believe me are all very different from BW.
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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.
Yep, this guy's pretty much spot on.
There's certain things that make BW not only fun to play, but a lot of fun to watch as a spectator sport. Just off the top of my head, here's some things that make BW so much fun to watch:
Dropships and Shuttles trying to evade scourge
I mean, HOW much fun is this whole scenario?? The scourge just BARELY catching up, the commentators freaking out, WILL IT GET AWAY?? WILL IT GET KILLED?? So much fun. There's nothing quite like that in sc2. If a drop gets spotted early it's usually more of an issue of whether or not the player can respond correctly, which is interesting, and entertaining, but not edge of my chair exciting the way scourge chases are. This isn't always the case, but come on, scourge chases happened all the time in BW, and they were awesome.
Reaver drops and workers trying to run away
This is the same kinda thing. It takes good reaction speed to move your workers fast enough, which is technically impressive, but then watching the scarab chase the workers, wondering how many kills it can get... it just builds so much tension and it's SO exciting. And once again, there's nothing quite like it in sc2.
Hold position lurkers
The zerg player burrows his lurkers in an interesting spot. The terran doesn't suspect. A mass of marines move out. They're getting closer to the lurkers. The terran has no idea but the crowd is freaking out. Is he going to move forward? Will the zerg player wait until JUST the right moment? This is actually something sc2 kind of DID mimic, what with burrowed banelings. Is it is as good? Maybe. Maybe even better.
I think you get my point. I'm not saying sc2 needs scourge and reavers, but what it does need are units that create interesting and entertaining scenarios like what I've described. Sc2 is probably going to be fun to play no matter what, but the difference between how fun it is to watch a player micro roaches, and how fun it is to watch a player micro a shuttle with a reaver, is something that makes a HUGE difference to the spectators.
It's not the specific units from BW that I want to see moved to SC2, it's the design philosophy. Part of what made BW so good was that it had units that could do amazing things when micro'd, and engagements rewarded intelligent use of geography and tactics (i.e. no deathballs).
Edit: I don't want to come off as someone who's knocking SC2, because SC2 does A LOT of things right. I mean, I went to MLG Columbus, I love the game and it's only getting better and better. I just want to point out what could be added to make it the best it CAN be.
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On October 26 2011 11:03 lololol wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:54 Redmark wrote:On October 26 2011 10:39 lololol wrote:On October 26 2011 10:38 Probulous wrote:On October 26 2011 10:33 lololol wrote:
So because BW exists, SC2 should be as different as possible? What kind of an argument is that?
Since BW was great and balanced, I guess SC2 should be terrible and imbalanced, right?
Since if you tried to make it great and balanced it would be "BWy" and we can't have that, right? Nice hyperbole you have there. How is that even close to what people are saying. According to your logic, we either have a BW remake or a game that has no resemblance to BW at all. All the OP is saying is that this game is different. It didn't have to be but it is. There is no point trying to make things the same as BW because the game is not BW. Yes some things have been incorporated but not everything. There is a middle ground here. The hyperbole is not from my side, nobody wants SC2 to be a rerelease of BW. That in itself is hyperbole. There is a minority of people who explicitly say that they want this, and a larger group who always clamor for lurkers, reavers, scourge, old high ground, tank AI etc. People want these, because there are better than what we have right now, they don't want an exact copy of BW, because they already bought one years ago, they just want the stuff that is better. You know, they want a game that is improved and better, not one that is different, if they want one that is different, they can buy a million other cheap bad rts games, which believe me are all very different from BW.
nailed it!
thx
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On October 26 2011 10:39 R0YAL wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:29 Angra wrote: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. Exactly. A little bit off topic, but personally I think the one absolute biggest difference that makes SC2 feel so different (and not as likable to many people) from BW isn't in the units at all, but rather, the fact that unit hitboxes/sizes are SO TINY compared to BW. This makes a 200/200 army able to slip through choke points, walk up ramps, and die to aoe attacks in a matter of seconds. It was completely different in BW and it DEFINITELY was what allowed such powerful spells to exist, and allowed map control to be a much bigger deal, because large armies took much longer to travel around the map no matter what race. The sad thing is this will never happen because Blizzard will never change the way their game works. They will only ever change numbers, and it makes me sad. Size has no influence with this. In BW the units take a path and takes into consideration all of the other units in its way, so the unit would take the fastest path as if the other units were a part of terrain. This caused units to naturally spread out more because they had to find a path around the other units. In SC2 they take the fastest path regardless of where other units are, and even push units out of the way. Since all of the units are going straight to a location, they bunch up.
Most ramps in BW could only fit 1 unit at a time though, too. Other units physically couldn't get by if a unit was on hold position at the time. It takes about 3-4 units to do the same thing in most SC2 ramps.
Anyway regardless of how it worked, it had a really huge impact on how the game worked, and it's a big reason why SC2 feels and plays so differently.
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For me, I welcomed WoL and the simplification of repetitive tasks. I'm thinking specifically about automining, multiple building selection, and infinite size control groups which was not possible in BW. The unit pathing is definitely much better in WoL and there aren't discussion about "stupid units," regarding the unit's AI (like dragoons and scarabs in BW). All of those changes, I like.
Other than that, I'd rather be playing BW to be perfectly honest.The control in BW allows for many micro techniques and the distinction between micro players and macro players was very large. For example, you could control mutas in such a way that they constantly darting in and attacked then left without slowing down. This was crucial when sniping marines because you would significantly reduce the amount of damage you sustained. There was also no delay for firing animations (for the most part, I'm looking at you Valkyrie), so if you had one more range than your opponent then you wouldn't need to suffer any damage while using scoot and shoot micro.
Map control and long-term planning was rewarded much better in BW as well. You could place spider mines around the map and later siege up near those positions and be largely protected from Protoss gateway units. This defined your pushing paths and it was very difficult for Terran when all of their mine fields were cleaned up with Dragoons and an observer because it drastically limited your map control and awareness and slowed your pushes. Terran mech could form a siege line literally from one end of the map to the other and it would take an entire Protoss army focuses on one point to break the siege line. I miss these types of planning dynamics.
I think that if some of the game engine were made to be more similar to BW, that we could again see more interesting harass dynamics. I'm less interested in which units are used, but they play a significant factor in the game dynamic. If the new units are considered more similar to BW, I don't really care. It's a new game, there are new units and if we as a community like the new units then we'll adopt the game. If we don't like the new units and Blizzard doesn't want to accommodate us then we can continue to play WoL; wait for Legacy of the Void; or put together a mod which raises the skill ceiling on the game. I've seen many custom maps which tweak certain features of the game and it's not out of the question.
My two cents.
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I just want space control and less "ball on ball" action. And what the post above me says :D .
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On October 26 2011 11:15 Alpino wrote:
I just want space control and less "ball on ball" action.
/signed
many little tricky moves instead of 1a + some spells.
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People often refers to BW because it is the basic template that SC2 was designed from. When they share so many units, so many mechanics, so many spells and so many of the same game concepts, comparisons are inevitable.
For example, people will always bring up carrier micro in BW when lamenting its SC2 counterpart.
However I do not think the majority of fans want SC2 to be BW in HD (Play SC2BW mod for that )
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Fair point, but there are certain timeless principles that BW was based on that SC2 hasn't developed yet.
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" Isn't BW the best "version of BW" we could ever hope for? "
Thats a really good point.
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Every time I heard "Back in BW, we..." I remember my grandpa, my dad "When I was young, I..." Yeah I know your 60s, 70s was great, was the bomb, whatever. Things were so much balanced back then, and my generation sucks
/sarcasm
I like SC2 for what it is right now. I don't want to another BW that I've watched for last decade.
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On October 26 2011 10:17 R0YAL wrote:
I disagree entirely. The army balls in sc2 are not even close to as spectator friendly as the pathing in bw was. It looked much better, it was more clear, and it felt almost infinitely more epic. I actually can't conceive someone thinking that a blob on one screen is more appealing than masses upon masses of units stretched out over the map.
That's just a bad side effect of good pathfinding. Honestly, it's up to you to 1a2a3a4a and not Blizzard to artificially create spread.
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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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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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On October 26 2011 11:29 Probulous wrote:
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.
By the community: All of the well known western BW community figures have switched over to SC2 and now only talk about BW like a dead uncle. Don't you think it's weird that popular SC2 casters will tell viewers to check out fighting game tournaments, but don't even mention major BW events?
By Blizzard: Granted Blizzard never seemed to care about esports before, but now that they're all about "supporting esports" have you ever heard them say anything good about BW? It's like they've completely disowned the game.
On October 26 2011 11:29 Probulous wrote:
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.
The argument that the OP was making was that SC2 is more popular with viewers because it gives exposure to a group that wouldn't normally be skilled enough to compete. By the OP's logic SC2 would become less popular with non-Korean viewers if the skill level increased to a point where only people in Korea were good enough to compete.
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On October 26 2011 11:55 R0YAL wrote:Show nested quote +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.
He certainly could have worded his post better. My understanding is that the point where strategy becomes important relative to mechanics is much earlier in SC2 than BW. From a consumer point of view, this is a good thing. It makes the basics easier to learn. From a spectator point of view it only matters if a pro with awesome mechanics gets beaten by a better strategy from a mechanically weak player.
I don't think anyone can argue that BW didn't have incredibly depth when it comes to strategies. There is no way it would have lasted so long if this was the case.
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The argument that the OP was making was that SC2 is more popular with viewers because it gives exposure to a group that wouldn't normally be skilled enough to compete. By the OP's logic SC2 would become less popular with non-Korean viewers if the skill level increased to a point where only people in Korea were good enough to compete.
It probably would, unfortunately. Like I said earlier though, it's much easier for a worse player to beat a better player in SC2 than BW.
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On October 26 2011 11:58 BrosephBrostar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 11:29 Probulous wrote:
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.
By the community: All of the well known western BW community figures have switched over to SC2 and now only talk about BW like a dead uncle. Don't you think it's weird that popular SC2 casters will tell viewers to check out fighting game tournaments, but don't even mention major BW events?
I take it you never watch state of the game.
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I think the popularity of sc2 is more about the era we live in than the game itself. Gaming is now a more acceptable and widespread phenomenon, almost everyone, knows something about games, previously it would be limited to very few people, and it would mostly be need for speed or gta.
If you now couple this with streaming and youtube, and people finding Day9,husky and the others, you have a very potent combination. Brood war never had that. It was released at a time when playing games was not a socially acceptable, most people had 56k connections which pretty much rendered any form of video through the internet choppy at best .
Sure the ease of playing casually does help, but that isnt the most important factor for the growth of e-sports, it in fact is a double edged sword. The games that people enjoy the most,from a spectator perspective. are the ones where you see pro's doing things that are nearly impossible for most of us here. Marineking's marine control is a wonder to watch not because it is easier to do, but because it is very tough to do that. In brood war, it is tough to control units properly and make them march properly at times, let alone engage terran siege lines and drag spider mines onto sieges, while spreading dragoons behind to deal damage...and that scene run across 3 screens on the map. Watching stuff like that is just plain amazing, and it's only one example. The ease of sc2 hurts the watchability because control is kinda negated,and things start to feel a little samey(death ball vs death ball etc).
And it's not that brood war was not popular back in the day, it was extremely popular, but within the gaming community, for the reasons stated above.Maybe if it had the same exposure that sc2 got, who knows. Also, keep in mind that sc2 built off the popularity of bw, which gave it a community, a bunch of loyal fans, a lot of charismatic characters. Would've been interesting to see the reaction if it was not branded as an sc game.
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It's a sequel, it should be BW-y.
Ideas like map control and holding positions using units like lurkers are ideas/concepts that should exist in SC2, because they promote more interesting, drawn out games.
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What I hate most of all is how people are saying that BW were more mechanics than strategy and SC2 is so balanced when it comes to mechanics and strategy.
I have a question. What is it in SC2 strategy that overcomes the strategy depth in BW?
And one thing that screws up the game so there is this ball vs ball and no smaller battles thru the game is because of how the race mechanics is in sc2. Because of larvae mechanics, warp in mechanic and reactor addons you remax so damn quick.
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On October 26 2011 12:03 theBizness wrote:Show nested quote +
The argument that the OP was making was that SC2 is more popular with viewers because it gives exposure to a group that wouldn't normally be skilled enough to compete. By the OP's logic SC2 would become less popular with non-Korean viewers if the skill level increased to a point where only people in Korea were good enough to compete.
It probably would, unfortunately. Like I said earlier though, it's much easier for a worse player to beat a better player in SC2 than BW.
This makes for a better spectator sport, mroe upsets make it more exciting. Take soccer versus rugby for example. One soccer goal is worth so much more that a fluke of a goal could win a game, in rugby points are less vaulable, leading to less chance of upset. Upsets piss you off if you support that team that loses, but are nice for neutral and rivals. It dosen't make it endless domination. But this endless domination dosen't occur in BW anyway
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On October 26 2011 11:58 BrosephBrostar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 11:29 Probulous wrote:
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.
By the community: All of the well known western BW community figures have switched over to SC2 and now only talk about BW like a dead uncle. Don't you think it's weird that popular SC2 casters will tell viewers to check out fighting game tournaments, but don't even mention major BW events? By Blizzard: Granted Blizzard never seemed to care about esports before, but now that they're all about "supporting esports" have you ever heard them say anything good about BW? It's like they've completely disowned the game. Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 11:29 Probulous wrote:
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.
The argument that the OP was making was that SC2 is more popular with viewers because it gives exposure to a group that wouldn't normally be skilled enough to compete. By the OP's logic SC2 would become less popular with non-Korean viewers if the skill level increased to a point where only people in Korea were good enough to compete.
Right. Well fair nuff.
People moved to SC2 because that is where the money is. Besides who are we to begrudge someone else choice. I still think BW is strong and has a devoted community. SC2 provides a great place for recruits. I played BW casually for years wihtout knowing about the pro-scene till SC2 was announced. It isn't all bad.
Your second point makes perfect sense.
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We'll have to disagree, even as a lifelong fan of long-suffering sports teams, I prefer for the better team to win. Upsets also gain more value because they are much more rare, and there's a much more defined hierarchy of player caliber.
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On October 26 2011 12:12 taldarimAltar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 12:03 theBizness wrote:
The argument that the OP was making was that SC2 is more popular with viewers because it gives exposure to a group that wouldn't normally be skilled enough to compete. By the OP's logic SC2 would become less popular with non-Korean viewers if the skill level increased to a point where only people in Korea were good enough to compete.
It probably would, unfortunately. Like I said earlier though, it's much easier for a worse player to beat a better player in SC2 than BW. This makes for a better spectator sport, mroe upsets make it more exciting. Take soccer versus rugby for example. One soccer goal is worth so much more that a fluke of a goal could win a game, in rugby points are less vaulable, leading to less chance of upset. Upsets piss you off if you support that team that loses, but are nice for neutral and rivals. It dosen't make it endless domination. But this endless domination dosen't occur in BW anyway
lol barcelona is never going to loose to a costa rica
It doesnt make for a better spectator sport imo
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I agree with everyone who said that watching deathball vs. deathball can get somewhat monotonous.
Really though, the only thing that bothers me in SC2, which I don't often see brought up, is the maps themselves. It's been a while since I played BW, so my memory is hazy, but it seems like a lot of SC2 maps are just smaller and simpler in terms of geography, with an almost 'arena' like feel to them. There's nothing wrong with this in itself, as it leads to a lot of straight forward action, but I think SC2 could benefit from more map diversity. I would love to see the gameplay of SC2 pan out on some really epic, intricate maps. Of course, I am biased, because the most fun BW games I played with my friends were always the hour(s) long, drawn out affairs where it would take ages to move armies into strategic positions/out think one another.
So, I don't think SC2 should move in a BW direction overall (aside from B.Net). I just think that epic SC2 engagements would be a lot of fun/perhaps more interesting if the variable of geography played a more prominent role in strategy and tactics. Does anyone else feel this way..?
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On October 26 2011 12:03 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 11:58 BrosephBrostar wrote:On October 26 2011 11:29 Probulous wrote:
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.
By the community: All of the well known western BW community figures have switched over to SC2 and now only talk about BW like a dead uncle. Don't you think it's weird that popular SC2 casters will tell viewers to check out fighting game tournaments, but don't even mention major BW events? I take it you never watch state of the game.
SotG is pretty "unofficial," and even then BW is only mentioned in retrospect. There's a huge difference between Tasteless telling everyone to watch EVO during the GSL finals and Artosis talking about a BW match that already happened during an informal show.
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Definitely agree with this - I was a long-time BW follower (started watching around the boxer-dropship era, stopped for a while and thus missed nada, iloveoov and savior, but returned around 2008 just before the flash-dominance era).
I started watching a mix of BW and SC2 but have slowly started watching more SC2 until I do it almost exclusively. I now only watch MSL and OSL finals but almost all of GSL. I liked BW alot but I think SC2 is a superior game.
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Game design is all about building on what works and experimenting with new ideas and concepts. RTS (and every other genre) has evolved over time thanks both to ideas that worked and ideas that didn't.
The original C&C is a good early example. You had a single resource (tiberium fields) and harvesters which were expensive and actually unlocked a fair way down the tech tree. It meant resources couldn't be protected easily (the fields were damaging to bio units and tended to cover a larger area) and it took almost 2 full game minutes for a harvester to pay itself off. It's pretty uncommon for RTS titles nowadays to make resources difficult to secure and defend, because as a general rule that's a bad idea.
Most of the elements of SC2 can be seen in one form or another in various RTS titles, not just Brood War. I think it's helpful to look back at Brood War in the same way it's helpful to look back at all the other RTS games, even games in similar genres. Economic Management Sims teach us that having complex resource dependencies makes economic harassment far too effective, for example.
But I don't think it's helpful to demand features from Brood War just because they were good in Brood War. What's important is looking at the concept, the role, and what new dimensions it brought to the game. SC2 already has so much that is good from other RTS titles, exemplified in the different races in one way or another.
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On October 26 2011 12:09 Termit wrote:
What I hate most of all is how people are saying that BW were more mechanics than strategy and SC2 is so balanced when it comes to mechanics and strategy.
I have a question. What is it in SC2 strategy that overcomes the strategy depth in BW?
And one thing that screws up the game so there is this ball vs ball and no smaller battles thru the game is because of how the race mechanics is in sc2. Because of larvae mechanics, warp in mechanic and reactor addons you remax so damn quick.
Well people that say that are just ignorant.
I never watched the beginnings of BW as a spectator sport. Did it start with ball verse ball action? I can't help but feel that one of the main reasons we have this ball action is because pros can still win with it. The move towards marine splitting, multiple drops and discarding of the protoss deathball all suggest an evolution towards more action across the map.
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Yes I agree 100% with OP.
However it doesn't mean we should ignore the good game design aspects of BW. But it seems most people that bring the BW topic on SC2 discussions are always just like "lurkers !! goliath !!" and simply sceaming out what units they want back, which is useless and plain annoying. Browder is right: BW still exist, you can play it out.
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Its great that you want a game that is easier to play and that looks better than broodwar, that said what does this have to do with abandoning starcraft units and gameplay elements that were iconic to the series?
SC2 at the end of the day is still a sequal to broodwar, but the way things are turning out you can almost say it is a new IP.
I know alot of people are against my way of looking at things but really SC2 IMO shouldve looked more like an expasion to broodwar with new graphics.
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I was a little afraid when starting the thread that ther will be offended and offensive responses (both in the same post or not) and it happened to some extend, but there are some really well thought responses that have widened my view on why do some people present opinions that I do not fully understand. Anyway, please rest assured, that the point of my rather lenghty OP was not to "bash BW" - what would I ever gain from that? I can bash football for hours, if you want me to, but I spend several years playing BW (albeit absolutely terribly), I have no need to make fun of that (or should I?).
I would like to elaborate a little on the ESPORTS part: I believe that if the day comes that Koreans will completely dominate SC2, as they do in BW, it will stop being intersting for the majority of western fans. Yes, there are many fans of BW and I believe they get a lot of fun and excitement from watching it (as from the limited amount of matches I have seen, it is quite different from SC2 and has a lot of depth beyond my understadnig) - but I think that for the averagy Joe (using mysefl as an example), the competition between people in a small country, devided from me be language and cultural barriers will not be as atractive, as, say, an MLG. I must admit, even now I already hate watching all the ceremonies around GSL, all the glittery stuff.. and don't let me started on KPOP. This is not "xenophoby" or whatever, it's just not fun. It's OK to being picky about what you watch for run, right?
So what I am not sure about is, whether it is actually possible to recreate all the great aspects of BW that you all keep mentioning, without making the game too difficult to master without korean training system, thus destroying its western ESPORTS appeal.
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On October 26 2011 12:15 crawlingchaos wrote:
I agree with everyone who said that watching deathball vs. deathball can get somewhat monotonous.
Really though, the only thing that bothers me in SC2, which I don't often see brought up, is the maps themselves. It's been a while since I played BW, so my memory is hazy, but it seems like a lot of SC2 maps are just smaller and simpler in terms of geography, with an almost 'arena' like feel to them. There's nothing wrong with this in itself, as it leads to a lot of straight forward action, but I think SC2 could benefit from more map diversity. I would love to see the gameplay of SC2 pan out on some really epic, intricate maps. Of course, I am biased, because the most fun BW games I played with my friends were always the hour(s) long, drawn out affairs where it would take ages to move armies into strategic positions/out think one another.
So, I don't think SC2 should move in a BW direction overall (aside from B.Net). I just think that epic SC2 engagements would be a lot of fun/perhaps more interesting if the variable of geography played a more prominent role in strategy and tactics. Does anyone else feel this way..?
Very true.
If blizzard wasn't so ridiculously profitable I would feel for them :p
How exactly does one balance
- Unit design
- Game mechanics
- Map design
Keeping in mind the game is supposed to be similar but different to BW and there will be thousands of people playing it competitively. How do you know what it causing the problem? How do you know there is a problem? Maybe time is the best solution.
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BW wasn't unpopular in the west because it was too hard, it was unpopular because it was 12 years old. If they had released shiny updated BW instead of sc2 everything that is happening now would still be happening.
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On October 26 2011 12:31 sickoota wrote:
BW wasn't unpopular in the west because it was too hard, it was unpopular because it was 12 years old. If they had released shiny updated BW instead of sc2 everything that is happening now would still be happening.
So the fact that a handful of foreigners are somewhat relevant has nothing to do with it? Look at all those polls/threads where all people care about is rooting for players from their own country etc.
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Love Sc2 but BW is the STANDARD. We compare because we want SC2 to be as good a game as BW. That's all.
Hopefully one day it will. But its not yet.
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I strongly disagree. BW is unpopular now because it's old. Simple as that. It was an amazing game and we should strive to be as close to it as possible and as far from WC3 as possible. Sometimes I think people want it the other way around though..
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Very well put together.
Thanks!
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On October 26 2011 12:18 Probulous wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 12:09 Termit wrote:
What I hate most of all is how people are saying that BW were more mechanics than strategy and SC2 is so balanced when it comes to mechanics and strategy.
I have a question. What is it in SC2 strategy that overcomes the strategy depth in BW?
And one thing that screws up the game so there is this ball vs ball and no smaller battles thru the game is because of how the race mechanics is in sc2. Because of larvae mechanics, warp in mechanic and reactor addons you remax so damn quick. Well people that say that are just ignorant. I never watched the beginnings of BW as a spectator sport. Did it start with ball verse ball action? I can't help but feel that one of the main reasons we have this ball action is because pros can still win with it. The move towards marine splitting, multiple drops and discarding of the protoss deathball all suggest an evolution towards more action across the map.
No, brood war was never ball on ball. It went from microing the few units you had to having more units by macro. I don't see the ignorance in his post.
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I don't understand how if you've seen both games being played that you could argue that the gameplay of BW from a spectator POV wasn't 20x better. The way people positioned themselves across the map, and how armies engaged were all superior any way you look at it. SC2 is flashier, that's it. I'm just shaking my head here thinking how people can enjoy watching balls walking around the map and clashing once in a while.
People are under the assumption that you would have to dumb down the AI to achieve a BW game style, and while that would certainly get the game to that point, it doesn't mean that's the only way. If the mechanics stay the same, and casual players aren't overwhelmed, why not move more towards the BW style?
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Because Brood War is 10x times the game that SC2 is ever going to be and having David Kim (Warhammer 40k, the shitty balance) and Dustin Browder (Red Alert 2, omg) create and balance the game is really never going to be better than Rob Pardo and all the rest of the old designers that worked on the original SC1.
User was warned for this post
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There are really only 3 things I wish SC2 had from BW:
-Muta stacking... good muta control was just an art, and beautiful to watch in the hands of a pro (will never happen due to engine)
-Reaver, 10x more exciting than the colossus (will probably never happen)
-Less ball vs ball in general (hopefully we'll get there in the future)
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The reason I don't think it should be more like BW - SCII was designed to be an esport. It is designed for the west. What does the west like? Not the strategy aspect of RTS, but the RT aspect of it. BW was a slow, strategic/macro game. SCII is a fast, micro/tactics game. That is why it will suceed in the West, at least for a while, like BW never did. It's the same reason that chess is not a popular sport - people find it boring. Blizzard got that, and that's why SCII is like it is. Unfortunately, this kind of gimped the Zerg race(SCII has a very sped up timeline, with players maxing in under 10 minutes frequently, which could take 20-30 minutes in BW, and Zerg is extremely time dependent, meaning with this sped up rate it's either OP(too many drones with little pressure opportunity) or UP(not enough drones, too much enemy pressure) meaning there is a very very thin line for their balance).
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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.
Your title jumps to that fairly quickly; not only that, but your major points teeter on it as well. Something I will address later on. Your reasoning is no different from the countless threads we've have over the last 2 years in all honesty. I've seen this topic discussed to no end and yet here it is again.
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.
The reason we see so many comparisons is because a lot of the player base played Brood War and let's face it. Brood War is the most balanced RTS of all-time. You would see very few people debate this.
As it stands, the Zerg lack a heavy-siege unit and we knew a spell like dark swarm would re-appear soon as it helps maintain a stranglehold and it can be used defensively as well. This is just one point.
It comes down to utility. The more utility your units have the more interesting and dynamic the game will get.
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.
Once again, it comes down to dynamics. You need units that serve more than one purpose (vaibility/soft counters) and some of the new units touch on these points to a certain extent. Some of the units are very similar to Brood War units; however, they are still different. I see what your saying. Spinoffs are always going to get the short-end of the stick because they will always be compared to their counterparts. It's not a win-win situation.
Anyway, let's think about why do people not keep playing BW, even though many people that play (or at least passionately discuss) SC2 are apparently of the opinion that BW is superior? For me, the reason is simple: I suck at BW, because of its mechanical difficulty and playing SC2 is much more fun for me.
The pro's and amateurs don't continue to play BW because financially it isn't feasible for them. They have to market the game they play. When it is all said and done they have to make a living.
OK, but I am a noob, right? So why do we have a whole ESPORTS scene around SC2, if it is inferior to BW? The reason is, again, simple: because the pros (non-korean) suck at BW - at least compared to their korean counterparts.
Only viable if you make it on a pro gaming team in Korea. SC2 is the new thing. It was nearly impossible to break into the Korean scene. Lots of players tried and either failed or couldn't handle the working conditions and being far from home. It isn't so simple as you make it out to be.
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.
Thank the friendlier U.I. for that. I'm of the belief that you don't necessarily have to keep making U.I.'s more user friendly with each game. It's part of the rulebook. That doesn't mean I don't think BW's U.I. is outdated because I believe it is. I would definitely make a number of changes.
The think that we have to understand is that we now have something different than what we had in BW and that by making SC2 being more like BW, it will be ruined and essentially another version of BW will be made. Why would we want that? Isn't BW the best "version of BW" we could ever hope for?
This situation has another, for many unwelcome, consequence: we cannot really have even the units feel too much BWy. The reason why BW is balanced with just the units and statistics it has, has much to do with its mechanical difficulty. Putting BW units into SC2 with all the UI improvements is a complete disaster. But removing these improvements would be a disaster as well, a disaster for the existence of SC2 as a separate entitty from "just a shiny BW remake".
The question I would like to see ultimately discussed in this thread is: if you argue that something should be "more like in BW", what is you goal? What do you want to achieve with that? Does any desirable outcome of such a developement even exist? Isn't it better for SC2 to be just as different from BW as possible (while still having ESPORTS potential - Angry Birds are obvously more different from BW than SC2)?
Again, the reason for having SC2 different from BW is not that one or another approach is better than the other, but that we already kinda do have a very nice realisation of the BW one.
No. Just watch instead of jumping the gun like everyone else does. The game won't be ruined; give it time. You are overgeneralizing just like the rest.
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Why did it double post? -_-
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On October 26 2011 12:40 hitpoint wrote:
I strongly disagree. BW is unpopular now because it's old. Simple as that. It was an amazing game and we should strive to be as close to it as possible and as far from WC3 as possible. Sometimes I think people want it the other way around though..
no, like the op said, BW is unpopular now bc it's too hard for many people and western pros' lack of skill in the game caused the western audience to lose any interest they may have had left in the game. according to ur logic, bw should not be popular in korea but that is a contradiction.
for the regular noob, a game is infinitely more fun if you can actually do a lot of stuff the first time you play a game (flatter learning curve) than a game like BW where you're just going to get owned all the time in the beginning.
there is a reason why people always bring up bw in sc2 design and that is because bw is the standard to look up to. BW, and the characteristics of BW are what made people become interested in RTS in the first place, BW is the game that made Day9, Artosis, Tasteless, incontrol, idra, etc. passionate about professional gaming and is what has led to an esports scene in the first place. it's because BW was such a high standard game that SC2 is even popular in the first place. the value of the starcraft name is tied to the characteristics of BW which made the game such a great rts game.
if SC2 is going to continue mooching off its "starcraft" brand name, then it at least has a duty to go back to the drawing board and think about what is starcraft and what made it so great in the first place.
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shredder they said is like a spider mine. spider mine way cooler. they try to meet bw half way.
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On October 26 2011 10:05 No_eL wrote:
sorry but im so BW nostalgic right now... i really recommend to all sc2 players watch some bw games and play some for better understanding the sorrow of many
You're comparing a game that is how many years old vs 1 year old SC2? Really?
One of these days this BW eliteism will disappear...
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On October 26 2011 13:04 Peterblue wrote:
The reason I don't think it should be more like BW - SCII was designed to be an esport. It is designed for the west. What does the west like? Not the strategy aspect of RTS, but the RT aspect of it. BW was a slow, strategic/macro game. SCII is a fast, micro/tactics game. That is why it will suceed in the West, at least for a while, like BW never did. It's the same reason that chess is not a popular sport - people find it boring. Blizzard got that, and that's why SCII is like it is. Unfortunately, this kind of gimped the Zerg race(SCII has a very sped up timeline, with players maxing in under 10 minutes frequently, which could take 20-30 minutes in BW, and Zerg is extremely time dependent, meaning with this sped up rate it's either OP(too many drones with little pressure opportunity) or UP(not enough drones, too much enemy pressure) meaning there is a very very thin line for their balance).
The bold part... micro? Really?
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On October 26 2011 12:44 lyAsakura wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 12:18 Probulous wrote:On October 26 2011 12:09 Termit wrote:
What I hate most of all is how people are saying that BW were more mechanics than strategy and SC2 is so balanced when it comes to mechanics and strategy.
I have a question. What is it in SC2 strategy that overcomes the strategy depth in BW?
And one thing that screws up the game so there is this ball vs ball and no smaller battles thru the game is because of how the race mechanics is in sc2. Because of larvae mechanics, warp in mechanic and reactor addons you remax so damn quick. Well people that say that are just ignorant. I never watched the beginnings of BW as a spectator sport. Did it start with ball verse ball action? I can't help but feel that one of the main reasons we have this ball action is because pros can still win with it. The move towards marine splitting, multiple drops and discarding of the protoss deathball all suggest an evolution towards more action across the map. No, brood war was never ball on ball. It went from microing the few units you had to having more units by macro. I don't see the ignorance in his post.
Yup, the Terran death ball didn't appear until much later in BW and even then players still had methods of dealing with stuff like that. There are several eras well documented in BW history.
On October 26 2011 13:16 SpiritAshura wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:05 No_eL wrote:
sorry but im so BW nostalgic right now... i really recommend to all sc2 players watch some bw games and play some for better understanding the sorrow of many You're comparing a game that is how many years old vs 1 year old SC2? Really? One of these days this BW eliteism will disappear...
... and you guys need to stop jumping on everyone who talks about BW as if it were all elitism.
I think we need to turn it in another light. Instead of comparing the two how about we look at the entire progress of RTS games in general?
The goal is to aim for perfect balance while breathing more fresh air into a franchise. Not just once; but twice.
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I agree with OP. Why make Brood War when Brood War already exists?
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On October 26 2011 10:04 XsebT wrote:
SC2 generated a huge influx of new players to the foreign community - something I was looking forward to. But I was disappoint it wasn't the game I loved anymore. Now I know it will never be, so I've stopped complaining and with this mindset I agree with the OP.
I still complain to myself, but otherwise I'm with you T_T
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Canada11363 Posts
I don't think I agree at all with the idea that foreigners have switched to SC2 because they dislike the mechanical difficulty in BW. There's a lot of reasons they would switch, but I have yet to hear a BW foreigner that have said there reason for switching is multi-base selection and smart casting. Although they're quiet about it now, they were quite vocally against such things when they were first announced pre-Beta.
However, I feel the OP misses the point of all the BW comparisons. I don't think anyone wants a BW clone. However, all the comparisons about roles that SC2 is missing, about unit dynamics and a decreased emphasis on possible moments of brilliance.
So generally we're just looking at what interactions, strategic possibilities, and fun moments SC2 is missing and often the best set of examples are in BW. But no, we definitely want a direct port. But something like it, something that fills the missing roles.
In the end though this thread skirts pretty close to the BW vs SC2 debates.
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On October 26 2011 13:33 Falling wrote:
I don't think I agree at all with the idea that foreigners have switched to SC2 because they dislike the mechanical difficulty in BW. There's a lot of reasons they would switch, but I have yet to hear a BW foreigner that have said there reason for switching is multi-base selection and smart casting. Although they're quiet about it now, they were quite vocally against such things when they were first announced pre-Beta.
However, I feel the OP misses the point of all the BW comparisons. I don't think anyone wants a BW clone. However, all the comparisons about roles that SC2 is missing, about unit dynamics and a decreased emphasis on possible moments of brilliance.
So generally we're just looking at what interactions, strategic possibilities, and fun moments SC2 is missing and often the best set of examples are in BW. But no, we definitely want a direct port. But something like it, something that fills the missing roles.
In the end though this thread skirts pretty close to the BW vs SC2 debates.
Probably because it isn't true at all. If anything, it's a barrier to entry when most players are used to U.I.'s that are more user friendly to begin with. Anyway, I've already addressed this and so have many others. There are several reasons as to why the base is thinning out and the U.I. isn't the half of it.
We have to look at the bigger picture of what the game entails and what the game is missing.
We have a fair consensus:
- Zerg are missing a heavy siege unit. The ability to slow down an army with another spell is a plus.
- Protoss need a unit that can provide harassment.
- Terran have good utility as is.
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On October 26 2011 12:44 lyAsakura wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 12:18 Probulous wrote:On October 26 2011 12:09 Termit wrote:
What I hate most of all is how people are saying that BW were more mechanics than strategy and SC2 is so balanced when it comes to mechanics and strategy.
I have a question. What is it in SC2 strategy that overcomes the strategy depth in BW?
And one thing that screws up the game so there is this ball vs ball and no smaller battles thru the game is because of how the race mechanics is in sc2. Because of larvae mechanics, warp in mechanic and reactor addons you remax so damn quick. Well people that say that are just ignorant. I never watched the beginnings of BW as a spectator sport. Did it start with ball verse ball action? I can't help but feel that one of the main reasons we have this ball action is because pros can still win with it. The move towards marine splitting, multiple drops and discarding of the protoss deathball all suggest an evolution towards more action across the map. No, brood war was never ball on ball. It went from microing the few units you had to having more units by macro. I don't see the ignorance in his post.
Thanks, like I said I didn't follow BW in the early stages. I wasn't saying he was ignorant I was saying that " people are saying that BW were more mechanics than strategy and SC2 is so balanced when it comes to mechanics and strategy" are ignorant. I think my post makes sense.
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On October 26 2011 13:07 hmmm... wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 12:40 hitpoint wrote:
I strongly disagree. BW is unpopular now because it's old. Simple as that. It was an amazing game and we should strive to be as close to it as possible and as far from WC3 as possible. Sometimes I think people want it the other way around though.. no, like the op said, BW is unpopular now bc it's too hard for many people and western pros' lack of skill in the game caused the western audience to lose any interest they may have had left in the game. according to ur logic, bw should not be popular in korea but that is a contradiction.
I think that's totally wrong and I don't understand why people think that way. Isn't it kind of demeaning to think that people will only watch a game if people that look the same as them are winning?
The reason pro BW isn't popular in the west was because it had zero exposure. Aside from WCG every year there were was basically no way to watch live games with English commentary. When GomTV started doing English commentary for BW it was a massive boost to popularity even though it was only once a week at 4AM. If Blizzard had put even half as much effort into promoting BW as it is SC2 I have no doubt that it would be hugely popular.
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Personally I hope they are able to kill the ball vs. ball strategies of WoL. It's just not as entertaining (to watch AND play) as a large army spread out all over the place.
And I say that as someone who BARELY ever played BW.
Watching 6 colossus or 20 tanks or 30 marauders ball up and practically A move isn't fun to watch over and over.
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forgive me if im mistaken as its a long time since i playing wc3 but wasnt there this function where units are arranged into columns instead of balls? would that help improve spectator quality?
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I don't know how every single poster opening threads manages to be as rude as humanly possible when choosing the title. If you want to start a discussion do it right. Meaning formulate the question neutrally.
For example instead of saying 'Why SC2 should not be getting more BW-y' (Which basically says everyone who disagrees with that statement is a moron) you could ask ' Would Sc2 benefit (or suffer) from introducing (more) BW mechanics?'.
And the No-Native-Speaker argument cannot be applied here since you choose the put in the effort to start a discussion in an english forum. I don't care about spelling or grammar but people needlessly und probably involuntary behaving like assholes really pisses me off.
On Topic:
The whole discussion is pointless since you only can argue when you have the relevant data. We don't have any data because HotS isn't even in beta yet. Thus any argument how close it ever will be to the actual facts will still be wrong.
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On October 26 2011 16:07 thoradycus wrote:
forgive me if im mistaken as its a long time since i playing wc3 but wasnt there this function where units are arranged into columns instead of balls? would that help improve spectator quality?
I'm not sure how this was in wc3, but im just going to say yes, because anything is better than what it's like right now lol
I mean, i can't imagine that being any worse, unless units actually climbed on each others backs.
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Whether you post this or not. After seeing the HotS expansion votes I can clearly tell that a significant majority of SC2 players who don't want BW features are completely in denial.
The Defiler 2.0 unit (viper) is the most popular change in HotS, notice that is also closest to one of the most popular BW spellcasters.
We see posts like this all the time, yet statistics tell the exact opposite, the Anti-BW guys are on the Pro-BW bandwagon whether they realise it or not.
On October 26 2011 18:33 pzea469 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 16:07 thoradycus wrote:
forgive me if im mistaken as its a long time since i playing wc3 but wasnt there this function where units are arranged into columns instead of balls? would that help improve spectator quality? I'm not sure how this was in wc3, but im just going to say yes, because anything is better than what it's like right now lol I mean, i can't imagine that being any worse, unless units actually climbed on each others backs.
Warcraft 3 had similar grid style pathing to BW (but optimised), and I don't remember anyone saying it sucked. Blizzard is simply in denial and I'd say its due to the programmers not wanting to change the uber-advanced pathing algorithm and coming up with some sort of excuse. Programmers have a lot of pride in their work, and don't like it when people want to throw it away. I know from experience.
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On October 26 2011 18:47 sluggaslamoo wrote:Whether you post this or not. After seeing the HotS expansion votes I can clearly tell that a significant majority of SC2 players who don't want BW features are completely in denial. The Defiler 2.0 unit (viper) is the most popular change in HotS, notice that is also closest to one of the most popular BW spellcasters. We see posts like this all the time, yet statistics tell the exact opposite, the Anti-BW guys are on the Pro-BW bandwagon whether they realise it or not.Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 18:33 pzea469 wrote:On October 26 2011 16:07 thoradycus wrote:
forgive me if im mistaken as its a long time since i playing wc3 but wasnt there this function where units are arranged into columns instead of balls? would that help improve spectator quality? I'm not sure how this was in wc3, but im just going to say yes, because anything is better than what it's like right now lol I mean, i can't imagine that being any worse, unless units actually climbed on each others backs. Warcraft 3 had similar grid style pathing to BW (but optimised), and I don't remember anyone saying it sucked. Blizzard is simply in denial and I'd say its due to the programmers not wanting to change the uber-advanced pathing algorithm and coming up with some sort of excuse. Programmers have a lot of pride in their work, and don't like it when people want to throw it away. I know from experience.
Man that pathing sounds perfect then. I hate the balling up soo much in SC2. I can't express my hate towards it enough.
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I love BW and still find it far superior game design-, balance- and style-wise.
however, SC2 has:
-a lot more players
-is newer
-is still changing a lot
-has more userfriendly controls
-the gap between pros and noobs is a lot smaller (especially at the beginning)
The problem with SC2 is that it dropped a lot of the things that made BW so awesome: interaction between units, real micro, interesting units, etc.
SC2 just does not use the whole spectrum of design that BW used. sure there are new things introduced, but these new things actually play with the framework of the game, which is something I think should not be done as it has widely negative effects that then need to be counterbalanced with other negative effects. (example: macro mechanics (mules, chronoboost, inject larva), forcefields, warp in, etc.)
Another major problem is the movement AI. sure, it should be better than BW, but the movement AI of SC2 is I think one of the main problems the game has. AoE cannot be properly balanced because of the clumping/balling.
I don't want BW but I want that the superior aspects of BW are built into SC2.
I really wonder who designed the BW units but I'm pretty sure that it's not the same people that designed the SC2 units. stuff like roaches, marauders, unique units, hellions etc. just don't make sense.
I don't really expect this to change but I still have hope. (when I hear Dustin Bowder talk about the game it just makes me cringe. It always sounds as if he hasn't really much of a clue.)
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I completly disagree with OP; SC2 has brought several great improvements (such as no limit control groups) but BW is still superior in the vast majority of sectors: : My main complaint; because BW is so hard and complicated its impossible to master. Thats why players have to focus on certain aspects. Some are known for their micro.. other for their macro.. other for their decision making.. while in SC2 if you show a pro match with names blured there is almost no way you can say who is playing/ thats why fans care more about drama / country / story than the game..
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Exactly, great idea. Everyone will eventually switch to SC2 when they see the money and community going into it, as it is evolving at a much faster rate
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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.
It's a valid point but even so it seems that much of the comparison ends with comparing unit X in SC2 to unit Y in BW, and I agree that comparisons should be drawn between the two games, and I agree that certain elements in BW did make it a more enjoyable spectator sport, but we need to allow space for new units to come in without criticizing their roles compared to their BW "counterpart" as it were. For example a thread that was recently closed debated the phoenix being useless compared to corsairs and how the unit should be remade to be almost a carbon copy of the corsair, that's not what we need and that's not the step forward, yes, it may have to deal with the same/similar issues, but they can be approached by several different means, and that then leads to more exciting development.
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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.
i agree with this. bw was more positional. There was a rock paper scissor happening in BW, but that dynamic played out in map positions and lots of positional joustings and feignings. In SC2, there is more emphasis on the rock paper scissors, and positional play is greatly greatly reduced, so that all the important things that determine a battle in SC2 happens within 10 seconds, rather than in SC1 where there were 10 minutes leading to the battle where grounds were given and taken, battles were fought over cliffs and minute advantages, and you can see one player gaining more and more territory on the map until finally something gives.
u don't see that in SC2, because SC2 is all focused on units. The designers didn't appreciate the beauty of the terrain. I guess one way to sum it up is that in SC2, everything that's important to see can be seen on the game screen. in SC1, controlling the minimap was must more important.
even within SC2, there is the dynamic where sometimes positional play is important, and sometimes rock/paper/scissor is important. the epitome of the rock/paper/scissor is protoss vs protoss, where you either build order win or you don't. the epitome of positional play in SC2 is mech terran vs marine marauder terran.
I hope this gets the point across to anyone reading that things happening positionally is much more interesting to play and watch than things happening based on rock/paper/scissor. it's why TvT is fun to watch, but PvP, for the most part is, "oh, rock beats scissor, gg."
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On October 26 2011 20:48 TI13 wrote:
I completly disagree with OP; SC2 has brought several great improvements (such as no limit control groups) but BW is still superior in the vast majority of sectors: : My main complaint; because BW is so hard and complicated its impossible to master. Thats why players have to focus on certain aspects. Some are known for their micro.. other for their macro.. other for their decision making.. while in SC2 if you show a pro match with names blured there is almost no way you can say who is playing/ thats why fans care more about drama / country / story than the game..
You're comparing skill caps from a game that has been around for over 10 years to one that is just over 2 years old, the skill caps will not be comparable for a long time to come because of the fact that BW has had a long time to develop and be played by the pros, whereas SC2 is still having lots of changes applied to it and therefore the metagame is rapidly changing. We don't know in 2-3 years time whether things will still be the same way, or maybe in 2-3 years we will have people known for their macro/micro/decision making, even now we see some players being credited for their good micro, but my main point is you can't line these two games up side-by-side and have a straight comparison, it's too early and this has been said time and time again.
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When I see people complaining about ball vs ball battles in sc2 I wonder...
During this kind of fight, there will be a winner (most of the time). So why the future looser will engage ? Maybe some good spells will have win him the fight, but in this case the risk/reward ratio was probably not well addressed.
I think that this kind of battle will eventually stop, not because of game changes, but because of players changes. As the game will get older and older and as the player will be able to see outright if they have a good chance of winning a blob battle, they will try to apply new tactics to avoid this kind of battle. With theses new tactics, the blober will have to prepare for this potential threat and adapt too.
Blizzard does not like this kind of battle, it probably does not take much to remove them. They just don't know how yet. Since the game is evolving so fast: patches, hots et the next one, we can't go in this kind of stuff right now. We will have to wait a few years/months after the game is all set up, like BW has. It is really are to see this kind of chance appears with the rules being constantly changing. Enjoy theses changes in the mean time
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People don't want SC2 to be BW, they want SC2 to have characteristics of BW which made BW so awesome. I am not talking about workers cannot be rallied to mineral patches and unlimited unit selection. I mean things like micro. In SC2 everything looks like made to remove any micro from the game. Dustin browder does not even understand the meaning of micro, micro for him is turning on banshee's cloak lol.. Compare reaver with colossus and say that you wouldn't like to have reaver in SC2.
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well Brood War was an amazing game, if SC2 replicates it it shouldn't be bad but... yeah, I definately agree with OP in general.
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You don't see much micro yet, because it is not needed to win.
When everything will stabilize and when every pro will have the same knowledge of the (balanced) game, the micro will make the difference. And only then we will see it grow.
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On October 26 2011 21:09 Alpina wrote:
People don't want SC2 to be BW, they want SC2 to have characteristics of BW which made BW so awesome. I am not talking about workers cannot be rallied to mineral patches and unlimited unit selection. I mean things like micro. In SC2 everything looks like made to remove any micro from the game. Dustin browder does not even understand the meaning of micro, micro for him is turning on banshee's cloak lol.. Compare reaver with colossus and say that you wouldn't like to have reaver in SC2.
There are micro intensive things in Starcraft. Marine-Splits, Immortal drop micro, blink micro, stutter step, ling baneling wars, focusing of the right units, ... .
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brood war is hugely overrated as a game.
It was good even great for it's time but compared by today's standard it's just terrible. It's too much mechanics and pointlessly clicking this and that. SC2 is much cleaner in that you don't have to mindlessly repeat actions like sending scv's to work etc. which leaves more focus on other things like timings and micro. SC2 also doesn't have all the dodgy bugs that bw has like dodgy reavers, spider mines, dragoons etc. The 12 unit cap for a group is another terrible thing that I'm glad is gone in sc2,
it has nothing to do with tactics but only mechanical skill.
BW had the luck that lots of those glitches worked out well and allowed for cute micro moves. That is the only thing I can complain about perhaps in sc2 compared to bw, bw had some cute micro moves and some 'cleaner' battles. The 'deatball' does get much more chaotic in sc2 and there are some cool moves lacking perhaps like stop lurker but that can be implemented in the expansion quite well still.
This site is just heavily biased towards BW because it was founded by people loving BW, it's only logical that there is a bias here. Sequels almost never live up to the original because people that judge the sequel are usually huge fans of the original and thus think of the original as the golden standard.
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Yet everyone would rage, if they saw an exact copy of BW just with better graphics. It's been done before, but there are surely a few things that could be used from BW. It's all been mentioned.
I like SC2, since it feels more fast phased and still heavily micro intensive.
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Most of us want the same "feel" in sc2 that BW had. which right now is almost true except for any matchup concerning protoss because of protoss's complete reworking in SC2.
PvZ PvT and PvP are almost nothing like they were in BW and hence you see a lot of Terrans like myself who really wish for that old glorious TvP style they have in BW that just isnt possible against deathball toss. And a lot of zergs whining about Hydras being useless when they were one of the go-to units in BW against protoss.
which is why a lot of us forum posters hate these new units like the Collosus the roacha dnt he marauder cuz they fundamentally destroy what makes the game interesting due to the fact that they are almost not like any unit their race had in BW. redesigning protoss to be a deathball 1a race isn't as interesting as watching what the protoss matchups were like in BW.
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On October 26 2011 21:15 Sandermatt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 21:09 Alpina wrote:
People don't want SC2 to be BW, they want SC2 to have characteristics of BW which made BW so awesome. I am not talking about workers cannot be rallied to mineral patches and unlimited unit selection. I mean things like micro. In SC2 everything looks like made to remove any micro from the game. Dustin browder does not even understand the meaning of micro, micro for him is turning on banshee's cloak lol.. Compare reaver with colossus and say that you wouldn't like to have reaver in SC2. There are micro intensive things in Starcraft. Marine-Splits, Immortal drop micro, blink micro, stutter step, ling baneling wars, focusing of the right units, ... .
But they are so ... meh. And you have to look at micro elements that separate SC2 from BW and there's none. BW has all the elements of SC2 micro and more. e.g Marine splits exist in BW against Lurkers.
What does SC2 actually have over BW?
On October 26 2011 21:18 Markwerf wrote:
brood war is hugely overrated as a game.
It was good even great for it's time but compared by today's standard it's just terrible. It's too much mechanics and pointlessly clicking this and that. SC2 is much cleaner in that you don't have to mindlessly repeat actions like sending scv's to work etc. which leaves more focus on other things like timings and micro. SC2 also doesn't have all the dodgy bugs that bw has like dodgy reavers, spider mines, dragoons etc. The 12 unit cap for a group is another terrible thing that I'm glad is gone in sc2,
it has nothing to do with tactics but only mechanical skill.
BW had the luck that lots of those glitches worked out well and allowed for cute micro moves. That is the only thing I can complain about perhaps in sc2 compared to bw, bw had some cute micro moves and some 'cleaner' battles. The 'deatball' does get much more chaotic in sc2 and there are some cool moves lacking perhaps like stop lurker but that can be implemented in the expansion quite well still.
This site is just heavily biased towards BW because it was founded by people loving BW, it's only logical that there is a bias here. Sequels almost never live up to the original because people that judge the sequel are usually huge fans of the original and thus think of the original as the golden standard.
No one thinks Street Fighter 1 is the best fighter game, and 99.999% of people switched to BW. You never see SC1 vs BW threads.
Everyone thinks BW is the gold standard because it is. Its the only game to have established a stabilitised E-Sports scene which has lasted over 10 years, with paid pros in the hundreds of thousands of dollars salary, and attracted crowds of over 100,000.
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On October 26 2011 21:15 Sandermatt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 21:09 Alpina wrote:
People don't want SC2 to be BW, they want SC2 to have characteristics of BW which made BW so awesome. I am not talking about workers cannot be rallied to mineral patches and unlimited unit selection. I mean things like micro. In SC2 everything looks like made to remove any micro from the game. Dustin browder does not even understand the meaning of micro, micro for him is turning on banshee's cloak lol.. Compare reaver with colossus and say that you wouldn't like to have reaver in SC2. There are micro intensive things in Starcraft. Marine-Splits, Immortal drop micro, blink micro, stutter step, ling baneling wars, focusing of the right units, ... .
The micro in SC2 is not half as beautiful to watch as the micro displayed in BW or WC3.
The things you list there don't impress me at all in SC2 - the only thing that I really like to watch is Marine splitting, since it has great dynamic and takes a lot of skill.
Immortal drops don't do enough to be spectacular albeit they take lots of skill to pull off.
Blink and stutter step are not impressive at all.
There are two things why I believe that micro and thus battles are not as nice to watch as in BW or WC3:
1. Shit dies too fast.
The dps to health ratio in SC2 is pretty high compared to BW or WC3. Everything happens so quickly, how are you supposed to micro? In BW and WC3 battles players have insanely high apm since there is so much to do. But what kind of micro do you want to display when armies kill each other off in the blink of an eye? What do you get out of drop play when your WP and the dropped Colossus, Immortal can easily get sniped?
2. Battle outcomes are often predetermined.
If Terran EMPs Protoss's core units before a battle, Protoss loses no matter what. If Toss catches Zerg or Terran off-guard and FF traps them, there is nothing they can do. If Zerg gets a good flank, there is no way of running away from that and it might outright lose you the game.
There are many of these occasions where a battle can't be won because somebody is half a second quicker than the other player. Suppose you are in your base macroing and suddenly you see a red dot on the mini map which turns out to be 4 ghosts who just blanket EMPed your army. What u gonna do besides trying to run from stimmed bio?
In both BW and WC3 there were these situations as well where one would have an initial advantage over the other player due to positioning or catching somebody offguard, but in those games you had better retreat options and could use micro to overcome theses disadvantages. I don't see that in SC2 as much
3. Anti - Micro abilities
This has been brought up many times: How do micro against Fungal/FF/Concussive? You hardly can. What do I gain from pulling back units when a stimmed marauder does not only outrun it but it additionally gets slowed? Got FFed? Bad luck for you. Fungal anyone? Say goodbye to your units.
Yes, in WC3 you had lots of those abilities. But almost every friggin unit had some spell so that you had great spell dynamics in battles including heals and other abilities that helped you safing units.
There is other stuff adding to this. How do you want to micro roaches? Yeah you could use burrow micro and the likes... But in general I kinda feel that there are too many situations where you can win battles by having a good position and then a-move your army with using a couple of spells on top of that.
Furthermore there are so many units that do not reward micro? The Stutter Stalker experiment underlines this. While good players can get so much out of marines, kiting with stalkers is so laughable compared to this. Why cant the Stalker turn quicker and have a better fire animation? It would help Pro-Tosses at the highest level but not have an impact on the noob level.
How do you micro Hellions? THe list goes on....
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No one wants to re-make BW people want SC2 to be as good as BW which at its state, simply is not other than the fact that it is more beginner-friendly. And you are wrong to say BW still has a huge player-base, in comparison to SC2 it is nowhere close and almost all foreigner BW pros have switched over.
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On October 26 2011 20:50 firehand101 wrote:
Exactly, great idea. Everyone will eventually switch to SC2 when they see the money and community going into it, as it is evolving at a much faster rate
and thats the problem
Thats the wrong sequence of events, first there should be interest, than you have passion and THAN you have money. If money makes you switch games, its none other than job persuit. Some pros were kinda clear on that, (for example IdrA).
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There's hardly any way to play BW for me anymore. ICCup is too laggy.
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On October 26 2011 21:18 Markwerf wrote:
brood war is hugely overrated as a game.
It was good even great for it's time but compared by today's standard it's just terrible. It's too much mechanics and pointlessly clicking this and that. SC2 is much cleaner in that you don't have to mindlessly repeat actions like sending scv's to work etc. which leaves more focus on other things like timings and micro. SC2 also doesn't have all the dodgy bugs that bw has like dodgy reavers, spider mines, dragoons etc. The 12 unit cap for a group is another terrible thing that I'm glad is gone in sc2,
it has nothing to do with tactics but only mechanical skill.
BW had the luck that lots of those glitches worked out well and allowed for cute micro moves. That is the only thing I can complain about perhaps in sc2 compared to bw, bw had some cute micro moves and some 'cleaner' battles. The 'deatball' does get much more chaotic in sc2 and there are some cool moves lacking perhaps like stop lurker but that can be implemented in the expansion quite well still.
This site is just heavily biased towards BW because it was founded by people loving BW, it's only logical that there is a bias here. Sequels almost never live up to the original because people that judge the sequel are usually huge fans of the original and thus think of the original as the golden standard.
What you say is completely of the hook. You sound like you completely lack experience in gaming at all. What you say could be only said by someone who was not around era when bw came or even 5 years after that. You are describing typical "modern" attempt at making games, which UNFORTUNATELY somehow was adopted into E-SPORTS games. Make games easier, dont strain players. Make games "balanced" (as in automated, so players have less tools to change the outcome). By giving less tools to players thats easier to mathematically balance game, but in fact its still almost impossible to, because you won't truly account players ability to micro/macro which is in fact a part of balance.
BW was made not in essence to be an E-sports game (there was no such thing as esports back then), and turned out to be the greatest one (historically). As we saw for it was mostly achieved by giving players a set of tools that were theoretically imbalanced, but in proper environment(maps) they worked great. But still it was not the biggest priority to make mathematically perfect units, because those units utility VARIED by small to big margin depending on HOW they were controlled . But hey! How newbie player could play unbalanced units wouldnt it make it as bad experience? No when his opponent was also a new player, even if both of them sucked and they didnt use their tools as efficient as they should there was a still balance, because an effort to do a tricky strategy (reaver drop, high reward) was met with equal effort to defend it. And yes thats why those "cute" moves mattered, it was part of balance, designers calculated hidden balance which was actually a micro ability.
In SC2 we will never see Reaver drops, because AI is to perfect and newbie player would drop other player and in this case an effort required for defender would be much greater (111 vs protoss).
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On October 26 2011 10:17 R0YAL wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:02 sunman1g wrote:
i sort of agre, i am so tired of all the ppl asking questions like "Back in BW we had"
go fucking play BW if you love it.
i like SC2 the way it's designed and i like that it is really different from bw.
that's why i feel it's a shame when kennigt asked DB questions that were all Bw centric...
waste of time/questions imho
"in BW we had units stretching out for screens and screens" etc.
jesus, i do not want to see that shit in SC2 personally -.-
i feel all this obsession to have SC2 looking like BW is something not THAT popular.
if you go around TL it may appear that way but thank god there's tons of people who agree SC2 shouldn't be more BW-y
I disagree entirely. The army balls in sc2 are not even close to as spectator friendly as the pathing in bw was. It looked much better, it was more clear, and it felt almost infinitely more epic. I actually can't conceive someone thinking that a blob on one screen is more appealing than masses upon masses of units stretched out over the map. I personally only reference bw units as a benchmark for comparison between units. Take the new Warhound for example, I don't like the AOE AA it has. Terran does not need help against flying light units, it would be more beneficial if its AA was more like the Goliath, long range and solid damage. When I compare units it's because of the purpose that unit fulfills, how it complements that race and what it forces your enemy to do.
Spot on man. I really loved in BW when tank line was stretching through half of the map and zerglings+ulstras+defilers were coming from all directions attacking attacking everything. Carnage was massive, blood everywhere, and after quite a long time (30s to 1min  ) one side emerged victorious.
In SC2 we got giant blob in the middle of the screen, and battles done in 3 to 5s, with the guy that has more aoe winning.
No need to copy BW exactly to achieve that goal, but they could try harder to bring back the same excitement, suspense and general awesomness with the tools offered by SC2. Not saying SC2 is crap, I like it very much and I enjoy watching the tournaments. But it could be so much better.
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I don't want SC2 to be more "BW-y". I just want it to have the same level of awesomeness as BW.
I mean, SC2 has already differentiated itself from the original by a lot. There are little to no units from BW that made it to SC2 other than tier 1 units and iconic units.
Which means no more wraiths, flying queens, defilers, lurkers, scourge, scouts, corsairs, arbiters, reavers, shuttles, dropships, valkyries, science vessels, firebats, goliaths, vultures, and medics.
So already, you have a completely different game with a completely new set of units that have their different dynamics and uses.
And what happens? The game, as a result, sucks balls because these units are incomparable to BW units.
The collosus will never beat the Reaver.
The baneling will never beat the Lurker.
The list can go on and on (I mean, yes, the banshee/viking might be cooler than the Wraith) and the very fact that these units are horrible and terrible (Marauder, Roach, the hellion is also dumb) make the game very stale and boring.
So no, don't make SC2 BW-y. But if you're going to make a good successor to BW and throw in a bunch of units at the same time, at least make those units good and worthwhile.
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On October 26 2011 21:19 Roeder wrote:
Yet everyone would rage, if they saw an exact copy of BW just with better graphics. It's been done before, but there are surely a few things that could be used from BW. It's all been mentioned.
I like SC2, since it feels more fast phased and still heavily micro intensive.
Wrong. Many people would be happy and It has not been done before.
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If starcraft 2 was just like starcraft broodwar, but not just with better graphics, but also better ai (including pathfinding) and more user friendly (allowing smart casing, control groups with over 12 units, etc), I could be satisfied just with that.
But starcraft 2 came as it is and I really liked it because due to differenc mechanics, the three races became even more distinct, something that I would not have believed was possible (while keeping a nice, balanced game).
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I don't understand wanting to play SC2 over BW because it's easier, especially at a high (esports) level. I would much rather play the more difficult one and I am by no means a high level player, but guess what, everyone else has to have the same high level mechanics to play. Since no one is going to hit the skill cap in SC2 or BW, why would they care what game is harder? All of your opponents are dealing with the same game; in the end, the player who puts in the time and better understands the game will win. I guess if you're a new player, you might be intimidated by the difficulty of the basics of BW, but EVERY new player has to deal with this and you're in the exact same position as your opponents are. So if we were, instead, one year into BW, you'd still be in the same percentile as you are in SC2. As long as the game doesn't have an immediately reachable skill cap, the player who puts in the most time/effort and has a good head on their shoulders will still be better.
EDIT: I never played much BW, but if we could make SC2 harder, I would be very happy but I don't see it as necessary at this point.
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I agree with the OP completely. The only part I want from BW is the higher end micro skill cap. But I don't need, or want, all my races and units to "feel" like BW. I'll just go play BW in that place.
I really dislike the bullying from the vocal minority of BW diehards who feel entitled to make SC2 the same.
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I feel this should be spotlighted, Definately worth it. I agree 98% with you OP. Fact is tho. people want sc2 to be as mechanicly genius as BW. But instead of making a thread like this (with valid points) they QQ and hate on us Sc2 players from mediocre to pro.
Hope the Bw veterans reads this and give's some decent feedback. Interesting to read!
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BW had the luck that lots of those glitches worked out well and allowed for cute micro moves.
I think that one thing which is commonly missed is that a LOT of those "cute micro moves" were not developed in the first year of BW. So obviously people are going to say the "skill ceiling" is lower than in BW, since the highest we can current see is lower. People at the start of SC1 had no idea of the things Flash or Jaedong could pull. Just like at the start of WC3 no one had a clue of the things Moon or Sky could accomplish in FT.
The roof is only going to keep rising as players develop new ways to use the units they have and superior mechanics (eg: simultaneous drops on multiple expos for example is something i try to do often and usually fail miserably at).
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i agree 100%, i almost thought about making a thread like this myself. it is sad so many measure how good units are based solely on how much they resemble BW-units.
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Brood War is an excellent game. So is soccer. So is baseball. Imagine if the "creators" of soccer said "hey everyone, we've got a new game, it's called soccer 2!" and everyone went to play it, but, despite the prettier field and neon ball, the new rules were kind of crazy and the game ended up being just two big teams crashing into eachother where whoever has the bigger team wins. People would be all like "aw, I enjoyed playing soccer."
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Canada5565 Posts
I'm just waiting for Proleague...
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On October 26 2011 09:56 opisska wrote:
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.
*looks at thread title*
....
*scratches head*
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I can't find SC:BW CDs anymore so I can't play it anymore, when I did play I actually loved the game, it was my childhood, even though I was very crap (Carrier rushes every game, yay)
My obvious theory is that everyone misses the BW units, they were amazing and unique in most ways, I have to be honest, I miss BW units.
Ah nostalgia, I don't need you anymore.
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On October 26 2011 10:42 Tektos wrote:
Kennigit's interview with Dustin made his view quite clear.
"If you want it to be like Broodwar, go play Broodwar."
I'm glad the devs share your and my point of view.
how depressive
well it was BW that sent his game down the toilets back then
i can imagine how he feels about it ^^
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Am I the only one that thinks SC2 being less challenging when it comes to pure mechanics is actually a great thing? I've never played BW and never followed it as an esports, so I might be lacking some understanding. But I think it's awesome that SC2 is harder than most (casual) games but less hard than BW in terms of mechanics for 2 reasons.
1) It's challenging enough to be a competitive esports game, but easy enough for beginners to get started. That means that more people are gonna play it and the bigger the community, the more money sponsors will want to invest into the growth of esports, be it in price money, teamhouses or whatever.
2) Although at the highest level of BW, where everyone has sick mechanics, strategy is gonna be what decides the game, in BW usually the player with slightly better mechanics will win. I think it is really cool that, although mechanics are obviously super important, in SC2 you can actually win by having a sick gamesense and better tactical decision making, even if your mechanics are worse than your opponent's. To me, this deep understanding of the game is much more impressive than just high apm. Surely you need a lot of practise for that aswell, but it seems like that actually requires a bit of intelligence and talent, while i'd think that everyone who got the willpower to just play > 8 hours a day will get good mechanics pretty soon.
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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?
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..
Totally agree. An example that this works is Dota2, they knew the original game was amazing and loved by millions so they didn't want to change that but rather give it a new touch for the next generation with better graphics, platforms to play it on etc. I never really understood the argument that because BW and SC2 are different they should try to be unique and not "copy".
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On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
I feel this should be spotlighted, Definately worth it. I agree 98% with you OP. Fact is tho. people want sc2 to be as mechanicly genius as BW. But instead of making a thread like this (with valid points) they QQ and hate on us Sc2 players from mediocre to pro.
NO, we dont want sc2 to be as mechanicaly difficult as BW. Sc2 mechanics are good. If you started reading through responses, youd probably see what we need from BW, dont just read the OP and respond with what you THINK bw die hard fans want on sc2.
On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
Hope the Bw veterans reads this and give's some decent feedback. Interesting to read!
It has been given. 7 pages of it. Read before you reply.
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The thing that strikes me the most ist he sheer size of SC/BW armies compared to SC2.
In SC/BW when containing a Protoss waiting for his push-out a Zerg army could span over SEVERAL screens with groups and groups and groups of Hydra/Ling/Lurkers... A toss that would push out carelessly would get surrounded from like a 240° angle... This did not even require a 200/200 army...
Now? If I want to stretch my 200/200 army over more than 1 or maybe 2 screens I run out of units to justify spreading them anymore... WTF happened? A 200/200 army in SC/BW was MASSIVE... In SC2 it's like "I finally get may army growing.. oh, maxed? Allready?  .".
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On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
Hope the Bw veterans reads this and give's some decent feedback. Interesting to read!
It's not a matter of making SC2 as hard mechanically as BW -- it's simply that each RTS in the space has a unique function and feel and Blizzard is taking Starcraft further and further from the core mechanics that make Starcraft, Starcraft. Starcraft is an economy-based RTS NOT some amalgamation-of-specialized-units-that-do-cool-things-and-look-cool RTS. For those of us who DID play broodwar, this feeling of departure is MORE pronounced and so perhaps it may seem to the OP that the former bw community is more vocal in outwardly criticizing HotS.
And in response to the argument about "well SC2 is a global e-sport that finally has the backing of the Western community." While it is true that there is definitely a skill gap between Koreans and foreigners in brood war, that is precisely a consequence of technology, exposure, and content availability. Koreans have long-lived with a fantastic online community along with near unlimited content on forums and on TV for brood war. When you live and breathe Starcraft, of course you will be better at it for the same reason that I bet you no matter how much other countries practice, they will NOT be as good as Americans at American football. We watch it everyday, digest the content, and see things in the game that people who don't understand the game as well don't. In this regard, the brood war community outside of Korea was lacking -- it was very difficult to digest as much high-level content simply because it was fairly inaccessible. Fast forward to today where we have huge communities and quite nearly unlimited content for SC2. Obviously we would expect the skill gap to narrow because it gives foreigners the opportunity to "live and breathe" Starcraft also. Regarding the accessibility and ease of SC2 v. BW -- I would argue this is more illusion than anything else, it is an issue of content.
We are not arguing for SC2 to feel more like BW -- we are arguing for SC2 to feel more like Starcraft. This is the fundamental misunderstanding that those who did not play brood war suffer from.
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On October 26 2011 21:33 sluggaslamoo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 21:15 Sandermatt wrote:On October 26 2011 21:09 Alpina wrote:
People don't want SC2 to be BW, they want SC2 to have characteristics of BW which made BW so awesome. I am not talking about workers cannot be rallied to mineral patches and unlimited unit selection. I mean things like micro. In SC2 everything looks like made to remove any micro from the game. Dustin browder does not even understand the meaning of micro, micro for him is turning on banshee's cloak lol.. Compare reaver with colossus and say that you wouldn't like to have reaver in SC2. There are micro intensive things in Starcraft. Marine-Splits, Immortal drop micro, blink micro, stutter step, ling baneling wars, focusing of the right units, ... . But they are so ... meh. And you have to look at micro elements that separate SC2 from BW and there's none. BW has all the elements of SC2 micro and more. e.g Marine splits exist in BW against Lurkers. What does SC2 actually have over BW? Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 21:18 Markwerf wrote:
brood war is hugely overrated as a game.
It was good even great for it's time but compared by today's standard it's just terrible. It's too much mechanics and pointlessly clicking this and that. SC2 is much cleaner in that you don't have to mindlessly repeat actions like sending scv's to work etc. which leaves more focus on other things like timings and micro. SC2 also doesn't have all the dodgy bugs that bw has like dodgy reavers, spider mines, dragoons etc. The 12 unit cap for a group is another terrible thing that I'm glad is gone in sc2,
it has nothing to do with tactics but only mechanical skill.
BW had the luck that lots of those glitches worked out well and allowed for cute micro moves. That is the only thing I can complain about perhaps in sc2 compared to bw, bw had some cute micro moves and some 'cleaner' battles. The 'deatball' does get much more chaotic in sc2 and there are some cool moves lacking perhaps like stop lurker but that can be implemented in the expansion quite well still.
This site is just heavily biased towards BW because it was founded by people loving BW, it's only logical that there is a bias here. Sequels almost never live up to the original because people that judge the sequel are usually huge fans of the original and thus think of the original as the golden standard. No one thinks Street Fighter 1 is the best fighter game, and 99.999% of people switched to BW. You never see SC1 vs BW threads. Everyone thinks BW is the gold standard because it is. Its the only game to have established a stabilitised E-Sports scene which has lasted over 10 years, with paid pros in the hundreds of thousands of dollars salary, and attracted crowds of over 100,000.
For the record, there were battles between Vanilla SC players and BW players way and I mean way back. When push came to shove we finally had a show match between the two sides. I'm sure a few old chaps remember that. Some players took a while to make the switch including myself and Testie.
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On October 26 2011 23:15 Velr wrote:The thing that strikes me the most ist he sheer size of SC/BW armies compared to SC2. In SC/BW when containing a Protoss waiting for his push-out a Zerg army could span over SEVERAL screens with groups and groups and groups of Hydra/Ling/Lurkers... A toss that would push out carelessly would get surrounded from like a 240° angle... This did not even require a 200/200 army... Now? If I want to stretch my 200/200 army over more than 1 or maybe 2 screens I run out of units to justify spreading them anymore... WTF happened? A 200/200 army in SC/BW was MASSIVE... In SC2 it's like "I finally get may army growing.. oh, maxed? Allready? .".
Yeah, this is something that SC2 really lacks. I was a terran player in BW and I remember those time when you got your mech army up to 200/200 against toss and you would start to roll out spreading tanks and vulture mines all across the map as you slowly pushed over the map with your MASSIVE mech army spreading across many screens.
This is something that SC2 totally lacks, when I play zerg and reach 200/200 I always think to myself "where the **** is my maxed out army?", its just nothing there.
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I think the units and changes in HOTs will take SC2 in a "BWy" direction. This is a good thing. SC2 was made balanced by the adjustment of units that fill more roles than the units of SC2. SC2 in WOL is more like a game of paper/rock/scissors. The question you as yourself prior to battles in sc2 is: Do you have the composition to counter what your opponent has? In BW the question was: Is your positioning good enough to defend incoming attacks? or, do you have enough gas intensive spellcasters to hold off until your latest expo provides the needed produciton? The battles seem to have a more specific intent than to kill your opponent.
Also, a battle of 200 food vs 200 food in SC2 takes about 15 seconds, units die so quickly, everything does a ton of damage, where battles in BW would take a long time, and would be thought out in depth prior to staging an attack. The units in HOTs added for controlling space and filling gaps in composition roles are awesome. This is truly a sign of what's to come for me. Being more "BWy" is such a good thing for this game and it's growth.
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The learning curve for BW, SC2 and RTS games in general is very high, and usually discourages casual gamers. That said, SC2 needs to find a balance between a game where a casual gamer can pick it up and play without hours of practice and understand the game, yet a game difficult enough so that that same casual gamer does not become comparable in skill to Nestea simply by just playing everyday after school. On one hand the high learning curve discourages the growth of the esports scene, on the hand a game that is too easy cheapens the accomplishments of the pros.
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Casual gamers can't pick up SC2 and play... At least not anymore than SC/BW.
What happens to a real Casual in SC2 and SC/BW is alike... They die to the first attack the CPU or another Human makes... AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.
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On October 26 2011 22:42 Zergneedsfood wrote:
I don't want SC2 to be more "BW-y". I just want it to have the same level of awesomeness as BW.
I mean, SC2 has already differentiated itself from the original by a lot. There are little to no units from BW that made it to SC2 other than tier 1 units and iconic units.
Which means no more wraiths, flying queens, defilers, lurkers, scourge, scouts, corsairs, arbiters, reavers, shuttles, dropships, valkyries, science vessels, firebats, goliaths, vultures, and medics.
So already, you have a completely different game with a completely new set of units that have their different dynamics and uses.
And what happens? The game, as a result, sucks balls because these units are incomparable to BW units.
The collosus will never beat the Reaver.
The baneling will never beat the Lurker.
The list can go on and on (I mean, yes, the banshee/viking might be cooler than the Wraith) and the very fact that these units are horrible and terrible (Marauder, Roach, the hellion is also dumb) make the game very stale and boring.
So no, don't make SC2 BW-y. But if you're going to make a good successor to BW and throw in a bunch of units at the same time, at least make those units good and worthwhile.
Ah my favourite BW streamer <3
I completely agree with this and its how I've been thinking of this whole situation
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The sole fact we're still having these discussions so long after release, imo is clear proof that's something's wrong.
The argument they need to make the game easy to catter audiences is void. Chess is a fun game even if you got no idea what you're doing, yet there's no way you can understand a pro game without having frequented a chess club in your life.
Bw was the same !
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On October 26 2011 23:13 iPAndi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
I feel this should be spotlighted, Definately worth it. I agree 98% with you OP. Fact is tho. people want sc2 to be as mechanicly genius as BW. But instead of making a thread like this (with valid points) they QQ and hate on us Sc2 players from mediocre to pro.
NO, we dont want sc2 to be as mechanicaly difficult as BW. Sc2 mechanics are good. If you started reading through responses, youd probably see what we need from BW, dont just read the OP and respond with what you THINK bw die hard fans want on sc2. Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
Hope the Bw veterans reads this and give's some decent feedback. Interesting to read! It has been given. 7 pages of it. Read before you reply.
The mechanics can have depth without the simple parts being difficult. If you don't want any difficult mechanics at all then you will not get the same depth that made BW keep evolving strategy-wise to this day, because being mechanically difficult is the only reason it happened. I can guarantee you in it's current form, with it's current fundamental mechanics, once patching stops SC2 will stabilize pretty quickly and not be particularly interesting long-term as an eSport.
That is unless they can produce enough depth with the added units/abilities in the expansions to allow years of skill development; judging by the HotS additions that seems extremely unlikely. While they constantly mention competitive play they very blatantly are designing the game to be simultaneously accessible to everyone, so literally everyone is able to do every strategy to some extent. I don't see how they can have it both ways.
It's telling how a lot of people found TvT and TvZ to be prehaps the best matchups to spectate; in my opinion they are the ones which most resemble their BW counterparts, although i think even they could be improved a lot.
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wheel it really comes down to how you spin it: is the glass half empty or is it half full?
You have to ask yourself what is the game missing? You guys are still focusing too much on the pieces (BW) rather than the whole (RTS games in general).
It is no different from your standard MMO.
Playable classes:
Warrior (melee)
Sorceress (spell-caster)
Ranger (range attack)
Then you get into the skill sets. You will need a healer, tank, spell to de/buff, aoe spells, etc.
It really is no different. The pieces are always going to be the same. It just comes down to how you package it. All Blizzard is doing is adding pieces that were missing from before. Packaging it is the hardest part.
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Why would we focus on RTS games in general? The discussion is heavily weighed towards eSports and competitive gaming, if there was another RTS which was even relevant in that respect then you might actually see it mentioned. AoE2 is the only other RTS i can think of which you could use as an example and that's so radically different in every way that it's not comparable. I think it would be totally wrong to try and use any other game as an example considering none of them have proven to be worthwhile.
On October 26 2011 23:10 JayJay_90 wrote:
2) Although at the highest level of BW, where everyone has sick mechanics, strategy is gonna be what decides the game, in BW usually the player with slightly better mechanics will win. I think it is really cool that, although mechanics are obviously super important, in SC2 you can actually win by having a sick gamesense and better tactical decision making, even if your mechanics are worse than your opponent's. To me, this deep understanding of the game is much more impressive than just high apm. Surely you need a lot of practise for that aswell, but it seems like that actually requires a bit of intelligence and talent, while i'd think that everyone who got the willpower to just play > 8 hours a day will get good mechanics pretty soon.
I just noticed this post, but this is just wrong really on 2 things.. first the assumption that SC2 is even strategically deep at all in the first place, and the idea you can't win via outthinking someone in BW. A lot of the time it feels like luck plays more of a part than supposedly 'sick gamesense'; you can get lucky and beat someone with far better mechanics - that isn't a good thing. Yes you can also out-think someone with better mechanics and beat them, but personally i think in BW it's actually more possible to do that, and it's been proven quite a bit by lower APM players doing very well on the ICCUP ladder. In a a real-time strategy the person who can simply do more always has an advantage, that is the real-time part of course.
I remember when a maphacker very easily got to number 1 rank on the NA ladder, with platinum level mechanics. So a vastly slower player can simply beat a vastly superior one with a blind counter; i don't think that's a good thing. Even at GSL level i remember a day where Killer advanced 2-1 simply by going nexus first, taking a huge economic risk to get an advantage that he could easily play to victory. It's still an aspect of the game in BW too but not to the same extent.
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On October 26 2011 23:23 NotSupporting wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 23:15 Velr wrote:The thing that strikes me the most ist he sheer size of SC/BW armies compared to SC2. In SC/BW when containing a Protoss waiting for his push-out a Zerg army could span over SEVERAL screens with groups and groups and groups of Hydra/Ling/Lurkers... A toss that would push out carelessly would get surrounded from like a 240° angle... This did not even require a 200/200 army... Now? If I want to stretch my 200/200 army over more than 1 or maybe 2 screens I run out of units to justify spreading them anymore... WTF happened? A 200/200 army in SC/BW was MASSIVE... In SC2 it's like "I finally get may army growing.. oh, maxed? Allready? .". Yeah, this is something that SC2 really lacks. I was a terran player in BW and I remember those time when you got your mech army up to 200/200 against toss and you would start to roll out spreading tanks and vulture mines all across the map as you slowly pushed over the map with your MASSIVE mech army spreading across many screens. This is something that SC2 totally lacks, when I play zerg and reach 200/200 I always think to myself "where the **** is my maxed out army?", its just nothing there.
Agree, I think this is an important issue, that's seldom discussed. In SC2 you have more workers, economy boosting abilities, and additionally: units cost more supply. You're maxed faster and with less units.
I was hoping they would increase the supply cap in HOTS, like they did in WC3:TFT (90 -> 100). Just to 220 or so, and 240 in the last addon. The only downside would be that team games would be even more cluttered, and system requirements would increase a bit.
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Hmmm... a lot of valid points.
SC2 is it's own game let it evolve at it's own pace, if you don't like it, then stick to BW! To which I agree with!However, in another tangent, I don't think many have touched upon. The problem for a sport is, if after each iteration, the game changes dramatically, it becomes difficult to sustain, follow, and keep a consistent level of history and playerbase.
Maybe it'd be better for a sport to define a certain set of rules (say BW) then build on it and improve on it as the society/community grows with it. Football (soccer) rules have changed a number of times to allow faster flow, more exciting spectator sport of the game. i.e when you passed the ball back to the keeper, the keeper was allowed to pick the ball up, but later on they changed the rules so the keeper can not. This allowed better flow and promoted more intelligent play from the defence. Rather than a whole new set of rules!
This can apply to eSports as well, the problem however is, it is in the hands of Blizzard. BW was successful! They still could have used BW and build upon it, rather than just create a new game with some similar units, because all the hard balancing work was done! Why start again?! SC2 could have been the HotS to what WoL is. Add new units to BW, or in theory could have just updated graphics with more forgiving mechanics.
Once all the expansions are out and we're all happy about balance etc. If they ever decide to make SC3 will it be different again, and will we be complaining that they should just make a SC2 upgraded graphics. I just hope that Blizzard decides that SC2 becomes the base product for the sport to build on for many, many years. New expansions can be there to try to change it up a little and improve on it if at all possible, but as long as there is a base product where the transition is easier, I'm all for it.
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On October 26 2011 23:13 iPAndi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
I feel this should be spotlighted, Definately worth it. I agree 98% with you OP. Fact is tho. people want sc2 to be as mechanicly genius as BW. But instead of making a thread like this (with valid points) they QQ and hate on us Sc2 players from mediocre to pro.
NO, we dont want sc2 to be as mechanicaly difficult as BW. Sc2 mechanics are good. If you started reading through responses, youd probably see what we need from BW, dont just read the OP and respond with what you THINK bw die hard fans want on sc2. Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
Hope the Bw veterans reads this and give's some decent feedback. Interesting to read! It has been given. 7 pages of it. Read before you reply.
When the fk did I say people wanted it to be more difficult? I said people want sc2 to be as mechanicly genius as BW.
Mechanicly genius = more difficult to you?
My point was the design of mechanics. Like when units get into 1 ball in sc2 and in BW theres 4-6 hotkeys for a mass zealot army.
And I've red through most of the replies and when 4-5 bw "veterans" answer without a valid point or a simple question.
Just saying
"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."
and
"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?"
My point beeing. It's nice to read what the BW veterans think of this I meant how they felt about the OP not my simple reply. Oh And i've played BW for 10 years, Do I consider myself a BW veteran? no
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On October 26 2011 23:56 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 23:13 iPAndi wrote:On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
I feel this should be spotlighted, Definately worth it. I agree 98% with you OP. Fact iS tho. people WanT sc2 to be as mechanicly Genius as BW. But instead of making a thread like this (with valid points) they QQ and hate on us Sc2 players from mediocre to PrO.
NO, we dont WanT sc2 to be as mechanicaly difficult as BW. Sc2 mechanics are good. If you started reading through responses, youd probably see What we need from BW, dont just read the OP and respond with What you THINK bw die hard fans WanT on sc2. On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
Hope the Bw veterans reads this and give's some decent feedback. Interesting to read! It has been given. 7 pages of it. Read before you reply. When the fk did I say people wanted it to be more difficult? I SaiD people WanT sc2 to be as mechanicly Genius as BW. Mechanicly Genius = more difficult to you? My Point was the design of mechanics. Like when units get Into 1 ball in sc2 and in BW theres 4-6 hotkeys for a Mass zealOt army. And I've red through most of the replies and when 4-5 bw "veterans" Answer without a valid Point or a simple question. just saying "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." and "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?" My Point beeing. It's Nice to read What the BW veterans think of this I meant how they felt about the OP not my simple reply. Oh And i've played BW for 10 years, Do I consider myself a BW veteran? no
I responded right below that post. is that a valid response?
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well...sc2 imo should always be an improvement from bw. for example, bw terran bio werent that great in tvt and tvp, but in sc2 they fixed that so i'm ok with it. but obviously, there're still tons of thing in sc2 that has not improve (which you know). but since there're 2 more expansions, they got 2 more chances to make it greater or as great as bw. so..yeah, still waiting for the day.
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The reason why all the foreigners moved to sc2 is because BW has been around long enough for most of the possibilities to be explored and the most efficient ways of playing it have been found. The BW strategy forum for all I know can be closed down since any player here will not have any interesting questions to ask. Everything can be found on liquipedia and from then on it's just a matter of practice till your eyes bleed.
The minimum requirement is 300apm and 2 years of full time experience, if not more. Only then can you come up with some small breakthrough and have any sort of impact on the scene.
sc2 right now is like back when hydra lurk was a legit and viable strat in zvt BW. The way BW was played back in those days is very different from how it is now because people soon found more efficient ways to play after thousands of practice games in progamer houses.
The thing is because the sc2 game engine and how the units move is so fluid and smooth, the most efficient way of playing is going to be figured out by the koreans even faster. When the game has been more or less "solved" it is going to come down to raw apm again to distinguish the good from the great, and we would be back to square one mechanics whining every day.
In 2-3 years foreigners are going to be obsolete again because we simply value having a social life more than playing a computer game to its absolute limits. Unless someone comes up with an incredibly revolutionary strat or build and somehow can stop people from watching his replays and copying him, raw apm will always win because it is a computer game and not real life war where a million other factors like army morale and finance factor in.
The only way for sc2 to stay in the "hydra lurk is viable zvt" stage is for new units to come out every few years to create chaos and force the whole metagame to shift. Otherwise foreigners don't stand a fucking chance vs the koreans.
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On October 27 2011 00:02 d_wAy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 23:56 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:On October 26 2011 23:13 iPAndi wrote:On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
I feel this should be spotlighted, Definately worth it. I agree 98% with you OP. Fact iS tho. people WanT sc2 to be as mechanicly Genius as BW. But instead of making a thread like this (with valid points) they QQ and hate on us Sc2 players from mediocre to PrO.
NO, we dont WanT sc2 to be as mechanicaly difficult as BW. Sc2 mechanics are good. If you started reading through responses, youd probably see What we need from BW, dont just read the OP and respond with What you THINK bw die hard fans WanT on sc2. On October 26 2011 22:55 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
Hope the Bw veterans reads this and give's some decent feedback. Interesting to read! It has been given. 7 pages of it. Read before you reply. When the fk did I say people wanted it to be more difficult? I SaiD people WanT sc2 to be as mechanicly Genius as BW. Mechanicly Genius = more difficult to you? My Point was the design of mechanics. Like when units get Into 1 ball in sc2 and in BW theres 4-6 hotkeys for a Mass zealOt army. And I've red through most of the replies and when 4-5 bw "veterans" Answer without a valid Point or a simple question. just saying "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." and "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?" My Point beeing. It's Nice to read What the BW veterans think of this I meant how they felt about the OP not my simple reply. Oh And i've played BW for 10 years, Do I consider myself a BW veteran? no I responded right below that post. is that a valid response?
Well you replied to my post with exactly the same as the one I quoted so same reply to you as I think my point was misunderstood.
other then that
For those of us who DID play broodwar
Dude I did, your post pretty much tell us others who played broodwar, how we are supposed to feel instead of saying that's your opinion. I definately dont feel that way, and I'm sure there are others like me.
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Canada13389 Posts
In part its because some problems in SC2 could be solved with BW units or something similar. Protoss has trouble vs. Mutalisks. So they give us the tempest. This borrows from corsair with its anti air AoE.
The issue is it is AoE vs Light and is supposed to fight 40-50 mutas (?!?!?!?) in lategame. The cost and speed of the tempest based on what we have seen makes it seem like its not very effective at defending bases from mutas. This is the problem protoss has. We can't defend huge packs of mobile mutas easily between bases. The tempest might be like a thor and sit there to help but they already said the thor isn't very good and with only one or two they die very fast and aren't worth the investment.
Corsair is fast, small, not quite massable but you can get a small number of them AoE AtA unit. It is what would help us most in defending Muta Harass between bases and counterattacks. They don't want to give it to us because we could just go play BW if we wanted corsairs.
Poor logic, the unit itself was well designed and served a solid purpose and achieved what it was supposed to - filling a particular hole in protoss play. Stalkers suck vs Mutas in relatively even numbers because they do terrible dmg. vs light. Even if you can mass stalkers they arent as mobile as mutas. Pheonix die pretty quick to mutas in straight up fights unless you already have more pheonix than mutas and can keep the numbers of mutalisks low.
I feel that even if pheonix just had similar AoE to an archon or EVEN a little less they would instantly become so much more usable. But then again what do I know?
Some of it isnt about having all the same units as BW. It is about seeing a unit that would and could fix a problem that exists in BW and is well designed and proven to be good over many years of play. We then look at SC2 and think about what the holes are and how the BW unit would and could fill it just as well, maybe better, potentially worse than it did in BW.
Corsair - small AtA AoE. (vs. Pheonix bonus light, super fast)
Reaver - big damage, slow, fragile GtG AoE -- can harass (vs. Collossus big damage, not as slow, not as fragile, AoE -- can't harass)
Carrier - microable, could attack units outside of range, siege type (vs. Carrier not microable, can't attack more than the initially targetted unit outside of Range - interceptors die quickly but i think this is due to no overkill non missile based attacks and fault of the game engine more than anything else).
For terran people would prefer goliath to the new warhound but we need to remember that Marines are already super super good GtA so for a goiliath whose strength was GtA to be around its kind of pointless. Though I feel people want a marine replacement when going mech which is understandable. Goliath would be bad vs protoss since the range on collossus would demolish them before they get close enough to really do damage to them if they use their air attack. No real Flying units come out of protoss. Against Zerg the marine is much better and more mobile than the goliath would be so why not use them if you can micro well to fight Zerg.
For Zerg. Lurker. Lurker would give them space control. Which Zerg definitely needs to make the mobile terran army run around less sniping outlying bases easily and also to help prevent siege lines and mech units from walking across the map freely. Right now they leapfrog less and just walk straight to Zerg more. It could be because Z is playing it wrong but I feel that a lurker type unit would force a leapfrog or a slow push a little more than what is currently available. But then again good infestor play can achieve the same results. If the marines come up without tanks fungal. If tanks leapfrog then the infestor is not doing damage but instead slowing the others down.
I play protoss so I can see holes to be filled easier there and their BW counterparts that could do the job better so if others have insight point it out.
TL;DR -
Some of it isn't about having all the same units as BW. It is about seeing a unit that would and could fix a problem that exists in BW and is well designed and proven to be good over many years of play. We then look at SC2 and think about what the holes are and how the BW unit would and could fill it just as well, maybe better, potentially worse than it did in BW is always a possibility too.
A good example of potentially worse is the carrier whose intereceptors die too quick to non missile base GtA and the unit itself unable to shoot more than one thing outside its initial range - re: no micro.
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Anyone who has not seen Kennigit's interview with Dustin Browder should go see it.
I totally agree with them that they need to think of ways to pull food out of 200/200 deathballs which is not as exciting to watch all the time. BW w its stream of armies continuing fighting for more than 20 secs was amazing to watch, n though we will not have that in SC2, at least making it viable to have more skirmishes (value in pulling food out of a deathball for all races) throughout the match will make it better to watch n play.
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On October 26 2011 10:25 shadowboxer wrote:
BW was a better game than SC2 hands down. The problem is that BW was a lot better for competitive players and not necessarily for building a marketable product. BW was extremely hard, and as such getting into it as a new player was extremely difficult. SC2 is not hard, or at least not in the same way BW was. If you have a desire to become really good at SC2, you can do that as long as you put in the hard work and dedication.
You couldn't do that in BW at all. If you wanted to be a top player you HAD to move to Korea and you had to play 14+ hours a day because the game was pure speed and the ability to combine that speed with good strategy, tactics and unit control. In SC2 the game does almost all of this for you, so players that will never actually be good at the game can still play it at a certain level and feel like they have an understanding of the game and why pros do what they do.
BW is a game competitive gamers appreciate, but SC2 is an e-sport. It's similar to Counter-Strike 1.6 in the sense that for competitive gamers, it was the perfect shooter. Nothing will top it, ever, hands down. 1.6 is not a marketable e-sport though, and something will come along and eventually beat it out in the e-sports market just like SC2 did to BW.
I think this is the main misconception people have of BW.
What makes BW great is that you never have enough time to do everything. You can either
1) build probes and put them on minerals when they come out,
or
2) build more zealots,
or
3) micro your dragoons from the zerglings.
You don't have time to do all three. Your aim is not to do all three things but to be able to make the ballsy split second decision to build more zealots over making more probes or saving your goons because you realize that that is your top priority at that place and time. That is superior game sense and knowledge, not mechanics.
When you get better at playing you may be able to squeeze a second action in, but to try and do everything in BW and play a perfect game is impossible. A lot of BW is about creating havoc for your opponent and forcing him to choose the wrong priority.
That's something people again and again do not understand.
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On October 27 2011 00:12 pyrogenetix wrote:
The reason why all the foreigners moved to sc2 is because BW has been around long enough for most of the possibilities to be explored and the most efficient ways of playing it have been found. The BW strategy forum for all I know can be closed down since any player here will not have any interesting questions to ask. Everything can be found on liquipedia and from then on it's just a matter of practice till your eyes bleed.
The minimum requirement is 300apm and 2 years of full time experience, if not more. Only then can you come up with some small breakthrough and have any sort of impact on the scene.
sc2 right now is like back when hydra lurk was a legit and viable strat in zvt BW. The way BW was played back in those days is very different from how it is now because people soon found more efficient ways to play after thousands of practice games in progamer houses.
The thing is because the sc2 game engine and how the units move is so fluid and smooth, the most efficient way of playing is going to be figured out by the koreans even faster. When the game has been more or less "solved" it is going to come down to raw apm again to distinguish the good from the great, and we would be back to square one mechanics whining every day.
In 2-3 years foreigners are going to be obsolete again because we simply value having a social life more than playing a computer game to its absolute limits. Unless someone comes up with an incredibly revolutionary strat or build and somehow can stop people from watching his replays and copying him, raw apm will always win because it is a computer game and not real life war where a million other factors like army morale and finance factor in.
The only way for sc2 to stay in the "hydra lurk is viable zvt" stage is for new units to come out every few years to create chaos and force the whole metagame to shift. Otherwise foreigners don't stand a fucking chance vs the koreans.
Except that the foreign scene is evolving. More money from the foreign country is being put into the game, and full time pro team with houses are emerging. With the same amount of training, I don't see why korean should have an undisputed upper hand.
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On October 27 2011 00:36 Merlimoo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2011 00:12 pyrogenetix wrote:
The reason why all the foreigners moved to sc2 is because BW has been around long enough for most of the possibilities to be explored and the most efficient ways of playing it have been found. The BW strategy forum for all I know can be closed down since any player here will not have any interesting questions to ask. Everything can be found on liquipedia and from then on it's just a matter of practice till your eyes bleed.
The minimum requirement is 300apm and 2 years of full time experience, if not more. Only then can you come up with some small breakthrough and have any sort of impact on the scene.
sc2 right now is like back when hydra lurk was a legit and viable strat in zvt BW. The way BW was played back in those days is very different from how it is now because people soon found more efficient ways to play after thousands of practice games in progamer houses.
The thing is because the sc2 game engine and how the units move is so fluid and smooth, the most efficient way of playing is going to be figured out by the koreans even faster. When the game has been more or less "solved" it is going to come down to raw apm again to distinguish the good from the great, and we would be back to square one mechanics whining every day.
In 2-3 years foreigners are going to be obsolete again because we simply value having a social life more than playing a computer game to its absolute limits. Unless someone comes up with an incredibly revolutionary strat or build and somehow can stop people from watching his replays and copying him, raw apm will always win because it is a computer game and not real life war where a million other factors like army morale and finance factor in.
The only way for sc2 to stay in the "hydra lurk is viable zvt" stage is for new units to come out every few years to create chaos and force the whole metagame to shift. Otherwise foreigners don't stand a fucking chance vs the koreans. Except that the foreign scene is evolving. More money from the foreign country is being put into the game, and full time pro team with houses are emerging. With the same amount of training, I don't see why korean should have an undisputed upper hand.
That's your problem right there.
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BW has been around for 12 years, built a pro scene around it in Korea and defined E-sports. So its no surprise that players make comparisons to BW when playing SC2. If you ask me, I want SC2 to be different from BW, but still keeping the important units and abilities that make the game exciting. Things like muta micro, reaver micro, wraith micro, I could go on and on. This way, SC2 can have its own form of uniqueness while retaining important aspects of BW so as to increase the entertainment value.
There's this fantastic game BW that Blizzard created and then there's SC2, which is also amazing in its own regard. If Blizzard wants this game to last, wouldn't it be obvious that they should try to replicate and innovate upon the elements that made BW such a great game? If you ask me, Blizzard did a great job with WOL, but most of the new units in HoTS don't make any sense to me. I know it's still being tested, and I sincerely hope they axe some of the new units.
So if you do not want SC2 to become more like BW, what do you want it to become like? I sure as hell don't want SC2 to become more like CnC, but looking at the HoTS units and the Colossus, it's heading in that direction (Dustin Browder: Ex CnC designer). I just hope Blizzard knows what its doing and good luck to them.
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On October 27 2011 00:38 pyrogenetix wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2011 00:36 Merlimoo wrote:On October 27 2011 00:12 pyrogenetix wrote:
The reason why all the foreigners moved to sc2 is because BW has been around long enough for most of the possibilities to be explored and the most efficient ways of playing it have been found. The BW strategy forum for all I know can be closed down since any player here will not have any interesting questions to ask. Everything can be found on liquipedia and from then on it's just a matter of practice till your eyes bleed.
The minimum requirement is 300apm and 2 years of full time experience, if not more. Only then can you come up with some small breakthrough and have any sort of impact on the scene.
sc2 right now is like back when hydra lurk was a legit and viable strat in zvt BW. The way BW was played back in those days is very different from how it is now because people soon found more efficient ways to play after thousands of practice games in progamer houses.
The thing is because the sc2 game engine and how the units move is so fluid and smooth, the most efficient way of playing is going to be figured out by the koreans even faster. When the game has been more or less "solved" it is going to come down to raw apm again to distinguish the good from the great, and we would be back to square one mechanics whining every day.
In 2-3 years foreigners are going to be obsolete again because we simply value having a social life more than playing a computer game to its absolute limits. Unless someone comes up with an incredibly revolutionary strat or build and somehow can stop people from watching his replays and copying him, raw apm will always win because it is a computer game and not real life war where a million other factors like army morale and finance factor in.
The only way for sc2 to stay in the "hydra lurk is viable zvt" stage is for new units to come out every few years to create chaos and force the whole metagame to shift. Otherwise foreigners don't stand a fucking chance vs the koreans. Except that the foreign scene is evolving. More money from the foreign country is being put into the game, and full time pro team with houses are emerging. With the same amount of training, I don't see why korean should have an undisputed upper hand. That's your problem right there.
So the EG house is not full time trained ?
Even a lot of european team are full time now. Look at Stephano winning everyone, even not full time trained yet.
Whatever, we will see. For me, the korean supremacy is at an end. I don't want to argue, future will prove me right.
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On October 26 2011 23:56 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
Just saying
"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."
and
"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?"
Well put my friend.
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On October 26 2011 23:56 NeWeNiyaLord wrote:
Just saying
"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."
and
"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?"
Isn't it what Starcraft Phoenix is all about ?
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what we need from broodwar are not its outdated UI. We need the brilliant units and interactions that made it so balanced and so fun to watch.
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On October 26 2011 21:18 Markwerf wrote:
brood war is hugely overrated as a game.
It was good even great for it's time but compared by today's standard it's just terrible. It's too much mechanics and pointlessly clicking this and that. SC2 is much cleaner in that you don't have to mindlessly repeat actions like sending scv's to work etc. which leaves more focus on other things like timings and micro. SC2 also doesn't have all the dodgy bugs that bw has like dodgy reavers, spider mines, dragoons etc. The 12 unit cap for a group is another terrible thing that I'm glad is gone in sc2,
it has nothing to do with tactics but only mechanical skill.
BW had the luck that lots of those glitches worked out well and allowed for cute micro moves. That is the only thing I can complain about perhaps in sc2 compared to bw, bw had some cute micro moves and some 'cleaner' battles. The 'deatball' does get much more chaotic in sc2 and there are some cool moves lacking perhaps like stop lurker but that can be implemented in the expansion quite well still.
This site is just heavily biased towards BW because it was founded by people loving BW, it's only logical that there is a bias here. Sequels almost never live up to the original because people that judge the sequel are usually huge fans of the original and thus think of the original as the golden standard.
I agree as far as that reducing mechanical skill is, in general, a good thing for the game (such as unlimited control groups and multiple building selection). It does allow more focus on more interesting things like you mentioned. For those that disagree, would reducing the BW cap from 12 to 6 units have made BW a better game? I doubt it!
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Reason says this:
It's not about turning SC2 into BW. It's about including those aspects of BW that made it a good RTS into its successor. Those characteristics are not exclusive to BW, but BW had more of them than most other RTS games, hence why it seems like people want the game to be more BW-ish.
Now for my more personal and emotionally loaded response...
We have new CnC games. We have new AoE (that suck). We have new DoW games, we have LOL, HON, etc. But why would I want aspects of those games in my SC? There's a reason I play SC and not CnC, and that is, IT'S DIFFERENT. There are characteristics that should ALWAYS be in SC games, otherwise it's not SC. I don't think it's wrong in any way to say things should be more BWy. Otherwise just chuck the name and call it something else. If I wanted another game, I'd play it.
That being said I've already decided to switch back to BW when HoTS comes out. No hard feelings guys, just not what I was looking for. And I imagine that's why most people want things to get more BW, at their gut level.
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The high BW skill cap makes for great entertainment, but it also makes the game very noob-unfriendly. So I think the reason people want a BW-like game is that they are more interested in watching the pro scene than actually playing the game. Or at least that's my opinion anyway.
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This is just like every other SC2/BW thread in that people say "SC2 shouldn't be like BW. Go play BW if you want that", then in the same breath they talk about how amazing things are in SC2, which ALWAYS happen to be the aspects that are most similar to BW.
When you talk about great SC2 games that have insane marine/army splitting, constant back-and-forth engagements, and constant harrassing on multiple fronts, you are basically praising BW, because those were some of the most iconic parts of BW. It's sad that even Blizzard is falling into this trap where Dustin Browder states flat out that SC2 shouldn't be BW, but then at the same time talk about how they're trying to discourage deathballs, which is (surprise, surprise) something that makes the game more like BW. This hypocrisy is made all the worse by the fact that Blizzard is deliberately adding more BW-esque units into the game (viper, map control units) while still telling the community that SC2 shouldn't be more like BW.
I don't want SC2 to be a one-to-one copy of BW (dragoon pathing FTL). I don't think anyone other than the most fanatical of fanboys want that. But we DO want SC2 to have the same aspects that made BW an e-sport. I see nothing wrong with that. It may be a different game, but it's still a STARCRAFT game, and it should maintain the things that made Starcraft great, especially since the best things about SC2 are the ones that are mostly mimicked in BW.
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Wow. Wonderful discussion everybody.
As someone who played almost nothing of BW multiplayer, here´s what I think:
1) Im so happy I can actully play SC2 (although I know BW fans are not saying that the game should be harder).
2) I like watching BW much more than I can watch SC2. Its partially because of "cute micro", but above all because the units were more "spread", battles were more epic and yes, the game actually felt more strategic.
I can both play SC2 and watch BW. No prob, Im happy with that.
But can SC2 learn some lessons from BW to become a superior game, without losing its identity (aka as "becoming better looking BW")?
I think so and I think it would be like this:
a) Deathballs are boring after the 20th time you watch it/play it. Spread camp battles from BW were so much funnier. As people have stated, its because size and/or pathing of units. I don´t think Blizzard is going to adress that. But they are trying to nerf balls in the expansion, that is clear. Let´s see what happens;
b) BW also had more tactical units, or so it seems (SC2 meta isnt final yet). I don´t think we need lurker and reaver in SC2. We need stuff that aren´t just DPS dealers.
c) Units die faster, so there is less micro; that´s actually a design decision and this isnt gonna change;
d) Another thing about micro: spells seemed to be more micro-intensive in BW. Now they are easier to cast and favor decision-making and timing upon skill (spells now wether work or dont work). I think its intentional, its how they want it to be. Beaultiful, I´d like this to feel more awesome, and I know they can do it.
What I want from SC2? Less deathballs, more strategic play. If they want to reward decision-making and not insane micro, than dont give me more micro, but give me more decision making!
I think things are improving thou.
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I think what BW fans want out of SC2 is outline pretty well in this blog: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=278553
Essentially, the units should be designed simply, yet have very complex interactions with other units, whether its from the same race or others. I do agree that there is a bit of this in WoL so far, but with the addition of the new units in HotS, it takes away the simplicity of the units, and makes them more for specific purposes and situations, rather than a basic, universal unit. I'm not saying that new units shouldn't be added at all, it's just that the new units should have some sort of synergy with the rest of the units in the previous games for more potential, instead of being units made to counter a type of situation.
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I feel you OP, but think about it from the other point of view.
Brood War 'eliteists' love BW (duh). They love it for the epic-ness that it comes with. Long lines of siege tanks, fights that take up multiple screens, units spreading out and having skirmishes EVERYWHERE. They love the difficulty that comes with the game. It allows them to appreciate the dedication that the top Koreans give to the sport. When you see Flash micro a single marine to kill of Jaedong's Lurker on FS during an OSL Final, you can't help but cheer for that single marine (even if you want JD to smash Flash's twitching face into the ground! [JD > Flash all the way!]). Its this love for the game that has allowed it to live for so fucking long. Allowed for it to last and continue to grow in Korea (10 Mill views for the last OSL final anyone?).
BW eliteists don't hate SC2. They just want to see another game worthy of the Starcraft name. They want to see epic engagements. Tight, crisp execution. They respect BW for being so fucking hard. They want to respect the next generation of the game that they love so much. But how can they when the things that made BW so fun to play, and even more fun to watch, are not at par in SC2?
Have you ever tried medic marine micro in BW? That shit is INSANELY hard. Like crazy fucking hard. For me at least. I sometimes mess up by selecting a marine, and not stimming, allowing me to get caught off guard and surrounded by lings while 8 lurkers burrow right by my army. Its brutal. Takes a lot of practice and work to get right. However, a child can control a marine in SC2. Sure splitting is tricky at times, but after an hour practice on a UMS map, I felt like I was practically MKP. However, no matter what I do, I cannot control three marines the way Boxer does to kill lurkers.
Its THIS that makes BW so awesome! Blizzard got some of it right in SC2. I love watching Baelings vs Marines at insanely high levels. Its like having scarabs back. The idea of creep infesting the map is brilliant! I'm loving the idea of this new oracle unit or wahtever.. But when Blizz adds units like the Marauder to terran, it completely ruins the entertainment value of the game. No longer do we have EPIC fucking pvts. Where the terran slowly, methodically pushes out. Sieging and unsieging with every move. Laying mines while the protoss techs to arbs.. sigh we never get to see this kind of gameplay in star2. Instead we just have a bio ball vs a chargelot archon ball with a couple cols or ht thrown in there. It comes down to who can get the FF/Strom off first or who can EMP first. (My personal opinion, get rid of this piece of trash unit called the marauder and buff up tanks a little more... We with the new goliath 2.0 and better tanks we might see more mech vs p and everyone is happy).
I dont want to see BW again. I just want to see a game that has the same entertainment value as BW. Blizzard took everything that made BW awesome (lurker, defiler, reaver, etc.) and tried to replace it to get a new fresh game. Some it worked as mentioned previously. Others didn't. (Mainly cols and marauders). It is an insanely hard task to do. I am not denying that. There needs to be some true spark of genius to get the perfect game. They are getting closer. But they are not there yet.
I am not worried about having a balanced game from Blizzard. They will continue to patch the shit out of SC2 until its 50/50 across the board. But will it still be a fun game to watch? Will it still be as entertaining to play? Tic-tac-toe is pretty balanced. Chess is one of the most balanced games in the world. However, I do not keep going back to Chess or Tic-tac-toe after months of break. They lose their novelty after a point in time. Grandmasters have already memorized the first 20 moves of chess. The game has become repetitive and stale. Yet, I always come back to BW. 12 years after release we see new strats and counters. New ideas and better execution of older strategies.
Blizzard has garunteed an ESPORTs game that will last at least 3-4 years (due to expansions) and maybe another 5. But I really cannot see the game keep up it's current drive. It will run out of steam (everything does.. even BW, one sad sad day ]= )...
Anyways my point is that everyone on this site is a starcraft fan. We all 'get it' (as Day9 would say). We all want the best for this game (its like parent's badgering their kids to do study hard or eat their vegies. We never liked it, but we understand it), and just want to see a worthy successor to what is (and no one can dare to fucking disagree) the best game on the planet.
Edit: Also, I can just see TL in three year from now. It will no longer be SC2 vs BW. It will be BW vs WOL vs HOTS vs LOV. lol should be interesting.
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MAP CONTROL.
MOAR OF IT.
PLZ.
A lot of what people are calling 'BW-ness' is really just better map control. The Swarm Host and Lurker look the same because they both siege and control ground. The Shredder looks like vulture mines, because they both deny area but can't join an army. Blinding Cloud looks like Swarm because, okay, yea, it is swarm, but swarm was f-king awesome.
Point is, we don't want BW units, we want units that are more tactical and give you options besides building a ball of death and 1A-ing your way to victory. BW units do this, we want new units that do this, but that doesn't mean every new unit is a BW throwback.
Thank you.
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Umm, well - that's not the problem.
The problem lies in balancing. They'll never keep a version of the game for long enough to let the gameplay solutions evolve.
Just when the game is about to be somewhat balanced (current state of WoL with EMP change), everything is reset and we're back to experimentation again.
The beauty of esports (as with any sport) is found in near-perfect execution.
The pro players are never going to start microing with higher precision as long as they can get away with rock-paper-scissor buildorder wins. I want to see a four control group army bouncing back and forth. I want to see phoenix pick-ups and feedbacks on ghosts while stalkers are blinked back from marauders.
I'll never get to see that at this rate. It'll only be "whose clumped deathball is going to be better when A-moved".
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On October 27 2011 03:40 Thrill wrote:
Umm, well - that's not the problem.
The problem lies in balancing. They'll never keep a version of the game for long enough to let the gameplay solutions evolve.
Just when the game is about to be somewhat balanced (current state of WoL with EMP change), everything is reset and we're back to experimentation again.
I'm sorry but PvT was near impossible to win as a protoss because of EMP. It had to be changed, and I still don't think this change will do much, all it will do is make T make 2-3 more ghosts.
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SC Broodwar HD Edition would be perfect!
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On October 27 2011 00:30 ArchDC wrote:
Anyone who has not seen Kennigit's interview with Dustin Browder should go see it.
I totally agree with them that they need to think of ways to pull food out of 200/200 deathballs which is not as exciting to watch all the time. BW w its stream of armies continuing fighting for more than 20 secs was amazing to watch, n though we will not have that in SC2, at least making it viable to have more skirmishes (value in pulling food out of a deathball for all races) throughout the match will make it better to watch n play.
That interview was actually pretty depressing. Browder knows that the only way to kill deathballs is by changing the way units move, but he won't do it because he thinks that would make the game "worse." Even if you shrink a 120 food deathball into a 80 food one, it's still going to play out the same.
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I've probably played over 5000 games of BW
I prefer SC2
I like that it is different.
I hope that the custom maps get a little love though.
Having said all that, i consider SC2 to be a work in progress.
I enjoy the game, but there is much room for improvement
I just hope blizzard is willing to improve it
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I would love to see something else than BO wins in SC2.
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On October 26 2011 23:10 JayJay_90 wrote:
Am I the only one that thinks SC2 being less challenging when it comes to pure mechanics is actually a great thing? I've never played BW and never followed it as an esports, so I might be lacking some understanding. But I think it's awesome that SC2 is harder than most (casual) games but less hard than BW in terms of mechanics for 2 reasons.
1) It's challenging enough to be a competitive esports game, but easy enough for beginners to get started. That means that more people are gonna play it and the bigger the community, the more money sponsors will want to invest into the growth of esports, be it in price money, teamhouses or whatever.
2) Although at the highest level of BW, where everyone has sick mechanics, strategy is gonna be what decides the game, in BW usually the player with slightly better mechanics will win. I think it is really cool that, although mechanics are obviously super important, in SC2 you can actually win by having a sick gamesense and better tactical decision making, even if your mechanics are worse than your opponent's. To me, this deep understanding of the game is much more impressive than just high apm. Surely you need a lot of practise for that aswell, but it seems like that actually requires a bit of intelligence and talent, while i'd think that everyone who got the willpower to just play > 8 hours a day will get good mechanics pretty soon.
Um yeah, Flash wins the most games because of his sick game-sense and strategic decision making.
Jaedong on the other hand has amazing instantaneous tactical decision making, he will strike if you leave the slightest weakness anywhere. He also has great defiler and muta control meaning he can get bases earlier.
Bisu is a sick multitasking macro/micro god, and has builds that no other protoss' can do.
Three of the best players, great in completely different ways.
What you've essentially said, is that its great that now only players like Flash can be good at the game.
Well let me tell you, that there are a lot of people who don't enjoy Flash's games.
Also tactics barely exist in SC2, they make a much bigger difference in BW due to larger variation in effectiveness of units, depending on positioning and micro. Even the dynamic between zerglings and marines, if you catch a bunch of marines off guard in BW it makes a MASSIVE difference. In SC2 they move clumped all the time, so how can you be tactical?
Read this if you wanna learn about tactics
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=226236
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In my honest opinion, you got some good arguments there, but I will say that changing something just for the sake of changing it, is sometimes not the best idea.
There is a saying: "don't fix something that ain't broken" or something like this, you get my point.
I like that they are trying new things and some of them are really cool, but sometimes I think like in Sarm Host case - "god damn, I wished they gave this lurker back and let's just be done with it'' and I'm by no means BW hardcore gamer, I started off from SC2. But I watched some top BW players play and it's very entertaining, because those games are that similar.
Look what we got coming in HotS:
Pseudo Lurker - Swarm host
Pseudo Goliath - Warhound
I think some ideas are oh so awesome that they shouldn't change it, Lurker for me and I think for many other is one of those ideas. To replace Lurker with something, you gotta have super idea and Swarm Host seems like an average one. I played almost no BW and am I entitled to say I want some old units back? Probably not, but I am SC2 player and I'm entitled to say that those units are awesome and I want them in.
Moral of my story is: if they want to replace some cool stuff they have to give us some cool stuff as a replacement, not some average Swarm host phobia mushroomlike creature which is all around weird from the way it looks to the way it attacks and it's counterpart from BW is great.
I do think that some of their ideas are awesome, but some of them are questionable to say the least.
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The other day I was sitting in the student dining here at my college talking to a guy I know from a while ago, and he knew I was I big star craft fan. His one complaint about the new starcraft, he said, is that it felt too much like playing the old one.
but...
You don't just change shit around in the plot line of a book and a movie when you produce its sequel (unless you're Arthur Clark hehe+ Show Spoiler +) precisely because you're continuing on the basis of the idea that you had a good thing going. Video games are a complex industry, and just as esports was bound to come with the digital age individual esports are going to be affected by changes in technology. A more sophisticated and streamlined UI affects how the game gets played, and indisputably makes certain aspects of a game easier. But very few people just want bw with updated graphics, and this can be known to be true because it exists and has, to my knowledge, little traction. But going back to my initial point about the fundamental similarities of the games; if that is true, similar problems will arise in both, and they'll have similar fixes. If sc2 is taking a bw-like turn, it's because blizzard has done a good job of assimilating old and new. No one can fault them for that just because they, for whatever reason, didn't like the original or want something different. If you want don't want starcraft go play LoL or wc3 or chess. But, and I'm saying this as someone who loves bw and did before sc2 came along, and as someone who loves and plays sc2, the definitive standard of what is starcraft is bw. It's sc2's job to try and live up to it, and it is making huge strides in that direction.
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On October 26 2011 10:02 sunman1g wrote:
i sort of agre, i am so tired of all the ppl asking questions like "Back in BW we had"
go fucking play BW if you love it.
i like SC2 the way it's designed and i like that it is really different from bw.
that's why i feel it's a shame when kennigt asked DB questions that were all Bw centric...
waste of time/questions imho
"in BW we had units stretching out for screens and screens" etc.
jesus, i do not want to see that shit in SC2 personally -.-
i feel all this obsession to have SC2 looking like BW is something not THAT popular.
if you go around TL it may appear that way but thank god there's tons of people who agree SC2 shouldn't be more BW-y
Really? You don't want to see positional gameplay? You don't want units to be able to function on their own? The reason sc2 gets stale is blob vs blob combat. There's not much excitement in actual battles they are just too anti-climatic. Battles tend to end in like 8 seconds, there's no back and forth. People who talk about brood war don't want sc2 to be brood war as much as you do...they just want the aspects that made brood war what it is.
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On October 27 2011 07:46 sluggaslamoo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 23:10 JayJay_90 wrote:
Am I the Only ONE that thinks SC2 being Less challenging when it comes to pure mechanics iS Actually a great thing? I've Never played BW and Never followed it as an esports, so I might be lacking some understanding. But I think it's Awesome that SC2 iS harder than most (casual) games but Less hard than BW in terms of mechanics for 2 reasons.
1) It's challenging enough to be a competitive esports game, but easy enough for beginners to get started. That means that more people are gonna play it and the bigger the community, the more Money sponsors will WanT to invest Into the growth of esports, be it in price Money, teamhouses or whatever.
2) Although at the highest level of BW, where everyone has sick mechanics, strategy iS gonna be What decides the game, in BW usually the player with slightly better mechanics will win. I think it iS Really COol that, although mechanics are obviously Super important, in SC2 you can Actually win by having a sick gamesense and better tactical decision making, even if your mechanics are worse than your opponent's. To me, this Deep understanding of the game iS much more impressive than just high apm. Surely you need a lot of practise for that aswell, but it seems like that Actually requires a bit of intelligence and talent, while i'd think that everyone WhO got the willpower to just play > 8 hours a day will get good mechanics pretty soon. Um Yeah, Flash wins the most games because of his sick game-sense and strategic decision making. Jaedong on the other hand has amazing instantaneous tactical decision making, he will strike if you leave the slightest weakness anywhere. He also has great defiler and MuTa Control meaning he can get bases earlier. Bisu iS a sick multitasking macro/micro god, and has builds that no other Protoss' can do. Three of the best players, great in completely different ways. What you've essentially SaiD, iS that its great that now Only players like Flash can be good at the game. Well let me tell you, that there are a lot of people WhO don't ENJoY Flash's games. Also tactics barely exist in SC2, they make a much bigger difference in BW due to larger variation in effectiveness of units, depending on positioning and micro. Even the dynamic between zerglings and marines, if you catch a bunch of marines off guard in BW it makes a MASSIVE difference. In SC2 they move clumped all the time, so how can you be tactical? Read this if you wanna learn about tactics http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=226236
THIS is exactly what I hate.
Shutting all avenues of discussion because the "noob" made a little misstatement, than proceed to turn your post into pure condescending crap.
Can we have a discussion while not being thrown in the face that we don't know anything about life, like if being a fan of this or that game also defined the size of our cocks?
That being said, SC2 has evolved a lot since Beta. Terran and Zerg are taking shape and big balls don't work anymore in these match ups. (Terran would be better without the marauder though ) At the very least in hi levels of play. When you watch T & Z plays, you can really distinguish the player's styles behind the games now.
Issue is Protoss...
This race just doesn't allow to drift away from the same core boring builds. Deathballs or 4-8 gates all-ins are the only way to go. What is sad is that creative and innovative Protoss builds will always be inferior to these strats.
That's why I like the new HotS P units, they are different to what BW brings on the table.
Replicators, Oracles, Nexus recall, Arc cannon or whatever it's called, those things encourage to get away from the Deathball or the gates all ins, they try to reward "cute" and inventive play. I have faith in them.
The Tempest (more or less an Air Colossus) on the other end... This unit will not address any of SC2 Toss' problems.
Revised carriers instead of that thing would have helped more there IMO
An example where a BW solution would help SC2.
Reavers, arbiters? These units would aggravate the Deathball syndrome.
An example where a BW solution would severely damage SC2.
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i dont care if sc2 becomes more like bw or less like bw, its a different game after all
however, what i do want from sc2 is for it to be more spectator friendly and have better protoss design (not balance, as the game is balanced imo, but design) I feel that it is bad design for protoss to rely on a poorly designed unit -the colossus- and be all but forced to make it almost every game
i also disagree with the design philosophy behind the replicator and tempest (oracle i don't mind) the replicator is there so that protoss can play terran or zerg, although i do like mind control for those fun games it doesnt have as much of a place in competitive play especially considering how niche the unit is and how its role in protoss play is far from what protoss actually needs, the tempest suffers a similar design flaw where the whole design point of the unit is to fight mutalisks
-_-
honestly i'd prefer blizzard to remove the colossus and re balance protoss armies
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I agree 100%. Even without adding in BW units and making things deliberately more broodwar-ey, there will EVENTUALLY be a shift towards that gameplay style anyways.
Korean pros sucked hard at broodwar for a long time. Remember when July realized that mutas could be microed? OMGWTFBROKENNERF.
As players get better mechanically, they will start breaking up the ball vs ball approach and start doing seriously all-over-the-place stuff. Watch nestea vs BratOK's blizzcon match, game 2 on shakuras. He has turrets everywhere, planetaries as defensive structures, and his army was spread nicely. Nestea circumvents it with a nydus and then crashes the front on multiple points. It was brilliant to watch.
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i played SC:BW for 10years on and off. when sc2 came out i played few games everyday just because i enjoyed bw so much.
altough i didn't like the game at all, i didn't get happy when i won, neither angry when i lost. played around 1,5k games total and then i quit.
I dont enjoy SC2 at all, they made everything so easy. in BW u could drop when u saw him move out and make real damage, in SC2 they just warp in 3units and np.
imo they removed everything hard from bw or made it auto (Automining) to attract more noobs.
Just my opinion
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Protoss deathballs exist mainly due to colossi. Colossi are simply so powerful that most P games live and die based on how well they are protected. Normally this wouldn't be a bad thing if colossi required excellent micro and positioning, but instead they are A-move units in their purest form. It's a shame that one of the biggest causes of deathball syndrome went completely unchanged in HotS, and I'm willing to bet money that it stayed in simply because Blizzard likes the model of the unit.
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On October 27 2011 09:27 Spawkuring wrote:
Protoss deathballs exist mainly due to colossi. Colossi are simply so powerful that most P games live and die based on how well they are protected. Normally this wouldn't be a bad thing if colossi required excellent micro and positioning, but instead they are A-move units in their purest form. It's a shame that one of the biggest causes of deathball syndrome went completely unchanged in HotS, and I'm willing to bet money that it stayed in simply because Blizzard likes the model of the unit.
no, its more likely that it stayed in, because removing it would mean rebalancing protoss, something they dont want to do
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On October 27 2011 07:46 sluggaslamoo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 23:10 JayJay_90 wrote:
Am I the only one that thinks SC2 being less challenging when it comes to pure mechanics is actually a great thing? I've never played BW and never followed it as an esports, so I might be lacking some understanding. But I think it's awesome that SC2 is harder than most (casual) games but less hard than BW in terms of mechanics for 2 reasons.
1) It's challenging enough to be a competitive esports game, but easy enough for beginners to get started. That means that more people are gonna play it and the bigger the community, the more money sponsors will want to invest into the growth of esports, be it in price money, teamhouses or whatever.
2) Although at the highest level of BW, where everyone has sick mechanics, strategy is gonna be what decides the game, in BW usually the player with slightly better mechanics will win. I think it is really cool that, although mechanics are obviously super important, in SC2 you can actually win by having a sick gamesense and better tactical decision making, even if your mechanics are worse than your opponent's. To me, this deep understanding of the game is much more impressive than just high apm. Surely you need a lot of practise for that aswell, but it seems like that actually requires a bit of intelligence and talent, while i'd think that everyone who got the willpower to just play > 8 hours a day will get good mechanics pretty soon. Um yeah, Flash wins the most games because of his sick game-sense and strategic decision making. Jaedong on the other hand has amazing instantaneous tactical decision making, he will strike if you leave the slightest weakness anywhere. He also has great defiler and muta control meaning he can get bases earlier. Bisu is a sick multitasking macro/micro god, and has builds that no other protoss' can do. Three of the best players, great in completely different ways. What you've essentially said, is that its great that now only players like Flash can be good at the game. Well let me tell you, that there are a lot of people who don't enjoy Flash's games. Also tactics barely exist in SC2, they make a much bigger difference in BW due to larger variation in effectiveness of units, depending on positioning and micro. Even the dynamic between zerglings and marines, if you catch a bunch of marines off guard in BW it makes a MASSIVE difference. In SC2 they move clumped all the time, so how can you be tactical? Read this if you wanna learn about tactics http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=226236
I've learned that it's pointless to try to educate people on the intricacies of BW when they have no idea. They usually turn around and blame your opinion on nostalgia because they don't understand that maybe BW is actually genuinely a vastly superior game. Tactics are almost non-existent in SC2 and the ones that do exist are also a part of the BW metagame. I always hear people saying that "BW is only mechanics," and "theres no strategy, the player with the best mechanics wins." For some reason they can't understand that mechanics and strategy can coincide. But somehow mechanics and strategy coincide in SC2 which is more than a decade younger. Yes, mechanics are very important in BW but all the players play 14 hours a day, they all have amazing mechanics, its the strategy that sets the best apart from the rest. Well biased SC2-only players, if BW is so shallow then i'm sure that you can learn all there is to BW no problem right?
I find it strange that people with experience in area X feel like they have superior knowledge in area Y over someone who has experience in area X and Y. It's like having two people test if they like the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate better. One person tries both and gives his opinion, the other person tries only one and insists that one is the best. Which person do you think I would be more inclined to listen to?
+ Show Spoiler +Correct! The person with more credentials!
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I've learned that it's pointless to try to educate people on the intricacies of BW when they have no idea. They usually turn around and blame your opinion on nostalgia because they don't understand that maybe BW is actually genuinely a vastly superior game. Tactics are almost non-existent in SC2 and the ones that do exist are also a part of the BW metagame. I always hear people saying that "BW is only mechanics," and "theres no strategy, the player with the best mechanics wins." For some reason they can't understand that mechanics and strategy can coincide. But somehow mechanics and strategy coincide in SC2 which is more than a decade younger. Yes, mechanics are very important in BW but all the players play 14 hours a day, they all have amazing mechanics, its the strategy that sets the best apart from the rest. Well biased SC2-only players, if BW is so shallow then i'm sure that you can learn all there is to BW no problem right? I find it strange that people with experience in area X feel like they have superior knowledge in area Y over someone who has experience in area X and Y. It's like having two people test if they like the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate better. One person tries both and gives his opinion, the other person tries only one and insists that one is the best. Which person do you think I would be more inclined to listen to? + Show Spoiler +Correct! The person with more credentials!
I love how everything you quote as being "amazing" about brood war was late in the game's life. SCII has been out for less than a year, and brood war was a hundred times worse in that time frame.
Face it: the game hasn't had time to mature, and you're expecting it to be perfect instantly. Grow up and stop waxing nostalgic (yeah, you are putting nostalgia ahead of logical thought) and start contributing to making SCII as good as brood war, or stop talking about SCII and go play BW.
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On October 26 2011 10:02 iky43210 wrote:
There are units similarities, but they really are very different compare to BW
They just wants make a unit slightly similar to BW to sell you that nostalgia. But as long as the unit pathing for sc2 is so advance, it won't go toward the way of BW. I do agree with Blizzard moves to try to spread out the deathball though
back and forth game is always the best to look at. Introducing powerful casters and siege units will achieve them
Rename the deathball to deathwave when HoTS comes out.
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If sc2 was to be entirely different than BW... then it wouldn't be sc2. It'd be a new franchise possibly...
sc2 has the BW concept. The races have the same base mechanics and then some in sc2.
To improve sc2, we need to look at what BW did right. Because when we criticize games, we often associate the most similar game to it to find faults and goods...
albeit, i'd like it if criticism was more open and not so BW exclusive. It would bring out more innovative ideas IMO...
sc2 does have some innovative concepts and layers of mechanics despite it being 'simplified.' Most stupid BW mechanics that took away gameplay was simplified.. like mass selection... mining... etc...
By mechanics, I meant the AI... Units move better and don't retard like BW. Even though deathballs do form, balls are only seen while moving and not confronting splash damage. I think what people see when they say 'deathball' they see units moving across the field and say, ball vs ball... but when the battle comes, pros split their balls up to deal with baneling, sieg tanks, storms, and what have you. And then its micro wars... I don't know about you, but I don't give a shit about how units walk from A to B in the form of a ball.
I just wanted to say that... but anyways, sc2 is BW-y cuz its starcraft. it's okay to compare sometimes. it can give better solutions. sometimes though, I don't agree with BW elitist being elitist...
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On October 27 2011 12:27 Honeybadger wrote:Show nested quote +I've learned that it's pointless to try to educate people on the intricacies of BW when they have no idea. They usually turn around and blame your opinion on nostalgia because they don't understand that maybe BW is actually genuinely a vastly superior game. Tactics are almost non-existent in SC2 and the ones that do exist are also a part of the BW metagame. I always hear people saying that "BW is only mechanics," and "theres no strategy, the player with the best mechanics wins." For some reason they can't understand that mechanics and strategy can coincide. But somehow mechanics and strategy coincide in SC2 which is more than a decade younger. Yes, mechanics are very important in BW but all the players play 14 hours a day, they all have amazing mechanics, its the strategy that sets the best apart from the rest. Well biased SC2-only players, if BW is so shallow then i'm sure that you can learn all there is to BW no problem right? I find it strange that people with experience in area X feel like they have superior knowledge in area Y over someone who has experience in area X and Y. It's like having two people test if they like the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate better. One person tries both and gives his opinion, the other person tries only one and insists that one is the best. Which person do you think I would be more inclined to listen to? + Show Spoiler +Correct! The person with more credentials! I love how everything you quote as being "amazing" about brood war was late in the game's life. SCII has been out for less than a year, and brood war was a hundred times worse in that time frame. Face it: the game hasn't had time to mature, and you're expecting it to be perfect instantly. Grow up and stop waxing nostalgic (yeah, you are putting nostalgia ahead of logical thought) and start contributing to making SCII as good as brood war, or stop talking about SCII and go play BW.
If SC2 was to stay WoL forever, all the time in the world would not allow the game to evolve into a better game than BW. SC2 is missing some fundamentals or is designed in a way to prevent that Just watch the Dustin B. interview with teamliquid video where they talk about these issues that they are trying to solve with HoTs, and even admits that it won't be solved in HoTs . I'm just glad there are 2 more expansions to hopefully make SC2 as good as BW. SC2 isn't that fun to watch, I even left during the GSL finals at Blizzcon for the Hilton party because the matches weren't that interesting (watching marauders destroy everything boo!)
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Most of you don't get it. It's not about SC2 becoming like BW. It's about SC2 overcoming BW...BW fans don't want just another game...maybe you new guys do...we want a better game.
SC2 just doesn't improve on what BW started, it tries to do it's own thing and fails again and again with fault. It makes a relatively short journey to success a long one. So it's frustrating for us, because BW taught us so much and SC2 isn't taking advantage of those lessons.
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I would like to play BW with GRID hotkeys, multiple building select, automining queue and unlimited unit selections.
Don't even mind if there is no queen, mules, or chronoboosts.
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On October 26 2011 10:23 iPAndi wrote:
We definitely dont want BW, thats why we all migrated from it. We, however, want sc2 to have the great characteristics bw had. Positional advantage (read minefields, tank spreading, observers spreading, lurkers), back and forth motion in games (scourge+lurk vs observers+goons, lurker+defiler vs mnm) and more are available on BW and made the game as epic as it was.
This is my biggest disappointment with SC2. In BW there was such a huge focus on have many expansions all over the map and having just the right amount of units positioned perfectly all over the map to defend everything. In SC2, half the games end up with just two big balls of units smashing into the other and someone wins. Sure, sometimes you get epic macro games with drops going on all over the place and counter attacks, but those epic SC2 games would just be standard BW games.
This thread and the title of it is poison. The OP's argument is fundamentally flawed. SC2 shouldn't be "as different as possible" from SC1 because SC2 carries the "StarCraft" name in its title. If you want something as different as possible from SC1, then there are a ton of other games out there for you. But we want SC2, that is, Starcraft 2. It's supposed to be a new version of Starcraft 1, which means, it should keep the awesome characteristics from the first game.
I also agree with this. If I buy street fighter 5 in the future, I am expecting it to be like the previous street fighters. Going from BW to SC2 is like going from street fighter to tekken. They are the same genre sure, but they are just so completely different.
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This thread and the title of it is poison. The OP's argument is fundamentally flawed. SC2 shouldn't be "as different as possible" from SC1 because SC2 carries the "StarCraft" name in its title. If you want something as different as possible from SC1, then there are a ton of other games out there for you. But we want SC2, that is, Starcraft 2. It's supposed to be a new version of Starcraft 1, which means, it should keep the awesome characteristics from the first game.
Aside from all that, SC2 should strive to be more realistic. Ball vs Ball and stutter step micro isn't realistic, it's stupid looking and boring to watch. A 13 year old game actually simulated how real war would look; long siege lines, armies that extend multiple screens, etc. I know, it's Starcraft, it's not supposed to be a real war simulator right? But it's also not supposed to be 200/200 armies fitting in a small ball all in 1 screen. That just doesn't look right, and it's not fun and it's boring to watch.
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On October 27 2011 13:51 KingAce wrote:
Most of you don't get it. It's not about SC2 becoming like BW. It's about SC2 overcoming BW...BW fans don't want just another game...maybe you new guys do...we want a better game.
SC2 just doesn't improve on what BW started, it tries to do it's own thing and fails again and again with fault. It makes a relatively short journey to success a long one. So it's frustrating for us, because BW taught us so much and SC2 isn't taking advantage of those lessons.
I <3 You.
On October 27 2011 13:10 Hokay wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2011 12:27 Honeybadger wrote:I've learned that it's pointless to try to educate people on the intricacies of BW when they have no idea. They usually turn around and blame your opinion on nostalgia because they don't understand that maybe BW is actually genuinely a vastly superior game. Tactics are almost non-existent in SC2 and the ones that do exist are also a part of the BW metagame. I always hear people saying that "BW is only mechanics," and "theres no strategy, the player with the best mechanics wins." For some reason they can't understand that mechanics and strategy can coincide. But somehow mechanics and strategy coincide in SC2 which is more than a decade younger. Yes, mechanics are very important in BW but all the players play 14 hours a day, they all have amazing mechanics, its the strategy that sets the best apart from the rest. Well biased SC2-only players, if BW is so shallow then i'm sure that you can learn all there is to BW no problem right? I find it strange that people with experience in area X feel like they have superior knowledge in area Y over someone who has experience in area X and Y. It's like having two people test if they like the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate better. One person tries both and gives his opinion, the other person tries only one and insists that one is the best. Which person do you think I would be more inclined to listen to? + Show Spoiler +Correct! The person with more credentials! I love how everything you quote as being "amazing" about brood war was late in the game's life. SCII has been out for less than a year, and brood war was a hundred times worse in that time frame. Face it: the game hasn't had time to mature, and you're expecting it to be perfect instantly. Grow up and stop waxing nostalgic (yeah, you are putting nostalgia ahead of logical thought) and start contributing to making SCII as good as brood war, or stop talking about SCII and go play BW. If SC2 was to stay WoL forever, all the time in the world would not allow the game to evolve into a better game than BW. SC2 is missing some fundamentals or is designed in a way to prevent that Just watch the Dustin B. interview with teamliquid video where they talk about these issues that they are trying to solve with HoTs, and even admits that it won't be solved in HoTs . I'm just glad there are 2 more expansions to hopefully make SC2 as good as BW. SC2 isn't that fun to watch, I even left during the GSL finals at Blizzcon for the Hilton party because the matches weren't that interesting (watching marauders destroy everything boo!)
You sound smart with that logical wisdom of yours.
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@OP
You're mostly correct, but you're largely overlooking and ultimately ignoring the fact that SC2 piggybacked on the success and longevity of BW to get its jump start.
Don't get me wrong, you are right in attributing SC2's widespread and broad success to its relatively low mechanical requirement, but you have to admit there are a number of problems with this simplicity as well. Kennigit's questions in his Dustin Browder interview are all great examples of aspects of BW that I personally really think would benefit SC2.
SC2 being different from BW is fine, it being an entirely different game is fine, and it already is. SC2 emulating parts of BW that made BW the amazing game it is should also be considered, however.
Unfortunately, a lot of what made BW great are things that no modern RTS would even think to have included, and Blizz is no exception.
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I agree and disagree Opisska. Many reasons why SC2 is successful is because of how successful BroodWar is, among other reasons (Like being released in 2010 after BW and other games made e-sports). In order to legitimize esports though and make sure it's not just a fad, there needs to be the skill to back it up. Broodwar has that, and the perfect balance; SC2 thrives to attain that high pedestal while being a different game. Hard shoes to be the predecessor to BroodWar, one of the greatest games ever made.
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On October 27 2011 12:27 Honeybadger wrote:Show nested quote +I've learned that it's pointless to try to educate people on the intricacies of BW when they have no idea. They usually turn around and blame your opinion on nostalgia because they don't understand that maybe BW is actually genuinely a vastly superior game. Tactics are almost non-existent in SC2 and the ones that do exist are also a part of the BW metagame. I always hear people saying that "BW is only mechanics," and "theres no strategy, the player with the best mechanics wins." For some reason they can't understand that mechanics and strategy can coincide. But somehow mechanics and strategy coincide in SC2 which is more than a decade younger. Yes, mechanics are very important in BW but all the players play 14 hours a day, they all have amazing mechanics, its the strategy that sets the best apart from the rest. Well biased SC2-only players, if BW is so shallow then i'm sure that you can learn all there is to BW no problem right? I find it strange that people with experience in area X feel like they have superior knowledge in area Y over someone who has experience in area X and Y. It's like having two people test if they like the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate better. One person tries both and gives his opinion, the other person tries only one and insists that one is the best. Which person do you think I would be more inclined to listen to? + Show Spoiler +Correct! The person with more credentials! I love how everything you quote as being "amazing" about brood war was late in the game's life. SCII has been out for less than a year, and brood war was a hundred times worse in that time frame. Face it: the game hasn't had time to mature, and you're expecting it to be perfect instantly. Grow up and stop waxing nostalgic (yeah, you are putting nostalgia ahead of logical thought) and start contributing to making SCII as good as brood war, or stop talking about SCII and go play BW.
SC2 is the sequel to BW. Like it or not, it has an enormous legacy and name to live up to. It clearly doesn't. There isn't a single person who actually played BW who can honestly say SC2 has lived up to BW.
Vanilla Starcraft was terrible when it first came out. BW wasn't nearly as broken. More importantly, however, the fundamental aspects of BW that let it mature into the great game it is were always there.
We don't have ten years to wait for SC2 to become a great game. It needs to be a game worthy of succeeding BW now, not in ten years.
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well thats the most useless thread ive seen in a while
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I also want SC2 to be a "separate game" than SC/BW. But the problem is SC2 still has and will always have some basic principles of each race that will always keep it from being a completely unique game from BW.
Until they do a complete overhaul on how the races play, each race in SC2 will eventually (either through meta game, blizzard's unit designs, or some combo of both) play very similar roles to their SC1 counterparts. So the game will always be compared to brood war in some way.
While i give blizzard a lot of crap for the success that WoW has put into their heads, I give them a small amount of props for at least trying to change up certain aspects of the races to differ SC2 z/t/p from BW. But the problem is it really isnt working. And now these HotS units have some similarities to the BW units tbh.
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On October 27 2011 14:19 DEN1ED wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:23 iPAndi wrote:
We definitely dont want BW, thats why we all migrated from it. We, however, want sc2 to have the great characteristics bw had. Positional advantage (read minefields, tank spreading, observers spreading, lurkers), back and forth motion in games (scourge+lurk vs observers+goons, lurker+defiler vs mnm) and more are available on BW and made the game as epic as it was. This is my biggest disappointment with SC2. In BW there was such a huge focus on have many expansions all over the map and having just the right amount of units positioned perfectly all over the map to defend everything. In SC2, half the games end up with just two big balls of units smashing into the other and someone wins. Sure, sometimes you get epic macro games with drops going on all over the place and counter attacks, but those epic SC2 games would just be standard BW games.
I was thinking along these lines recently. You can see games go long right now where everything falls apart for players on both sides. Keeping up macro on 4+ bases while dealing with or performing drops & fighting that positional war on the front line seems to be where even high level pros hit their limit. You start to see poor decisions being made, from bad engagements to just going all in and letting their econ or tech get wiped when they could have cleaned up. I don't mean that in a harsh way, though. It's just the game and the skill level evolving.
A year ago 1 base all ins were the norm, 6 months ago it was 2 base timings. Now it's common to see an early push that isn't an all in, but keeps players honest, and another timing a little later, but again, those pushes really only kill off a player who is behind, either through harassment, poor engagements, a poor build order choice, or macro screw ups. Successful players are more active in the early stages and able to multitask better in the late game. And as knowledge of the early and mid game continues to get ingrained into pros,it seems more likely that someone who can control multiple engagements will always have the advantage over someone who tries to barrel through the map with a giant army.
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It doesn't make sense to make SC2 more broodwar-y anyway. Back then we had a completely different pathing and absolutely stupid units. The reaver and spidermine were units that were balanced around the fact that small bacteria can coordinate movement better than those units. Sure you could shove the stupid person in the right direction, but it kind of was like giving a spasmic retarded person a bazooka and cross your fingers that he hit your enemies.
The pathing is much smarter now. And right now the units aren't designed for that much smarter AI aside from perhaps the hellion. We shouldn't go back to making broodwar, that would be a cop-out to blizzard on the biggest scale possible. They should design truely smart units that are designed around the current pathing, not go back to making everything retarded and introduce BW units. And yes I do enjoy watching BW more than SC2 right now.
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It's not specifically about emulating starcraft:brood war that will supposedly make sc2 a better game, but instead a rehaul of the fundamentals of gameplay that exist in sc2 that will make it into a superior product. Ex. blob of stuff vs blob of stuff in sc2. SC1 maybe had "ball" formations as well but that took micro and had advantages and disadvantages. Units in sc2 have a tendency to squish together as hard as possible, but they avoid each other in sc1. Honestly, how fun is it to see MMMVG vs a colossus deathball and then see one army just evaporate? How fun is it to play that?
Then there's also the fact that it is a sequel and thus should stay true to the series. It already keeps some of the old units like the marine, zealot and zergling, but I think success relies also on teh way the game plays out. Take Street Fighter for example: Street Fighter 2 was a huge success but SF3 was not quite because the system was so different. SF3 introduced parries, which let skilled players completely nullify projectiles as space control, thus making rushdown the optimal playstyle. Then there was also the issue of only keeping 4 characters from the original street fighter 2. Now more people know about SF4 because they brought back every old character+some alpha+SF3 as well as not having parries (focus attacks are very different).
It's not essential that sc2 has lurkers and reavers and valkyries, but a gameplay system more reminiscent of BW than it does now will probably attract more SCBW pros into transferring and likely making better games (who knows, maybe it's the opposite and making it bw-y will ruin everything).
If I got anything wrong with my SF/BW analogies I apologize. I don't have pro 1st hand experience. It's the underlying idea that's important.
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On October 27 2011 15:02 Fugue wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On October 27 2011 14:19 DEN1ED wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:23 iPAndi wrote:
We definitely dont want BW, thats why we all migrated from it. We, however, want sc2 to have the great characteristics bw had. Positional advantage (read minefields, tank spreading, observers spreading, lurkers), back and forth motion in games (scourge+lurk vs observers+goons, lurker+defiler vs mnm) and more are available on BW and made the game as epic as it was. This is my biggest disappointment with SC2. In BW there was such a huge focus on have many expansions all over the map and having just the right amount of units positioned perfectly all over the map to defend everything. In SC2, half the games end up with just two big balls of units smashing into the other and someone wins. Sure, sometimes you get epic macro games with drops going on all over the place and counter attacks, but those epic SC2 games would just be standard BW games. I was thinking along these lines recently. You can see games go long right now where everything falls apart for players on both sides. Keeping up macro on 4+ bases while dealing with or performing drops & fighting that positional war on the front line seems to be where even high level pros hit their limit. You start to see poor decisions being made, from bad engagements to just going all in and letting their econ or tech get wiped when they could have cleaned up. I don't mean that in a harsh way, though. It's just the game and the skill level evolving. A year ago 1 base all ins were the norm, 6 months ago it was 2 base timings. Now it's common to see an early push that isn't an all in, but keeps players honest, and another timing a little later, but again, those pushes really only kill off a player who is behind, either through harassment, poor engagements, a poor build order choice, or macro screw ups. Successful players are more active in the early stages and able to multitask better in the late game. And as knowledge of the early and mid game continues to get ingrained into pros,it seems more likely that someone who can control multiple engagements will always have the advantage over someone who tries to barrel through the map with a giant army.
Ya, I guess it could just be a skill thing at the moment. It always makes me a little sad when there are bonjwa discussions about nestea when he was a below average BW player. It's not like you suddenly become godly at such a relatively old age. I don't want the BW scene to fall apart but part of me wants to see the top BW players in SC2 and see the game get pushed to the limits much faster.
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This comes up time and time again in all games. I've been active on gaming forums since WoW, and I see this same shit over and over. WoW players want the game more like Everquest, and when the expansion comes out they want the game more like vanilla. The MLG forums want all Halo games to be more like Halo CE or Halo 2 (depending, not at all coincidentally, on which of those two games the poster played competitively first), the League of Legends forums want everything more like DoTA, and the SC2 forums want everything more like Brood War.
It's all a matter of expectations. People play one game of a series or genre, and that game becomes the template for what that kind of game is supposed to be. If anything is not like that template, it is seen as wrong and inherently inferior, because it is different from what the player has come to expect. Every time I see Brood War called a perfect game it just reeks of this effect.
Understanding the designers' intent I think is key to discussing the success and failure of any game as it is and proposing changes. Your expectations do not match the exact design intentions of the developer, especially when your expectation is to have something close to the same game again. Lots of times people assume the developers are trying to recreate the supposed magic of the original, but this is a flawed assumption. Blizzard, Bungie, Riot, and just about all other game developers are completely capable of closely remaking their past games. They aren't failing to emulate previous success, they were never trying to begin with.
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On October 27 2011 13:10 Hokay wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2011 12:27 Honeybadger wrote:I've learned that it's pointless to try to educate people on the intricacies of BW when they have no idea. They usually turn around and blame your opinion on nostalgia because they don't understand that maybe BW is actually genuinely a vastly superior game. Tactics are almost non-existent in SC2 and the ones that do exist are also a part of the BW metagame. I always hear people saying that "BW is only mechanics," and "theres no strategy, the player with the best mechanics wins." For some reason they can't understand that mechanics and strategy can coincide. But somehow mechanics and strategy coincide in SC2 which is more than a decade younger. Yes, mechanics are very important in BW but all the players play 14 hours a day, they all have amazing mechanics, its the strategy that sets the best apart from the rest. Well biased SC2-only players, if BW is so shallow then i'm sure that you can learn all there is to BW no problem right? I find it strange that people with experience in area X feel like they have superior knowledge in area Y over someone who has experience in area X and Y. It's like having two people test if they like the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate better. One person tries both and gives his opinion, the other person tries only one and insists that one is the best. Which person do you think I would be more inclined to listen to? + Show Spoiler +Correct! The person with more credentials! I love how everything you quote as being "amazing" about brood war was late in the game's life. SCII has been out for less than a year, and brood war was a hundred times worse in that time frame. Face it: the game hasn't had time to mature, and you're expecting it to be perfect instantly. Grow up and stop waxing nostalgic (yeah, you are putting nostalgia ahead of logical thought) and start contributing to making SCII as good as brood war, or stop talking about SCII and go play BW. If SC2 was to stay WoL forever, all the time in the world would not allow the game to evolve into a better game than BW. SC2 is missing some fundamentals or is designed in a way to prevent that Just watch the Dustin B. interview with teamliquid video where they talk about these issues that they are trying to solve with HoTs, and even admits that it won't be solved in HoTs . I'm just glad there are 2 more expansions to hopefully make SC2 as good as BW. SC2 isn't that fun to watch, I even left during the GSL finals at Blizzcon for the Hilton party because the matches weren't that interesting (watching marauders destroy everything boo!)
lol yes... because broodwar was completely without issues....
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I agree that people need to stop comparing SC2 to Brood War. They are two completely different games and are both amazing in their own right.
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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.
Anyway, let's think about why do people not keep playing BW, even though many people that play (or at least passionately discuss) SC2 are apparently of the opinion that BW is superior? For me, the reason is simple: I suck at BW, because of its mechanical difficulty and playing SC2 is much more fun for me.
OK, but I am a noob, right? So why do we have a whole ESPORTS scene around SC2, if it is inferior to BW? The reason is, again, simple: because the pros (non-korean) suck at BW - at least compared to their korean counterparts.
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.
The think that we have to understand is that we now have something different than what we had in BW and that by making SC2 being more like BW, it will be ruined and essentially another version of BW will be made. Why would we want that? Isn't BW the best "version of BW" we could ever hope for?
This situation has another, for many unwelcome, consequence: we cannot really have even the units feel too much BWy. The reason why BW is balanced with just the units and statistics it has, has much to do with its mechanical difficulty. Putting BW units into SC2 with all the UI improvements is a complete disaster. But removing these improvements would be a disaster as well, a disaster for the existence of SC2 as a separate entitty from "just a shiny BW remake".
The question I would like to see ultimately discussed in this thread is: if you argue that something should be "more like in BW", what is you goal? What do you want to achieve with that? Does any desirable outcome of such a developement even exist? Isn't it better for SC2 to be just as different from BW as possible (while still having ESPORTS potential - Angry Birds are obvously more different from BW than SC2)?
Again, the reason for having SC2 different from BW is not that one or another approach is better than the other, but that we already kinda do have a very nice realisation of the BW one.
1) This point of view isn't exactly fresh.
2) In Broodwar, the game was balanced and almost every unit had a purpose. You can't say that about SC2. What's wrong with wanting a balanced game without useless units?
3) Since it's "Starcraft 2" and not "Koprulu Space Wars", it's more than reasonable to expect that Starcraft 2 would more or less be an extension or addition to the experience of Starcraft world. Why recreate Starcraft? Because IT IS STARCRAFT! Does it have to be exactly the same? No, but the old Broodwar model was a solid and safe model. Also, some of us want Broodwar with some of the easy UI features of SC2 (basically a mechanically simpler BW). And no, SC2BW isn't the same, not even close.
4) Yes, SC2 is mechanically easier. No, this isn't the reason that foreigners are doing reasonably well (compared to BW). The reason is that we jumped on the boat early, and we STAYED ON THE BOAT. In BW, we let them keep widening the gap whereas in SC2 we're fighting to either close it or keep it from growing. We're here early, and we plan to stay. And you could STILL have a western eSports scene with SC2 being a lot more like Broodwar.
5) There are a lot of VERY desirable thing about being more like Broodwar. Chat Channels (eventually got added), LAN support, multiplayer replay viewing, Clan Support? (or was that just WC3?), A BALANCED GAME, and A GOOD GAME DESIGN.
6) What do I want from the game since I want it to be more like Broodwar? I want variety in viable strategies (make mech viable for Terrans and make Hydralisks viable for Zerg), I want a balanced game, I want a good game design (goes towards variety of strategies), or if they can't do that - I want a mechanically easier and shinier (could do without the shinier) version of Broodwar. I don't want to spend years of my life just so I can have mechanics good enough just to macro decently in Broodwar.
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Dominican Republic39 Posts
I Agree! and think that this is happening because when ppl cant deal with something they say that "something" is broken or something is wrong! manytime i see ppl saying that X race in imbalanced or some $hit like that, But then come another player deal with the problem with ease.
Does that look like Imba for you?, I always say that if I cant deal with some stuff, I try to learn how that stuff is made so i can get it weaknesses. Sadly generally no ones do that, they go to a TL forum to Cry that the game is imba - and tha's the reasin Bkizzard is doing All that.
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The game is Starcraft non the less and it should be more similar to BW then any other game even if SC2 fans hate it or not . Right now it is a mixture of BW , WC3 and even C&C elements with most of the units and the lore of course coming from BW while the game design feels like 50 % BW 40% warcraft and 10 % C&C or something like that . I as a starcraft fan personaly hope that BW percentage increases in the future with the expansions and patches . If i wanted to play a game that felt similar to WC3 or other RTS i would be playing them not starcraft .So please understand SC2 fans that came from different communities , why it is important that the game SHOULD be getting more like BW .
Though you can rejoice with them new protoss units coming in HOTS at least one race that came out of WC3 will stay that way , with all them spellcasters and minions  . And thats exactly why WC3 players playing protoss are having such a huge success in the foreign scene and why most of the BW pros choose not to play protoss in favour of Terran or Zerg .
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On October 27 2011 00:31 pyrogenetix wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 10:25 shadowboxer wrote:
BW was a better game than SC2 hands down. The problem is that BW was a lot better for competitive players and not necessarily for building a marketable product. BW was extremely hard, and as such getting into it as a new player was extremely difficult. SC2 is not hard, or at least not in the same way BW was. If you have a desire to become really good at SC2, you can do that as long as you put in the hard work and dedication.
You couldn't do that in BW at all. If you wanted to be a top player you HAD to move to Korea and you had to play 14+ hours a day because the game was pure speed and the ability to combine that speed with good strategy, tactics and unit control. In SC2 the game does almost all of this for you, so players that will never actually be good at the game can still play it at a certain level and feel like they have an understanding of the game and why pros do what they do.
BW is a game competitive gamers appreciate, but SC2 is an e-sport. It's similar to Counter-Strike 1.6 in the sense that for competitive gamers, it was the perfect shooter. Nothing will top it, ever, hands down. 1.6 is not a marketable e-sport though, and something will come along and eventually beat it out in the e-sports market just like SC2 did to BW. I think this is the main misconception people have of BW. What makes BW great is that you never have enough time to do everything. You can either 1) build probes and put them on minerals when they come out, or 2) build more zealots, or 3) micro your dragoons from the zerglings. You don't have time to do all three. Your aim is not to do all three things but to be able to make the ballsy split second decision to build more zealots over making more probes or saving your goons because you realize that that is your top priority at that place and time. That is superior game sense and knowledge, not mechanics. When you get better at playing you may be able to squeeze a second action in, but to try and do everything in BW and play a perfect game is impossible. A lot of BW is about creating havoc for your opponent and forcing him to choose the wrong priority. That's something people again and again do not understand.
From the depth of the thread, I would like to pick up this particular response - paradoxically because it seems to be to most important thing to disagree with.
When both players reach certain level of mechanics, then yes, this is a very profound concept and it should be agreed with. Both below that level, there is always the possiblity that one player will be able to do more of these actions than the other and then it actaully is about the mechanics and nothing else.
And here I thnik the core of the problem is pinpointed, the queston is: am I able to put it in words? The whole BW is balanced around this basic choice of APM alocation. The possibility to balance very powerfull elements, such as consume/dark swarm, storm, mines, but also individual unit micro abilities (kiting, moving shots, deceleration management) is related to the fact that even though you can pull them off to a great effect, you will be loosing on your macro if you give it too much. But this is in stark contrast with the existence of/demand for a simple interface that, most importantly, simplifies the macro.
So still it seems to me that the BW's success lies in its mechanical difficulty, because it is only the difficulty that efficiently for this tradeoff between actions (otherwise there always will be players that manage to do everything). There several are people in this thread who said that they would like to just have BW without having to spend two years learning the mechanics. I would love that too! But considering the above arguement, I think that it just can't work, because when the difficulty to pull it off stops being the deciding factor in choosing your gameplay, then all of the sudden, different strategies will become effective and the whole underlying structure of the game will be lost. Sadly, I have not seen many suggestion as to what could actually be done in order to avoid this trap.
There are also other interesting things that I think merit being noted. Namely that there are two completely oposing views as to what the future of SC2 ESPORTS will look like: one says that now everything will be fine, because we jumped in the wagon soon enough and we are going to stay there, the other says that we should enjoy our fun until koreans figure the whole game out and noone will ever be able to breakthrough again. Well, what an interesting discussion!
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On October 27 2011 16:40 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2011 00:31 pyrogenetix wrote:On October 26 2011 10:25 shadowboxer wrote:
BW was a better game than SC2 hands down. The problem is that BW was a lot better for competitive players and not necessarily for building a marketable product. BW was extremely hard, and as such getting into it as a new player was extremely difficult. SC2 is not hard, or at least not in the same way BW was. If you have a desire to become really good at SC2, you can do that as long as you put in the hard work and dedication.
You couldn't do that in BW at all. If you wanted to be a top player you HAD to move to Korea and you had to play 14+ hours a day because the game was pure speed and the ability to combine that speed with good strategy, tactics and unit control. In SC2 the game does almost all of this for you, so players that will never actually be good at the game can still play it at a certain level and feel like they have an understanding of the game and why pros do what they do.
BW is a game competitive gamers appreciate, but SC2 is an e-sport. It's similar to Counter-Strike 1.6 in the sense that for competitive gamers, it was the perfect shooter. Nothing will top it, ever, hands down. 1.6 is not a marketable e-sport though, and something will come along and eventually beat it out in the e-sports market just like SC2 did to BW. I think this is the main misconception people have of BW. What makes BW great is that you never have enough time to do everything. You can either 1) build probes and put them on minerals when they come out, or 2) build more zealots, or 3) micro your dragoons from the zerglings. You don't have time to do all three. Your aim is not to do all three things but to be able to make the ballsy split second decision to build more zealots over making more probes or saving your goons because you realize that that is your top priority at that place and time. That is superior game sense and knowledge, not mechanics. When you get better at playing you may be able to squeeze a second action in, but to try and do everything in BW and play a perfect game is impossible. A lot of BW is about creating havoc for your opponent and forcing him to choose the wrong priority. That's something people again and again do not understand. From the depth of the thread, I would like to pick up this particular response - paradoxically because it seems to be to most important thing to disagree with. When both players reach certain level of mechanics, then yes, this is a very profound concept and it should be agreed with. Both below that level, there is always the possiblity that one player will be able to do more of these actions than the other and then it actaully is about the mechanics and nothing else. And here I thnik the core of the problem is pinpointed, the queston is: am I able to put it in words? The whole BW is balanced around this basic choice of APM alocation. The possibility to balance very powerfull elements, such as consume/dark swarm, storm, mines, but also individual unit micro abilities (kiting, moving shots, deceleration management) is related to the fact that even though you can pull them off to a great effect, you will be loosing on your macro if you give it too much. But this is in stark contrast with the existence of/demand for a simple interface that, most importantly, simplifies the macro. So still it seems to me that the BW's success lies in its mechanical difficulty, because it is only the difficulty that efficiently for this tradeoff between actions (otherwise there always will be players that manage to do everything). There several are people in this thread who said that they would like to just have BW without having to spend two years learning the mechanics. I would love that too! But considering the above arguement, I think that it just can't work, because when the difficulty to pull it off stops being the deciding factor in choosing your gameplay, then all of the sudden, different strategies will become effective and the whole underlying structure of the game will be lost. Sadly, I have not seen many suggestion as to what could actually be done in order to avoid this trap. There are also other interesting things that I think merit being noted. Namely that there are two completely oposing views as to what the future of SC2 ESPORTS will look like: one says that now everything will be fine, because we jumped in the wagon soon enough and we are going to stay there, the other says that we should enjoy our fun until koreans figure the whole game out and noone will ever be able to breakthrough again. Well, what an interesting discussion!
You make a good point, creating distractions was one major point of Saviors play, and it might have a lot to do with the mechanically demanding nature of BW.
Then again, there are logically very high level players on ICCUP (if you compare to SC2 top master-league to C- on ICCUP) with only 100 apm in BW. Hell, even Stork and Savior only hovered just above 200 apm, Stork being the considered one of the four pillars (the four kings lets say) of current BW.
Its the same in SC2, Stephano has BW level mechanics, but he is also a great decision maker, his ability lies in the fusion of both. I think in the end mechanics will matter just as much in both games, because the level of strategy and tactics is also higher in BW meaning it makes a much bigger difference also.
I've repeated many times that mechanics is only one way to get to the top (just like SC2), and its one koreans prefer. If you remember IdrA had much better mechanics than Nony, yet Nony won TSL2.
You are on point about the balance of Spells and Units however, we can say for sure that the balance of BW would be very different if it wasn't as mechanically demanding, for example 12 unit selection may-be what balances wraith and muta micro so you can't have 100 of them 1-shotting nexus's (although not considering the strong AA splash options in BW as well).
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EPT
