BW Teams playing Starcraft 2 - Page 82

On October 29 2011 11:10 ScoutingDrone wrote:
BW is the equivalent of wheelchair basketball, and SC2 is the equivalent of normal basketball.

BW mechanics that makes it "harder" are nothing but unnecessary handicaps placed on players to make it "harder".

A few examples are:
limited to 12 units per control group (unnecessary)
no rally point for workers to minerals (unnecessary)
cannot put multiple buildings in one control group (unnecessary)

As you can see, what makes BW "harder" are mostly caused by unnecessary handicaps, just like how wheelchair basketball is "harder" because you're handicapped and can't use your legs, but this doesn't make wheelchair basketball "better" than normal basketball.

On October 29 2011 11:25 ScoutingDrone wrote:


Right, because having limited units per control group, no rally for workers, and no multiple buildings in one control group makes BW create more tension and drama right?

On October 29 2011 12:15 DEN1ED wrote:


But why is being able to rally your worker to mineral patches NECESSARY? You can do it yourself.

On October 29 2011 12:31 infinity2k9 wrote:


Yes actually.. i don't know why it's so hard to understand. Put MBS and everything else into BW, it would not have strategically evolved to this day. It makes the moments when people manage to pull off perfect spellcasting or army control more special, you don't see it every game. The mechanical difficultly directly led to it's success as an eSport. If people could play at a Flash level, say in 2001, then there would not have been the last 10 years of games. And 2001 is already 2 years after BW's release, so it wouldn't be a stretch to say it might have been possible for it to happen with MBS/automining/smartcasting etc.

On October 29 2011 12:15 DEN1ED wrote:


But why is being able to rally your worker to mineral patches NECESSARY? You can do it yourself.

On October 29 2011 12:33 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:

I'm sure if Blizzard had the idea and/or technology back then to automatically rally workers to the mineral patches and start mining, they would have. Seeing as they've done it in SC2, I don't see why they'd remove it in the future.

On October 29 2011 12:38 ScoutingDrone wrote:


If your logic is:

harder -> more special when something good happens

then you must enjoy watching wheelchair basketball more than normal basketball because:

wheelchair basketball -> harder to score -> more special when they do score -> wheelchair basketball better than normal basketball.

On October 29 2011 12:42 Talin wrote:


You shouldn't be so sure about things.

There were absolutely no technological or engine barriers to implementing this. As long as rally points are implemented, not only is it straightforward to have workers automine, but I can't imagine a program structure in which it would take more than a few harmless lines of code that wouldn't affect performance in the slightest.

As for the idea, it's actually very intuitive so I doubt it never crossed anyone's mind. Besides, there were a few RTS games back in the time that had automatic gathering of resources (though not in the SC2 sense, more like in make a building and it gives you stuff over time sense), they could have gotten the idea from a number of places.

It was just a design decision. Starcraft 1 was a classic RTS in every sense of the word - you order units, units finish building/training, and then you command units and tell them what you want them to do. It's actually a very clean and simple solution.

On October 29 2011 12:38 ScoutingDrone wrote:


If your logic is:

harder -> more special when something good happens

then you must enjoy watching wheelchair basketball more than normal basketball because:

wheelchair basketball -> harder to score -> more special when they do score -> wheelchair basketball better than normal basketball.

On October 29 2011 12:38 ScoutingDrone wrote:


If your logic is:

harder -> more special when something good happens

then you must enjoy watching wheelchair basketball more than normal basketball because:

wheelchair basketball -> harder to score -> more special when they do score -> wheelchair basketball better than normal basketball.

On October 29 2011 11:55 awesomoecalypse wrote:


the real difference is that there's no choice involved in a lot of BW macro actions, and barely any with Queen injects--something is indisputably good, in an ideal world players would always do it, and the only question is whether they can successfully do it. For example, having workers be idle in BW is basically always bad. Using all your workers therefore isn't really a choice, its just something everyone should try to do all the time. Queen injects are basically like this--yes, in the early game there are some decisions about when to spawn tumors, and occasionally you'll use inject energy on a transfuse for defense, but 95% of the time injecting isn't a choice, its just something that should be done all the time. Its a way to differentiate "skill" of a certain kind, but it certainly isn't interesting.

Whereas blink obviously carries almost unlimited choice. It can be used offensively, defensively, for harassment. When/where you use it makes a huge difference--blinking out of harm's way could save that Stalker, but maybe you need its dps to bring down a key unit, so there's a tension, an actual choice to make.

Starcraft at its best is IMO, about making millions of choices big and small and at an incredibly fast pace. Do you build a Stalker or a Sentry? Do you go fast lair or stay on hatch tech for a while? Do you move that harass unit right towards the mineral line, or do you try to loop around from another angle? Do you press your advantage or retreat? Do you move that stimmed marine to the right, or to the left? Each choice has consequences, and the player who makes the most choices and makes them right should win.

I'm not saying that mechanics shouldn't play a part--they clearly should play a big part. I'd just prefer mechanics to be about making actual decisions at a nearly superhumanly fast pace, rather than just performing repitive/binary actions that have a clearly correct course of action in all cases.

On October 29 2011 12:44 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:

And yet they didn't implement it, and it's not to make the 'game harder for esports' because there was no motivation or foreknowledge at all to make SC1 a professional esport when they were developing it, but simply a design choice. They realized it was a bad choice, and fixed it in SC2. If it wasn't a bad idea, they wouldn't have allowed automining after worker creation in SC2.

On October 29 2011 12:44 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:

And yet they didn't implement it, and it's not to make the 'game harder for esports' because there was no motivation or foreknowledge at all to make SC1 a professional esport when they were developing it, but simply a design choice. They realized it was a bad choice, and fixed it in SC2. If it wasn't a bad idea, they wouldn't have allowed automining after worker creation in SC2.