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On December 07 2011 09:49 KULA_u wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 06:22 happyness wrote:On December 06 2011 18:18 Velr wrote:
SC2's problem is not it's UI.
It's
1. the crappy unit design (Marauder, Corruptor, Roach, Colossus, Hellion, Banshee... Actually they even "killed" the Hydra).
2. Unitclumping and tons of other stuff with the "movement" of units...
3. Some mechanics (Creep, Mules and Warp-In immediatly come to mind) which just don't seem to be implemented the right way. I agree with most everything here. Except for Creep, which I think is awesome. I like creepspreading but I dislike it a lot that some units cannot be used properly off creep. I think creep should be less focused on speed increase and instead provide some other bonus.
Creep used to increase health regen for zerg units in BW iirc. Perhaps Blizzard could look into that.
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On December 08 2011 06:46 RavenLoud wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 09:49 KULA_u wrote:On December 07 2011 06:22 happyness wrote:On December 06 2011 18:18 Velr wrote:
SC2's problem is not it's UI.
It's
1. the crappy unit design (Marauder, Corruptor, Roach, Colossus, Hellion, Banshee... Actually they even "killed" the Hydra).
2. Unitclumping and tons of other stuff with the "movement" of units...
3. Some mechanics (Creep, Mules and Warp-In immediatly come to mind) which just don't seem to be implemented the right way. I agree with most everything here. Except for Creep, which I think is awesome. I like creepspreading but I dislike it a lot that some units cannot be used properly off creep. I think creep should be less focused on speed increase and instead provide some other bonus. Creep used to increase health regen for zerg units in BW iirc. Perhaps Blizzard could look into that.
Nope. Creep only affected building placement, essentially Zerg pylon power. It had very little strategical value in BW.
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On December 08 2011 06:58 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2011 06:46 RavenLoud wrote:On December 07 2011 09:49 KULA_u wrote:On December 07 2011 06:22 happyness wrote:On December 06 2011 18:18 Velr wrote:
SC2's problem is not it's UI.
It's
1. the crappy unit design (Marauder, Corruptor, Roach, Colossus, Hellion, Banshee... Actually they even "killed" the Hydra).
2. Unitclumping and tons of other stuff with the "movement" of units...
3. Some mechanics (Creep, Mules and Warp-In immediatly come to mind) which just don't seem to be implemented the right way. I agree with most everything here. Except for Creep, which I think is awesome. I like creepspreading but I dislike it a lot that some units cannot be used properly off creep. I think creep should be less focused on speed increase and instead provide some other bonus. Creep used to increase health regen for zerg units in BW iirc. Perhaps Blizzard could look into that. Nope. Creep only affected building placement, essentially Zerg pylon power. It had very little strategical value in BW.
My bad, but health regen would be cool still 
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On December 08 2011 09:31 RavenLoud wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2011 06:58 SarcasmMonster wrote:On December 08 2011 06:46 RavenLoud wrote:On December 07 2011 09:49 KULA_u wrote:On December 07 2011 06:22 happyness wrote:On December 06 2011 18:18 Velr wrote:
SC2's problem is not it's UI.
It's
1. the crappy unit design (Marauder, Corruptor, Roach, Colossus, Hellion, Banshee... Actually they even "killed" the Hydra).
2. Unitclumping and tons of other stuff with the "movement" of units...
3. Some mechanics (Creep, Mules and Warp-In immediatly come to mind) which just don't seem to be implemented the right way. I agree with most everything here. Except for Creep, which I think is awesome. I like creepspreading but I dislike it a lot that some units cannot be used properly off creep. I think creep should be less focused on speed increase and instead provide some other bonus. Creep used to increase health regen for zerg units in BW iirc. Perhaps Blizzard could look into that. Nope. Creep only affected building placement, essentially Zerg pylon power. It had very little strategical value in BW. My bad, but health regen would be cool still
And really OP ^^
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Blizzard needs to make the game less easy... All the new units presented make the game easy mode to play instead of hard. When blizzard released its BW expansion they included lurker, medics, corsair, and just stuff that was hard to use but really awesome. Blizzard needs to figure out a way to fix their custom games. Most of the average players play on custom games don't even touch ladder. So if they implemented a similar hosting system to what BW had and bam new fun custom games for everyone...
Then they can design ladder for pros and competition and have really crazy tricky units to play around and take skill to use... But I doubt any of this will ever happen.
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Honestly don't see any reason to whine or complain about these things. And I used to be the one leading the charge when it came to riling people up against Blizzard. It's impossible to draw conclusions about how HotS will turn out at this point. What's more: people's expectations of how HotS is supposed to somehow "save" SC2 are unrealistic.
I could easily spend an entire day writing about why it is that a game of SC2 plays out differently than a game of BW. But I honestly don't think it's fun, useful or productive participating in these discussions anymore. Here's my theory about what make up the fundemental differences between SC2/BW:
The difference in worker saturation mechanics has a significant impact in the way SC2 needs to be balanced when compared to BW. As you know I spent a couple weeks of my life exploring this concept and writing a thread about it. I thought the ramifications of the so called "3 base ceiling" concept I introduced would be much more devastating than it actually turned out to be. It turned out SC2 still produces epic games, and talented players like Stephano still manage to outmacro their opponents in impressive fashions by relentlessly keeping up the pressure and constantly army trading. But there is clearly a much finer balance there in SC2 than in BW. Whenever the pressure lets up and the games so to say "stabilize" are usually the points when the games stop appearing dynamic to viewers. They then enter the predictable deathball formula, and viewers subsequently start to whine in the manner people have been in this thread.
In my view SC2 is partly predisposed to this because of how worker saturation works. Mining rates even out and hit their theoretical and practical ceilings much faster in SC2. As such the game, by necessity, needs to be balanced in a way where imbalanced ("fun spellcasters") units no longer can have a place in it. A unit that may have functioned well in BW, like the defiler, would be impossible to implement in SC2. In SC2, because of the way mining rates equalize and because of the faster tempo of games due to macro mechanics, the races and their respective units need to be balanced in a way where they perform roughly equal. As such insane unit concepts like the defiler can't exist.
If you think back to BW, you might suddenly realize just how low econ zerg used to be in ZvT. With this I particularly mean really light on minerals. The relentless terran pressure would hardly allow for any drones, and zerg had to rely on a gas heavy, tech based, cost efficient style of play with lurkers, stacked muta micro and last minute defiler defenses. In general though, zerg were expected to be 20-50 supply behind Terran in ZvT. Sometimes even more without anyone raising an eyebrow.
When Blizzard set out to design the zerg race for SC2, they sort of misinterpreted what the "swarminess" concept entailed and instead ended up designing the zerg into what they are today. From being the race with the lowest emphasis on mineral collection in the early and midgames of a match, to being the one with the highest. From a required careful and constant larva management, to basically unlimited amount or larva. From having some of the most cost efficient tech and spellcasters, to being the wasteful race with room for throwing away cheap useless ("blizzard definition swarmy") units.
Zerg in SC2 is basically how Protoss used to be played in PvT in BW. Mostly because (my own personal view) Blizzard totally misunderstood how zerg worked in BW. They attached the term "swarmy" to how zerg should feel, and then they designed a race from those specifications as best as they could. In reality what they ended up doing was making the three races even more similar than they were previously.
Of course, improved AI, macro mechanics and other factors play a large role as well. I'd like to some day sum up my accumulated thoughts on why SC2 plays out the way it does and why we won't be able to do much about it, along with why it totally won't be a huge problem for the future of the game. But I promised not to let myself get sucked into one of these threads again. This was written as a long uninterrupted train of thought, and as such went into a zerg tangent. Not meant to be interpreted as whine, but rather as examples. Zerg is obviously the race I know best (though I played Protoss in BW).
Balance arguments need lots of structuring and thought, lest it'll all come out like incoherent shit. That's the other reason I don't like engaging in these discussions. Takes lots of time to be pleased with what you've written and what you're trying to argue. Mostly ends up with you trying to argue too many points at once, without getting anything at all across. Like TT1's thread about HotS.
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On December 08 2011 11:01 LaLuSh wrote:
Honestly don't see any reason to whine or complain about these things. And I used to be the one leading the charge when it came to riling people up against Blizzard. It's impossible to draw conclusions about how HotS will turn out at this point. What's more: people's expectations of how HotS is supposed to somehow "save" SC2 are unrealistic.
I think this pretty much ends the thread. There is no point in theorizing what HotS will be and what SC2 could have been. I'm personally going to put little thought into what HotS will be. Blizzard can worry about that. I for one will enjoy SC2 for what it is. If you like BW better, go enjoy BW.
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I also meant to talk about warp gate mechanic and its influence. Then also about how the worker saturation mechanics influence battles toward being shorter, because there is less room for "wasteful" attacking in SC2 when mining rates have equalized. The defining factor of a game then becomes battle micro and to some extent your ability to mine slightly more gas and tech to a slightly more useful unit composition without sacrificing too much in the way of minerals.
A large part of the prolonged battle dynamics of BW were IMO a result of
- A clear defender's advantage
- More imbalanced tech units
- Larger differences in mining rates based on the number of expansions/bases
- No macro mechanics
Of course the better AI plays a huge role as well. Though to me the constricting effect of the mining rate equalization is undeniable. It hampers the fluidity and the sort of dynamics the viewers deem exciting in games.
Although I have to end this post by saying that from watching the players who currently are the best of the best, I think they're doing a pretty damn good job of keeping it fluid and dynamic. The absolute best seem to realize how SC2 needs to be played. It requires a shitton of multitasking and that's why most of us are still stuck here whining, but it seems possible from what I've seen the last seasons in GSL and from Stephano.
A bit more volatile than BW sure, but still damn entertaining when the absolute best players duke it out.
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On December 07 2011 04:27 Brotocol wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 04:23 Bagi wrote:On December 07 2011 04:04 gayfius173 wrote:
Like I don't even know how people can even argue that theres not a fundamental design problem when the lead developer is not trying to make the same game lol. This is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on this forum, ever. Of course they are not making the same game over again, are you kidding? The game still has many qualities that make it "Starcraft", but that doesn't mean they are responsible to mimic the design of BW to every last detail. Here's an idea: go back to BW. It's the same game that you can keep playing forever. I don't think he means that he wants BW remade. I think he means that the design team is trying too hard to not be like BW, and we've ended up in C&C territory in terms of design, rather than a true sequel to BW which builds upon it. Instead, there have been several backwards steps.
My cousin is a C&C player. (I was up until RA2 came with it's tesla coil mutant obsession and that turned me off). Tried to show him Starcraft was superior. He said it was way too different. Holding your mindset, I tried sc2. He said its basically the same thing with blocky-er graphics and now some streamlining of gameplay- too different. I was shocked, but unbiased test is unbiased test... I still wish he had visited in 2000 so I could have shown him an amazing game. I think blizz is about as close to where they want to be as they can be in today's corporate structure. I don't think C&C has much to do with it.
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On December 07 2011 03:16 TT1 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 03:07 anastacia wrote:
i lol'd at clouds answer. funny how he thinks that anyone can be really good, yet he isn't himself. i lol'd at your answer. funny how you think he isnt good, yet he is..
Never said he was bad, heck he would beat me anytime. I said really good. That's relative as to who you are comparing him to, and I was comparing him to top pro gamers. He is certainly not really good in that way.
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On December 07 2011 05:43 gayfius173 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 05:21 Bagi wrote:On December 07 2011 05:05 gayfius173 wrote:
Put on your reading glasses buddy and read the entirety of that paragraph, not just the part you selectively picked out of context to throw your opinion around. Doesn't change a thing, you complain when SC2 doesn't follow your arbitrary definition of "Starcraft design". The game is still very, very much Starcraft, and your whines about smartcasting and MBS make me believe your definition of "Starcraft" is something every sane developer would avoid (for good reasons). Just cut the bullshit and go back to playing BW, its obvious you will never be satisfied with this game. Your posts are very very relevant and useful to the discussion. /end sarcasm. Go play some broodwar. Go play some command and conquer. Then play starcraft 2. If you've any minor amount of brain activity going on you'll quickly find out that sc2 plays more like command and conquer than it does BW. That is a problem.
Which game in the C&C installment?
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On December 08 2011 11:01 LaLuSh wrote:
Honestly don't see any reason to whine or complain about these things. And I used to be the one leading the charge when it came to riling people up against Blizzard. It's impossible to draw conclusions about how HotS will turn out at this point. What's more: people's expectations of how HotS is supposed to somehow "save" SC2 are unrealistic.
I could easily spend an entire day writing about why it is that a game of SC2 plays out differently than a game of BW. But I honestly don't think it's fun, useful or productive participating in these discussions anymore. Here's my theory about what make up the fundemental differences between SC2/BW:
The difference in worker saturation mechanics has a significant impact in the way SC2 needs to be balanced when compared to BW. As you know I spent a couple weeks of my life exploring this concept and writing a thread about it. I thought the ramifications of the so called "3 base ceiling" concept I introduced would be much more devastating than it actually turned out to be. It turned out SC2 still produces epic games, and talented players like Stephano still manage to outmacro their opponents in impressive fashions by relentlessly keeping up the pressure and constantly army trading. But there is clearly a much finer balance there in SC2 than in BW. Whenever the pressure lets up and the games so to say "stabilize" are usually the points when the games stop appearing dynamic to viewers. They then enter the predictable deathball formula, and viewers subsequently start to whine in the manner people have been in this thread.
In my view SC2 is partly predisposed to this because of how worker saturation works. Mining rates even out and hit their theoretical and practical ceilings much faster in SC2. As such the game, by necessity, needs to be balanced in a way where imbalanced ("fun spellcasters") units no longer can have a place in it. A unit that may have functioned well in BW, like the defiler, would be impossible to implement in SC2. In SC2, because of the way mining rates equalize and because of the faster tempo of games due to macro mechanics, the races and their respective units need to be balanced in a way where they perform roughly equal. As such insane unit concepts like the defiler can't exist.
If you think back to BW, you might suddenly realize just how low econ zerg used to be in ZvT. With this I particularly mean really light on minerals. The relentless terran pressure would hardly allow for any drones, and zerg had to rely on a gas heavy, tech based, cost efficient style of play with lurkers, stacked muta micro and last minute defiler defenses. In general though, zerg were expected to be 20-50 supply behind Terran in ZvT. Sometimes even more without anyone raising an eyebrow.
When Blizzard set out to design the zerg race for SC2, they sort of misinterpreted what the "swarminess" concept entailed and instead ended up designing the zerg into what they are today. From being the race with the lowest emphasis on mineral collection in the early and midgames of a match, to being the one with the highest. From a required careful and constant larva management, to basically unlimited amount or larva. From having some of the most cost efficient tech and spellcasters, to being the wasteful race with room for throwing away cheap useless ("blizzard definition swarmy") units.
Zerg in SC2 is basically how Protoss used to be played in PvT in BW. Mostly because (my own personal view) Blizzard totally misunderstood how zerg worked in BW. They attached the term "swarmy" to how zerg should feel, and then they designed a race from those specifications as best as they could. In reality what they ended up doing was making the three races even more similar than they were previously.
Of course, improved AI, macro mechanics and other factors play a large role as well. I'd like to some day sum up my accumulated thoughts on why SC2 plays out the way it does and why we won't be able to do much about it, along with why it totally won't be a huge problem for the future of the game. But I promised not to let myself get sucked into one of these threads again. This was written as a long uninterrupted train of thought, and as such went into a zerg tangent. Not meant to be interpreted as whine, but rather as examples. Zerg is obviously the race I know best (though I played Protoss in BW).
Balance arguments need lots of structuring and thought, lest it'll all come out like incoherent shit. That's the other reason I don't like engaging in these discussions. Takes lots of time to be pleased with what you've written and what you're trying to argue. Mostly ends up with you trying to argue too many points at once, without getting anything at all across. Like TT1's thread about HotS.
Can I second the notion? Providing of course you have time to put it together - something organized would make front page for sure 
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On December 08 2011 06:46 RavenLoud wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 09:49 KULA_u wrote:On December 07 2011 06:22 happyness wrote:On December 06 2011 18:18 Velr wrote:
SC2's problem is not it's UI.
It's
1. the crappy unit design (Marauder, Corruptor, Roach, Colossus, Hellion, Banshee... Actually they even "killed" the Hydra).
2. Unitclumping and tons of other stuff with the "movement" of units...
3. Some mechanics (Creep, Mules and Warp-In immediatly come to mind) which just don't seem to be implemented the right way. I agree with most everything here. Except for Creep, which I think is awesome. I like creepspreading but I dislike it a lot that some units cannot be used properly off creep. I think creep should be less focused on speed increase and instead provide some other bonus. Creep used to increase health regen for zerg units in BW iirc. Perhaps Blizzard could look into that.
You're thinking of the Undead's Blight in WC3.
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I like inControls comments. Balancing the game might take awhile and for a newbie like me, I'm okay with taking on new units. It will give me a better chance to be good at the game. I am sure that I won't be using some of the units a whole lot since newbies tend to not try out bigger unit builds like battlecruisers, but I will be more comfortable knowing that everyone is trying to learn these units as well as me. We are all learning these units and will be pretty much all starting at square 1. At the silver level, I don't have to worry as much on the balancing of races since nobody is really doing any crazy strategies. But I feel that the pros will have a little bit of a hard time with balance because if they have a weak race, they might loose a lot more matches which might hurt their career. It really can go either way.
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Wow, lol. I have faith in Blizzard. Everyone thought SC2 would be a huge complete failure, but look how it turned out. I don't think we have anything to worry about, as patches will ensure balance and stability. There are some aspects that can be abused, yes. Zerg might become a tad underpowered in heart of the swarm because of the removal of the overseer. I have no idea how people will be able to scout without the overseer. The sacrificed overlord doesn't always see what needs to be seen. This is potentially game breaking, since Zerg is a reactionary race.
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Why is cloud so sad, he's soo good, the game isn't as random as he makes it sound..
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On December 08 2011 06:46 RavenLoud wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 09:49 KULA_u wrote:On December 07 2011 06:22 happyness wrote:On December 06 2011 18:18 Velr wrote:
SC2's problem is not it's UI.
It's
1. the crappy unit design (Marauder, Corruptor, Roach, Colossus, Hellion, Banshee... Actually they even "killed" the Hydra).
2. Unitclumping and tons of other stuff with the "movement" of units...
3. Some mechanics (Creep, Mules and Warp-In immediatly come to mind) which just don't seem to be implemented the right way. I agree with most everything here. Except for Creep, which I think is awesome. I like creepspreading but I dislike it a lot that some units cannot be used properly off creep. I think creep should be less focused on speed increase and instead provide some other bonus. Creep used to increase health regen for zerg units in BW iirc. Perhaps Blizzard could look into that.
you're getting it mixed up with blight (undead creep basically) in warcraft 3
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The issues of zerg's "SWARM" mechanic, is the fact that they imply zerg units are weaker, they are, but the supply cap is the same. It's hard to balance a game where you have warm vs power-roll conflict if the maximum unit cap is the same(also, 200 supply is incredibly easy to reach and not very scary, and quite often completely punishes zerg macro mechanics of mass droning to overrun since you have to strictly balance your drones to not go over 100 so you can compete with the 3-base protoss's maxed army with about 30% less workers.) So how zerg usually ends up is they get 3x as many bases and protoss quickly kill the "swarmish" useless army and the build times are too long and zerg ends up being cut off from their other bases creating this situation where it is virtually impossible to be able to come close to engaging the colossi-hungry protoss. Especially on maps like tal darim where its really complicated and easy to cut reinforcements off.
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On January 06 2012 11:35 Lebzetu wrote:
Wow, lol. I have faith in Blizzard. Everyone thought SC2 would be a huge complete failure, but look how it turned out.
I thought everyone thought SC2 would be a good sequel to BW, I for one did.
Turned out that SC2 for me is a huge complete failure, I regret to have spent US$60 on it. I have infinitely much more fun playing BW, and thats what I have been doing. Keeping on eye on SC2 to see if some day I will ever touch it again, so far doesnt look like anytime soon...
And I agree with LaLush, they took the wrong decisions even though they were trying to get it right.
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EPT
