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On January 09 2012 10:52 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2012 03:24 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 19:06 ixi.genocide wrote:On January 07 2012 18:45 Humanfails wrote:On January 06 2012 13:56 Thugtronik wrote:On January 06 2012 12:06 0neder wrote:On December 08 2011 11:17 happyness wrote: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. It is a great point, but I don't think it ends the thread. We have every reason to suspect that SC2 will become a good, but not great e-Sport game. The HotS demo and repeated interviews have indicated many things: - The Blizzard design team may have accepted the Colossus as a unit that must remain in the game, in spite of community consensus that it is very boring and creating a mediocre unit dynamic that is holding the spot of what could be a better one. This is evident in that all the new units they proposed for protoss revolved around them having a single concentrated death ball of units including the colossus so there is little split action or excitement a la Hero (luckily Hero understands showmanship and is an explorative player). - Blizzard may be incapable of fundamental changes that could improve the game for spectating and excitement, such as unit spacing to make armies feel bigger, and moving shot micro that may not be possible given the game engine and the programming team's shortcomings (Phoenix moving shot, gross oversights in attack ranges, etc). - The design team is dead-set on preserving certain game dynamics even though it arguably negatively effects other game dynamics to a greater amount. EG Jinro and many in the community want to see more terran mech, but the insistence on strong bio for the sake of Bio being viable in TvT mean that bio is the strongest choice in all TvX matchups and the strongest choice for any player picking up SC2 looking to be the best in the world and win big money. You can't tell me it's impossible for a non-meching Terran to beat factory units given the strength of ghosts and Terran air. The new TvT could very well be Air Mech vs Ground Mech if bio were nerfed. That MVP Top game was pretty damn exciting to me, with ghosts and nothing but mech in the sky and air... - The suggestion that it's unrealistic for us to expect an expansion to 'save SC2' implies it's already failed on some level to live up to it's predecessor. - The Macro mechanics' effect on the game may be negative for SC2 in the long-term for achieving the chaos of contemporary macro BW excitement, but we have no indication that these will ever change. - Blizzard's omission or removal of high-level micro (EG instead of a buff, the Carrier is scrapped for a slow strong AoE air unit with unexciting micro/speed potential) - only one example... it's been said far too many times but i'll say it again. SC2 =/= BW also similar to policy making. There was a vide ofloating around that was anti-SOPA by some proponent of net neutrality who actually went on about policy makers in washington and comparing it to the war on drugs. They 1; cant admit it was a failure, and 2; cant admit all their policies were bad implementations, so they just keep trying to add on more and modify existing ones so it fixed the problem, with the end result being a bloated load of policies that may have some impact but bring more negative than positive solution to the problem. This is the same with dustijn browder, his ego, and blizzard/activision's control over blizz. Seriously, people can create their own units and their own mechanics with sc2 maps, they made brood war 2.0. There's nothing stopping the community from making a better game, and voting it better than the current blizz dev team's compilation, and thus proving that they are making an inherently flawed game by working more with the ego of not being wrong than with the ego of wanting to actually correct their mistakes. Such egos are status quo for celebrity figures and policy makers, which the head guys over at ActiBlizz are. I find that to be an interesting take on sc2 development. Because the map editor is so good in sc2 we can create and showcase the game we think is appropriate and point out the flaws in the shipped game. While I have considered this before, you just pointed out something that should be obvious, we don't have to build the game in the editor to come to the conclusion that blizzard is not doing this game justice. While you can take both bw and sc2 at face value and make an appropriate judgement, with the addition of using the map editor we get something almost tangible instead of a feeling. While this is probably not going to matter ever, The simple fact that we can make a better game with less tools using the in game map editor and have it voted by popular consensus (probably) and rated higher in competitive merit means that you can't argue that blizzard is doing the best job they can do. I hope that blizzard rearranges some of the units from WoL in HotS. I would really like to see the hydra at the roach spot and the roach either moved to tier 2 and changed appropriately or removed. Obviously the hydra would have to be tweaked to not be op but still. There are other units that could probably benefit from this change like the observer just requiring 1 of the 3 tech paths, not robo in particular or removing the reaper speed requiring factory etc. There is so far no evidence that the community can make a better SC2 than Blizzard. Someone suggested DotA was an example of this, but that is entirely subjective since DoTa and standard WC3:TFT are completely different games, it would be suggesting Nexus Wars is better than SC2 multiplayer. Fact: Blizzard has far more tools than the community. Blizzard originally aimed for 1 expansion a year, but due to their quality assurance is likely only going to release HotS once they are reasonably satisfied it actually improves the gameplay (HotS may not do everything YOU want it to do, but you can reasonably expect it to improve SC2 multiplayer once post-patching has fixed major issues). If someone thinks they can redesign SC2 better than Blizzard I would love to see their efforts. Who knows, maybe someone can make a better HotS than Blizzard but I certainly do not expect it to happen. Are you talking about the same Blizzard that helped to design 5rax reaper?
How's that strategy working out these days? Might want to read what the guy you quoted said:
(HotS may not do everything YOU want it to do, but you can reasonably expect it to improve SC2 multiplayer once post-patching has fixed major issues)
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On January 09 2012 03:24 Tor wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 19:06 ixi.genocide wrote:On January 07 2012 18:45 Humanfails wrote:On January 06 2012 13:56 Thugtronik wrote:On January 06 2012 12:06 0neder wrote:On December 08 2011 11:17 happyness wrote: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. It is a great point, but I don't think it ends the thread. We have every reason to suspect that SC2 will become a good, but not great e-Sport game. The HotS demo and repeated interviews have indicated many things: - The Blizzard design team may have accepted the Colossus as a unit that must remain in the game, in spite of community consensus that it is very boring and creating a mediocre unit dynamic that is holding the spot of what could be a better one. This is evident in that all the new units they proposed for protoss revolved around them having a single concentrated death ball of units including the colossus so there is little split action or excitement a la Hero (luckily Hero understands showmanship and is an explorative player). - Blizzard may be incapable of fundamental changes that could improve the game for spectating and excitement, such as unit spacing to make armies feel bigger, and moving shot micro that may not be possible given the game engine and the programming team's shortcomings (Phoenix moving shot, gross oversights in attack ranges, etc). - The design team is dead-set on preserving certain game dynamics even though it arguably negatively effects other game dynamics to a greater amount. EG Jinro and many in the community want to see more terran mech, but the insistence on strong bio for the sake of Bio being viable in TvT mean that bio is the strongest choice in all TvX matchups and the strongest choice for any player picking up SC2 looking to be the best in the world and win big money. You can't tell me it's impossible for a non-meching Terran to beat factory units given the strength of ghosts and Terran air. The new TvT could very well be Air Mech vs Ground Mech if bio were nerfed. That MVP Top game was pretty damn exciting to me, with ghosts and nothing but mech in the sky and air... - The suggestion that it's unrealistic for us to expect an expansion to 'save SC2' implies it's already failed on some level to live up to it's predecessor. - The Macro mechanics' effect on the game may be negative for SC2 in the long-term for achieving the chaos of contemporary macro BW excitement, but we have no indication that these will ever change. - Blizzard's omission or removal of high-level micro (EG instead of a buff, the Carrier is scrapped for a slow strong AoE air unit with unexciting micro/speed potential) - only one example... it's been said far too many times but i'll say it again. SC2 =/= BW also similar to policy making. There was a vide ofloating around that was anti-SOPA by some proponent of net neutrality who actually went on about policy makers in washington and comparing it to the war on drugs. They 1; cant admit it was a failure, and 2; cant admit all their policies were bad implementations, so they just keep trying to add on more and modify existing ones so it fixed the problem, with the end result being a bloated load of policies that may have some impact but bring more negative than positive solution to the problem. This is the same with dustijn browder, his ego, and blizzard/activision's control over blizz. Seriously, people can create their own units and their own mechanics with sc2 maps, they made brood war 2.0. There's nothing stopping the community from making a better game, and voting it better than the current blizz dev team's compilation, and thus proving that they are making an inherently flawed game by working more with the ego of not being wrong than with the ego of wanting to actually correct their mistakes. Such egos are status quo for celebrity figures and policy makers, which the head guys over at ActiBlizz are. I find that to be an interesting take on sc2 development. Because the map editor is so good in sc2 we can create and showcase the game we think is appropriate and point out the flaws in the shipped game. While I have considered this before, you just pointed out something that should be obvious, we don't have to build the game in the editor to come to the conclusion that blizzard is not doing this game justice. While you can take both bw and sc2 at face value and make an appropriate judgement, with the addition of using the map editor we get something almost tangible instead of a feeling. While this is probably not going to matter ever, The simple fact that we can make a better game with less tools using the in game map editor and have it voted by popular consensus (probably) and rated higher in competitive merit means that you can't argue that blizzard is doing the best job they can do. I hope that blizzard rearranges some of the units from WoL in HotS. I would really like to see the hydra at the roach spot and the roach either moved to tier 2 and changed appropriately or removed. Obviously the hydra would have to be tweaked to not be op but still. There are other units that could probably benefit from this change like the observer just requiring 1 of the 3 tech paths, not robo in particular or removing the reaper speed requiring factory etc. There is so far no evidence that the community can make a better SC2 than Blizzard. Someone suggested DotA was an example of this, but that is entirely subjective since DoTa and standard WC3:TFT are completely different games, it would be suggesting Nexus Wars is better than SC2 multiplayer. Fact: Blizzard has far more tools than the community. Blizzard originally aimed for 1 expansion a year, but due to their quality assurance is likely only going to release HotS once they are reasonably satisfied it actually improves the gameplay (HotS may not do everything YOU want it to do, but you can reasonably expect it to improve SC2 multiplayer once post-patching has fixed major issues). If someone thinks they can redesign SC2 better than Blizzard I would love to see their efforts. Who knows, maybe someone can make a better HotS than Blizzard but I certainly do not expect it to happen.
There is a huge hole in your logic (much like the design of SC2). Why would talented designers and great minds waste their time on a game no one would play? It doesn't matter if you can theoretically make a better game or not. You need a large pool of players to properly balance a game. Balance isn't everything though, if the units aren't organic in their roles and are simply assigned as 'hard-counters' the game becomes very coin-flippy and teeter-totter style game play instead of a graceful duel. There is always more than one direction you can balance something.
Don't get me wrong, SC2 is a good game, but there are some huge holes in the design that are impeding it from becoming a very good game.
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"Rock-paper-scissors is a pretty balanced game but it still sucks competitively."
For me it seems like people are too worried about balance. We should be worried about luck and randomness in general and try to increase the skillcap as much as possible without moving back to stone-age AI.
Thats some pretty words, but how exactly can we remove luck and increase skillcap?
-First of all we should have clear defenders edge, which we have to some extent with ramps and chokes, but ramps/cliffs could give additional advengate for those who are above, something like +armor or whatnot. Additionally warpgates are breaking defenders edge too quickly, giving protoss strong allins, in order to balance this earlygate units have to suck.
-Reliable scouting. We do have strong scouters such as observer, overseer and scan but its not good enough because scans can miss the tech buildings, observers/overseers come out way too late. To fix this we could have overlord speed upgrade on tier1 and hallucination could to be viable but currently it cant be researched because warpgate is necessary. Terrans allready have pretty viable scouting methods even if scan misses (reaper, flying buildings)
-Melee micro. Microing something like zealots vs zerglings is doable, especially in the early game, but microing zealots against marines and other rangers is basically clicking A-button and checking you have the speed upgrade done. I have no clue how to include more meleemicro when the autosurround system exists.
-Positional units, im sure everyone who has played sc1 knows how interesting and challenging using defilers, lurkers and tanks can be. On sc2 its just terrans with their tanks frogleapping forward, takes lots of babysitting and is very cool, but other races should feel the love aswell, luckily we are getting replicators and swarmhosts.
Just read the topic and its all about pros opinions. This post has little to none to do with that but im going to post it anyway  . Anyways i think cloud is right and people dissing clouds opinions just because he isnt #1 in the world is ridiculous.
For me it feels like people think "cloud is just a crybaby who's saying all his losses come due to lucky enemies not him being shit". Meanwhile i feel like he is saying "Hell, i have won some games just because opponent did the wrong build, whats the point in that?"
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On January 09 2012 13:27 acrimoneyius wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2012 03:24 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 19:06 ixi.genocide wrote:On January 07 2012 18:45 Humanfails wrote:On January 06 2012 13:56 Thugtronik wrote:On January 06 2012 12:06 0neder wrote:On December 08 2011 11:17 happyness wrote: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. It is a great point, but I don't think it ends the thread. We have every reason to suspect that SC2 will become a good, but not great e-Sport game. The HotS demo and repeated interviews have indicated many things: - The Blizzard design team may have accepted the Colossus as a unit that must remain in the game, in spite of community consensus that it is very boring and creating a mediocre unit dynamic that is holding the spot of what could be a better one. This is evident in that all the new units they proposed for protoss revolved around them having a single concentrated death ball of units including the colossus so there is little split action or excitement a la Hero (luckily Hero understands showmanship and is an explorative player). - Blizzard may be incapable of fundamental changes that could improve the game for spectating and excitement, such as unit spacing to make armies feel bigger, and moving shot micro that may not be possible given the game engine and the programming team's shortcomings (Phoenix moving shot, gross oversights in attack ranges, etc). - The design team is dead-set on preserving certain game dynamics even though it arguably negatively effects other game dynamics to a greater amount. EG Jinro and many in the community want to see more terran mech, but the insistence on strong bio for the sake of Bio being viable in TvT mean that bio is the strongest choice in all TvX matchups and the strongest choice for any player picking up SC2 looking to be the best in the world and win big money. You can't tell me it's impossible for a non-meching Terran to beat factory units given the strength of ghosts and Terran air. The new TvT could very well be Air Mech vs Ground Mech if bio were nerfed. That MVP Top game was pretty damn exciting to me, with ghosts and nothing but mech in the sky and air... - The suggestion that it's unrealistic for us to expect an expansion to 'save SC2' implies it's already failed on some level to live up to it's predecessor. - The Macro mechanics' effect on the game may be negative for SC2 in the long-term for achieving the chaos of contemporary macro BW excitement, but we have no indication that these will ever change. - Blizzard's omission or removal of high-level micro (EG instead of a buff, the Carrier is scrapped for a slow strong AoE air unit with unexciting micro/speed potential) - only one example... it's been said far too many times but i'll say it again. SC2 =/= BW also similar to policy making. There was a vide ofloating around that was anti-SOPA by some proponent of net neutrality who actually went on about policy makers in washington and comparing it to the war on drugs. They 1; cant admit it was a failure, and 2; cant admit all their policies were bad implementations, so they just keep trying to add on more and modify existing ones so it fixed the problem, with the end result being a bloated load of policies that may have some impact but bring more negative than positive solution to the problem. This is the same with dustijn browder, his ego, and blizzard/activision's control over blizz. Seriously, people can create their own units and their own mechanics with sc2 maps, they made brood war 2.0. There's nothing stopping the community from making a better game, and voting it better than the current blizz dev team's compilation, and thus proving that they are making an inherently flawed game by working more with the ego of not being wrong than with the ego of wanting to actually correct their mistakes. Such egos are status quo for celebrity figures and policy makers, which the head guys over at ActiBlizz are. I find that to be an interesting take on sc2 development. Because the map editor is so good in sc2 we can create and showcase the game we think is appropriate and point out the flaws in the shipped game. While I have considered this before, you just pointed out something that should be obvious, we don't have to build the game in the editor to come to the conclusion that blizzard is not doing this game justice. While you can take both bw and sc2 at face value and make an appropriate judgement, with the addition of using the map editor we get something almost tangible instead of a feeling. While this is probably not going to matter ever, The simple fact that we can make a better game with less tools using the in game map editor and have it voted by popular consensus (probably) and rated higher in competitive merit means that you can't argue that blizzard is doing the best job they can do. I hope that blizzard rearranges some of the units from WoL in HotS. I would really like to see the hydra at the roach spot and the roach either moved to tier 2 and changed appropriately or removed. Obviously the hydra would have to be tweaked to not be op but still. There are other units that could probably benefit from this change like the observer just requiring 1 of the 3 tech paths, not robo in particular or removing the reaper speed requiring factory etc. There is so far no evidence that the community can make a better SC2 than Blizzard. Someone suggested DotA was an example of this, but that is entirely subjective since DoTa and standard WC3:TFT are completely different games, it would be suggesting Nexus Wars is better than SC2 multiplayer. Fact: Blizzard has far more tools than the community. Blizzard originally aimed for 1 expansion a year, but due to their quality assurance is likely only going to release HotS once they are reasonably satisfied it actually improves the gameplay (HotS may not do everything YOU want it to do, but you can reasonably expect it to improve SC2 multiplayer once post-patching has fixed major issues). If someone thinks they can redesign SC2 better than Blizzard I would love to see their efforts. Who knows, maybe someone can make a better HotS than Blizzard but I certainly do not expect it to happen. There is a huge hole in your logic (much like the design of SC2). Why would talented designers and great minds waste their time on a game no one would play? It doesn't matter if you can theoretically make a better game or not. You need a large pool of players to properly balance a game. Balance isn't everything though, if the units aren't organic in their roles and are simply assigned as 'hard-counters' the game becomes very coin-flippy and teeter-totter style game play instead of a graceful duel. There is always more than one direction you can balance something. Don't get me wrong, SC2 is a good game, but there are some huge holes in the design that are impeding it from becoming a very good game.
People on this forum seem to be suggesting that these "huge holes" are rather easy to fix, I take issue with that. I think Blizzard simply has more resources, and more incentive to fix these huge holes, they also have two expansions and massive amounts of playtesters to help them fix SC2's larger issues.
People have every right to criticize SC2's gameplay. People should certainly speak up about what they think SC2's major flaws are. But to suggest that the SC2 design team is completely ignorant and incompetent, and that one talented game designer in his basement using the map editor could fix all of SC2's problems is a little naive and incredibly ignorant about the massive amount of interactions between units and abilities that need to be considered in SC2.
p.s. someone mentioned 5rax reaper, Blizzard didn't design 5rax reaper, it developed by accident as a result of the game and was patched and dealt with. Blizzard saw, Blizzard listened, and Blizzard fixed it, let's hope they continue this trend (lest the SC2 naysayers and Blizzard haters be proven right).
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On January 09 2012 03:11 mrRoflpwn wrote:
everyone that hates on cloud should know that he was a top foreign BroodWar player- and he is pretty much right about the gamble aspect- in broodwar a lesser player could NEVER beat a greater player- in SC2 lesser players are constantly upsetting players who are better
Are you joking? Lesser players beat better players ALL THE TIME in BW and IT STILL HAPPENS TODAY in BW. Saying a lesser player can't beat a better player in BW is beyond bullshit.
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On January 10 2012 04:04 Skwid1g wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2012 03:11 mrRoflpwn wrote:
everyone that hates on cloud should know that he was a top foreign BroodWar player- and he is pretty much right about the gamble aspect- in broodwar a lesser player could NEVER beat a greater player- in SC2 lesser players are constantly upsetting players who are better Are you joking? Lesser players beat better players ALL THE TIME in BW and IT STILL HAPPENS TODAY in BW. Saying a lesser player can't beat a better player in BW is beyond bullshit.
Lesser player in bw can easily beat a better player one year after the game came out. Give sc2 some time damn it, and please stop comparing a really well developed game to a fresh game, which balance changes every few weeks.
Half the stupid shit one could loose to a year ago is already no longer possible, and I'm sure another year or two down the road it will get even better. And even now better players start to consistently beat lesser players.
Every single time a following game comes out where we don't see some random nerd rape everyone all the time people talk the exact same bullshit, luckily a few years down the line some random nerd does keep raping everyone and people start to shut up.
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On January 10 2012 04:04 Skwid1g wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2012 03:11 mrRoflpwn wrote:
everyone that hates on cloud should know that he was a top foreign BroodWar player- and he is pretty much right about the gamble aspect- in broodwar a lesser player could NEVER beat a greater player- in SC2 lesser players are constantly upsetting players who are better Are you joking? Lesser players beat better players ALL THE TIME in BW and IT STILL HAPPENS TODAY in BW. Saying a lesser player can't beat a better player in BW is beyond bullshit.
You have no clue what you're talking about, do you ?
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On January 10 2012 03:49 Tor wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2012 13:27 acrimoneyius wrote:On January 09 2012 03:24 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 19:06 ixi.genocide wrote:On January 07 2012 18:45 Humanfails wrote:On January 06 2012 13:56 Thugtronik wrote:On January 06 2012 12:06 0neder wrote:On December 08 2011 11:17 happyness wrote: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. It is a great point, but I don't think it ends the thread. We have every reason to suspect that SC2 will become a good, but not great e-Sport game. The HotS demo and repeated interviews have indicated many things: - The Blizzard design team may have accepted the Colossus as a unit that must remain in the game, in spite of community consensus that it is very boring and creating a mediocre unit dynamic that is holding the spot of what could be a better one. This is evident in that all the new units they proposed for protoss revolved around them having a single concentrated death ball of units including the colossus so there is little split action or excitement a la Hero (luckily Hero understands showmanship and is an explorative player). - Blizzard may be incapable of fundamental changes that could improve the game for spectating and excitement, such as unit spacing to make armies feel bigger, and moving shot micro that may not be possible given the game engine and the programming team's shortcomings (Phoenix moving shot, gross oversights in attack ranges, etc). - The design team is dead-set on preserving certain game dynamics even though it arguably negatively effects other game dynamics to a greater amount. EG Jinro and many in the community want to see more terran mech, but the insistence on strong bio for the sake of Bio being viable in TvT mean that bio is the strongest choice in all TvX matchups and the strongest choice for any player picking up SC2 looking to be the best in the world and win big money. You can't tell me it's impossible for a non-meching Terran to beat factory units given the strength of ghosts and Terran air. The new TvT could very well be Air Mech vs Ground Mech if bio were nerfed. That MVP Top game was pretty damn exciting to me, with ghosts and nothing but mech in the sky and air... - The suggestion that it's unrealistic for us to expect an expansion to 'save SC2' implies it's already failed on some level to live up to it's predecessor. - The Macro mechanics' effect on the game may be negative for SC2 in the long-term for achieving the chaos of contemporary macro BW excitement, but we have no indication that these will ever change. - Blizzard's omission or removal of high-level micro (EG instead of a buff, the Carrier is scrapped for a slow strong AoE air unit with unexciting micro/speed potential) - only one example... it's been said far too many times but i'll say it again. SC2 =/= BW also similar to policy making. There was a vide ofloating around that was anti-SOPA by some proponent of net neutrality who actually went on about policy makers in washington and comparing it to the war on drugs. They 1; cant admit it was a failure, and 2; cant admit all their policies were bad implementations, so they just keep trying to add on more and modify existing ones so it fixed the problem, with the end result being a bloated load of policies that may have some impact but bring more negative than positive solution to the problem. This is the same with dustijn browder, his ego, and blizzard/activision's control over blizz. Seriously, people can create their own units and their own mechanics with sc2 maps, they made brood war 2.0. There's nothing stopping the community from making a better game, and voting it better than the current blizz dev team's compilation, and thus proving that they are making an inherently flawed game by working more with the ego of not being wrong than with the ego of wanting to actually correct their mistakes. Such egos are status quo for celebrity figures and policy makers, which the head guys over at ActiBlizz are. I find that to be an interesting take on sc2 development. Because the map editor is so good in sc2 we can create and showcase the game we think is appropriate and point out the flaws in the shipped game. While I have considered this before, you just pointed out something that should be obvious, we don't have to build the game in the editor to come to the conclusion that blizzard is not doing this game justice. While you can take both bw and sc2 at face value and make an appropriate judgement, with the addition of using the map editor we get something almost tangible instead of a feeling. While this is probably not going to matter ever, The simple fact that we can make a better game with less tools using the in game map editor and have it voted by popular consensus (probably) and rated higher in competitive merit means that you can't argue that blizzard is doing the best job they can do. I hope that blizzard rearranges some of the units from WoL in HotS. I would really like to see the hydra at the roach spot and the roach either moved to tier 2 and changed appropriately or removed. Obviously the hydra would have to be tweaked to not be op but still. There are other units that could probably benefit from this change like the observer just requiring 1 of the 3 tech paths, not robo in particular or removing the reaper speed requiring factory etc. There is so far no evidence that the community can make a better SC2 than Blizzard. Someone suggested DotA was an example of this, but that is entirely subjective since DoTa and standard WC3:TFT are completely different games, it would be suggesting Nexus Wars is better than SC2 multiplayer. Fact: Blizzard has far more tools than the community. Blizzard originally aimed for 1 expansion a year, but due to their quality assurance is likely only going to release HotS once they are reasonably satisfied it actually improves the gameplay (HotS may not do everything YOU want it to do, but you can reasonably expect it to improve SC2 multiplayer once post-patching has fixed major issues). If someone thinks they can redesign SC2 better than Blizzard I would love to see their efforts. Who knows, maybe someone can make a better HotS than Blizzard but I certainly do not expect it to happen. There is a huge hole in your logic (much like the design of SC2). Why would talented designers and great minds waste their time on a game no one would play? It doesn't matter if you can theoretically make a better game or not. You need a large pool of players to properly balance a game. Balance isn't everything though, if the units aren't organic in their roles and are simply assigned as 'hard-counters' the game becomes very coin-flippy and teeter-totter style game play instead of a graceful duel. There is always more than one direction you can balance something. Don't get me wrong, SC2 is a good game, but there are some huge holes in the design that are impeding it from becoming a very good game. People on this forum seem to be suggesting that these "huge holes" are rather easy to fix, I take issue with that. I think Blizzard simply has more resources, and more incentive to fix these huge holes, they also have two expansions and massive amounts of playtesters to help them fix SC2's larger issues. People have every right to criticize SC2's gameplay. People should certainly speak up about what they think SC2's major flaws are. But to suggest that the SC2 design team is completely ignorant and incompetent, and that one talented game designer in his basement using the map editor could fix all of SC2's problems is a little naive and incredibly ignorant about the massive amount of interactions between units and abilities that need to be considered in SC2. p.s. someone mentioned 5rax reaper, Blizzard didn't design 5rax reaper, it developed by accident as a result of the game and was patched and dealt with. Blizzard saw, Blizzard listened, and Blizzard fixed it, let's hope they continue this trend (lest the SC2 naysayers and Blizzard haters be proven right).
Exactly. Blizzard has said they don't design balanced units, because that is impossible. They build units that they think will result in interesting gameplay and then balance them based on the the feed back they receive. If you listen to interviews from the design team, they said that creep spread was thought to be a stupid, useless mechanic that no one would use. They were suprised that creep spread is one of the more important parties of zerg play and is the sign of a really good player. They also expected the immortal to be a unit used to tank, but players use it mostly for its burst damage, while the zealot tanks.
If you want to take another example of designing something based on feedback, take a look at the Iphone. On release the Iphone had none of the features we know it for today. No app store, limited storage, no twitter or facebook. Nothing that defines the Iphone and the market that enjoyes it. It is because Apple builds products and then improves them in the ways people use them.
There are parts of SC2 that I would like to see improved, but I do not believe that Blizzard is flawed in the way they made it. There are things I would like to see, better feedback control groups(icons over the units), a more stable early game so we can get beyond 2 bases and really macro and so on. But all of this will take time and effort on both sides. But the people who say "Blizzard could have made a better game, but didn't" are silly. Starcraft 1 was an poorly balanced nightmare with no replays when it came out. Its a refine esport now, but its over 10 years later.
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I feel like the new units will become a: You either abuse the new units every game or you just lose. Where although the new units for each race may balance each other, they are overpowered compared to the WoL units.
I wish there were tech animations for every single upgrade so a scout can see exactly what you are researching. (Like a spinning animation on a tech lab for stim, a freezing/thawing animation for combat shield, etc., something esoteric but distinctly shows the tech path).
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To be truly balanced, just make starcraft have 1 race. (but then it won't be starcraft)
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Cloud opinion might be correct, he took a game off MC lately after all.
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I agree with cloud in general.
Its going to be a mess when the expansion comes out and I have little faith in Blizzards current game design team(the unit department).
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United Kingdom14464 Posts
I honestly think there are 3 problems with SC2:
The maps. They're just not quite there yet. Daybreak is a start. Tal'darim is great, but has terrible mirror matchups etc. Once the maps are sorted, gameplay will improve a huge amount.
The players. 90% of bad or boring games are as a result of bad play. The better players are, the more entertaining the games are. Once again this will get better with time.
The only problems that Blizzard have are (and this is all in my opinion) 3 units, ironically, one for each race. Colossus, Marauder, and Corruptor. I honestly think that if these 3 units were different, then SC2 really wouldn't need any more changing. The game is already pretty fucking amazing as it. When Toss play multitask based, When Terran play is centred around the tank, when Zerg play ling bling Muta, the game already plays really nicely.
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On January 10 2012 04:22 MCDayC wrote:
I honestly think there are 3 problems with SC2:
The maps. They're just not quite there yet. Daybreak is a start. Tal'darim is great, but has terrible mirror matchups etc. Once the maps are sorted, gameplay will improve a huge amount.
The players. 90% of bad or boring games are as a result of bad play. The better players are, the more entertaining the games are. Once again this will get better with time.
The only problems that Blizzard have are (and this is all in my opinion) 3 units, ironically, one for each race. Colossus, Marauder, and Corruptor. I honestly think that if these 3 units were different, then SC2 really wouldn't need any more changing. The game is already pretty fucking amazing as it. When Toss play multitask based, When Terran play is centred around the tank, when Zerg play ling bling Muta, the game already plays really nicely.
But is boring to death.
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What makes you think HotS is only a few months away?
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The number one thing that I think needs to be improved is a significant reduction in how much luck plays into the game currently. There are a far and extreme amount of games now where it is essentially decided by the luck of the draw in the beginning, the rest is simply the players playing it out and hoping for a come-back.
As cloud says, there are a lot of players who just abuse this VERY swingy luck mechanic to get where they are now, banking on the fact that they get essentially free-wins 50%+ of the time because of the types of strats they use. The mark of the truly great players are the ones that can still win after being unlucky off the bat.
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On January 09 2012 13:39 suxN wrote:
-First of all we should have clear defenders edge, which we have to some extent with ramps and chokes, but ramps/cliffs could give additional advengate for those who are above, something like +armor or whatnot. Additionally warpgates are breaking defenders edge too quickly, giving protoss strong allins, in order to balance this earlygate units have to suck.
-Reliable scouting. We do have strong scouters such as observer, overseer and scan but its not good enough because scans can miss the tech buildings, observers/overseers come out way too late. To fix this we could have overlord speed upgrade on tier1 and hallucination could to be viable but currently it cant be researched because warpgate is necessary. Terrans allready have pretty viable scouting methods even if scan misses (reaper, flying buildings)
-Melee micro. Microing something like zealots vs zerglings is doable, especially in the early game, but microing zealots against marines and other rangers is basically clicking A-button and checking you have the speed upgrade done. I have no clue how to include more meleemicro when the autosurround system exists.
-Positional units, im sure everyone who has played sc1 knows how interesting and challenging using defilers, lurkers and tanks can be. On sc2 its just terrans with their tanks frogleapping forward, takes lots of babysitting and is very cool, but other races should feel the love aswell, luckily we are getting replicators and swarmhosts.
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Good post, removed some of it so mine wouldn't be too bloated.
I very much agree with the first point. The defenders advantage needs to be bigger and the power of coinflippy cheeses and all-ins needs to be smaller. I would personally like to see the cliff advantage returned, and for example stronger queens for zerg to compensate the lack of defendable cliffs.
I'm not sure I agree with the scouting problem. I don't want both players to have perfect information, there needs to be the element of surprise. I'd rather have "safe" builds to be safer against all sorts of random all-ins, without sacrificing economy too much.
I don't see how the third point can be fixed really. Terran is getting a stronger counter to mass zealot, so that should make the a-move zealot/archon a little less viable.
The fourth point I think everyone agrees with.
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Pretty interesting to hear what they think. I can't wait to see how HotS will pan out.
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On January 08 2012 09:06 Kare wrote:I just have to post this great picture in this thread, because it answers most of the comments in a way  ![[image loading]](http://www.quotepictures.net/wp-content/uploads/The-whole-problem-with-the-world-is-that-fools-and-fanatics.jpg)
you'd be surprised. WHen Im sure, I end up wrong 50% of tjhe time or more. When I'm not sure and seem not to know, I usually and perfectly correct. Its a pain in the ass to deal with, because its like George Costanza, DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU FEEL!... lol.
vOn January 10 2012 04:10 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2012 03:49 Tor wrote:On January 09 2012 13:27 acrimoneyius wrote:On January 09 2012 03:24 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 19:06 ixi.genocide wrote:On January 07 2012 18:45 Humanfails wrote:On January 06 2012 13:56 Thugtronik wrote:On January 06 2012 12:06 0neder wrote:On December 08 2011 11:17 happyness wrote: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. It is a great point, but I don't think it ends the thread. We have every reason to suspect that SC2 will become a good, but not great e-Sport game. The HotS demo and repeated interviews have indicated many things: - The Blizzard design team may have accepted the Colossus as a unit that must remain in the game, in spite of community consensus that it is very boring and creating a mediocre unit dynamic that is holding the spot of what could be a better one. This is evident in that all the new units they proposed for protoss revolved around them having a single concentrated death ball of units including the colossus so there is little split action or excitement a la Hero (luckily Hero understands showmanship and is an explorative player). - Blizzard may be incapable of fundamental changes that could improve the game for spectating and excitement, such as unit spacing to make armies feel bigger, and moving shot micro that may not be possible given the game engine and the programming team's shortcomings (Phoenix moving shot, gross oversights in attack ranges, etc). - The design team is dead-set on preserving certain game dynamics even though it arguably negatively effects other game dynamics to a greater amount. EG Jinro and many in the community want to see more terran mech, but the insistence on strong bio for the sake of Bio being viable in TvT mean that bio is the strongest choice in all TvX matchups and the strongest choice for any player picking up SC2 looking to be the best in the world and win big money. You can't tell me it's impossible for a non-meching Terran to beat factory units given the strength of ghosts and Terran air. The new TvT could very well be Air Mech vs Ground Mech if bio were nerfed. That MVP Top game was pretty damn exciting to me, with ghosts and nothing but mech in the sky and air... - The suggestion that it's unrealistic for us to expect an expansion to 'save SC2' implies it's already failed on some level to live up to it's predecessor. - The Macro mechanics' effect on the game may be negative for SC2 in the long-term for achieving the chaos of contemporary macro BW excitement, but we have no indication that these will ever change. - Blizzard's omission or removal of high-level micro (EG instead of a buff, the Carrier is scrapped for a slow strong AoE air unit with unexciting micro/speed potential) - only one example... it's been said far too many times but i'll say it again. SC2 =/= BW also similar to policy making. There was a vide ofloating around that was anti-SOPA by some proponent of net neutrality who actually went on about policy makers in washington and comparing it to the war on drugs. They 1; cant admit it was a failure, and 2; cant admit all their policies were bad implementations, so they just keep trying to add on more and modify existing ones so it fixed the problem, with the end result being a bloated load of policies that may have some impact but bring more negative than positive solution to the problem. This is the same with dustijn browder, his ego, and blizzard/activision's control over blizz. Seriously, people can create their own units and their own mechanics with sc2 maps, they made brood war 2.0. There's nothing stopping the community from making a better game, and voting it better than the current blizz dev team's compilation, and thus proving that they are making an inherently flawed game by working more with the ego of not being wrong than with the ego of wanting to actually correct their mistakes. Such egos are status quo for celebrity figures and policy makers, which the head guys over at ActiBlizz are. I find that to be an interesting take on sc2 development. Because the map editor is so good in sc2 we can create and showcase the game we think is appropriate and point out the flaws in the shipped game. While I have considered this before, you just pointed out something that should be obvious, we don't have to build the game in the editor to come to the conclusion that blizzard is not doing this game justice. While you can take both bw and sc2 at face value and make an appropriate judgement, with the addition of using the map editor we get something almost tangible instead of a feeling. While this is probably not going to matter ever, The simple fact that we can make a better game with less tools using the in game map editor and have it voted by popular consensus (probably) and rated higher in competitive merit means that you can't argue that blizzard is doing the best job they can do. I hope that blizzard rearranges some of the units from WoL in HotS. I would really like to see the hydra at the roach spot and the roach either moved to tier 2 and changed appropriately or removed. Obviously the hydra would have to be tweaked to not be op but still. There are other units that could probably benefit from this change like the observer just requiring 1 of the 3 tech paths, not robo in particular or removing the reaper speed requiring factory etc. There is so far no evidence that the community can make a better SC2 than Blizzard. Someone suggested DotA was an example of this, but that is entirely subjective since DoTa and standard WC3:TFT are completely different games, it would be suggesting Nexus Wars is better than SC2 multiplayer. Fact: Blizzard has far more tools than the community. Blizzard originally aimed for 1 expansion a year, but due to their quality assurance is likely only going to release HotS once they are reasonably satisfied it actually improves the gameplay (HotS may not do everything YOU want it to do, but you can reasonably expect it to improve SC2 multiplayer once post-patching has fixed major issues). If someone thinks they can redesign SC2 better than Blizzard I would love to see their efforts. Who knows, maybe someone can make a better HotS than Blizzard but I certainly do not expect it to happen. There is a huge hole in your logic (much like the design of SC2). Why would talented designers and great minds waste their time on a game no one would play? It doesn't matter if you can theoretically make a better game or not. You need a large pool of players to properly balance a game. Balance isn't everything though, if the units aren't organic in their roles and are simply assigned as 'hard-counters' the game becomes very coin-flippy and teeter-totter style game play instead of a graceful duel. There is always more than one direction you can balance something. Don't get me wrong, SC2 is a good game, but there are some huge holes in the design that are impeding it from becoming a very good game. People on this forum seem to be suggesting that these "huge holes" are rather easy to fix, I take issue with that. I think Blizzard simply has more resources, and more incentive to fix these huge holes, they also have two expansions and massive amounts of playtesters to help them fix SC2's larger issues. People have every right to criticize SC2's gameplay. People should certainly speak up about what they think SC2's major flaws are. But to suggest that the SC2 design team is completely ignorant and incompetent, and that one talented game designer in his basement using the map editor could fix all of SC2's problems is a little naive and incredibly ignorant about the massive amount of interactions between units and abilities that need to be considered in SC2. p.s. someone mentioned 5rax reaper, Blizzard didn't design 5rax reaper, it developed by accident as a result of the game and was patched and dealt with. Blizzard saw, Blizzard listened, and Blizzard fixed it, let's hope they continue this trend (lest the SC2 naysayers and Blizzard haters be proven right). Exactly. Blizzard has said they don't design balanced units, because that is impossible. They build units that they think will result in interesting gameplay and then balance them based on the the feed back they receive. If you listen to interviews from the design team, they said that creep spread was thought to be a stupid, useless mechanic that no one would use. They were suprised that creep spread is one of the more important parties of zerg play and is the sign of a really good player. They also expected the immortal to be a unit used to tank, but players use it mostly for its burst damage, while the zealot tanks. If you want to take another example of designing something based on feedback, take a look at the Iphone. On release the Iphone had none of the features we know it for today. No app store, limited storage, no twitter or facebook. Nothing that defines the Iphone and the market that enjoyes it. It is because Apple builds products and then improves them in the ways people use them. There are parts of SC2 that I would like to see improved, but I do not believe that Blizzard is flawed in the way they made it. There are things I would like to see, better feedback control groups(icons over the units), a more stable early game so we can get beyond 2 bases and really macro and so on. But all of this will take time and effort on both sides. But the people who say "Blizzard could have made a better game, but didn't" are silly. Starcraft 1 was an poorly balanced nightmare with no replays when it came out. Its a refine esport now, but its over 10 years later.
yesh, and creep spread is a terrible mechanic. DOnt say they didnt intend it to be used because zerg units are slow as shit off it. Immortal is a terrible unit, it was designed to perform one role, and people are using it for bust damage while its insanely hard to kill off if protoss has semi-competence. It even does significant damage to units it has nerfed damage against, e.g. light.
blizzard is trying to make themselves look smart while designing horrible units by saying this. Also, look at the beginning interview of dustimn browder. He made colossus and burrow roaches to "raid" bases. colossus are supposed to climb cliffs to kill probes because, and I quote in his words "Its cool". that is NO basis for creating game units that are balanced. There needs to be a damn good reason for introducing something potentially game changing like being able to walk over cliffs and enemy/friendly units.
roach raiding is mostly over and done with at higher leagues. By the time it comes out, all races have a form of detection.
Lets be honest, the original blizzard design team never said these things, and their units mostly stayed true to their intended design. Sc2, almost all units have to be used in UNINTENDED ways because they suck for their intended purpose. Remember that dustin browder came from C&C which was famous for Tank vs tank end game because everything else sucked realistically. (if you dont believe me, Stalker is a support/raid unit massed as the main unit for protoss 99% of the time, bane bombs from overlords to deal with deathball because of force fields and other nonsense, mass infestor fungal before nerf because zerg lacks anti-deathball/AoE otherwise, mass thors instead of 2 or 3 used as support/base of fire units during fights because they just rape so hard, etc).
THis is simply CYA speak, good political.
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To the above poster: BW units do not follow their "intended design" either but have evolved far beyond that. This includes techniques that almost qualify as glitches or bugs, such as muta stacking and hold position lurkers.
Does that mean BW is also a horribly designed game in your eyes?
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On January 10 2012 14:15 Bagi wrote:
To the above poster: BW units do not follow their "intended design" either but have evolved far beyond that. This includes techniques that almost qualify as glitches or bugs, such as muta stacking and hold position lurkers.
Does that mean BW is also a horribly designed game in your eyes?
brood war units follow their intended use much more closely. Stacked mutas may not have been "designed purposefully", they still are still used in their INTENDED USE. don't try to change the goalposts on the issue. They're still used the same way there were designed.
zergling, hydra, lurker, tank are all still used in the way they were designed to be used. The same does not hold true for most sc2 units, which is why, for example, immortals got +1 range.
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EPT
