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I feel like you are arguing the wrong points.
Regarding Unlimited Unit Selection. Objectively, having control over more than 12 units at a time is better. It is better because then you can move your army more precisely and it increases the micro ability.
The problem with sc2 is that it doesnt have microable units that take advantage of the extra apm GAINED from having more efficient control groups.
Also: this has been discussed to death. This thread boils down to broodwar was better than sc2. People know that, there was no reason for you to make another thread because if you use the search engine you will see that other people have posted what you have posted, sometimes better, sometimes worse. You dont bring up ANYTHING NEW, you just give your opinion on the problems which should be done in a blog or as a post on an already established thread, However if there was no such post about broodwar mechanics being better than sc2 mechanics this would be quite nice.
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It seems to me odd that many here consider that Broodwar is a better game that SC2. While SC2 is still settling down (2 expansions to go), the main complaints seem to revolve around antiquated technology.
There are three major mechanics discussed. I will address each.
1) Pathing. So units control better, they tend to be less stupid. This leads to the ball. This has various game effects (AOE, ranged vs melee).
2) Unit Selection. Unlimited vs 12 limit. The main effect I feel this had is that it increases opportunity cost for micro. If you are forced to group units in groups of 12, there is less APM cost in moving them to more elegant locations. In essence it costs you nothing to choose a better location for your units. In an unlimited control scenario, you don't have to make the extra click, so it's a choice of manoeuvring your units OR macro etc. It turns out, minor adjustments of unit location are not worth the APM.
3) High ground... well... this is just a balance issue. It slightly affects balance depending on which implementation is used. This is little more than a matter of taste. Being able to shoot with impunity has its advantages. Missing also has its advantages. PvP is a matchup that might have been better suited to the old mechanic rather than the new one for instance.
The final point I want to address is the Frisbees vs Baseballs analogy of Day[9]. While it is cute, there is a bit of a flaw in the ideas presented.
The difference between Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2 in regards to the frisbee analogy, is not that SC2 has replaced Frisbees with Baseballs, but rather that the physics of SC2 frisbees are more predictable allowing less-skilled players to use the 'complex' shots more easily (imagine a little 'guide-line' from the source to the target for instance).
In essence instead of bad control => good control changing unit effectiveness from 1 to 9 (SC1), what is really occurring is that base unit effectiveness in SC1 is like... 0.15. In SC2 it's 1. So going from pro in SC2 gives you ~1.5x skill but the apparent difference between skill levels is far more dramatic in SC1 as going from 0.15 => 1.5 is a factor of 10.
This is not because SC1 is harder to master. This is because SC1 is harder to play. There seems to be this great nostalgia surrounding BW because of this, but the reality is that SC2 has just allowed less skill players to compete more effectively but making the interface more user-friendly.
In summary, it isn't a lower skill-ceiling. It's a higher skill floor.
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for me this seems like the good old sc2 is worse then bw and change everything to what it was in bw even if that wasnt OPs intention, which I believe him, it really seems like thats how he thinks about sc2
BTW I really liked the post before me 
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hoho I am so happy my thread is actually mention ^_^ , I thought broodwar could use a facelift a little bit , better sprites and better animation although the engine still retain the same mechanics left untouched . I wish , I could have done some kind of a ff7 ps3 demo like for broodwar .
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On January 09 2012 00:07 Goobahfish wrote:
In essence instead of bad control => good control changing unit effectiveness from 1 to 9 (SC1), what is really occurring is that base unit effectiveness in SC1 is like... 0.15. In SC2 it's 1. So going from pro in SC2 gives you ~1.5x skill but the apparent difference between skill levels is far more dramatic in SC1 as going from 0.15 => 1.5 is a factor of 10.
Nope. Day[9] mentions the muta in this example. The muta is one of the units in BW that isn't retarded, and the general pathing and AI of a BW muta is approximately the same of a SC2 muta. So the effectiveness is also ~1. But thanks to the BW engine, you can highly improve the effectiveness of a BW muta. If you haven't seen BW-mutas in action yet... all I can say that those guys are surgical knives if used correctly.
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I completely agree!
And what the SC2 only players don't understand is that we don't want a BroodWar with better graphics, we want a better RTS game than BroodWar. And Blizzard should have known how to deliver that after all their experience with BroodWar.
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On January 08 2012 15:33 sc14s wrote:
i feel its so silly to continue to attempt to bash sc2, i am just now seeing the complexities of sc2 come to the forefront.. your introduction is false, sc2 is NOT mature yet, it still is constantly changing every month or two.
Sure it might not be as "hard" as BW .. in the respects that BW was hard.
The thing is though its a completely different game. there was no ball in BW so you didn't have to deal with splitting your ball, as well as personally i find it easier to defend harassment in sc1 than sc2 since you are predisposed to have your units in smaller groups so have less issues splitting your army to deal with said harassment. in sc2 i generally have 3 groups where BW i had 4+ (talking about army selection here and not production/queens/upgrades ect.)
YOU might find sc2 "stale and boring" I however find it to be great to watch and it still is in its development, whether you want to agree with me or not is your own issue.
There is nothing to mature. The game has already matured, and it's still fucking horrible to watch any matchup involving Protoss. It's damn too boring, because it always revolves around blobs.
TvT and TvZ is fine, ZvZ is a different matter but I believe it is better than BW ZvZ, in my opinion, in terms of spectatorship.
Also, just a quick suggestion, what about creating huge-ass maps, like 3 times the size of taldarim with mega big open areas? In that case armies would look much bigger and maybe players would try to spread in order to not get surrounded easily by a non-clumped army?
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On January 09 2012 01:42 Bleak wrote:
Also, just a quick suggestion, what about creating huge-ass maps, like 3 times the size of taldarim with mega big open areas? In that case armies would look much bigger and maybe players would try to spread in order to not get surrounded easily by a non-clumped army?
I actually experimented with this in beta, since the maps then were STUPID small as we all remember. It turns out that the game just doesn't reward spreading out your bases from a macro sense, and due to the hard caps on macro and linear returns on adding additional workers, it's just a lot of blank space. Not to mention, it destroys the pressure timings which this game is so delicately balanced on. Hell, even Broodwar has pretty delicate balance with regards to attack timings and spawn distance. The fact is, the game would just have to be completely rebalanced anyways on such maps, and the macro mechanics in SC2 do not favor such maps.
I will touch more on that topic when I discuss macro mechanics.
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On January 07 2012 22:25 FeyFey wrote:
umm bw unit formations work because people actually abuse the mechanics from bw to get units into formation. Best example is probaly the line flank, where you use the horrible unit pathing to form a long line along the side of the opponents army and then move towards the opponent, getting a huge concave.
Play bw without an idea how to move your units correctly ... it will look terrible, feel horrible and ends in utter defeat. Now lets go over to sc2, looks horrible, feels horrible, will end in defeat. Result, in sc2 being a noob with your units isn't as bad.
Attack moves will make units solids, just like hold position. stop commands is liquid, where units flow into each other. Magic box breaks with attack move but stays with hold position. You see many people still attack move, when it would be more clever to hold posi move as it would retain your formation against aoe units.
Anyway clumpig is the most horrible thing that can happen to you in bw, because it really messes up unit movement, thats why you even take care of it with building rally points. So i like the sc2 approach, you still don't want to clump, but you aren't unfiddling your units for about 2 minutes or have to rally every building at another point to prevent clumping. That adds to game speed, which results in an higher difficult.
So the sc2 system is fine, easy to learn hard to master, just as wanted. Also its fully controllable if you wish so.
Wrong.
I'd like to justify this with an explanation but any self-respecting BW player that's also played SC2 would disagree with you to the utmost regard.
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Its too bad you couldn't write this article without mentioning BW somehow, now your awesome post will be summarily ignored by what TL has now become, because BW is evil and having any good elements of it transfer over to SC2 would be a true tragedy.
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On January 09 2012 02:37 EternaLLegacy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2012 01:42 Bleak wrote:
Also, just a quick suggestion, what about creating huge-ass maps, like 3 times the size of taldarim with mega big open areas? In that case armies would look much bigger and maybe players would try to spread in order to not get surrounded easily by a non-clumped army? I actually experimented with this in beta, since the maps then were STUPID small as we all remember. It turns out that the game just doesn't reward spreading out your bases from a macro sense, and due to the hard caps on macro and linear returns on adding additional workers, it's just a lot of blank space. Not to mention, it destroys the pressure timings which this game is so delicately balanced on. Hell, even Broodwar has pretty delicate balance with regards to attack timings and spawn distance. The fact is, the game would just have to be completely rebalanced anyways on such maps, and the macro mechanics in SC2 do not favor such maps. I will touch more on that topic when I discuss macro mechanics.
yeah an overlord would need 3 years to get across.
terran would be all in every time they move out
the game would be like 10min no rush 200 vs 200
etc.
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United Kingdom14464 Posts
On January 07 2012 21:16 qxc wrote:
"This is not meant to be a bw vs sc2 comparison post" oo?
In terms of clumping produces deterministic battles & reducing the complexity of the game - this is actually just wrong. A ball is almost not the optimal formation of your units. Try taking an army and moving it across the map in a line only 1-2 units at any given point. That actually requires a huge amount of apm as the units repeatedly cluster back into a ball.
This is a great point.
Also, did high ground really give the low person a random chance to miss? That's a terrible mechanic, rnd is not good.
On January 09 2012 02:37 EternaLLegacy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2012 01:42 Bleak wrote:
Also, just a quick suggestion, what about creating huge-ass maps, like 3 times the size of taldarim with mega big open areas? In that case armies would look much bigger and maybe players would try to spread in order to not get surrounded easily by a non-clumped army? I actually experimented with this in beta, since the maps then were STUPID small as we all remember. It turns out that the game just doesn't reward spreading out your bases from a macro sense, and due to the hard caps on macro and linear returns on adding additional workers, it's just a lot of blank space. Not to mention, it destroys the pressure timings which this game is so delicately balanced on. Hell, even Broodwar has pretty delicate balance with regards to attack timings and spawn distance. The fact is, the game would just have to be completely rebalanced anyways on such maps, and the macro mechanics in SC2 do not favor such maps. I will touch more on that topic when I discuss macro mechanics.
This is worker saturation on mineral lines right? Wouldn't having less mineral patches per base solve this problem? Large maps are very much playable, but the players have to progress with the maps. If players are used to playing on tiny maps, of course they're not gonna transition well instantly onto large maps.
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BW AI bashing is overdone.
i've never complained about bw ai. even the dragoon is over exaggerated 
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I'm wondering, but did the auto-surround mechanic for melee units was born out of the Blizzard unit pathing decision for SC2? The ball mechanic meant that melee units would be more inefficient with lings/zealots not being able to spread out. Thus, auto-surround was added to lessen the micromanagement of melee units, and slightly boosting their utility. If we had dynamic unit pathing in SC2, I would think the auto-surround mechanic can have a slight to moderate impact on the game because units would be easily surrounded and picked off.
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On January 09 2012 00:07 Goobahfish wrote:
It seems to me odd that many here consider that Broodwar is a better game that SC2. While SC2 is still settling down (2 expansions to go), the main complaints seem to revolve around antiquated technology.
There are three major mechanics discussed. I will address each.
1) Pathing. So units control better, they tend to be less stupid. This leads to the ball. This has various game effects (AOE, ranged vs melee).
So what's your point here?
On January 09 2012 00:07 Goobahfish wrote:
2) Unit Selection. Unlimited vs 12 limit. The main effect I feel this had is that it increases opportunity cost for micro. If you are forced to group units in groups of 12, there is less APM cost in moving them to more elegant locations. In essence it costs you nothing to choose a better location for your units. In an unlimited control scenario, you don't have to make the extra click, so it's a choice of manoeuvring your units OR macro etc. It turns out, minor adjustments of unit location are not worth the APM.
OK now you're just making zero sense. "Less APM cost in moving them to more elegant locations?" What? Have you ever tried controlling a 200/200 army with 12 limit selection? It's not just an APM sink. The limited unit selection added a strategic depth to the game as already mentioned before in the thread, not to mention it raised the skill ceiling.
On January 09 2012 00:07 Goobahfish wrote:
The final point I want to address is the Frisbees vs Baseballs analogy of Day[9]. While it is cute, there is a bit of a flaw in the ideas presented.
The difference between Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2 in regards to the frisbee analogy, is not that SC2 has replaced Frisbees with Baseballs, but rather that the physics of SC2 frisbees are more predictable allowing less-skilled players to use the 'complex' shots more easily (imagine a little 'guide-line' from the source to the target for instance).
In essence instead of bad control => good control changing unit effectiveness from 1 to 9 (SC1), what is really occurring is that base unit effectiveness in SC1 is like... 0.15. In SC2 it's 1. So going from pro in SC2 gives you ~1.5x skill but the apparent difference between skill levels is far more dramatic in SC1 as going from 0.15 => 1.5 is a factor of 10.
I'm really laughing at this one. Even if "base unit effectiveness in SC1" is 0.15, that number doesn't mean shit by itself because it's a constant that's imposed on all players. What's important is the CHANGE between bad control => good control which you yourself admitted is a factor of 10 increase compared with SC2 which is a factor of 1.5. This is exactly one of the flaws of SC2 atm.
On January 09 2012 00:07 Goobahfish wrote:
This is not because SC1 is harder to master. This is because SC1 is harder to play. There seems to be this great nostalgia surrounding BW because of this, but the reality is that SC2 has just allowed less skill players to compete more effectively but making the interface more user-friendly.
Wait so you basically pulled an arbitrary number out of your ass to conclude that SC1 is "harder to play"? How on earth is that a bad thing for competitive gaming? No matter how hard the game is, each player will have to overcome the same difficulties. As long as the skill ceiling isn't too high then it's perfectly fine. And please explain why you think allowing lesser-skilled players to compete with better players is a good thing, because quite frankly that's the last thing we want in a competitive game.
On January 09 2012 00:07 Goobahfish wrote:
In summary, it isn't a lower skill-ceiling. It's a higher skill floor.
They are the same thing lol.
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This topic has been discussed extensively before.
I do agree with some points, however, most of them I believe are “by design” if you ask Blizzard and the game design team. At least now after the fact.
I think Blizzard agrees that clumping can be a problem and the “big death ball” phenomenon is not that interesting in the game. I seem to remember that their reasoning behind e.g. the proposed Shredder for HOTS was to “remove some supply from the Terran main army”.
The clumping does make it somewhat more difficult to balance the game as some races will benefit more than others. E.g. on one hand, the Protoss “death ball” army mostly benefits from the new and improved (from BW) pathing of the units as this is the best way to move around an army that contains Colossus. Zerg, on the other hand, would often prefer a more spread out stance of their units and their opponents units as then want as much surface area as possible when attacking with Zerglings and Ultralisks. On yet another hand, the fungal growth spell (and other area effect spells) benefit from the opponents clumping up.
I too have been thinking a lot about the pathing of units and the unlimited selection groups but it is difficult to see how this could be improved by changing the game mechanics. I think the appropriate approach would be to encourage players to work against the clumping. Take, for example, marine splits vs. banelings or toss spreading out the “death ball” to limit the effects of EMP. This makes for interesting and micro intense action.
Regarding high ground, I don’t like randomness so I would not enjoy that change. One could imagine other benefits to be gained from high ground, e.g. shooting units loose one range when shooting up? However, as was seen in e.g. the games between YJP and MC in Homestory cup yesterday, already today’s implementation of high ground can be quite interesting. I’m not so sure that something has to be done w.r.t. this.
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On January 09 2012 01:18 Dizzy.exe wrote:
I completely agree!
And what the SC2 only players don't understand is that we don't want a BroodWar with better graphics, we want a better RTS game than BroodWar. And Blizzard should have known how to deliver that after all their experience with BroodWar.
What players of both don't understand is how BW players are completely missing the mark on what makes a good RTS. The kefka said it best: The problem with SC2 is entirely because of unit design! Ignore the technical stuff for once.
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On January 09 2012 20:32 Ysellian wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2012 01:18 Dizzy.exe wrote:
I completely agree!
And what the SC2 only players don't understand is that we don't want a BroodWar with better graphics, we want a better RTS game than BroodWar. And Blizzard should have known how to deliver that after all their experience with BroodWar. What players of both don't understand is how BW players are completely missing the mark on what makes a good RTS. The kefka said it best: The problem with SC2 is entirely because of unit design! Ignore the technical stuff for once.
I don't see how SC2's unit design is bad. For the current game mechanics, most units work as intended, including the A-move colossus. If the pathfinding and dynamics were similar to BW then obviously such a unit will have no place in the game, since units don't clump so much, but in SC2 it makes sense. Blizz has admited that they made a number of design mistakes, but with a game so complex, it is incredibly hard to predict how a unit will perform, unless you choose a simpler unit design.
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Would it help with defenders advantage if low-ground units shooting up have -1 range? That would feel very intuitive in my opinion.
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On January 09 2012 20:51 rKzzz wrote:
Would it help with defenders advantage if low-ground units shooting up have -1 range? That would feel very intuitive in my opinion.
As I've said before in the comments to this thread, I fully believe that range adjustments for high/low ground would be the most logical way to implement a non RNG high ground advantage, and there is precedent in other games for it.
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EPT
