What I don't like is that there is really no clear differentiator between good and bad players. You can't simply sit down and watch a game of SC2 and say, "that person is really really good" or "that guy is struggling." You don't see evidence of the struggle players have by watching their forces. Honestly, even the GSL finals I watched recently was fairly unimpressive. To me it looked like a fairly normal B- game of Broodwar. There just wasn't any evidence that the players were truly world class, because there's just no real contrast between solid army control and world class army control. The best players just seem to have good multitask and good strategic sense.
You're comparing 12 year old brood war to <2 year old sc2.
While skill in sc2 is going to advance faster than it did in Brood War, I feel confident in saying that the sc2 pros of today will look like trash compared to the sc2 pros of 2 years from now.
Go back and watch some 2002 games of pro Brood War. With a few iconic exceptions, they're going to look pretty lackluster compared to some average GSL games of today.
I think that the "watchability" of SC2 compared to BW depends a lot on the viewer's (and to a lesser, but not insignificant extent, the player's) depth of knowledge about the game. For instance, I feel that I am better able to discern the differences in player quality between two SC2 players than I can in BW. This is because I have a better understanding of what they are trying to do as well as how well they are doing this. This says nothing about the relative quality of either game, but I certainly enjoy watching SC2 more because of it. I have no doubt that the BW players have a better knowledge of their game than the SC2 players, but would be more interested in a comparison between the skill levels at the same (or similar) times in the game's lifetime. Either way, this says nothing about how well designed the games are.
This is not limited to SC2 and BW. I feel like I cannot enjoy soccer as much as I can hockey because I don't know what are good plays in soccer that set up goals. This is also what limits my enjoyment of MOBA and fighting games from a viewing perspective.
What I don't like is that there is really no clear differentiator between good and bad players. You can't simply sit down and watch a game of SC2 and say, "that person is really really good" or "that guy is struggling." You don't see evidence of the struggle players have by watching their forces. Honestly, even the GSL finals I watched recently was fairly unimpressive. To me it looked like a fairly normal B- game of Broodwar. There just wasn't any evidence that the players were truly world class, because there's just no real contrast between solid army control and world class army control. The best players just seem to have good multitask and good strategic sense.
You're comparing 12 year old brood war to <2 year old sc2.
While skill in sc2 is going to advance faster than it did in Brood War, I feel confident in saying that the sc2 pros of today will look like trash compared to the sc2 pros of 2 years from now.
Go back and watch some 2002 games of pro Brood War. With a few iconic exceptions, they're going to look pretty lackluster compared to some average GSL games of today.
2002 pro brood war was one hell of a interesting time for broodwar , 1 base plays <3 , players trying to out micro the opponent, Can't believe build orders and strategy has come a long way , from a micro intensive game , broodwar has change in to a semi aggressive and economical in balance . Neither do we focus on the aggressive aspect too much well except going all in for , or trying to go to economical to gain the advantage because you can't expect to mass expo without putting up a smoke shell to cover your evil scheme's .
Lack luster is the poor choice of word's , because you pick the time where broodwar was at early's days and Sc2 like i have mention earlier in previous posts , they can't be compared to early days of broodwar because current strategies that come from broodwar and play style has been brought to sc2. Sc2 in fact has the benefit of having 10 years of knowledge from broodwar and other strategy game . Than again bw at it's current form , it's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen , crucial fake's to get that extra expansion , infinite amount of unknown build orders are into the making , we have even seen old school builds being refined and still are being used today .
Broodwar has come along way and they are here to stay.
The esports bubble has been bigger than we all think. It's popped many times and just completely failed leaving only the real passionate fans, Brood War was so much bigger than starcraft 2 has ever been. (Of course not in the west)
(One of my favorite games Jaedong vs Stork WCG 2009 Chengdu China)
Players retire, fans move on, the community is split between 2 games: Brood War & SC2
wow great articles ... a couple of days ago i was randomly watching a BW Pro Koeran game and couln't help but think how much superior in term of excitement, imprevedibility, strategy and so on, SC-BW was (and is) compared to SC2.
You're comparing 12 year old brood war to <2 year old sc2.
While skill in sc2 is going to advance faster than it did in Brood War, I feel confident in saying that the sc2 pros of today will look like trash compared to the sc2 pros of 2 years from now.
Go back and watch some 2002 games of pro Brood War. With a few iconic exceptions, they're going to look pretty lackluster compared to some average GSL games of today.
well ... you can see already the direction that the game is going ... you don't need to wait 12 years, what he says on formation (big ball vs big ball) is dramatically correct and i doubt this is gonna change in the future, unless there is a radical change of direction.
Every game nowadays tends to oversimplify the mechanics of every genre in compare with the precessors. Other way, 'dumbs' couldn't play (Developers point of view). Overall they care only to sell more games and gain more money, there is nothing new here.
I am sure we will come to a point where we are going to say 'why they don't make RTS games for PC instead of console' in some years from now on.
My point is I am pretty sure that complaining about the oversimplification and less skill demanding state of the game won't lead us to anywhere. We have to adapt what we have now and move forward, like RPG fans did for last 7-9 years. Old good days are gone.
You're comparing 12 year old brood war to <2 year old sc2.
While skill in sc2 is going to advance faster than it did in Brood War, I feel confident in saying that the sc2 pros of today will look like trash compared to the sc2 pros of 2 years from now.
Go back and watch some 2002 games of pro Brood War. With a few iconic exceptions, they're going to look pretty lackluster compared to some average GSL games of today.
well ... you can see already the direction that the game is going ... you don't need to wait 12 years, what he says on formation (big ball vs big ball) is dramatically correct and i doubt this is gonna change in the future, unless there is a radical change of direction.
This is incorrect.
It is rare that in Ball formation is the most efficient, it's just dramatically more so than non-simultaneous engagement.
As mentioned by another poster in this thread, the core challenge of SC2 (in regards to formation) is different than SC1. In SC1, the core challenge was to keep your army together, and to provide the optimal positioning. In SC2, the core challenge is to keep your army apart, and to provide the optimal positioning.
Eternal agreed with this position, but remarked that his point was not that the ball is always efficient, but that it's the default; that the default results in boring battles and skirmishes. This is why I mentioned the disparity in ages between the two games. The pros of today suck at SC2. They are not controlling their armies well, or interestingly.
The trade off between the two designs is the following: * SC1 behaviour ensured that the pro scene was always interesting, because chaotic movement removed the chance for staleness. The cost of this is that players below the pro level are consistently frustrated because they found it unfairly challenging (ie: not fun) to try to get their units to behave the way they intended * SC2 behaviour ensures that players' armies will routinely behave in the way that is intuitive and predictable. The game is not cumbersome to control and therefore allows [more] players to have fun. The cost of this is that the default behaviour will be efficient for all players (including pros) for quite some time until a skill level is reached where micromanagement is more effective than default behaviour.
Did SC2 get the balance of this correct? Maybe not, but I feel they got it pretty damn close. Basic understanding of tactics and positioning elucidates that their default behaviour is far from optimal while improving the player experience for 98% of the player base. Kudos Blizzard, you got this one right.
On January 12 2012 02:20 Laserist wrote: Every game nowadays tends to oversimplify the mechanics of every genre in compare with the precessors. Other way, 'dumbs' couldn't play (Developers point of view). Overall they care only to sell more games and gain more money, there is nothing new here.
I am sure we will come to a point where we are going to say 'why they don't make RTS games for PC instead of console' in some years from now on.
My point is I am pretty sure that complaining about the oversimplification and less skill demanding state of the game won't lead us to anywhere. We have to adapt what we have now and move forward, like RPG fans did for last 7-9 years. Old good days are gone.
What a cynical and awful perspective. (and incorrect to boot).
Wanting to have your game be accessible is not driven just by sales, but also by [competent] designers understanding that a game can accessible without sacrificing depth. That the former does not have to come at the cost of the latter.
So please support your perspective with more constructive examples: games that keeps the depth and content without oversimplification. (C'mon not Starcraft 2)
On January 12 2012 07:22 Laserist wrote: So please support your perspective with more constructive examples: games that keeps the depth and content without oversimplification. (C'mon not Starcraft 2)
Warcraft 2 to Starcraft Dawn of War to Company of Heroes Civilization 1 to Civ 2
I used the term 'nowadays' at the beginning of my post. None of the examples hardly fit into this category.
W2 1995 to Starcraft 1998, Dawn of War 2004 to Company of Heroes 2006 (can't tell the connection) Civilization 1 1991 to Civ 2 1996
Late 90's and early 2000's draws the border of the golden age of gaming history. What I was trying to say is childern or grandchildren of these games are oversimplified and relatively empty.
For turn-based strategy HoMM3(99) was a great game and ruined at the 5th(06) and 6th(11) of the same series. Same as Civilization 4 provides better and deeper gameplay experience in compare with Civ 5. Civ 5 is really designed for players who clearly have no idea how to play Civilization.
For RPG genre, Fallout(97-98) and Baldur's gate(98-2000) series was, imho, way more better than current RPG's, i.e Dragon Age(even see the difference between 1 & 2), Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls series.
I am not trying to say newer games necessarily bad. But it is clear that, for some time, newer games tends to be simple and broad. I am not the only one who stated that. Look at the reviews of the games I wrote above. All of them is critised by being simple and dissapointing.
Same is applied to starcraft too. I am not advocating 'return to broodwar' concept. I dislike many limitations of it and know SC2 is better in many aspects. But to reach this point, Blizzard sacrifices many things(storyline depth etc.).
Blizzard even oversimplied the units(one purpose, boring units) and battle mechanics. Zerg should swarm, Terran should all-in or rush, toss should turtle and deathball. Is there any depth in that I am not able to see?
I don't pretend to know anything about design, but it seems to me that the difficulty of the UI (including unit selection limitations, "smart casting" and the like), combined with the type of non-clumping engine that Broodwar has can actually play a critical role in the balance of the game.
For example,
Imagine that you have 4 full energy high templar in broodwar. To cast a carpet storm you would have a couple of basic options:
1) click on each templar individually and storm individually, which takes time and precision 2) use the magic box to spread your templar out properly so that when you storm, they all storm together in the appropriate formation, which also takes practice 3) have your HT in different control groups (inefficient)
If you could cast BW storm with just t-click with a group of HT, it would wipe out virtually everything easily.
My point is that along with the balling, storm in SC2 has to be relatively weaker because it would otherwise obliterate everything with the push of a button.
I think that the difficulty of using, moving, etc a unit could, and in fact, should be a key factor in balancing that unit (another example: the reaver), which is something that, besides the "macro mechanics," Blizzard haven't really experimented that much with. Yes, you could argue that the players discovered stuff like reaver/shuttle micro, or mutalisk control or whatever, but the game has clear mechanical limits that allow things to be overpowered individually because overall, the player cannot hope to make the most of them unless they are extremely talented.
You can't micro your reaver and your shuttle and macro at your base unless you are pretty good, but if you could, it would be absurdly easy to do economic damage with almost none of your own in return. Imagine if, while microing a reaver, you could hit your gateway hotkey and hit ZZZDDD and then hit your nexus hotkey and hit PPP and then go back to microing your reaver because you don't have to worry about probes sitting idle. Crazy.
While people dont like to hear it, mechanical difficulty is, I think, a very valid and important way to balance the game.
On another note, its getting pretty annoying seeing the number of stock responses in threads like these. Things like: "BW and SC2 are different games so dont you dare compare them," and "randomness has no place in an RTS" and "the game design wont change" are really annoying to read.
I think part of it is because people feel strongly but dont really know what to say, so they repeat conventional wisdom or common opinions as if theyre saying something new and interesting. The uncertainty really is disturbing: how can anyone know if clumping is actually better or worse? Still, these threads -- which many people cynically dismiss because they attempt to do something incredibly ambitious (and admittedly, often end up failing) -- actually try to do something good for the community, which is to encourage thought about difficult subjects. Some people have some interesting insight, but the people who really ruin the TL experience are not the OPs who start a new thread about an old issue (btw, I think this is a great topic), but the people who get all up in arms about the fact that its not BW dammit, mind your own business, or those who repeat the common opinion or understanding as if it were fact instead of trying to actually think about the OP's topic.
Look at all the things in SC1 which could make a player lose by default * I am not good at building and rallying workers to mine consistently -> I lose -> Automining * I am not good at controlling more than 3 control groups in combat -> I cannot possibly play zerg -> Unlimited selection & Better pathing * I am not good at microing spell-casters individually -> I lose -> Smart-casting
First of all, you will not lose by default if you have these problems. You will only lose if you are worse at these things than your opponent is. So you played a few games of BW and lost because your mechanics were worse than your opponent's; doesn't mean the game needs to be changed.
Second, it is precisely these difficulties that make BW so impressive to watch. It is so impressive seeing beast macro, impressive 200/200 army control, Jangbi storms, etc in BW. Not so in SC2.
On January 09 2012 21:21 Goobahfish wrote: The point I am trying to make is there is a lot of talk of 'strategic depth' on this forum which I think is not properly understood. Things like No Multiple-Building-Selection, No Automining, Control Group limits etc don't really add to strategic depth.
See this is the thing that annoys me the most. SC2 players who have never watched BW will say things like "BW is just a button mashing game", "BW is all about who can click faster", "there is no strategic depth" etc. They characterize BW as a game where players are spending all their APM fighting the interface and don't have any to spare for tactics and strategy. If you take the time to watch professional BW you will see that nothing could be further from the truth. That is why many people including me are so worried by the SC2 interface changes. Yes we know telling your workers to mine and building from one factory at a time isn't strategic depth. MBS, automine, smart casting etc free up players' apm....to do what exactly? There was no lack of strategy in BW. Why change something that will only lower the skill ceiling?
Not even just at proscene though, right down to D level there's tons of strategy. You can beat people far better mechanically with strategy, and not nessecerily in an all-in easy coinflip win but in actual tactics and smart play. Plus you got versatile units enough to innovate and try things without being forced into roles.
People just keep bringing up the same tired defences over and over even though it's not even supposed to be a game vs game argument; the criticism stands on it's own against it. BW is just the easiest comparison because it's the obvious benchmark for a competitive RTS. SC2 is not just 'different' and therefore immune to criticism, it fails to implement some of the things fundamental to BW's long term success as a game. Defending some of these things just sounds like you immediately jump to the defence of the SC2 with any argument; keep bringing up things like interface, unit limit etc. when that isn't even the big deal.
It's fine you have MBS and all the rest of those things but then they also went and simplified every other aspect too. So there's nothing to replace that giant chasm of difficulty that resulted from the mechanics and unit design.. but it was the difficultly precisely which has made the game strategically evolve to this day. The idea that it somehow allows for more tactics/strategy is just wrong, it has the opposite effect: see TvZ in BW and the ability of Z to do extreme aggressive micro based 2hatch muta or a completely defensive fast hive tech build and all things in between; and T's ability to use nearly every unit in some way if they wish. Add to SC2 much more intensive micro units and abilities which can give the edge by constant control, space things out slightly and slow engagements down prehaps; and that alone will improve the game and it's longetivity, yet HotS doesn't appear to be doing this at all.
Edit: the post above is on the mark this is one whole aspect completely ignored by Blizzard, as if they hadn't paid any attention to the game's success at all. It's actually frustrating to see them go in a direction of less mechanics when there's much more potential.
And, last but not least, people are ignoring the fact that, as players improve more and more and their APM raises they can and will take advantage of the easier macro we have now in SC2 (if it stays that way), to dedicate more APM to army movement/positioning and attacks. If you thought 2-3 attacks at a time was impresive, imagine people being able to conduct 3-6 attacks at a time and control them well while macro-ing at home. That is the freedom that the current system provides, and I've yet to see many SC2 players to reach such a level.
Have to respond to this too because it's one of the completely false points repeatedly said as truth. Players will never be able to do this anymore than they did in BW, infact it's probably less so; see how fast a major engagement happens in SC2 and how much maximum potential actions a player could use, then compare to a BW engagement (not to mention BW engagements can be smaller, spread out across the map and happening at once). Even with the extra macro mechanics there's very clearly far more actions actually available for micro, and pro BW players you can see in fpvod are constantly microing. Your statement is just wishful thinking not how it's actually working. This video is often bought up but you have 1:12 shown of constant 300-400 APM unit micro, SC2 in no engagement even comes close to the amount of actions devoted to precision unit control.. let alone more than it.
Regarding the "Ball vs. Ball" unit clumping problem:
In Age of Empires series, there were unit formation hot keys. You could arrange your units in spread, box, line, etc. formations. Is this something that would be received positively by the community? Or is this too noob friendly as well?
Everyone wants change; i don't think you are understanding any of this if you think otherwise. Currently there's not actual change at all just simplified and removed things and this is what you get. Add whole new good features in and change units in new ways for the better. That'd be great, i'd love to see many things added if they are fun to use/watch.
I don't think formations would be very good at all, that sounds awful as a spectator. But they will never put it in either so thats good.
just wanted to add that thinking the 12 unit limitation was because of technical limitations sounds ridiculous, they could have easily done unlimited selection in bw, right ?
EPT
