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I've kind of stayed away from this thread, but I'm surprised at the amount of resistance being shown to what I essentially see is the idea that using prior knowledge is paramount to understanding what works and what doesn't. It's not just about what worked in BW and making comparisons to SC2. People need to accept that doing so isn't necessarily putting on rose tinted glasses. I could make comparisons to Dune 2 and comment about design differences in either a positive or negative light.
A fairly straightforward comparison would be the evolution of resource gathering in RTS games. Dune 2 through till C&C Generals relied upon a system whereby trucks would gather resources from a field. Resources were generally located across a wide patch of land. This is at odds with Warcraft and Starcraft which contained more concentrated patches (gold mines/minerals) C&C Generals adopted a similar style with its resource collection points, and there are some good reasons why having concentrated resources is a good idea.
It creates clear cut strategic points on the map. Base locations are decided wholly upon resource deposits. Might seem obvious, but if resources are spread out all over the map, it's not obvious where the optimal location for a base is, and many choices can be reasonable.
Also, it means that workers/harvesters have to travel outside the base to collect. It's like your only option being long distance mining, and also having to mine 200 minerals in a single trip. Not only does such huge jumps in resources result in bumpy macro, but worker harassment becomes the core strategy.
Of course, various experiments have been tried over the years for different resource gathering mechanisms. Z was an RTS where holding more control points resulted in faster build times for units. Of course, that kind of fell over when you realised the best strategy was to scramble to capture any amount that was slightly more than your opponent, and then hold that advantage as long as possible (which would only ever get easier over time).
Other games have used mechanisms like decreasing income depending on your army size, to prevent players from simply sitting on an advantage that will only ever grow (e.g. using a big army to capture more of the resources on the map and hold them, starving an opponent out).
SC2 has evolved from other RTS titles, learning from those lessons:
1. 2 vespene geysers allow for finer control over your gas income
2. Standardised amounts of mineral patches at bases, and in general standardised patch locations.
3. A hard limit on the speed at which a patch can be mined, creating a maximum income from one base.
It's easy to take this stuff for granted, and I know macro mechanics are planned to be covered in future, no doubt that'll talk about this sort of stuff too.
But seriously, go back and play Dark Reign, or Ground Control, or some other RTS. Realise how insane their designs are in comparison. Recognise that creating a balanced RTS with 3 different races is still in its infancy, despite being considered almost standard compared to your old school 2 race paper/scissors/rock examples.
I don't necessarily agree with EternalLegacy in the sense that I would only feel compelled to point out where mistakes have been made before, shown to be poor design, and there is evidence of an objectively superior design choice. I don't think there are examples of that in SC2, perhaps because I'm not an ex-BW fanatic who can percieve all the lessons learned there. Most of my RTS experience is in horribly broken titles from the 90s. But I will say I applaud the attempt to not just describe perceived problems with the game's design, but articulate why in such detail and depth.
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SC2 has evolved from other RTS titles, learning from those lessons:
1. 2 vespene geysers allow for finer control over your gas income
2. Standardised amounts of mineral patches at bases, and in general standardised patch locations.
3. A hard limit on the speed at which a patch can be mined, creating a maximum income from one base.
1. Zerg armies are tiny, gas builds require less investment, or makes cheese more powerful.
2. What happened to balance?
3. How is this good? In SC2 there is a flat income increase per workers. BW had decreasing returns per worker, this meant that having more bases un-saturated was much better than having less saturated bases. The BW way required more strategy and macro skill.
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On January 13 2012 06:46 Kring wrote:
Another sc2 vs bw thread - in disguise.
Care to explain further how is he making this thread a Sc2 vs Bw thread ? I don't see any point he is raising here as saying one game is superior than another hence he is being objective which is good .
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On January 13 2012 11:50 iky43210 wrote:Show nested quote +The thing is, Big J, SC2 is lucky enough to have BW as a reference for design. Everyone says SC2 is a different game, and that is true, but the design essence of both BW and SC2 is the same.
While SC2 has its own virtues, in the shadow of BW its flaws are way too blatant to be ignored. What we know that works for a RTS now we know from BW, but SC2 seems to be taking steps further and further away from what made BW the best RTS game of all the time.
Nony's post says everything better than I could have done:
On January 12 2012 02:39 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
Show nested quote +
BW was very popular worldwide for an RTS. The biggest reasons why a game does not remain immensely popular do not reflect on the game's design. It's not completely fair which games get a shot at being a real competitive game and which don't. BW in Korea has gotten the best shot of any video game ever. Whether the Koreans got it wrong for sticking to the game or the rest of the world got it wrong for abandoning is not even worth time discussing; they have proven that it is a game worth playing for over a decade. There's no discussion to be had about it.
Now, given that BW did get a shot and has proven that it was worth it, we ought to examine it to learn how the game is designed for lessons on how to design future games. BW has gotten the closest out of any video game to becoming as successful as athletic games (soccer) and board games (chess) have become. It makes sense to stay close to its formula, especially when talking specifically about its sequel. Because though there may have been good designs in other RTS's like you said, none of them have added up to anything close to BW. So unless sticking to BW's formula puts us worse and worse off, there's no reason for us to shake up the hat and pick a game design at random that some folks theorize may be the best. broodwar popularity was medicore outside of Korea in 1990s, and even since then the taste and accustom have drastically changed for gamers in the 2010s. I think quite a smart move for Blizzard to create/adapt designs that may fit the tastes for modern generation gamers. For such a volatile industry, why would you stick with a decade old game design? what liquid tyler suggesting is suicidal, he did not given much thoughts into them. I'm just talking about that quotation specifically of course. What I truly feel about sc2 or bw design is not relevant
dustin browder talking
Go to the esport slide and watch it says right there, "you are going to need to build on the original or you are going to fail"
And they did the way the gameplay works is very similar to broodwar and there a lot of units from broodwar that work just like they did in broodwar. I don't see how using broodwar inspiration for a few more subtle parts like noticing armies look better if they spread out a bit(still with good path finding) or new units that control space better would have been so suicidal compared to what they did.
About 9.5 million copies of the original StarCraft have been sold globally, according to Blizzard, which does not release breakdowns for individual countries.
South Korea, however, accounts for almost half of the sales. HanbitSoft, the local distributor, says StarCraft has sold 4.5 million copies there.
source
that is from 2007. By then the taste of modern gamers must have changed and people were no longer interested in broodwar right?
Launched in 1998 for PC, the original Starcraft has sold over 11 million copies worldwide, Sams said.
source from 2009
Wow it sold over 1.5 million worldwide in those two years! That's more than some other modern rts's released in that time frame with new modern design but your right modern gamers would have hated something like broodwar. It sure is risky to make a game just like that one that outsold every other rts ever made and was still selling well a decade later.
I mean if broodwar really was a decade old game with mediocre popularity why were so many people hyped and excited for a sequel making it sell millions right away without Korea? Why isn't dawn of war 2 or something getting all that hype and sales it plays nothing like broodwar so it must be good and modern for modern gamers!
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because I got quite a few responses (just not from the guy I was talking to):
On January 13 2012 06:56 fabiano wrote:The thing is, Big J, SC2 is lucky enough to have BW as a reference for design. Everyone says SC2 is a different game, and that is true, but the design essence of both BW and SC2 is the same. While SC2 has its own virtues, in the shadow of BW its flaws are way too blatant to be ignored. What we know that works for a RTS now we know from BW, but SC2 seems to be taking steps further and further away from what made BW the best RTS game of all the time. Nony's post says everything better than I could have done: Show nested quote +On January 12 2012 02:39 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On January 12 2012 01:36 iky43210 wrote:
it smells bias when you do every one of your comparison with broodwar. This shows your lack of knowledge in the RTS universe in general and perhaps unwilling to accept advantages and good aspects other famous RTS games have.
It simply becomes a strong opinionated post when first thing you do is make a thread and do a one way comparison of X game with Y game, just let it go.
Broodwar is not popular and did not kick off anywhere else but Korea. Just a food for thought BW was very popular worldwide for an RTS. The biggest reasons why a game does not remain immensely popular do not reflect on the game's design. It's not completely fair which games get a shot at being a real competitive game and which don't. BW in Korea has gotten the best shot of any video game ever. Whether the Koreans got it wrong for sticking to the game or the rest of the world got it wrong for abandoning is not even worth time discussing; they have proven that it is a game worth playing for over a decade. There's no discussion to be had about it. Now, given that BW did get a shot and has proven that it was worth it, we ought to examine it to learn how the game is designed for lessons on how to design future games. BW has gotten the closest out of any video game to becoming as successful as athletic games (soccer) and board games (chess) have become. It makes sense to stay close to its formula, especially when talking specifically about its sequel. Because though there may have been good designs in other RTS's like you said, none of them have added up to anything close to BW. So unless sticking to BW's formula puts us worse and worse off, there's no reason for us to shake up the hat and pick a game design at random that some folks theorize may be the best.
yeah. that's all fine and right and everything. But first of all, as Tyler said: BW was the only RTS game that has ever been figuered at this level. We don't know, if other concepts (the CnC superhardcounter system, in which MG - infantry doesn't do shit to a tank, but they kill other infantry in a few shots; other ressource gathering systems; other map layouts; tech trees in which low tier units become more and more useless...) wouldn't work as well or even better on high level
And therefore it just makes sense (especially if you are blizzard and you have NEVER done a plain sequel... since WC2) to experiment around a little bit with such stuff (and it is only a little bit! SC2 is still kind of close to BW)
On January 13 2012 07:42 TaShadan wrote:
"honestly, I don't even think there is a single thing you could tell me that is an "RTS fundamental", which I can't give you a counterexample for. With mechanics it is probably different, but still I think that most of it is very game - and inside games even faction - dependent."
well there is
in every rts you need a good unit control and battle overview (for example react on minimap dots) and you need a speed (in some games you need less but if you are slow like shit and missclick alot you are screwed)
If you play a RTS game like WC3 Tower Wars 1.9 (you build towers for defense and you send units to run through your opponents maze/attack his towers), you don't even have control of your units. And the speed argument is mechanics, which I said was probably very transferable to any game.
On January 13 2012 11:25 JieXian wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2012 06:29 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 05:40 EternaLLegacy wrote:On January 13 2012 04:57 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 04:44 EternaLLegacy wrote:On January 13 2012 04:37 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 04:34 JieXian wrote:
Yes, the first year of sc/bw was much worse.
But you have to understand that gaming has changed a lot since 1995 when SC came out. I'm sure you'll agree these assumptions :
People who played SC thought, "wow this game looks cool! Aliens vs bugs vs humans whoaaaa!"
People come into SC2 thought : "Wow this game's going to be popular I should quit BW/WC3 (or any other game) since it's dying anyways/since I can't go anywhere with it anyways and the money will be gooooood."
Or "Wow I have a chance to get good money playing games I need to practice really hard to be good."
When people had problems in the first year of SC, they have figure out how to solve it themselves. There were no replays back then.
When people had problems in the first year of SC2, they can just look for replays on how other people are dealing with it and learn/copy from them. Or rewatch their replay 10 times to come up with a solution.
These are general statements and assumptions but I'm sure you can agree with me now that comparing the first year of both games is ridiculous.
then compare the first year of SC2 with the 3rd year of BW. with the 4th or 5th... you will still see that there was a HUGE development in BW in the following 5,6,7 years. And I mean giganticly huge. Dude, SC2 started from about the point at which foreign Broodwar was at when it came out. Dude, your duding opining has nothing to do with the duding reality. because the duding reality says that there were no duding banelings, no duding warp gates, no duding reactors and a couple of other duding things in BW. So none of your BW dudes could have known a dude about the metagame, that is still heavily under developement in any SC2 matchup. btw this kind of disagrees with your OP in which you talk about how all the stuff is completly different in SC2 from BW, (which leads to nothing being figuered out). and it would be pretty poor if all the 10years of BW gameplay development had only led to one thing: 4gate. 10 years of BW led to an understanding of RTS fundamentals and mechanics that wasn't present in any game. Strategy and metagame have absolutely nothing to do with that. Also, that kind of childish mockery only makes you look ridiculous. Avoid it if you want to be taken seriously. well, but most of the mechanics are pretty broodwar specific things. And most of the "RTS"-understanding is broodwar specific. Most of the broodwar things won't help you instantly when you go to a game like World in Conflict that don't even have bases or ressources. Only after you understand the metagame. Before that all your mechanics won't make heavy tanks a solid choice against infantry. And I'm not sure if we are really there in SC2 yet. Partially of course, but there is so much basic stuff being developed. One month we see a build just turning the whole metagame upside down, next month it has been solved and we are back to the standard from before. And don't tell me you can just overcome this with basic understanding and good mechanics. If build loses to another (standard) build, then the first build is simply not viable and another build has to be developed. And before all those options have been explored, there is no way arguing that SC2 started somewhere were close to where broodwar was. There is simply no dragoon pressure, no minefields, no lurkerrushes around in SC2. There is other stuff. And right now we don't even know exactly which stuff is around. If some Terrans keep showing off that certain (many) builds in TvT can simply get destroyed by reaperrushes, then we have to question each and every of these openings. We even have to question the follow ups, because what if there was a "bigger" reaper rush that would destroy these? Not a few months ago ZvZ was considered to be a rock-scissor-paper scenario (early pool - 14/14 - 15hatch). These days we see many Zergs going back to ling/bling rushes, because they have the SC2 mechanics and the SC2 understanding to emphasize on those tiny advantages they get in army and tech. This is specific knowledge. A BW pro doesn't know this and has to experience this himself, to see why 14/14 pool can be pretty good in a lot of scenarios vs 15hatch. Furthermore I want to question this part about "understanding of RTS fundamentals". RTS games are soooo far spread: from no base management only micro games to no micro only basemanagement games from zero ressources to Idk... 10? from no hardcounter (armor type etc), to 1unit being 10.000% costefficieny against the right units from action from the first minute games to turtle wars honestly, I don't even think there is a single thing you could tell me that is an "RTS fundamental", which I can't give you a counterexample for. With mechanics it is probably different, but still I think that most of it is very game - and inside games even faction - dependent. Addressing "RTS fundamentals": It took time before people know how to manage their econ and workers. It took time before people know that they need to Maynard workers (wow what a coincidence that he played wc2 and aoe at a high level. People know that taking more bases meant less money/tech/army now more money later. People know about the tech vs money vs econ thing. People know what micro and macro is. Just a few examples of RTS fundamentals off my head. When I say people I mean waaaaaaaaay more people than in 1998 of course, because even if a few of them know something information doesn't spread fast.
-) CnC 4 or World in Conflict has no workers or economy, so it's not a fundamental
-) same argument, there are no workers there. Or other argument: in a game in which all your workers have a short lifetime (like mules), transfering them is probably a bad idea. Also transfering workers is already a bad idea in BW, if the distance is rather big. Now imagine a map that has no close expansions. Suddenly this fundamental becomes a game AND mapspecific feature.
-) More money later: Well that's something everyone with a basic math understanding can tell you and nothing that has been learned in BW. Progamers had to learn in BW that expansions will pay off, but that is very specific knowledge.
But what if you play a game without expansions? What if you play a game in which building an economy is ressource free and therefore only limited by time and clicks (kind of the situation in Empire Earth, once you had farms, workers were so cheap that building more of them didn't hurt you at all)?
Other RTS games don't need to have tech at all. Or it doesn't interact with money or economy.
Or just play fastest map ever in Starcraft... taking more bases doesn't make a lot of sense there.
-) Macro and Micro are defined terms. People always did that since the beginning of RTS games (if the game allowed for it at least... again, tower wars has no micro management, CnC4 has no macro management).
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Everything in this post is correct, except maybe the part about Tanks holding their own?
They function much better due to instant hits and splash and clumped units, but they also take up 3 food in a food strapped game. Tanks were never meant to really hold anything alone unless there were a lot of them.
I don't think tank use in SC II has been explored as much as it can be by a long shot.
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Its true that forcefield and fungal does promote other micro/preperation like positioning and baiting. Thats how sc2 players have come to adapt. What i think, along with many others, wants to see more micro orientated plays like loading up on medivacs vs forcefield, splitting against banelings, vulture/dragoon, irradiate, lurker/marine, splitting vs reaver, etc.
What i mean is that, its fine one unit has a clear advantge over the other, but micro should be able to minimize that gap. This still exists in sc2 but minimal and has become blatant like zealot vs marauder.
Little less focus on composition and little more on micro. This is what sets apart between two players. I think micro should reward more than composition, imo.
Dont take it word for word, just trying to get the idea across.
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On January 13 2012 18:18 jinorazi wrote:
Its true that forcefield and fungal does promote other micro/preperation like positioning and baiting. Thats how sc2 players have come to adapt. What i think, along with many others, wants to see more micro orientated plays like loading up on medivacs vs forcefield, splitting against banelings, vulture/dragoon, irradiate, lurker/marine, splitting vs reaver, etc.
What i mean is that, its fine one unit has a clear advantge over the other, but micro should be able to minimize that gap. This still exists in sc2 but minimal and has become blatant like zealot vs marauder.
Little less focus on composition and little more on micro. This is what sets apart between two players. I think micro should reward more than composition, imo.
Dont take it word for word, just trying to get the idea across.
YES exactly. for example in TvZ even with smaller army you can still fight cost-efectively with good target firing and micro. In TvP when you have not enough vikings to kill their collo fast enough you can't do shit.
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On January 13 2012 20:27 PredY wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2012 18:18 jinorazi wrote:
Its true that forcefield and fungal does promote other micro/preperation like positioning and baiting. Thats how sc2 players have come to adapt. What i think, along with many others, wants to see more micro orientated plays like loading up on medivacs vs forcefield, splitting against banelings, vulture/dragoon, irradiate, lurker/marine, splitting vs reaver, etc.
What i mean is that, its fine one unit has a clear advantge over the other, but micro should be able to minimize that gap. This still exists in sc2 but minimal and has become blatant like zealot vs marauder.
Little less focus on composition and little more on micro. This is what sets apart between two players. I think micro should reward more than composition, imo.
Dont take it word for word, just trying to get the idea across.
YES exactly. for example in TvZ even with smaller army you can still fight cost-efectively with good target firing and micro. In TvP when you have not enough vikings to kill their collo fast enough you can't do shit.
and do you know, for ZvT, your scenario is the opposite. Less units and micro = lol just die.
and in ZvP, the scenario is exactly the same for zerg as it is for terran. not enough corroptor or they die too fast = lol just die.
Additionally, zerg was the swarm race. brood war zerg was cheap, supply efficient, and fast. sc2 zerg is expensive, supply inefficient, and moderately fast to mediocre. Zerg was the race that used slightly less micro by making up for that in numbers of correctly picked units. zerg now has a deficit in this corner, and also must micro like mad to whittle down T or P forces before or during a fight in order to win a battle, and if zerg has less forces, microing doesn't mean shit.
So you as Terran have at least one non-mirror matchup where you can micro better with a smaller force and win. Thats one more than zerg gets. I hope that with your frustration at colossus now you can understand zerg frustration with both T and P.
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On January 13 2012 23:06 Humanfails wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2012 20:27 PredY wrote:On January 13 2012 18:18 jinorazi wrote:
Its true that forcefield and fungal does promote other micro/preperation like positioning and baiting. Thats how sc2 players have come to adapt. What i think, along with many others, wants to see more micro orientated plays like loading up on medivacs vs forcefield, splitting against banelings, vulture/dragoon, irradiate, lurker/marine, splitting vs reaver, etc.
What i mean is that, its fine one unit has a clear advantge over the other, but micro should be able to minimize that gap. This still exists in sc2 but minimal and has become blatant like zealot vs marauder.
Little less focus on composition and little more on micro. This is what sets apart between two players. I think micro should reward more than composition, imo.
Dont take it word for word, just trying to get the idea across.
YES exactly. for example in TvZ even with smaller army you can still fight cost-efectively with good target firing and micro. In TvP when you have not enough vikings to kill their collo fast enough you can't do shit. and do you know, for ZvT, your scenario is the opposite. Less units and micro = lol just die. and in ZvP, the scenario is exactly the same for zerg as it is for terran. not enough corroptor or they die too fast = lol just die. Additionally, zerg was the swarm race. brood war zerg was cheap, supply efficient, and fast. sc2 zerg is expensive, supply inefficient, and moderately fast to mediocre. Zerg was the race that used slightly less micro by making up for that in numbers of correctly picked units. zerg now has a deficit in this corner, and also must micro like mad to whittle down T or P forces before or during a fight in order to win a battle, and if zerg has less forces, microing doesn't mean shit. So you as Terran have at least one non-mirror matchup where you can micro better with a smaller force and win. Thats one more than zerg gets. I hope that with your frustration at colossus now you can understand zerg frustration with both T and P.
I think you got it backwards in BW. Zerg is the race that used the most micro to make supply inefficient armies beat bigger armies. 3 lurkers on a ramp = infinity marines held. 1 Swarm + a few lurkers = natural cannot be broken.
Most of zerg's units actually get eaten up moving from position to position, rather than in direct combat. Once in position, zerg was stupidly supply/cost efficient.
All the races worked that way though. Terran mech was absolutely ludicrous to engage into if set up, but easily toppled if out of position. Terran had to sacrifice infinity vultures to move tanks into better positions.
Protoss is the least positional race, but PvZ was exceptionally positional, because protoss had to fortify bases with cannons + reavers + HT, any of which would be decimated on their own, and any of which are fragile out in the open. Not to mention, P had to hide behind cannons until necessary techs were ready. Cannons are the positional unit for protoss. They're how you secure territory without a major force.
...Just so people have an understanding of how units in BW worked positionally.
And your point regarding SC2 is exactly my biggest gripe, which is that if your army is smaller you almost always lose.
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On January 13 2012 17:01 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2012 11:25 JieXian wrote:On January 13 2012 06:29 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 05:40 EternaLLegacy wrote:On January 13 2012 04:57 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 04:44 EternaLLegacy wrote:On January 13 2012 04:37 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 04:34 JieXian wrote:
Yes, the first year of sc/bw was much worse.
But you have to understand that gaming has changed a lot since 1995 when SC came out. I'm sure you'll agree these assumptions :
People who played SC thought, "wow this game looks cool! Aliens vs bugs vs humans whoaaaa!"
People come into SC2 thought : "Wow this game's going to be popular I should quit BW/WC3 (or any other game) since it's dying anyways/since I can't go anywhere with it anyways and the money will be gooooood."
Or "Wow I have a chance to get good money playing games I need to practice really hard to be good."
When people had problems in the first year of SC, they have figure out how to solve it themselves. There were no replays back then.
When people had problems in the first year of SC2, they can just look for replays on how other people are dealing with it and learn/copy from them. Or rewatch their replay 10 times to come up with a solution.
These are general statements and assumptions but I'm sure you can agree with me now that comparing the first year of both games is ridiculous.
then compare the first year of SC2 with the 3rd year of BW. with the 4th or 5th... you will still see that there was a HUGE development in BW in the following 5,6,7 years. And I mean giganticly huge. Dude, SC2 started from about the point at which foreign Broodwar was at when it came out. Dude, your duding opining has nothing to do with the duding reality. because the duding reality says that there were no duding banelings, no duding warp gates, no duding reactors and a couple of other duding things in BW. So none of your BW dudes could have known a dude about the metagame, that is still heavily under developement in any SC2 matchup. btw this kind of disagrees with your OP in which you talk about how all the stuff is completly different in SC2 from BW, (which leads to nothing being figuered out). and it would be pretty poor if all the 10years of BW gameplay development had only led to one thing: 4gate. 10 years of BW led to an understanding of RTS fundamentals and mechanics that wasn't present in any game. Strategy and metagame have absolutely nothing to do with that. Also, that kind of childish mockery only makes you look ridiculous. Avoid it if you want to be taken seriously. well, but most of the mechanics are pretty broodwar specific things. And most of the "RTS"-understanding is broodwar specific. Most of the broodwar things won't help you instantly when you go to a game like World in Conflict that don't even have bases or ressources. Only after you understand the metagame. Before that all your mechanics won't make heavy tanks a solid choice against infantry. And I'm not sure if we are really there in SC2 yet. Partially of course, but there is so much basic stuff being developed. One month we see a build just turning the whole metagame upside down, next month it has been solved and we are back to the standard from before. And don't tell me you can just overcome this with basic understanding and good mechanics. If build loses to another (standard) build, then the first build is simply not viable and another build has to be developed. And before all those options have been explored, there is no way arguing that SC2 started somewhere were close to where broodwar was. There is simply no dragoon pressure, no minefields, no lurkerrushes around in SC2. There is other stuff. And right now we don't even know exactly which stuff is around. If some Terrans keep showing off that certain (many) builds in TvT can simply get destroyed by reaperrushes, then we have to question each and every of these openings. We even have to question the follow ups, because what if there was a "bigger" reaper rush that would destroy these? Not a few months ago ZvZ was considered to be a rock-scissor-paper scenario (early pool - 14/14 - 15hatch). These days we see many Zergs going back to ling/bling rushes, because they have the SC2 mechanics and the SC2 understanding to emphasize on those tiny advantages they get in army and tech. This is specific knowledge. A BW pro doesn't know this and has to experience this himself, to see why 14/14 pool can be pretty good in a lot of scenarios vs 15hatch. Furthermore I want to question this part about "understanding of RTS fundamentals". RTS games are soooo far spread: from no base management only micro games to no micro only basemanagement games from zero ressources to Idk... 10? from no hardcounter (armor type etc), to 1unit being 10.000% costefficieny against the right units from action from the first minute games to turtle wars honestly, I don't even think there is a single thing you could tell me that is an "RTS fundamental", which I can't give you a counterexample for. With mechanics it is probably different, but still I think that most of it is very game - and inside games even faction - dependent. Addressing "RTS fundamentals": It took time before people know how to manage their econ and workers. It took time before people know that they need to Maynard workers (wow what a coincidence that he played wc2 and aoe at a high level. People know that taking more bases meant less money/tech/army now more money later. People know about the tech vs money vs econ thing. People know what micro and macro is. Just a few examples of RTS fundamentals off my head. When I say people I mean waaaaaaaaay more people than in 1998 of course, because even if a few of them know something information doesn't spread fast. -) CnC 4 or World in Conflict has no workers or economy, so it's not a fundamental -) same argument, there are no workers there. Or other argument: in a game in which all your workers have a short lifetime (like mules), transfering them is probably a bad idea. Also transfering workers is already a bad idea in BW, if the distance is rather big. Now imagine a map that has no close expansions. Suddenly this fundamental becomes a game AND mapspecific feature. -) More money later: Well that's something everyone with a basic math understanding can tell you and nothing that has been learned in BW. Progamers had to learn in BW that expansions will pay off, but that is very specific knowledge. But what if you play a game without expansions? What if you play a game in which building an economy is ressource free and therefore only limited by time and clicks (kind of the situation in Empire Earth, once you had farms, workers were so cheap that building more of them didn't hurt you at all)? Other RTS games don't need to have tech at all. Or it doesn't interact with money or economy. Or just play fastest map ever in Starcraft... taking more bases doesn't make a lot of sense there. -) Macro and Micro are defined terms. People always did that since the beginning of RTS games (if the game allowed for it at least... again, tower wars has no micro management, CnC4 has no macro management).
Ok I don't know for sure but, how many trend setters in SC2 are from CnC and Empire Earth where there's little correlation? The top 5 international and Korean players in SC2 are either from BW(MMA MVP Nestea), switched to BW (Beasty) to prepare themselves or are from WC3(Naniwa, Sase).
I'm limiting to trend setters because this isn't 1998 as I said, and everyone copies the top players. I welcome you to prove me wrong if there are some top players from those cnc or ee. Otherwise your long ramble about those 2 games is irrelevant.
Fastest BW is a fun mode.... still I'd assume that someone who played fastest will have a better understanding than on who didn't. Yet, if a game doesn't have either micro or macro, you'd at least learn either micro or macro, that's always better than coming in knowing nothing.
On January 13 2012 17:01 Big J wrote:
Also transfering workers is already a bad idea in BW, if the distance is rather big.
errrrr are you below plat or something? Pros and D players do it all the time.... There's absolutely no reason not to, if it's safe (pros will devise a plan to make it safe to do so). I don't understand why people won't do it in SC2 if they have an empty base and they have saturated all their bases.
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On January 11 2012 06:53 Treehead wrote:
I like the general flavor of the article - that this game needs more options centered around controlling terrain and less options around building an army, that this game needs units with more micro (and to make the micro required cause a unit to be more rewarding than 1aing marauders, roaches or colossi), and that the lack of useful static defense is hurting the game. I agree with the general spirit that the game needs to turn more towards chess, and less towards... whatever 1a-ing armies against each other is supposed to be. However, I think some of the specific complaints are either wrong or misleading. I think the sentry and phoenix are interesting units micro-wise, and are adding to the interactions of the game.
I’d love to see protoss get a space-controlling unit. That will probably never happen, though. Expanding in any matchup as P is real scary right now.
Actually, this said everything I wanted to say but couldn't find the right words for. Well done.
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On January 14 2012 00:58 JieXian wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2012 17:01 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 11:25 JieXian wrote:On January 13 2012 06:29 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 05:40 EternaLLegacy wrote:On January 13 2012 04:57 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 04:44 EternaLLegacy wrote:On January 13 2012 04:37 Big J wrote:On January 13 2012 04:34 JieXian wrote:
Yes, the first year of sc/bw was much worse.
But you have to understand that gaming has changed a lot since 1995 when SC came out. I'm sure you'll agree these assumptions :
People who played SC thought, "wow this game looks cool! Aliens vs bugs vs humans whoaaaa!"
People come into SC2 thought : "Wow this game's going to be popular I should quit BW/WC3 (or any other game) since it's dying anyways/since I can't go anywhere with it anyways and the money will be gooooood."
Or "Wow I have a chance to get good money playing games I need to practice really hard to be good."
When people had problems in the first year of SC, they have figure out how to solve it themselves. There were no replays back then.
When people had problems in the first year of SC2, they can just look for replays on how other people are dealing with it and learn/copy from them. Or rewatch their replay 10 times to come up with a solution.
These are general statements and assumptions but I'm sure you can agree with me now that comparing the first year of both games is ridiculous.
then compare the first year of SC2 with the 3rd year of BW. with the 4th or 5th... you will still see that there was a HUGE development in BW in the following 5,6,7 years. And I mean giganticly huge. Dude, SC2 started from about the point at which foreign Broodwar was at when it came out. Dude, your duding opining has nothing to do with the duding reality. because the duding reality says that there were no duding banelings, no duding warp gates, no duding reactors and a couple of other duding things in BW. So none of your BW dudes could have known a dude about the metagame, that is still heavily under developement in any SC2 matchup. btw this kind of disagrees with your OP in which you talk about how all the stuff is completly different in SC2 from BW, (which leads to nothing being figuered out). and it would be pretty poor if all the 10years of BW gameplay development had only led to one thing: 4gate. 10 years of BW led to an understanding of RTS fundamentals and mechanics that wasn't present in any game. Strategy and metagame have absolutely nothing to do with that. Also, that kind of childish mockery only makes you look ridiculous. Avoid it if you want to be taken seriously. well, but most of the mechanics are pretty broodwar specific things. And most of the "RTS"-understanding is broodwar specific. Most of the broodwar things won't help you instantly when you go to a game like World in Conflict that don't even have bases or ressources. Only after you understand the metagame. Before that all your mechanics won't make heavy tanks a solid choice against infantry. And I'm not sure if we are really there in SC2 yet. Partially of course, but there is so much basic stuff being developed. One month we see a build just turning the whole metagame upside down, next month it has been solved and we are back to the standard from before. And don't tell me you can just overcome this with basic understanding and good mechanics. If build loses to another (standard) build, then the first build is simply not viable and another build has to be developed. And before all those options have been explored, there is no way arguing that SC2 started somewhere were close to where broodwar was. There is simply no dragoon pressure, no minefields, no lurkerrushes around in SC2. There is other stuff. And right now we don't even know exactly which stuff is around. If some Terrans keep showing off that certain (many) builds in TvT can simply get destroyed by reaperrushes, then we have to question each and every of these openings. We even have to question the follow ups, because what if there was a "bigger" reaper rush that would destroy these? Not a few months ago ZvZ was considered to be a rock-scissor-paper scenario (early pool - 14/14 - 15hatch). These days we see many Zergs going back to ling/bling rushes, because they have the SC2 mechanics and the SC2 understanding to emphasize on those tiny advantages they get in army and tech. This is specific knowledge. A BW pro doesn't know this and has to experience this himself, to see why 14/14 pool can be pretty good in a lot of scenarios vs 15hatch. Furthermore I want to question this part about "understanding of RTS fundamentals". RTS games are soooo far spread: from no base management only micro games to no micro only basemanagement games from zero ressources to Idk... 10? from no hardcounter (armor type etc), to 1unit being 10.000% costefficieny against the right units from action from the first minute games to turtle wars honestly, I don't even think there is a single thing you could tell me that is an "RTS fundamental", which I can't give you a counterexample for. With mechanics it is probably different, but still I think that most of it is very game - and inside games even faction - dependent. Addressing "RTS fundamentals": It took time before people know how to manage their econ and workers. It took time before people know that they need to Maynard workers (wow what a coincidence that he played wc2 and aoe at a high level. People know that taking more bases meant less money/tech/army now more money later. People know about the tech vs money vs econ thing. People know what micro and macro is. Just a few examples of RTS fundamentals off my head. When I say people I mean waaaaaaaaay more people than in 1998 of course, because even if a few of them know something information doesn't spread fast. -) CnC 4 or World in Conflict has no workers or economy, so it's not a fundamental -) same argument, there are no workers there. Or other argument: in a game in which all your workers have a short lifetime (like mules), transfering them is probably a bad idea. Also transfering workers is already a bad idea in BW, if the distance is rather big. Now imagine a map that has no close expansions. Suddenly this fundamental becomes a game AND mapspecific feature. -) More money later: Well that's something everyone with a basic math understanding can tell you and nothing that has been learned in BW. Progamers had to learn in BW that expansions will pay off, but that is very specific knowledge. But what if you play a game without expansions? What if you play a game in which building an economy is ressource free and therefore only limited by time and clicks (kind of the situation in Empire Earth, once you had farms, workers were so cheap that building more of them didn't hurt you at all)? Other RTS games don't need to have tech at all. Or it doesn't interact with money or economy. Or just play fastest map ever in Starcraft... taking more bases doesn't make a lot of sense there. -) Macro and Micro are defined terms. People always did that since the beginning of RTS games (if the game allowed for it at least... again, tower wars has no micro management, CnC4 has no macro management). Show nested quote +On January 14 2012 00:58 JieXian wrote:
Ok I don't know for sure but, how many trend setters in SC2 are from CnC and Empire Earth where there's little correlation? The top 5 international and Korean players in SC2 are either from BW(MMA MVP Nestea), switched to BW (Beasty) to prepare themselves or are from WC3(Naniwa, Sase).
I'm limiting to trend setters because this isn't 1998 as I said, and everyone copies the top players. I welcome you to prove me wrong if there are some top players from those cnc or ee. Otherwise your long ramble about those 2 games is irrelevant.
Fastest BW is a fun mode.... still I'd assume that someone who played fastest will have a better understanding than on who didn't. Yet, if a game doesn't have either micro or macro, you'd at least learn either micro or macro, that's always better than coming in knowing nothing.
Well, you were talking about RTS fundamentals. I just gave counterexamples why those aren't RTS fundamentals. Never said anything about that being related to SC2, rather just wanted to proof that different game means different stuff is efficient/possible/required.
I would never disagree that SC2 isn't very closly related to SC:BW. But I disagree that therefore skills are easily transferable. F.e. if I learn something like the backspace inject methode for SC2, it is a pure SC2 skill. Similar for macroing in BW. You won't need that skill in SC2, where you can put more buildings into one Ctrl group. Or like methodes for microing dragoons, vultures or mutalisks are simply different in SC2... No discussion about top fast players (no matter which PC game they are from) being able to learn this very quickly and possibly invent new stuff themselves, but still it has to be learned from scratch. Similar for RTS knowledge: if you are good at any RTS game, you will soon understand that Starcraft 2 is a game that is about distributing ones attention on the right things at the right times. But f.e. if a crackling runby in BW is superhigh priority in ones play, in SC2 it is not, because the canons will hold unless it is a whole army of zerglings...
SC2 just like BW is a game of experience. If you don't have enough of it, you can't be good.
On January 14 2012 00:58 JieXian wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2012 17:01 Big J wrote:
Also transfering workers is already a bad idea in BW, if the distance is rather big. errrrr are you below plat or something? Pros and D players do it all the time.... There's absolutely no reason not to, if it's safe (pros will devise a plan to make it safe to do so). I don't understand why people won't do it in SC2 if they have an empty base and they have saturated all their bases.
Because
a) it is a different game and therefore not efficient enough to justify for the income lost and the risk taken, or
b) because people haven't figuered it out yet, the argument many "BW-elitists" (dont want to call anyone like that, because I think it is kind of rude to, but just that you know who is getting adressed by this... in the time I wrote this, I could have written something else long-windedly as well ^^) like the OP don't agree on - just re - read the full quotes.
Well or c) the "elephant argument": everyone who plays SC2 is too dumb to figure. (which is actually just point b) with a different motivation to put it)
All I want to say is, that no matter how much RTS or BW or whatever experience you have, you will have to learn the SC2 specific mechanics and the SC2 specific fundamentals and the SC2 specific metagame.
And the later you start with that, the more you will have to learn and therefore the longer it will take you to get good.
And the same is true of course for every other RTS game. Of course it will be pretty easy to dominate some CnC which is only played by a few thousand players overall, but if you want to do that in SC2 or WC3, you better train a lot of SC2 and not something else that is kind of similar.
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On January 11 2012 03:45 Markwerf wrote:
Pff alot of these are just disguised balance whines.
First of all you don't seem to know that much about gamedesign I'm realising. Complexity is not the holy grail in game design which your article does make it seem to be. Depth while remaining clarity is important. Chess is a great game because it's complex but still relatively easy to understand and thus strategize for, you don't have to know how to win directly for example by simply focussing on winning pieces allowing for people to plan strategies while not being experts. Go on the other hand is by many players especially in more Western societies deemed as too complex because it's very hard to set intermediar goals for the game because the game is more difficult to set subgoals for.
Microless units are needed to create important units, if each unit had many abilities etc it would become too chaotic or complex. The microless units you mention are not poorly designed at all imo in fact many of them have interesting abilities i think. Roach for example may look like a boring vanilla unit but wasn't the hydra in BW as well? Roaches being no AA means there is much more room for air units to play a crucial role in XvZ matchups a great design choice imo. The only poor unit design mentioned in this article here is the colossus, not per se because it's boring in itself but because of the counterunits (viking and corruptor) that there are which invalidate other cool units (battlecruiser and carrier).
In the same vein I don't see units that restrict micro as poor either. In the case of the sentry there is plenty that can be done about it for example, flanking, dropping, burrow, fungal, emp, etc.etc. Losing to it is aggrevating perhaps but that doesn't make the design poor, it's just a hidden balance whine.. Stasis and lockdown where liked abilities as well how are stuff like fungal etc different? If truly nothing could be done about these abilities then it might be problematic but there really is plenty you can do, for example marauder kiting can be solved by forcefields so these 'unfun' mechanics can perfectly solve eachother.
The point about a slight lack of zone control units I agree with but saying siege tanks don't fulfill that role now is silly. The entire TvZ matchup and TvT matchup revolve for a large part about zone and map control because of the siege tank. Saying this doesn't work properly is just silly, breaking siege lines is still very hard. The problem is just that you seem to be comparing the game to BW too much, yes PvT is not the same and the PvT there is now might not as good the BW variant but that doesn't mean the tank is broken.. they just chose an other path for sc2.
All this pretending to be some game design guru while it's just an elaborate balance whine basically is annoying. The conclusion is also just complete bogus.
This is so horribly written I just have no words for it.
First off he had a whole section which detailed how adding complexity is not always the best thing. Second you keep constantly saying about how this entire thing is a balance whine. THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK SIR. A balance whine against who? Units from every single race were talked about! His whole entire post explains that sc2 is very simple to play, but lacks depth (if you read part 1 as well).
Microless units are bad for the game, pure and simple. What you are confusing (which I would expect from a person who sounds like he's played BW twice) is micro with units which have abilities or spells. A unit with good micro potential does not necessarily mean that it has some sort of interesting gimmick about it. Look at classic examples. The zergling has no special ability and yet due to its speed and surface area requirement to do damage, micro is a necessity to be effective with the zergling.
The one thing I agree with in this post is that things that restrict micro are not always bad. For example the reason the reaver was considered such a good unit was because it was slow and required micro. The way that sc2 does it though is to take micro completely out of the equation. Force fields which completely seal off roaches make it impossible for the roaches to get out and they are essentially dead. FG on a group of marines make it impossible for marines to escape and they're dead. There needs to be something that a player could do to minimize damage. A couple ideas that I've had is killable force fields with high armor or make FG a single cast ability which spreads to units clumped up next to the infected. This way getting caught by one fg doesn't mean the entire army dies.
The poor design choice behind the colossus is not due to its counters. The poor design choice is due to the fact that it is a pure class cannon just like the siege tank which is countered by everything and nothing. The fact that positioning almost doesn't matter for colossi is what makes them a poor design choice is that they are a damage machine which benefit almost nothing from being microed in a battle. If you think that pulling your colossi back is "adequate micro" then you need to go watch some reaver shuttle micro.
Last thing is please don't use BW units as examples. It seems to me like you've played BW maybe a total of a dozen times if that. The hydralisk needed to be microed to be good. Positioning, flanking, and kiting are key for hydras. You may say that the roach does the same thing, but positioning becomes null and void when you have more roaches. Flanking becomes dangerous because of how close roaches have to get to their targets. Kiting is useless if you have more roaches or they have a bigger army. Stasis lockdown were not used as spells to restrict micro. Stasis was used as a method to minimize dps of tanks. Lockdown was on the same vein. They cost too much energy to be used on a retreating army.
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The way that sc2 does it though is to take micro completely out of the equation. Force fields which completely seal off roaches make it impossible for the roaches to get out and they are essentially dead. FG on a group of marines make it impossible for marines to escape and they're dead. There needs to be something that a player could do to minimize damage. A couple ideas that I've had is killable force fields with high armor or make FG a single cast ability which spreads to units clumped up next to the infected. This way getting caught by one fg doesn't mean the entire army dies.
There is something players do to minimize damage it's called positioning, yes if you keep your army in one giant ball FF, Fungal and EMP will trash you but that's not because the spells are too powerful it's just that they are very good at punishing players who are lazy about their positioning. Now you need to bait spells, split your army and be careful about where you engage.
Last thing is please don't use BW units as examples. It seems to me like you've played BW maybe a total of a dozen times if that. The hydralisk needed to be microed to be good. Positioning, flanking, and kiting are key for hydras. You may say that the roach does the same thing, but positioning becomes null and void when you have more roaches. Flanking becomes dangerous because of how close roaches have to get to their targets. Kiting is useless if you have more roaches or they have a bigger army.
I can say the same to you, it seems like you've played Sc2 maybe a total of a dozen times. Positioning, flanking and kiting are just as important for the roach in Sc2 as they were for the hydra in Sc:BW.
Simply A-Moving more roachs will never "solve" sentries, simple A-moving more roachs will never "solve" Marauders, no amount of roachs can simple engage a Marine/Tank wall head on profitably and your comment about kiting is completely nonsensical, yes you don't need to kite vs Ling/Bling or zealots if you have enough roachs but it's still more cost effective to do so then not and yes if they have enough of an army you can't kite it to death with Roachs but again you still get more use out of them then you would if you just A Moved.
Stasis lockdown were not used as spells to restrict micro.
So Stasis, maelstorm and lockdown just removed units ability to move or attack but didn't restrict your ability to micro....
Makes perfect sense.
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OP, i've learned in making these threads you have to exclude any comparison to or mention of BW, or SC2 players wil immediately be turned off to your arguments and just cry "this game isn't BW!", ending alll rational discussion.
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Force fields are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than stasis though. Maelstorm and lockdown were far from being needed to the standard game, they are used to do some rare fancy tactics.
But FFs are part of the core Protoss strategies, without it you die.
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micro limiting spells existed in bw. the key difference is, in bw, it was late, late game stuff and rarely used because it took long (tech+upgrade+waiting for mana regeneration)
it is very abundant in sc2.
blizzard wanted to make it fancy for the viewers, therefore making spells available earlier in the game.
i guess the debate is, is it good or bad for the gameplay?
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On January 13 2012 23:19 EternaLLegacy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2012 23:06 Humanfails wrote:On January 13 2012 20:27 PredY wrote:On January 13 2012 18:18 jinorazi wrote:
Its true that forcefield and fungal does promote other micro/preperation like positioning and baiting. Thats how sc2 players have come to adapt. What i think, along with many others, wants to see more micro orientated plays like loading up on medivacs vs forcefield, splitting against banelings, vulture/dragoon, irradiate, lurker/marine, splitting vs reaver, etc.
What i mean is that, its fine one unit has a clear advantge over the other, but micro should be able to minimize that gap. This still exists in sc2 but minimal and has become blatant like zealot vs marauder.
Little less focus on composition and little more on micro. This is what sets apart between two players. I think micro should reward more than composition, imo.
Dont take it word for word, just trying to get the idea across.
YES exactly. for example in TvZ even with smaller army you can still fight cost-efectively with good target firing and micro. In TvP when you have not enough vikings to kill their collo fast enough you can't do shit. and do you know, for ZvT, your scenario is the opposite. Less units and micro = lol just die. and in ZvP, the scenario is exactly the same for zerg as it is for terran. not enough corroptor or they die too fast = lol just die. Additionally, zerg was the swarm race. brood war zerg was cheap, supply efficient, and fast. sc2 zerg is expensive, supply inefficient, and moderately fast to mediocre. Zerg was the race that used slightly less micro by making up for that in numbers of correctly picked units. zerg now has a deficit in this corner, and also must micro like mad to whittle down T or P forces before or during a fight in order to win a battle, and if zerg has less forces, microing doesn't mean shit. So you as Terran have at least one non-mirror matchup where you can micro better with a smaller force and win. Thats one more than zerg gets. I hope that with your frustration at colossus now you can understand zerg frustration with both T and P. I think you got it backwards in BW. Zerg is the race that used the most micro to make supply inefficient armies beat bigger armies. 3 lurkers on a ramp = infinity marines held. 1 Swarm + a few lurkers = natural cannot be broken. Most of zerg's units actually get eaten up moving from position to position, rather than in direct combat. Once in position, zerg was stupidly supply/cost efficient. All the races worked that way though. Terran mech was absolutely ludicrous to engage into if set up, but easily toppled if out of position. Terran had to sacrifice infinity vultures to move tanks into better positions. Protoss is the least positional race, but PvZ was exceptionally positional, because protoss had to fortify bases with cannons + reavers + HT, any of which would be decimated on their own, and any of which are fragile out in the open. Not to mention, P had to hide behind cannons until necessary techs were ready. Cannons are the positional unit for protoss. They're how you secure territory without a major force. ...Just so people have an understanding of how units in BW worked positionally. And your point regarding SC2 is exactly my biggest gripe, which is that if your army is smaller you almost always lose.
Your point is valid and Blizzard "seems" to agree with you. Everyone wants a more "stable" game that allows a player who dots their i's and crosses their t's to win. Blizzard has said that they are trying to "pull food out of the ball" with HotS. They don't want to break with the game that have right now, since creating a balanced game of any kind is difficult as it is. I have hopes that the game will move away from the ball, or at least make it risky. There is some merit to putting all your units together and making a huge push, but it should not be the default.
The problem is that all of this takes time. They need to create a game, give it to several million people, let those people break it, fix it, let them break it again, fix it. At some point, they add new units in and the process starts over. BW is amazing, but it has such a history to draw on. So many disproven theories on how to play and a wealth of evidence to back that up. SC2 has none of this and won't for some time. I respect that BW is a deeper game, but that has more to do with the amount of time it has been around. If you released a "new" BW on the same engine with different units and abilites, its play would like look as simple as SC2's does. Only after years of play are those units and abilities refined down to their perfect uses.
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On January 14 2012 04:15 jinorazi wrote:
micro limiting spells existed in bw. the key difference is, in bw, it was late, late game stuff and rarely used because it took long (tech+upgrade+waiting for mana regeneration)
it is very abundant in sc2.
blizzard wanted to make it fancy for the viewers, therefore making spells available earlier in the game.
i guess the debate is, is it good or bad for the gameplay?
and the debate has to be led about each and every single such spell, because as seen from broodwar, different spells (the broodwar ones) and different usage (the broodwar usage) in a different enviroment (broodwar) lead to a different opinion within the same person.
Furthermore things like Siege Tanks, Lurkers and dark swarm could be regarded as such things as well. They limit you're ability to micro, because they limit the area in which micro can take place. But that again is also an interesting aspect of such spells.
If you want to hear my opinion on those things:
FFs are necessary, but I don't like their offensive usabilities (probably because I'm zerg). If they could get rid of it, or change it so you can't use mass sentries offensively, I would love that.
Fungal is a great spell imo. Used with burrowed infestors (or without them), it allows for so much stuff, not even to mention infestor drops etc. It really makes it necessary to split up your units when engaging infestor play and also to keep them split at all times. Also the low dps (yes fungal has very low dps compared to real high dps units like bio or lings or blings or tanks or colossi etc...) make it so that not overfungaling is important, which makes it hard to control in a battle, when lots of things are going on. The only thing that is a little frustrating is to see how strong it is against zealots and sentries and zerglings and banelings (like storm in SC2 and BW)
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EPT
