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On January 14 2012 04:52 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +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)
Dark swarm is a great example that forces micro and does not prevent micro.
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On January 14 2012 04:59 jinorazi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2012 04:52 Big J wrote: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) Dark swarm is a great example that forces micro and does not prevent micro.
exactly. like fungal. it decreases microability in a certain area and increases overall micro in a battle
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no, because it's not possible to escape from a fungal, they are not actually the same, this is why they are adding it in HOTS
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On January 14 2012 05:39 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2012 04:59 jinorazi wrote:On January 14 2012 04:52 Big J wrote: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) Dark swarm is a great example that forces micro and does not prevent micro. exactly. like fungal. it decreases microability in a certain area and increases overall micro in a battle
Lol no, he brought up swarm specifically to contrast it to Fungal. Fungal is just watch your Marines fall over once it's been cast. What micro does it "increase"? -_-
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Canada11493 Posts
On January 14 2012 05:39 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2012 04:59 jinorazi wrote:On January 14 2012 04:52 Big J wrote: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) Dark swarm is a great example that forces micro and does not prevent micro. exactly. like fungal. it decreases microability in a certain area and increases overall micro in a battle
Not at all in the same way. This isn't even comparing the same things. Limiting micro as described by jinornazi means your opponent throws something down and when you click on your unit, you literally cannot move it. All the spam clicking in the world will not free you from FG or Forcefields. That is what is meant by limiting micro.
Dark Swarm, siege tanks, and lurkers threaten a zone. And you have to devise a plan that will mitigate that threat. If you are halfway into the engagement and realize the threat is great... you can click on your units and click them back and they will move.
FF's and FG's you engage and you are locked into place and though you think it wise to retreat, you click on your units and there is nothing you can do. THAT is limiting micro.
Now. BW did have stasis, which was also friendly fire and actually prevented any damage to the units underneath. Now admittedly, at a newbie level, stasis is actually equally annoying. But it's very late game, it is used as crowd control at the back of the tank lines, costs a lot of energy and can't mess up the entire army. You can also emp it or target fire it with goliaths. Zerg it was never much of an issue because the arbiter could be sniped too easily.
Maelstrom and lockdown were very situational and were equally hard to perform as there is no smart casting (possibly the other problem with these spammable spells.) The more often your micro is limited the more irritating it is. In the case of SupCom2, I am irritated every time I play it because the units are not at all responsive with so-called 'smart' or 'automated' fighting with super slow movement. Boring as hell because my micro is limited every moment of the game.
Edit.
Although BW hydras and SC2 roaches are both massable units, I don't think the value of micro'ing them is quite the same. Consider the interplay between storm vs hydra and storm vs roach. Now admittedly no Zerg wants to weather the storm, but if you didn't micro hydra's and the storm would hit- you would die. If the Protoss was Jangbi, he could melt the entire hydra army. But it was super hard to get all the storms off, so storm was allowed to be powerful.
Take the roach, if you don't micro them at all, the roach comes out with just under half of it's hitpoints. Not nearly as big a deal (Because storms are spammable, they need to be weaker.) The end result of this is you had a lot more back and forth micro with different hydra group, trying to bait the high templars to waste precious storms: Storm Dodging. It required such fine tuned control or you'd just lose an entire control group completely. Vs simply walking through a storm and be mildly unhappy.
It's more of that 'twitchy' control like muta stacking, vulture micro, hold position dragoons, and storm dodging hydra's that we are looking for when we say we'd like more micro.
Spread marines and shoot and scoot is a start. And can't we all agree that these are some of the more interesting interplays between units? Or Hero stalker micro in the early game... until a dang passive upgrade (Concussive) completely negates an entire method of micro. That's just poor design imo. If we can agree that these moments are awesome, then can we agree that SC2 could use even more of these opportunities? And stop calling edging collosi forward a bit and then backing them up a little bit impressive micro on par with marine spread vs banelings? Fast paced, 'twitchy' control. Instant reflex.
Also Battlenet latency- I wonder does this effect anything? Because muta micro is very difficult if not possible when you're on Battlenet 1.0 vs iCCup or Fish.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9934 Posts
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impressive post falling, thats the point 
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On January 13 2012 15:21 sluggaslamoo wrote:Show nested quote +
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.
I don't quite understand where you're getting these conclusions from.
2 vespene geysers doesn't necessarily equal more gas... The intent I saw in that was just what I said, finer control over the income. if you have a single geyser at all bases, you'd need to double the mining rate to maintain the balance, therefore meaning you either open no gas or double gas, effectively. And so on with each base. I don't see how your conclusion makes sense.
The standardised patches and patch locations serve balance in the sense of ensuring all bases are equal as much as possible. Thats more a map design aspect, of course, but the way resources are implemented supports this kind of balanced approach. If this isn't, what is?
The point on decreasing returns per worker is intruiging. I would argue that securing multiple unsaturated bases is still a viable and desirable strategy, given the decrease in income close to saturation still exists, but I' be wary of suggesting that designing so that 5+ mining bases is standard as opposed to 3+. I would think that would require larger maps overall and make it difficult to defend. But that's just theory.
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Although BW hydras and SC2 roaches are both massable units, I don't think the value of micro'ing them is quite the same. Consider the interplay between storm vs hydra and storm vs roach. Now admittedly no Zerg wants to weather the storm, but if you didn't micro hydra's and the storm would hit- you would die. If the Protoss was Jangbi, he could melt the entire hydra army. But it was super hard to get all the storms off, so storm was allowed to be powerful.
Take the roach, if you don't micro them at all, the roach comes out with just under half of it's hitpoints. Not nearly as big a deal (Because storms are spammable, they need to be weaker.) The end result of this is you had a lot more back and forth micro with different hydra group, trying to bait the high templars to waste precious storms: Storm Dodging. It required such fine tuned control or you'd just lose an entire control group completely. Vs simply walking through a storm and be mildly unhappy.
If yoou just walk in with a group of roachs you just get FF'ed and lose them all to the HT/Immo's for free; instead you see roach groups split up and a lot of back and forth micro done with Slings/Roach/Bling trying to bait Sentries or Templars into wasting precious FF's and storms. I mean dodging storms was/is much easier and forgiving then dodging forcefields as you could still back out vs. storms
So what's the difference other then one was BW and one was Sc2?
On January 14 2012 06:23 intrigue wrote:
great post, falling.
Figures you'd say that. 
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Nice read. Supporting every single argument in the OP.
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Most of the posturing in SC2 happens before the actual engagement and one misstep can leave you crippled. In other words, more emphasis is put on proper preparation rather than reactionary engagement. You fuck up; you fuck up good.
You see a lot of players move forward and then back again to bait out spells so when they do engage full-on there is less worry. We still have snipes, which are good.
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On January 14 2012 07:03 TheButtonmen wrote:
If yoou just walk in with a group of roachs you just get FF'ed and lose them all to the HT/Immo's for free; instead you see roach groups split up and a lot of back and forth micro done with Slings/Roach/Bling trying to bait Sentries or Templars into wasting precious FF's and storms. I mean dodging storms was/is much easier and forgiving then dodging forcefields as you could still back out vs. storms
Dodging FF's and storms in SC2 isn't less foregiving - there's no forgiveness to it at all. If they're good enough to get the FF's down, the units trapped are dead, and you need to get in range of FF to be able to attack. That doesn't make it a good mechanic because it only requires one person to play well.
Storm dodging in BW was something completely different. Moving units was harder, and while he can certainly guarantee that you'll take some damage from his storms, you can also mitigate some of it, so that if he does well placing them and you do well dodging them, you're on an even playing field.
In SC2, you have to convince the person with the anti-micro ability to mess up - because if they don't you can't mitigate it. This is why there's no complaint about SC2 storm - it hurts and is kinda easy to use, no doubt. But if you storm well and your opponent micros well, you don't necessarily come out behind. But if you FF well or fungal well, that's the end of the story. That's why it's a bad mechanic - there's no interaction. You use it well or you don't and that's the end of it - it's all on the player with the FF/Fungal.
You might not see this in your play because the people you're playing against haven't fine-tuned their play to the point where they don't miss an opportunity to FF. People aren't there yet - so it seems balanced but only because your opponent is still very fallible. If it's still there in a few years, FF and "baiting" is going to feel very, very different.
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4713 Posts
Big J, for the past couple of pages you keep missing the point, in fact you've missed it from the begining. Yes FF does encourage another kind of micro in that you want to bait and and split etc but, and this is what the OP keeps saying, if you could destroy FF, you could add an entire new dimension to dealing with them. FF overall punish you way too much for not micro-ing against them, what if you could also micro while trapped?
Why does FF need to only have one type of micro atached to and around it, why not also focus on dodging them (early game), and even destroying them (late game), but still with emphasis on dodging them even late game so you don't waste DPS. Why does FF have to be such a one dimensional spell and why, for the entirety of the duration of this thread you had to focus only on a one dimensional focus, and refuse to accept that, maybe there is a better way.
Fungal falls in the exact same category, too punishing if you get hit by it. If you not only could split your units, but also had alternatives to getting out of fungal (or minimizing the root/turning it into a slow), it would become an even better spell.
And you keep comparing Terran control units to stuff like FF and Fungal is just wrong.
The point of terrain control units like Tanks, Swarm Lords, Lurkers etc, isn't too limit micro, it is in fact to encourage different kind of strategies and tactical play around the map, FF and FG are battle control, tanks are space control. You actually can brute force your way trough a fortified position, provided you will take heavy losses and sometimes it isn't the best course of action, but space control doesn't automatically cut of all avenuse of attack or micro in an area (someting FF and FG do once they hit), it actually encourages more avenuse of attack.
Instead of going for a frontal attack, you could go for drops, some harass, perhaps siege with higher tech of your own, or lure an army out of position and then you destroy the entrenched position. If you feel confident enough though you can try to brute force it, thats the beauty, all options still remain open, FF and FG close as many options as they open.
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Although BW hydras and SC2 roaches are both massable units, I don't think the value of micro'ing them is quite the same. Consider the interplay between storm vs hydra and storm vs roach. Now admittedly no Zerg wants to weather the storm, but if you didn't micro hydra's and the storm would hit- you would die. If the Protoss was Jangbi, he could melt the entire hydra army. But it was super hard to get all the storms off, so storm was allowed to be powerful.
Take the roach, if you don't micro them at all, the roach comes out with just under half of it's hitpoints. Not nearly as big a deal (Because storms are spammable, they need to be weaker.) The end result of this is you had a lot more back and forth micro with different hydra group, trying to bait the high templars to waste precious storms: Storm Dodging. It required such fine tuned control or you'd just lose an entire control group completely. Vs simply walking through a storm and be mildly unhappy.
The main point I'd like to bring up is that Storms are much weaker because everything bunches up a lot more. You tend to hit a lot of roaches with a single storm in this game, compared to how much you would hit in BW (even taking into account the reduced area). This is why AoE of all sorts has been so reduced both in range and damage but still is absurdly effective.
Though with KA out, storms could be a bit more powerful imo. At least it doesn't sound crazy to me.
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On January 14 2012 06:01 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2012 05:39 Big J wrote:On January 14 2012 04:59 jinorazi wrote:On January 14 2012 04:52 Big J wrote: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) Dark swarm is a great example that forces micro and does not prevent micro. exactly. like fungal. it decreases microability in a certain area and increases overall micro in a battle Not at all in the same way. This isn't even comparing the same things. Limiting micro as described by jinornazi means your opponent throws something down and when you click on your unit, you literally cannot move it. All the spam clicking in the world will not free you from FG or Forcefields. That is what is meant by limiting micro. Dark Swarm, siege tanks, and lurkers threaten a zone. And you have to devise a plan that will mitigate that threat. If you are halfway into the engagement and realize the threat is great... you can click on your units and click them back and they will move. FF's and FG's you engage and you are locked into place and though you think it wise to retreat, you click on your units and there is nothing you can do. THAT is limiting micro. Now. BW did have stasis, which was also friendly fire and actually prevented any damage to the units underneath. Now admittedly, at a newbie level, stasis is actually equally annoying. But it's very late game, it is used as crowd control at the back of the tank lines, costs a lot of energy and can't mess up the entire army. You can also emp it or target fire it with goliaths. Zerg it was never much of an issue because the arbiter could be sniped too easily. Maelstrom and lockdown were very situational and were equally hard to perform as there is no smart casting (possibly the other problem with these spammable spells.) The more often your micro is limited the more irritating it is. In the case of SupCom2, I am irritated every time I play it because the units are not at all responsive with so-called 'smart' or 'automated' fighting with super slow movement. Boring as hell because my micro is limited every moment of the game. Edit. Although BW hydras and SC2 roaches are both massable units, I don't think the value of micro'ing them is quite the same. Consider the interplay between storm vs hydra and storm vs roach. Now admittedly no Zerg wants to weather the storm, but if you didn't micro hydra's and the storm would hit- you would die. If the Protoss was Jangbi, he could melt the entire hydra army. But it was super hard to get all the storms off, so storm was allowed to be powerful. Take the roach, if you don't micro them at all, the roach comes out with just under half of it's hitpoints. Not nearly as big a deal (Because storms are spammable, they need to be weaker.) The end result of this is you had a lot more back and forth micro with different hydra group, trying to bait the high templars to waste precious storms: Storm Dodging. It required such fine tuned control or you'd just lose an entire control group completely. Vs simply walking through a storm and be mildly unhappy. It's more of that 'twitchy' control like muta stacking, vulture micro, hold position dragoons, and storm dodging hydra's that we are looking for when we say we'd like more micro. Spread marines and shoot and scoot is a start. And can't we all agree that these are some of the more interesting interplays between units? Or Hero stalker micro in the early game... until a dang passive upgrade (Concussive) completely negates an entire method of micro. That's just poor design imo. If we can agree that these moments are awesome, then can we agree that SC2 could use even more of these opportunities? And stop calling edging collosi forward a bit and then backing them up a little bit impressive micro on par with marine spread vs banelings? Fast paced, 'twitchy' control. Instant reflex. Also Battlenet latency- I wonder does this effect anything? Because muta micro is very difficult if not possible when you're on Battlenet 1.0 vs iCCup or Fish.
This is spot on.
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On January 14 2012 06:01 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2012 05:39 Big J wrote:On January 14 2012 04:59 jinorazi wrote:On January 14 2012 04:52 Big J wrote: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) Dark swarm is a great example that forces micro and does not prevent micro. exactly. like fungal. it decreases microability in a certain area and increases overall micro in a battle It's more of that 'twitchy' control like muta stacking, vulture micro, hold position dragoons, and storm dodging hydra's that we are looking for when we say we'd like more micro. Spread marines and shoot and scoot is a start. And can't we all agree that these are some of the more interesting interplays between units? Or Hero stalker micro in the early game... until a dang passive upgrade (Concussive) completely negates an entire method of micro. That's just poor design imo. If we can agree that these moments are awesome, then can we agree that SC2 could use even more of these opportunities? And stop calling edging collosi forward a bit and then backing them up a little bit impressive micro on par with marine spread vs banelings? Fast paced, 'twitchy' control. Instant reflex.
very nicely wrote and this is exactly what i want more of from sc2.
i must say that the standards of "impressive micro" has gone way below with sc2. any pro's storm or FF aren't impressive at all to me because its something that any competent players can do. (same with colossus)
it was something to look at in awe in bw with the lack of easy casting. i just want more opportunity where great micro can shine(like marine splitting) in sc2 and not let battles be determined by unit composition.
i want more micro abilities that can make pros shine and the average players strive to improve.
its same reason why i'm sooooo against the shredder. (sorry for mentioning it many times)
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Canada11493 Posts
On January 14 2012 07:03 TheButtonmen wrote:Show nested quote +Although BW hydras and SC2 roaches are both massable units, I don't think the value of micro'ing them is quite the same. Consider the interplay between storm vs hydra and storm vs roach. Now admittedly no Zerg wants to weather the storm, but if you didn't micro hydra's and the storm would hit- you would die. If the Protoss was Jangbi, he could melt the entire hydra army. But it was super hard to get all the storms off, so storm was allowed to be powerful.
Take the roach, if you don't micro them at all, the roach comes out with just under half of it's hitpoints. Not nearly as big a deal (Because storms are spammable, they need to be weaker.) The end result of this is you had a lot more back and forth micro with different hydra group, trying to bait the high templars to waste precious storms: Storm Dodging. It required such fine tuned control or you'd just lose an entire control group completely. Vs simply walking through a storm and be mildly unhappy.
If yoou just walk in with a group of roachs you just get FF'ed and lose them all to the HT/Immo's for free; instead you see roach groups split up and a lot of back and forth micro done with Slings/Roach/Bling trying to bait Sentries or Templars into wasting precious FF's and storms. I mean dodging storms was/is much easier and forgiving then dodging forcefields as you could still back out vs. storms So what's the difference other then one was BW and one was Sc2?
The difference is during the battle itself. I will concede, there is a lot of micro'ing pre-battle. (I would argue, aethetically the grouped up army makes it hard to distinguish, but that's another point.) And I think players will continue to get better at this and perhaps we'll see better splits and multi-prong engagements prebattle. Both BW have a lot of jockying back and forth pre-battle. Whether storm baiting by BW hydra's or FF baiting by SC2 Zerg's. And then in SC2 both sides engage and the micro comes to a screeching halt for one side.
So we have micro, micro, micro. SPAM FF! SPAM STORM! And the you just have to wait until your army dies or the FF's wear off. Whichever comes first. I think that's partly what Day9 is talking about when he believes BW units can move from .75 effectiveness to x9. Partially it's that reflex control like vulture micro. Partially it's the continued micro during the battle itself. Because let me tell you, it's not the first of Jangbi storm's that is impressive, it's when it continues, and continues, and continues during the battle and you are sitting at home freaking out at how awesome the micro is during the battle itself. Same with storm baiting, the first couple storm dodges are impressive, but the more he continues to dodge consecutively the more crazy it is.
Now imagine, you put all this effort into pre-battle micro set-up, then BLAM! half your army is stuck and you can't move it anymore. It's that rising tension as both players are continue to counter each micro move and counter and counter and counter. FF's and FG are unforgiving in the binary sense. You are stuck or you're not. Storm dodging are unforgiving in whether you predicted where he was going to land his next storm and whether your reflex was fast enough to dodge. And if you mess up, a control group dies. But it was all based on prediction and reflex. Not outwaiting the FG timer.
On January 14 2012 07:40 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +Although BW hydras and SC2 roaches are both massable units, I don't think the value of micro'ing them is quite the same. Consider the interplay between storm vs hydra and storm vs roach. Now admittedly no Zerg wants to weather the storm, but if you didn't micro hydra's and the storm would hit- you would die. If the Protoss was Jangbi, he could melt the entire hydra army. But it was super hard to get all the storms off, so storm was allowed to be powerful.
Take the roach, if you don't micro them at all, the roach comes out with just under half of it's hitpoints. Not nearly as big a deal (Because storms are spammable, they need to be weaker.) The end result of this is you had a lot more back and forth micro with different hydra group, trying to bait the high templars to waste precious storms: Storm Dodging. It required such fine tuned control or you'd just lose an entire control group completely. Vs simply walking through a storm and be mildly unhappy. The main point I'd like to bring up is that Storms are much weaker because everything bunches up a lot more. You tend to hit a lot of roaches with a single storm in this game, compared to how much you would hit in BW (even taking into account the reduced area). This is why AoE of all sorts has been so reduced both in range and damage but still is absurdly effective. Though with KA out, storms could be a bit more powerful imo. At least it doesn't sound crazy to me.
Oh storms are balanced. They're just not very impressive because everything is bunched up and because of smart casting. So storm had to be nerfed to be balanced. Both I think are mistakes that reduced the ability for pro's to separate themselves from everyone else. It's just better showbiz to watch a couple lightening storms go down and actually kill something then to see the entire screen covered in storms and even the workers survive! It becomes a glorified debuff rather than a killing blow.
Continued discussion on Storm's and Smartcasting for newbies vs pro's
+ Show Spoiler +
Blizzard specifically mentioned they wanted even low level players to be able to do crazy things and feel epic, hence easy to learn, hard to master. So I think that's partly the motivation for smartcasting. It's annoying as a newbie player to have all your high templars storm the same spot when you select storm as a group. So smart cast seems like a good fix, so that even if you select 50 high templars, only one will storm at a time. Cool. Newbie player can feel epic laying down a ton of storms.
Except newbie players probably aren't going to focus on spamming storms so much because of limited apm. Collosi are easier. And because of aforementioned reasons, storms don't kill very many things outright, the ability as a whole is actually not very epic.
I would argue that the BW storm is more epic, even for newbies. I recall in 07 when I first switched from Terran to Protoss playing with some of my friends vs computers. We were 3 humans vs 2 computers with my 20apm, barely surviving for 2 hours/ never leaving our base. And just defending, defending, defending our choke point. I might get 1 or 2 storm off in a wave attack. But I felt epic. Hydralisks melted, dragoons were on death's door, even tanks were horribly mauled. Muta's just barely survived and zerglings and marines melted completely. There was tremendous power in the old storm that just isn't there anymore.
And getting 1 or 2 storms off was motivation to try and get even more off because the results were so impressive. And they were so impressive because it was hard to do and units were more spread out.
So I really believe we are killing epic moments for our viewing experience with the pro's as well as killing the epic moments for the newbies when you can kill a ton of stuff with 1 or 2 storms.
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On January 12 2012 11:15 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2012 10:20 TheButtonmen wrote:On January 12 2012 10:16 Grumbels wrote:On January 12 2012 10:14 TheButtonmen wrote:On January 12 2012 09:44 Jehct wrote:
This topic: a bunch of SC2 players getting upset that people with any kind of BW experience think the game can be improved. If we went to the BW forum and continually made threads about how BW needs to be improved to be more like SC2 we would get banned so why on earth do you think it's acceptable for BW fans to continually come to the SC2 forum and tell us how our game needs to be made more like BW so it's actually good? Brood War is a better and more successful competitive game and Starcraft 2 is a direct sequel. Obviously there will be comparisons. See here is what you don't seem to get. We don't think BW is a better game then SC2, we love SC2 not BW, no amount of posting about how our game is inferiorly designed, how our scene is a farce and how bad our pros are is going to change this. If we wanted to watch BW we would watch BW, we don't begrudge you the game you love so please return the courtesy and don't come into our home and try to evangelize about the game you love. I don't want to burst your bubble, but just about everyone thinks BW is a better competitive game than SC2, including every single SC2 pro-gamer. I still like Starcraft 2, in fact, I play and follow the game way more than Brood War. That's the very reason I would like to see it improved, and what better way than to draw on inspiration from its successful and amazing predecessor? If you want to claim the SC2 forum as the place for people who think SC2 is the superior game, then I just don't think team liquid is meant for you, sorry. Maybe try Reddit? this. I love sc2, but there are certainly scenarios that could be improved. I think the OP touched on some of these in surprisingly unbiased manner.
I'm very interested in the evaluation of the effects of micro reducing abilities. As an avid DotA player, I'm used to micro reducing abilities being a central feature of the game. General consensus is that these are harmful in sc2.I understand the that the games are different, but why are micro reducing abilities bad here but not there?
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Blizzard specifically mentioned they wanted even low level players to be able to do crazy things and feel epic, hence easy to learn, hard to master. So I think that's partly the motivation for smartcasting. It's annoying as a newbie player to have all your high templars storm the same spot when you select storm as a group. So smart cast seems like a good fix, so that even if you select 50 high templars, only one will storm at a time. Cool. Newbie player can feel epic laying down a ton of storms.
Smartcasting wasn't in BW because they were trying for epicness. Smartcasting wasn't in BW because they hadn't thought of it yet.
Consider if BW had smartcasting. Do you really think that would reduce the epicness of BW Storm? Do you think it would need to be nerfed? Nah, probably not.
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On January 14 2012 01:23 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2012 00:58 JieXian wrote: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). 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. Show nested quote +On January 14 2012 00:58 JieXian wrote: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.
Of course effort matters.
But let's take it from a different point of view to explain it better. If you play piano, you'll pick up guitar more quickly, even the trumpet, even though they have very different techniques, even if there are many non-transferable skills. Trumpets don't have chords and trumpet players will struggle with that while learning piano. It's the same will RTS, the fundamentals is similar. before CnC4 there was resource management after all.
For example, there's MBS in SC2 but if you play a lot of BW you'll know all of the things Day9 preaches again and again.
And let's take dissimilar games out of the arguement because my first post was talking about SC2 trends, which are mostly set by WC3 and BW players. (Maybe aoe?)
It's only different at the surface.
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