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On January 09 2015 00:53 BaronVonOwn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2015 20:32 Grumbels wrote:
For zerg build time does not imply a strain on production because it has no effect on larva generation which is the sole measure of the capability of zerg production. One larva equals one unit, no matter the cost. If terran was similar then a scv and a battlecruiser would both take equally long to build, and in fact this is the case with zerg: an ultralisk requires as much larva as a drone despite the cost difference, allowing you to create an overwhelming number of high tech units very easily. I think this is just one of the defining traits of Zerg and it balances out. What you should consider is that Zerg also needs to build drones and overlords with that larva, and drones are lost whenever they make new buildings. This adds some overhead to their production. Moreover let's assume that a protoss and a zerg keep their production perfectly queued. The zerg player would end up waiting on larva, and the time it takes for them to spawn would be added to the production time of each of their units. So I think there are already some drawbacks to the zerg production model.
Well, I find zerg macro a bit odd. On some level zerg has a simplified version of the general macro design, i.e. if you take the generic terran production model and remove some elements then you're left with the zerg one. There aren't really any drawbacks to it other than balance choices by Blizzard to make larva limited. But in practice larva is rarely limited without any special effort by the zerg player, you only really have to decide how to spend your resources, having enough larva is an afterthought.
Buildings requiring a drone to sacrifice themselves (costing larva) and overlords costing larva are just a general tax on larva production and don't affect the design in any major specific way (of course there are some minor effects like zerg production being relatively higher when they're replenishing units vs building up, but since you have so much larva these factors are insignificant).
And zerg players have several ways to trivialize their macro. Inject can be made easier with hotkey set-ups, eggs can be added to control groups to circumvent having to take care of rallied units, overlords can be made without looking at the screen (unlike supply depots), you have some of the advantages of queuing (larva build-up) without the downside of overqueuing etc. And mainly you just have one building and you just have to hold the D or R key or whatever, afaik pro zerg players don't bother anymore with building from each hatchery individually.
To me it feels like zerg macro is simpler and more powerful than that of the other races in design and it sort of removes a challenging aspect of zerg gameplay which hurts the race. (of course some people like the fact that it's simplified) There are also some things like the ability to make 70 drones before making any combat units and the ability to make 50 ultralisks or mutalisks at once that are imo a bit problematic although they can be balanced around. So personally I'm not very satisfied with the zerg macro design. Inject is also a very boring ability. At least creep is interesting.
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Grumbels, it's almost like you're describing differences in behavior -- like having to select groups of eggs and add them to a hotkey, or "time" the injection of hatcheries, or decide based on your opponent's behavior whether to commit to building several of one unit or another -- that add both mechanical and strategic complexity to zerg macro. In that sense, I totally agree that zerg has to engage in different thought and behavior than the other two races. Well put.
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On January 09 2015 02:32 BaronVonOwn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2015 01:38 Big J wrote:
Well, playing the game on BGH-maps isn't the same as just playing the game in my opinion. If that's the fun part of the game, then the original design should go towards it and the professional scene should also play on those maps. Otherwise we are starting to talk about two different games that just happen to run on the same client. I'm not considered playing Starcraft when I'm playing Desert Strike and neither should be someone who is allowed to 1base with 1million resources, possibly even from stacking 50workers on one mineral.
I agree that units could be a lot better, however, your examples just aren't good. The Mothershipcore was never meant to be similar to the Arbiter, you could as well compare it to the Dark Archon and then conclude it is a better design. The Swarm Host and the Lurker share nothing besides having burrow without requiring the burrow upgrade. On top of that there are unit improvements:
I like the Marauder replacing the Firebat, it is a much less narrow and microable unit. The hellion is one of the best designed units in Starcrafts legacy, with it's splash form, range and speed fitting perfectly to offer interesting interactions with many units in the game. Banelings are great fun and stalkers an improvement to dragoons (even though blink could have been designed with cliff-abuse in mind to begin with). And the list goes on.
Imo there are ups and downs (Colossus, Sentry, Swarm Host) in the comparison with BW unit design and many of the units that are in both games are just bad design to begin with (BC, Devourer/Corruptor, Guardian/Broodlord, Ultralisk, Dark Templar...) and should be considered for redesigning/cutting, one way or another. No, I don't think dictating what maps people will use is the right approach at all. You see, I'm 'Murican, so let me tell you about something called freedom, brother  Seriously though, I think this is a situation where it's better to let the market decide. Look what happened with Dreampool, it's not just about money maps. If I were to propose a change, I would make the MM section in SC2 work more like CSGO's MM, where you just check off the maps you want to play and press OK. It could list out available maps much like custom games do now (the difference being, the custom section does not provide MM). As for MSC vs. arbiter yeah you're right, the closer comparison is the full mothership but it's hard for me to speak of that like it's an actual unit when it's so broken and useless. Anyway I do agree that a lot of the SC2 units are better; banelings, ghosts are improved, I do like phoenix, and even stalkers are more "interesting" although I'm not sure whether dragoons have more DPS. As for the hellion, I think this is another case where it was too much of a soft counter and they had to add in the hellbat to make up for its shortcomings.
Which units you can build and what stats they have are rules in RTS games. So are maps. Which of those you alter doesn't matter, if you alter them too much it is not the same game anymore. FMP and BGH are most definitely not "just maps for starcraft", they go deep into data editing (e.g. minerals per mineralfield, workers per mineralfield) and break many rules that the game has been designed around (e.g. the whole concept of base building/expansions).
And yes, what I'm saying is: let the market decide. If they rather play BGH/FMP, then design and balance the units for these mods to improve the BGH/FMP experience. Stop catering to the minority that plays the original content and give the players a chance to develop a professional scene on the more fun/popular BGH/FMP maps.
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On January 09 2015 05:46 Big J wrote:
Which units you can build and what stats they have are rules in RTS games. So are maps. Which of those you alter doesn't matter, if you alter them too much it is not the same game anymore. FMP and BGH are most definitely not "just maps for starcraft", they go deep into data editing (e.g. minerals per mineralfield, workers per mineralfield) and break many rules that the game has been designed around (e.g. the whole concept of base building/expansions).
And yes, what I'm saying is: let the market decide. If they rather play BGH/FMP, then design and balance the units for these mods to improve the BGH/FMP experience. Stop catering to the minority that plays the original content and give the players a chance to develop a professional scene on the more fun/popular BGH/FMP maps.
Agree, and I think it would be best if we all just gave the ladder/matchmaking section a rest and supported mods / community content, it seems like the best hope for Starcraft now. That is how MOBA and Counter-Strike got their start afterall.
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On January 08 2015 11:44 BaronVonOwn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2015 01:19 Big J wrote:
The difference between Broodwar and SC2 is in mindset.
In Broodwar, when something was a "hardcounter" people just had to put up with it because blizzard would never patch the game.
SC2 has the problem of the second-born. BW people expect the game to offer the same strategies as their game had, aka "this is supposed to be BW 2.0".
Then there is the young generation of SC2-fans that is spoiled by how much blizzard supported the game with patches. And now demand that anything they would like to have playable to become playable, aka "I want to be able to mass my favorite unit in every matchup".
And then there are the guys that are annoyed by patches and expansions and hate whenever one of their previous options becomes weaker or unviable, aka, "blizzard destroying strategies".
If people would just put up with immortals hardcountering tanks as they did with reavers hardcountering M&M in BW, we could have actual discussions about improving the game instead of "why isn't this BW"/"why I don't want this to be BW". I feel like you can't go wrong if you err on the side of making it more like BW. BW didn't start fizzling out 3 years after release and there's a reason for that. Look at CSGO. They made a few small, evolutionary changes rather than massively breaking from the past. They stayed true to the Counter-Strike formula and that is being rewarded big time. Show nested quote +On January 07 2015 01:28 Grumbels wrote:
Maybe larva shouldn't regenerate when eggs are still morphing (i.e. eggs count as larva for the limit of 3), that way units with higher cost/larva can get higher build time to effectively bring down this ratio, which might be good since for other races cost/production is more or less constant for all units. I don't see what problem this is solving? How does this make the game more fun?
To me it seems more non Koreans play SC2 at 4 years past release than played BW at 4 years after SC's release. You'd log onto BNET and it would be endless bots and empty channel ghost towns. I think there is the myth of Broodwar that doesn't represent the reality. Warcraft 3 coming out in 2002 also took away much of what was left of the Broodwar scene...sure Grrr and Pillars and Maynard and Dudey and whoever were living in Korea (okay so ilnp doesn't count) but there wasn't much of a Broodwar scene at that point outside of Korea.
StarCraft 2 did two things that hurt it early on and that is not having chat channels at release (killed community) and not supporting the modding community that had been huge in prior games. StarCraft 2 has an actual nonKorean professional scene going strong for 4 years which is taken for granted even though Broodwar had nothing close (coming from someone who finished r16 in PGL, won an i2e2, and set up weekly broodwar tournaments and did official work for the i2e2 circuit). StarCraft 2 has been an amazing success...even though there have been so tough periods with balance infestor/broodlord, early all in maps, blink maps, etc.
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On January 11 2015 07:11 Eliezar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2015 11:44 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 07 2015 01:19 Big J wrote:
The difference between Broodwar and SC2 is in mindset.
In Broodwar, when something was a "hardcounter" people just had to put up with it because blizzard would never patch the game.
SC2 has the problem of the second-born. BW people expect the game to offer the same strategies as their game had, aka "this is supposed to be BW 2.0".
Then there is the young generation of SC2-fans that is spoiled by how much blizzard supported the game with patches. And now demand that anything they would like to have playable to become playable, aka "I want to be able to mass my favorite unit in every matchup".
And then there are the guys that are annoyed by patches and expansions and hate whenever one of their previous options becomes weaker or unviable, aka, "blizzard destroying strategies".
If people would just put up with immortals hardcountering tanks as they did with reavers hardcountering M&M in BW, we could have actual discussions about improving the game instead of "why isn't this BW"/"why I don't want this to be BW". I feel like you can't go wrong if you err on the side of making it more like BW. BW didn't start fizzling out 3 years after release and there's a reason for that. Look at CSGO. They made a few small, evolutionary changes rather than massively breaking from the past. They stayed true to the Counter-Strike formula and that is being rewarded big time. On January 07 2015 01:28 Grumbels wrote:
Maybe larva shouldn't regenerate when eggs are still morphing (i.e. eggs count as larva for the limit of 3), that way units with higher cost/larva can get higher build time to effectively bring down this ratio, which might be good since for other races cost/production is more or less constant for all units. I don't see what problem this is solving? How does this make the game more fun? To me it seems more non Koreans play SC2 at 4 years past release than played BW at 4 years after SC's release. You'd log onto BNET and it would be endless bots and empty channel ghost towns. I think there is the myth of Broodwar that doesn't represent the reality. Warcraft 3 coming out in 2002 also took away much of what was left of the Broodwar scene...sure Grrr and Pillars and Maynard and Dudey and whoever were living in Korea (okay so ilnp doesn't count) but there wasn't much of a Broodwar scene at that point outside of Korea.
That was in a west that couldn't compete. The Korean BW scene was bigger than the SC2 Korean + west scene combined.
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On January 09 2015 01:38 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2015 00:53 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 08 2015 12:37 Big J wrote:
BW didn't have a real esports rival, found very lucky enviromental circumstances in Korea at the time it got popular, didn't take off as a esport in the rest of the world and couldn't keep up with it's successor WC3 at all outside of Korea.
Add to that that not a single other bigger game developer is even trying to get a big RTS game on the market, despite the competition being non-existant and the top dog SC2 declining.
Then compare that to CSGO: The shooter market has been booming for ages. The target audience is huuuuge.
If you want to take Starcraft somewhere, you have to look at what the majority of Starcraft customers play and make a good esports-capable game out of it. For Broodwar that would be something amongst the lines of Big Game Hunters, for SC2 probably something like Desert Strike/Nexus Wars.
If RTS/Starcraft wants to be a thing again at some point, the developers need to take a look into these sorts of games and analyze why people prefer those over their bigass triple A titles. The answer is right under their noses and it is definitely not harder game fundamentals (aka more Broodwar, even Broodwar players didn't like them and played BGH instead). I agree totally. SC2 made things even harder than Brood War because matchmaking funneled people into 'standard' maps and there was no easy mode option - maps like BGH, Fastest Map, etc. Purists don't like it, but that's what 90% of people play in BW. It was a huge mistake and I think this is one of the main reasons SC2 is dying out. When I say I want SC2 to be more like BW, I am talking about the units. I think the other big problem with SC2 is anti-fun units. Let's face it, in terms of overall fun, lurkers are better than swarm hosts, reavers versus colossus, scourge versus corruptors, arbiters versus a mothership core, and so on. It's true that the shooter market is now bigger than the strategy one, but I think it's just totally wrong to say strategy games can't have mass appeal. Chess is a strategy game, and a national sport in some countries just like BW is/was. Would a really well-done strategy game be the most popular eSport of all? Maybe not, but Starcraft could easily be in the top 3. Well, playing the game on BGH-maps isn't the same as just playing the game in my opinion. If that's the fun part of the game, then the original design should go towards it and the professional scene should also play on those maps. Otherwise we are starting to talk about two different games that just happen to run on the same client. I'm not considered playing Starcraft when I'm playing Desert Strike and neither should be someone who is allowed to 1base with 1million resources, possibly even from stacking 50workers on one mineral. I agree that units could be a lot better, however, your examples just aren't good. The Mothershipcore was never meant to be similar to the Arbiter, you could as well compare it to the Dark Archon and then conclude it is a better design. The Swarm Host and the Lurker share nothing besides having burrow without requiring the burrow upgrade. On top of that there are unit improvements: I like the Marauder replacing the Firebat, it is a much less narrow and microable unit. The hellion is one of the best designed units in Starcrafts legacy, with it's splash form, range and speed fitting perfectly to offer interesting interactions with many units in the game. Banelings are great fun and stalkers an improvement to dragoons (even though blink could have been designed with cliff-abuse in mind to begin with). And the list goes on. Imo there are ups and downs (Colossus, Sentry, Swarm Host) in the comparison with BW unit design and many of the units that are in both games are just bad design to begin with (BC, Devourer/Corruptor, Guardian/Broodlord, Ultralisk, Dark Templar...) and should be considered for redesigning/cutting, one way or another.
Devourer is a million times better and more interesting than Corrupter with the way it interacts (reduces armor via splash, reduces unit attack rate, very slow attack) that it ends up being almost a support unit in battle as opposed to the primary damage dealer, unlike the corrupter which has the purpose simply to focus fire capital ships. Devourer's vs Corsairs had a very unique relationship as well given how it made sair fire rate notably slower, helped scourge get in, etc. Scourge could own carriers without lots of sairs (until critical mass), so it was an interesting dynamic.
Guardian was far better than BL even if it wasn't as good, Guardian didn't have the free unit spawn --> fuck with pathing insane frustrating that came with the unit.
Ultralisk is also way more badass in BW, one of the best units! Became significantly worse in SC2 with it being much bigger, clunkier. BW had it right.
And while DA might not be best for competitive play, c'mon, it was everyone's favorite unit growing up (cept maybe the carrier).
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On January 12 2015 06:47 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2015 01:38 Big J wrote:On January 09 2015 00:53 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 08 2015 12:37 Big J wrote:
BW didn't have a real esports rival, found very lucky enviromental circumstances in Korea at the time it got popular, didn't take off as a esport in the rest of the world and couldn't keep up with it's successor WC3 at all outside of Korea.
Add to that that not a single other bigger game developer is even trying to get a big RTS game on the market, despite the competition being non-existant and the top dog SC2 declining.
Then compare that to CSGO: The shooter market has been booming for ages. The target audience is huuuuge.
If you want to take Starcraft somewhere, you have to look at what the majority of Starcraft customers play and make a good esports-capable game out of it. For Broodwar that would be something amongst the lines of Big Game Hunters, for SC2 probably something like Desert Strike/Nexus Wars.
If RTS/Starcraft wants to be a thing again at some point, the developers need to take a look into these sorts of games and analyze why people prefer those over their bigass triple A titles. The answer is right under their noses and it is definitely not harder game fundamentals (aka more Broodwar, even Broodwar players didn't like them and played BGH instead). I agree totally. SC2 made things even harder than Brood War because matchmaking funneled people into 'standard' maps and there was no easy mode option - maps like BGH, Fastest Map, etc. Purists don't like it, but that's what 90% of people play in BW. It was a huge mistake and I think this is one of the main reasons SC2 is dying out. When I say I want SC2 to be more like BW, I am talking about the units. I think the other big problem with SC2 is anti-fun units. Let's face it, in terms of overall fun, lurkers are better than swarm hosts, reavers versus colossus, scourge versus corruptors, arbiters versus a mothership core, and so on. It's true that the shooter market is now bigger than the strategy one, but I think it's just totally wrong to say strategy games can't have mass appeal. Chess is a strategy game, and a national sport in some countries just like BW is/was. Would a really well-done strategy game be the most popular eSport of all? Maybe not, but Starcraft could easily be in the top 3. Well, playing the game on BGH-maps isn't the same as just playing the game in my opinion. If that's the fun part of the game, then the original design should go towards it and the professional scene should also play on those maps. Otherwise we are starting to talk about two different games that just happen to run on the same client. I'm not considered playing Starcraft when I'm playing Desert Strike and neither should be someone who is allowed to 1base with 1million resources, possibly even from stacking 50workers on one mineral. I agree that units could be a lot better, however, your examples just aren't good. The Mothershipcore was never meant to be similar to the Arbiter, you could as well compare it to the Dark Archon and then conclude it is a better design. The Swarm Host and the Lurker share nothing besides having burrow without requiring the burrow upgrade. On top of that there are unit improvements: I like the Marauder replacing the Firebat, it is a much less narrow and microable unit. The hellion is one of the best designed units in Starcrafts legacy, with it's splash form, range and speed fitting perfectly to offer interesting interactions with many units in the game. Banelings are great fun and stalkers an improvement to dragoons (even though blink could have been designed with cliff-abuse in mind to begin with). And the list goes on. Imo there are ups and downs (Colossus, Sentry, Swarm Host) in the comparison with BW unit design and many of the units that are in both games are just bad design to begin with (BC, Devourer/Corruptor, Guardian/Broodlord, Ultralisk, Dark Templar...) and should be considered for redesigning/cutting, one way or another. Devourer is a million times better and more interesting than Corrupter with the way it interacts (reduces armor via splash, reduces unit attack rate, very slow attack) that it ends up being almost a support unit in battle as opposed to the primary damage dealer, unlike the corrupter which has the purpose simply to focus fire capital ships. Devourer's vs Corsairs had a very unique relationship as well given how it made sair fire rate notably slower, helped scourge get in, etc. Scourge could own carriers without lots of sairs (until critical mass), so it was an interesting dynamic. Guardian was far better than BL even if it wasn't as good, Guardian didn't have the free unit spawn --> fuck with pathing insane frustrating that came with the unit. Ultralisk is also way more badass in BW, one of the best units! Became significantly worse in SC2 with it being much bigger, clunkier. BW had it right. And while DA might not be best for competitive play, c'mon, it was everyone's favorite unit growing up (cept maybe the carrier).
You're focusing on tiny details which I could now oppose with many arguments, but which wasn't the point of that argument. The point of the argument is that even many of the BW units are far from "the most fun possible", which is why just going back from one bad unit to another bad unit just would hardly be any improvement. The game should be balanced/designed with high goals in mind and not return to stuff that wasn't very good to begin with.
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On January 12 2015 07:06 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2015 06:47 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 09 2015 01:38 Big J wrote:On January 09 2015 00:53 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 08 2015 12:37 Big J wrote:
BW didn't have a real esports rival, found very lucky enviromental circumstances in Korea at the time it got popular, didn't take off as a esport in the rest of the world and couldn't keep up with it's successor WC3 at all outside of Korea.
Add to that that not a single other bigger game developer is even trying to get a big RTS game on the market, despite the competition being non-existant and the top dog SC2 declining.
Then compare that to CSGO: The shooter market has been booming for ages. The target audience is huuuuge.
If you want to take Starcraft somewhere, you have to look at what the majority of Starcraft customers play and make a good esports-capable game out of it. For Broodwar that would be something amongst the lines of Big Game Hunters, for SC2 probably something like Desert Strike/Nexus Wars.
If RTS/Starcraft wants to be a thing again at some point, the developers need to take a look into these sorts of games and analyze why people prefer those over their bigass triple A titles. The answer is right under their noses and it is definitely not harder game fundamentals (aka more Broodwar, even Broodwar players didn't like them and played BGH instead). I agree totally. SC2 made things even harder than Brood War because matchmaking funneled people into 'standard' maps and there was no easy mode option - maps like BGH, Fastest Map, etc. Purists don't like it, but that's what 90% of people play in BW. It was a huge mistake and I think this is one of the main reasons SC2 is dying out. When I say I want SC2 to be more like BW, I am talking about the units. I think the other big problem with SC2 is anti-fun units. Let's face it, in terms of overall fun, lurkers are better than swarm hosts, reavers versus colossus, scourge versus corruptors, arbiters versus a mothership core, and so on. It's true that the shooter market is now bigger than the strategy one, but I think it's just totally wrong to say strategy games can't have mass appeal. Chess is a strategy game, and a national sport in some countries just like BW is/was. Would a really well-done strategy game be the most popular eSport of all? Maybe not, but Starcraft could easily be in the top 3. Well, playing the game on BGH-maps isn't the same as just playing the game in my opinion. If that's the fun part of the game, then the original design should go towards it and the professional scene should also play on those maps. Otherwise we are starting to talk about two different games that just happen to run on the same client. I'm not considered playing Starcraft when I'm playing Desert Strike and neither should be someone who is allowed to 1base with 1million resources, possibly even from stacking 50workers on one mineral. I agree that units could be a lot better, however, your examples just aren't good. The Mothershipcore was never meant to be similar to the Arbiter, you could as well compare it to the Dark Archon and then conclude it is a better design. The Swarm Host and the Lurker share nothing besides having burrow without requiring the burrow upgrade. On top of that there are unit improvements: I like the Marauder replacing the Firebat, it is a much less narrow and microable unit. The hellion is one of the best designed units in Starcrafts legacy, with it's splash form, range and speed fitting perfectly to offer interesting interactions with many units in the game. Banelings are great fun and stalkers an improvement to dragoons (even though blink could have been designed with cliff-abuse in mind to begin with). And the list goes on. Imo there are ups and downs (Colossus, Sentry, Swarm Host) in the comparison with BW unit design and many of the units that are in both games are just bad design to begin with (BC, Devourer/Corruptor, Guardian/Broodlord, Ultralisk, Dark Templar...) and should be considered for redesigning/cutting, one way or another. Devourer is a million times better and more interesting than Corrupter with the way it interacts (reduces armor via splash, reduces unit attack rate, very slow attack) that it ends up being almost a support unit in battle as opposed to the primary damage dealer, unlike the corrupter which has the purpose simply to focus fire capital ships. Devourer's vs Corsairs had a very unique relationship as well given how it made sair fire rate notably slower, helped scourge get in, etc. Scourge could own carriers without lots of sairs (until critical mass), so it was an interesting dynamic. Guardian was far better than BL even if it wasn't as good, Guardian didn't have the free unit spawn --> fuck with pathing insane frustrating that came with the unit. Ultralisk is also way more badass in BW, one of the best units! Became significantly worse in SC2 with it being much bigger, clunkier. BW had it right. And while DA might not be best for competitive play, c'mon, it was everyone's favorite unit growing up (cept maybe the carrier). You're focusing on tiny details which I could now oppose with many arguments, but which wasn't the point of that argument. The point of the argument is that even many of the BW units are far from "the most fun possible", which is why just going back from one bad unit to another bad unit just would hardly be any improvement. The game should be balanced/designed with high goals in mind and not return to stuff that wasn't very good to begin with.
Well the point is very relevant - they're not bad units at all. They are some of the better units in RTS overall in how they interact with the game.
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On January 12 2015 07:08 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2015 07:06 Big J wrote:On January 12 2015 06:47 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 09 2015 01:38 Big J wrote:On January 09 2015 00:53 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 08 2015 12:37 Big J wrote:
BW didn't have a real esports rival, found very lucky enviromental circumstances in Korea at the time it got popular, didn't take off as a esport in the rest of the world and couldn't keep up with it's successor WC3 at all outside of Korea.
Add to that that not a single other bigger game developer is even trying to get a big RTS game on the market, despite the competition being non-existant and the top dog SC2 declining.
Then compare that to CSGO: The shooter market has been booming for ages. The target audience is huuuuge.
If you want to take Starcraft somewhere, you have to look at what the majority of Starcraft customers play and make a good esports-capable game out of it. For Broodwar that would be something amongst the lines of Big Game Hunters, for SC2 probably something like Desert Strike/Nexus Wars.
If RTS/Starcraft wants to be a thing again at some point, the developers need to take a look into these sorts of games and analyze why people prefer those over their bigass triple A titles. The answer is right under their noses and it is definitely not harder game fundamentals (aka more Broodwar, even Broodwar players didn't like them and played BGH instead). I agree totally. SC2 made things even harder than Brood War because matchmaking funneled people into 'standard' maps and there was no easy mode option - maps like BGH, Fastest Map, etc. Purists don't like it, but that's what 90% of people play in BW. It was a huge mistake and I think this is one of the main reasons SC2 is dying out. When I say I want SC2 to be more like BW, I am talking about the units. I think the other big problem with SC2 is anti-fun units. Let's face it, in terms of overall fun, lurkers are better than swarm hosts, reavers versus colossus, scourge versus corruptors, arbiters versus a mothership core, and so on. It's true that the shooter market is now bigger than the strategy one, but I think it's just totally wrong to say strategy games can't have mass appeal. Chess is a strategy game, and a national sport in some countries just like BW is/was. Would a really well-done strategy game be the most popular eSport of all? Maybe not, but Starcraft could easily be in the top 3. Well, playing the game on BGH-maps isn't the same as just playing the game in my opinion. If that's the fun part of the game, then the original design should go towards it and the professional scene should also play on those maps. Otherwise we are starting to talk about two different games that just happen to run on the same client. I'm not considered playing Starcraft when I'm playing Desert Strike and neither should be someone who is allowed to 1base with 1million resources, possibly even from stacking 50workers on one mineral. I agree that units could be a lot better, however, your examples just aren't good. The Mothershipcore was never meant to be similar to the Arbiter, you could as well compare it to the Dark Archon and then conclude it is a better design. The Swarm Host and the Lurker share nothing besides having burrow without requiring the burrow upgrade. On top of that there are unit improvements: I like the Marauder replacing the Firebat, it is a much less narrow and microable unit. The hellion is one of the best designed units in Starcrafts legacy, with it's splash form, range and speed fitting perfectly to offer interesting interactions with many units in the game. Banelings are great fun and stalkers an improvement to dragoons (even though blink could have been designed with cliff-abuse in mind to begin with). And the list goes on. Imo there are ups and downs (Colossus, Sentry, Swarm Host) in the comparison with BW unit design and many of the units that are in both games are just bad design to begin with (BC, Devourer/Corruptor, Guardian/Broodlord, Ultralisk, Dark Templar...) and should be considered for redesigning/cutting, one way or another. Devourer is a million times better and more interesting than Corrupter with the way it interacts (reduces armor via splash, reduces unit attack rate, very slow attack) that it ends up being almost a support unit in battle as opposed to the primary damage dealer, unlike the corrupter which has the purpose simply to focus fire capital ships. Devourer's vs Corsairs had a very unique relationship as well given how it made sair fire rate notably slower, helped scourge get in, etc. Scourge could own carriers without lots of sairs (until critical mass), so it was an interesting dynamic. Guardian was far better than BL even if it wasn't as good, Guardian didn't have the free unit spawn --> fuck with pathing insane frustrating that came with the unit. Ultralisk is also way more badass in BW, one of the best units! Became significantly worse in SC2 with it being much bigger, clunkier. BW had it right. And while DA might not be best for competitive play, c'mon, it was everyone's favorite unit growing up (cept maybe the carrier). You're focusing on tiny details which I could now oppose with many arguments, but which wasn't the point of that argument. The point of the argument is that even many of the BW units are far from "the most fun possible", which is why just going back from one bad unit to another bad unit just would hardly be any improvement. The game should be balanced/designed with high goals in mind and not return to stuff that wasn't very good to begin with. Well the point is very relevant - they're not bad units at all. They are some of the better units in RTS overall in how they interact with the game.
I disagree, the named units are some of the worst units in Broodwar. They are levels below the better designed Broodwar units and there are quite some good other RTS games out there with great units that can compete with Starcraft's unit design. In particular air units are just very boring in Starcraft. CnC airdesign with returning fast strike fighters, very vulnerable helicopters and badass slow Kirovs has always been much more exciting than Starcraft's in that department, to give an example.
Starcraft just always has the benefit of the game fundamentals being much better so that even crap units like the Corruptor or the BW Ultralisk have a place just from a strategic standpoint. While the units themselves are mainly just roles that need to be fullfilled.
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On January 12 2015 07:32 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2015 07:08 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 12 2015 07:06 Big J wrote:On January 12 2015 06:47 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 09 2015 01:38 Big J wrote:On January 09 2015 00:53 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 08 2015 12:37 Big J wrote:
BW didn't have a real esports rival, found very lucky enviromental circumstances in Korea at the time it got popular, didn't take off as a esport in the rest of the world and couldn't keep up with it's successor WC3 at all outside of Korea.
Add to that that not a single other bigger game developer is even trying to get a big RTS game on the market, despite the competition being non-existant and the top dog SC2 declining.
Then compare that to CSGO: The shooter market has been booming for ages. The target audience is huuuuge.
If you want to take Starcraft somewhere, you have to look at what the majority of Starcraft customers play and make a good esports-capable game out of it. For Broodwar that would be something amongst the lines of Big Game Hunters, for SC2 probably something like Desert Strike/Nexus Wars.
If RTS/Starcraft wants to be a thing again at some point, the developers need to take a look into these sorts of games and analyze why people prefer those over their bigass triple A titles. The answer is right under their noses and it is definitely not harder game fundamentals (aka more Broodwar, even Broodwar players didn't like them and played BGH instead). I agree totally. SC2 made things even harder than Brood War because matchmaking funneled people into 'standard' maps and there was no easy mode option - maps like BGH, Fastest Map, etc. Purists don't like it, but that's what 90% of people play in BW. It was a huge mistake and I think this is one of the main reasons SC2 is dying out. When I say I want SC2 to be more like BW, I am talking about the units. I think the other big problem with SC2 is anti-fun units. Let's face it, in terms of overall fun, lurkers are better than swarm hosts, reavers versus colossus, scourge versus corruptors, arbiters versus a mothership core, and so on. It's true that the shooter market is now bigger than the strategy one, but I think it's just totally wrong to say strategy games can't have mass appeal. Chess is a strategy game, and a national sport in some countries just like BW is/was. Would a really well-done strategy game be the most popular eSport of all? Maybe not, but Starcraft could easily be in the top 3. Well, playing the game on BGH-maps isn't the same as just playing the game in my opinion. If that's the fun part of the game, then the original design should go towards it and the professional scene should also play on those maps. Otherwise we are starting to talk about two different games that just happen to run on the same client. I'm not considered playing Starcraft when I'm playing Desert Strike and neither should be someone who is allowed to 1base with 1million resources, possibly even from stacking 50workers on one mineral. I agree that units could be a lot better, however, your examples just aren't good. The Mothershipcore was never meant to be similar to the Arbiter, you could as well compare it to the Dark Archon and then conclude it is a better design. The Swarm Host and the Lurker share nothing besides having burrow without requiring the burrow upgrade. On top of that there are unit improvements: I like the Marauder replacing the Firebat, it is a much less narrow and microable unit. The hellion is one of the best designed units in Starcrafts legacy, with it's splash form, range and speed fitting perfectly to offer interesting interactions with many units in the game. Banelings are great fun and stalkers an improvement to dragoons (even though blink could have been designed with cliff-abuse in mind to begin with). And the list goes on. Imo there are ups and downs (Colossus, Sentry, Swarm Host) in the comparison with BW unit design and many of the units that are in both games are just bad design to begin with (BC, Devourer/Corruptor, Guardian/Broodlord, Ultralisk, Dark Templar...) and should be considered for redesigning/cutting, one way or another. Devourer is a million times better and more interesting than Corrupter with the way it interacts (reduces armor via splash, reduces unit attack rate, very slow attack) that it ends up being almost a support unit in battle as opposed to the primary damage dealer, unlike the corrupter which has the purpose simply to focus fire capital ships. Devourer's vs Corsairs had a very unique relationship as well given how it made sair fire rate notably slower, helped scourge get in, etc. Scourge could own carriers without lots of sairs (until critical mass), so it was an interesting dynamic. Guardian was far better than BL even if it wasn't as good, Guardian didn't have the free unit spawn --> fuck with pathing insane frustrating that came with the unit. Ultralisk is also way more badass in BW, one of the best units! Became significantly worse in SC2 with it being much bigger, clunkier. BW had it right. And while DA might not be best for competitive play, c'mon, it was everyone's favorite unit growing up (cept maybe the carrier). You're focusing on tiny details which I could now oppose with many arguments, but which wasn't the point of that argument. The point of the argument is that even many of the BW units are far from "the most fun possible", which is why just going back from one bad unit to another bad unit just would hardly be any improvement. The game should be balanced/designed with high goals in mind and not return to stuff that wasn't very good to begin with. Well the point is very relevant - they're not bad units at all. They are some of the better units in RTS overall in how they interact with the game. I disagree, the named units are some of the worst units in Broodwar. They are levels below the better designed Broodwar units and there are quite some good other RTS games out there with great units that can compete with Starcraft's unit design. In particular air units are just very boring in Starcraft. CnC airdesign with returning fast strike fighters, very vulnerable helicopters and badass slow Kirovs has always been much more exciting than Starcraft's in that department, to give an example. Starcraft just always has the benefit of the game fundamentals being much better so that even crap units like the Corruptor or the BW Ultralisk have a place just from a strategic standpoint. While the units themselves are mainly just roles that need to be fullfilled.
The corrupter is awful, I don't disagree.
The air mechanics in CnC were interesting but hardly exciting compared to the Carrier.
I don't understand where your hate from the Ultra comes from - just because it doesn't have a spell and plays the role of a tankier unit, which nearly every race needs to have, does not make it bad.
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On January 12 2015 07:38 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2015 07:32 Big J wrote:On January 12 2015 07:08 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 12 2015 07:06 Big J wrote:On January 12 2015 06:47 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 09 2015 01:38 Big J wrote:On January 09 2015 00:53 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 08 2015 12:37 Big J wrote:
BW didn't have a real esports rival, found very lucky enviromental circumstances in Korea at the time it got popular, didn't take off as a esport in the rest of the world and couldn't keep up with it's successor WC3 at all outside of Korea.
Add to that that not a single other bigger game developer is even trying to get a big RTS game on the market, despite the competition being non-existant and the top dog SC2 declining.
Then compare that to CSGO: The shooter market has been booming for ages. The target audience is huuuuge.
If you want to take Starcraft somewhere, you have to look at what the majority of Starcraft customers play and make a good esports-capable game out of it. For Broodwar that would be something amongst the lines of Big Game Hunters, for SC2 probably something like Desert Strike/Nexus Wars.
If RTS/Starcraft wants to be a thing again at some point, the developers need to take a look into these sorts of games and analyze why people prefer those over their bigass triple A titles. The answer is right under their noses and it is definitely not harder game fundamentals (aka more Broodwar, even Broodwar players didn't like them and played BGH instead). I agree totally. SC2 made things even harder than Brood War because matchmaking funneled people into 'standard' maps and there was no easy mode option - maps like BGH, Fastest Map, etc. Purists don't like it, but that's what 90% of people play in BW. It was a huge mistake and I think this is one of the main reasons SC2 is dying out. When I say I want SC2 to be more like BW, I am talking about the units. I think the other big problem with SC2 is anti-fun units. Let's face it, in terms of overall fun, lurkers are better than swarm hosts, reavers versus colossus, scourge versus corruptors, arbiters versus a mothership core, and so on. It's true that the shooter market is now bigger than the strategy one, but I think it's just totally wrong to say strategy games can't have mass appeal. Chess is a strategy game, and a national sport in some countries just like BW is/was. Would a really well-done strategy game be the most popular eSport of all? Maybe not, but Starcraft could easily be in the top 3. Well, playing the game on BGH-maps isn't the same as just playing the game in my opinion. If that's the fun part of the game, then the original design should go towards it and the professional scene should also play on those maps. Otherwise we are starting to talk about two different games that just happen to run on the same client. I'm not considered playing Starcraft when I'm playing Desert Strike and neither should be someone who is allowed to 1base with 1million resources, possibly even from stacking 50workers on one mineral. I agree that units could be a lot better, however, your examples just aren't good. The Mothershipcore was never meant to be similar to the Arbiter, you could as well compare it to the Dark Archon and then conclude it is a better design. The Swarm Host and the Lurker share nothing besides having burrow without requiring the burrow upgrade. On top of that there are unit improvements: I like the Marauder replacing the Firebat, it is a much less narrow and microable unit. The hellion is one of the best designed units in Starcrafts legacy, with it's splash form, range and speed fitting perfectly to offer interesting interactions with many units in the game. Banelings are great fun and stalkers an improvement to dragoons (even though blink could have been designed with cliff-abuse in mind to begin with). And the list goes on. Imo there are ups and downs (Colossus, Sentry, Swarm Host) in the comparison with BW unit design and many of the units that are in both games are just bad design to begin with (BC, Devourer/Corruptor, Guardian/Broodlord, Ultralisk, Dark Templar...) and should be considered for redesigning/cutting, one way or another. Devourer is a million times better and more interesting than Corrupter with the way it interacts (reduces armor via splash, reduces unit attack rate, very slow attack) that it ends up being almost a support unit in battle as opposed to the primary damage dealer, unlike the corrupter which has the purpose simply to focus fire capital ships. Devourer's vs Corsairs had a very unique relationship as well given how it made sair fire rate notably slower, helped scourge get in, etc. Scourge could own carriers without lots of sairs (until critical mass), so it was an interesting dynamic. Guardian was far better than BL even if it wasn't as good, Guardian didn't have the free unit spawn --> fuck with pathing insane frustrating that came with the unit. Ultralisk is also way more badass in BW, one of the best units! Became significantly worse in SC2 with it being much bigger, clunkier. BW had it right. And while DA might not be best for competitive play, c'mon, it was everyone's favorite unit growing up (cept maybe the carrier). You're focusing on tiny details which I could now oppose with many arguments, but which wasn't the point of that argument. The point of the argument is that even many of the BW units are far from "the most fun possible", which is why just going back from one bad unit to another bad unit just would hardly be any improvement. The game should be balanced/designed with high goals in mind and not return to stuff that wasn't very good to begin with. Well the point is very relevant - they're not bad units at all. They are some of the better units in RTS overall in how they interact with the game. I disagree, the named units are some of the worst units in Broodwar. They are levels below the better designed Broodwar units and there are quite some good other RTS games out there with great units that can compete with Starcraft's unit design. In particular air units are just very boring in Starcraft. CnC airdesign with returning fast strike fighters, very vulnerable helicopters and badass slow Kirovs has always been much more exciting than Starcraft's in that department, to give an example. Starcraft just always has the benefit of the game fundamentals being much better so that even crap units like the Corruptor or the BW Ultralisk have a place just from a strategic standpoint. While the units themselves are mainly just roles that need to be fullfilled. The corrupter is awful, I don't disagree. The air mechanics in CnC were interesting but hardly exciting compared to the Carrier. I don't understand where your hate from the Ultra comes from - just because it doesn't have a spell and plays the role of a tankier unit, which nearly every race needs to have, does not make it bad.
It's not really a hate, I like the Ultralisk form a lore standpoint. And I'm not a fetishist of active abilities either, they can stay in Warcraft. But the unit offers little to no real micro potential. And in my opinion it is not placed well in the techtree, I'd fancy such a basic design with little potential tricks and melee attack more towards T2 in Starcraft, because it often feels like one just builds them because... well, the game got long and one just has enough to build them now. (in both games, though my BW experience is quite limited)
The carrier is a great unit (if done right of course). To the air mechanics in general, let's just say I think of SC2's air mechanics as a form of invulnerability combined with complete Terrain neglection. The antiair options in Starcraft are neither so narrow that air play is strongly interesting as an "abusive trickery", nor strong enough to allow for air units being treated somewhat normally. They are in between so that air play can be a stable option that forces narrow reactions from the opponent (corsair/phoenix, lategame P/T airballs vs Zerg, Broodlords forcing Vikings/VRs/Tempests). Or just useless (most Terran air vs Protoss, most Protoss air vs Terran, most airplay from Terran vs Zerg coming very late after extreme precautions).
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On January 12 2015 07:55 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2015 07:38 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 12 2015 07:32 Big J wrote:On January 12 2015 07:08 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 12 2015 07:06 Big J wrote:On January 12 2015 06:47 FabledIntegral wrote:On January 09 2015 01:38 Big J wrote:On January 09 2015 00:53 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 08 2015 12:37 Big J wrote:
BW didn't have a real esports rival, found very lucky enviromental circumstances in Korea at the time it got popular, didn't take off as a esport in the rest of the world and couldn't keep up with it's successor WC3 at all outside of Korea.
Add to that that not a single other bigger game developer is even trying to get a big RTS game on the market, despite the competition being non-existant and the top dog SC2 declining.
Then compare that to CSGO: The shooter market has been booming for ages. The target audience is huuuuge.
If you want to take Starcraft somewhere, you have to look at what the majority of Starcraft customers play and make a good esports-capable game out of it. For Broodwar that would be something amongst the lines of Big Game Hunters, for SC2 probably something like Desert Strike/Nexus Wars.
If RTS/Starcraft wants to be a thing again at some point, the developers need to take a look into these sorts of games and analyze why people prefer those over their bigass triple A titles. The answer is right under their noses and it is definitely not harder game fundamentals (aka more Broodwar, even Broodwar players didn't like them and played BGH instead). I agree totally. SC2 made things even harder than Brood War because matchmaking funneled people into 'standard' maps and there was no easy mode option - maps like BGH, Fastest Map, etc. Purists don't like it, but that's what 90% of people play in BW. It was a huge mistake and I think this is one of the main reasons SC2 is dying out. When I say I want SC2 to be more like BW, I am talking about the units. I think the other big problem with SC2 is anti-fun units. Let's face it, in terms of overall fun, lurkers are better than swarm hosts, reavers versus colossus, scourge versus corruptors, arbiters versus a mothership core, and so on. It's true that the shooter market is now bigger than the strategy one, but I think it's just totally wrong to say strategy games can't have mass appeal. Chess is a strategy game, and a national sport in some countries just like BW is/was. Would a really well-done strategy game be the most popular eSport of all? Maybe not, but Starcraft could easily be in the top 3. Well, playing the game on BGH-maps isn't the same as just playing the game in my opinion. If that's the fun part of the game, then the original design should go towards it and the professional scene should also play on those maps. Otherwise we are starting to talk about two different games that just happen to run on the same client. I'm not considered playing Starcraft when I'm playing Desert Strike and neither should be someone who is allowed to 1base with 1million resources, possibly even from stacking 50workers on one mineral. I agree that units could be a lot better, however, your examples just aren't good. The Mothershipcore was never meant to be similar to the Arbiter, you could as well compare it to the Dark Archon and then conclude it is a better design. The Swarm Host and the Lurker share nothing besides having burrow without requiring the burrow upgrade. On top of that there are unit improvements: I like the Marauder replacing the Firebat, it is a much less narrow and microable unit. The hellion is one of the best designed units in Starcrafts legacy, with it's splash form, range and speed fitting perfectly to offer interesting interactions with many units in the game. Banelings are great fun and stalkers an improvement to dragoons (even though blink could have been designed with cliff-abuse in mind to begin with). And the list goes on. Imo there are ups and downs (Colossus, Sentry, Swarm Host) in the comparison with BW unit design and many of the units that are in both games are just bad design to begin with (BC, Devourer/Corruptor, Guardian/Broodlord, Ultralisk, Dark Templar...) and should be considered for redesigning/cutting, one way or another. Devourer is a million times better and more interesting than Corrupter with the way it interacts (reduces armor via splash, reduces unit attack rate, very slow attack) that it ends up being almost a support unit in battle as opposed to the primary damage dealer, unlike the corrupter which has the purpose simply to focus fire capital ships. Devourer's vs Corsairs had a very unique relationship as well given how it made sair fire rate notably slower, helped scourge get in, etc. Scourge could own carriers without lots of sairs (until critical mass), so it was an interesting dynamic. Guardian was far better than BL even if it wasn't as good, Guardian didn't have the free unit spawn --> fuck with pathing insane frustrating that came with the unit. Ultralisk is also way more badass in BW, one of the best units! Became significantly worse in SC2 with it being much bigger, clunkier. BW had it right. And while DA might not be best for competitive play, c'mon, it was everyone's favorite unit growing up (cept maybe the carrier). You're focusing on tiny details which I could now oppose with many arguments, but which wasn't the point of that argument. The point of the argument is that even many of the BW units are far from "the most fun possible", which is why just going back from one bad unit to another bad unit just would hardly be any improvement. The game should be balanced/designed with high goals in mind and not return to stuff that wasn't very good to begin with. Well the point is very relevant - they're not bad units at all. They are some of the better units in RTS overall in how they interact with the game. I disagree, the named units are some of the worst units in Broodwar. They are levels below the better designed Broodwar units and there are quite some good other RTS games out there with great units that can compete with Starcraft's unit design. In particular air units are just very boring in Starcraft. CnC airdesign with returning fast strike fighters, very vulnerable helicopters and badass slow Kirovs has always been much more exciting than Starcraft's in that department, to give an example. Starcraft just always has the benefit of the game fundamentals being much better so that even crap units like the Corruptor or the BW Ultralisk have a place just from a strategic standpoint. While the units themselves are mainly just roles that need to be fullfilled. The corrupter is awful, I don't disagree. The air mechanics in CnC were interesting but hardly exciting compared to the Carrier. I don't understand where your hate from the Ultra comes from - just because it doesn't have a spell and plays the role of a tankier unit, which nearly every race needs to have, does not make it bad. It's not really a hate, I like the Ultralisk form a lore standpoint. And I'm not a fetishist of active abilities either, they can stay in Warcraft. But the unit offers little to no real micro potential. And in my opinion it is not placed well in the techtree, I'd fancy such a basic design with little potential tricks and melee attack more towards T2 in Starcraft, because it often feels like one just builds them because... well, the game got long and one just has enough to build them now. (in both games, though my BW experience is quite limited) The carrier is a great unit (if done right of course). To the air mechanics in general, let's just say I think of SC2's air mechanics as a form of invulnerability combined with complete Terrain neglection. The antiair options in Starcraft are neither so narrow that air play is strongly interesting as an "abusive trickery", nor strong enough to allow for air units being treated somewhat normally. They are in between so that air play can be a stable option that forces narrow reactions from the opponent (corsair/phoenix, lategame P/T airballs vs Zerg, Broodlords forcing Vikings/VRs/Tempests). Or just useless (most Terran air vs Protoss, most Protoss air vs Terran, most airplay from Terran vs Zerg coming very late after extreme precautions).
It's just another unit that synergizes incredibly well with the Zergling. Ling/ultra is all about flanking your opponent, you can't really just A-move unless you know you have a very superior force. BW interacted very different with teh Ultra being a necessity due to Terran MM and Tank DPS output. Zergs absolutely desperately need a tank, and the Science Vessel pretty much nullifies all options except the Ultra when you get to very late game. Of course, you can get by as well with Defilers, Scourge, and Lurkers but it's very hard to be mobile with these units. For that reason, the Ultra fits in perfectly in that it has characteristics similar to a Zergling (speed/melee) but also fills a much needed gap.
Also synergizes incredibly well with defiler (although so does the infestor with the ultra).
Also only referring to BW.
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In terms of gameplay, maybe instead of the ultralisk it could be better to have the aberrations from the campaign at around a T2 tech level? They could be a tankier melee unit that does not suffer from pathing issues with zerglings because of being able to walk over them. This helps melee keep up with ranged units, because one issue with the scaling is that only a limited number of melee units can attack a group of ranged units at once while all ranged units can keep attacking and this grows more pronounced with more units, so if you have higher tech zerg units that can walk over each other then melee can keep up with scaling better (as opposed to just giving zerg ranged units). On the other hand, this kind of overlaps with the roach -- but maybe ultralisks overlap with roaches anyway.
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On January 12 2015 06:02 DemigodcelpH wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2015 07:11 Eliezar wrote:On January 08 2015 11:44 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 07 2015 01:19 Big J wrote:
The difference between Broodwar and SC2 is in mindset.
In Broodwar, when something was a "hardcounter" people just had to put up with it because blizzard would never patch the game.
SC2 has the problem of the second-born. BW people expect the game to offer the same strategies as their game had, aka "this is supposed to be BW 2.0".
Then there is the young generation of SC2-fans that is spoiled by how much blizzard supported the game with patches. And now demand that anything they would like to have playable to become playable, aka "I want to be able to mass my favorite unit in every matchup".
And then there are the guys that are annoyed by patches and expansions and hate whenever one of their previous options becomes weaker or unviable, aka, "blizzard destroying strategies".
If people would just put up with immortals hardcountering tanks as they did with reavers hardcountering M&M in BW, we could have actual discussions about improving the game instead of "why isn't this BW"/"why I don't want this to be BW". I feel like you can't go wrong if you err on the side of making it more like BW. BW didn't start fizzling out 3 years after release and there's a reason for that. Look at CSGO. They made a few small, evolutionary changes rather than massively breaking from the past. They stayed true to the Counter-Strike formula and that is being rewarded big time. On January 07 2015 01:28 Grumbels wrote:
Maybe larva shouldn't regenerate when eggs are still morphing (i.e. eggs count as larva for the limit of 3), that way units with higher cost/larva can get higher build time to effectively bring down this ratio, which might be good since for other races cost/production is more or less constant for all units. I don't see what problem this is solving? How does this make the game more fun? To me it seems more non Koreans play SC2 at 4 years past release than played BW at 4 years after SC's release. You'd log onto BNET and it would be endless bots and empty channel ghost towns. I think there is the myth of Broodwar that doesn't represent the reality. Warcraft 3 coming out in 2002 also took away much of what was left of the Broodwar scene...sure Grrr and Pillars and Maynard and Dudey and whoever were living in Korea (okay so ilnp doesn't count) but there wasn't much of a Broodwar scene at that point outside of Korea. That was in a west that couldn't compete. The Korean BW scene was bigger than the SC2 Korean + west scene combined.
It wasn't in a west that couldn't compete. When the scene transitioned to Korea many of the best west players had moved on and Bnet had already lost much of its population. Players like Zileas, Sosowac, Gadianton, and TillerMan were no longer in the game when professional starcraft took off in Korea...you take those 4 and add Grrr... and Maynard and you have the 6 best players during Bnets hey day. Pillars, Kain, Jolly, and Honest (Korean) were behind those players until those players started dropping off.
I'm not buying the revised history that StarCraft was bigger in Korea than StarCraft 2 is in the entire world either. Sure in Korea there was a bigger impact on television and in the studio, but...there were 4 major individual tournaments in 2001; in 2011 there were way more premier tournaments in Korea (11), in Europe (8), and in the North America (12). There was a massive amount of prize money for the year, there were great crowds, and there were solid online streaming numbers.
Moneywise 2001 saw the largest tournament pay out less than $10k US...2011 saw the largest tournament pay out almost $190k US. The largest broodwar prize pool ever was about $110k US...there were 7 tournaments in 2011 alone that had larger prize pools than that, 3 in 2010, and 6 in 2012 (including the $250k US prize money world championship), 9 in 2014, and I forgot to count 2013 and don't feel like going back and looking it up.
So starcraft 2 has had MORE tournaments, bigger prize pools, and has had an actual global audience.
Its actually pretty crazy how successful the game has been.
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On January 12 2015 20:09 Eliezar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2015 06:02 DemigodcelpH wrote:On January 11 2015 07:11 Eliezar wrote:On January 08 2015 11:44 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 07 2015 01:19 Big J wrote:
The difference between Broodwar and SC2 is in mindset.
In Broodwar, when something was a "hardcounter" people just had to put up with it because blizzard would never patch the game.
SC2 has the problem of the second-born. BW people expect the game to offer the same strategies as their game had, aka "this is supposed to be BW 2.0".
Then there is the young generation of SC2-fans that is spoiled by how much blizzard supported the game with patches. And now demand that anything they would like to have playable to become playable, aka "I want to be able to mass my favorite unit in every matchup".
And then there are the guys that are annoyed by patches and expansions and hate whenever one of their previous options becomes weaker or unviable, aka, "blizzard destroying strategies".
If people would just put up with immortals hardcountering tanks as they did with reavers hardcountering M&M in BW, we could have actual discussions about improving the game instead of "why isn't this BW"/"why I don't want this to be BW". I feel like you can't go wrong if you err on the side of making it more like BW. BW didn't start fizzling out 3 years after release and there's a reason for that. Look at CSGO. They made a few small, evolutionary changes rather than massively breaking from the past. They stayed true to the Counter-Strike formula and that is being rewarded big time. On January 07 2015 01:28 Grumbels wrote:
Maybe larva shouldn't regenerate when eggs are still morphing (i.e. eggs count as larva for the limit of 3), that way units with higher cost/larva can get higher build time to effectively bring down this ratio, which might be good since for other races cost/production is more or less constant for all units. I don't see what problem this is solving? How does this make the game more fun? To me it seems more non Koreans play SC2 at 4 years past release than played BW at 4 years after SC's release. You'd log onto BNET and it would be endless bots and empty channel ghost towns. I think there is the myth of Broodwar that doesn't represent the reality. Warcraft 3 coming out in 2002 also took away much of what was left of the Broodwar scene...sure Grrr and Pillars and Maynard and Dudey and whoever were living in Korea (okay so ilnp doesn't count) but there wasn't much of a Broodwar scene at that point outside of Korea. That was in a west that couldn't compete. The Korean BW scene was bigger than the SC2 Korean + west scene combined. It wasn't in a west that couldn't compete. When the scene transitioned to Korea many of the best west players had moved on and Bnet had already lost much of its population. Players like Zileas, Sosowac, Gadianton, and TillerMan were no longer in the game when professional starcraft took off in Korea...you take those 4 and add Grrr... and Maynard and you have the 6 best players during Bnets hey day. Pillars, Kain, Jolly, and Honest (Korean) were behind those players until those players started dropping off. I'm not buying the revised history that StarCraft was bigger in Korea than StarCraft 2 is in the entire world either. Sure in Korea there was a bigger impact on television and in the studio, but...there were 4 major individual tournaments in 2001; in 2011 there were way more premier tournaments in Korea (11), in Europe (8), and in the North America (12). There was a massive amount of prize money for the year, there were great crowds, and there were solid online streaming numbers. Moneywise 2001 saw the largest tournament pay out less than $10k US...2011 saw the largest tournament pay out almost $190k US. The largest broodwar prize pool ever was about $110k US...there were 7 tournaments in 2011 alone that had larger prize pools than that, 3 in 2010, and 6 in 2012 (including the $250k US prize money world championship), 9 in 2014, and I forgot to count 2013 and don't feel like going back and looking it up. So starcraft 2 has had MORE tournaments, bigger prize pools, and has had an actual global audience. Its actually pretty crazy how successful the game has been.
You do make a strong argument with your numbers and facts and stuff, but not sure wether to believe you or the multiple people saying SC2 is a daed game. They do seem quite convinced.
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On January 12 2015 20:09 Eliezar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2015 06:02 DemigodcelpH wrote:On January 11 2015 07:11 Eliezar wrote:On January 08 2015 11:44 BaronVonOwn wrote:On January 07 2015 01:19 Big J wrote:
The difference between Broodwar and SC2 is in mindset.
In Broodwar, when something was a "hardcounter" people just had to put up with it because blizzard would never patch the game.
SC2 has the problem of the second-born. BW people expect the game to offer the same strategies as their game had, aka "this is supposed to be BW 2.0".
Then there is the young generation of SC2-fans that is spoiled by how much blizzard supported the game with patches. And now demand that anything they would like to have playable to become playable, aka "I want to be able to mass my favorite unit in every matchup".
And then there are the guys that are annoyed by patches and expansions and hate whenever one of their previous options becomes weaker or unviable, aka, "blizzard destroying strategies".
If people would just put up with immortals hardcountering tanks as they did with reavers hardcountering M&M in BW, we could have actual discussions about improving the game instead of "why isn't this BW"/"why I don't want this to be BW". I feel like you can't go wrong if you err on the side of making it more like BW. BW didn't start fizzling out 3 years after release and there's a reason for that. Look at CSGO. They made a few small, evolutionary changes rather than massively breaking from the past. They stayed true to the Counter-Strike formula and that is being rewarded big time. On January 07 2015 01:28 Grumbels wrote:
Maybe larva shouldn't regenerate when eggs are still morphing (i.e. eggs count as larva for the limit of 3), that way units with higher cost/larva can get higher build time to effectively bring down this ratio, which might be good since for other races cost/production is more or less constant for all units. I don't see what problem this is solving? How does this make the game more fun? To me it seems more non Koreans play SC2 at 4 years past release than played BW at 4 years after SC's release. You'd log onto BNET and it would be endless bots and empty channel ghost towns. I think there is the myth of Broodwar that doesn't represent the reality. Warcraft 3 coming out in 2002 also took away much of what was left of the Broodwar scene...sure Grrr and Pillars and Maynard and Dudey and whoever were living in Korea (okay so ilnp doesn't count) but there wasn't much of a Broodwar scene at that point outside of Korea. That was in a west that couldn't compete. The Korean BW scene was bigger than the SC2 Korean + west scene combined. It wasn't in a west that couldn't compete. When the scene transitioned to Korea many of the best west players had moved on and Bnet had already lost much of its population. Players like Zileas, Sosowac, Gadianton, and TillerMan were no longer in the game when professional starcraft took off in Korea...you take those 4 and add Grrr... and Maynard and you have the 6 best players during Bnets hey day. Pillars, Kain, Jolly, and Honest (Korean) were behind those players until those players started dropping off. I'm not buying the revised history that StarCraft was bigger in Korea than StarCraft 2 is in the entire world either. Sure in Korea there was a bigger impact on television and in the studio, but...there were 4 major individual tournaments in 2001; in 2011 there were way more premier tournaments in Korea (11), in Europe (8), and in the North America (12). There was a massive amount of prize money for the year, there were great crowds, and there were solid online streaming numbers. Moneywise 2001 saw the largest tournament pay out less than $10k US...2011 saw the largest tournament pay out almost $190k US. The largest broodwar prize pool ever was about $110k US...there were 7 tournaments in 2011 alone that had larger prize pools than that, 3 in 2010, and 6 in 2012 (including the $250k US prize money world championship), 9 in 2014, and I forgot to count 2013 and don't feel like going back and looking it up. So starcraft 2 has had MORE tournaments, bigger prize pools, and has had an actual global audience. Its actually pretty crazy how successful the game has been.
honestly i think most people crying dead game either have nostalgia tinted glasses of wat broodwar is like, or simply call sc2 dead because its no longer the biggest e sport
honestly overall sc2 has been very succesfull, i think people just feel that because nowadays were arguably 4th(behind dota, lol and cs) and sort of declining that the games dead when its actually still got a rather large folowing
40-50k stream numbers for most larger tournaments isnt dead, heck smite got~30k for its world championship finals
but compared to lol and dota numbers 30-40k doesnt seem that great anymore.
tho the ammount of sc content (especially last year) kinda crippled individual players streaming numbers, but thats also due to how hard it is to be competetive and stream in sc compared to other games
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Watching Gumiho playing mech makes me hope that in Lotv the raven will be made into a sensible unit.
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Does anyone know if LOTV multiplayer will be free to play?
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On January 13 2015 02:40 SuperFanBoy wrote:
Does anyone know if LOTV multiplayer will be free to play?
So far they have hinted that it's not, emphasising that it is 'standalone' and you can buy it without having WoL or HotS. It's still possible the game could end up being F2P though.
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EPT
