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On January 01 2017 02:13 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2017 01:30 207aicila wrote:On January 01 2017 00:42 Nakajin wrote:On December 31 2016 22:24 207aicila wrote:On December 31 2016 09:51 Nakajin wrote:On December 31 2016 05:27 Dingodile wrote:
Do we have any great successors? Look what happened to Diablo, PES, FIFA, GTA, CnC, Settlers, AoE etc... Same with movies. I really think the "prime time" at gaming and movie industries were around 1998-2007. That sound a awfull lot like "it was better in my day" there is some amazing movies and games that comes out today. I mean I can hardly find why FIFA is suppose to be worst now then it was in 2001. Yes because we all know graphics is all that matter. If anything that's worse too, because everyone is trying too hard to be super mega realistic which means in 5 years games will look like shit, but many old games had strong artistic direction that prevents them from seeming dated even now. Sorry friend but when almost every $60 game that releases is a generic open world meme with the same mechanics, same progression, crafting, climb towers, a million sidequests and garbage story, yeah. Things were better when we had things like Fallout 2, System Shock, Planescape Torment, Deus Ex, Unreal, Quake etc.  Unless you're gonna backtrack and say "oh but what about the indie scene blah blah blah". Agreed, but those are not the games we're complaining about, and not the games whose graphics you're so eager to suck off. For the record my favourite game of 2016 is Enter the Gungeon so I'm not entirely ignorant about the indie scene. First, I never said anyting about graphic I don't really care about them and I play all my game in low because I have a crappy pc and I want good framerate. And for FIFA or any sport games I can't see how the mecanics where better in the early 2000 when it was just kick and run and now. Second Systen Shock and Planescape Torment are your definition of what games were betwen 1998 and 2007? Sorry to tell you that but those game sold like shit, so I don't see why the inde scene should be ignore when there are some huge commercial succes coming out if it, for exemple The Witness, Fez, Divinity : original sins, ect... But most of all what about The Witcher, Mass Effect, the first bioshock, Fallout NV, Europa Universalis 4, Heart of Iron, Pillars of Eternity, Trine, ect... those are suppose to be shit? I mean you can say that you love older FPS and RPG better then the new but there is difference between that and saying evretying is garbage now. Also since the first post included movie : Manchester by the sea and Room are amazing and Star wars 2 and Catwoman are terrible.Just like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is great and Batman vs Superman is bad. There is not a lot that has change in movie in the last 20 years. Oh okay so what matters to you is if a game sells well or not, and not if it's any good. By your logic Justin Bieber must be one of the greatest music artists of all time. [insert thinking emoji here] And yes, System Shock is much better than Bioshock, Fallout 1 and 2 are much better than their sequels, The Witcher games are pretty good but super overrated by casuals who never played Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment or other god-tier RPGs etc. No I am not saying sales determine if a games is good or not, I am saying that you can't say indie don't matter now when you talk about niche game like System Shock to say that games were better before. Those indie games are much more popular and have a big presence in the videogame industries, and there is some of them that are amazing. I played Baldur's Gates and fallout 1-2 and a bit of tactics, they are very good games but it's not like that mean other RPG like New Vegas or the Witcher are not good. Also those type of game still exist, pillars of eternity, Divinity, wasteland 2 ect... And I don't see why someone who didin't played a 20 years old game is suppose to be a casual.
LOL now you're moving the goalposts, classic and classy.
I didn't say indies don't matter, but the examples you bring like FIFA and Mass Effect are definitely extremely overrated. If you brought up games like The Binding of Isaac or Hotline Miami or Furi (2016 release represent, very good one too) then sure, those are phenomenal games that came out in the last decade.
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I think it is true that good games were a lot more common in the 1998-2007 or so, that doesn't mean there aren't exception or good games today or that there were no bad games back then. But overall there was more creativity and quality to games, nowadays more focus on graphics / production value / presentation / marketing etc, often at sacrifice of gameplay accuracy and/or depth. Something around when the wii came out the mainstream/casual/social game playing market developped and the focus of the industry started to shift or something like that. There were casuals before but I guess different percentage... simultaneously the companies grew like giants and many big eat the small and producers I guess have more power of decision in the game design / direction. That's not good for making the greatest games like happened more frequently in the era where games grew like more of a risk to take, new activity/craft to explore..
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Canada8988 Posts
On January 01 2017 02:35 207aicila wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2017 02:13 Nakajin wrote:On January 01 2017 01:30 207aicila wrote:On January 01 2017 00:42 Nakajin wrote:On December 31 2016 22:24 207aicila wrote:On December 31 2016 09:51 Nakajin wrote:On December 31 2016 05:27 Dingodile wrote:
Do we have any great successors? Look what happened to Diablo, PES, FIFA, GTA, CnC, Settlers, AoE etc... Same with movies. I really think the "prime time" at gaming and movie industries were around 1998-2007. That sound a awfull lot like "it was better in my day" there is some amazing movies and games that comes out today. I mean I can hardly find why FIFA is suppose to be worst now then it was in 2001. Yes because we all know graphics is all that matter. If anything that's worse too, because everyone is trying too hard to be super mega realistic which means in 5 years games will look like shit, but many old games had strong artistic direction that prevents them from seeming dated even now. Sorry friend but when almost every $60 game that releases is a generic open world meme with the same mechanics, same progression, crafting, climb towers, a million sidequests and garbage story, yeah. Things were better when we had things like Fallout 2, System Shock, Planescape Torment, Deus Ex, Unreal, Quake etc. Unless you're gonna backtrack and say "oh but what about the indie scene blah blah blah". Agreed, but those are not the games we're complaining about, and not the games whose graphics you're so eager to suck off. For the record my favourite game of 2016 is Enter the Gungeon so I'm not entirely ignorant about the indie scene. First, I never said anyting about graphic I don't really care about them and I play all my game in low because I have a crappy pc and I want good framerate. And for FIFA or any sport games I can't see how the mecanics where better in the early 2000 when it was just kick and run and now. Second Systen Shock and Planescape Torment are your definition of what games were betwen 1998 and 2007? Sorry to tell you that but those game sold like shit, so I don't see why the inde scene should be ignore when there are some huge commercial succes coming out if it, for exemple The Witness, Fez, Divinity : original sins, ect... But most of all what about The Witcher, Mass Effect, the first bioshock, Fallout NV, Europa Universalis 4, Heart of Iron, Pillars of Eternity, Trine, ect... those are suppose to be shit? I mean you can say that you love older FPS and RPG better then the new but there is difference between that and saying evretying is garbage now. Also since the first post included movie : Manchester by the sea and Room are amazing and Star wars 2 and Catwoman are terrible.Just like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is great and Batman vs Superman is bad. There is not a lot that has change in movie in the last 20 years. Oh okay so what matters to you is if a game sells well or not, and not if it's any good. By your logic Justin Bieber must be one of the greatest music artists of all time. [insert thinking emoji here] And yes, System Shock is much better than Bioshock, Fallout 1 and 2 are much better than their sequels, The Witcher games are pretty good but super overrated by casuals who never played Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment or other god-tier RPGs etc. No I am not saying sales determine if a games is good or not, I am saying that you can't say indie don't matter now when you talk about niche game like System Shock to say that games were better before. Those indie games are much more popular and have a big presence in the videogame industries, and there is some of them that are amazing. I played Baldur's Gates and fallout 1-2 and a bit of tactics, they are very good games but it's not like that mean other RPG like New Vegas or the Witcher are not good. Also those type of game still exist, pillars of eternity, Divinity, wasteland 2 ect... And I don't see why someone who didin't played a 20 years old game is suppose to be a casual. LOL now you're moving the goalposts, classic and classy. I didn't say indies don't matter, but the examples you bring like FIFA and Mass Effect are definitely extremely overrated. If you brought up games like The Binding of Isaac or Hotline Miami or Furi (2016 release represent, very good one too) then sure, those are phenomenal games that came out in the last decade.
Hum no the first post said "the prime time for movie and video game was 1998-2007" and then I said that there are some amazing games that come out today, and then you said that games today are all the same and graphics oriented (and also that I wanted to suck of a game for some reason) and that indie don't matter in the conversation because those are not what you are complaining against, and I said that I tough indie games have to be included in the conversation since they are part of what games are especially if you want to talk about relivelly "small" (in term of sales) games to say that late 90 early 2000 games were better. And I also said that I belive there are non indie games that are great to, like ME, The Witcher, Pillars of Eternity, and you don't like those games that. Ok.
And then you accuse me of "moving the goalpost" when the discution, at least in my eye is around the idea that "there is some amazing games that comes out today" and if you agree with that I don't see why you wanted to argue.
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On December 31 2016 05:38 NonY wrote:The author talked very little about what it means to be a successor. Even when we accept his different sub-genre argument, there remain other indicators that SC2 is a successor. Look at how many players and fans replaced BW with SC2, for instance. He doesn't seem very interested in discussing succession at all and instead focuses entirely on game design in his discussion and arguments, but still chose to make his title, main statement and conclusion about succession. I don't get it. I got enticed into reading something I thought I'd never read before and it's just another game design article that I feel like I've already read five versions of. Show nested quote +LOTV basically is a huge "fuck you" to the entire player base that enjoyed playing WOL/HOTS. Wait you were enjoying yourself during WoL/HotS? It's hard to tell with you man.
I and most other people enjoyed the hell out of the game until Blizzard essentially stopped balancing it and then starting putting out the most absurd balance patches.
So basically before the broodlord/infestor era where it took blizzard roughly around 1 yr or so to admit that massing 50 infestors every game with broods was not healthy for the game.
Ever since that point, there have been very few "good" balance patches or changes made to the game...and very few impactful ones for game strategic diversity. I mean i think the issue is, Blizzard has got virtually every balance/design change for SC2 completely wrong, and then waits months to ever fix or address or iterate upon those changes. Would you not agree with that?
Brood infestor taking over game for 1+ yr leading to ZvZ embarrassment in tourney games of brood infestor vs brood infestor.
Mech not being viable for the entirety of the game's lifespan, even on the current "mech patch" it's basically still garbage and the changes were off the mark. They refused to make any meaningful changes for fear that they would "get it wrong" and disrupt balance...but now when they finally did make changes, the changes were almost negligible and wrong and they haven't shown they are iterating upon anything, such as the cyclone re-design, or swarmhost vs mech atm again.
Speaking of...the 1+ yr of mass swarmhost versus everything, again leading to ZvZ embarrassment in tourney games that were mass locusts vs mass locusts.
The correlation between all of the above types of things, which i'm sure i missed a ton of, are that there are always periods of absolute bullshit in terms of game balance that could easily be tweaked and changed and fixed if there was a competent lead balance dev working on SC2 that also actively still played the game.
I mean hell Nony, i see your passion for the game, but you probably recognize the same bullshit i do when it comes to blizzard's lack of iteration and consistent patching. I remember your thread about carrier leash range and how it could be incorporated into SC2 to add micro to the unit and bring it to be more viable...the problem is... you understand how that could be tweaked, i understand how that could be tweaked, and maybe a lot of people here understand the benefits of adding such things to the game but apparently there's not even a C+ level lead balance designer at blizzard that understood that thread or plays the game at a high enough level to understand your points, or how to implement it into the game.
I enjoy the game still like a lot of other people and i still stream it for a living too, just like you played for TL and stream too and other people that have a lot of passion for the game and want it to succeed and thrive again do.
I honestly think the SC2 community is delusional or too afraid for the longest time to call out one of the most incapable balance developers of all time. In regards to SC2 competition...it's kind of important that the game be decently balanced without the most absolute bullshit gameplay in the game, otherwise the game loses a lot of competitive integrity.
Blizzard should be constantly patching SC2 balance for competitive play, every month at the worst. MOBA games / Overwatch / Insert new Successful game here get a lot of attention and patches and it really shows with those products.
While i think Blizzard got the last patch largely wrong again (cyclone re-design bad, carriers op, swarmhosts op again) they did do somethings right like try to address mech viability, fix tankivacs, address carrier viability, address hydra viability. Those things are definitely good.
But we're just back to square one again. They do those things. Then they don't patch for another 3, 4, usually 6+ months. Like what the hell? We should all be angry as fuck over that to be honest. Because the issue is, the things that they get massively wrong such as current swarmhosts don't get patched or fixed again for way too long, which can cause player frustration and mess up competitive play + ladder.
So yeh...i still enjoy the game probably like you do Nony, but you have to remember players like me and you are the hardcore of the hardestcore. Players that are not as dedicated as us...after 1 week of playing vs 3 rax reaper, or mass adepts, are going to just stop playing the game or get really "annoyed."
Obviously Blizzard / Tim Morten implementing co-op commanders was a great way to start appealing SC2 to more casual players, and there's nothing really negative myself or anyone can say about that, i think that's great. But when it comes to the competitive multiplayer blizzard has literally no clue or direction on how to balance the game or iterate upon changes they make, and the proof is in how inconsistent blizzard is with their patching.
@_@
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I disagree with the article, irregardless of how one categorizes the 'classic' and 'modern' RTS subgenres, SC2 is the successor to SC:BW. Maybe some people would prefer a SC:BW Remastered or SC:BW HD as a 'true' successor, but it doesn't change the fact that SC2 is the direct successor. The main problem with SC2 isn't that they 'modernized' task management, e.g. with unit pathing, limitless control groups, etc. It's that they never added any depth on top to make up for the simplications, and instead went for a ridiculous 3 game design (WoL, HotS, LotV) with nonsense meta changes (e.g. finally reintroducing the Lurker as a 'new' unit in LotV). So yes, they botched the game design and execution, but it doesn't change the fact that SC2 is the successor.
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On January 01 2017 01:30 207aicila wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2017 00:42 Nakajin wrote:On December 31 2016 22:24 207aicila wrote:On December 31 2016 09:51 Nakajin wrote:On December 31 2016 05:27 Dingodile wrote:
Do we have any great successors? Look what happened to Diablo, PES, FIFA, GTA, CnC, Settlers, AoE etc... Same with movies. I really think the "prime time" at gaming and movie industries were around 1998-2007. That sound a awfull lot like "it was better in my day" there is some amazing movies and games that comes out today. I mean I can hardly find why FIFA is suppose to be worst now then it was in 2001. Yes because we all know graphics is all that matter. If anything that's worse too, because everyone is trying too hard to be super mega realistic which means in 5 years games will look like shit, but many old games had strong artistic direction that prevents them from seeming dated even now. Sorry friend but when almost every $60 game that releases is a generic open world meme with the same mechanics, same progression, crafting, climb towers, a million sidequests and garbage story, yeah. Things were better when we had things like Fallout 2, System Shock, Planescape Torment, Deus Ex, Unreal, Quake etc. Unless you're gonna backtrack and say "oh but what about the indie scene blah blah blah". Agreed, but those are not the games we're complaining about, and not the games whose graphics you're so eager to suck off. For the record my favourite game of 2016 is Enter the Gungeon so I'm not entirely ignorant about the indie scene. First, I never said anyting about graphic I don't really care about them and I play all my game in low because I have a crappy pc and I want good framerate. And for FIFA or any sport games I can't see how the mecanics where better in the early 2000 when it was just kick and run and now. Second Systen Shock and Planescape Torment are your definition of what games were betwen 1998 and 2007? Sorry to tell you that but those game sold like shit, so I don't see why the inde scene should be ignore when there are some huge commercial succes coming out if it, for exemple The Witness, Fez, Divinity : original sins, ect... But most of all what about The Witcher, Mass Effect, the first bioshock, Fallout NV, Europa Universalis 4, Heart of Iron, Pillars of Eternity, Trine, ect... those are suppose to be shit? I mean you can say that you love older FPS and RPG better then the new but there is difference between that and saying evretying is garbage now. Also since the first post included movie : Manchester by the sea and Room are amazing and Star wars 2 and Catwoman are terrible.Just like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is great and Batman vs Superman is bad. There is not a lot that has change in movie in the last 20 years. Oh okay so what matters to you is if a game sells well or not, and not if it's any good. By your logic Justin Bieber must be one of the greatest music artists of all time. [insert thinking emoji here] And yes, System Shock is much better than Bioshock, Fallout 1 and 2 are much better than their sequels, The Witcher games are pretty good but super overrated by casuals who never played Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment or other god-tier RPGs etc.
long term community engagement are an objective measure of a game's quality. so games like NHL '94 , Tecmo Bowl, and M.U.L.E. are great games. You can blab away about how poorly they are designed though.
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It is very easy. The people that matter inside the community, they cannot bite the hand that feeds them. Many people had new opportunities in RTS because Blizzard released a new game. It was either SC2, of a rare opportunity to be the sole foreigner in a Korean teamhouse, trying to win Courage.
So all those people that made some money off SC2, they couldn't be frrank about the game.
As for the communication between the balance team and the top players leading to actual improvements to the game, is there actually any evidence for that? I don't trust the top players to be honest. And some can be honestly delusional about race balance.
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On January 01 2017 09:45 Euphorbus wrote:
It is very easy. The people that matter inside the community, they cannot bite the hand that feeds them. Many people had new opportunities in RTS because Blizzard released a new game. It was either SC2, of a rare opportunity to be the sole foreigner in a Korean teamhouse, trying to win Courage.
So all those people that made some money off SC2, they couldn't be frrank about the game.
As for the communication between the balance team and the top players leading to actual improvements to the game, is there actually any evidence for that? I don't trust the top players to be honest. And some can be honestly delusional about race balance.
You can easily have representatives from all the races coming together in a meeting to settle on a mutual ground.
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Feels like kind of a pointless article to me. Of course SC2 belongs to the same genre as SC1. So does Warcraft 1-3, C&C, DoW, and any game that has you commanding all your forces in real time from a top-down view. The base game is the same: achieve victory by building an economy and infrastructure, train an army, and command them to fight your enemy. I have the same basic mindset playing SC2 as I did SC1: gather resources, and split my attention amongst economy, attacking, and defending. How to achieve those goals differs between each game, but the general objective is shared between each and every one of them. This is just kind of slapping your own definition of "genre" and I... don't see what the bottom line is, really.
Argue all you want about the differing mechanics or what your idea of "fun" is, but that's really detracting from the main point. The different games play out in completely different directions from each other but the basic idea and basic gameplay are shared. Is StarCraft 2 a successor to StarCraft 1? Yes, absolutely. Is Warcraft 3, a game that does things almost 100% differently from the games before, a successor to both Warcraft 2 and StarCraft 1? Yes, indeed!
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On January 01 2017 10:24 Lunchador wrote:
Feels like kind of a pointless article to me. Of course SC2 belongs to the same genre as SC1. So does Warcraft 1-3, C&C, DoW, and any game that has you commanding all your forces in real time from a top-down view. The base game is the same: achieve victory by building an economy and infrastructure, train an army, and command them to fight your enemy. I have the same basic mindset playing SC2 as I did SC1: gather resources, and split my attention amongst economy, attacking, and defending. How to achieve those goals differs between each game, but the general objective is shared between each and every one of them. This is just kind of slapping your own definition of "genre" and I... don't see what the bottom line is, really.
Argue all you want about the differing mechanics or what your idea of "fun" is, but that's really detracting from the main point. The different games play out in completely different directions from each other but the basic idea and basic gameplay are shared. Is StarCraft 2 a successor to StarCraft 1? Yes, absolutely. Is Warcraft 3, a game that does things almost 100% differently from the games before, a successor to both Warcraft 2 and StarCraft 1? Yes, indeed!
Ultimately thats why its pointless. The author of the article is drawing a line in the sand when he's only considering at best 4 titles, when you look at the genre as a whole you see the numerous similarities.
Would a Brood War player really think AoE is closely more related than SC2? I'm doubtful.
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8748 Posts
--The article still has no discussion about what a sub-genre is. Two novels could be identical except one paragraph that explains how the object empowering the protagonist's incredible feats works, with one novel attributing it to magic and the other novel offering a scientific explanation. That little explanation determines whether the whole work is scifi or fantasy even though it's not really important to the story at all. If the article isn't actually about succession, but rather about sub-genres, then it still seems like it's lacking in its main point. Yes these RTS's have these design differences, but why is it important to put them in different genres? Is the genre thing actually that important to the article?
--It seems like the author could say SC2 isn't the spiritual successor to BW (which is a way of acknowledging that it is its actual successor but that it has important differences). I feel like this may have have been the best way to communicate the differences, or at least a better way than "not a successor" and "different sub-genre"
--In BW, your decisions are based on investing in different things: economy (bases and workers), production (buildings that make units), static defense (buildings with an attack), army, tech (ability to make new kinds of units), upgrades (+1, +2, etc), research (stim, storm, etc). A lot of these things have limits: supply cap (workers and army), tech (eventually you can build every unit), upgrades (+3), research (everything researched), bases (all expansions taken or mined out). But bases essentially don't have limits for most of the maps, at least not until very late game. Workers get more efficient the more bases you have, as the article explains, so their effectiveness is sort of uncapped even though the supply cap limits their numbers. Production buildings and static defense are essentially unlimited. So this creates a very obvious win condition in BW: take advantage of the uncapped things (bases, production buildings, and static defense) and you almost can't lose. Thus Artosis saying "when ahead, get more ahead" which applied far more in BW than it ever did in SC2. Because in the end, being ahead in BW would eventually lead to an unassailable position. Not so much in SC2, where you have to continue to play an RTS, not SimCity, to win the game.
Rather than players trading off between a focus on economy and military, every macro style has a similarly strong economy – the difference is the military strategy and unit compositions that are chosen. This places a huge emphasis on cost-efficient trades, which typically favor the defending player.
People have been complaining about SC2 not having a defender's advantage for its whole existence. When attacking into a concave or going through a choke point is dangerous, or when you have to deal with some kind of low ground vs high ground disadvantage, or when your latest round of production isn't instantly on offense and that matters, then there's a defender's advantage. But for SC2 a lot of these things didn't matter. The real default advantage goes to the attacker who gets to decide when an engagement happens and can plan for it rather than react to it, which is much easier not only mechanically but also strategically and tactically. The game has to build in automatic and effective advantages for the defender to be on even or better footing or else defensive styles will yield lower win rates. But it should err on the side of a weak defender's advantage, or there'll be fewer attackers and thus less action.
Unit control has a chess-like feel to it – controlling an Oracle is less about achieving anything than it is about executing the right strategic decisions to get it in the right place at the right time to achieve a specific goal. Once that’s accomplished, the unit can do the rest on its own, at least relative to units in classic games.
The Oracle is the worst example here (read more of the article preceding this quote to understand the author's argument better). But on a quick tangent, BW is the game that is far more rock-paper-scissors. There are far more hard counters in BW. The author's argument here is specifically about unit control, but the idea of having the right strategic decisions to be in the right place at the right time -- that determines wins and losses in BW far more than SC2. Maybe when we look back at WoL, which had a lot of scouting issues (especially for Zerg and PvP), then SC2 is comparable. But current SC2 is not even close to BW.
Anyway, back to the Oracle. The Oracle a lot of the time now is either anticipated or it is naturally accounted for in a normal build. The vast majority of the time, the Oracle can expect resistance upon arrival. But whatever it faces, it must be controlled well to be effective at all. The ONLY exception is in a low skill game where the Oracle flies in, activates its weapon, and both players don't look there again until the Oracle is out of energy and all workers are dead. Realistically, the Oracle was designed from every direction to be the perfect counterexample because you can't just let it go unsupervised for any reason: if you hold position just outside of a turret, its energy will be wasted; if you attack move, it'll target their army or static defense instead of workers; if they run their workers away, its deceleration/acceleration forces you to weave move commands; if you don't focus fire, you'll only damage a bunch of workers instead of killing them; it never becomes useless because its abilities are so useful at every stage of the game, so you can never carelessly send it on a suicide mission. Its range is small and you're always trying to use it at max range. It gets one shot by mines that require you to rotate your camera to see. Its skill ceiling is so high. It always requires a lot of attention when it's in enemy territory and it's balanced so well because each worker it kills makes a big difference at that time in the game, and the skill of safely getting maximum worker kills has not been mastered by the best protoss in the world. Every commentator judges an Oracle's performance, estimating whether it did enough or not. I was just watching Stats do Oracle builds on his stream and he was making some mistakes every time.
DT's in BW are a far far better example than Oracles in SC2. They result in more instant wins and require less skill to micro, both to achieve their win condition (kill enemy detection) and to harass workers if the game is going to continue.
--SC2 requires hardly any thinking (strategy) at all if you want to play that way. You can pick one build per matchup per map and just improve mechanics so much that you could conceivably win Blizzcon. An easy way to demonstrate this is Korean players outclassing non-Korean players while doing the exact same strategies. Or you can look another way: any pro player can pick any old build and get high GM on the ladder. Another way: look at how much better one player can be at executing an extremely straightforward build against top pros, like Parting with the Soul Train build. Other top Protoss practiced the same build exactly and Parting still distinguished himself as the best. Or consider that SC2 players still need to specialize their builds and unit compositions because they can't play everything at the same level mechanically. SC2 players absolutely can focus completely on mechanics and rise all the way to the top. The games won't play out the same as BW where you earn an advantage and "spend" it on economy, over and over, until the game is decided. But the same things that actually earn you advantages will occur, without the building of a ridiculous economy/production, and you'll have a killing blow planned just the same.
--If there are 1000 viable strategies in RTS, and any given RTS can implement 500 of them, then I'd say SC2 eliminated some of the ones that involved repeated choices to invest in economy and production. Does that define a genre? Like the science fiction vs fantasy distinction, sometimes it doesn't inform anything and sometimes it can make a big difference.
--You may even say that SC2 has fewer viable strategies than BW, simply pruning those ones and not adding any of its own. But does this matter if SC2 has more viable strategies than its pro players can uncover (that is, the game is always producing new strategies), if it has more strategies than a single player can master, if the strategies are so hard to execute that they cannot ever really be mastered (so improving via mechanics is always an option)? I think back to the scifi vs fantasy distinction. Is it really important or is it a trivial distinction? It can be an important distinction. Or you might find that the things that are truly causing wins and losses are similar, and SC2 removing the sprawling economy aspect was just amputating a useless limb, though one that we definitely grew to love and appreciate (myself included -- I always preferred playing small advantage -> economic investment style). You can still do it in SC2, it's just not so obvious and big as in BW. But most of the essence of playing BW is there in SC2 too.
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On December 30 2016 20:55 Liquid`Ret wrote:
Really nice post, been having some of these thoughts myself lately as well.
Just the other day I after playing a SC2 game I was thinking of how much I miss just managing my bases/macro everywhere and being occupied with that almost entirely, and finding it very fun to keep busy with.
When I played SC:BW I would focus almost entirely on macro and getting my economy near flawless as possible, and then as a result of that I could just awkwardly control my units into a win, and it was very satisfying/fun to me.
The actual fighting/micro was a lot less appealing to me than the base management/macro aspects, and even in Sc2, I've felt that way. Just that sc2 offered a lot less in that department than sc;bw did. There's creep spread and injects, but after years it became so boring, BW had so much more to offer in that regard, and even though most tasks completly mundane and largely thanks to outdated interface, it never got boring for some reason. BW also did offer a lot in micro, say with mutalisks or some smaller group of units, but it was a lot different than the type of mass armies control in SC2.
Looking back now, I think I've had so much more fun with BW than SC2, and I think I've always felt that way since switching to Sc2, even throughout being a pro and all that, there was always part of me that felt it just wasn't that fun. Maybe it was just nostalgia.. I don't know.
That said, when I go back to BW now I find it almost impossible to deal with the unit pathing, lol. Despite having played it for so long before and never having a problem with it then.
Fully agreed. They are essentially two different sub-genres in a sense. It's a strange change, and one that indeed has left me feeling that SC2 Melee is not nearly as fun as BW Melee was in the past. However, now the BW pathing is much more noticeable. To adjust back to BW you basically have to start kinda fresh and re-learn the things you learned that let you get around the BW pathing and really deal with it.
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On December 30 2016 20:31 mantequilla wrote:
age of mythology rulez
fuck yeah
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On January 01 2017 14:11 NonY wrote:
--SC2 requires hardly any thinking (strategy) at all if you want to play that way. You can pick one build per matchup per map and just improve mechanics so much that you could conceivably win Blizzcon. An easy way to demonstrate this is Korean players outclassing non-Korean players while doing the exact same strategies. Or you can look another way: any pro player can pick any old build and get high GM on the ladder. Another way: look at how much better one player can be at executing an extremely straightforward build against top pros, like Parting with the Soul Train build. Other top Protoss practiced the same build exactly and Parting still distinguished himself as the best. Or consider that SC2 players still need to specialize their builds and unit compositions because they can't play everything at the same level mechanically. SC2 players absolutely can focus completely on mechanics and rise all the way to the top. The games won't play out the same as BW where you earn an advantage and "spend" it on economy, over and over, until the game is decided. But the same things that actually earn you advantages will occur, without the building of a ridiculous economy/production, and you'll have a killing blow planned just the same.
I disagree with this. You can't be very succesful just with good mechanics. When you see players like Byun with his 2/1/1 timing or PartinG with his soultrain it may look like they are so good with this because of their mechanics but the real reason why they are so succesful is that they have played the build so often that they have refined the ideal way to react to each situation.
the real factor that differentiates them from other players is their decision-making.
just look at Byuns 2/1/1 build in tvz. He never overcommits, he always knows exactly when he should commit and when not, where to attack, when to stutterstep back and when to targetfire banes. He almost never loses his medivacs without doing some significant damage.
Similar PartinGs soultrain, he always knew the ideal way to attack on each map, carefully casted forcefields to not waste to much energy and waited for the perfect opportunity to crush the zerg army.
My point is that with every strategy your decisionmaking needs to be absolutely on point, just mechanics don't help you in alot of situations.
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8748 Posts
they have played the build so often that they have refined the ideal way to react to each situation.
No I don't think the players who are worse are unable to identify when a mistake is made. They know it even just after it has happened, and always when watching the replay. The knowledge is there already. The ability to put that knowledge to use during a real game against the best in the world is what mechanics are for. With good mechanics, so many things are automatic and fast that your mind can stay ahead of the game rather than struggling to keep up and missing opportunities. Mechanics teach you the quickest and easiest mental effort and quickest and easiest physical effort to complete each task well. Some players get a knack for controlling certain unit compositions, or certain units in particular, and for macroing certain builds, and their mechanics become a cut above the rest for those strategies. But if you take a player who is worse than them and put them in a game that pauses every 2 seconds, so that they can gather their thoughts and plan the best moves for the next 2 seconds, they'll definitely outperform the best player. So practicing until information can be processed that quickly live would also result in a superior performance. And that's a matter of pure mechanics.
The alternative is that players are experimenting. They see multiple things they can do each moment and they're not sure which one is optimal, so one game they try one thing and another game they try another. They gather evidence and draw a conclusion. And when they get to a tournament, Parting wins because he already saw a zerg behave that way in practice, already got to experiment in several directions, and already figured out the best path. While the other player had not filled in that knowledge space yet, had no idea what to do, and guessed incorrectly. This just isn't the case. The situation isn't that complicated and players have practiced it many 100's of times, enough to already know what there is to know. You'll see players do exactly what Parting does, but without the consistency of Parting.
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I actually agree with Nony though. I always feel like I fuck up too many times in mechanical sense in SC2. I don't really buy the whole SC:BW=mechanic/SC2:Strategy. Both games are demanding in both aspects they just have different types of mechanic and strategies. I always laugh at people who think SC2 is actually easy mechanically.
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On December 31 2016 10:50 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2016 10:00 ProMeTheus112 wrote:On December 31 2016 05:45 Hildegard wrote:
Shower thought: Auto-mining or multi-select buildings, more than 12 unit selection etc. could be upgrades in SC3. agree^^ That sound good but it would be awful in a real game, first because of a clear immersion break and also because that it would mean that you become exponentially better as game go on especially at low level, it is pretty fucking hard to comeback when your worker don't auto-mine and you have to manually click every barrack to produce a marine and your opponent who have a better economy and is in the lead also doesn't have that to worry about, just try it in one of your game for fun your gonna get destroyed. But most of all it would just be frustrating and useless, just like if hotkey, control group ect... became upgrades, either you don't have it for anyone or you have it for everybody.
I think it can work if the numbers are tuned right. A game in which someone has it and the other doesn't obviously doesn't work. It's more about if you choose to have it 15 seconds earlier or if you do something else first. There might be late-game upgrades that are more of a choice of yes or now than of when that could support different playstyles.
The point about spiraling out of control is a different one. It's about comeback mechanics and neither BW nor SC2 have real comeback mechanics outside of stuff like Dark Shrine. It's an interesting question if the genre would benefit from comeback mechanics. I doubt it because RTS is essentially about small advantages that accumulate to snowballing to victory. SC2 has more focus on the fights and one could argue that control in fights is a comeback mechanic. Units die fast and it's possible to make a comeback based on a single good engagement.
In short: I think it's incredibly hard to make it work but I think it's possible and would add more depth.
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The title should have been; StarCraft II and Brood War Belong to different Sub-Genres. The current one is still wrong
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On January 02 2017 04:04 Wildmoon wrote:
I actually agree with Nony though. I always feel like I fuck up too many times in mechanical sense in SC2. I don't really buy the whole SC:BW=mechanic/SC2:Strategy. Both games are demanding in both aspects they just have different types of mechanic and strategies. I always laugh at people who think SC2 is actually easy mechanically.
well it's indeed more easy than BW
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EPT
