StarCraft II and Brood War Belong to Different Genres

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boring, BW had so much more to offer in that regard, and even though most tasks completly mundane and largely thanks to outdated interface, it never got boring for some reason.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.

On December 30 2016 23:16 ZiggyPG wrote:
The ease with which micro and macro can be executed in SC2 would make it difficult for future games (e.g. SC3, bound to happen sometime in the future) to switch back to the previous model used in SC1. Though it would change the gameplay drastically, I find it hard to believe rudimentary solutions such as limiting the number of units in a control group or removing multi selection of buildings would appeal to a modern gamer. And despite the competitive aspects of such solutions one must not forget a professional scene has no right to exist without a casual playerbase.

Oh dear, we are thinking about how to modify the geysers since forever. We want you to have to manage your economy more. And the geysers would be a perfect start point, since they were quite unspectacular in the past: You sent three workers there, and that’s it. So we decided to change the mechanic, which hasn’t succeeded thus far. It was extremely hard to balance the new system. Had we decided to regulate the gas supply necessarily by hand, to collect the regular amount of resources, we would have severerly disadvantaged the newer players, since they couldn’t afford expensive units like Battle Cruisers and Templar. But just these units have the most appeal to casual players. Therefore, we would have to modify the mechanic in that way, that you still earn enough gas if you leave the geysers to themselves. But then, Micro experts would collect by far more resources and would produce only very mighty units like Carriers and Archons. That would also be unfair. In addition, the constant geyser-checking would become annoying very quickly. We want to reward the players, not annoy them.

On December 31 2016 00:10 2Pacalypse- wrote:
As someone who didn't follow SC2 beta at all, can anyone explain to me why that quote in the article from Dustin Browder didn't make everyone skeptical about SC2? At least pro/top players. It's fairly obvious, from that quote alone, that the focus of the SC2 designers was to make the game appealable to the new/casual players. And I think it's pretty obvious that trying to balance the game for the professionals that was designed with that kind of a mindset is pretty futile.

Here's the quote in question (bolded the most important part):

On December 30 2016 23:06 Freezard wrote:
Curious why the author says that BW feels easier to play than SC2. Makes no sense to me. Also remember when you could build Barracks before Supply Depot in SC2 beta? Well you can still do that in BW, I hate how they limited the strategy in such ways in SC2. I think the game was actually at its best during beta.

On December 31 2016 00:13 RoomOfMush wrote:

But wasnt it exactly the opposite that "killed" SC2 in the end? Casual players didnt enjoy the game and no fresh blood (or too little) came into the game. The pros we have today are mostly okay with the state of the game while all the scrubs are disappointed.

On December 31 2016 00:13 RoomOfMush wrote:

But wasnt it exactly the opposite that "killed" SC2 in the end? Casual players didnt enjoy the game and no fresh blood (or too little) came into the game. The pros we have today are mostly okay with the state of the game while all the scrubs are disappointed.

On December 30 2016 20:55 Liquid`Ret wrote:
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....

SC:BW didnt have such a bad interface because they thought it was a good idea but because they just couldnt make it any better back then. (for any reason: time, money, skill, processing power, etc)

On December 31 2016 00:15 2Pacalypse- wrote:

That would be pretty ironic if true, yes.

On December 31 2016 00:32 KeksX wrote:


Koreans are/were also complaining about the game being too hard. Not for casuals, but coaches etc complained about it.
Honestly it's impossible to tell what exactly caused the downfall.

On December 31 2016 00:57 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
To be fair, can you actually even imagine a worthy successor to BW?

It's a dream we'll never see

On December 31 2016 00:03 RoomOfMush wrote:

I dont think intentionally dumbing down the interface is a good way to go. SC:BW didnt have such a bad interface because they thought it was a good idea but because they just couldnt make it any better back then. (for any reason: time, money, skill, processing power, etc)

On December 31 2016 00:15 2Pacalypse- wrote:

That would be pretty ironic if true, yes.

On December 31 2016 00:13 RoomOfMush wrote:

But wasnt it exactly the opposite that "killed" SC2 in the end? Casual players didnt enjoy the game and no fresh blood (or too little) came into the game. The pros we have today are mostly okay with the state of the game while all the scrubs are disappointed.

On December 31 2016 00:23 207aicila wrote:


People keep spouting this here and on reddit and it is factually not true. There are actual printed interviews from the 90s you can find in which the developers clearly point out some of these are conscious, deliberate design decisions.

That only by accident did they create a game so incredibly great, is a different matter entirely.

On December 31 2016 00:23 207aicila wrote:


People keep spouting this here and on reddit and it is factually not true. There are actual printed interviews from the 90s you can find in which the developers clearly point out some of these are conscious, deliberate design decisions.

On December 31 2016 00:17 ZiggyPG wrote:

Changing the pathing of units also sounds like a forced way of fixing things.

StarCraft II’s design decisively treads the strategic fork in the road. It emphasizes the player’s plan and how they adjust that plan rather than their execution of that plan. It limits sprawling economic playstyles, producing more passive games with less action.

On December 31 2016 01:59 RoomOfMush wrote:

Of course it was a conscious decision to a certain degree. It didnt just "randomly" happen that you could select 12 units without the devs knowing how this is possible. There is no doubt that they decided on a 12 unit selection limit.

The question is though why they did that. I think the reason is not as simple as 12 is the best number or anything like that. There are many factors at play here like how to make the interface look like. BW had such a low resolution that every pixel was important. Selecting more than 12 units would have required a different kind of interface. It also needs more RAM which back then could have actually played a role. Not a big role perhaps but every little bit counts.

Anybody who says, that blizzard did some hardcore testing on a scientific level and have empirically proven that a 12 unit selection limit is the objectively best solution, is an idiot. The reasons for the 12 unit selection limit are most likely due to designers and developers just thinking "12, yeah, sounds like a good number...".

On December 31 2016 00:10 2Pacalypse- wrote:
As someone who didn't follow SC2 beta at all, can anyone explain to me why that quote in the article from Dustin Browder didn't make everyone skeptical about SC2? At least pro/top players. It's fairly obvious, from that quote alone, that the focus of the SC2 designers was to make the game appealable to the new/casual players. And I think it's pretty obvious that trying to balance the game for the professionals that was designed with that kind of a mindset is pretty futile.

Here's the quote in question (bolded the most important part):

On December 31 2016 00:57 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
To be fair, can you actually even imagine a worthy successor to BW?

It's a dream we'll never see

On December 31 2016 03:05 207aicila wrote:


And by contrast, anyone who says that BW had 12 unit selection cap because the technology was too limited sounds like an Xbox casual who never played a game in his life until 2009 and doesn't know anything about computers. Just saying, if you wanna come in hot and fast and loose with generalizations.

No, of course they didn't do scientific tests and stuff like that, but they clearly intended to force some micro in high supply situations. As another poster stated previously, StarCraft 64 had a higher selection limit of 18, presumably because micro-ing with an N64 controller is ridiculously hard, despite the N64 being a very weak and limited machine (the weakest of its console generation IIRC, notoriously difficult to program for and I believe the 1st to require some games to be capped at 30 FPS). Warcraft's was 4 units I think? It's been a long time. Age of Empires 1 which came out in 1996 and had a wildly different design philosophy to Blizzard's allowed somewhere in the mid 20s, which was almost half of the population cap, by contrast.

On December 31 2016 03:07 avilo wrote:


The last part of that quote by Browder is the most obvious problem with SC2.

"We want to reward the players, not annoy them."

Do you guys feel rewarded or annoyed when mass adepts shade into your mineral line?
Rewarded or annoyed from massing carriers/swarmhosts?
Rewarded or annoyed from the 5 rang warp prism pickup?
Rewarded or annoyed by that liberator sieged behind your mineral line?
Rewarded or annoyed that two widow mines killed 30 probes?
Rewarded or annoyed that mech is near un-viable, even on the "mech re-work patch?"
Rewarded or annoyed that an invulnerable nydus + 8 queens with transfuse are now in your base?
Rewarded or annoyed that your base dries up incredibly fast compared to HOTS/WOL?
Rewarded or annoyed by proxy 3 rax reaper TvZ/TvT?
Rewarded or annoyed by pylons killing your depots from underneath your ramp for free?

LOTV basically is a huge "fuck you" to the entire player base that enjoyed playing WOL/HOTS. They took everything ever wrong with SC2, and then put it into the final expansion pack, without ever tweaking or reverting the annoying things.

On December 31 2016 03:07 avilo wrote:
LOTV basically is a huge "fuck you" to the entire player base that enjoyed playing WOL/HOTS. They took everything ever wrong with SC2, and then put it into the final expansion pack, without ever tweaking or reverting the annoying things.

On December 31 2016 03:22 Elroi wrote:

The original red alert had unlimited unit selection already in 1996.

On December 31 2016 03:46 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

here you go speaking for everyone again. everyone in the clan i'm in loves WoL. half of them love LotV and play it every week. the other half thinks it has too many units and is too complex and they keep on playing WoL.

On December 31 2016 03:05 207aicila wrote:
Just saying, if you wanna come in hot and fast and loose with generalizations.

On December 31 2016 03:22 Elroi wrote:

The original red alert had unlimited unit selection already in 1996.

On December 31 2016 03:48 207aicila wrote:


Not only are you right now that I think about it, but also that's probably the best example for this discussion. Case closed lol.



There's still non-hackers playing WoL? I am genuinely shocked.

On December 31 2016 05:15 PharaphobiaSC wrote:
yet another article which creates a thread to bash blizzard devs for even breating air... nothing constructive

LOTV basically is a huge "fuck you" to the entire player base that enjoyed playing WOL/HOTS.

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.

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.

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.

On December 31 2016 06:03 The_Red_Viper wrote:

What exactly creates this "feeling" here? I think it is fair to say that playing sc2 feels a lot different than playing bw. Whatever you prefer is up to you ofc, but if it wasn't named starcraft and didn't have the same unit skins people probably wouldn't necessarily think it's the same franchise.

It’s not a successor to Brood War – instead, it’s arguably the best-to-date version of an entirely different type of game, the “strategic” or “modern” competitive real time strategy game. It’s more streamlined, more passive, feels harder, and is more focused on the right decisions – it emphasizes the strategy in real time strategy. Brood War and Age of Empires II are more mechanical, more active, feel easier, and are more focused on optimal execution – they emphasize the real time in real time strategy.

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.

On December 31 2016 06:33 grizzlybear wrote:
Hey folks,

brownbear here. Thanks for all the comments.

I wanted to touch on the title. It originally referenced StarCraft II as a successor to Brood War. I changed this a few days ago because, as several folks have pointed out, it's clickbaity and not really the point of the article. WordPress creates URLs for pieces when they are first saved, not when they are published, hence why it appears there. At no point has the title referenced succession since publication.

The references to succession in the article proper were almost stripped out too, but I ended up keeping them after completing an unrelated project on Yooka Laylee. The blog post reminded me of the many discussions that took place around succession when Nuts and Bolts came out many years ago, so I decided to keep it. In retrospect, probably should have been cut, it is a statement that is too easily interpreted in a negative light. To me succession is neutral, ie there was never really a true successor to Age of Empires 2, but I don't mean this in a negative way or to invalidate Age of Mythology or AOE3. The company just stopped making that kind of game.

Thanks again for all your comments.

Edit: thanks to the moderation team for updating the title of this thread.

On December 31 2016 08:01 Euphorbus wrote:
I do think that is an interesting aspect of SC BW vs SC2. Battles all over the map during all the game in SC BW vs some harass but otherwise army vs army battles, that was a difference that was not predicted before beta. And I haven't seen it fully and convincingly explained yet. Is it really because of no control group cap? I am not so sure.

I always imagined SC2 maps being way smaller, I guess that plays a role as well.

On December 31 2016 08:01 Euphorbus wrote:
I do think that is an interesting aspect of SC BW vs SC2. Battles all over the map during all the game in SC BW vs some harass but otherwise army vs army battles, that was a difference that was not predicted before beta. And I haven't seen it fully and convincingly explained yet. Is it really because of no control group cap? I am not so sure.

On December 31 2016 08:21 PharaphobiaSC wrote:


I like the game how it is so yeah...

On December 31 2016 07:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:

I actually do not understand how you decide what "should be a core part" tbh. Basically macro should need the least amount of clicks possible? Does it come down to that? Ofc there is no right and wrong per se, but personally i think having more options to be a better macro player is also an important aspect of rts. Streamlining it means there are less options though.

This is a years-old argument to be fair.
Even if you don't think it's not a core part of all RTS, it is/was at least a core part of StarCraft.

This is already the case in Brood War, with bases and units spread out across pretty much the whole map.
The elegance in BW's design is that they don't need specific units or buildings for that. The existing ones are enough.

Yes, I agree that there are many options on what skills to test.

I had this argument many times. People wanted to have some meaningful clicking. You could just have it that in your dead time.

you would solve sudoku or other puzzles at your buildings to improve production.
That sort of was my absurd argument, but it points out that for some people, emergence still plays a role. It is about space marines fighting aliens, in some parallel or future universe. And things you do have to make sense in that context

The mineral mining in SC is actually a major reason for its success, as has been discussed to death years ago on this forum. But what was it really?

On December 31 2016 08:21 207aicila wrote:


Don't know how long you've been reading TL since the account you're on seems awfully new, but it's been explained to death.

Unlimited unit selection is probably a minor factor in the particular difference you are talking about, but it is corroborated by:

- Different (better) unit pathing and high degree of clumping in SC2
- Lack of high ground advantage or some similarly impactful defender's advantage that can be easily integrated into standard maps
- The fact that fights simply do not last as long in SC2 compared to BW, which also means there is less time to react and micro during individual engagements

All of these together (and possibly other factors that escape me right now) lead to the situation where it is almost always more efficient to have all your army together when you're engaging.

What iam saying is that IT SHOULD NOT BE A CORE PART of the rts genre. I know very well its a huge part of Starcraft.

On December 31 2016 08:49 TheDougler wrote:
It's funny how in a very real sense, the age old multiple building selection (MBS) debate continues even ten years later. I remember in 2007 when that first preview video for SC2 (with the planet cracking mothership) came out people were saying MBS would change the game completely. I guess they're right.

On December 31 2016 08:59 Euphorbus wrote:



Oh, I have been here long enough that I probably have been banned by Rekrul more often than you have posted.

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.


Wait you were enjoying yourself during WoL/HotS? It's hard to tell with you man.

On December 31 2016 09:30 thezanursic wrote:

I think it's basically a sensational click baity title to get some traction and a reason to talk about why some players prefer one over the other, and a discussion about mechanics in RTS.

I noticed that the mods changed the title, it's a good example of the click bait nature; Nobody, or at least a lot fewer people, would read an article or rather an opinion piece titled "Starcraft II and Brood War belong to different Genres" over "SC2 is not a true successor to Brood War". And the title worked, TL is all up in arms about it, soo is Reddit, if this were 2011 with massive traffic on /r/Starcraft and Teamliquid the article would get serious buzz, essentially what I'm trying to say is that the title worked, and if it hadn't been titled this way, you probably wouldn't have read it in the first place.

BTW, just rewatched TSL 2 Finals yesterday, good games

On December 31 2016 08:16 -NegativeZero- wrote:
oh look another sc2 vs bw baiting thread

article's pretty good though

On December 31 2016 08:59 Euphorbus wrote:
Pathing surely plays no role, as it happened in progamer games, and they know how not to bug out the pathing too badly.

On December 31 2016 08:59 Euphorbus wrote:
Clumping probably plays a role, but cannot fully explain it as battles are drawn out in space and time in SC BW before unit numbers get high for clumping to make a true difference. And clumping can only explain the spatial component anyway. I would also argue that the spatial distances are far larger than the length scale on which clumping plays a role.

On December 31 2016 08:59 Euphorbus wrote:
High ground advantage only plays a role when there are cliffs. If so, in SC BW battles would be drawn out in space and time only around cliffs.

On December 31 2016 09:33 grizzlybear wrote:

Just to be clear, the piece was never published with the succession title. The OP of the Reddit and TL posts chose to ad lib the succession title. Succession was removed from the title days prior to publication.

On December 31 2016 09:43 NonY wrote:

? https://illiteracyhasdownsides.com/2016/12/30/starcraft-ii-is-not-a-successor-to-brood-war/

It's in the URL... I don't mean to drag this on but I'm guessing you changed the headline and overlooked the URL.

On December 31 2016 09:47 grizzlybear wrote:

If you read my prior post, this is explained. WordPress creates a URL when an article is first saved as a draft, not published. This article was never published with that title.

On December 31 2016 09:43 Euphorbus wrote:
If SC BW would be like SC2, yes it would be like SC2. But all things you mention can not in itself explain it. I am not denying there is an explanation. I am saying it isn't obvious and the fact that many elements are needed to stack on top of each other, and many of them unclear, proves exactly my point. And what is so bad about that? Why would one expect something to be completely transparent and predictable? It is already amazing enough how well something like the effect of MBS was predicted.

I hope that from the way I argue, you can see how I think and why I am not convinced. I am trained to try to not see patterns that aren't there.

I can make more arguments as to why I disagree with pathing inefficiencies being a major cause, but all those details are not important. I have seen nothing new, and in the past, I was not convinced. Neither am I now. One would actually expect the dynamics of an RTS game to be way less predictable and way more counter intuitive than it turned out to be. It is probably synergy and non-linear behavior of these elements. It is probably an emergent property, and not a direct effect of a single game feature.

More important, no one, including myself, made the argument against SC2, that battles wouldn't be drawn out in space and time enough. We knew it was in SC BW and we knew we liked it. But we didn't see or predict certain game features eliminating it from SC2. And yes, we debated high ground advantage to death.

On December 31 2016 09:33 grizzlybear wrote:

Just to be clear, the piece was never published with the succession title. The OP of the Reddit and TL posts chose to ad lib the succession title. Succession was removed from the title days prior to publication.

On December 31 2016 07:35 Foxxan wrote:
I dont buy the argument that the clicking on buildings, sending workers to mine etc are a core part of what an rts should look like, be like.
If we look at SC2, those things are gone -yes, But what instead is there to do for the player? Not much actually if you think about it. Your units die so fast when you engage, the micro isnt really much either- perhaps tvz in hots was closest to the "much micro to do through the game" but that aside, its not much to do.
Spreadning creep imo is super boring - Clicking buildings in broodwar is more fun here.

I want a modern RTS without these things broodwar provide BUT ADD other things which occupie the player/s throughout the game. Iam talking relevant stuff. For example, instead of managing your 1base in broodwar(you build most buildings in your main) if you could manage buildings on the map instead and more "tactic" buildings. The right defence here and there , i want to have vision here. I want to control this area of the map right here. and os on

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.

On December 31 2016 09:48 NonY wrote:

Yeah I read that. I publish with WordPress myself. I just don't get why you're so bad at understanding what happened. You're going in circles.

On December 31 2016 09:50 RoomOfMush wrote:

What useless drivel. Do you yourself actually understand what you are trying to say with all that text.

Are you upset about the URL? If so, why?

On December 30 2016 21:59 shadymmj wrote:
one thing where i disagree with the article is the claim that sc2 has more strategy.
i've played a lot of sc2, watched a lot of BW.

i can always call games in sc2 with decent accuracy, say which strategy is good against which because it's fairly cut and dry as to what beats what.

i have learned not to call BW games too early except in zvz and pvp. so often you can win a battle but lose the war.

On December 31 2016 09:42 Mahanaim wrote:
Um... well... so since I enjoy SC2 a lot more than I enjoyed BW back in the days, does that mean I don't know how to differentiate between a good game and a bad game?

On December 31 2016 09:51 Euphorbus wrote:



Really? All that text?



You are responsible for the url. The url resulted in the titles on other sites. I guess the point would be that you cannot deny responsibility of that, which is fair. Though I do not know why Nony is drawing at straws at it so much. He used to be more about content in the past. It should be obvious to both of you what happened, and what the other means. I do not know why both of you are feigning ignorance.

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.

On December 31 2016 10:00 ProMeTheus112 wrote:

agree^^

On December 31 2016 09:43 NonY wrote:

? https://illiteracyhasdownsides.com/2016/12/30/starcraft-ii-is-not-a-successor-to-brood-war/

It's in the URL... I don't mean to drag this on but I'm guessing you changed the headline and overlooked the URL, which ended up causing the confusion you tried to prevent.

On December 31 2016 15:02 todespolka wrote:
Only the sc2 community could say sc2 is not the successor of bw. There are more similarities than differences. Sc2 is still an attention based game with economy, army, micro and macro.

I played both games religiously. The only difference between bw and sc2 is the interface, ai and pathing.

On December 31 2016 09:51 Nakajin wrote:


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.

On December 31 2016 09:51 Nakajin wrote:


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.

On December 31 2016 22:24 207aicila wrote:


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.

On January 01 2017 00:42 Nakajin wrote:


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.

On January 01 2017 01:30 207aicila wrote:


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.

On January 01 2017 02:13 Nakajin wrote:


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.

On January 01 2017 02:35 207aicila wrote:


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.

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.


Wait you were enjoying yourself during WoL/HotS? It's hard to tell with you man.

On January 01 2017 01:30 207aicila wrote:


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On December 30 2016 20:31 mantequilla wrote:
age of mythology rulez

they have played the build so often that they have refined the ideal way to react to each situation.

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.

On January 02 2017 22:16 Garmer wrote:


well it's indeed more easy than BW

On January 03 2017 00:41 NonY wrote:

but then sc2 has things that are objectively more difficult to do that bw doesnt.

On January 03 2017 00:41 NonY wrote:

easier to do some things, harder to do others. both games are too hard to consistently do any of the various types of tasks perfectly against an equally skilled opponent. idk what measurements you do to so confidently say bw is more difficult (like limited unit/building selection? but then sc2 has things that are objectively more difficult to do that bw doesnt. so you'd need to catalog all of these things and then create a system for comparing apples and oranges). anyway, in the end, the knowledge you'd achieve would just be trivia. the way difficulty of mechanics actually matters to competitive players and game designers doesn't care about that analysis

On January 03 2017 21:29 Euphorbus wrote:
Of course SC2 is more 'difficult'. Every second unit has spellcasting and there are many non-transparent mechanisms in the game. Also, there are many hard counters.

SC2 is hard to learn, easy to master.


.

On January 03 2017 05:23 The_Red_Viper wrote:

Too bad even korean progamers/coaches suggested that sc2 is "too hard". It seems these guys disagree with you.
While there are simply more tasks in bw that isn't the only measurement of difficulty

On January 03 2017 21:50 Garmer wrote:



how much have you played BW? because everyone who played BW until level B on iccup will never say that sc2 is harder, there are many more position gameplay which is very attention and skill demanding in BW than starcraft 2, tank vs defiler anyone?

i don't see anything out of the ordinary day in sc2 that there isn't also in BW but at greater order of magnitude, also you are talking about spell in sc2 with smartcast, when in BW you need to select each unit, just talking about mass storm for example, that alone is more difficult than anything in sc2

On January 03 2017 22:44 Euphorbus wrote:
No game is strictly harder than the other? Really? Yes, you cannot measure how 'hard' SC2 or Starcraft is. But you can in simpler cases. This statement is simply factually wrong.

Neither me nor Nony is currently B on iccup. But he misread, so his comment is confusing anyway.

You assert yourself that it cannot be measured how hard SC2 or BW is, that answers all your questions.
If a value cannot be measured, it can also not be compared.

If I score girl A 8/10 for looks and 4/10 for personality, and girl B 4/10 for looks and 8/10 for personality, can you say which girl is "better"? If no, must they therefore be "equal"?

Best analogy I could come up with at the minute xD
The point is, there are various degrees of freedom at play as you noted, some things will be objectively harder in BW, while some are objectively harder in SC2, and which of these is more important to overall difficulty depends from person to person. Similarly, someone who cares more about personality will say girl B is better, while someone who cares more about looks will say girl A is better, but you cannot objectively say A>B or B>A.

On January 03 2017 23:21 Euphorbus wrote:
That's odd. Are you sure you are using the right words? Maybe you meant to say that Starcraft is not in all aspects harder than SC2?

Because when you talk about Starcraft and SC2 in specific, and then say " no game is" instead of "SC2 is not, ... than Starcraft", it is a general statement about all games.

And when you say that Starcraft is not harder than SC2 and SC2 is not harder than Starcaft, it in fact means they are equally difficult.

On January 03 2017 23:21 Euphorbus wrote:

And in fact, going along with your argument, you can. You give a weight to both personality and looks. Then you calculate a weighted average. The one with the highest weighted average is 'better'. And they can only be equal if they score exactly the same value.

You wouldn't measure how hard a game is on a person by person basis.

On January 03 2017 23:38 Euphorbus wrote:
Yes, you can add weights to personality and looks, but those weights will be different from person to person, hence the weighted average will be subjective

On January 03 2017 22:41 Laurens wrote:


Is Nony not B level on Iccup, or are you just ignoring his post to defend your narrative?

Some things are harder in BW, some things are harder in SC2, no game is strictly harder than the other.

On January 04 2017 03:42 NonY wrote:
Ok let's say you're a runner and you can run a series of races on flat courses or you can run a series of races on hilly courses. Which one is harder? Whichever one your opponents are better at. The whole thing about how it's harder to run up a hill than run on a flat surface is just trivia. The important question for the competitor is which one they're relatively better at. The question for the designer is which one is more fun and more fulfilling for people to do. The question for the competition director is which one yields a better competition, both for the competitors and for the viewers.

A mapmaker can make a map "objectively more difficult" by making it "more difficult" to expand. Does this really make the map more difficult to play? Probably not. People play differently on it. The change will suit some people and not others, some races and not others. It may even make the game easier because no even tries to expand anymore so it's just a 1 base all-in map. There's just no point in looking at one little detail of a very complex thing, seeing that it is more challenging in some way, and concluding that the whole thing is therefore more challenging. It's not simply additive like that.

If you had nearly perfect players who had to do everything nearly perfectly in order to stand a chance competitively at all, then challenges would be virtually additive like that. But playing SC2 presents a player with far more things than can be done perfectly, so playing it is already a matter of prioritizing attention and effort. When something becomes more challenging, in SC2 or in BW, it triggers the player to reevaluate the amount of value they get out of devoting their attention to it. This doesn't affect how hard the game is to play overall. Their attention is already over-burdened.

So to explain some of SC2's UI changes, let's look at macro and micro. Macro was changed so that multiple buildings could be selected at once to reduce the amount of time a player has to spend on production. Why? Because it's not one of the more fun things to do in the game and it's not fun to watch. Change the UI so players spend less time doing that and more time harassing, engaged in skirmishes, etc. Micro was changed so that an unlimited number of units can be selected at once. Why? Because giving your whole army move and attack move commands is not one of the more fun things to do in a battle. Controlling individual units, casting spells, working on more specific positioning with drag selections, etc, are the more fun things to do. So make it easy to give basic commands to the whole army but provide incentives for doing other kinds of unit control.

Now, WoL ended up being not very good for a bunch of other reasons which really muddled our ability to judge these UI changes. And at the same time, these UI changes proved trickier than originally thought, because many people (myself included) spent a lot of time developing those skills in BW and learned to love them. Blizzard also discovered that having too many spellcasting units ends up having its own pitfalls. The way they're working on LotV now is showing their continued ability to tweak how players use their attention to yield the most fun game to play and watch.

You could keep simplifying and simplifying and removing challenges so much that it's inevitable that the whole does become insufficiently challenging. Has anyone made that argument successfully about mechanics in SC2? I've never seen someone come close. I've only seen people not even understand the task before them, thinking they've already proven it when they haven't even started. The more interesting discussion is about what kind of mechanical challenges players face and whether the ones in BW or the ones in SC2 are better for competitive play. And that's something this article's author addressed in a different article and a lot of people have been discussing for years. And it's something that Blizzard was concerned about ever since they started working on SC2's multiplayer.

On January 04 2017 04:50 Euphorbus wrote:
I can't believe you are making that argument, Nony.

There are several problems with your line of reasoning.

First off, you define how hard a game is by the odds of winning at that game. That is absurd for the following reason. Compare me winning a coin flip competition against the entire world population against me winning at some RTS game against the existing player base.

The odds of me winning the coin flip population is basically zero, yet the only skill I need is to throw a coin and have it not land on it's edge. As long as I get one side up, all I need is for luck to give me the right result.

Now in an RTS game, I will also have very low chance to actually win, but a way better chance of winning than winning the coin flipping, which is basically zero.
You cannot say flipping a coin is harder than the RTS game just because my chance of winning is lower.


You cannot possibly think that the only difference between Starcraft and SC2 is what skills it tests for. They also differ in how and how much they are tested.

So you need to define the difficulty of a game by how well the game is able to differentiate the skills of the player, whatever those skills are. When there is a very tiny skill gap between two players, the game has to be able to 'measure' which one is better and let that player win. And for any game that is not a game of pure chance, if you play enough times, the outcome will not be 50-50. A difficult game will be a game where that percentage is bigger.

The more difficult the game, the more skill plateau's between a beginner and the best player of the world. You can also express it in terms of Elo, as long as the Elo model is actually accurate (which I suspect it often isn't). So many difference in points means a certain odds. Like 100 points difference means the player with 100 more Elo has a 76% to win. The more of an Elo gap between the very best and the average player, the more difficult the game.


In your example, you describe a game like bingo where the 'difficulty' of the game comes down to holding the right lot/number ie having the right skills and talents for the right game/track. Yes, if you run up a slope, run on a flat, run on a forest trail, different people will win, unless one is just much much better than anyone else. And yes, this is also what happens in different games. All you need to do is have the right skill for the right game. That's like a lottery/bingo. But even SC2 is much much more than just that.

As for the running analogy specifically, in running your performance is basically independent of your competitors as you compete against the clock, not against your opponent. Yes, there is race tactics and drafting, but that is completely different from pressuring your opponent, outthinking your opponent, in a game where you 'fight' against your opponent, be it chess, an RTS, some 1vs1 duel in a teamsport, or martial arts.
One reason why such games have such big skill differentiation is exactly because better players can exploit their opponent's weakness, anticipate their moves, or trick or out-think them.

It is actually ironic that you changed position on this. When you were still a Starcraft player you argued for a SC2 more similar to Starcraft. Why? Maybe because it would help you as more of your skills would transition.
And now that you and many other players aren't haven't achieved in SC2 what they hoped out to achieve, now it becomes more convenient to claim that SC2 is really difficult.

in sc2 the skill cieling was already reached by many poeple but snce many reached it, it's hard to prevel this is how i see it, what prove this is that there was never a single progamer in sc2 who lasted many years like in BW

On January 05 2017 00:05 Euphorbus wrote:
It is possible to test if Starcraft is harder than SC2, in the way I kind of have proposed. But it should also be possible to 'do the experiment' by sampling data from past games played databases. At least for SC2, Blizzard sits on that data for sure. I don't know if iccup data would be able to provide the same. As there will be a lot of variance, you need sufficiently large numbers of games played. And no, I am not going to try to analyze the data myself. I have other more important experiments to do.

Elo works for SC2? I don't know what that means. Elo is just a way to quantify how large the skill spectrum over players of different ability is. And in a sense it is a measure of how much a game is luck-based vs skill-based.

Fact remains my position is not just an opinion or a vague statement. And even without definite proof, there certainly is evidence. Yes, counter-intuitive things may be going on, but if you make the game easier to play, you would expect the spectrum of skill to shrink, ie the game being less difficult. It's not a law of nature, but the evidence definitely points that way. And, if you are convinced this is not the case, you can actually analyze the data and show it to be false.


There has been some work published on this. So if you don't find my convincing, you can read up on the literature. Most of it was based or motivated on poker, and trying to 'prove' that it was a game of skill instead of a game of luck, so it could bypass the gambling regulations in some countries.

On December 30 2016 22:49 Charoisaur wrote:

I think what the article means isn't that sc2 offers more strategy but that strategy is more important and decides more games.
in BW a lot of games just get decided by mechanics, there's a lot of strategic decisions you can make but I feel it doesn't make the difference between win and loss as often as in sc2.
In sc2 when I analyze a replay of me or a pro-level game it's most of the time a few errors in decision-making that made the difference between win and loss. Of course it also happens that you lose just because your opponent has better mechanics but I feel it's not as often as in BW.

On January 05 2017 02:24 Euphorbus wrote:
Well, the line of reasoning is that we as a Starcraft community knew why our game was harder than C&C or DoW or AoE (and even WC3). That was the multitasking involved.
We, and that includes you as I seem to remember better than you, argued that MBS would be an integral part of what made Starcraft different from all other RTS games.

While I do indeed remember you had a nuanced opinion, you did say here on TL things like:

"Simplifying the interface with MBS and automining takes an enormous chunk out of the macro variable and will make it so close to a constant because all the top players will be doing it nearly perfectly."

"Why can't manual macro be a definitive aspect of SC? Every RTS has to have unique aspects that separate it somehow and why can't SC be set apart by not hopping on the MBS/automining bandwagon?"

"The catch is that MBS/automining might not be good for StarCraft's formula for a long-term competitive game."


I just find it strange that a time where old Nony is actually vindicated, new Nony suddenly doesn't even recognize the arguments made by old Nony, but also does not see reality now agrees with the predictions of old Nony.

I guess you see things differently than me and than old Nony. But I just find it strange that at a time where I feel vindicated about my old opinions, you reject those old opinions on the basis of the same evidence that I feel vindicates me.


I understand that all you top players had to accept SC2 the way it was to be able to perform, and that for some (Idra?) that was a struggle. I recognize that transitioning from Starcraft to SC2 required some double think. I mean, I can't imagine how I would be passionate about a game I didn't fully believe in. And back then, people were vocal. But the moment they realized they had to accept SC2 the way it was, because it wouldn't change, they shut up about it, for understandable reasons.

On December 30 2016 23:06 Freezard wrote:
Curious why the author says that BW feels easier to play than SC2. Makes no sense to me. Also remember when you could build Barracks before Supply Depot in SC2 beta? Well you can still do that in BW, I hate how they limited the strategy in such ways in SC2. I think the game was actually at its best during beta.

On January 04 2017 23:44 NonY wrote:
Why do you need something weird like "there aren't bonjwas in SC2 like there were in BW" to "prove" that the skill ceiling of SC2 was reached? Why not just watch any SC2 game ever and observe all the mistakes both players make, even at the highest level of play, and then conclude that the ceiling hasn't been reached? This isn't something that has to be so difficult to observe. It's super clear: progamers are nowhere near perfect at SC2. Like not even remotely close unless it's just a super short game of all-ins. So how can you even think about skill ceilings?

On January 05 2017 02:37 MoosyDoosy wrote:

Yeaaaa this. In mirror matchups if u and the opponent went for the same build ur dead if u macro 1 sec worse. In sc2 theres a lot of things you can do in comparison to pull the game back.

But tbh i like it better with a higher mechanical skill ceiling. It makes you really really appreciate pros and what they're able to do. In sc2 that divide is a lot less clear.

On January 05 2017 03:38 Euphorbus wrote:
I never said that. In fact, 10 years ago, I would argue against the concept of a skill ceiling. When everyone was talking about a skill ceiling, I objected since I realized they wouldn't probably not reach it, but they would still feel the effect.

I don't think you will ever hit a skill ceiling in the average competitive video games. But that doesn't mean they have the same spectrum of skill.

On January 05 2017 09:19 Foxxan wrote:
lol@nony

Myself dont see the pointless in that quote nony did.

Alot of people know, ALOT of people know that the skill ceiling isnt reached in broodwar nor sc2 and many other games. Sure thats a good thing but thats not what matters in the end or overall, what matters is WHAT SKILL THE PLAYER IS USING. Arguing that the skillceiling is high is pure crap, argue instead WHAT SKILL IS BEING USED HERE.

So if someone is writing bullshit its nony imo.

On January 05 2017 12:48 Thieving Magpie wrote:


Lets simplify it then.

Can players still get better at SC2?

Are the top players better then the middling players?

Are the top pro players better than the middling pro players?

What are your answers to this, and then give me your conclusion.

Army control was affected, too. Controlling a maximum supply army in a classic real time strategy game was extraordinarily difficult due to things like poor unit AI, weak pathing, and limitations in the user interface around control groups. This created a comeback mechanic in which superior mechanical control of a smaller group of units by the losing player could defeat a winning player managing an uncontrollably large army. Modern real time strategy games change this. Armies are mechanically easier to control, meaning that a player with a larger army will usually defeat a player with a smaller army. Comeback mechanics instead center around strategic decisions like harassment or tech switches.

On January 05 2017 12:48 Thieving Magpie wrote:


Lets simplify it then.

Can players still get better at SC2?

Are the top players better then the middling players?

Are the top pro players better than the middling pro players?

What are your answers to this, and then give me your conclusion.

On January 05 2017 17:12 Garmer wrote:



if none can get better forever than it mean that the skill cieling was reached, it's simply

you can't simply throw away the argument that the skill cieling can not be reached, the skill cieling is the possible(not impossible) highest skill someone can reach