On July 18 2011 05:46 lorkac wrote: So it's not the micro you miss but the spell selection?
So really, it's purely nostalgia and not really argument?
Is it a troll? I talk about the general tendancy of the game, and why it is more impressive to see two players respond to eachother instead of one accomplishing HIS micro task while the other is waiting to see if the aforementioned micro-er has failed or not. Where is the nostalgia here? I talk about game design...
actually no.
You listed spells you disliked and wished were more like the spells in BW
psi storm hallucinate feedback maelstorm mind control stasis disruption web
web spawn broodlings parasite plague dark swarm consume burrow (let's give this to BW to be nice)
of those spells 5 turn units off (dark swarm, psi disruption, lockdown, stasis, maelstorm) and two outright kill the opponents unit (spawn broodlings, mind control)
the rest are aoe or utility.
Forcefield? Doesn't turn off units, just changes terrain. Fungal growth? Does less damage than 2 dragoon shots. Neural parasite? Oh right, a temporary Mind Control. PDD? Oh right, can be killed and only stops a set number of shots. It's like a crappy version of dark swarm. Strike Cannons? A channeled lockdown that doesn't last as long.
Come to think of it--sc2 spells are less overpowered than BW spells. But only if you compare them side by side. If you depended on nostalgia, th sky's the limit to how much better the spells you favor are to the ones you dislike.
This is getting ridiculous you're listing lockdown maelstorm and psi disruption wich are actually never seen in pro bw (pretty much) see how i didn't list the mother ship vortex? Now if forcefield or fungal doesn't restrict micro I don't know how you use thoses abilities but certainly not the same way pro players are using it. And you still didn't talk about my argument wich his that restrictive micro spells are in general boring. At this point that's just pure trolling unless you really want to debate on the arguments I will not answer to your troll atempts... Edit:Really I'm just talking about the general tendancy of the game you can list all the abilities that you want the thing is that BW allow more room for "micro contest" than SC2 (for the time being)
if you get fungeled you cant micro but the micro is to avoid to get fungeled or to mcro aganist forcefiels you can use medivacs as many times seen by koreans or borrow move. its just the other way around in sc2. you try to avoid getting damage .
That's the point I'm trying to make the micro is more unilateral than it was in BW I agree with you concerning the medivac exemple though.
On July 18 2011 06:15 Kanku wrote: Now if forcefield, fungal or conc shell doesn't restrict micro I don't know how you use thoses abilities but certainly not the same way pro players are using it.
They restrict reactive micro and create preemptive micro. Much like, say, plague in BW will make a Terran want to spread their sci vessels, but once it hits you can't do anything about it.
Even with stuff like psi storm (in both games), reactive micro is more of a last resort. Much better to spread your units and/or snipe the templar before they ever storm you.
what I'm showing you is there is as much or mre restrictive spells and abilities in BW. Players don't use them because of the metagame. The players are choosing not to lockdown. They are choosing not to maelstorm.
SC2 is not being designed to be restricting--it has weaker restriction spells than BW.
SC2 is merely playing out the metagame. Game design wise--BW is the game that has the problems you were pointing out design wise.
On July 18 2011 01:00 Shiori wrote: Allow me to explain why the skill ceiling is lower in SC2 than it is in Brood War. There seems to be a fundamental misconception that it has something to do with the inherently mechanics-based nature of BW as compared to the more streamlined SC2. This is only partially true, but mechanics in themselves are not what make games competitively challenging. It's entirely possible to have easier mechanics but difficult strategic decisions, which would result in an equally difficult game. The problem, however, is that SC2 doesn't replace mechanical depth with anything non-transitory. Why? In short, because SC2 is primarily a game of BO counters and hard counters.
Let me give you an example: In BW, Lurkers countered marines, but with good play, the person with the marines could actually accomplish something rather than losing all of his forces. Now let's look at SC2. No matter how good your blink micro is, Stalkers are never going to beat Marauders. What's amusing is that the units that people never use/consider UP are actually the only balanced units in the game in a BW sense. Take the Hydralisk: it's slow as shit off of creep and everyone says it needs a buff. It doesn't. All units should be like the hydralisk. Hydralisks counter stalkers in a straight fight, but with good positioning and really good Blink micro, the Toss player can minimize losses and sometimes come out on top.
Look at the Raven: it's another good unit because it's a situational counter which can be dealt with on the fly. Generally speaking, if the opponent gets a Raven, (unless it's a timing push) you can counter it with micro given the units you have, or by picking a position outside of the range of the PDD. Similarly, Banelings are devastating against biological units, but they can be countered through good micro, especially since they represent an inherent investment from the Zerg player. The Baneling is actually one of the best units in Sc2 precisely because it can be used in so many different ways (e.g. drops) none of which are absolute hard counters to anything (since they can always be minimized by micro).
So, when you ask for something to be balanced in SC2, I suggest that you ask for the majority of units to be nerfed, because giving everything a hard counter means that games become Build Order tossups, devoid of skill except for the easily acquirable ability to scout builds early in the game.
In a nutshell, that's why SC2 will falter competitively unless players accept that the game needs to be hard and that strategies should require inherent risk and never be an automatic composition win. There's nothing wrong with having a better army comp giving you, say, a 10% advantage over your opponent's army, but that's all it should be: an advantage, not an automatic victory.
Now we can surely debate, if there are more hardcounters in sc2 than bw, but you can't act like there are none in BW. Scourge shuts down any air and stimmed marines > muta, science vessel > lurkers, defiler with energy > most of T army, archons > zerglings etc.
I really don't see the point of such threads. The most obvious reason is, that it will create a giant trollfest, but also if you want to suggest improvements in SC2, you can do this without referring to SC:BW or you lack any ability to abstract the important essence of "your" idea.
IMO, no SC:BW vs SC2 thread brings us anywhere, but feeding the trolls
The difference between those BW spells and SC2 spells (aside from the fact that it was harder to cast spells in general, which in turn allowed Blizzard to make them powerful) is that the former encourage micro instead of preventing it (for the most part; there are spells in BW that prevent micro, but they're FAR less prevalent than those in SC2).
Scourges do not shut down any air, as you claim - you can dodge them with your air units and let your anti-air units take them down (akin to Marine/Tank vs. Banelings), you can kite them (with Wraiths/Mutas), counter them with spells (Irradiate on either your own units or Scourges, or D-Matrix), etc., and the Zerg player has to actively micro them (clone, retreate, decide how many he wants to use, while taking into account overkill and Scourges not connecting).
Stimmed Marines do not > Mutas. You can still pick off stray Marines/Medics, you can force exessive Stims, etc.
Irradiate > Lurkers, true, but you can also use it in a dozen different ways (eraser, sniping Defielrs, abusing Muta stacking, etc.), and the Zerg can turn it against you (mainly with Ultras)/has to micro against it (splitting stacked Mutas, Ultras surrounded with Lings, consuming Lings and casting spells ASAP with Defilers, killing Hydras in the middle of the army).
Defiler vs. Terran army is MUCH more complicated than you make it out to be. Each side is constantly fighting for the better position, moving their army. Swarm requires the Terran to reposition his army, use Matrix (on Firebats), stim at the right time, resiege his Tanks, etc. The Terran has to Irradiate (sometimes EMP) the Defiler, while dodging Scourges, while the Zerg has to avoid getting his Defilers Irradiated and make the most of his Irradiated ones. He has to cast the best Swarms possible and move his units unhindered under the Swarm. I could really go on and on, it's one of the most sophisticated match-ups in all RTS games, really.
Archons vs. Zerglings - that, too, depends on micro (to what degree, I cannot really tell since I only watch PvZ). Archons surrounded by Speedlings (and especially Cracklings) fall down really fast.
There have been countless threads and articles explaining how making SC2 more like BW in certain aspect would make it a much better game, many of them did not resort to comparing it to BW (but why make up some abstract examples when you can simply use the ones readily available to you?). When you present those suggestions to the SC2 folk without referring to BW, they will agree with you (most SC2 players agree that TvZ and TvT are the two best MUs in the game, and they happen to be the most similar to BW), but whenever anyone compares SC2 to BW, a shitstorm follows since SC2 players somehow get offended by someone saying SC2 is not the best thing since sliced bread. ;;
what I'm showing you is there is as much or mre restrictive spells and abilities in BW. Players don't use them because of the metagame. The players are choosing not to lockdown. They are choosing not to maelstorm.
SC2 is not being designed to be restricting--it has weaker restriction spells than BW.
SC2 is merely playing out the metagame. Game design wise--BW is the game that has the problems you were pointing out design wise.
I'm talking about the average BW match of course those abilities exist but since we are judging of the pro scene (because after all we are on TL) the average BW match is more a showcase of reactive micro than the average SC2 one. You can't deny that FFs and conc shell are seen more often (like WAY more) than lockdown and co.
They restrict reactive micro and create preemptive micro. Much like, say, plague in BW will make a Terran want to spread their sci vessels, but once it hits you can't do anything about it.
Even with stuff like psi storm (in both games), reactive micro is more of a last resort. Much better to spread your units and/or snipe the templar before they ever storm you.
Well that's my point, preemptive micro by its unilateral nature is less exciting because there is no exchange (if you preemptively spread your vessel in response the Z player doesn't plague)
Edit:But anyway we don't know what will be up in the next addons maybe we'll see interesting abilities that will encourage reactive micro.
On July 18 2011 03:30 setzer wrote: Almost everything you mentioned has a comparable BW counterpart that is much more impressive and difficult to pull off.
and what makes the moves better in BW apart from "harder to click"?
Harder =\= better.
The fact that they require actual technique as opposed to simple button pressing (which is why sc2 players with no BW experience always equate BW to button mashing - micro in sc2 practically is just button mashing)? In BW, Muta micro alone consists of like 5-6 different techniques alone, whereas in SC2 people call "magic boxing" "micro" (to a seasoned BW player, hell any seasoned RTS player, it's a joke, no offence).
As mentioned above, the only SC2 micro that's comparable to BW one in terms of depth/skill is Banelings vs. Marines and Lings/Banelings battles. The rest is either as simple as Dragoon hold-micro or "hold button, click-click-click" kind of thing (imo smart-cast is one of the worst micro killers in the game, spell casting in BW is so much more impressive because of the lack of smart-cast and better spell design in general, e.g. Storm encourages micro on both sides of the battle).
edit: Honestly, I'm not bashing SC2 at all. I always give credit where it's due. E.g. I love how Banelings turned out in SC2 - Marines vs. Banelings battles, Banelings/Lings battles, Baneling mines, Baneling drops (both in battles and harassment). It's just that most unit interactions in SC2 are shallow compared to BW.
edit #2: By "technique" I mean micro that requires specific timing, precision and a sort of algorythm (think of Marine splitting: manual vs. patrol, just more sophisticated).
I agree about banelings, but I think you don't give enough credit to blink stalker and forcefield micro. When I play toss I find it's really difficult to actually cast perfect FFs like MC or blink micro like Huk. It might seem like anyone can throw down an FF but to actually throw one down in the right position at the right time is a real skill. Also to blink stalkers back individually in a big battle while trying to keep macroing takes a lot of speed and to keep blinking in and out of an opponent's base doing harassment takes really good judgement and control. I think these two abilities are also areas where the pros can really distinguish themselves from the amateurs.
I really wish they had kept muta micro the same as BW though. Mutas feel kind of boring in comparison now.
On July 18 2011 06:36 Kanku wrote: Well that's my point, preemptive micro by its unilateral nature is less exciting because there is no exchange (if you preemptively spread your vessel in response the Z player doesn't plague)
What do you consider the exciting spell-based micro in BW?
On July 18 2011 06:36 Kanku wrote: Well that's my point, preemptive micro by its unilateral nature is less exciting because there is no exchange (if you preemptively spread your vessel in response the Z player doesn't plague)
What do you consider the exciting spell-based micro in BW?
Storm dodging in PvZ, goons vs mines in TvP... But really the problem for me might just be that those restrictive spells (like FFs or conc shell) are maybe too powerfull.
On July 18 2011 06:36 Kanku wrote: Well that's my point, preemptive micro by its unilateral nature is less exciting because there is no exchange (if you preemptively spread your vessel in response the Z player doesn't plague)
What do you consider the exciting spell-based micro in BW?
This is probably one of the best and most truthful articles out there.
I honestly couldn't agree more.
(I mean no offense to anyone by the way, so please don't be upset)
But what I found pretty ridiculous is Minigun, who used to play Halo or whatever, can beat IdrA, the most accomplished player outside of Korea. You can't tell me Mini has better Macro, Micro, Multi-task, etc when IdrA has been in Korea playing for pro teams there for YEARS.
It's like me walking up to Anderson Silva and beating him in a fight and I have a background in babysitting.
It honestly makes no sense and no this is no offense to Minigun by the way.
To me, Starcraft is like playing the guitar and Starcraft 2 is like playing guitar hero. You can make the same sounds as guitar, but you only have five buttons to push.
To me, Starcraft 2 is extremely boring to watch and to me why that is, is because I don't see anything their doing as something I can't do. I don't get that "Wow look at that control" factor.
And for the people saying "Hey Starcraft 2 is a completely different game." Well then they shouldn't have named it STARCRAFT 2. When you bought Tony Hawk 2, was it a completely different game than Tony Hawk 1? Or what about Madden 98, is that any different than Madden 99? No, there's a few tweaks and thats that.
"What do you mean I have to send my workers to work! Wait what? I have to have more than one control group?" In BW, we all used to joke Protoss was the "1a2a3a4a" race because it was so easy. Well in Starcraft 2 there isn't even that. It's simply "1a" . Hahah idk, I don't mean any disrespect, I just find "Starcraft 2" to be a joke.
On July 19 2011 02:44 el perro wrote: And for the people saying "Hey Starcraft 2 is a completely different game." Well then they shouldn't have named it STARCRAFT 2. When you bought Tony Hawk 2, was it a completely different game than Tony Hawk 1? Or what about Madden 98, is that any different than Madden 99? No, there's a few tweaks and thats that.
98, 99, 2000. We have 2011, the game was released in 2010. It's newbie-friendly because it has to pay for itself. We are talking about millions here. Of course as BW fans you can feel frustrated that the legacy has not been continued, but calling the game 'a joke' automatically makes a potential important Blizz employer close the tab. They are not going to change anything just like that because you want it. Either people learn to be patient and reasonable or we will fight this war for ages. On a side note, guess what happened to SC2Promod.
I'm wondering why people don't play BW in such massive numbers anymore. I guess for the same reason they didn't play it for last 12 years. Sure, money's on the table, tourneys turned their back on BW, but I believe there's a ton of people who know they won't get to the top tier in it, prefer it over SC2 and still post in SC2 section.
I believe it will be possible for certain players to become dominant, recurring tournament winners. Unfortunately / Fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it is not about mechanical skill. The key criteria for triumph in SC2 is innovation. You have to be capable of consistently coming up with imaginative strategies and play styles if you want to keep winning. If you don't, others will study your replays until they figure out how to counter your style and win.
TLO was hugely successful at this at first.. Not sure where his shortcomings are these days.
I believe it will be possible for certain players to become dominant, recurring tournament winners. Unfortunately / Fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it is not about mechanical skill. The key criteria for triumph in SC2 is innovation. You have to be capable of consistently coming up with imaginative strategies and play styles if you want to keep winning. If you don't, others will study your replays until they figure out how to counter your style and win.
TLO was hugely successful at this at first.. Not sure where his shortcomings are these days.
How can SC2 be all about innovation when you have a hard counter system? I'd say that takes away from innovation and strategy. A huge part of innovation is how creatively you use your units in game to gain an advantage and with the hard counter system, no matter how innovative you are with a hellion, it will never beat a stalker.
But in BW, being innovative and having good control, you can overcome counters, a vulture can beat a goon and a goon can beat a vulture.
Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE tlo, I'm a huge fan. But I think the reason why we dont see this highly creative play anymore is because there isn't much wiggle room for creativity in the game.
Honestly, I see Starcraft 2 living the same life that Warcraft 3 did. It'll be really hot for 3-4 years and then just fall off the face of the earth. Unless people keep pumping tons of money into it, to keep players playing.
I believe it will be possible for certain players to become dominant, recurring tournament winners. Unfortunately / Fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it is not about mechanical skill. The key criteria for triumph in SC2 is innovation. You have to be capable of consistently coming up with imaginative strategies and play styles if you want to keep winning. If you don't, others will study your replays until they figure out how to counter your style and win.
TLO was hugely successful at this at first.. Not sure where his shortcomings are these days.
How can SC2 be all about innovation when you have a hard counter system? I'd say that takes away from innovation and strategy. A huge part of innovation is how creatively you use your units in game to gain an advantage and with the hard counter system, no matter how innovative you are with a hellion, it will never beat a stalker.
But in BW, being innovative and having good control, you can overcome counters, a vulture can beat a goon and a goon can beat a vulture.
Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE tlo, I'm a huge fan. But I think the reason why we dont see this highly creative play anymore is because there isn't much wiggle room for creativity in the game.
Honestly, I see Starcraft 2 living the same life that Warcraft 3 did. It'll be really hot for 3-4 years and then just fall off the face of the earth. Unless people keep pumping tons of money into it, to keep players playing.
You raise some good points. But hopefully there will always be creative ways to use new units. We also have to keep in mind that there are two expansions coming out, hopefully blizz will bring some fun things into the mix!
what I'm showing you is there is as much or mre restrictive spells and abilities in BW. Players don't use them because of the metagame. The players are choosing not to lockdown. They are choosing not to maelstorm.
SC2 is not being designed to be restricting--it has weaker restriction spells than BW.
SC2 is merely playing out the metagame. Game design wise--BW is the game that has the problems you were pointing out design wise.
User was warned for this post
I think you're grasping at straws to make this point. Dark Swarm and Disruption Web don't stop you from microing - rather, just like Storm, they force you to move your units if you want them to remain effective/not die. Lockdown is single target, and roughly equivalent to Graviton Beam, which sees A LOT more use in actual gameplay - nobody really complains about Phoenix in this context though.
The only reasonable points you may have are Maelstrom, Stasis, and arguably Ensnare. Let's examine these spells though - both Maelstrom and Stasis require expensive, high-end units with expensive, slow upgrades, which also have other abilities you'd want to save energy for. An Arbiter costs 350 gas, requires nearly the entire Protoss tech tree to get out, and Stasis doesn't even let you attack the frozen units. This is good design.
Now, look at Forcefield, Concussive Shells and Fungal. These become available extremely early, and dominate the game the moment they are deployed. Protoss practically can't play without FF, Terran can't TvP without CS, and you can barely see lategame Zerg without Infestors nowadays, and many of them even skip Spire in favor of getting them out earlier.
It's really a question of availability and prominence, rather than recounting which game has more of what. Whatever you theorize, BW games don't revolve around Maelstrom or Stasis (this can be argued I suppose). SC2 games, do revolve around Forcefield (to a ridiculous degree at times), Fungal and CS. This is actually part of a bigger problem, that doesn't just concern unit abilities, but I don't want to digress too much.
On July 19 2011 03:29 el perro wrote: How can SC2 be all about innovation when you have a hard counter system? I'd say that takes away from innovation and strategy. A huge part of innovation is how creatively you use your units in game to gain an advantage and with the hard counter system, no matter how innovative you are with a hellion, it will never beat a stalker.
Actually, Hellions are cost effective against Stalkers in large numbers.
Not due to micro though, they just aoe the hell out of Stalker balls.
I believe it will be possible for certain players to become dominant, recurring tournament winners. Unfortunately / Fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it is not about mechanical skill. The key criteria for triumph in SC2 is innovation. You have to be capable of consistently coming up with imaginative strategies and play styles if you want to keep winning. If you don't, others will study your replays until they figure out how to counter your style and win.
TLO was hugely successful at this at first.. Not sure where his shortcomings are these days.
How can SC2 be all about innovation when you have a hard counter system? I'd say that takes away from innovation and strategy. A huge part of innovation is how creatively you use your units in game to gain an advantage and with the hard counter system, no matter how innovative you are with a hellion, it will never beat a stalker.
But in BW, being innovative and having good control, you can overcome counters, a vulture can beat a goon and a goon can beat a vulture.
Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE tlo, I'm a huge fan. But I think the reason why we dont see this highly creative play anymore is because there isn't much wiggle room for creativity in the game.
Honestly, I see Starcraft 2 living the same life that Warcraft 3 did. It'll be really hot for 3-4 years and then just fall off the face of the earth. Unless people keep pumping tons of money into it, to keep players playing.
A hellion might not beat a stalker 1 on 1 but that doesn't mean it's useless in the matchup. And there is still creativity going on. I was amazed by Sage's PvZ play for example which mainly relied on zealots and phoenix. Zealots aren't used much past the early game in PvZ because ('hard counter') roaches just lol at them. But he forced the zerg to make AA with his phoenix and was constantly harassing with the zealots at expansions and warping in at the main through spotting with his phoenix. Play like this is really exiting to watch for me, it's trying to find ways around those 'hard counters' and making units work anyway.
I believe it will be possible for certain players to become dominant, recurring tournament winners. Unfortunately / Fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it is not about mechanical skill. The key criteria for triumph in SC2 is innovation. You have to be capable of consistently coming up with imaginative strategies and play styles if you want to keep winning. If you don't, others will study your replays until they figure out how to counter your style and win.
TLO was hugely successful at this at first.. Not sure where his shortcomings are these days.
How can SC2 be all about innovation when you have a hard counter system? I'd say that takes away from innovation and strategy. A huge part of innovation is how creatively you use your units in game to gain an advantage and with the hard counter system, no matter how innovative you are with a hellion, it will never beat a stalker.
But in BW, being innovative and having good control, you can overcome counters, a vulture can beat a goon and a goon can beat a vulture.
Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE tlo, I'm a huge fan. But I think the reason why we dont see this highly creative play anymore is because there isn't much wiggle room for creativity in the game.
Honestly, I see Starcraft 2 living the same life that Warcraft 3 did. It'll be really hot for 3-4 years and then just fall off the face of the earth. Unless people keep pumping tons of money into it, to keep players playing.
A hellion might not beat a stalker 1 on 1 but that doesn't mean it's useless in the matchup. And there is still creativity going on. I was amazed by Sage's PvZ play for example which mainly relied on zealots and phoenix. Zealots aren't used much past the early game in PvZ because ('hard counter') roaches just lol at them. But he forced the zerg to make AA with his phoenix and was constantly harassing with the zealots at expansions and warping in at the main through spotting with his phoenix. Play like this is really exiting to watch for me, it's trying to find ways around those 'hard counters' and making units work anyway.
This. PvZ for me is the dumbest MU in SC2, but watching Sage play his style made me reconsider. It trully looked like a BW game with all the action going in multiple locations, more important is the fact there were no "deathballs".
I know this is getting old, but I think we need to wait for someone to change the metagame drastically. It's in the hands of the players, not blizzard to make the game Excellent.
Where can I see these amazing Sage games? That sounds right up my alley :D
Oh, and saying that hard counters destroy ingenuity: is there any evidence behind that at all? Or are you just theorizing? Because there doesn't seem to be a logical step there to me.
I just woke up with this genius idea: make MBS / rally to mineral / unlimited selection... researches on your Nexus. Newbs will get it early and it wont change much for them and pros will delays it as much as possible to avoid spending any money on it.
EPT
