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First of all, take notice that this is not intended to be troll post, only observation and impressions why Starcraft 2 falls short in every way as harcore esport title compared to Brood War. This is coming from casual gamer with ~ 17 years of gaming experiance. My impressions are based on watching tons of replays, vods, streams , playing online on borrowed account, and playing a hell out of offline edition with latest AI. Now I will count couple of big problems. Many of them are more then likely to stay unsolved as ever since Battlereport 1 general gameplay direction in set and will not change much. Before people start screaming it is only beta and Blizz will not release until it is ready or better I say get real, release date is set for middle of year and no state of game build will matter much. And Blizzard seems pretty satisfied what they have done and will not change final product much in any significant way.
Problem number 1: Hard conter sistem is big fail compared to BWs soft one.
Ok this is very large problem that people were screaming since day 1 of beta. This sistem sucks big time for long term esports title cuz no amount of gosu micro can do anything when you face unit that is designed as its hard counter. Just watch Blizzcon 07 Terran video and it is clear as day how did they balance game. Unit 1 giving you problems? Bring unit 2 that destroys unit1, now opponent will bring his unit 3 that will destroy your unit 2 ect ect. Blizzard just went easy way inteed accually designing abilities and relationship between 2-3 units and THEN designeing how unit will look like and not crying we can touch Zergling, we cant touch Hydralisk, we cant touch Mutalisk becouse Zerg race will loose its identity. Lets look at situation 1 in BW. Vulture vs Dragoon. If you just send vulture at dragoon without micro dragoon wins, but if you micro vulture with mines pressure vulture can win or deal heavy damage, on other hand dragoon can responce by micro also by targeting mines and stepping back. This is very intence situacion with no clear winner and person with better micro skill wins even if dragoon by default is supposed to kill vulture. Situation 2 Marines & Medics vs Lurkers. If you just send your M&M group into lurkers they all die in blink of second, but if you separate them, secrifice 1 marine to draw lurker fire you can then easily kill them, again lurker player can respond with superior positioning. Again very intence situacion, no clear winner its all up to micro skill and superior positioning. Lets take a look at SC2 now. Immortal vs Roach... hmmm..yea..... you cant do shit but GG, Of course there are some micro situacion but on overall scale much less than BW. Maybe more will be discovered but people now have tons of experiance and ussually if there is something it dosent takes long to discover plus this is 3D title so bugs and glitches that can be passed as micro are less likely to exist.
Problem number 2 : SC2 as spectator sport is much worse than BW
This is also big problem as BW is such a joy to watch. Everything is so clean and easy on the eyes. you can see every unit, where it is, what is it doing ect. In SC2 big battles are complete mess. Its just 2 big armies engage in battle, theres lasers, rockets, whatever flying all over the place and units themselfs are so clumped together...just focus fireing tiny ghost in big mess of colors is hard especially when armyes die in 2 seconds. That leaves little chance for exciting battles like in BW where you chear for every tank, for every unit while they struggle to stay alive. Some of videos are so exciting and awe inspiring it is incredible. In SC2 low setting are too ugly and unnatural while high/ultra are to much detailed, processed.
Problem number 3: SC2....boring game?
Ok this is hugely subjective, I find SC2 fun game but also boring one. It is hard to explain but I kinda feel that for completely new game it feels tired after only 2-3 weeks of playing. Problem may be in boring spells. Lets look at BW for a second, at defiler... when he stars shooting dark sworm and plaque, when multiple science weesels stars irradiateing everything, couple orbiters recalling and stasis everything in sight all hell break lose. Its edge of you seat kind of expierince for bought player and viewer. Sure in SC2 ghost can emp, raven can hsm and infester can fungal growth but everything seems eather worse or toned down and less exciteing. Zerg race in particular while crazy and dinamic race in BW is complete boredom in SC2.
Problem number 4: SC2 is easy game ( compared to BW )
There is no denying, SC2 is 10X more easier than BW. I feel Blizzard had big chance here with their 1 game per account. See even if you are first time RTS player who dosent even use shourtcuts you still have tons off fun if you play with someone of your skill level. On iccup this is not possible as there are more smurfers than new players but with new battlenet there is not need to dumb down game for hardcore players and its esport potencial. In BW on high level play you need to have sick sick multitasking ability, years of practise and with time you will hit barrier that you cant pass because its your limit as a person. This is old discusion but SC2 shouldent have auto mine and unlimited army selection, Imo smart casting and mbs is welcome edition but Blizz went over the top for SC2 to be as easy as possible.
Problem number 5 : Korea lukeworm welcome
Seeing Artosis video it is amasing how little some of top Korean players care about SC2. When head coatch say SC2 is to simple and too fast its clear they are not impressed at all. Blizz vs Kespa situation makes it even worse. And face it, if Starcraft 2 become foreign only esport it will happen same thing what was happened to W3, it will stay popular for couple of years then disapear for mayority of people.People need players like Flash, Jaedong, Bisu to idolise, nobody really care about foreigns. They respect them but its not the same thing.
In the end I kinda feel that this is most dissapointing Blizzard game along with WOTLK and I have played them all, from Lost vikings and Warcraft 1 to WoW. Its not that game is bad as Blizzards game even when solid is better than mosts but still... Actually first thing I did with game was clicking on units to hear what they have to say and was shocked how uninspiring voiceovers are, almost like they was not getting paid for job or forced to do it. Another possible scenario is that since Blizzard dident make any new game besides WoW for so long many of original Blizz members from Diablo, Starcraft 1 ect left company as there is not much magic left in game that so few companies have.
I will keep final judgment when game hit retail as hopes are high for great single player but as for multiplayer I feel it did not live up to SC:BW expecialy since they had 12 years of ideas and that battlenet 2.0 will be region locked is such a blow to community.
P.S.
Sorry for bad grammar, I did best I could.
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SC wasn't an immediate eSport when it was in its beta phase. As far as I remember, neither was it when BW first launched. It took what, like 6 years of patching to make it the game it is today? SC2 has to wait for at least 2 expansions and who knows how many patches before it can even be considered in the same league as SC:BW. Calling out faults in a beta is welcome, even encouraged, but you can't claim it's future is over even before it's begun, even before the game has been completely released.
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I believe in StarCraft 2.
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Starcraft was a far shittier game then SC2 is in Betta stages, it too BW and years of patches still to make the game what it is today,
All this beta critique is annoying. The fact that the game plays fairly well and its not even out yet AND we know we will be having at least 2 expansions in the future gives me alot of hope for the game even if im not fully happy now
I honestly think SC:BW will continue to live threw out SC2 launch and far beyond it will be like 2 different games though
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While i don't think SC2 will ever live up to how good BW was, it is still BETA and i still think it has potential to be a successful esport. I agree with most points that you make but it's not like this can't change. They claim to have hired an esports team and, if they have a clue, alot of these points are ringing in their ears. This post is about a year or two too early imo.
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It is kind of weird you are saying this things. Like so many people do, ok the game is easier does it makes it not competitive? Well the answer is no, look at wc3 a game that is like 10000 times easier then sc2 and still is very competitive. Ok macro skills reduce a bit, but micro skills improve. And 2nd of all have you watched the games of broodwar the first four weeks? Your argumunts are valid, maybe of the like of life experience. And saying the people needs players like flash, jeadong whatever is stupid because every other game has his own top players. And it is not like CS players are saying we need players the top players from quake. If flash getting steamrolled by players in the future, what are you going to say then?
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sc2 is still the best rts of the past 11 years. thats enough for me.
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First of all your post gives me headache not because some of the statements you make are true, but also you didn't even put a bit of effort into your post. If you want to go into detail about why Starcraft 2 isn't nearly as good as Starcraft in the aspect of e-Sports you should take some time to spellcheck, maybe mark the important points, but you just didn't.
Secondly its easy to point out that this is not just the BETA, but also the early game stage. People will get used to the graphic changes, spells, the micro and every other situation. I strongly disagree that Starcraft 2 is an easy game. It might be easier than Starcraft, but its by no means easy. Sometimes in Terran vs Zerg you have to pull a miracle in micro to keep your units alive while you bank up thousands of minerals. I'm a pretty good player so I realize I got plenty of minerals, but since the game is so fast you have a hard time deciding:
Want to micro or do you want to macro right now, because one false move and your army is gone and it won't matter if you rebuild 20 new marines; On the other hand - having insane macro doesn't get you anywhere if your units die as soon as they start to fight because you lack control.
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2 expansions makes your point irrelevant for SC2's popularity for the next 1.5 years.
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It's waaaaay too early to say that SC2 is a boring/easy game compared to SC1. I think the reason SC1 is so "easy on the eyes" is because we've been playing it for years. I agree, that I can't just glance at the battlefield and immediately know what's going on (hell, I'd settle for being able to glance at the unit list in a replay and immediately recognize the pictures), but all that takes time.
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You make some excellent points. Blizzard has it's work cut out to make SC2 the truly dominant e-sport game, it's obviously very tightly tuned for a beta and will be extremely popular no matter what, but brushing off some of those concern's isn't productive. I have faith in Blizzard but how it's accepted in the Korean scene is pretty crucial for a longstanding future.
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While I think that we may find that the units dont quite hard counter each other as hard as we think, or Blizzard may do some magic with softening them up a little, I do agree that the battles need to be changed. The simplest answer i can think of is to increase the collision range a bit, which also has the happy effect of making ramps easier to block. Colors also need to be adjusted on some units, especially zerg, as only a handful of the colors are actually distinguishable from creep, but are too similar to each other in battle.
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sad to say this but as a spectator sport i think sc2 is better because of the graphics, there r so many newbs who enjoy looking at games streams without knowing how the game works so :p
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yesterdays zotac was the best shit i've seen for long. so entertaining; for me SC2 already surpassed SC:BW at the entertainment factor; maybe some korean games are still better, but not many. especially the grand final of zotac was lovely imo
still you got some points, but it's a beta right now and much will change
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I believe in SC2 too! Its not only what Blizzard does, its also in the players hand to choose what to do with it.
On March 23 2010 02:13 lunar3force wrote:
Problem number 5 : Korea lukeworm welcome
Seeing Artosis video it is amasing how little some of top Korean players care about SC2. When head coatch say SC2 is to simple and too fast its clear they are not impressed at all. Blizz vs Kespa situation makes it even worse. And face it, if Starcraft 2 become foreign only esport it will happen same thing what was happened to W3, it will stay popular for couple of years then disapear for mayority of people.People need players like Flash, Jaedong, Bisu to idolise, nobody really care about foreigns. They respect them but its not the same thing.
Huh what? What are you really talking about?? Players exists all over the globe. Who cares where you are from? Shouldnt bring in rasism to the gaming world...
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sorry for answering with such a short response to your long post, but way too many topics about sc1 > sc2 offer no solutions and take up too much space in the forums. i wouldn't mind it if you were sounding the death knell for sc2 as an esport in like, 2 years after release if support for the game were actually floundering, but we're only a few weeks into beta.
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meeeeeeh I'm sorry but these kind of posts really need to be saved for after the launch, It's just not fair to compare a game that's in beta to a game that has been perfected over 10 years..
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Poor spelling and grammar really kills this thread for me, but what always bothers me about these threads is when people keep crying out how the sky is falling.
Yes, SC2 has problems and we should give feedback on them, but declaring the game a miserable failure in its beta stages is utter retardation, especially since a lot of your complaints are rather misinformed. We still got several months of beta and several YEARS of expansion and future patches to balance the game. The game is nowhere near being a failure.
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I think every1 can agree that after watching the finals of the Zotac cup on day9s stream that there is absoultely esports potential. It was a joy to watch and a great series, also what Senx said, its a month old beta compared to a year 10year old perfected game. The one month beta of broodwar wasn't exactly OMFG ESPORTS.
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^
But BW wasn't really perfected "over 10 years".
Not to mention comparing the SC2 beta with the SC ONE beta is highly irrelevant.
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EPT
