I love this game and will geek out over all of the epicness that come out of pro games, but I feel that macro games are much too passive as opposed to macro games in BW.
I know this game isn't BW and is pretty much entirely different, but I feel that if macro games were made to be more active, pro tournaments would produce a lot more epic games and results and attract a lot more attention. What prevents this game from being as active as BW was? The dependency on workers, higher supply units, small and boring maps(compared to BW), and fragile and small armies which disappear in the blink of an eye.
BW's resource collection rate is substantially higher than that of SC2. This allows for less workers required and more army to fight with. The fact that units were less supply and maps were much bigger also helped out with the large army aspect of the game. With gigantic armies and gigantic maps, there was a lot more action and there were a lot more game changing aspects other than a drop that killed a bunch of workers or one big army killing another army and the game is now over.
Starcraft 2 is more like chess where late late game situations tend to become a matter of waiting and unit control rather than tactics. If the Protoss moves out his death ball to try and kill the Zerg base and end the game, he risks getting out of position and the game ends right there. If both Terrans are maxed out on Vikings and Battle Cruisers, it becomes a matter of waiting for someone to make the first attack, as every other strategy you have left is nonviable (Boxer vs Rain). I would rather see a TvT where both players have their armies all over the place like trying to hold the line down the middle while sending platoons all over the map trying to find the slightest advantage than a waiting game where the only epic moments of the game are a move out that almost happened or a drop that killed a bunch of workers.
This is why I love the ZvT match up so much. It has everything that makes for epic macro games. Brood Lords, Infestors, Tanks, Thors, and turrets/bunkers hold the middle while lings, mutas, marines, ghosts, traverse the map looking for advantages. This is as Stacraft 2 is currently, what if we were to add elements of BW games into the Starcraft 2 universe. Larger, more interesting maps, a lesser need for workers, larger armies, and lower supplied units.
I know we haven't reached the skill ceiling yet. Players rather work on mechanics and build orders rather than crazy tactics and strategies. Custom maps haven't been incorporated into professional play as widely as it has been in BW. But, it's something to think about.
tl;dr BW macro games were crazy. SC2 macro games are chess (interesting, but not active). Maybe if we added some basic elements of BW into SC2 we can see some crazy games?
All the matchups in SC2 tend to last until 200/200 in a macro game. This is because of various elements. You need more workers to saturate to a decent level, and there's 2 gas instead of one (twice as many gas miners). Units in SC2 also tend to cost more supply. Tanks cost 3 supply, Immortals cost 4, roaches cost 2. In BW, tanks costed 2 supply, I don't recall a massable 4 supply unit and the equivalent to roaches, hydras, were 1 supply.
In BW, the only matchup that regularly went to 200/200 is TvP.
Little by little people are figuring out ways to poke at players. Until that research is completed people will be passive as the small pieces of aggression are not effective enough. But do not be mistaken it will come in time(And expansions).
I'm not sure if macro games in general are as dull as you described. If attacks/pressure were as rare as you seem to think, people would be going fast third and stuff like that.
Sure, the Boxer vs Rain game will have it's moments in the early to mid game that will have crowds jeering out of their seats, but in the late game it becomes (like I pointed out in my OP) nothing but a waiting game whereas Flash and Fantasy's late game has so much movement going on inside it.
There's always something each player can do to gain advantages during a game, even during late game stalemates. For example, in ZvZ player can use burrowed infestors to sneak into mineral lines and in TvT players can use cloaked ghosts and drops to bypass tank lines. As Starcraft 2 continues to develop, players who are able to use harassment and small engagements will come out on top. The current style of sitting back and macroing while waiting for a large engagement works because both players are playing passively. As overall player skill and game understanding rises I feel like we will see more engagements and harass from both sides in order to gain minor advantages which will eventually snowball into a victory. Just remember how people played back in beta. No drops in TvP, basically every game was a 1 base timing attack, no infestor harass, etc.
Basically, once the matchups are more developed and players can no longer win by turtling all game long there will be more action.
On November 23 2011 12:48 eSuBuildings wrote: BW's resource collection rate is substantially higher than that of SC2. This allows for less workers required and more army to fight with. The fact that units were less supply and maps were much bigger also helped out with the large army aspect of the game. With gigantic armies and gigantic maps, there was a lot more action and there were a lot more game changing aspects other than a drop that killed a bunch of workers or one big army killing another army and the game is now over.
As a zerg (in BW ad SC2), this is completely untrue for me . A "massive" zerg army is like 120 food.
Problem in sc2 is stuff like roaches, A max zerg army looks so small because having 70+ workers only leaves room for like 65 2 food units.
EsuBuildings xd I posted this like 3 months ago on Gamefaqs. Its basically because everyone is lazy and rather max out before doing any type of harassment. The game I used to demonstrate the amount of action that is possible in BW is game 1 of n.Die_soO vs JangBi in the OSL semis:
I bet you're unable to find that much action in any SC2 game xd
I was going to come in here and rail on you, but then I actually read the post fully, and I can see what you mean. I do agree that too much of the army gets tied up in workers in SC2. I think cutting the resource gathering rate was one of the worst decisions in SC2. I remember being so pissed off about it when I first found out. I think they should put it back closer to what it was, because the slower gas gathering rate is really gimping the tech rush to tier 3 into mass tier 3. I used to love massing tier 3 units in BW.
I think this comes down in large part to skill level, I just dont think sc2 pros have learned to utilize agression to its full potential yet. That said, the game is clearly far more dynamic than it was in the eary days, and I think it will continue to progress and improve as players themselves improve and understand the game better.
For every SCII game that you can say went into an overly passive mode, I can point out a game with a totally epic late game. consider: Thorzain vs. MC g4 Huk vs. Moon Dreamhack group stages Sen vs. Socke NASL and many more
1. Bigger maps, bigger maps, bigger maps, bigger maps. Stuff like twice the size of metalopolis. A map like Tal darim alter should be one of the smallest maps out there. This way 'ball armies' will simply fail, because you can only hit one part of their base, while if they hit you at multiple locations at once you'll probably lose. Because of big maps you would bring back the seige/perimeter lines. You would have zergs placing burrow banelings in areas to block off paths/swarm hosts for this as well. Warp gate for Protoss would be great here for them to warp into any base to protect it. The game would be so much better.
2. Take away the mass multi section of units. You don't have to limit it to 12 like in BW, however everything is in one big ball/ 1-3 control groups only. Maybe cap it at like 24-32 units or something. Units/armies would be WAY harder to control if you had to use like 6 hotkeys for a 200/200 army. It would put more skill back into the game. Way more IMO. Being able to select all of your units in 1 control group is so noob-ish. Even bad players might even agree to that.
3. Like TT1 kind of said in his post. The less casting units the better. Take away that stupid "get over here" thing from the viper. Less spells actually = more action. Having just 2-3 total spells per race actually makes them more exciting. TT1 also said each race having few spells to support the army, even though they're strong. They won't be as strong with armies separated around the map instead of a big ball.
Dumb Dustin Browder fails to realize. Sorry I'm calling him dumb, it's just I feel a sense of ignorance with his logic of 'this is the game I made, not the game you want' Dustin, we don't want these changes because it will be like BW. We want these changes because it will make the game a better RTS. It's already not like BW. The units are so much more fast paced IMO.
He said he's looking at ways to split those balls up. Start with those basic ones.
On November 23 2011 13:05 SkimGuy wrote: EsuBuildings xd I posted this like 3 months ago on Gamefaqs. Its basically because everyone is lazy and rather max out before doing any type of harassment. The game I used to demonstrate the amount of action that is possible in BW is game 1 of n.Die_soO vs JangBi in the OSL semis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa8xMv5fhQo
I bet you're unable to find that much action in any SC2 game xd
One big thing you notice in this game is that worker scouting isn't shut down at the 4 minute mark. I'd love to see that come back.
I think the GSL finals between MMA and MVP was a series overall that showed the weakness of passive play. MVP mech style was generally considered more passive than, say MKP's bio, but was also more successful and consistent. However MMA essentially proved that bio was still very viable and in many ways superior to mech in TvT, even against the world's best mech player. That series was incredibly back and forth, with MMA making attacking everywhere, while MVP struggled to catch up.
On November 23 2011 13:10 HuHEN wrote: I think this comes down in large part to skill level, I just dont think sc2 pros have learned to utilize agression to its full potential yet. That said, the game is clearly far more dynamic than it was in the eary days, and I think it will continue to progress and improve as players themselves improve and understand the game better.
On November 23 2011 12:52 FragRaptor wrote: Little by little people are figuring out ways to poke at players. Until that research is completed people will be passive as the small pieces of aggression are not effective enough. But do not be mistaken it will come in time(And expansions).
Again this is not a matter of time, its inherent in the game design. Even the worst players on ICCUP have more action packed games than the highest level ladder players in SC2.
The time horse has been beaten to death. When you can just look at the game design and see how it's not possible. The reason TvZ is so developed is that it has Tanks, its a lot like TvP in BW. Where T is always jostling for position and point capture, while P is trying to look for opportunities to exploit Terran weaknesses. Similar applies to TvT, this is why Zerg and Protoss need strong immobile slow-shot siege units (Reaver, Lurker), it creates much better battle dynamics.
On November 23 2011 13:12 Nizzy wrote: 1. Bigger maps, bigger maps, bigger maps, bigger maps. Stuff like twice the size of metalopolis. A map like Tal darim alter should be one of the smallest maps out there. This way 'ball armies' will simply fail, because you can only hit one part of their base, while if they hit you at multiple locations at once you'll probably lose. Because of big maps you would bring back the seige/perimeter lines. You would have zergs placing burrow banelings in areas to block off paths/swarm hosts for this as well. Warp gate for Protoss would be great here for them to warp into any base to protect it. The game would be so much better.
2. Take away the mass multi section of units. You don't have to limit it to 12 like in BW, however everything is in one big ball/ 1-3 control groups only. Maybe cap it at like 24-32 units or something. Units/armies would be WAY harder to control if you had to use like 6 hotkeys for a 200/200 army. It would put more skill back into the game. Way more IMO. Being able to select all of your units in 1 control group is so noob-ish. Even bad players might even agree to that.
3. Like TT1 kind of said in his post. The less casting units the better. Take away that stupid "get over here" thing from the viper. Less spells actually = more action. Having just 2-3 total spells per race actually makes them more exciting. TT1 also said each race having few spells to support the army, even though they're strong. They won't be as strong with armies separated around the map instead of a big ball.
Dumb Dustin Browder fails to realize. Sorry I'm calling him dumb, it's just I feel a sense of ignorance with his logic of 'this is the game I made, not the game you want' Dustin, we don't want these changes because it will be like BW. We want these changes because it will make the game a better RTS. It's already not like BW. The units are so much more fast paced IMO.
He said he's looking at ways to split those balls up. Start with those basic ones.
His method for splitting those balls up doesn't make any sense though. Hes just trying to make gimmicky units that don't work well within the main army.
There is a fundamental problem to this, the core armies are going to become even SMALLER. In BW the core army looked HUGE, you would just look at an army like that on the minimap in absolute awe, and this is partly due to the huge supply units in SC2. A 200/200 bio ball in BW had a roughly 160 unit blob moving around the map, SC2 is less than half of this.
The second problem is it is the wrong way to tackle the issue. The problem is not synergy of the colossus or MMM or anything like that, its lack of units that benefit hugely from tactical situations. A zerg army with 1 defiler is 10x stronger than one without, you don't see that from the infestor. A lurker in a choke is 10x more powerful than in the open, this is not the same for the baneling. In fact the only thing close to this is split marines and tanks.
About the micro Ai comment, true nobody can ever reach that, but it is impressive how good certain players can do that and the skill is only going to rise:
That video just proves what a joke the SC2 graphics and pathing is. Big blobs of stuff shooting at eachother. What you guys also have to remember is that you can't compare BW in 2002 with SC2 today. SC2 today is dominated mostly by players with a lot of experience. MVP and MC trained BW for years on most of their free time. Their overall RTS skills are much better than Boxer's was in 2002, and they probably have double the APM, if not more. The top SC2 players today are really good and there's really not much Flash will be able to add. Whatever Flash did, Nada had already done a few years prior. The only thing Flash brought to the table was strategies, his ability to read games and adept and his flawless macro. If Flash switches, you might be able to see some creative strategies, or brilliant comebacks, but that's it. You will not see him change the standards on micro. Nada could match Flash easily on micro in BW, and what have he done for SC2 micro?
This is Nada's marine micro in BW. That group of mnm did around 10 times more damage than they was worth.
In similar situations, I have personally lost around 30 mnm to half of that amount of lurkers. The BW engagements are intense and requires your immediate attention so that you're not caught off guard. SC2 will never be able to offer that, and on top of that, SC2 will always be plagued by the blobby graphics.
The ppl who are saying it's a natural progression to go from BW to SC2 clearly have no clue what you're talking about since you can't see that there's a huge difference between the games.
The reason why we are angry is because we feel that SC2 is a downgrade. Tell us why our players should switch to a game that is worse? Also tell us why we should watch said game instead? Everybody would have questioned KESPA's sanity if they had transitioned into WC3 a few years ago, so how come BW -> SC2 is taken for granted? Blizzard games are not like Tekken, where there are little to no difference between each new version of the game. If a transition to SC2 is to take place, wouldn't you first have to ask yourself if SC2 actually is a better game? This is a question that the ppl who switched to SC2 never asked themselves. They just hyped it up blindly and assumed that the game would follow the same path as BW.
What happened with BW in Korea was a miracle and it would require a really awesome game if we are to ever see such a great scene again. The fact that KESPA seems open to just disband this scene in favor of SC2, who's future is very uncertain, is quite saddening. BW won't last forever, but I highly doubt that the korean viewers will accept SC2. As ppl have said, the SC2 scene is niched towards gamers. What will happen when the next big RTS is released? I remember WC3 was huge a few years ago, atleast among gamers. Now the game is pretty much dead. But more importantly, the mainstream non gamers in Korea couldn't care less about SC2. BW have transcended to another level. In Korea it's mainstream, a sport. I remember reading a recent interview with the young Samsung KHAN progamer Reality, where he said that the high school he attended was very understanding of his BW career, and that they let him follow a more personalized scheduling plan in school, so that he could more easily focus on both gaming and school. That's how mainstream BW is in Korea. Even grown up parents watch BW with their kids, and teenage girls follow the scene and their players as if they were K-pop stars. I don't think most SC2 fans really understand how huge BW is in Korea, and how many different groups of ppl that SC2 would have to appeal to for a transition to work.
1225 (7 lurker gas cost) / 25 (baneling gas cost) = 49
I think its even more sad that if you could actually micro 11 marines and 1 medivac to kill 49 banelings, 20 zerglings, a Hatchery and an Evo Chamber, there would be mass screams of imba and Blizzard would never let it happen. T_T
Although at the same time other races had equal opportunities to gain huge advantages by exploiting weaknesses in small battles.
Of course to have situations like the above, Blizzard would need to remove auto-clumping. I think this is the biggest issue that needs to be resolved, players are too scared to engage each other because armies are almost 100% efficient at all stages of the game. If you removed clumping, players would be more inclined to be opportunistic and engage when the other player has moved out of position.
The second point I need to make about this is that de-clumping won't cause dragoon AI problems. Remember Warcraft III pathing? That used a very similar algorithm to Broodwar, its just that it wasn't a 13 year old game and pathfinding had gotten better since then.
EPT
. A "massive" zerg army is like 120 food.
When you can just look at the game design and see how it's not possible. The reason TvZ is so developed is that it has Tanks, its a lot like TvP in BW. Where T is always jostling for position and point capture, while P is trying to look for opportunities to exploit Terran weaknesses. Similar applies to TvT, this is why Zerg and Protoss need strong immobile slow-shot siege units (Reaver, Lurker), it creates much better battle dynamics.
