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On April 16 2011 10:26 Leyra wrote:
One thing I didn't see you mention (I got tired halfway through and fell asleep, sorry Mahnini ;p ), although others have commented, is how much Unit pathing has improved. This causes the "ball up" type function, whereas in BW you spent half the game trying to get your retarded fucking dragoons to go where you wanted them to. Hell, I've played games with you and seen you bitch about pathing, when in reality it's infinity times better than BW, lol.
Only bad players struggled with pathing, I don't see how thats such a big deal.
ON topic: I really liked the post about how battles in bw lasted much longer. The game deciding ball vs ball battles in sc2 are just so unsatisfying to be on both the winning, and losing end of. Also OP you forgot the power of deflers to hold positions everywhere on the map!
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best thread since the opening of the sc2 forums.
sticky this. lets sign this with few thousands TL guys and send it to blizzard. capture browder and reprogram his brain so he can fully understand what this is about.
sc2 will longterm stand or fall about exactly this issue. watching a 1a'd stalker collosus ball roast evrything isnt exciting since week 2 of the beta. seeing a roachball just trade shots with another ball for 20 seconds isnt either.
i almost never get the feeling of "WOW OMG he actually did that..." i had when watching broodwar. even reps in broodwar were super entertaining while sc2 reps without the caster hype are often nothing but build x aclick vs build y aclick.
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To those saying to "give starcraft2 more time", tell me, what possible innovation will make roach vs roach fights interesting? What can make bio ball vs gateway colossi ball interesting? There aren't things like zealot bombs, storm dodging, or stasis. It's just "who has the better concave" or as commentators like to say "sick emp" or "Great forcefield" when in actuality, it's just e click e click.
There is a lot of potential things like marine spread vs banelings and drop micro and of course blink, but it will never compare to bw
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This looks like the kind of thread people were making literally a year ago. I had to check the date myself.
When will everyone take a step back and realize that this isn't Broodwar? For the people who dedicated years to Broodwar, SC2 may never be as satisfying. If you want to go play broodwar that's fine, but to compare the two games does no good for anyone.
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This game literally needs 2 maybe 3 positional units (like lurker + reaver) and a bit bigger collision size. Is anyone else much more entertained by the new tvp involving tank marine as opposed to the usual MMM?
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I think what they were aiming for when they developed sc2 was a game where your decisions weigh heavier than your mechanics. I think purists are against it since mechanics are a very clear way of determining which players are better than others. But in a game like sc2 where most of the top pros have generally the same mechanics (more or less), their decisions suddenly make all the difference. However with that being said, it makes results and games (other than MC) seem very coinflippish.
edit: perhaps hots will have something that changes the game?
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Id like to talk about the last video that was posted in the OP. I has some critical elements that is very lacking in SC2.
What made it tactical
Both players were able to control space
Both players had a way to break the opponents entrenched position.
Both players were able to utilize attacking on multiple fronts
What made it entertaining
Both players used skill in order to control their space.
Both player used skill in order to break the opponents entrenched position
Both players used skill in order to attack on multiple fronts while maintaining the above.
Hopefully someone sees what I am getting at here.
As of right now there is no way to effectively control space, except with siege tanks. Protoss has FF but that only lasts so long
There is no way to break an opponents entrenched position with out vastly out macroing your opponent.
In SC2 attacking on multiple fronts can happen but the lack of being able to hold a position effectively makes it so if you go for a drop you can simply be all in counter attacked because your army is split up and you cant be cost effective with a smaller army as any race.
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I agree with everything he says. But I also believe this is just another qq thread just long and drawn out. SC2 is a great game and is more appealing to the common gamer. Yes, watching BW and all its mechanics were great but only if you knew the difficulty of doing those tactics. I think everyone who played BW is expecting SC2 to be as comparable or better than BW. I also think that Blizzard has plans to have 'siege units' in the future expansions. How about every just play the game for how it is right now and complain whenever that last expansion comes out. There is still plenty of micro involved in SC2 it's just more fast paced to keep up with the speed of the game. You have to remember that BW took much longer to build up a max army and that usually most armies stayed between 130-180 food.
The whole '1a an army to win in SC2' or however you phrased that is a understanding that you have complained to early. I believe that the best of the best will be determined by having multiple army groups. Not only by having multiple groups but army positioning, multitasking, mechanics, and cleverness. BW was more about mechanics than any kind of cleverness, except for maybe TvT, and that's why so many Koreans were at the top. It's time for the foreigners to shine and SC2 is going to do just that because I believe that the quick decision making is more important in an entertaining game than just raw mechanics.
I have always loved BW since I was introduced back in 1999. It will always be the best game because it's the classic game. Much like any movies, the first one is always the best (at least imo). But it's time for me to move on and I believe SC2 fits me much better because it's less thinking about mechanics and more about the raw decision making. SC2 feels more like a chess game to me than a memory game. They each have their place in my heart and I still go back to BW about once a month because the memory game every once in a while pleases me. But in the long run I feel much more satisfied with a chess game.
P.S. I remember back in a time before BW expansion came out and zerg had no lurkers. I'm just saying stop crying over something when it hasn't even been completely developed.
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I'm a little confused. Is the emphasis of this thread more on units and micro, or (at this point)artificial limiters like no smartcasting, bad pathing, small control groups etc.
There's no going back in regards to the latter. There is literally 0 chance that they're going to go back to an 'old' user interface and AI to increase the games difficulty and mechanics. I think we can all agree on this? BW will forever be more difficult mechanics wise, the only road ahead of us in regards to changing things for the better is units.
Not sure what to add here besides that I fully agree that SC2 needs a lot more 'control' units that don't just limit micro like shells, forcefields and fungal.
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Well, it's pretty simple, game mechanics and 'game flow' were sacraficed for a greater aesthetical appeal.
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On April 16 2011 10:41 gogogadgetflow wrote:
This looks like the kind of thread people were making literally a year ago. I had to check the date myself.
When will everyone take a step back and realize that this isn't Broodwar? For the people who dedicated years to Broodwar, SC2 may never be as satisfying. If you want to go play broodwar that's fine, but to compare the two games does no good for anyone.
The thing is there is room for improvement for the expansions, blizzard can still modify and put elements which made BW great into heart of the swarm. Of course it isn't BW, but fixing it up will make it be a much much more entertaining game that it currently is.
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On April 16 2011 10:41 gogogadgetflow wrote:
This looks like the kind of thread people were making literally a year ago. I had to check the date myself. When will everyone take a step back and realize that this isn't Broodwar. For the people who dedicated years to Broodwar, SC2 may never be as satisfying. If you want to go play broodwar that's fine, but to compare the two games does no good for anyone.
because its boring and one dimensional bad design. you think sc2 will live 10 years or even 5 if the game is majorly aclick battles with build x countering y no matter what the player does ?
people will get bored with seeing the same stuff over and over again. and im obv not talking about unit comps or strats. im talking about the battles and games beeing exactly the same evrytime.
and broodwar is the best competive rts ever made. there is a reason why it still lives and there is a reason why a community like TL for a 10 year old game still was going strong before sc2 happened. copying as much as possible design wise is just smart.
look at the fps market, its a similar story. what are the competive games? quakelive ( which is a 1:1 copy of a 13(?) year old game) and counterstrike which is just as old. cause the design is amazing and perfect for competive play.
instead of trying to catch that spirit todays FPS try to score with flashy crap and giving people a good feeling and easy entry at all costs. and guess what, all those new fps are played between 6months to 2 years max while those outdated ancient games are the go to competive games.
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Another problem with sc2 that you touched on is that they made the game faster paced, but didn't improve the scouting options. Larva inject allows you to get a big wave of units quickly and unexpectedly, chrono allows you to rush out upgrades to hit critical timings, warpgate mechanic effectively reduces rush distance to 0, and mules give Terran a big income boost that increases the strength of all ins and timing pushed if used right. Now this may be fine, but the scouting options in sc2 haven't gotten any better. Observers are midgame tech, scans are extremely costly in the early game because those individual mules matter more, and overseer / overlord speed is also lair tech. Hence the game at times becomes too much of a guessing game and very volatile cause 1 wrong guess or unlucky scouting pattern can decide the outcome.
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You did a good job of outlining the flaws, however, I would of liked to see more discussion on how and what Blizzard can do to combat those flaws.
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I never understood when people say that BW is all about raw mechanics rather than decision making, the best BW players aren't the best because of their mechanics, but rather because their builds and strategies are super refined. Execution is just part of that.
Honestly I don't think there is much blizz can do anymore, every move they make, regardless of what it is, will draw hate from every side of the community.
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I think people who're saying, "Well SC2 is different and won't be a BW copy," or"Give it some time. Of course it's not BW level yet," or "The old mechanics of BW didn't make it good. You're just being senile," are all missing the point. Mahini specifically stated it wasn't SC2 vs BW. Thinking in such a comparison-oriented viewpoint misses the point of the OP. The point isn't that BW is better in anyway.
The point is that SC2 at this moment is lacking in some areas which causes games to be less interesting. This could be improved upon. The reason BW is brought up is because it's a good example of the improvement and the success it could have.
I completely agree with mahini on the point that static/set up units could really help make the game more interesting. I saw that Nada vs DDE game yesterday, and honestly, I loved it. I've been watching NASL everyday since it's started, and well, sometimes I love it; other times, the games are just boring. What annoys me is that a lot of the times, losing one battle WILL cost you the game. It makes SC2 seem... one dimensional and like a one battle game. A great example would be PvP. You lose the battle, you lose, gg. Sure, sentries can slow down your demise, but with ranged stalkers, immortals, and colossi, it's just a matter of time. The same thing happened with Incontrol vs Ensnare. One giant battle at the end, and it's GG. It also happens with Cruncher vs Zergs, when he just builds up the deathball of stalker/voidray/colossi, then rolls over the zerg. There's no sense of static map-control like in BW. No matter what you do, your defense just isn't strong enough.
I remember some time ago, Nazgul made a post asking for buffs to static defense. Blizzard took that point very well and implemented the change. I think SC2 now needs some type of UNIT that can defend. In SC1, you had lurkers, defilers, siege tanks, mines, reavers, and high templars to make sure that if your opponent attacked into a small choke after a battle, they'd still lose their army because of positioning and unit strength. In SC2, sentries and siege tanks seem to be the only units even remotely capable of doing such a task. There just isn't enough defense.
Also, fungal growth and forcefield are so restrictive in the sense of micro allowed. Sure you get to see beautiful forcefields like MC's that pop up like 12 in a second, but his opponent can't do anything about it! No matter what, they'll take enormous damage be it trying to burrow roaches, medivac lifting, fighting on, etc. Fungal is the same, except you can't even micro out of it.
BW has those equivalents too, like maelstrom and Lockdown, but they're hardly ever used. Lockdown requires extremely high skill to pull off, especially with such fragile 45 hp ghosts. You also can't just auto-cast like SC2. Maelstrom was expensive and rare, you get one shot at it, and either you do massive damage or you do nothing. Protosses couldn't afford 5 tries like Zergs can now with infestors. It was hit or miss, and that, I think, caused tension.
I doubt these spells will get changed, but it's just sad that there's these 1 way micro spells in my opinion. However, it could also be these same spells that establish the map control defense Mahini was looking for. I hope so, or I hope that HoTS will introduce such units. Although, I remember Blizzard saying they wouldn't change multiplayer with expansion packs somewhere... was I wrong?
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Can we stop comparing the two? SC:BW is a child of years and years of balance and changes.
Nobody is going to argue that SC2 is doing alot of things right that we didn't like in sc:bw, but sc2 will keep getting better and better with time.
Also, the sc2 community in the rest of the world is booming... I don't remember a time in sc:bw that I was having trouble with what tournament / day9 daily  to watch...
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United States22883 Posts
I disagree with this almost entirely.
On April 16 2011 09:35 mahnini wrote:
A fundamental design flaw.
In ZvP how do you prepare for an upcoming battle? ZvT? PvT? PvZ? TvP? Chances are the answer everyone gives to that question is exactly the same. You minimize or maximize surface area, what else can you do? Units in this game don't require setup time. The function of nearly every unit in this game is simple and one dimensional, reduce or improve DPS. One of the few exceptions to this is the siege tank, I'll touch more on this later. What exactly is your counter example from BW? Vultures laying mines, lurkers and what else? Perhaps Consume, but no one ever got excited over that.
Pre-fight unit positioning is more important in SC2 because there are more units in each composition with more roles, and once you're into a battle, there are actually more abilities to micro, as well as more decisions to make regarding targeting. People just aren't doing it yet, so it sucks when two people 1a2a two larger armies into each other, but eventually it won't be that way.
Do you know what game flow is?
We used to have a term that was used abundantly on this board that described a pivotal aspect of competitive play. Controlling the game flow is, in essence, controlling the pace of the game. In ZvT, if a Terran wanted to push out and kill your third, you exercised your map control to slow down the Terran push by slowly moving back lurkers as they got in tank range. Conversely, if you wanted to force an engagement as Terran you unsiege and attack towards another position or drop harass his bases, forcing the Zerg to completely reposition. When you're controlling the flow, the only things that can happen are the things you allow to happen. If he wants a big fight, you drop everywhere. If he wants a macro game, you attack him constantly. How is game flow any different? I feel like you're just using it as a non-descript buzzword and expecting people to think the BW way was automatically superior.
"When you're controlling the flow, the only things that can happen are the things you allow to happen."
We don't see this happen all the time when July, qxc or AdelScott take their opponent on a tour? It doesn't always work out that way, but it didn't always work out in BW either. Players are still capable of forcing their "game flow" (again, whatever that means in your example) on the other player and on the game as a whole.
The importance of map control.
Map control isn't really how much of the map you are literally covering with buildings and units, rather it is how much area can you freely move without contest. Put simply, just because you have a unit in a certain area doesn't mean you have map control of that area, it's that fact that you can actively deny movement in that area that makes it map control. It seems to me like all these ideas build upon one another and that if you want to be able to control the flow of the game you need to have map control, and if you want to have map control you need units that can do more than add DPS. You need units with map prescence. BW had units like lurkers, siege tanks, and vultures that could very effectively control sections of the map. Can you name one other than the siege tank that SC2 has? Infestors and sentries. Map control isn't as static as lurkers and spider mines once were, but why don't you see how BW Protosses feel about it? Because there are no more lurkers and spider mines, there's a lot more potential backstabs and pokes in SC2 which are exciting in their own right.
Positioning and setup time.
I don't really know how to explain positioning, but thankfully there are units that personify the idea of positioning perfectly: siege tanks and lurkers. If you've ever been a victim of a lurker or siege tank contain you know how powerful these units are when they are properly setup. 5 properly setup siege tanks can mow down twice the amount of dragoons and 5 properly positioned lurkers could deny an infinite amount of marines from touching your expansion. Why does positioning make these units exciting? Unless it's lurkers at the top of a ramp. Waiting for the Irradiate vs Lurker stage of a BW game was usually the worst part. In BW there were zerg and terran sieges. In SC2, terran sieges still exist and certain variants of Z play have sieges as well (IdrA's hydra/spine crawler push comes to mind.) There's still plenty of contains that go on in SC2 and they're still just as exciting when they get broken.
Another unique aspect of the siege tank and lurker was that they required time before they were useful, tanks had to siege and lurkers had to burrow. This introduced a unique dynamic in which armies weren't always doing 100% DPS and introduced the idea that you can actively seek to cost-effectively trade units BEFORE tanks or lurkers were setup. What? This the same. There's still a critical mass of certain units, where it's important for different races to pick them off before there are too many or they gain too much energy. How much tension is there when a 2rax is pushing into a zerg base while everyone is waiting for banelings or hooks to finish?
This gave micromanagement a larger role to play other than simply pulling away damaged units. If you're attacking into a Terran army as Zerg, you are using lings to tank the majority of the damage and buy time for your lurkers to burrow in addition to trapping marines and killing tanks. Of course, your Terran opponent isn't just sitting there, he's microing his marines back, dodging spines, escaping lings, and picking off the lurkers that you are still advancing. As a zerg or terran in ZvT it was entirely possible to attack into the opposing army and kill almost nothing while losing everything if your control was worse. This 100% exists in SC2. Pros don't do it because current pros are bad, but there is a ton of stuff for units to do and targeting is a lot more involved in SC2 because it's ambiguous. In BW, you know exactly what unit should get killed first, while in SC2 that varies a lot more depending on the numbers and composition.
What this adds up to is that it gives the person with proper positioning a significant defender's advantage so, even if you come out somewhat behind in an engagement, your opponent can't immediately attack into your remaining army without severe repercussion. This also introduced a way to delay your opponent by slowly giving up ground rather than doing what most SC2 player have to do, which is run back to their nat and turtle until they have a unit advantage. It also meant it required some finesse to get the most out of your attack. If your opponent was low on unit count, you couldn't just 1a into his army, micro a little, and still come out on top. What it really comes down to is that unit relationships were far more complex and, as a result, proper engagements required a higher level of control. Again, you're simply arguing that the requirements on a current BW pro are higher than that of a current SC2 pro. That's absolutely true, but that's not necessarily due to the game. An obvious example is July. He's been playing SC2 for 6 months now, yet if you watch his game he is awful with banelings and it took him 4+ months to start doing runbys with zerglings. He even did runbys in BW, but he didn't pick them up immediately in SC2. This point is on the players, not the game.
Player-unit interaction.
If we take a moment to consider BW spellcasters, we can see that not only did BW spellcasters involve massive player-unit interaction to use properly but also player-unit interaction to combat. Psi storm required tons of apm to use effectively or to dodge; irradiate could be used to massacre high value zerg units but it could also be turned against you; and dark swarm required exquisite levels of control on both sides. When you see a dark swarm get thrown up in a TvZ you don't go, "well that sucks, I need to kill defilers faster", you unsiege your tanks, run out of lurker range and keep raining shells because dark swarm assists zerg units rather than directly hindering terran units. I mean, obviously it hinders terran units to an extent, but you are able to mitigate damage and micro out of it, there's not an instantaneous downpour of lasers down on your army because staple damage dealers required setup time. It's not like it was easy for the zerg to use properly either, it wasn't a fire and forget spell like forcefield. After it was casted both players were microing their asses off. You're glorifying BW spell casting too much. Irradiate's main purpose was an instant, long range "fuck you" to clumps of mutalisks, lurkers, defilers and ultras. The only situation where it was turned against you was with ultras, but that happens all the time with storm and is beginning to happen with siege tank fire. It's not like there was ever a decision to be made on whether or not to use Irradiate because of that. It was just a side effect, that has essentially been replaced by ultralisk's innate AoE ability.
PDD/FF is the modern Swarm.
Take plague vs fungal growth. If all my front marines plagued, I can run them behind healthier units and still use them to some degree. If I get my front marines fungal'd I get to sit there watching them die stuck in place and there's almost nothing I can do to avoid a second fungal other than running headlong into more fungals. More importantly, plague required a large amount of time to research and you could only cast one per defiler before you had to consume, and many times dark swarm was a better choice. On the other hand, fungal is the primary infestor spell and is smartcasted. This is just a micro issue, and I don't see how it adds to the excitement of BW at all. Consume made defilers instantly powerful, so no, they didn't need much time to set up. The fungal thing is the exact thing that happened with Irradiate, so I don't see how it's a downside in SC2 but not in BW. There is nothing you can do to save your initial zerglings after an ultra gets Irradiated. If anything, I think the dynamic of fungal + infested terran vs dropship is more exciting. If you're a second too slow or they're in too good of a position, all of the drop ships will fly off slightly damaged. If it's done perfectly, they're all dead. Either way, you're staring at those eggs and waiting for them to pop.
Psi storm vs psi storm? A psi storm in SC2 is almost meaningless. In BW, the beauty of psi storm was purely because of the mechanics required to cast it. I don't think there is any debate here. In SC2 smartcast forced a nerf on psi storm to the point where a single psi storm means almost nothing and it requires the screen to be carpeted for it to even be effective. In BW, sequential psi storms were extremely difficult to pull off mid-battle, but had a tremendous payoff. In SC2, not only is it not impressive to see 4 psi storms casted, it's damn stupid to micro against. Microing against a storm almost always means running into 3 more storms because it's so ridiculously easy to cast. If microing against multiple storms in SC2 is so difficult, then why isn't that impressive?
Even staple units were replaced by less interesting, less interactive versions of themselves. Colossus vs reaver? Baneling vs lurker? Viking vs wraith? Thor vs goliath? Phoenix vs corsair? Immortal vs dragoon? Muta vs muta? Hydra vs hydra? There's just no contest. How is there no contest? Reaver/shuttle is obviously one of the coolest mechanics ever, but what is impressive about 6 +1 sairs flying around and killing anything that comes within 5 range? Why are Goliath and Dragoons so great, when they were kind of retarded and didn't have any abilities. Thor plays such a big role in battles, even without doing damage. It's a giant road block that can nullify another unit for 5 seconds. Wraith was awesome because of the 1 vZ and a few vT builds it got used in? Viking is so much more versatile and plays a bigger role where it is used.
The high mechanical requirement enabled extremely skilled players to use their units in ways no one ever could. It made large engagements an event in itself because of how difficult it is to maintain your composure when you are controlling 200/200 armies with a 12 unit limit. Huge army fights were a means to and end, and not and end within themselves. The final battle wasn't a formality to end the game that you knew ended minutes ago, it was a direct contest between players. It was the moment when both players go, "I don't care how big your army is, I have mine and I'm going to kill you with it". Have you noticed that during SC2 battle commentators can't say anything other than, "SO MUCH STUFF IS DYING!!", it's because there's nothing for players to do during fights other than pull back damaged units. There's no clutch psi storms, elegant spine dodging, ruthless zealot bombing, flyby reavers, or gross surrounds. It's a variation of 1a vs another variation of 1a.
Because players are bad compared to where they will eventually be. IdrA is arguably the #1 mechanical Zerg in the world and what did he do in his last two matches against MC and Cruncher? He fucked up unit control and donated large portions of his army. There is a lot to be done, players just aren't doing it yet. Most of them don't use more than 3 hotkeys for units and that's the fault of them, not the game.
You can't just 1a BW units and have then attack at full effectiveness. Yeah, you can't in SC2 either.
What does any of this have to do with spectators? I'm not going to go into the subjectivity of your spectating SC2 games, but you are giving far, far too much credit to the AI in SC2. Have you played zerg yet? Because even with the fancy new AI, zerglings are fucking retarded on their own. Same goes for zealots, when 16 of them decide to charge 2 or 3 units.
I think the biggest tension builder that's lacking in SC2 is in the casting. There's no loud, magnificent Kim Carrier style orations (besides TB) and the public's insistence on seeing the Production tab destroys a lot of the tension that was in BW. You can't flip to a base and see 4 carriers anymore, because everyone saw the Fleet Beacon go down. Honestly, I think changing these two things would have a profound effect on everyone's excitement. I know everyone says they want the production tab open and full information all the time, but there would be a lot more drama if they weren't.
And that's a particular expertise that has to be learned by casters. There are times to show different tabs, times to show players' perspectives and time to unveil the big surprises. I know I've ranted about players in most of this post, but the casters need to improve as well if you really want games to be as big and exciting as they can be.
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I don't know, it seems like there are tons of opportunity for micro battles in sc2:
TvZ: tank/marine vs. ling/bane/muta is 100% micro dependent
ZvZ: line/bane vs. line/bane, roach/infestor vs. roach/infestor
TvT: practically 100% positional/micro dependent
PvT: ghost vs. templar, ghost vs. phoenix
PvX: immortal micro, blink
I agree that some units are less micro-intensive than their replacements (reaver v. colo), but I feel like you're cherry picking examples to suit your case. The immortal isn't the replacement for the goon, the stalker is (and it has way more micro possibilities than did the goon). Irradiate in BW? There really wasn't much you could do if it happened; same with plague. There is an equivalent to dark swarm—PDD (except with micro you can focus it down)—and zerg can do cool shit with cloaked movement units (countering forcefield, the canonical "uncounterable" ability that everyone complains about).
Is the situation ideal? Not really, because people aren't as skilled at sc2 as they are in bw. But it will come, in time.
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Please, sticky this post, get it up to over 1000 pages, and send the whole thing, bound into a massive scroll, to Blizzard.
And have a member sit down with blizzard WHILE they read it, just to clarify and misconceptions they might have.
Then they realize the problems they have created, and fix everything in the next to expansions!!
orrr...we just keep playing this sub-par game (compared to the mighty BW of course, it's a fine game if BW never existed)
Some of it does have to do with the game still being very new though, as well as having terrible maps to play on.
Fix the maps first, then give people time to clear their old set in stone mindsets about what is what.
an example being "zerg goes roach hydra corrupter in ZvP, and thats the best way no matter what the protoss is doing" When that clearly is not the case, since zerg is having such a hard time with certain things. Spanishiwa seems to have no problems with death balls though, ultras are pretty sweet.
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EPT
