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I really like the idea of more units that make for positional play and territorial domination. This is by far the most interesting part of SC2 at the moment. Even though an amazing nydus play or a fantastic warp prism harass is super exciting, the lack of extremely methodical decision making available to Protoss and Zerg can be extremely frustrating to watch and play. It's why great TvX is the most interesting matchup. However, one thing that I think is extremely under-appreciated is fantastic forcefield play. I think it is ridiculous that Game 1 of Incontrol vs Ensnare has been so untalked about. Incontrol used the most amazing forcefields to date to stall a push until EXACTLY when his colossus popped at which point he could win the fight. He used chokes and ramps at a level that hasn't been seen except for that game. As SC2 progresses, this game style can be used by all three races in ways we don't yet see in these extremely tiny timing windows.
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On April 16 2011 13:44 Parabol732 wrote:
I think everyone seems to forget the fact that there are two more expansions on the way. SCBW had 11 years of balance changes and exposure. SC2 has been out for what, a year if you count the beta? The point is that is too early to compare BW and SC2 because one is ten years older than the other. Give SC2 11 years and I am positive that it will be as great, if not greater, than BW.
The last patch that had any balance changes was 1.08, which was released in 2001, about 3 years after BW. All told, liquidpedia lists only 4 patches that modified gameplay including the release of Broodwar. The rest were mostly bug fixes and feature additions.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Patch_1.08
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Currently reading this as I watch the MSL games. And i gotta say: Spot on. Thanks for the write up and analysis!
EDIT: MSL comment was to say that there's so much micro going on as i read about it and watch it simultaneously happening. Makes this read that much more epic
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On April 16 2011 13:08 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 11:49 mahnini wrote:On April 16 2011 10:52 Jibba wrote: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. i mean let's take tvp as an example. before a fight you are laying mines everywhere, in front of your tanks, possible flanking points, basically exerting as much map control as possible so the protoss can't freely move into your tank line. you put up turrets to take care of shuttles, tier off tanks to make sure shots aren't wasted and try to get pot shots on units as they attack into your minefield. tvp in sc2 is a matter of spreading units and making sure all of your units are firing. What about pre-fight EMPs, fungals and feedbacks? Players could easily make structure walls in SC2, they just haven't yet. It's not like the Mind vs. Bisu layout happened over night.
emp, fungals, and feedback happen mostly before engagements adn affect a completely different dynamic and even then it's a handful of units vs 3 control groups of attack move.
Show nested quote +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. it's true you can still control pacing in sc2, but not to the extent with which you could in BW. again tvp as an example, if a terran tries to death push you from his nat to your nat you use your mobility and exert map control. give inch by inch. force extra seiges force mines to be laid AWAY from your nat. this aspect of controlling the pace by exerting map control doesn't exist in sc2 because unit dynamics don't allow it to. forcing a colossus to fire a laser at my kiting units is completely different from forcing a tank to seige. You poke and force the siege, then back up and do it again.
what? i'm talking about sc2 tvp if you're terran. there's nothing you can do to delay a protoss ball because there's no setup time for protosss units to reach maximum effectiveness like a siege tank.
Show nested quote +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. backstabs are interesting in their own right but that doesn't replace the ability to definitively control area as well as tanks and lurkers did. if i push a protoss back into his nat and he warps in a round of units putting him at an advantage over me there's no way to solidify my position, no way to punish him for losing map control. What about a Nydus during the battle. Then when your next round of units spawn, send them to whereever you want and there's absolutely 0 way for the P to match that mobility and control.
Show nested quote +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? i feel like i am repeating myself a lot here but, pvz corruptor roach hydra vs colossus sentry stalker zealot. these are huge moving balls of death that dont require setup. there is still some excitement with forcefields and the outcome of casting those but what else? what is honestly happening when these two armies clash, they are just dishing out as much dps as possible. it doesn't matter if the zerg has half the map covered in creep the outcome of the fight will be entirely unchanged. Burrowing and corruption. Specific unit targeting? No one in BW ever microed a dragoon mid battle the way people micro stalkers, except in PvP. That's also one specific comp, that's proving to be less successful for Z.
Show nested quote +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. in bw pvz, you are able to risk units for damage. you can get shots off before a lurker is burrowed. pick off overeager lurkers, storm chasing zerglings. in sc2 pvz, the setup time doesn't exist. you fight ball vs ball with everything you have and more likely than not the outcome of that fight will determine the game. This is exactly what happens in the snipe/emp/feedback battles. It can be done with banshees and other units too.
this isn't the same at all. there are many quick cost/benefit decisions you can make because the setup time exists. there's subtle unit movement and unit trading that goes on in every single battle with all your units. ghost vs ht is almost an isolated instance of micro and is done with only a handful of units.
Show nested quote +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. i'm saying sc2 units do not have the range necessary to provide a significant defender's advantage. when it's ball vs ball with no sieging or burrows needed, there's no reason to hold ground unless it puts you at a surface area advantage. in SC2 zvp, if i trade half my army for 25% of yours you can march forward uncontested because i won't have units to hold any ground. any fight i pick before i have a solid unit advantage results in a loss. in bw i can delay with lurkers because they exert definitive map control. if you want to attack into 2 control groups of well spread lurkers you are taking significant damage no matter what. This is how sentries and infestors work, once Zergs stop suiciding them into tanks.
i can see this working with infestors to a certain extent but not in the same way as lurkers would hold ground. sentries are almost never used this way and shouldn't even be considered in the same class as unit-based map control.
Show nested quote +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. you pick out irradiate here but you can't honestly say the player interaction when someone casts a forcefield was vs a dark swarm is anywhere near the same. you can move 100% freely under a dark swarm and unit compositions allowed you to fight units in a dark swarm. it forced a tremendous amount of control on both sides. what does a protoss have to do to maximize his forcefield wall? what can a terran do to minimize damage from a forcefield wall? more importantly, perhaps, what happens when you lose 10% of your army to a ff wall when you were otherwise on equal ground with the protoss? you run. you can't slowly move back. can't cost effectively pick units. you just run. And PDD?
PDD is mostly damage mitigation. it's not sustained like a dark swarm is if a pdd is casted there is almost no reason to run away from it in a large battle as it can only tank 10 projectiles making it's offensive use fairly limited. you probably wont ever see a terran pdd push to a zerg or protoss' base.
Show nested quote +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? it would be impressive but the effect of the spell is diminished. so instead of a mutual exchange of crazy micro you have a one-sided exchange. Feedback on Medivacs and other units?
Show nested quote +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. goliaths required player involvement to be effective. goliath vs mutas or lings would be a massacre if goliahts weren't micro'd. on the other hand, thors effectively can't be micro'd because they are so slow. what does a thor do against zergligns? it can't do anything. the interesting part of bw units was the player involvement needed not necessarily the role it had in composition. phoenixes are much more diverse that corsairs but think of the micro that is required to keep corsairs alive vs scourge. think of the micro that's required to kill corsairs. this is the kind of invovlement that is missing from sc2 units. Fair enough on those fronts, but marine control gets a lot more attention in SC2 than BW. There's other units in SC2 that still require baby sitting.
that marine part is not true at all. there are very specific hard counter kiting relationships like stalker vs roach or marauder roach but i mean it very simplistic compared to what is available in bw. vulture vs goon, goon vs ling, marine vs lurker, etc.
Show nested quote +
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. there's much less potential for micro in sc2. what do you do with a roach? or corruptor how do you micro those well? think about the differnce between lategame zvp in sc2 and lategame zvp in bw. there is always tons to do in bw. burrow lurkers, surround with lings, cast dark swarm, consume, rinse and repeat as the protoss pulls back. this doesnt exist in sc2, hydra corruptor roach just deals dps and if your attack runs out of steam you cant pull back to the ground you've earned and occupied with lurkers. you just run back home or keep attacking. Again, you're stuck on one comp that's actually not very good a lot of the time. Plus Zerg already requires extra actions for spreading creep, injecting and moving OLs for creep spread.
i think you are arguing mostly general mechanics with this one, whereas, i'm talking about unit mciro and relationships. creep spread is fairly important to maximizing army maneuverability during fights but that's about it. what's happening in 99% of these battles is once units engage that's it, full commitment, because pulling back means dropping dps while still taking damage.
Show nested quote +You can't just 1a BW units and have then attack at full effectiveness. Yeah, you can't in SC2 either. true. exaggeration on my part but still holds some truth to it. It holds truth in that players are currently doing it, but there's so much that current players can improve.
i can agree with that, but i don't think it will have a significant effect on how battles are engaged or decided.
Show nested quote +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. that's true. however, let's think about lurker ling vs roach ling zvp. there's no tension in an attack because there's nothing to anticipate other than perhaps forcefields. in bw it depended on how you burrowed how well were you pushing with lurkers and surrounding with lings. this doesnt exist with roach ling because it's just an exchange of flat damage. you can't pick a roach before it does damage. more importantly when a zerg is defending what can they do besides attack into the protoss? Baneling/ling vs baneling/ling requires as much micro as anything in BW.
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On April 16 2011 13:52 andrewlt wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 13:32 BigFan wrote:
I think this part of your post was opinionated:
"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."
Yes I agree with the reaver one and bane one but disagree with the rest. Vikings have a larger range and can land making for quick assaults on mineral lines. Compare that to just cloaking a wraith which I don't personally feel is as interactive. The cloak ability also isn't gone, it's just passed over to the banshee to prevent units other than spellcasters from having multiple abilities. The thor's cannons make them more interactive than a goliath ever was IMO. For the phoenix, you have the graviton beam so you can always go around and shift map control in your favour by removing it from your opponent by lifting tanks, etc.... I think immortals are more interactive because, as long as you keep in mind that their specialty goes into effect if they have their shields on, you can always watch the shield and micro back to regenerate which you can't for the dragoon. As for muta and hydras, they are pretty similar to BW aside from the speed(hydra) which was explained by Dustin.
Yes, you're really missing a lot of things from BW if you don't follow competitive play. The larger range of vikings means that it is less interactive than a wraith. The wraith is fast and fragile but can stack like mutas can. That allows top players like Leta to penetrate even tiny cracks in opponents defenses and pick off units like marines and hydras while they're moving. They barely have more range than mutas so the back and forth hit and run wars are exciting as well. You won't appreciate it until you've seen it in action. It's like muta micro in BW. The immortals are also another symptom of the problem. There wasn't any ground units in BW like immortals and marauders that can cost effectively break a tank line by just a-moving them into it. Breaking tank lines involved drops, dark swarm and good timing.
This is one of the reasons I dislike immortals and marauders so much. It's really counter-productive to any sort of map control as they can bust your units rather easily if your spread out just a little bit. -_-
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On April 16 2011 14:02 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 13:52 andrewlt wrote:On April 16 2011 13:32 BigFan wrote:
I think this part of your post was opinionated:
"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."
Yes I agree with the reaver one and bane one but disagree with the rest. Vikings have a larger range and can land making for quick assaults on mineral lines. Compare that to just cloaking a wraith which I don't personally feel is as interactive. The cloak ability also isn't gone, it's just passed over to the banshee to prevent units other than spellcasters from having multiple abilities. The thor's cannons make them more interactive than a goliath ever was IMO. For the phoenix, you have the graviton beam so you can always go around and shift map control in your favour by removing it from your opponent by lifting tanks, etc.... I think immortals are more interactive because, as long as you keep in mind that their specialty goes into effect if they have their shields on, you can always watch the shield and micro back to regenerate which you can't for the dragoon. As for muta and hydras, they are pretty similar to BW aside from the speed(hydra) which was explained by Dustin.
Yes, you're really missing a lot of things from BW if you don't follow competitive play. The larger range of vikings means that it is less interactive than a wraith. The wraith is fast and fragile but can stack like mutas can. That allows top players like Leta to penetrate even tiny cracks in opponents defenses and pick off units like marines and hydras while they're moving. They barely have more range than mutas so the back and forth hit and run wars are exciting as well. You won't appreciate it until you've seen it in action. It's like muta micro in BW. The immortals are also another symptom of the problem. There wasn't any ground units in BW like immortals and marauders that can cost effectively break a tank line by just a-moving them into it. Breaking tank lines involved drops, dark swarm and good timing. This is one of the reasons I dislike immortals and marauders so much. It's really counter-productive to any sort of map control as they can bust your units rather easily if your spread out just a little bit. -_-
Agreed, a well executed arbiter tank line break is one of the most exciting things to watch in BW. If you want to beat a terran that's dug in, you have to do more than just walk the designated counter unit up to his line, you have to earn it.
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I agree that a huge difference between spells in BW and SC2 exists, and that a unit's effectiveness in BW is greatly effected by how a player controls it in BW, while only effected to a lesser extent in SC2.
I really hope that Blizzard can find some way to make SC2 resemble BW a little bit more within the next two expansions. SC2 has such a great opportunity to become a huge eSport so I think that these improvements would just put SC2 over the top.
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On April 16 2011 10:52 Banzaii wrote: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...
SC2's initial success is very artificial. The massive hype pre-release is trying to force SC2 to be the vessel of e-sports to the west, making it do quite well in the beginning. You can't legitimately evaluate its success for quite a while still.
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While I agree with your point that those things made BW be able to have more exciting engagements and a greater skill gap, I disagree if your implication is that SC2 should be more like this.
BW involved a lot of bad things. A lot of these bad things we got used to, a lot of them we think are great, and some we just deny are bad or even exist. SC2 fixed a lot of these sloppy areas of BW. The most important areas they fixed were where bad pathing/AI resulted in basically random variables influencing outcomes of battle.
While these things may have made BW a more skillful game, they were NOT what should be in an ideal competitive game.
I think SC2 should work on adding more things to create a skill gap between players, but I think it'd be ridiculous to model these changes after the mistakes/inefficiencies of Broodwar. That type of solution is just terribly ugly because you'd be using mistakes to create difficulty for the sake of difficulty. If SC2 is to be improved, it needs to have new and creative aspects added which increase the complexity of the game in innovative clean ways (Not broken/sloppy mechanics like BW).
I guess what I'm basically saying is BW shouldn't be what we aim for in improving SC2 (mechanics-wise). We should be coming up with more creative solutions.
Note 1: Perhaps no one is making this argument that SC2 should be more like BW and I'm arguing with myself.
Note 2: I'm not trying to insult BW. It was the greatest game ever made and I've spent 11 of my 21 years of living playing and loving that game. I'm just being honest about outdated mechanics.
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Excellent post. It made me think a lot about this, but to be honest I don't have a whole lot to say. I only played BW at D+, and am pretty bad at SC2, but as an observer I would agree with the points raised.
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Excellent read Mahnini
I agree with practically everything here
The game IS missing a lot of elements of BW both play-wise and for the spectator (Im watching the MSL right now instead of watching SC2 streams like usual)
I do LOVE SC2 but I feel like BW has a larger spot in my heart because of everything youve mentioned here.
One thing I cant get over is the pacing of mechanics compared to the overall skill ceiling; Maybe its because I've recently breached into "higher level play" but I really think some things need to be changed a bit.
Fungal, for one is too favored towards the user and all the points you've stated are why, no need for repeats.
Its not exciting or skill based
I don't really know how to add to this thread right now im too tired, but while I think SC2 is headed in a decent direction I also think that a few of the games components need to be rethought, lets see how the expansion does though
when's blizzcon again?
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On April 16 2011 13:49 GagnarTheUnruly wrote:
I also don't agree that there is a problem with player-unit-interaction. I know you don't use the phrase "micro-nullifying ability" but you reference the common complaint people have with units like sentries and infestors -- specifically, that micro doesn't help them to deal with the effects of the spells these units cast. I disagree with this notion entirely. These units encourage micro by requiring players to anticipate the spells. They have to try to snipe the spellcasters, have to keep their armies split and moving, have to feint and dodge to try to cause their opponents to miss... all these things are great for the game and are exciting to watch. And in this way SC2 is actually no different from BW. How does the response of a player to plague differ from the response to fungal, or stasis, or devastating abilities like EMP? That the micro occurs before-the-fact doesn't make it less important or less interesting.
Keep your armies split? Half the point of FFs and fungals is to split your opponent's army. I'm not sure how doing your opponent's job for him helps with micro. And since you've split your army up you certainly can't take him on in a fight, so once those FFs/fungals land and completely prevent retreats you've just lost a chunk of your army for no gain whatsoever. I've never seen anyone respond to sentries by splitting their army, and I'm pretty sure there's a reason for that. I can't think of any concievable situation where that would be a good idea, particularly since SC2 is still very much a 1a deathball game.
And yes, you can try to bait your opponent, you can try to snipe sentries and infestors, you can try to make him miss. But all of that relies on your opponent making a mistake. If your opponent plays it safe, keeps his casters in the middle of his deathball (which tends to happen even if you just 1a) and doesn't play like Tyler did against Thorzain and throw five FFs at a single hellion that slips through anyway you can't micro against it. Yes, you can dance a few units in front of him and try to bait out FFs and fungals, but if your opponent is good he'll either ignore them or, if it's worth the energy, throw the spells down and kill your units while taking no damage in return. Ultimately, combating FFs and fungals requires doing your thing and praying that your opponent messes up, because if he doesn't do something stupid you will lose the micro war because you simply don't have anything to do. You can use distractions, baits and all sorts of fancy tricks to make it more likely that your opponent makes a mistake, but in the end you're still just hoping that he screws up, because if your opponent doesn't make any critical mistake there's nothing you can do.
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On April 16 2011 14:06 Befree wrote:
Note 1: Perhaps no one is making this argument that SC2 should be more like BW and I'm arguing with myself.
yes and no. i think we all want to recreate the excitement and depth of watching/playing a bw game with sc2 but not necessarily by making sc2 an improved version of bw. bw is used abundantly as an example, not to put down sc2, but as an easy reference.
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On April 16 2011 14:05 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 10:52 Banzaii wrote: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... SC2's initial success is very artificial. The massive hype pre-release is trying to force SC2 to be the vessel of e-sports to the west, making it do quite well in the beginning. You can't legitimately evaluate its success for quite a while still.
I think this statement holds a lot of truth. SC2 is still a baby and we WANT it to grow up to become like its older, successful brother (bw), but it does need time.  The first post of this thread is amazing, btw.
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On April 16 2011 14:12 Ezekyle wrote:Keep your armies split? Half the point of FFs and fungals is to split your opponent's army. I'm not sure how doing your opponent's job for him helps with micro.
When you use FF you aren't just splitting your opponent's army arbitrarily, you're splitting it in a way that prevents it from retreating from zealots or colossi or that traps ranged units back so that you can gain a better concave. If you pre-emptively split your army into a large concave there is nothing to FF and you will have a huge advantage if the sentry-having player gets agressive (I'm thinking TvP here). The reason you haven't seen people do it much is because people are not microing as much as they could be
You can use distractions, baits and all sorts of fancy tricks to make it more likely that your opponent makes a mistake, but in the end you're still just hoping that he screws up, because if your opponent doesn't make any critical mistake there's nothing you can do.
And if he's not reacting to your feints you can stim in for a kill move or distract him while you drop or flank. If he responds correctly then he wins and if not he loses. In other words, micro skill and reaction time determines the outcome of the battle. How is that a bad thing?
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There was always a sense whether I was playing or watching BW that whatever the winner had done to make the other guy gg was a momentous achievement, whether that involved defending a four pool, defending a proxy, or macroing off of 5 bases. I have to conclude that this stems from the idea of buildup and gameflow that mahnini discussed in the OP.
Whether I'm watching others or playing myself, winning in SC2 is strongly colored by the strategies the players chose. The abilities don't hit the near perfect, split second timings where you either cinch the win or barely execute a clutch hold. That is not to say that the game cannot reach this point, but the way it is now in WoL, I highly doubt we will see play reach that refined level.
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I love you Blast to the past in all these games and truly understandin how awesome they were. ;D
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I just wish that the skill gap in SC2 was larger. I'm not saying that it's not there, but I'm Masters level in SC2, but can't make it to C- in BW right now. o.O
I'm still practicing, though!
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I do agree with the OP on most parts, but I think they just need to change a few units/spells and add a few positional units (that require micro from both players) and battles will be far more exciting. They should consider adding mines back to reapers or something, which would at least make that unit a bit more interesting (but make sure it's balanced), fix the a-move rape everything style of the colossus, and give Zerg some better ways to control space, aside from the infestor.
Honestly I don't know though, the path Blizzard seems to be taking is to nerf everything that's exciting into the ground rather than give other races a way to counter them.
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BW does provide a far better viewing experience. The fact that games aren't resolved by two "death balls" marching into each other and deciding the game in a few seconds is probably the biggest thing from a spectator point of view. However, while do I prefer watching BW, I prefer playing SC2.
I'm very scared about the future of SC2. It's covered with hype and money at the moment but it doesn't really seem to have the depth to make it longer term successful RTS like BW. Again, I'm not 'hating' on SC2. I really do wish it could replace BW. Not sure if it'll happen though.
People talk about game maturity, about waiting for expansions, etc. I don't have much faith that much will change radically in the future. As the original post highlighted there are just some fundamental 'mechanics' of SC2 which (probably) aren't going to be changed by patches and new units. I imagine people in the Blizzard office are going to keep the game fairly same old same old.
I wish we had Broodwar 2, not SC2. And by that I don't mean the arcane controls, but the game kind of elegant gameplay which does provide such a magical spectating experience... if only there was a way to keep the magic with a modern platform 
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EPT
