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On April 25 2011 21:22 ShadeR wrote:
Found this gem comment in the source article lol.
"Vincent Goossens 22 Apr 2011 at 1:10 pm PST
SC1 and BW have had hundreds of patches before it became good and it took years. And only then it became popular with the Koreans.
Don't forget that. A good game takes time, and it has to be shaped while it's in the open."
Warcraft 3 is pretty old now and it aint balanced. You cant explain that 
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Japan11285 Posts
At the end of the interview this was said;
In the end, Browder believes the team created a game that has fundamental similarities to traditional sports: "The reality is that the game is trying to be easy to learn, impossible to master."
I believe this to be at least half-true, but not that he is lying but I think he just doesn't know it. In Broodwar, we have the classic easy to learn, impossible to master reaver drops, storms, dark swarms, emp, stasis, recall etc. It's not really easy but anyone can learn it. But as we all see, even pros can mess these things up, right? Then the other less notable ones are gol, and goon micro. These units are relatively hard to just move. Pros have fluid army movement but can still get goons dancing behind lines and stuff.
Removing the micro intensive units from sc2 made it duller imo. These units are micro-intensive to be effective but the pay-off can be game winning (stork vs hiya ). The advanced pathing made the game much more newbie friendly but I think took out much of the skill needed to make units move smoothly.
Less skill needed, I think takes out a lot of the competitiveness because there's not much stuff to get better in and be in awe when one sees pros play (spectating value).
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Dont know how you can mistake 4 balance patches for "hundreds".
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I love both games equally, obviously brood war requires far superior mechanics but both are easy to learn hard to master games. Can't everyone just <3
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On April 25 2011 23:08 Rampager wrote:
I love both games equally, obviously brood war requires far superior mechanics but both are easy to learn hard to master games. Can't everyone just <3
Some people settle for sc2 being just good, while others want it to be just as good if not better than BW. What's wrong with the latter?
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On April 25 2011 23:12 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2011 23:08 Rampager wrote:
I love both games equally, obviously brood war requires far superior mechanics but both are easy to learn hard to master games. Can't everyone just <3 Some people settle for sc2 being just good, while others want it to be just as good if not better than BW. What's wrong with the latter?
Oh absolutely nothing is wrong with this, I got nothing against growth I just think some of the undue criticism that sc2 should've been "sc:bw HD" are dubious claims, I don't think there's any way Blizzard could justify horrible dragoon pathfinding for a game released in 2010  Hopefully with more time, and maybe an expansion or two, sc2 will become better, or atleast match BW. Until then, I need to find Sea and console him.
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I haven't really seen anyone argue for "BW HD" since beta or so. ;]
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maybe not the pathfinding, but some units have slow/clunky movement as a counter balance for their strengths. it would suck hard tits if goliaths could move and mesh together like stimmed marines, same with dragoons. that's where the beauty of it is, taking a unit's innate weakness and using your skills to micro it despite. after knowing how much of a challenge it is, seeing perfect dragoon movement is a sight to behold
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This is weird, I have a feeling that I already read this interview, like one year ago.
Anyway thanks for sharing.
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There may have been 'hundreds' of patches cept they only do major releases in between key patches.
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On April 25 2011 21:54 LML wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2011 21:22 ShadeR wrote:
Found this gem comment in the source article lol.
"Vincent Goossens 22 Apr 2011 at 1:10 pm PST
SC1 and BW have had hundreds of patches before it became good and it took years. And only then it became popular with the Koreans.
Don't forget that. A good game takes time, and it has to be shaped while it's in the open."
but the time was a totally different. Back in 1998 companies fought to bring out RTS games with aspects that other games didn't have to make them get ahead. Most games were only played until another company came out with a better setup for the control panel and unit control, balancing and especially competetive play wasn't the first thing that came to mind back then. Nowadays Blizzard makes it differently (unlike EA for example who pump out one bad game after the other for sells) and seeing the effort they put into this game and the experience they had, they should already need alot less time to balance everything out.
Don't forget that Battle.net also played a hand in SC's success. Yeah, there were other gaming servers, but they were independently run (such as Kali, Gamespy) from the company which created the actual game.
I just hope Dustin and his design team will add in some new units in the next expansion which will cater to more skillful gameplay. I also hope that they improve Battle.net 2 by adding clan support and other small things like that to bring back the feel of the first Bnet.
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You have to remember that SC2 was also designed so that it is easy to watch and to understand.
A newer player may not understand exactly how hard it is to move a squad of dragoons fluidly, and if spectators aren't aware of what's going on they are missing out on what's happening.
While fluid unit movement lessens the need for good micro when moving an army, it makes for a less complicated viewing experience, which many argue, will translate to a bigger audience for the progaming scene.
Broodwar features lots of engine-based limitations that do make the game much harder to play and giving it a much higher mechanical skill ceiling, but it's important to note that implementing those limitations was most likely not a premeditated choice. If mechanical difficulty was the only consideration when designing a game, units would probably all have to be controlled individually without any kind of group selecting method, hotkeys, camera controls or mini-map. We can all agree that a game like that would quickly turn out to be boring, so a game designer has to make a hard choice between what he can or cannot implement into his game based on the expectations of his target audience.
Another necessity for a game to become a known e-sport is to achieve massive popularity. This is likely why Broodwar never took off in the west. The game is absolutely amazing and remains one of the best games ever made even after SC2's release, but it was never popular outside Korea when compared to games like Halo, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Guitar Hero and other triple A titles. These games had so many more people playing them than Broodwar because they were much easier to play, but also had the depth necessary to produce a professional scene (with the exception of maybe guitar hero, which ended up being rote-learning based). Nobody in their right mind would argue that any of those games is more complicated than Broodwar, but sheer complexity isn't what has made Counter-Strike massively popular around the world. Counter-Strike didn't feature advanced movement modes so it was actually less complicated than many games in its own genre, and a new player could take out a pro instantly with a lucky spray & pray headshot. Professionals would still overtake newer players over the course of many rounds, so the random aspect wasn't detrimental to the professional scene. Top players could still establish themselves and make a living playing the game.
Therein lies another reason why SC2 was made easier to pick up and play than Broodwar. For a professional scene to develop, it needs sponsors that are interested in marketing their products specifically to that game's community. If the community in itself is larger, then sponsors will be more inclined to finance teams, tournaments, or even leagues. The sad truth in the e-sports world is that the game with the most money will be the most successful, and the game with the biggest fan base will get the money. As long as a certain criteria for difficulty and skill is upheld, it becomes irrelevant how high the game's skill ceiling is in terms of having that game become a successful e-sport. What matters is having long term consistency in results between two players of different skill level. Much of Broodwar's popularity in Korea can be attributed to the PC bang culture and holding tournaments to see who was the top player in the area. Korean e-sports evolved around Starcraft because the game was popular, not because the game was hard to play or because it was a better game than the competition (which it was by a huge margin). Those certainly contributed to its popularity, but they weren't the selling points of sponsorship deals for the players.
Blizzard has clearly designed SC2 not only as a modern RTS with a powerful engine for their modding community (which created DotA on the War3 engine), but also as a game with massive potential to become popular in the west. Even in the event that the standard game itself wouldn't take off, the SC2 engine is powerful enough that the modding community could create a custom map that could become an e-sport of its own. Blizzard also promotes the game within their own huge gaming community (which remains largely WoW based) and restricts third parties from holding tournaments so they can be fully aware of SC2's popularity (which may or may not be a good thing). They are very serious about having SC2 or a community mod based on it succeed as an e-sport, and everything about the game from design to marketing seems to be fixated on that. That means having to make sacrifices and compromises in order to cater to all players. While SC2 has a lower skill ceiling than its predecessor, it can be expected that the game will evolve beyond how we understand it now if it becomes huge. Players will always find ways to innovate and gain even the smallest advantage over their opponents when there's enough money on the line.
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On April 25 2011 21:56 erin[go]bragh wrote:
SC2 will never be a worthy e-sport successor to BW unless it basically rebuilt from the ground up. I think it's an amazing casual game, BW was simply too mechanically demanding for today's casual market to enjoy, but sports aren't meant to be easy. And from a spectator stand point, the game is just boring to watch. I find it hard to believe that he analyzed BW much at all, if he did I have no idea how he came to some of these conclusions like removing defender/high ground advantage and the exciting tech units.
I mean holy shit, I tried. I watched the TSL yesterday because I wanted to support TL, but I was practically bored to tears. Ball vs. Ball fights and nothing but attack move? Am I supposed to cheer when a player selects his army hot key, presses "T", and spams the screen? I wouldn't be so hard on SC2 if BW wasn't such an amazing game. If the game was just marketed as a casual version of Broodwar that would be more fitting, but Blizzard is constantly pushing this e-sport crap and I personally find it insulting. It's like the kiddy leagues of BW. Simply put, Broodwar fans deserve better IMO.
idk about you, but I just dont find someone pressing each individual factory and spamming buttons very entertaining.
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On April 25 2011 21:58 Drey wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2011 21:22 ShadeR wrote:
Found this gem comment in the source article lol.
"Vincent Goossens 22 Apr 2011 at 1:10 pm PST
SC1 and BW have had hundreds of patches before it became good and it took years. And only then it became popular with the Koreans.
Don't forget that. A good game takes time, and it has to be shaped while it's in the open."
Warcraft 3 is pretty old now and it aint balanced. You cant explain that
Warcraft 3 had 4 races. That means 16 matchups, almost double what SC has. You balance one matchup and the others get messed up. Even then, WC3 was pretty damn close to balance. There wouldn't have been a pro scene if it weren't.
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On April 26 2011 01:07 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2011 21:56 erin[go]bragh wrote:
SC2 will never be a worthy e-sport successor to BW unless it basically rebuilt from the ground up. I think it's an amazing casual game, BW was simply too mechanically demanding for today's casual market to enjoy, but sports aren't meant to be easy. And from a spectator stand point, the game is just boring to watch. I find it hard to believe that he analyzed BW much at all, if he did I have no idea how he came to some of these conclusions like removing defender/high ground advantage and the exciting tech units.
I mean holy shit, I tried. I watched the TSL yesterday because I wanted to support TL, but I was practically bored to tears. Ball vs. Ball fights and nothing but attack move? Am I supposed to cheer when a player selects his army hot key, presses "T", and spams the screen? I wouldn't be so hard on SC2 if BW wasn't such an amazing game. If the game was just marketed as a casual version of Broodwar that would be more fitting, but Blizzard is constantly pushing this e-sport crap and I personally find it insulting. It's like the kiddy leagues of BW. Simply put, Broodwar fans deserve better IMO. idk about you, but I just dont find someone pressing each individual factory and spamming buttons very entertaining.
i find it much more entertaining than watching the game make units for you
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maybe blizz decided that they will start off with something easy to understand to cater for those who do not know sc at all (wings of liberty) and then gradually make it more complex like BW in the future (heart of the swarm and legacy of the void) so those newbies who make up like 90% of the sc2 community will be abled to understand the more complex things (just my theory though).
^ Pressing individual factories and spamming buttons doesn't really concern the viewers in terms of entertainment.
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On April 25 2011 21:36 corumjhaelen wrote:
There's not a lot of content in this interview. The idea is not to get all the fun out from the game, it's to remain both fun and competitive.
So his conclusion was to get out defilers/lurkers/reavers etc and to replace them with boring units. Makes sense.
Honestly, I think they did not spend enough time watching bw vods. I think that in the end, Browder watched 2 Boxer compilation, and understood that bw success was due on it being "competitive" and fast paced. That's a bit short-sighted.
This, although another thing that made BW such a fun sport to watch was the lack of blobs; i'm not sure how they could fix this without using BW's method which a lot of people do not like.
I can understand their choice for that, what I cannot understand is why they replaced some of the most tactically diverse units in BW with sub-par units from a gameplay and observer perspective.
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On April 26 2011 01:07 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2011 21:56 erin[go]bragh wrote:
SC2 will never be a worthy e-sport successor to BW unless it basically rebuilt from the ground up. I think it's an amazing casual game, BW was simply too mechanically demanding for today's casual market to enjoy, but sports aren't meant to be easy. And from a spectator stand point, the game is just boring to watch. I find it hard to believe that he analyzed BW much at all, if he did I have no idea how he came to some of these conclusions like removing defender/high ground advantage and the exciting tech units.
I mean holy shit, I tried. I watched the TSL yesterday because I wanted to support TL, but I was practically bored to tears. Ball vs. Ball fights and nothing but attack move? Am I supposed to cheer when a player selects his army hot key, presses "T", and spams the screen? I wouldn't be so hard on SC2 if BW wasn't such an amazing game. If the game was just marketed as a casual version of Broodwar that would be more fitting, but Blizzard is constantly pushing this e-sport crap and I personally find it insulting. It's like the kiddy leagues of BW. Simply put, Broodwar fans deserve better IMO. idk about you, but I just dont find someone pressing each individual factory and spamming buttons very entertaining.
I don't find that in itsefl entertaining, but what do you mean ?
I agree with him. I mean I watched Boxer play, and in 2 games out of three, he maxed without doing anything. Not a singe try to outmultitask is opponent, to outmicro him, to outthink him, to do anything cute. In the third he tried something once, very late into the game. SC2 made Boxer a boring player. Even when he ws sucking in the Airforce, he would try some stuff, pulling crazy cheses or idk. But now, nothing to see. Even his games vs Fruitdealer, in TvZ which is more watchable were pretty boring.
And I mean, I'm not Boxer's biggest fan, I think his play was pretty gimmicky and I dislike his habbit to bunker rush mindlessly (cf my sig...). But he often tried some crazy stuff. Now ? I'd rather see him get facestomped by YellOw in allstar game. Of course it's worse for his carrier, but on the standpoint of entertainment value...
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On April 26 2011 01:21 frodoguy wrote:
maybe blizz decided that they will start off with something easy to understand to cater for those who do not know sc at all (wings of liberty) and then gradually make it more complex like BW in the future (heart of the swarm and legacy of the void) so those newbies who make up like 90% of the sc2 community will be abled to understand the more complex things (just my theory though).
^ Pressing individual factories and spamming buttons doesn't really concern the viewers in terms of entertainment.
maybe not actually seeing it happen, but knowing that an important facet of the game such as macro is not trivialised and downplayed is pretty important. its interesting as there must be a balance between switching between your base and concentrating on everything else. i like it because it rewards multitasking and rewards people that have a talent for it, which in turn produces faster and better players
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It is hard to build an exact replica of Brood War. If it was easy you would have seen another version of it on a newer engine done by any other company to tap into it.
SC2 has its flaws and its cool features. I would love to see Brood War with the current SC2 replay and observer features. It would be very nice to see the income and production tabs in a proleague game.
It is hard to grasp what made Brood War a success from a design point of view. Of course it is easy to criticise and say it would make the game awesome if they kept _____ in the game. As the expansions roll out hopefully it molds it into a Brood War style game without having the exact same units as Brood War had in the game.
As long as Proleague, Winners League, and MSL/OSL are still around I will be happy with the scene no matter what. I play both and watch both to enjoy both worlds.
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EPT
