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chewii101

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SCII is inferior to SC:BW

(Its 4 in the morning here, the grammar is probably non-existent)
 
I will try to justify to you all why I believe BW is the better game (unlike some others with their pointless complaining) 
 
At the heart of any game is its gameplay, and SCII fall short of the benchmark its predecessor. I'm sounding like a pompous ass but I have played a ton of SC on ICCup (the international gaming platform, the place to face the best) and watched the pro scene in Korea (Grand Finals is this Saturday!) That being said, I am really disappointing by the mechanics in SCII. Starcraft has always been about the careful balance between micro and macro, a thin line only the best can tread. This balance is something that must always be in the game, built into the game engine and be the foundation of the game. In BW the greats showed how to play, iloveoov the alltime macro beast and pros like Bisu showing fantastic micro. It is here I believe SCII fails. The micro.
 
 

  
                                                               Watch Nada's insane micro. Could a hellion reproduce the awe and fear the vultures caused?
 
 
 
                         An inferior force defeating a greater one? That never happens in SCII, the best the smaller army can hope for is to delay the opposing army and retreat. 
 
The greatest deficiency in SCII micro is with the air units. In the before mentioned video Savior has mutas, capable of the moving shot. This technique allows the attacking force to attack without decelerating. For units like the muta and corsair this was an invaluable tool, ensuring their usefulness. The moving shot is so vital in SC, the idea that Blizzard would take it out in the sequel is mindblowing. It allows players with the skill to control their units and dominate their enemy by moving, shooting, moving shooting etc. There is NO difference between a 50 apm and 300 apm player in SCII. In SCII there is no unit capable of this moving shot. Maybe the Void Ray but then again, it got nerfed. The Protoss air unit Phoenix is pretty much useless. Rarely seen in pro games (idra/TLO might use em in a couple of matches) the Phoenix instantly begins to decelerate as soon as it attacks. The first lasers come out and the Phoenix becomes a shiny dead duck in midair, unable to move. A unit without any mobility is a useless one no? This leads to the point that a smaller force can NEVER engage a greater one. If it dares to fire off one volley, it has to take the chance of receiving even more damage. This lack of micro is unbelievable. The vulture and Fantasy's uncanny control of them can never been seen in SCII. 
 
To make up for this lack of micro Blizzard played with the balancing of unit stats throughout the entire beta. Ranges were increased/decreased, damage was heightened/lessened, blah blah blah. Yes it was a beta and ofc balancing will happen. But the frequency and magnitude of some of these changes show even Blizzard is not sure of the balancing. They can keep releasing patches, jiggling with the balance until the end of time. Never going to fix the lack of micro. I don't want to trash Dustin Browder and his team. SCII is a fine RTS, one of the best this year. But being of the same lineage as one of the best RTS of all time it stacks up short. Real short. 
 
Additional Notes:
In SCII there are units that are useless after a point in the game. The reaper is the prime example. After the early game, why would anyone invest the time and gas into a weak low-tier unit when more powerful units are avaliable. This is a unit whose sole purpose is to harass, yet he is useless after the first 5 minutes. Watch any pro game and the reaper is rarely used. All units in BW are viable throughout the entire game. 
 
PS. If anyone wants me to add more, answer questions, elaborate, I will continue with this topic.
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chewii101

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Edited By chewii101

(Its 4 in the morning here, the grammar is probably non-existent)
 
I will try to justify to you all why I believe BW is the better game (unlike some others with their pointless complaining) 
 
At the heart of any game is its gameplay, and SCII fall short of the benchmark its predecessor. I'm sounding like a pompous ass but I have played a ton of SC on ICCup (the international gaming platform, the place to face the best) and watched the pro scene in Korea (Grand Finals is this Saturday!) That being said, I am really disappointing by the mechanics in SCII. Starcraft has always been about the careful balance between micro and macro, a thin line only the best can tread. This balance is something that must always be in the game, built into the game engine and be the foundation of the game. In BW the greats showed how to play, iloveoov the alltime macro beast and pros like Bisu showing fantastic micro. It is here I believe SCII fails. The micro.
 
 

  
                                                               Watch Nada's insane micro. Could a hellion reproduce the awe and fear the vultures caused?
 
 
 
                         An inferior force defeating a greater one? That never happens in SCII, the best the smaller army can hope for is to delay the opposing army and retreat. 
 
The greatest deficiency in SCII micro is with the air units. In the before mentioned video Savior has mutas, capable of the moving shot. This technique allows the attacking force to attack without decelerating. For units like the muta and corsair this was an invaluable tool, ensuring their usefulness. The moving shot is so vital in SC, the idea that Blizzard would take it out in the sequel is mindblowing. It allows players with the skill to control their units and dominate their enemy by moving, shooting, moving shooting etc. There is NO difference between a 50 apm and 300 apm player in SCII. In SCII there is no unit capable of this moving shot. Maybe the Void Ray but then again, it got nerfed. The Protoss air unit Phoenix is pretty much useless. Rarely seen in pro games (idra/TLO might use em in a couple of matches) the Phoenix instantly begins to decelerate as soon as it attacks. The first lasers come out and the Phoenix becomes a shiny dead duck in midair, unable to move. A unit without any mobility is a useless one no? This leads to the point that a smaller force can NEVER engage a greater one. If it dares to fire off one volley, it has to take the chance of receiving even more damage. This lack of micro is unbelievable. The vulture and Fantasy's uncanny control of them can never been seen in SCII. 
 
To make up for this lack of micro Blizzard played with the balancing of unit stats throughout the entire beta. Ranges were increased/decreased, damage was heightened/lessened, blah blah blah. Yes it was a beta and ofc balancing will happen. But the frequency and magnitude of some of these changes show even Blizzard is not sure of the balancing. They can keep releasing patches, jiggling with the balance until the end of time. Never going to fix the lack of micro. I don't want to trash Dustin Browder and his team. SCII is a fine RTS, one of the best this year. But being of the same lineage as one of the best RTS of all time it stacks up short. Real short. 
 
Additional Notes:
In SCII there are units that are useless after a point in the game. The reaper is the prime example. After the early game, why would anyone invest the time and gas into a weak low-tier unit when more powerful units are avaliable. This is a unit whose sole purpose is to harass, yet he is useless after the first 5 minutes. Watch any pro game and the reaper is rarely used. All units in BW are viable throughout the entire game. 
 
PS. If anyone wants me to add more, answer questions, elaborate, I will continue with this topic.
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Slippery

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Edited By Slippery

When SC first came out is was unbalanced as crap and all round pretty bad game, give it time.

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Tommygun141

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Edited By Tommygun141

Interesting point that I didn't realize initially, but I completely agree with. 
 
Post your comment in the battle.net forums. This is something that Blizzard wouldn't be unwilling or unlikely to include in a future patch if they were aware of the fact / the dissenting argument.

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swamplord666

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Edited By swamplord666

obligatory "the original game was better. this new one disappoints". check.

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XenoZak

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Edited By XenoZak

I micro with hellions, its a very very fast unit. If it could fire and move it would be overpowered imo. I'm still playing through the campaign so I can't comment on they're effectiveness in a competitive match but I can see how they could be used to great effect.

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firewrkninja

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Edited By firewrkninja
@Slippery said:
" When SC first came out is was unbalanced as crap and all round pretty bad game, give it time. "
Exactly
 
The reason there isn't as much micro as in starcraft 1 is because the pros havent had 12 years perfecting it.
 

the reason blizzard changed the stats so much is because they were just testing stuff out.
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gunslingerNZ

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Edited By gunslingerNZ

While I'm nowhere near a level of play where I could adequately critique the relative benefits of micro in the different games all I can say is wait for patches. Seriously anything that causes a big enough problem will undoubtedly be addressed by Blizzard over the coming months and years so I don't think it's worth getting worried about just yet.

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shirogane

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Edited By shirogane

Err, reapers can totally pull off that vulture thing. Easily. What's more, they can cliff jump.
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Teaspoon83

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Edited By Teaspoon83

I'm extremely rusty at Starcraft so I decided I would play the campaign, get use to the keybinds, go to the challenges next and then get my butt kicked in Multiplayer as I relearned the game. That being said, I'm watching a lot of youtube videos and I agree that a lot of it is big armies crushing the smaller one, you don't see much of micro to overcome the enemy. Want to see more old school Brood War videos though where crazy things happen on screen and you have Koreans screaming in joy over what happened.

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Sanryd

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Edited By Sanryd
@Shirogane said:
" Err, reapers can totally pull off that vulture thing. Easily. What's more, they can cliff jump. "
Exactly. They can pull off a micro similar to the one in the first video. Hellions, when compared to their predecessor, may disappoint, but reapers can do the same job. They may become somewhat irrelevant after a certain point in the game, but that is a separate issue. 
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OsheaDiesStupid

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Edited By OsheaDiesStupid
@Chewii101: Yeah, I think reapers are pretty useless through most of the game. Marauders are a bit overpowered, which encourages you to build a lot of them and ignore other units.  
                         Well, I'm waiting to see if koreans will obsess about this the same way they did for SC1 but somehow I doubt it  
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yinstarrunner

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Edited By yinstarrunner

So, basically, "BAWWW this game doesn't take as many mouse clicks as the old one!"  You say the foundation of starcraft is micro and macro.  I disagree.  Starcraft is a strategy game first and foremost, the foundation is reading your opponent and responding in such a way to gain an advantage.  Micro and Macro are simply the tools to do so, and streamlining them a bit so that fingerspeed is not such a deciding factor in a match does not make the game "worse".  In fact, a bit of streamlining can go a long way in introducing new players to the game and the genre.  More players means more strategies getting figured out and evolves the metagame more quickly.  And it does so without sacrificing the true core of the game: the strategy.
 
I'm sure you know that Brood War has been around for quite some time.  Since you follow Korean leagues, I'm also sure you know that the game was not always like that.  It has constantly evolved since it came out, and that's what truly makes starcraft great.  You can STILL watch a game and be amazed at an unorthodox strategy a player is utilizing.  To say that the thing that makes Starcraft incredible is that you can kill a bunch of units with only a few units as long as you press buttons and click faster is doing the game a disservice.  Yes, it's exciting to watch and very fun to do, but there's much more to it than that.
 
Speaking of which, I've seen plenty of large armies get beaten by smaller ones in Starcraft II.  Defensive nukes, EMPs, Forcefields, psistorms, feedback, hunter-seekers, neural parasites, and other tactics and abilities all help to even playing fields if used correctly.  Just as there were abilities like that in SC1.  Not to mention I've seen 2-3 hellions do about as much damage as those vultures in your first post.  lzgamer loves going mass reaper and rolling over his opponent with micro in the early game.
 
You come across as a person who played Brood War a lot, who got very comfortable with their micro and macro and a stable build order.  You sound like you went into Starcraft II totally expecting to "pwn some scrubs" with elite patrol micro, but you began getting outstrategized.  So now you complain that your units can't hit people while moving, because you've got it so ingrained in your head that if you just do a standard build and click faster than the other guy, you should win.
 
You sound like a surface player.  Get out of the APM=skill mentality, and see it for what it is.  Micro is just another tool in your arsenal to help you carry out your overall strategy.

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Lilja

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Edited By Lilja
@Shirogane said:
" Err, reapers can totally pull off that vulture thing. Easily. What's more, they can cliff jump. "
They can only pull it off if they have a cliff to use. Otherwise the zerglings will catch up to them.
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Semition

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Edited By Semition

I'm indifferent about it right now. I'm sure that more tricks will be discovered as the game moves on. Even right now, SC2 are pretty low leveled and people aren't used to the game yet (compared to SC:BW). That being said, I do not like the SC2 thing of "hard counters" that much. 
 
SC2 could probably do with or without these but I personally would much prefer the:
 

  
 
  
All of the little micro tricks that people want are simple to implement. It just involves changing a few fields in the map editor. And yes, they do need to be rebalanced if Blizzard decides to implement these changes.
 
My biggest complaint with SC2 is how 200/200 looks and feels really small. The food costs of almost all the units are increased compared to their counterpart in SC:BW and you max out really quickly. Even when you're at 200/200, it doesn't feel like an epic late-game army, it feels more like it's the mid-game. A lot of players like Artosis and IdrA have made the suggestion to increase the max pop to 300 instead of 200. (I get that Blizzard doesn't want to do it because they want SC2 to be played on low end computers but then at least change it for 1v1, so both players have a total max pop of 600. It won't lag much more than a 2v2 where the total max-pop is 800.) IMO this change needs to happen more than implementing the little micro tricks.
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TwoLines

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Edited By TwoLines
@Slippery said:
" When SC first came out is was unbalanced as crap and all round pretty bad game, give it time. "
Exactly what my brother said the other day.
 
 
 
After loosing 5 matches in a row.
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wunder_

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Edited By wunder_

Like I've said in boards time and time again, give it TIME. People like SlayerS_`Boxer` and Flash and Stork don't come around every day. Hell, before Brood War there wasn't even that big of a scene compared to today. I'd say, wait until Legacy of The Void comes out before even taking about balance. Then after that, wait another 2 years. Give it time.

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sixghost

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Edited By sixghost
@Wunder_ said:

" Like I've said in boards time and time again, give it TIME. People like SlayerS_`Boxer` and Flash and Stork don't come around every day. Hell, before Brood War there wasn't even that big of a scene compared to today. I'd say, wait until Legacy of The Void comes out before even taking about balance. Then after that, wait another 2 years. Give it time. "

It's not going to take 2-4 years to suss out the balance this time. Upon release SC2 already has a huge competitive following that already understands the basic concepts of the game 100x better than people understood 1 week after the release of SC or BW. We'll know if the game is balanced in 8-12 months if you ask me.

@gunslingerNZ said:

" While I'm nowhere near a level of play where I could adequately critique the relative benefits of micro in the different games all I can say is wait for patches. Seriously anything that causes a big enough problem will undoubtedly be addressed by Blizzard over the coming months and years so I don't think it's worth getting worried about just yet. "

I wouldn't get my hopes up for anything requiring micro like BW. Blizzard already added in a moving to the phoenix, and it was nothing like anything in BW.

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RVonE

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Edited By RVonE

I love the commentary in those videos.

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meteora

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Edited By meteora

As I recalled, SC was not originally as balanced as one thought. It was pretty unbalanced and needed a bunch of patching to make it work.

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Cambody

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Edited By Cambody

Give it time you will figure out how to play the new one eventually ;) 

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Rayeth

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Edited By Rayeth

Would the OP say that SC2 is better than SC without broodwar?  Cause you are comparing apples and oranges right now.  SC:BW has an expansion included and had years to mature.  SC2 still has 2 more expansions to go and many, many years to mature.

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Cataphract1014

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Edited By Cataphract1014

I really have no idea what you are talking about.  The stuff with those vultures happens ALL the time.  I did it the other day, and I'm not even that good.
 
Every replay I've watched almost always has exactly what those two videos are showing.

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deactivated-5997efb371d97

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@Shirogane said:
" Err, reapers can totally pull off that vulture thing. Easily. What's more, they can cliff jump. "
Yeah, i did it yesterday.  8 zealots killed by 2 reapers.  It didn't help me win at all.
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LegalBagel

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Edited By LegalBagel

Eh, I think in some respects the game is easier and doesn't require as much micro to play well, but in other respects it requires as much or more, and micro will become more important as the game goes on.  And I don't see how you come to the conclusion that the larger force always wins.  Good sentry play with force fields can easily make the difference between a win and a loss for a Protoss group.  Infestors with fungal growth can be decisive and overcome much stronger forces.  Proper baneling play (or anti-baneling play) is crucial.  There are lots of ways that more skilled players can come out on top in battles, though they may be different than SC1's microing ways.
 
To go along with what everyone else has said, I think as the game goes on Blizz will perfect and balance like crazy and certain units will fall into or out of favor (as happened before), and the players will learn more and more the little tricks that can be done and how to properly micro units to win in battle.  Judging this game a couple weeks out seems way overblown.   More skilled players will develop strategies and figure out how to use units to their best.

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empfeix

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Edited By empfeix

Fair enough, I realize tons of people will stick with the old game.  I'm excited to see what people pull off in the new game, and how the patches and expansions add to the game in the future.

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Cataphract1014

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Edited By Cataphract1014
@JSUMAN said:

" @Shirogane said:

" Err, reapers can totally pull off that vulture thing. Easily. What's more, they can cliff jump. "
Yeah, i did it yesterday.  8 zealots killed by 2 reapers.  It didn't help me win at all. "
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DMLTTvY9Fs
 
That is the exact same thing as the vultures.  After that, I went to his base and kill some more zerglings and harassed his mineral line.
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Cambody

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Edited By Cambody

I just proxy'd a base next to some toss and with three reapers took out 4 zelots and all of their drones.  So i have no idea what you are talking about.  I think in some ways with the abilities they gave, especially to zerg and toss make the micro more important already in this game.