Ever since Day9 talked about Frisbees and Baseballs, people have been humming and hollering about Broodwar’s superiority to SC2’s pathing system: mostly talking about how spread out the armies were and how each unit have this “micro potential” inherent within it.
I would like to break that illusion with this blog post.
Specifically, I would like to clarify *what* exactly Day9 was talking about, in order for people who have never played Broodwar to understand what we miss about the game.
Day9 brought up the idea of baseballs and Frisbees.
The metaphor, to an extent, makes sense. Baseballs, for the most part, fly straight (they don’t really, but that’s nitpicking) while Frisbees fly in curves (sort of, but close enough). Since baseballs fly straight, being good with a baseball is about speed and power; which is why baseball players wow each other with how fast they can throw a ball and how well they can slow it down, speed it up, as well as creating illusions of how far it can go and causing it to create slight curves in its trajectory. Because Frisbees fly in curves, being good with a Frisbee requires finesse and accuracy; which is why you see Frisbee players being able to toss a Frisbee across a field with just a flick of the wrist, or be able to get a Frisbee to curve from the perimeter of a park back to your intended target.
By and large, it is harder to hit targets with a Frisbee than with a baseball because Frisbees are delicate and glitch out with the slightest gust of wind. Baseballs, on the other hand, requires near perfect precision and strength—because unless you throw a baseball hard enough, it won’t gain enough momentum to go any distance worth-while.
In short, Day9 attempts to reveal the dynamic nature of Broodwar’s units by likening them to a Frisbee while also showing the difficulty and yet all-innish nature of Starcraft 2’s units by likening them to a baseball.
However, the metaphor doesn’t actually reveal *what* it is about Broodwar units that feel like a Frisbee and *what* it is about SC2 unit’s that feel like a baseball. Overall, it simply paints a picture that Broodwar is obviously more dynamic and that SC2 is obviously more rigid. This might have been the intent—I don’t believe it is, but I’m willing to accept the possibility that Day9 is more biased towards Broodwar. + Show Spoiler +
Understandably so, it’s a great game.
First, I will talk about the dynamic nature of Broodwar unit control. I will then talk about the precision based nature of Starcraft 2 unit control. I will not have a conclusive summary at the end, because I do not believe this is the kind of topic to have a conclusion.
Broodwar is Speed-Chess, on Crack, with Aliens, at the same time.
By and large, the Broodwar pathing could be oversimplified into that very simple description. More specifically, Broodwar pathing is a grid based system of open squares and closed squares. Open squares allow units to move through them while closed squares do not. Sound’s simple right? Except it isn’t.
As can be seen in the image, the grids are not evenly split apart. While some are half filled, others are barely filled, while some only have their corners filled. Each unit that will pass by those grids, due to their varying unit sizes, will treat each grid differently.
In Patrick Wyatt’s own words
Because the project was always two months from launch it was inconceivable that there was enough time to re-engineer the terrain engine to make path-finding easier, so the path-finding code just had to be made to work. To handle all the tricky edge-cases, the pathing code exploded into a gigantic state-machine which encoded all sorts of specialized “get me out of here” hacks.
If you read Wyatt’s blog, he will talk about the many tricks and coding practices he implemented into the game, the many stories of how those codes came about, etc… But that’s not what I want to talk about. The how and why of the coding process is irrelevant to the physical act of actually playing the game itself. What this post is about, first and foremost, is a discussion on why we play the game the way that we play it.
When people talk about fighting the unit AI what they are talking about is fighting the desire of a unit to neatly fit into a single square on the game grid; the problem being that not all units take up the same amount of space. Let’s look at the initial image again.
Notice how the zealots fit neatly into the 8x8 boxes. Now look at this image.
And notice how the Dragoon is double the size of the zealot? The dragoon wants to be as centered on a square as the zealot is: but when you’re a unit that big, which of the 4-8 squares that you’re standing in do you decide to walk into?
The answer is all of them:
This is the where a large majority of a unit glitches come from in Broodwar, but it is also where the micro potential comes from as well. Each unit in Broodwar has a different size, a different shape, and a different orientation. So while a Dragoon is a square that expands and contracts as the legs move, the Vulture is a tight rectangle that doesn’t change in size or shape. The marine is tiny, while zerglings double in length as they run, their stride stretches them as their legs first expand outward and then contract back inward. Units rotate, and as they do, they change their shape and their spatial relationship with the squares that they are trying to fit into. A vulture moving is a flat rectangle while a goliath moving is a vertical rectangle. A Goliath never changes his vertical orientation but a Vulture could be a vertical or horizontal rectangle depending which direction he is going. Each of these shapes interacts with the grids differently depending what direction they enter a square, and which parts of the square is open and which parts are closed.
So let’s go back to the picture of the bridge.
Zealots will tag these incomplete boxes and then correct themselves into the open boxes, adjusting themselves as they traverse the bridge. Notice how the zealots clump into their own respective squares as they maximize the space in which they are present in. The same thing occurs when they are in an open space, but instead of a bridge chopping up the partially filled squares, it will be other units doing it.
Imagine a dragoon and a zealot in an open field. The Dragoon will take up at least 4 squares if it stands at a corner of a square and up to 9 squares if it stands at the center of 1 square with its unit box spreading to the 8 squares around him. The zealot, much like it did in the bridge, will attempt to fit inside its own isolated square causing the zealot to create a space between himself and the dragoon. Assuming a completely flat field without obstacles, they will try to maintain this formation since it allows them to be isolated in their own squares.
This causes the Magic Box effect we all know and love from Broodwar. For reference:
When the units are far enough apart from each other, there will be enough empty squares for them to fill. But otherwise, they will be content to staying in their own relative squares from each other barring obstacles such as terrain, other units, etc…
The micro potential with units happens when you want them to traverse a non-open field. Because although they want to correct themselves and fill an ideal space, the truth of the matter is that even squares that have been cut smaller by terrain/units are still open areas that a unit can theoretically fit itself into, assuming you as the player force the unit to fit into it.
Remember the earlier video of the glitching Dragoons? Notice how during the first 2 seconds of the video, before the attack command is given, the Dragoons inside the ball kind of dance and jiggle in place while the dragoons forming the outer wall of the ball stand still as stone. This variance between the inner Dragoons and the outer Dragoons came about because each was given a different unit command.
The outer dragoons are given a hold position, forcing the Dragoons to stand in place despite their desire to fill an empty square. The dragoons inside the ball have not been given a hold position and so they want to fit into an empty square. Because they are unable to find an empty one, they jitter and wiggle as their pathfinding continually reroutes them over and over again looking for that empty square.
If these dragoons were in an open field, the jiggling of one dragoon would force the dragoon beside it to also jiggle as the first dragoon walks into the private space of the second dragoon. If no terrain or hold position units were there to stop the correction, the slowly spreading jiggling of dragoons would spread the tight dragoon ball into a spaced out army that fills 2-3 screens.
What does this mean? It means you have to use the whole command card.
This means that with the proper use of Move, Attack, Patrol, and Hold Position commands, you can choose to either have a tight ball of units moving across the map, or a spread out army of units moving across the map.
This means that when you have a Vulture running around the back of a mineral line, you can tell it to stop while being pointed at the perfect position to fire a shot without it trying to adjust itself, and then begin to move it the second the shot has been fired creating the illusion of a never stopping unit doing a “move and shoot” maneuver and in doing so it never loses momentum as it never is given the chance to decelerate allowing your microed Vultures to always be faster than unmicroed vultures. If the vulture is not pointed in the right direction, it will need to adjust, once it tries to adjust, it will then try to fill an open square, and only once it fills the open square will it attempt to fire or move, in which case it has to accelerate to top speed all over again. This "glitching" means that an unmicroed vulture harass literally moves slower and shoots less often in the same amount of time as a microed vulture harass even if the opponent does not react.
But more specifically, since you have to manually tell the unit when to stop, when to shoot, and when to move—the unit’s ability to perform basic tasks rests solely on your ability to make the unit do those tasks. When people talk about Starcraft 2 being simply “A-Move” units, this is what they mean. Design wise, almost all the Broodwar units are A-Move units and in comparison are much less dynamic and much less interesting than the SC2 units they are matched with. However, because of the limiting nature of the pathing system in Broodwar, all units in Broodwar required attention. You not only needed to perform micro tricks with them, but you also needed to tell them when to move, tell them when to stop, how to stop, what direction to face, and in what formation to move or not move in. All these commands required not only different buttons, but different button combinations depending on direction of movement, terrain present, and activity performed.
If you simply attack move a ball of Dragoons, they will first spread themselves out trying to stay clear of each other and then attempt to surround the targeted area. But if you use a move command to override the desire to isolate themselves, you move them as a tight deathball . If you then use the hold command, they will maintain their tight formation to maximize damage against melee units like Zerglings and Ultralisks. But if you need to dodge storms you could use an attack command or a stop command instead of a hold command in order to cause the dragoons in range to start attacking while the dragoons that aren’t in range will start spreading. As the dragoons in the back start to auto spread, you have time to manually spread the front dragoons. During this time the enemy could then send a flanking waze of zealots to hit your rear dragoons that are currently glitching, getting free hits while your ball breaks apart.
The choice of a deathball or a spread out army becomes that, a choice, instead of a norm. What allows players in Broodwar to gain an identity is the fact that you can’t master all the different ways to command all the units in the game. There will be people who spend their energies mastering how to move dragoons and there will be players who master how to move Vultures. And it’s not even just about moving vultures or moving dragoons. Some will be very good at moving marines in a tight ball. Others will be good at moving marines as a spread out composition. The tight ball will destroy mutalisk flocks but die instantly to lurkers. The spread out marines, because they’re too far away from each other to focus fire, will be picked off one by one by mutalisk packs; but are better able to break lurker lines. And since moving tightly or loosely had pros and cons, no player would be punished by their choice to master one instead of the other. This means that you can have two players of the same race, who specialize in the same unit compositions, still play completely differently from each other. Fantasy’s vulture control was great at harassing, but Flash’s vulture control was great in open field combat. This allowed Flash to win with his suffocating map control play style while Fantasy was able to abuse his highly mobile terrorist squads to be as equally devastating.
A lot of people talk about units having better AI or about units having more micro potential and wanting that micro potential to be programmed into the SC2 units—but there never was anything programmed into the AI to do that. What they are referencing is the limiting factors of the pathing system being circumvented through precise unit control. It is also these same limiting factors that give Dragoons a hard time when walking up a ramp: the size of the dragoon in relation to the squares in a tight ramp causes the algorithm to seemingly glitch when all it is doing is trying to find an ideal square for the dragoon to stand in and being unable to find it.
Imagine a dragoon trying to find the empty square on this ramp.
Not only do the rocks on the sides of the ramp chop up the squares, but the marine at the top and the dragoons in the bottom also fill up squares. Without babysitting, the dragoon will glitch out trying to find the perfect empty square that doesn't exist except for the center of the ramp. This causes a lot of Dragoons to either get stuck in the middle of a ramp, or to believe the entire ramp is blocked off causing them to "reroute" and find a another way around the cliff. Without babysitting the Dragoons at the bottom won’t even begin to climb up until you manually force them up the ramp 1-2 at a time.
Knowing that, could you imagine going up this ramp?
Getting large units up this ramp requires babysitting and lots of move commands. As you gently nudge units up this ramp the cannons gets dozens of free shots. If you don’t babysit the ascent then 1-2 units get stuck going up the ramp and the 3 cannons will only be facing at most 2 units at a time allowing them to increase their effective hit points by the hundreds. In Broodwar this defense would be able to stop large pushes long enough for reinforcements to arrive especially when supported by either a templar or a Reaver.
Now imagine if instead of Photon Cannons it was lurkers?
Imagine having a hard time getting units to go up a ramp, and imagine if the pathfinding forced your units to clump in ramps: now imagine trying to move command up a ramp with AOE landing on you?
1-3 Lurkers 1-3 Siege Tanks 1-3 cannons and a High Templar
Defenses like that could stall entire armies. It wasn’t the high ground miss chance, or the better defensive units, or higher siege/storm damage, or even the existence of lurkers that gave true defenders advantage. Lurkers happened to be the most cost effective at it but 6-10 Hydralisks could hold the top of a ramp just as easily—just not as effectively.
Many times the high ground was not just an advantage due to the miss chance, it was literally much more difficult to fight high ground units than low ground units from a micro perspective.
And it’s not just ramps. Tight chokes whether from buildings or from terrain created this dynamic as well. It was physically more difficult to get units walk through a valley let alone to get them to fight effectively in a valley. It’s not just about who has the better concave, but also about the attacking force being more likely to have a unit glitch out due to the clumping.
A large part of Broodwar AI came about due to the core problem of an archaic grid systems being used with variant sized units. People keep thinking that its bad unit design, or missing broodwar units, or extreme unit clumping that is the problem with Starcraft 2 when in reality none of those things is what made Broodwar work. Many of the things being asked for are not things that was initially given in Broodwar. The development team did not think “Oh, we need to make sure these units could be microed well” or “We need to make certain units spread out.”
They simply had an archaic system repair a problem that wasn’t even conceived of yet. However, since it wasn’t conceived yet, it wasn’t understood as a problem.
Starcraft 2 came into the scene and unlike the dev team of Broodwar, this Dev team was not crunched into thinking that
Because the project was always two months from launch it was inconceivable that there was enough time to re-engineer the terrain engine to make path-finding easier, so the path-finding code just had to be made to work. To handle all the tricky edge-cases, the pathing code exploded into a gigantic state-machine which encoded all sorts of specialized “get me out of here” hacks.
Having all the time in the world, they fixed the previous issue by implementing a more streamlined pathing system and in doing so created the so called “baseball” feel of the game.
That it is shaped like a baseball is beside the point.
Starcraft 2 loses the clunky features of the old systems and replaces it with a style more akin to Chess than it does to Broodwar. Don’t mistake the usage of the word chess to mean strategic (because both games are very strategic) but, more importantly, understand that unlike its predecessor, Starcraft 2 emphasizes strategic choices more so than it does strategic execution.
In chess you simply had to decide on a move, and then execute it. You want the pawn to move? Then move it. Think it should be the Queen’s turn? Then it’s the queen’s turn. By the simple act of deciding an action, you can, for all intents and purposes, simply perform the action.
Do your Stalkers need to go up the cliff? They’re now up the cliff. Siege Tanks need to come down the ramp? They’re now down the ramp.
This is not to say that there are no mechanical limitations in Starcraft 2, but the mechanical limitations in Starcraft 2 comes from your brain/hand speed matched against your opponent’s brain/hand speed. Because it is easy for you to position your units in Starcraft 2, it is also equally easy for your opponent to position his own units in Starcraft 2.
Did you forget to keep track of his army? Too late, he’s doom dropped your base. Did you notice that blip that passed the edge of your observer's vision? Too late, they’ve sniped your Templars.
This is a laughable defense in Starcraft 2. Without the high ground miss chance, the effective health of the cannons does not increase. Without bad pathing, units simply stutter up the ramp dealing too much damage for the cannons to handle.
Units are not slowed down by terrain in Starcraft 2, they do not get hindered by high ground, chokes, or each other’s company like they do in Broodwar. This makes drop play even more devastating in Starcraft 2 than it is in Broodwar. In Broodwar, unmicroed Vultures will hit about 1-2 workers at a time while simply right-clicking beside mineral patches with a pack of Hellions can roast more than that in 1-2 volleys. And while well microed Vultures can wreck a worker line, one well placed Hellion shot can evaporate a mineral line.
This means workers die in 2-6 clicks of the opponent as opposed to the 2-6 clicks it took just to fire a shot with vultures. A Terran player can send three dropships into three different mineral lines, not micro any of them and still wipe out the grand majority of workers in all three areas. Smartcasting means that if your army is out of position storms can and will hit your entire bio force without quarter all while zealots and stalkers charge forward decimating your retreating forces.
Starcraft 2 is faster, much faster, than Broodwar—and I'm not talking about game/movement speed. Tactically speaking, mistakes are punished harder, and making a positional mistakes is much more difficult to recover from. This is because, like chess, since it is easy for a player to make strategic decisions, it becomes very difficult for the player who makes the first strategic mistake to recover from the initial setback.
Imagine you are playing chess. The board has moved about, as tends to happen in chess, and suddenly your opponent captures your queen. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe he made a good play, whatever the reason: your queen was taken. As the opponent moves his piece and takes over the queen’s space—what fanfare and action occurs?
Nothing.
Because it is easy to execute moves, once you are caught in a bad position, more often than not the result is already decided. Broodwar, on the other hand, is not like chess; Broodwar is more like streetfighter.
In Broodwar, positional play is possible because the clumsy controls slows down the pace of the game. Units are guided through chokes, they are babied up cliffs, and you try your best not to pull a Jaedong.
All of these feel very chess like because of their methodical nature: you move your army around the map, you place key pieces on the board, you set up feints, traps, etc… But once an engagement happens, that is where Broodwar legends make their names.
In fighting games, you need very precise button combinations to initiate individual moves. Simply wanting to throw a fireball at the opponent does not mean the fireball will fire. Simply knowing that a combo chain requires X, Y, and Z buttons to be pressed in a specific order does not mean that you will get it to happen. Majority of the skill in a fighting game is not about knowing when to produce a move—it's about having the ability to execute the move and having the reflexes to capitalize on it.
Because of Broodwar’s pathing system, many maneuvers that are currently normal in Starcraft 2 required certain button combinations to be able to achieve. Between hold position, patrol, move, stop, and attack commands you could sometimes be tapping 2-3 different buttons just to move around 1 unit. Once you’ve mastered these moves it becomes as normal as watching Ryu throw a fireball—but because it requires some level of dexterity the players best able to execute these moves the fastest quickly become recognizable.
Above is a Jangbi storm. On paper, it is relatively boring. Two storms are cast on a line of tanks; units in the back are caught by a Stasis spell, and a line of zealots that was there is no longer there. In Starcraft 2 this would be considered a bad engagement for the Protoss. But this is Broodwar, to simply be able to cast two storms side by side like that on an empty field is a trick most players can’t perform. I’m not joking, when I say that many players cannot even cast those two storms side by side in that manner on an empty field with no enemy units killing your High Templars.
Jangbi is not only able to cast two perfectly spread storms; he can also aim to hit the maximum amount of tanks despite EMPs, Siege Tank fire, and Spidermines getting in the way. It required fast hands, good timings, and a complete understanding of not only how protoss and terran units behave, but also an understanding of what type of play style the enemy player has specialized in.
In Broodwar, it takes a lot of clicks to properly move an army from point A to point B. Ramps can sometimes take up half your APM, but that same amount of hand speed is even more needed in combat and whoever is more effective during the engagement is usually who comes out the victor: and this is what Broodwar players miss the most. In Broodwar, if a piece tries to capture your queen, your queen still has a chance of making it out alive. And since the tactical maneuvers in Broodwar are not as quickly decided as it is in Starcraft 2, every engagement is exciting. In Broodwar, even a strategic checkmate does not mean the king is captured—with proper micro even a bad position can be won.
In place of this, Starcraft 2 has emphasized what most people describe as “positional play,” “Good Concaves,” and “deathballs.” These are misused terms that is attempting to describe a new game using the parameters of an old game.
The reason for this is that combat in Starcraft 2 is largely logistical and compositional in a nature. This is due, in part, to the smooth pathing system implemented into the game in conjunction with the removal of the grid system. If you bring X Colossus to a fight against Y Vikings, the viewer already knows the results because they already know that a 1 to 3 ratio of Colossus to Vikings is bad for the colossus. For the most part, the excitement is most present about 3-5 minutes before the engagement when both players are still scouting each other.
People who watch poker knows the tense feeling of watching two players reading each other over the course of 10-20 hands. Once all the flops, turns, and rivers are in play the excitement is over, but it’s the raising, the folding, the bluffing, etc… those are what make the game fun to watch.
“I know I have Blink Colossus, but does he have pocket Vikings? Should I Raise?”
The difficulty of Broodwar’s controls shapes how we perceive it as a game. The ease of Starcraft 2’s controls has a similar effect. In Broodwar, seeing 10 Dragoons engaging 10 Dragoons can have many different outcomes and the better Dragoon player will always come out on top. However, in Starcraft 2, 10 stalkers meeting 10 stalkers will produce heavy casualties for both parties involved unless it’s a pure blinkstalker war like the homestory cup match between JYP and MC.
Which looks very similar to this Bisu vs Jangbi game. + Show Spoiler +
Despite the lack of Blink
Both result in a back and forth fight between even numbers of troops where you aren’t sure who will win in the end. So it isn't that Starcraft 2 is unable to produce the same types of micro intensive games and fights as Broodwar, it is that the emphasized aspects of Starcraft 2 as a whole does not stem from its unit control. It instead stems from positional play, concaves, and deathballs.
Positional Play
Because armies are so much more mobile in Starcraft 2, it is much more efficient to block army movements with your own army instead of depending on small clumps of troops stalling large pushes. You can't afford to forget the minimap because it only takes a few seconds for the enemy army to suddenly wipe out your main. This creates a very tense back and forth tempo based game that is not as interested in engagements and is more interested in good scouting and proper positioning.
This is why base races happen much more often in Starcraft 2. Since you can't slow down enemy advances with pockets of troops, being unable to put your main army in front of their main army puts you in a disastrous position where all of a sudden you are stuck in the middle of the map and have to choose between retreating to your ravaged home or charging to attacking their undefended structures.
Concaves
The smooth unit movement creates fewer chances for in-combat micro. Because there is less unit glitching, you don’t need to babysit your units as much as you did in Broodwar. It also means that your opponent creates less holes for you to take advantage of.
In Broodwar, stray units glitching away from the main army can be sniped for free. Pulling back your army and then reengaging with it causes the enemy units to stop attacking and instead they begin walking towards your troops causing the bad pathfinding system to make them fumble and glitch out of formation and hence easier to kill with your tighter formations. A good player will see this happening and grab hold of his straying units in order to keep them in line, usually pulling them back as well. This creates the back and forth play you see in the Bisu vs Jangbi video posted earlier.
Because Starcraft 2 does not have any this embedded into its pathing, the micro comes about before the fight starts since most of the time you do not have the speed necessary to keep up with the units on the board. Prepositioning becomes important and is usually in the form of concaves, flanks, and surrounds. This links back with the positional play nature of Starcraft 2 since you want to constantly have preset formations, but at the same time, if you fail to constantly move your army in front of the enemy army, your perfect formation will get you stuck in the middle of the map. A game thus forms between two armies constantly bobbing and weaving from each other while trying to setup the better formations before a fight ensues. The player who gets to setup the concave/flank faster than the other player will win the fight but all that micro happens mere seconds before the fight actually begins. Once the fight starts, it’s much like in Chess—we already know which piece will win the engagement.
Deathballs
This is the reason unit movement is so efficient. By getting rid of the archaich grid system of Broodwar, Starcraft 2 units are always comfortable exactly where they are. Terrain doesn't bother them, units do not bother them. There is no longer a desire to fit into a square box that is usually smaller than the unit trying to fill it.
But to really understand what I’m talking about, we need to look back to the Broodwar pathfinding system.
Recall this initial image:
Notice how those incomplete squares remain naturally unfilled and notice how blocky the compositions of the zealots are on the bridge itself. They don't clump evenly since each zealot is attempting to isolate itself into a single square even during the act of moving across a bridge.
Go back to the deathball image, notice the circular formation of the units? Without a desire to isolate themselves into a single isolated square, the units compress as close as they can to the last command order—the mouse click. They all converge into the singularity and evenly spread themselves around it. Since there is no longer partial squares scaring off units, movement across terrain is fluid, like water flowing over smooth rocks.
Because the positional nature of Starcraft 2 as a game, the bobbing and weaving of armies so that they are always facing each other head on forces them to always move, this movement clusters them into the spherical deathball shape we all recognize. When a lull occurs, the army that wins is normally the army that is able to properly form a concave—however, since armies move so fluidly, most players avoid enemy concaves and instead attempt to walk around entrenched positions. This constant mobility causes units to clump up again and again despite the desire for players to spread out the units into preset formations.
Since terrain does not slow them down, ramps do not provide the defenses that they used to provide, chokes do not frustrate the attacking force in the same way; army movement in Starcraft 2 will always be faster and more sudden than in Broodwar. However, due to the smoother interface, you will also, for the most part, never have this problem in Starcraft 2:
These three aspects of Starcraft 2 create the game dynamics we see every time a game pops up on Twitch.
If you do not see where your enemy is, isolated units will not stall them long enough for you to run back home and engage. Broodwar is tactically slower since each move you make takes more time to execute than it does in Starcraft 2. Once armies are in position in Starcraft 2, most fights become decided much like in Chess. Broodwar is less punishing, tactically, than Starcraft 2 because of this. Which is why Starcraft 2 feels like it is over in one fight; because once the dealer flips down the river, there is nothing left to do but show your hands.
Starcraft 2 is about everything that happens before the fight occurs. It’s about mini-map blips on the screen; it's about realizing you need ghosts despite spotting 2 colossi in production; it's about pre-splitting; it’s about knowing fully and perfectly where your opponent's army is, and how to contain their position with tempo based attacks. Much like in chess, engagements are predetermined and hence one must rely on perfect strategic play at all times. Strategic mistakes will cost you your entire army with you being unable to do anything about it.
This is why we get stuck with terms like concaves, positioning, and deathball. Because when it is easy to execute commands, we do not become impressed by the results of the commands themselves. We can only describe the physical actions we see in a macro scale. This is why I have compared Starcraft 2 to chess and poker. No one is impressed by how well a player moves a chess piece. No one is impressed that you are good at commanding Bishops while your opponent is good at commanding Knights. In chess, like in poker, the beauty of the game comes from the steady reading of each other's movements and decisions. The execution of the movement matters little; it is the culmination of the movements made that is exciting. But when we use terms that only define the end results of Starcraft 2’s foreplay, we end up describing seemingly bland things such as deathballs and concaves, ignoring the beautiful dance that occurred before the fight happens.
That is not to say that Broodwar is purely executional in nature and Starcraft 2 is purely strategic in nature. Strategic play happens all the time in Broodwar while intense micro play happens all the time in Starcraft 2. ST_Life can charge a line of Widow Mines and lose few to no zerglings or banelings due to his strong unit control in Starcraft 2 while Savior can pre-position Lurkers to setup concaves and traps like no one else could in Broodwar. Jangbi’s hit and run movements with Carriers is an amazing feat to watch while Rain’s seemingly effortless Oracle control makes the unit seem broken. The difference between the two games is not the absence of strategic or tactical play in one or the other, the difference is on the emphasized aspects of strategic and tactical play inherent within both games.
In Broodwar, you can set up the perfect trap—but if you don’t have the mechanical capability to execute the trap you will still lose.
In Starcraft 2, you can have the best micro in the world—but if you failed to see the trap there is almost nothing you can do to recover.
You need to be able to perform strategic play in both games, and you need to be able to execute tactical play in both games as well. A terran who can’t split marines will never win the GSL much like a Protoss who can’t baby a shuttle will never win the Global Seol Guji League. The point of I’m trying to make is that the two games are the way they are due to how we as players respond and interact with the game board presented to us.
The units in Broodwar were not better designed than the units in Starcraft 2. The limitations pressed upon the units in Broodwar forced a play style that rewarded fast hands and, as Day9 put it, twitchy personalities. Due to this, before you are able to play strategically in Broodwar, you need to be able to execute certain maneuvers that allow you to have strategic options that you can actually use. Knowing where to move your army is not as important in Broodwar as being able to *actually* move your army. It is all too easy for a better player to show up at your doorstep with fewer units than you and still win the engagement due to his better control leading to an early loss.
You can get a lot out of a single unit in Broodwar.
The opposite is true for Starcraft 2, since the interface is easy to execute, the pace is increased from a marathon into a sprint. Since units already do what you need them to do in Starcraft 2, getting caught off guard is something that will lead to an immediate loss. Unlike in Broodwar where a smaller enemy army can still kill you—Starcraft 2’s logistical nature makes being able to hit benchmarks the most important aspect to the game. No matter how terrible of a player you are, if you are at least able to keep up in unit production as your enemy you will survive.
You don’t necessarily need perfect marine splits to break a ling/bane army with pure macro.
So when people talk about the better “designed” broodwar units or the more “spread out” nature of Broodwar units—take their statements with a grain of salt. Not because they are wrong, but because they are asking for something from Starcraft 2 that is outside of Starcraft 2’s abilities.
The lurker was not what allowed Zerg to hold terrain on the map—it was simply the best tool for the job. The siege tank was not necessarily stronger in Broodwar—but it did severely punish bad unit pathing. The circular clumps of Starcraft 2 do not look any less “natural” than the blocky nature of Broodwar. Etc…
A lot of what was loved about Broodwar came from the fact that one needed to overcome the game itself. This need for proper execution meant that players would always make mistakes creating holes in their play that could be exploited by the opponent. The best players were the ones who either made the least mistakes (like Flash) or the ones who punished mistakes the most severely (like Hyvaa).
Players, for the most part, do not make execution mistakes in Starcraft 2. They do make strategic mistakes; and it is these strategic mistakes that are most taken advantage of. When you scout wrong, when you position wrong, or when you become too predictable—you suddenly get routed. This means that the best players are the ones who either make the fewest strategic blunders (Innovation) or are the ones who punish strategic mistakes the most severely (Soulkey).
This is what makes these games so different from each other despite their name and despite the fact that they are both RTS games.
Broodwar loyalists don’t understand why one fight wins the game and Starcraft 2 loyalists don’t understand why your units sometimes wander off to some random cliff face.
People who miss Broodwar don’t enjoy watching the army posturing, and the back and forth displays of dominance that Starcraft 2 armies employ like birds flaring their feathers at each other while people who prefer Starcraft 2 don’t understand why you have to right click a mineral patch for every worker you build.
People who dislike Broodwar dislike its tedious nature while people who dislike Starcaft 2 dislike its lack of granular control.
The reason for this is because they are not the same game at the most fundamental level; as different as Age of Empires is from Total Annihilation. Abstractly they are both RTS games, they both require the construction of units, and they both require your direct control of units. But in the end its more akin to Go vs Chess, Soccer vs Football, and Frisbees vs Baseballs.
The reason that taking small aspects of Broodwar and transferring them into Starcraft 2 will not work is not because Broodwar concepts are bad or even because Starcraft 2 concepts are better. The reason is because aspects of Broodwar that people keep referencing to only worked in Broodwar due to its holistic interaction with the totality of the Broodwar experience. It all comes back to the bad pathfinding. The micro potential of units did not come from their design, the tendency for units to spread was not an implemented feature, etc… the twitchy and granular nature of the Broodwar experience came from the fact that you had to overcome the limitations set before you. Without these preset limitations there is nothing to differentiate your successful implementation of a random unit with another player’s implementation of that exact same unit.
In Starcraft 2, my hellions will almost always kill units as efficiently as Bomber’s Hellions. Bomber will always be better at making hellions, dropping hellions, and preserving hellions—but once the flames are spewing Bomber and I are on even ground. Until this equalization of unit capabilities is stripped from Starcraft 2, none of the changes that people are suggesting will have the desired effect of bringing back the Broodwar feel of the game.
Broodwar was not defined by the Reaver. Broodwar was not defined by a high-ground miss change. Broodwar was not defined by Goliaths, by Scourge, by clump patterns, or any of the other things constantly spewed out by many posters in TL.
Broodwar is more than just 1 or 2 of the aspects that people remember here and there. At its base level, Broodwar was about being able to control individual units better than the other guy could. Why? Because at its core Broodwar was just the Warcraft development team trying to make Orcs in Space and accidentally creating a masterpiece.
As Patrick Wyatt said about Warcraft:
Later in the development process, and after many design arguments between team-members, we decided to allow players to select only four units at a time based on the idea that users would be required to pay attention to their tactical deployments rather than simply gathering a mob and sending them into the fray all at once.
This statement right here is where the Broodwar pathfinding code came from. Square boxes filled by oversized units chopped up unevenly in an isometric shape while using code for a top-down game.
And please don’t misunderstand this post as asking for Broodwar pathfinding to be put into Starcraft 2, I am simply pointing out that the reason Broodwar had granularity was due to its faulty pathfinding. This does not mean Starcraft 2 needs bad pathfinding it simply means that Starcraft 2, due to its streamlined pathfinding, is a different game than Broodwar and hence can’t be measured with the same metrics as Broodwar.
Very cool blog. One thing I would say is that I do recognize that many things that existed in BW were not by intentional design. I had actually asked Patrick Wyatt on his blog on this point and he described it as "emergent behaviour"- things like vulture control.
And at one point in time I had hoped SC2 would have taken the concept of the emergent behaviour and build it intentionally into the unit pathing rather than trying to recreate the mess of code that created it in the first place. Learn from the principle rather than the execution. Because it's true. I do enjoy the fighting game, button combo aspect of BW and can't really find it in any other RTS.
I 100% agree that difficulty getting up ramps was one of the key things that created defenders advantage. Between that and miss-chance, breaking an encamped army on the cliffs is brutal.
It's something I do not really think about, but which is absolutely truth upon brief reflection. Quite enlightening blog; I may watch Starcraft 2 games with chess/poker mindset if I happen to come across one again. Thanks for the writing!
I'm only halfway through this and have to stop reading because of work (my lunch break is almost over).
But, all I can say is: WOW! Top stuff, mate.
Edit/ I second that this should be featured/spotlighted.
Edit 2/ I like your insight that a part of the genius of BW came from accidental design decisions that led to better play after development from players (i.e. it was unitended by the developers). There is a lot of richness in the Starcraft RTS genre that takes a long time to bring out, and is only seen from time to time at the highest level of play. One example, seen from SC2, of which is pre-splitting of units in the late game to fight the "clump" againt AOE. You rarely, if ever, saw this in 2010 - 2012.
Thanks for the read. If you (or someone else) could explore different alternatives on how to improve the execution aspect of SC2, that would be an interesting discussion. Everyone loves to see the marine-splitting, blink micro or storm dodges of real pros. How could we make SC2 include such moments even more, without introducing the pathfinding of BW or destroying the positional plays and mindgaming that makes the game beautiful already?
fucking ramps man, this happened 3 days ago to me:
more then 12 units on top of each other. traffic jam lasted more then 3 minutes until I had to gg :D Spamming Stop, Hold Position or mineral walking workers through it and spamming stop on them like you do vs stasis on your ramp, nothing helped... :D
On September 19 2013 11:54 REDBLUEGREEN wrote: nice post, although a bit repetitive at times.
fucking ramps man, this happened 3 days ago to me: + Show Spoiler +
more then 12 units on top of each other. traffic jam lasted more then 3 minutes until I had to gg :D Spamming Stop, Hold Position or mineral walking workers through it and spamming stop on them like you do vs stasis on your ramp, nothing helped... :D
Reminds me of this old, now-patched bug in sc2 where one could stack sieged-up siege tanks in tight areas with the help of medivacs. Considering how powerful the mutalisk stacking of the old days was, this siege tank stacking was some hilariously next-level shenanigans.
What SC:2 needs is a chance to miss in certain areas of the map. This way pro-gamers are open to showcase their skills of being able to calculate the amount of times units will miss when fighting, giving the better player a higher chance to win.
Another thing a lot of people forget is that 'buggy' or 'flawed' pathfinding or movement will never, ever get a pass from the community at large (not TL, but the people who buy the game and just play it without serious interest in the pro scene). Blizzard would be crazy, from a financial standpoint, to release a game with BW type bugs in today's market; the game would just be patched in a matter of days due to the uproar. It would receive terrible reviews, and push away a lot of potential players. After all, they created this game for its ROI, and not to create 'a beautiful game'.
That isn't to say that it would be impossible to find a way to make SC2's mechanics and units possess more micro potential. It could be possible, though I have no ideas right now. But trying to make SC2 more like BW by implementing flawed or buggy pathfinding will never be a solution.
also, I forgot neutral terrain isn't messing up pathfinding in sc2. Think of the trees!
On September 19 2013 11:54 REDBLUEGREEN wrote: nice post, although a bit repetitive at times.
fucking ramps man, this happened 3 days ago to me:+ Show Spoiler +
more then 12 units on top of each other. traffic jam lasted more then 3 minutes until I had to gg :D Spamming Stop, Hold Position or mineral walking workers through it and spamming stop on them like you do vs stasis on your ramp, nothing helped... :D
epic explanation of the random thoughts that people have regarding why it feels like many new games with modern features and technology have lost the "magic"
Good shit. I think this about sums up why SC2 has lost all it's magic for me, while BW seems more appealing than ever. What does suck is that the more modern game is less mechanically difficult T_T.
I do feel there are several ways to make it more difficult without butchering or hacking the AI. You could make subtle adjustments to the pathing so that units settle in different ways. Add more micro tricks which come about through the use of stop (Blizzard intentionally patched viking/overlord flowers)...
The other thing that bugs me and which should be REMOVED are the two damage types. Remove those, and you've removed much of the counter system. I think giving all units viability against different compositions, (and then adjusting unit abilities/attack animation interruption/micro potential would add a lot more depth into the game.
It's just the lack of DEPTH, man...I talked a lot about increasing the macro baseline, this talk about unit micro is the opposite end of the spectrum. Requiring multiple control groups, requiring you to send your drones to mine, in my mind these are all good things that reward the faster player. Being able to do this AND macro would still make the game have much more depth.
Everything is just too 1 dimensional. You claim that BW units weren't the key element - and that pathing is. Within the realm of SC2, I have to disagree with this sentiment. There are just SO many things that could be changed to make the game more rewarding for the mechanically stronger player without breaking the fluid/modern nature of the game. Highgorund/lowground advantage/actually allowing units to hold positions (it can be done with numbers FFS, and game mechanics)...
Half the zerg upgrades increase unit speed. Imagine if they gave units more utility/dynamics? Many of the most dynamic upgrades for the other races were removed. Don't even get me started on WG or FF. And then there's the economy.
There's all this talk about PATHING...but there is so much OUTSIDE the realm of pathing that was either poorly done or OVERLOOKED by the developers that could alleviate much of these problems. Falling talks a lot about the three "power units." Imagine if their damage types were removed! I would welcome a return to explosive/normal damage for what it's worth.
Honestly what you're neglecting to mention (it is somewhat beyond the scope of the article, but it is relevant because you are at the core comparing the two games) is that, beyond the pathing engine, how more tastefully designed units are in BW. And never, NEVER forget or understate the rework of macro. That is by far the biggest change.
In the early years of WoL, great analysis pieces like this were a regular part of the TL experience, but it's rare to see one these days. I always admired how much the authors cared about the future of the game, and how they hoped they could make SC2 just that much better through their words. But nobody really writes these anymore, and to me it reflects the loss of hope for the future of SC2 you see many places in the community now. Even this piece, as great as it is, avoided making suggestions to the game going forward. Still, thanks a lot to TM. Best design blog in ages.
This post is epic and certainly deserves a feature.
I don't play SC2, but I watch it from time to time, mixing it with BroodWar. From this perspective, what I miss the most as a spectator is what I would call "situational advantage" that sometimes makes the outcome of engagements different that you could expect. As in chess, some of the beauty in every game lies within it's ability to create paradoxical situations where pigs fly, pawns are better than queens and 2 > 4.
This build was scouted by Stork and appropriately countered in terms of unit composition, but it was still not enough due to sheer brilliance of the execution by Jaedong. The thing is that in BroodWar, extra effort put into a purely mechanical control of otherwise glitchy units hugely enchanced their capabilities. We don't see that much of it in SC2. In this game, the units are already doing great "on their own", because... well, the game is simply better designed.
Thanks. This was literally the only StarCraft II related post I did read fully, did teach me stuff I didn't really know/realized yet and moreover didn't make me "hate" (too strong word though) SCII more, maybe because I did interprete things not entirely correct. It really was educating, keep up with the really good work. Needs to be spotlighted right away, great effort.
The other thing that bugs me and which should be REMOVED are the two damage types. Remove those, and you've removed much of the counter system. I think giving all units viability against different compositions, (and then adjusting unit abilities/attack animation interruption/micro potential would add a lot more depth into the game.
Huh? Broodwar's damage system works on a very similar basis except it's easier to tweak specific things in SC2. Tanks don't do 70 damage to everything, they only do half for zealots. Sorry, they do 35 to normal units and 70 to 'armoured' units like dragoons.
I have never understood why this is ever seen as a reasonable criticism to SC2 compared to BW.
The other thing that bugs me and which should be REMOVED are the two damage types. Remove those, and you've removed much of the counter system. I think giving all units viability against different compositions, (and then adjusting unit abilities/attack animation interruption/micro potential would add a lot more depth into the game.
Huh? Broodwar's damage system works on a very similar basis except it's easier to tweak specific things in SC2. Tanks don't do 70 damage to everything, they only do half for zealots. Sorry, they do 35 to normal units and 70 to 'armoured' units like dragoons.
I have never understood why this is ever seen as a reasonable criticism to SC2 compared to BW.
Something I've been trying to find for a while now is a video someone made a while back of SC2 unit movement with a single simple change: if a unit's movement is blocked, it pauses for a fraction of a second. It made all the difference in the world to the fluidity of movement through tight spaces, without looking stupid or bad.
I don't understand how you can say that the BW pathing is bad, when you have nothing bad to say about the SC2 pathing. Just because the SC2 pathing is more refined and smoother doesn't make it better. How often in a real war do you see tanks and marines running around glued to eachother in phalanx positioning? The SC2 pathing is silly, and I just could never accept it after having experienced BW.
There are flaws with the BW pathing, like units clogging up ramps, and lack of teamwork to get out of situations, but these are not major issues, and units being a bit clunky in some situations is a modest price to pay for a vastly superior pathing overall.
Because of the grid system, large units are not very agile, so when they get clumped up, they will automatically try to keep a distance to eachother. You call this bad pathing. I call this brilliant pathing, which creates a realistic battlefield, and which also simulates the clunkiness of large units, which makes smaller units more suited for assaulting through small spaces, which adds a strategic element that is realistic.
Besides, the ramp issues could be fixed by just widening the ramps, but map makers have chosen not to, to preserve the strong defenders advantage and to maintain lurkers as a tactical tool to protect bases.
As for the units, there's a lot more variety and depth in BW, where units can counter eachother, depending on the situation and how they're being used. Lurkers and marines are a good example. Dragoons and Vultures is another.
This is the why BW have battles like this, and SC2 don't:
If you look at this battle, there's so much microing going on, Flash dancing his tanks back and forth trying to maintain the distance to abuse the range advantage, and Bisu trying to move his dragoons in range to snipe tanks. Flash trying to mine up around Bisu's dragoons, and Bisu targeting down the mines individually. Flash even sent his scv to repair a tank at a certain part of the battle. You just don't see intense battles like this in SC2.
I don't understand how you can say that the BW pathing is bad, when you have nothing bad to say about the SC2 pathing. Just because the SC2 pathing is more refined and smoother doesn't make it better. How often in a real war do you see tanks and marines running around glued to eachother in phalanx positioning? The SC2 pathing is silly, and I just could never accept it after having experienced BW.
There are flaws with the BW pathing, like units clogging up ramps, and lack of teamwork to get out of situations, but these are not major issues, and units being a bit clunky in some situations is a modest price to pay for a vastly superior pathing overall.
Seriously, without wishing to give offence, it's as though you didn't read the blog at all.
"There are flaws with the BW pathing, like units clogging up ramps, and lack of teamwork to get out of situations, but these are not major issues"
They weren't described as issues. They were identified as being instrumental - indispensible, even - in the emergence of tactical gameplay. Poor ramp/choke pathing was why small, well-positioned forces could seriously delay larger ones, ensuring that 'deathball' play was not the most efficient or effective strategy.
It's a very nice and interesting blog post. It must have taken quite a while to put together. I think there is an interesting dynamic between the issues of BW as relating to it's greatness. What modern gamer would pick up a game with the pathfinding of BW now, after all?
On September 19 2013 23:35 Heartland wrote: It's a very nice and interesting blog post. It must have taken quite a while to put together. I think there is an interesting dynamic between the issues of BW as relating to it's greatness. What modern gamer would pick up a game with the pathfinding of BW now, after all?
I guess this is why games now at all aren't to great. Back then, there was a passion for them and people had great ideas and created them no matter what. Now they're specifically designed for the people, half by them.
On September 19 2013 23:35 Heartland wrote: It's a very nice and interesting blog post. It must have taken quite a while to put together. I think there is an interesting dynamic between the issues of BW as relating to it's greatness. What modern gamer would pick up a game with the pathfinding of BW now, after all?
I guess this is why games now at all aren't to great. Back then, there was a passion for them and people had great ideas and created them no matter what. Now they're specifically designed for the people, half by them.
I think that's just wrong. There have been plenty of horrible games in the past, and plenty of great games now.
Good blog, and I think you're right about both games' spectator highlights. Though it begs the question if people who enjoy soccer prefer Broodwar and if people who enjoy Poker prefer SC2 :p
Somehow I don't think so. I obviously can't speak for everyone but I enjoy watching poker as much as soccer, and in contrast watching SC2 is a sleeping pill compared to Broodwar. I mean when it comes to spectating, can anyone from the Broodwar era say they enjoy watching SC2 as much/more?
I am a proud I have read all that, I wish my differential calculus book was written the same way.
I admire this well explained blog. You should be writing school books
Yes, this was the thing I was thinking, Broodwar was an accident turned great invention like many great discoveries, facinating!
Because of the old technology of moving units gets bigger and smaller in the grid world, while superior coding and animation made sc2 faster and smoother.
If blizzard would read this, maybe they could learn from this, I doubt it would change the current state of Sc2 or LoTV but now after this is written I wonder what blizzard will do to Starcraft 3? I am hoping they would try to mix them up? we would have easy and dumb units! yay!
Really excellent explanation, very clear, and (to my surprise) pretty neutral about SC2 and BW. Conceptually nothing caught me too off-guard but I'd never seen it organized in such a clear, methodical, and well-written way. I think the most important point I took from all of this is that SC2 casters and viewers often aren't looking at the things that make the game really interesting; that they're watching the way the players push their poker chips around instead of observing how they read and react to each other.
This was probably the only game where I could see many Brood War like micro. I mean there were games where I saw BW like micro but not the amount I saw in this game.
Was a really good read. I'm happy to see an intelligent post about that, without the stupid mindset "BW is so much better" or "SC2 > BW". It's a good analysis of how the game are different (not better or worst just... different).
While I agree with most of what you said I don't agree it's all pathfinding. Ramps, sure, but not all battles happen on small ramps (and high ground advantage plays a big role because you are forced many times to move up the ramp instead of attack from below). I play both games and I don't find I have to baby-sit my units in bw in open field, and most of the map is open field in bw since there are no force fields that dictate map-design.
The units absolutely make a big difference. Playing zerg, lurkers+defilers are absolutely critical for map control. You think that a group of hydras can hold a ramp against m&m? Good luck. These units are what separate the zerg playstyles in both games, combined with the lack of muta micro in sc2. Hydras and lings are very fluid in BW as well so it's not the pathfinding. In ZvP lurkers need to be spread around and offer great positional control but are not easy to attack with, in ZvT lurker+defiler are used to push Terrans back slowly around the map and defend bases. This is in contrast to the all or nothing a-move ling-bane-muta attacks in sc2.
For terran, the synergy of medivac-marine-marauder encourages deathballing, whereas in BW with stronger tanks, and vultures and their mines, along with a lack of mech counter units like immortals promotes mech play. Stronger AOE units and overkill favour spreading out tank lines and pushing methodically towards the opponent, and fast and microable vultures promote harassment.
I won't touch protoss because I don't play them and because the issues with sc2 protoss have been repeated over and over in these forums.
I also don't agree with the SC2=strategy, BW=mechanics argument. All the strategy stuff you mentioned for SC2 applies to BW as well. ie postional play is even more important in BW than SC2, counters, concaves, pre-positioning and so on. What strategy element exists in SC2 that doesn't in BW? Or maybe you phrased this part wrong or I'm reading it incorrectly. Just because mechanics play a bigger part in BW doesn't mean it has less depth strategically, in fact I would argue the opposite as many of the unique micros and the positional units allow for greater strategic depth.
I really enjoyed reading this. I still own BW from when i first got it years ago but I never put the same time into BW as I did for SC2. Reading this blog helped me look at both BW and SC2 differently, and I love the fact that it is written well enough engage the community in discussion regarding its contents. Thank you for your insight good sir!
10/5 if I could. Very good read and some highly interesting points.
I've had many times where I've talked to friends I was playing SC2 with about the differences from Brood War, and I always ended up with some longwinded explanation of how there were a much higher amount of basic tasks(movement, more clicks to macro/rally etc.) to be performed in BW, which meant that not even the top3 players in the world could do it all perfectly. In stark contrast to SC2 where the best players can often come very close to the perfect macro and not really have to suffer much when it comes to unit control.
I don't think I've seen a post that better elaborates on what I'd felt was the major difference, or in any way come close to explaining it better.
On September 20 2013 02:42 Divine-Sneaker wrote: 10/5 if I could. Very good read and some highly interesting points.
I've had many times where I've talked to friends I was playing SC2 with about the differences from Brood War, and I always ended up with some longwinded explanation of how there were a much higher amount of basic tasks(movement, more clicks to macro/rally etc.) to be performed in BW, which meant that not even the top3 players in the world could do it all perfectly. In stark contrast to SC2 where the best players can often come very close to the perfect macro and not really have to suffer much when it comes to unit control.
I don't think I've seen a post that better elaborates on what I'd felt was the major difference, or in any way come close to explaining it better.
Best post/blog I've seen in a good while.
If only Blizzard could read it and moreover understand the importance of it...
What a good article, I am loving even more SC2 now hahaha. But I think we usually remember how "good" is when we are able to master "hard" things in order to make them work. It feels like "magic" because it was really something special behind any scenario.
Amazing blog. It kind of relates to why me and my friends watch more DOTA 2 than SC2 even though they aren't the same genre. I think it comes down to watching someone who specializes in something is 10x more interesting to us than who makes less mistakes doing the same set of strategies.
I remember the first time I played sc2 in beta, I had to switch from zerg (which I played in bw) because I couldn't get past how wrong the lings felt. I didn't have to the words to describe why until now. Thank you, this should be required reading for any comparisons between bw and sc2 (although you could probably tighten up some redundancy)
Interesting and I agree pathing and limitations played a huge part to make Brood War what it was.
When I re-watch BW VODs today I often notice how slow players were at re-inforcing attacks. And how zerg players many times would not be attackign with their entire armies. Often a huge chunk of it would stand idle with all the newly hatched units. I keep thinking: "If this was SC2 UI and pathing, the defending player would die to the reinforcements".
You start to realize how hard it is to actually recreate BW-like gameplay in a different, more modern, engine. Especially for a game that shares a lot of the design parameters of its predecessor (200 supply cap, roughly the same size maps, roughly the same income rates and many of the same units).
What the designers of SC2 did well I think was to make the game more fast paced. Because to attain the same level of depth in a mechanically less challening game -- you must introduce something in order to put players under more stress. But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game.
They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs.
There's a lot of untapped potential in SC2. Even with its current pathing. In that I very much include the microability of units.
Just last week I realized a peculiar quirk of how Blizzard have designed air units in SC2. Air units will only glide if they are perfectly separated when ordered to fire! If they in any way overlap (in their separation radius, that thing that repels them from clumping together), all the units that overlap will come to an immediate halt when ordered to fire!
The most evident way of spotting this phenomenon in pro games is in viking micro vs colossus. When players fire backwards with 4-6 perfectly separated vikings, they will keep their gliding motion while firing. But when the vikings are clumped before firing, they just halt at a stand still and fire.
De-stacking is made to take precedence over gliding in SC2 engine. If this was just an isolated example of lack of attention to detail I'd be more accepting of Blizzard. But really it's a pattern in SC2's entire design.
Pathing finding is only a small part of the story.
For one, unit design between the two games are so staggeringly different. HP creep, super mobile base destroyers, cliff walking, complete lack of turn rate, attack start up time, standing in place to finish your attack animation, gliding shots on the drone, archon.
What comes most to my mind is how excellent units are in SC2 are at base busting. Immortals, marauders, roaches, and banelings come to mind. In BW you wanted to get a siege tank into postion, or a defiler (fragile and easily sniped, hive tech). Spot the difference. + Show Spoiler +
Next we come to some fundamental decisions. Take a look at Z. Would you ever see SC2 zerg building a nydus canal to transport units for defence?
No, you just a-move some super speed lings and mutas anywhere you want as long as you have creep spread. Fundamental difference in defence strategies + Show Spoiler +
What about general base layouts? SC2 bases are defended by jockeying your army and make sure he isn't able to attack any of your bases when your army isn't there to intercept. What encourages things like storm drops more? What encourages just a-moving a few zealots? + Show Spoiler +
The pathfinding only tells a small story. It does play a big part, I'm not saying it doesn't. It helps with things like dps density (how much damage you can deal in a given area). It is much less punishing to fight the edge of another army due to this. More room for micro as well.
I could go into the incredible unit physics differences in BW and how SC2 units all just behave the same (which I believe Day9's rant hints more towards) but it would be so much easier to do a vod on it, and I've worked sooooo hard at bringing these sorts of differences in the Starbow mod.
To at least give you a very brief example. Compare zealots vs roaches to zealots vs hydras in BW. How much micro is there in both of these examples? In sc2 you simply kite backwards, the zealots have no input given to them to make them more effective. Now compare this to Zealots and hydras in BW. Lets assume we have sc2 pathing. If you are doing it correctly you probably are doing something more akin to blink micro for the hydras, while manually targetting weak units (or switching targets for zealots that are chasing hydras running away forever). Both sides are HEAVILY encouraged to make a wide flank, for ease of micro is to counter the opponents ability to outmaneuver you. This micro is similar to that awkward phase at the start of a tvp, 2 marines vs 1 zealot, except played out in a grander scale with much more micro required.
This is my primary example for how BW units could simply bump up their effectiveness by being manually controlled. These fights could go either way depending on how well they are micro'ed. Is there really a difference in roach micro between pro's?
Blizz changed the fundamental nature of how melee vs ranged units work in Starcraft. In bw you had speedzealots. A slow hydralisk being pulled backwards would never get hit by that speedzealot. You would need to actually micro to kill it. In sc2, ranged units that are slower than a melee unit WILL get hit 100% of the time, constantly. They cannot retreat. So blizz did things like, make the zealot slower but give it charge so it at least hits some of the time. But does that encourage micro or nullify it?
Now imagine a pack of speedlings trying to chase a probe. In BW they will never kill the probe unless the probe runs towards the lings. The player must actually micro the lings to run past it, then confirm the kill. Of course the probe can juke that sort of attempt and get away.
Now SC2? The probe will die, 100% of the time. No micro is required for either players. Lings can get a tiny bit more effective, but really, the probe will die it is only a small matter of time.
Fundamental differences in how attacks work between SC2 and BW, not pathing.
Sorry, I should probably do a vod on a lot of these differences because it is a lot easier to show than explain via text.
I leave you with something to think about. SC2 and BW in terms of map size are actually 1:1 matched. But SC2 units travel at MUCH faster rates than BW. This is why you saw a general trend towards bigger and bigger maps in sc2. You'd see 128x128 maps in BW. SC2? 168x168. Even with this difference in scale BW units STILL move roughly 10% slower in relation to rush distances. This is not including creep spread, or units like the ling having their speed buffed.
JangBi vs Bisu dragoon battle was glorious, notice how Bisu was putting the so called "AI pylons" in front of his dragoons* to create a choke against JangBi's dragoons. Progamers knew the in and outs of "faulty and archaic" design of BW in the practical way.
Boxer was also known to glitch things crazy, the amazing usage of mine glitch to "push" vultures through small chokes, barrack landings to glitch dragoons, medic walls etc.
*Bisu loves forcefields; )
I slightly don't like forceful neutral statements, yes BW and SC2 is orange and apples, but saying This and That is faulty or archaic just to offset massive advantageous statements you made before about this mechanic for BW is forcefully trying to neutralize your article. The faultiness of something is debatable, when we argue that it's the faultiness that is the cause of its awesomeness. And archaic? Chess are archaic and we marvel at this word, despite it being archaic if we set a convenient comparison bar.
Amazing article, very well thought out and explained! I'd be curious to see if difficult ramps could be implemented in SC2 as a means of providing secure expanions without changing the overall pathing system.
On September 19 2013 09:30 Falling wrote: Very cool blog. One thing I would say is that I do recognize that many things that existed in BW were not by intentional design. I had actually asked Patrick Wyatt on his blog on this point and he described it as "emergent behaviour"- things like vulture control.
And at one point in time I had hoped SC2 would have taken the concept of the emergent behaviour and build it intentionally into the unit pathing rather than trying to recreate the mess of code that created it in the first place. Learn from the principle rather than the execution. Because it's true. I do enjoy the fighting game, button combo aspect of BW and can't really find it in any other RTS.
I 100% agree that difficulty getting up ramps was one of the key things that created defenders advantage. Between that and miss-chance, breaking an encamped army on the cliffs is brutal.
I miss the regularity of 3+ base play thanks to the power of defensive positions. How many SC2 games are true back and forths like in BW? Too many 1 to 2 engagement decides everything after watching 20 minutes of macro. Sigh.
I think it's silly to use the example of Jaedong blocking his ramp deliberately (only to forget about it) and then use that as an example of the pathfinding. If you're going to wall off your ramp in SC2 the units will have the exact same behavior.
Design wise, almost all the Broodwar units are A-Move units and in comparison are much less dynamic and much less interesting than the SC2 units they are matched with.
On September 19 2013 09:30 Falling wrote: Very cool blog. One thing I would say is that I do recognize that many things that existed in BW were not by intentional design. I had actually asked Patrick Wyatt on his blog on this point and he described it as "emergent behaviour"- things like vulture control.
And at one point in time I had hoped SC2 would have taken the concept of the emergent behaviour and build it intentionally into the unit pathing rather than trying to recreate the mess of code that created it in the first place. Learn from the principle rather than the execution. Because it's true. I do enjoy the fighting game, button combo aspect of BW and can't really find it in any other RTS.
I 100% agree that difficulty getting up ramps was one of the key things that created defenders advantage. Between that and miss-chance, breaking an encamped army on the cliffs is brutal.
I miss the regularity of 3+ base play thanks to the power of defensive positions. How many SC2 games are true back and forths like in BW? Too many 1 to 2 engagement decides everything after watching 20 minutes of macro. Sigh.
Depends on match-up. Also, i for one do not admire units that go full retard on first possible obstacle, even if it makes for back and forth games (especially considering i have seen a serious level of throw by T in one of those 'comeback' ZvTs. And, tbh 1-2 engagements only really decide the outcome of TvP due to nature of toss ball and due to that are prepostured with at the least 2-3 minutes of positioning. Also, it is not BW, you need much less than 20 minutes to max out :D (i believe even in Bw you could max out on 3 base at ~15 minutes as T).
On September 20 2013 04:35 Grumbels wrote: I think it's silly to use the example of Jaedong blocking his ramp deliberately (only to forget about it) and then use that as an example of the pathfinding. If you're going to wall off your ramp in SC2 the units will have the exact same behavior.
Where he blocked his ramp? all he did is robotic a-moves to whereever he wanted. Screenshot just showed what it ended up with.
On September 20 2013 04:35 Grumbels wrote: I think it's silly to use the example of Jaedong blocking his ramp deliberately (only to forget about it) and then use that as an example of the pathfinding. If you're going to wall off your ramp in SC2 the units will have the exact same behavior.
Where he blocked his ramp? all he did is robotic a-moves to whereever he wanted. Screenshot just showed what it ended up with.
Jaedong blocked his ramp with drones on hold position or something like that. Point is that the ramp was blocked, so it's not surprising that the units couldn't move past, it has nothing to do with pathfinding.
On September 20 2013 04:35 Grumbels wrote: I think it's silly to use the example of Jaedong blocking his ramp deliberately (only to forget about it) and then use that as an example of the pathfinding. If you're going to wall off your ramp in SC2 the units will have the exact same behavior.
Where he blocked his ramp? all he did is robotic a-moves to whereever he wanted. Screenshot just showed what it ended up with.
This blog is awesome! So much of BW was not understood by people who champions its superiority over SC2. If only we can make it compulsory for those who are inclined to bring up BW in a LR thread to read this blog. Imagine the welcoming absence of fun killing posts...
SC2 is guilty of overcoming the technical challenges that plagued BW, and it did so with flying colors. It also a completed a checklist of features that would in theory created the ultimate RTS game. Hindsight is 20-20, and seeing that it took 3 years for this piece to appear in TL, it was impossible to have foreseen the diminishing effect it had on micro vs non microed engagement within the game.
I have something to add onto the reference with fighting games. Combos came into place when SF2's "cancel move" bug was discovered, similar to how pathing bug contributed to BW's. The developers in Capcom recognizes the impact it had on the game and the bug was later implemented in all subsequent iterations of SF.
One might think that Blizzard could have done the same, but it would not have been a clever move to just imitate the pathing behavior in SC2, since even for it's accidental brilliance, it is frustrating for a newcomer to play with, and for those unfamiliar to the BW pro scene it would be impossible to even comprehend that such an obvious bug would make it to the final build by today's standards. On the other hand, a superior pathing system in theory should result in more reward to a player with precise control, and so there was no real motivation to "sabotage" it.
Though there is no doubt that both are different games, SC2 should attempt to bring both grand strategy and real time action together into the game, without sacrificing one over the other. Just to throw ideas out there, imagine unit posturing if there is more variety to unit speed instead of the blanket 2.25 that we now have, the deathball would have been more likely to be broken apart, and rallying units will present more openings for an ambush. Would an even speedier burrowed roach movement result in more efficient trades if burrow micro is used? Instead of Bio Hellbats, would faster transformation animation result in more mid engagement transformations that are meaningful? These are what I felt were the missed opportunity of HoTS.
Having said that, even now the game is still evolving, and they are still untapped potential that is present within the game due to the precise nature of the controls. What we are seeing today could simply be a reflection of the skill ceiling of the present crop of top progammers, and there might be more Rain and Life ahead to shows us much more about SC2 that we think we know.
On September 20 2013 04:35 Grumbels wrote: I think it's silly to use the example of Jaedong blocking his ramp deliberately (only to forget about it) and then use that as an example of the pathfinding. If you're going to wall off your ramp in SC2 the units will have the exact same behavior.
Where he blocked his ramp? all he did is robotic a-moves to whereever he wanted. Screenshot just showed what it ended up with.
The paragraph leading up to the picture was describing how the improved interface of sc2 would prevent such an occurrence. However, what caused the blockage was not buggy pathing - it was the fact that Jaedong had set those drones on hold position and subsequently forgotten about them. There is no a-moving involved.
In that sense, the picture isn't a good illustration of how BW handled ramp pathing. There are many other examples that would've been suited for that.
On September 20 2013 04:53 playnice wrote: The game is still evolving, and there still is untapped potential that is present within the game due to the precise nature of the controls. What we are seeing today could simply be a reflection of the skill ceiling of the present crop of top progamers, and there might be more Rain and Life ahead to shows us much more about SC2 that we think we know.
All new Korean pro gaming talent is headed into the direction of LoL. The pros that you are seeing doing well in 2013/2014 will be the ones that will dominate the scene until the game is dead or they retire.
Ofc still tactical play is very important in every game, just the way it is executed is differenent in each game
Also i want to mention that there are mentionable differences how spells and some units are designed in bw and sc2: In bw, a spell does ONE thing doing dmg, providing shield etc, but in sc2, there are many skills and even units that has multifunctionality combining default attack with passive skill e.g.: fungal(dmg + immobile), marauder with concussive, medivac (transport, heal and now boost), mines (free burrow+free charge although huge splash dmg), zealot charge.
I dont want to prove that which game is better or worse, just that people should be aware of the major design differnces between bw and sc2.
On September 20 2013 04:35 Grumbels wrote: I think it's silly to use the example of Jaedong blocking his ramp deliberately (only to forget about it) and then use that as an example of the pathfinding. If you're going to wall off your ramp in SC2 the units will have the exact same behavior.
Where he blocked his ramp? all he did is robotic a-moves to whereever he wanted. Screenshot just showed what it ended up with.
The paragraph leading up to the picture was describing how the improved interface of sc2 would prevent such an occurrence. However, what caused the blockage was not buggy pathing - it was the fact that Jaedong had set those drones on hold position and subsequently forgotten about them. There is no a-moving involved.
In that sense, the picture isn't a good illustration of how BW handled ramp pathing. There are many other examples that would've been suited for that.
Oh wait, Jaedong actually had those drones on hold position there? What the hell O_o. Though i believe there was a gif that showed climbing up the ramp too. Someone posted it in Flying retirement thread.
I registered just to comment on this. Awesome article. I was 18/19 when I last played BW, which was 14 odd years ago and I don't remember the game like that all, but I was a VERY casual player and we certainly didn't have the internet to watch live streams either, so hearing about the game being played like that was quite an eye opener for me.
I only recently started watching SC2 and I LOVE the positional play of the game, I enjoy that micro that can happen in SC2 in battles, but it's nothing like what you've described of BW. I love the fact that you need to be aware of the WHOLE map and not just whats going on in front of you, because, as you said, if you miss something, you're possibly going to fall behind.
It was a very good post and I really enjoyed reading it.
On September 20 2013 03:25 LaLuSh wrote: Interesting and I agree pathing and limitations played a huge part to make Brood War what it was.
When I re-watch BW VODs today I often notice how slow players were at re-inforcing attacks. And how zerg players many times would not be attackign with their entire armies. Often a huge chunk of it would stand idle with all the newly hatched units. I keep thinking: "If this was SC2 UI and pathing, the defending player would die to the reinforcements".
You start to realize how hard it is to actually recreate BW-like gameplay in a different, more modern, engine. Especially for a game that shares a lot of the design parameters of its predecessor (200 supply cap, roughly the same size maps, roughly the same income rates and many of the same units).
What the designers of SC2 did well I think was to make the game more fast paced. Because to attain the same level of depth in a mechanically less challening game -- you must introduce something in order to put players under more stress. But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game.
They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs.
There's a lot of untapped potential in SC2. Even with its current pathing. In that I very much include the microability of units.
Just last week I realized a peculiar quirk of how Blizzard have designed air units in SC2. Air units will only glide if they are perfectly separated when ordered to fire! If they in any way overlap (in their separation radius, that thing that repels them from clumping together), all the units that overlap will come to an immediate halt when ordered to fire!
The most evident way of spotting this phenomenon in pro games is in viking micro vs colossus. When players fire backwards with 4-6 perfectly separated vikings, they will keep their gliding motion while firing. But when the vikings are clumped before firing, they just halt at a stand still and fire.
De-stacking is made to take precedence over gliding in SC2 engine. If this was just an isolated example of lack of attention to detail I'd be more accepting of Blizzard. But really it's a pattern in SC2's entire design.
Even with SC2's pathfinding, there were a lot of things they could have done differently in SC2. They could have made units bigger or decreased the range of ranged units. That would have lessened the lethality of massed clumps of ranged units. They could have strengthened positional play by introducing more units like siege tanks, lurkers and widow mines. They could have reduced the dps of all the mobile, fast moving units that all of SC2's most dominant compositions rely on. Like another poster said, they could have given melee units a pause before they attack, meaning they have to get in front of a retreating unit before they could do damage. They could have reduced to speed of ranged units to compensate.
To this day, I never understood why they kept insisting that SC2 is different from BW but kept things such as the 200 supply cap and the standard number of minerals inside a base roughly the same while the rest of the game changed.
I would like to compare this to the AH in Diablo 3. It had its advantages and disadvantages. It had its proponents and its detractors. It made trading easier, faster and far more efficient compared to trading in Diablo 1 and 2. But it also killed a lot of the magic of playing the Diablo series in the first place. Ultimately, Blizzard just wasn't able to make it work.
The new pathfinding is here to stay. But there are still many other variables Blizzard could have tinkered with to bring back the tactical battles that we loved from BW. They might have to start by toning down the dps of huge clumps of ranged units.
Is there a way to have this blog as as a thread in SC2 section so more people see it? Everyone needs to read this. Seriously, everyone. Deepest respect for your work OP!!!
On September 20 2013 06:19 andrewlt wrote: The new pathfinding is here to stay. But there are still many other variables Blizzard could have tinkered with to bring back the tactical battles that we loved from BW. They might have to start by toning down the dps of huge clumps of ranged units.
You're missing the point of the post. He's saying they're very different games that appeal to very different people. I like the way SC2 is and I would be very sad if it was just a BW clone with better graphics.
An amazing post. I always felt SC2 was Chess combined with a fog of war, which is frustrating, because you can't rely on your execution and everything that hits you by surprise is probably going to damage you a lot. Because of the missing tools one has to defend against things that happen without knowing about them, i think giving the players more , or even complete information, would really make the game a lot better.
On September 20 2013 06:47 DinoToss wrote: Am I the only one smirking like hell? This is one of the biggest pro BW article in disguise i've ever seen. I even got fooled till the middle. Damn!
Not really pro BW article. If you read a lot of Thieving Magpie's regular posts in other threads, he is pretty much very neutral. He even argue back to people who say BW > SC2 in other BW vs SC2 arguments because he views that these two games emphasize on different area that it should not be compare what is better, because it's more about preference (watching execution or watching preparation for the execution, for example).
Thank you for this awesome blog, I loved every part of it and I feel it has enriched my understanding of BW and at the same time amplified my love for it.
I'm one of those people that hate the posturing, the rushing speed and the overly strategical feel of SC2. I want a fight to not be decided beforehand by who has the better composition or the better arc, I want there to be back and forth fighting of the army, poking, prodding, luring units out of position and killing them, more interaction between armies, more in battle micro that rewards good players.
At the same time I'm not advocating the return of old technology. BW's pathfinding was a happy accident in that it produced a true miracle of a game, that doesn't mean we should doing everything in our power to exactly reproduce it, down to the geometry and glitches. Instead what I had hoped for, and probably what a lot of people I guess had hoped for and wish for now, is that, the devs invent new ways for the to bring back the same unit interactions in BW, to add back micro potential and opportunities and to create more ways for players with good battle micro to distinguish themselves, sometimes, even to the extremes you described, like having two different kinds of vulture players.
At this point I've made my peace with how SC2 is, I really love the game, but I love BW a bit more. I think the reason why SC2 came about the way it did is that the devs themselves really didn't understand how the units interact in relations to each other and to the terrain in the framework of different pathfinding methods and thus, didn't realize that, maybe to add the same depth of unit control and fighting you see in BW, they maybe had to add more things to the units.
Its probably an easy thing to see in retrospect, it doesn't make SC2 bad or BW better, it just makes them different I guess.
I hope the dev team reads this and makes a big effort to understand this and, come SC3 or WC4, they take strides in adding deeper unit interaction and, slowing down the pace of the game sufficiently enough for those interactions to take place. The kinds of unit interaction, the one reminiscent to BW, that we seek in SC2, is not possible in the framework of SC2 and, to add it to SC2, would require an entire shift in philosophy and paradigm, which, while possible, is probably to hard to execute and expensive now in SC2. In short it is probably not feesable to take a game with a certain philosophy and try to change it, it would be far, far easier to just easier to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. TLDR Its not that the dev team and Blizzard doesn't or didn't want to make the best game possible, its that they didn't really understand the interaction of units and terrain and the intricacy of controling them withing the framework of the different pathfinding engines. It doesn't make BW or SC2 better/worst then the other it makes them different now, though I guess subjectively each might appeal to a different player.
Hopefully the dev team learned their lesson and can apply it in a future RTS game and take the best of SC2 and BW. Until then learn to accept each game for what it is and to see the beauty of each in its own way.
On September 20 2013 06:47 DinoToss wrote: Am I the only one smirking like hell? This is one of the biggest pro BW article in disguise i've ever seen. I even got fooled till the middle. Damn!
Not really pro BW article. If you read a lot of Thieving Magpie's regular posts in other threads, he is pretty much very neutral. He even argue back to people who say BW > SC2 in other BW vs SC2 arguments because he views that these two games emphasize on different area that it should not be compare what is better, because it's more about preference (watching execution or watching preparation for the execution, for example).
The blog as a whole is definitely exceptional(presenting the idea of neutrality), but he should showcase more scrutiny when it comes to presenting few ideas. Because for me listing all the things that BW fans "don't like" about SC2 with ending : "But at least you wouldn't end up like this BW-fella[pic]", which after inspection *has no relation* to the topic. Makes it an "eat your own tail argument", and in my book looks witty as a BW fan.
This is amazing and I finally actually understand what BW people are talking about when they are critical of SC2. I still prefer SC2, but this has been a really enlightening read!
Sorry, this article is trying too hard to be "balanced" toward both games. The fact that Brood War has more of what you call "executional difficulty" doesn't mean Starcraft II is more about strategy. From my experience I'd argue that SC2 is both easier strategically and executionally, though with a greater element of LUCK.
You make the logical jump that because SC2 is more about unit content and positioning, it is somehow more "strategic" than Brood War, which I think has no basis in reality.
Just as you saw skills emerge from using Brood War's mechanics, I think you are starting to see special skills emerge from SC2. It's just that these skills are harder to pull off at these speeds, and it takes time to master them to the level of pro gamers.
But these skills are there, magic boxing with mutas, blinking hurt stalkers back during battle, picking up and dropping a hellion to avoid hits, stutter stepping, splitting units. Using seeker missiles on your own medivac to boost into an enemy. Dropping hellbats on an army mid-battle to inflict maximum splash damage. These things are skills that any amature cannot just master...They are growing, and more of them are being discovered, and practiced. Not to say this will ever change SC2's focus on strategy over skill. Or even match it to Brood War's level of required skilled. But it will make the game more fun to watch, and has already started to.
On September 20 2013 08:43 iamho wrote: Sorry, this article is trying too hard to be "balanced" toward both games. The fact that Brood War has more of what you call "executional difficulty" doesn't mean Starcraft II is more about strategy. From my experience I'd argue that SC2 is both easier strategically and executionally, though with a greater element of LUCK.
You make the logical jump that because SC2 is more about unit content and positioning, it is somehow more "strategic" than Brood War, which I think has no basis in reality.
Sometimes you need to be generous in order to get people to listen to an arguement. if this had been posted on reddit without the disclaimers we would just hear whines about BW elitism. (Then in the next thread bitching about how newb friendly LoL is)
Personally, I believe it is VERY wrong for a newb like me to be able to have the same performance with a group of units as a professional player (like your hellion example).
I think BW allows better for a professional player to showcase the gigantic skill gap (both mechanically and strategically) between him and the top amateur player. And even though in SC2 this gap most certainly exists and the difference is very big, it feels like it is oh so much narrower.
But I think this also poses a question to sc2 viewers, which is can one maybe start to enjoy and see the greatness of Builds that mislead your opponents to make the wrong decision or set traps etc... And also from a casting point of view to take the emphasis away from the big fight and concentrate more on the build up, the flexing of muscles with armies, leaving your opponent in an uncertain situation, rather than concentrating on the "chess like" decided fight.
The disappointing thing is that a lot of posters still see what they want to see and turn this thread into a "X > Y" discussion and totally missing the point
I feel like this is true of a lot of games. There was this magical window from around 1998 to 2004 where bad/simple coding made for amazing games. Later, their sequels, which were optimized and smoothed out, still can't touch how good the original games were. CS:GO, D3, SSBB, and SC2, I'm looking at you.
It seems like good programming is what is taking esports out of the hands of the gamer, and putting it into teams of 5. Hopefully some Indie game with poor coding and infinite micro potential shows up and becomes wildly popular in China or Korea.
I'm glad that this blog is now spotlighted/featured. It deserves it.
However, reading through some of these responses it surprises me, like lichter above, that people can still get BW vs SC2 from this blog. The core argument running through the blog is that these are fundamentally different games and should be treated as such. I take it, as a point of hope for SC2, is that "emergent behaviour", as Wyatt calls it, is as applicable to SC2 as it was to BW. And that the game has a lot left to reveal, but in its own way as a standalone game in its own right.
Holy shit man.. you almost said pretty much everything I had in mind about pathing/unit control for SC2 and BW for a long time. I hope Blizzard sees and consider these things for LotV.. its never to latee. Great writing
On September 20 2013 11:29 shin_toss wrote: Holy shit man.. you almost said pretty much everything I had in mind about pathing/unit control for SC2 and BW for a long time. I hope Blizzard sees and consider these things for LotV.. its never to latee. Great writing
Also now I know the Dragoon Mystery lol
Actually, now I'm hoping that Day[9]'s RTS is going to fix this.
On September 20 2013 11:20 aZealot wrote: I'm glad that this blog is now spotlighted/featured. It deserves it.
However, reading through some of these responses it surprises me, like lichter above, that people can still get BW vs SC2 from this blog. The core argument running through the blog is that these are fundamentally different games and should be treated as such. I take it, as a point of hope for SC2, is that "emergent behaviour", as Wyatt calls it, is as applicable to SC2 as it was to BW. And that the game has a lot left to reveal, but in its own way as a standalone game in its own right.
The thing is, people insist that SC2 should become more like BW--that it should enact changes that make its core design like BW--when it cannot possibly be. The core concept in this blog shows that a lot of the micro-ability of units relied on the fact that pathfinding and unit movement and positioning was inefficient, causing players to go around those inefficiencies to get the most out of those untis, and that these inefficiencies were a result of the way space is defined within the game. As ThievingMagpie puts it, the GAME BOARDS are different; as different as snake and ladders' board is to Catan's. Because of this, applying BW's micro-ability isn't as simple as a lot of people assume; in fact it is impossible to make it the same because the game boards, and thus the way space is defined, are different.
Basically to have pathing/unit behavior similar to BW, they'd have to change the entire game.
Instead of saying "BW was better, let's make SC2 like BW", people should be seeking solutions unique to SC2, because it is a different game--not only in terms of the way it plays, but fundamentally in the way it is designed. Constantly bringing up BW design contributes little, because it cannot be applied to SC2 directly. Yes we can take cues from BW, such as the importance of micro-ability and the effect of open ended unit control allowing players to showcase more skill, but its application within SC2 needs to be unique to SC2 and its game board's design.
Another thing to consider is included in my first post: that 'bugs' or inefficiencies will never be accepted by the current generation of gamers. If LotV or SC3 ships with quirks similar to BW, the community at large (people who buy the game to play it and care not for the proscene) will be outraged and have it patched within weeks.
On September 20 2013 11:20 aZealot wrote: I'm glad that this blog is now spotlighted/featured. It deserves it.
However, reading through some of these responses it surprises me, like lichter above, that people can still get BW vs SC2 from this blog. The core argument running through the blog is that these are fundamentally different games and should be treated as such. I take it, as a point of hope for SC2, is that "emergent behaviour", as Wyatt calls it, is as applicable to SC2 as it was to BW. And that the game has a lot left to reveal, but in its own way as a standalone game in its own right.
The thing is, people insist that SC2 should become more like BW--that it should enact changes that make its core design like BW--when it cannot possibly be. The core concept in this blog shows that a lot of the micro-ability of units relied on the fact that pathfinding and unit movement and positioning was inefficient, causing players to go around those inefficiencies to get the most out of those untis, and that these inefficiencies were a result of the way space is defined within the game. As ThievingMagpie puts it, the GAME BOARDS are different; as different as snake and ladders' board is to Catan's. Because of this, applying BW's micro-ability isn't as simple as a lot of people assume; in fact it is impossible to make it the same because the game boards, and thus the way space is defined, are different.
Basically to have pathing/unit behavior similar to BW, they'd have to change the entire game.
Instead of saying "BW was better, let's make SC2 like BW", people should be seeking solutions unique to SC2, because it is a different game--not only in terms of the way it plays, but fundamentally in the way it is designed. Constantly bringing up BW design contributes little, because it cannot be applied to SC2 directly. Yes we can take cues from BW, such as the importance of micro-ability and the effect of open ended unit control allowing players to showcase more skill, but its application within SC2 needs to be unique to SC2 and its game board's design.
Another thing to consider is included in my first post: that 'bugs' or inefficiencies will never be accepted by the current generation of gamers. If LotV or SC3 ships with quirks similar to BW, the community at large (people who buy the game to play it and care not for the proscene) will be outraged and have it patched within weeks.
Oh, I agree. To the larger point of players getting to grips with the game presented to them (I've been saying this in my own way for quite a while now), and to the other point of a game being shipped with (intentional) bugs or inefficiencies getting short shrift. As you say, developments to SC2 (if necessary) have to come from within the structure of its "own board". Not only is asking for a complete revamp ridiculous, it also overlooks sunk costs and path dependency.
On September 20 2013 11:48 lichter wrote: Another thing to consider is included in my first post: that 'bugs' or inefficiencies will never be accepted by the current generation of gamers. If LotV or SC3 ships with quirks similar to BW, the community at large (people who buy the game to play it and care not for the proscene) will be outraged and have it patched within weeks.
This is a good point and completely true.
It would be really interesting to see an RTS that was designed around what BW did by accident. It would be cool to see a design where the variance between micro'd and unmicro'd units was larger, but it was because it was designed that way not because if you don't micro your units, they will have a mind of their own and fuck up your day.
On September 20 2013 11:48 lichter wrote: Another thing to consider is included in my first post: that 'bugs' or inefficiencies will never be accepted by the current generation of gamers. If LotV or SC3 ships with quirks similar to BW, the community at large (people who buy the game to play it and care not for the proscene) will be outraged and have it patched within weeks.
This is a good point and completely true.
It would be really interesting to see an RTS that was designed around what BW did by accident. It would be cool to see a design where the variance between micro'd and unmicro'd units was larger, but it was because it was designed that way not because if you don't micro your units, they will have a mind of their own and fuck up your day.
I still think it's possible to add that level of micro-ability and unit efficiency in SC2.
On September 20 2013 11:48 lichter wrote: Another thing to consider is included in my first post: that 'bugs' or inefficiencies will never be accepted by the current generation of gamers. If LotV or SC3 ships with quirks similar to BW, the community at large (people who buy the game to play it and care not for the proscene) will be outraged and have it patched within weeks.
This is a good point and completely true.
It would be really interesting to see an RTS that was designed around what BW did by accident. It would be cool to see a design where the variance between micro'd and unmicro'd units was larger, but it was because it was designed that way not because if you don't micro your units, they will have a mind of their own and fuck up your day.
I still think it's possible to add that level of micro-ability and unit efficiency in SC2.
But it will not be the same as BW.
We'll have to think of a solution unique to SC2.
Not SC2, but the one that is designed by Day[9] is worthy to be BW's successor.
Saying that you need BW pathing for a lot of micro things you could do in BW is downright false.
Moving shots for the vulture, archon, drone. SC2 is physically hardcoded to NOT let you do that with ground units. Me and Maverick use an insane work around to do it.
Air units? Most air units are tweaked so moving shot isn't very effective or rewarding. There is even a bug Lalush just found where if air units are slightly overlapping they will go to a dead stop. You see this often with vikings.
The air units themselves have no qualms with the inefficiencies of ground pathing. They way they are set up in BW encourages air dancing and micro. SC2 not so much.
Now lets see, dragoons and how they must stand in place to take a shot. This adds in some really nicely paced micro. Sure it is just stutter stepping but the degree of difficulty in it is amped up.
Zealots vs hydras. Hydralisks would have to stand in place to get a shot off, just like the zealot had to. Of course a zealot had to stand still long enough to attack, so if a hydralisk was retreating he couldn't get a shot off. This led to absolutely beautiful micro between both parties and had absolutely NOTHING to do with pathing.
Yes, both SC2 and BW are entirely different games due to many differences, but pathing isn't some huge barrier, blizzard literally did not look into how each unit in BW had a degree of weight and different control.
Compare a vulture to a marine. The vulture accelerated, and flew across the terrain. And then the marine was obviously more grounded with instant acceleration. Compare this to SC2 marine hellion. Hellions turn on a dime, acelerate on a dime, decelerate on a dime.
If you look carefully you will see just how much attention blizz payed to how units actually moved and fought in BW. A tank would keep tracking its target in BW. All it took to shoot was a stop or attack command. In SC2 a tank quickly swivels its turret to the default position even in the middle of combat. Same with the immortal.
In BW a marine would ready its gun, fire, lower its weapon, and then start moving.
In SC2 a marine will ready its gun, fire (you can immediately order a move command) and it will start moving despite it looking like it is shooting all of his allies.
Its this sort of inattention to micro detail that has a huge impact on the game.
In BW most weapons have a period in which the unit must complete their attack animation before being able to move again. This is literally non existant in sc2, the field to modify this does not exist. Moving shots? Bugged, and implemented poorly compared to the beautiful mutalisk dancing we saw in BW.
Even then, the worst offender is probably the insane movement speed sc2 units have compared to BW. That itself hurts melee micro much more worse than any improvement in pathing.
It isn't just pathfinding. Yes they are different games, but blizzard downright didn't pay very much attention to the small details that made BW micro so amazing.
While I agree with most of what you said I don't agree it's all pathfinding. Ramps, sure, but not all battles happen on small ramps (and high ground advantage plays a big role because you are forced many times to move up the ramp instead of attack from below). I play both games and I don't find I have to baby-sit my units in bw in open field, and most of the map is open field in bw since there are no force fields that dictate map-design.
The OP doesn't say its all about ramps and pathfinding. The unit control limitations as well are said. It greatly affects the outcome of an engagement.
On September 20 2013 03:31 decemberscalm wrote: This is too simplistic a view.
Pathing finding is only a small part of the story.
For one, unit design between the two games are so staggeringly different. HP creep, super mobile base destroyers, cliff walking, complete lack of turn rate, attack start up time, standing in place to finish your attack animation, gliding shots on the drone, archon.
What comes most to my mind is how excellent units are in SC2 are at base busting. Immortals, marauders, roaches, and banelings come to mind. In BW you wanted to get a siege tank into postion, or a defiler (fragile and easily sniped, hive tech). Spot the difference. + Show Spoiler +
Next we come to some fundamental decisions. Take a look at Z. Would you ever see SC2 zerg building a nydus canal to transport units for defence?
No, you just a-move some super speed lings and mutas anywhere you want as long as you have creep spread. Fundamental difference in defence strategies + Show Spoiler +
What about general base layouts? SC2 bases are defended by jockeying your army and make sure he isn't able to attack any of your bases when your army isn't there to intercept. What encourages things like storm drops more? What encourages just a-moving a few zealots? + Show Spoiler +
The pathfinding only tells a small story. It does play a big part, I'm not saying it doesn't. It helps with things like dps density (how much damage you can deal in a given area). It is much less punishing to fight the edge of another army due to this. More room for micro as well.
I could go into the incredible unit physics differences in BW and how SC2 units all just behave the same (which I believe Day9's rant hints more towards) but it would be so much easier to do a vod on it, and I've worked sooooo hard at bringing these sorts of differences in the Starbow mod.
To at least give you a very brief example. Compare zealots vs roaches to zealots vs hydras in BW. How much micro is there in both of these examples? In sc2 you simply kite backwards, the zealots have no input given to them to make them more effective. Now compare this to Zealots and hydras in BW. Lets assume we have sc2 pathing. If you are doing it correctly you probably are doing something more akin to blink micro for the hydras, while manually targetting weak units (or switching targets for zealots that are chasing hydras running away forever). Both sides are HEAVILY encouraged to make a wide flank, for ease of micro is to counter the opponents ability to outmaneuver you. This micro is similar to that awkward phase at the start of a tvp, 2 marines vs 1 zealot, except played out in a grander scale with much more micro required.
This is my primary example for how BW units could simply bump up their effectiveness by being manually controlled. These fights could go either way depending on how well they are micro'ed. Is there really a difference in roach micro between pro's?
Blizz changed the fundamental nature of how melee vs ranged units work in Starcraft. In bw you had speedzealots. A slow hydralisk being pulled backwards would never get hit by that speedzealot. You would need to actually micro to kill it. In sc2, ranged units that are slower than a melee unit WILL get hit 100% of the time, constantly. They cannot retreat. So blizz did things like, make the zealot slower but give it charge so it at least hits some of the time. But does that encourage micro or nullify it?
Now imagine a pack of speedlings trying to chase a probe. In BW they will never kill the probe unless the probe runs towards the lings. The player must actually micro the lings to run past it, then confirm the kill. Of course the probe can juke that sort of attempt and get away.
Now SC2? The probe will die, 100% of the time. No micro is required for either players. Lings can get a tiny bit more effective, but really, the probe will die it is only a small matter of time.
Fundamental differences in how attacks work between SC2 and BW, not pathing.
Sorry, I should probably do a vod on a lot of these differences because it is a lot easier to show than explain via text.
I leave you with something to think about. SC2 and BW in terms of map size are actually 1:1 matched. But SC2 units travel at MUCH faster rates than BW. This is why you saw a general trend towards bigger and bigger maps in sc2. You'd see 128x128 maps in BW. SC2? 168x168. Even with this difference in scale BW units STILL move roughly 10% slower in relation to rush distances. This is not including creep spread, or units like the ling having their speed buffed.
Though I agree with some of your points, Pathing is a big part. And also the infinite unit selections. The OP just discussed the diffrences of SC2 and BW pathing . And why does it make different.
Yeah, I do agree with decembercalm that it isn't just pathfinding/ isometric view imposed over grid that created microbility.
For my A-move by Design, I tested the hellion and the vulture and few other units. And the biggest difference in micro handling is that the the vulture has a much shorter burst shot whereas the Hellion has to pause to ge off its entire flame cannon. In fact overall, BW has far more units that have frontloaded damage. Whereas many SC2 units have very long attacks that deal damage over time. (The biggest culprit is of course the collosus.)
Unit acceleration and deceleration into shooting combined with burst shot damage is a huge deal in creating micro opportunities and I do not think it is limited to the old BW engine.
On September 20 2013 12:50 Falling wrote: Yeah, I do agree with decembercalm that it isn't just pathfinding/ isometric view imposed over grid that created microbility.
For my A-move by design blog, I tested the hellion and the vulture and few other units. And the biggest difference in micro handling is that the the vulture has a much shorter burst shot whereas the Hellion has to pause to ge off its entire flame cannon. In fact overall, BW has far more units that have frontloaded damage. Whereas many SC2 units have very long attacks that deal damage over time. (The biggest culprit is of course the collosus.)
Unit acceleration and deceleration into shooting combined with burst shot damage is a huge deal in creating micro opportunities and I do not think it is limited to the old BW engine.
That's interesting, Falling. If I read you right, can I construe that as saying that BW might actually have had more "terrible terrible" damage in mind? (At least this would be one, and ironic, way of looking at it?)
Man, I remember being a clueless kid and having to wage total war against that Dragoon in Protoss Mission 6 Into the Darkness to get it down those bloody Installation stairways.
On September 20 2013 10:49 NoobCrunch wrote: Why can't they take colossus out of the game already? I used to think they were retarded in 2010 and I still do now when laddering.
Look, man, I just wish my units wouldn't clump immediately after issuing a move or attack command. I'd like to pre-split my army and have it hold its formation while on the move, just like armies have been doing so for eons. It's been proven with the map editor that this can be achieved in SC2, but Browder doesn't want it because they're in love with marine splits. The game's downright ugly with the current pathing.
That being said, I have a better understanding of the differences between the two game's pathin systems thanks to your post. Keep up the good work.
On September 20 2013 12:50 Falling wrote: Yeah, I do agree with decembercalm that it isn't just pathfinding/ isometric view imposed over grid that created microbility.
For my A-move by design blog, I tested the hellion and the vulture and few other units. And the biggest difference in micro handling is that the the vulture has a much shorter burst shot whereas the Hellion has to pause to ge off its entire flame cannon. In fact overall, BW has far more units that have frontloaded damage. Whereas many SC2 units have very long attacks that deal damage over time. (The biggest culprit is of course the collosus.)
Unit acceleration and deceleration into shooting combined with burst shot damage is a huge deal in creating micro opportunities and I do not think it is limited to the old BW engine.
That's interesting, Falling. If I read you right, can I construe that as saying that BW might actually have had more "terrible terrible" damage in mind? (At least this would be one, and ironic, way of looking at it?)
Well you have to look beyond dps. What matters is WHERE the damage falls. For instance the reaver has a crazy 100 damage, splash damage. But it has a huge cooldown period before the next attack. Therefore you can pick it up after only one shot and micro it away. If you just look at DPS and terrible, terrible damage you would miss that every time there is a gap between firing, there is space to move the unit back or forward.
If the damage is spread out over time (continous fire), then you can move it back, but you are losing damage. So front-loaded damage actually rewards moving your units more than units with continous fire. Or continous fire with only a short cooldown. This is the twitchy, rapid micro that made pro-gamers famous with certain units.
Here's a partially completed image of what I mean. I was going to use it for a blog that I wrote and then got too discouraged to post it.
Over time the continous might do more damage. Or perhaps the burst shot might do more damage. That doesn't really matter. What matters is how easy it is to get off a shot and immediately retreat without interrupting the damage output.
Ah, I see what you mean now, Falling. An interesting insight. Thanks.
I'm not sure if one is definitively better than the other, though? It would depend on the units and the nature and extent of damage delivered, I think. And, I suppose, here too is the trade off between pre-engagement setup over in-battle micro.
On September 20 2013 13:29 aZealot wrote: Ah, I see what you mean now, Falling. An interesting insight. Thanks.
I'm not sure if one is definitively better than the other, though? It would depend on the units and the nature and extent of damage delivered, I think. And, I suppose, here too is the trade off between pre-engagement setup over in-battle micro.
5/5, but I feel that you exaggerated the helplessness of certain game mechanics like a high-ground defense buff or specific units, like reavers or lurkers to bring back the defenders' advantage.
I feel like some of the successes of BW can be adapted into SC2 without fundamentally changing the game. A slight boost to the unit radii of marines and marauders would reduce the dps density of that composition, and having small terrain irregularities that discourage movement over specific types of ground would help units move more herky-jerky.
While this wouldn't help with the ramp problems, as it wouldn't be removing any excellent pathing from the game, having a sort of "disperse" command, that spaces units out more, without outright splitting them, would be a nice addition. Maybe BW-style movement could be fully integrated into SC2 with a "disperse-move" command. This would allow splash damage and other anti-deathball measures be made more powerful, and would significantly improve the ability of players to skirmish without losing everything in one big battle. As much as I prefer playing SC2 to BW, the constant army positioning and repositioning isn't nearly as fun to watch as constant fighting and mid-battle micro.
I think this helped me understand better one of the things that I like most about watching SC2 (I have little to no BW experience so this is not intended as a comparative statement, just a declarative one). I love to see games and series in which the "better" player loses (or in which one of two players of similar skill stood no chance at all). I think what is beautiful about the great SC2 players is that it's NOT necessarily their mechanical skill that separates them from the crowd.
Because SC2 does not seem to be overwhelmingly challenging from a physical standpoint, a strategically brilliant player can stand out by being able to play more intelligently than their "better" opponent. What makes MVP or Stephano so good? Or what prevents elfi, and Goody before him, from being unbelievably bad for that matter? It's certainly not the fact that they are mechanically superior to their competitors. Likewise, MC may show top-notch skill when he wins tournaments, but it's his enormous repertoire of strategies that makes him really dangerous.
I enjoy the aspect of SC2 that prevents a sufficiently skilled player from dominating a slower player of comparable strategic ability, and I would be sad to see the Stephanos and MVPs become mid-tier players because they were playing a game where their advantage in intelligence couldn't make up for the fact that many of the other championship caliber players they face have an advantage in physical skill.
That said, amazing displays of skill contribute hugely to the viewing experience and excitement of the game. I just like how in SC2, they take a secondary role to good strategy.
This post is actually terribly biased towards BW. I think posts like this is actually a problem because it undermines everything that SC2 has created to make up for the pathing differences from BW. It is not simply just more strategy.
I believe there is a major lack of deep understanding in the foreign community regarding SC2. In fact, the more SC2 I play, the more similarities I see with BW. The small actions that distinguishes a pro from a casual player are present in both BW and SC2 and these actions occur at every step of the game. Saying that Sc2 is more of a guessing game than BW is also ridiculous.
I don't really want to start up an aimless argument or debate regarding this post. So if you have anything to discuss please message me.
The drone blocking the ramp was from a Jaedong game right, he was vs a protoss. He started losing the engagements because none of his hydras were reinforcing. Then he found the block and with his 'new' hydras rolled over the toss.
On September 20 2013 15:26 Burns wrote: The drone blocking the ramp was from a Jaedong game right, he was vs a protoss. He started losing the engagements because none of his hydras were reinforcing. Then he found the block and with his 'new' hydras rolled over the toss.
god i miss broodwar
Jaedong vs Flying.
I remember watching that game and had a good laugh when the camera panned to Flying's booth and he had this really bewildered look on his face when the hydras came out.
He must've been thinking "wtf I was winning this game. where did all those hydras come from!?"
What most people forget is that Mr Plott says in his vid that he could be proven wrong within six months, because players might discover amazing mechanics. I want to bring the speedling dodge move vs widow mines into remembrance: + Show Spoiler +
We need more of this, with a wider variety of usage than my example. And it will come, as long as people will play SC2.
Do not forget that the BW pro scene is much older than SC2. You cannot expect the elaborate usage of units or the macro that is being done in BW. You just can not. Pro players are the vanguard of the scene playwise. But that does and can not mean they have already figured out the game as much as they have BW.
In my opinion a lot of people that compare BW with SC2 are not doing justice to the fact that BW is much more elaborate than SC2 simply because it is much older. ALso they are different games, as the honorary OP already said.
On September 20 2013 14:42 T0MORR0W wrote: I think this helped me understand better one of the things that I like most about watching SC2 (I have little to no BW experience so this is not intended as a comparative statement, just a declarative one). I love to see games and series in which the "better" player loses (or in which one of two players of similar skill stood no chance at all). I think what is beautiful about the great SC2 players is that it's NOT necessarily their mechanical skill that separates them from the crowd.
Because SC2 does not seem to be overwhelmingly challenging from a physical standpoint, a strategically brilliant player can stand out by being able to play more intelligently than their "better" opponent. What makes MVP or Stephano so good? Or what prevents elfi, and Goody before him, from being unbelievably bad for that matter? It's certainly not the fact that they are mechanically superior to their competitors. Likewise, MC may show top-notch skill when he wins tournaments, but it's his enormous repertoire of strategies that makes him really dangerous.
I enjoy the aspect of SC2 that prevents a sufficiently skilled player from dominating a slower player of comparable strategic ability, and I would be sad to see the Stephanos and MVPs become mid-tier players because they were playing a game where their advantage in intelligence couldn't make up for the fact that many of the other championship caliber players they face have an advantage in physical skill.
That said, amazing displays of skill contribute hugely to the viewing experience and excitement of the game. I just like how in SC2, they take a secondary role to good strategy.
Great Blog!
But the article itself presents a way, that seems to be "in BW you could have been an SC2er and/or BWer" in SC2 you have to SC2er.
It even makes an example of Savior who was such a brilliant strategist that he flopped twice as fast place with use of strategy. Savior in that era had only 150-200 apm and nada was 350-400 apm, he still outmicroed and outmultitasked him with the deterministic behavior, the same way SC2 super intelligent pro does to 400 apm monster.
It was much harder to make, but by no means impossible. For me this just shows that SC2's glass is always half empty. And im sad that SC2 fans actually accept the view of SC2 having almost all of the time only half of the water as preference. Maybe it is ;(
Please read both God's of battlefield final edits. It really depicts that savior was truly almost purely about army movements / concaves, ambushes and build orders.
The 2nd part of God of battlefiend establishes how Savior influenced every zerg that happened after him, while Savior showed BW how zerg should be played, all the tricks from now on were used on daily basis. Yes people payed more attention to engagements, and pre determinism of fights. But new generation came and still and had new buffer, they saw what Savior did and STILL pushed it further with additional micro and macro (Jaedong)
In a way you could say that Savior invented SC2 tactics within BW zerg play, but because new "better" people came(last stage of BW era, TBLS), they accepted this as daily routine and pushed the boundry even further to near god-like level. It is by no means a degeneration, it is evolution. Its just predeterminism stopped being the biggest influence because there was another layer on top of that.
This article says there is no another layer in case of SC2.
For me this is not even foothold. No matter how i want to look at. The only possibility is that people actually prefer LESS over MORE. Which i find to be a lie, of new generations. Because most of the time the people who say that preface that by saying
I have little to no BW experience so this is not intended as a comparative statement, just a declarative one
I loved SC2 just as much as you do but i rediscovered BW later on and couldnt go back because, i knew i would be lying to myself.
Instead of saying "BW was better, let's make SC2 like BW", people should be seeking solutions unique to SC2, because it is a different game--not only in terms of the way it plays, but fundamentally in the way it is designed. Constantly bringing up BW design contributes little, because it cannot be applied to SC2 directly. Yes we can take cues from BW, such as the importance of micro-ability and the effect of open ended unit control allowing players to showcase more skill, but its application within SC2 needs to be unique to SC2 and its game board's design.
I agree with the sentiment, but it may simply be that there is no way to achieve these things within the framework provided by SC2's unit movement.
BW default unit movement was highly suboptimal in terms of:
- Time taken to get an army across the map - Time taken to bring concentrated DPS to bear - Time taken to negotiate chokes or other difficult terrain
This created windows of opportunity for player input and positioning to influence the outcome of an engagement.
By those same metrics, default unit movement in SC2 is almost optimal. The only thing SC2 units are bad at is dodging splash damage. And what do we see? Right: the only meaningful examples of player micro involve the mitigation of splash damage. Lings vs Widow mines. Marines/Lings vs banelings. Viper vs Colossus. Bio vs Storm. Drops vs Tanks. In every other situation it's macro or preset unit counters that determine the outcome.
Imagine a racing game where the car automatically takes the perfect racing line, and all the driver needs to do is manage the accelerator and brake. We could talk all we wanted about how there's still an unattainable skill cap in doing that perfectly, or how there are still challenges to be appreciated in the pit lane or the team's R&D department, but it's still less fun for the driver, and (for most people) less varied and fun to watch.
So if unit pathing is off the table, what else could we make units less good at?
Great 1/2 of the post, I'm not always 100% sure about everything. It just seems you're going a little bit too far with the pathing thing - e.g. "Broodwar was not defined by the Reaver." Surely, you can't deny the epicness of the reaver and the way scarabs work (like actually most of the time, if you play right), that's also certainly one of the reasons many people including myself got into this game. Muta micro etc. Let alone finding the time to actually micro. What I'm saying is that there is clearly much more to BW than just the pathing. Anyway great job man. 5/5
On September 20 2013 16:41 papalion wrote: What most people forget is that Mr Plott says in his vid that he could be proven wrong within six months, because players might discover amazing mechanics. I want to bring the speedling dodge move vs widow mines into remembrance: + Show Spoiler +
We need more of this, with a wider variety of usage than my example. And it will come, as long as people will play SC2.
Do not forget that the BW pro scene is much older than SC2. You cannot expect the elaborate usage of units or the macro that is being done in BW. You just can not. Pro players are the vanguard of the scene playwise. But that does and can not mean they have already figured out the game as much as they have BW.
In my opinion a lot of people that compare BW with SC2 are not doing justice to the fact that BW is much more elaborate than SC2 simply because it is much older. ALso they are different games, as the honorary OP already said.
Edit: Thanks for the amazing read, dear OP!
Amm SC2 has been figured many times over... then a patch comes around and fucks everything up again.
It took 14 years to figure out BW to the point that it is now. It only takes 2-3 months to figure out SC2 (then Blizzard patches the game and it has to be figured out again)
The ''BW is the older and more developed game'' argument is as stale and putrid as an argument can be.
On September 20 2013 19:46 thezanursic wrote: Amm SC2 has been figured many times over... then a patch comes around and fucks everything up again.
It took 14 years to figure out BW to the point that it is now. It only takes 2-3 months to figure out SC2 (then Blizzard patches the game and it has to be figured out again)
No game, even holmenkollen 2, can be figured out in 2-3 months in my opinion.
SC1 has been patched more than one time, with huge balance changes in a few patches, afair.
I do not understand what you want to imply or counterpropose.
Should Blizzard stop patching?
Or should they implement the accidentally great BW mechanics?
2-3 months is an exaggeration, but I'd say 1-1½ years to figure out the game at most. Most of the importants stuff was figured out in BW, and now its all about unit compositions, build orders and how to use the little micro tricks that took people 2-3 months to discover (finding them is easy when you came from BW, its a bit more tricky to find a use for them)
Take this article for what it is - its a detailed analysis of the BW movement system, and how it affected the overall game feel. It also points out how the movement system reflects the focus of the game (and for SC2 the design goals). A smooth and easy movement system puts emphasis on stategic decisions, a more complicated and difficult one puts more emphasis on execution and tactics. TBH tactics make for a better spectator sport than strategy, and that is why SC2 while a good strategy game, is not as exiting to watch as BW.
Is also works against SC2 that most units have become more generic, with less extreme values attached to them. The Siege Tank is a prime example - it shoots faster with less damage, but does its damage more reliably. Smartfire on old BW tanks were too much, but instead of removing smartfire, the nerfed the tank - this lead to tanks being UP, so they made unsieged tanks better. Now the mighty Siege tank is reduced to a 1a blob unit rather than the king of positional play.
On September 20 2013 19:46 thezanursic wrote: Amm SC2 has been figured many times over... then a patch comes around and fucks everything up again.
It took 14 years to figure out BW to the point that it is now. It only takes 2-3 months to figure out SC2 (then Blizzard patches the game and it has to be figured out again)
No game, even holmenkollen 2, can be figured out in 2-3 months in my opinion.
SC1 has been patched more than one time, with huge balance changes in a few patches, afair.
I do not understand what you want to imply or counterpropose.
Should Blizzard stop patching?
Or should they implement the accidentally great BW mechanics?
One of the best articles I read on TL so far! And now I understand better why so many legends failed to transition to SC2 or don't seem as skilled as before
On September 20 2013 19:46 thezanursic wrote: Amm SC2 has been figured many times over... then a patch comes around and fucks everything up again.
It took 14 years to figure out BW to the point that it is now. It only takes 2-3 months to figure out SC2 (then Blizzard patches the game and it has to be figured out again)
No game, even holmenkollen 2, can be figured out in 2-3 months in my opinion.
SC1 has been patched more than one time, with huge balance changes in a few patches, afair.
I do not understand what you want to imply or counterpropose.
Should Blizzard stop patching?
Or should they implement the accidentally great BW mechanics?
People are stuck in a bubble where they think that the strategy of SC2 actually developed. Often times the veterans of the SC2 community talk about the evolution of SC2 how this and that wasn't used for however long, but usually for the most part things were only used after they were patched (After the first year or so after that every patch brought a month or two of evolution and a period of stagnation).
On September 20 2013 19:46 thezanursic wrote: Amm SC2 has been figured many times over... then a patch comes around and fucks everything up again.
It took 14 years to figure out BW to the point that it is now. It only takes 2-3 months to figure out SC2 (then Blizzard patches the game and it has to be figured out again)
No game, even holmenkollen 2, can be figured out in 2-3 months in my opinion.
SC1 has been patched more than one time, with huge balance changes in a few patches, afair.
I do not understand what you want to imply or counterpropose.
Should Blizzard stop patching?
Or should they implement the accidentally great BW mechanics?
On September 20 2013 19:46 thezanursic wrote: Amm SC2 has been figured many times over... then a patch comes around and fucks everything up again.
It took 14 years to figure out BW to the point that it is now. It only takes 2-3 months to figure out SC2 (then Blizzard patches the game and it has to be figured out again)
No game, even holmenkollen 2, can be figured out in 2-3 months in my opinion.
SC1 has been patched more than one time, with huge balance changes in a few patches, afair.
I do not understand what you want to imply or counterpropose.
Should Blizzard stop patching?
Or should they implement the accidentally great BW mechanics?
Last BW balance patch was in 2001.
And most of the balance patches were not massive changes, they were pretty small.
On September 20 2013 19:46 thezanursic wrote: Amm SC2 has been figured many times over... then a patch comes around and fucks everything up again.
It took 14 years to figure out BW to the point that it is now. It only takes 2-3 months to figure out SC2 (then Blizzard patches the game and it has to be figured out again)
No game, even holmenkollen 2, can be figured out in 2-3 months in my opinion.
SC1 has been patched more than one time, with huge balance changes in a few patches, afair.
I do not understand what you want to imply or counterpropose.
Should Blizzard stop patching?
Or should they implement the accidentally great BW mechanics?
Last BW balance patch was in 2001.
And most of the balance patches were not massive changes, they were pretty small.
Wraith: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas. Increased cooldown rate of ground attack. Increased air to air damage to 20. Dropship: Increased speed slightly. Science Vessel: Decreased cost to 100 minerals, 225 gas. Increased acceleration Increased overall damage of Irradiate Increased sight radius Battlecruiser: Increased starting armor to 3 Increased Yamato Cannon damage to 260 Goliath: Increased ground damage to 12 Increased effectiveness of weapon upgrade on ground to air weapon system Nuke: Nuclear Missiles build faster ComSat: Decreased energy cost to 50 Starport: Decrease cost of Starport to 150 minerals, 100 gas Decreased add-on cost of Control Tower to 50 minerals, 50 gas Decreased build time
Archon: Increased acceleration Dragoon: Decreased cost to 125 minerals, 50 gas Decreased build time Increased range upgrade (Singularity Charge) by 1 High Templar: Decreased energy cost of Hallucination to 100 Scout: Increased Air to Air damage to 28 Base Armor of Scout changed from 1 to 0 Increased shields to 100 and hit points to 150 Increased cooldown rate of ground attack Carrier: Changed build cost to 350 minerals, and 250 gas Increased hit points of Carrier to 300 Increased starting armor of Carrier to 4 Increased Interceptor shields and hitpoints to 40 Increased Interceptor damage to 6 Decreased Interceptor cost to 25 Arbiter: Decreased cost to 100 minerals, 350 gas Shuttle: Increased build time Reaver: Increased build time Templar Archives: Increased cost to 150 minerals, 200 gas. Citadel of Adun: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas. Stargate: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 150 gas Decreased build time Robotics Facility: Increased build time Robotics Support Bay: Increased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas Observatory: Decreased cost to 50 minerals, 100 gas Forge: Decreased cost to 150 minerals Photon Cannon: Decreased build time Fleet Beacon: Decreased cost of "Increased Carrier capacity" upgrade to 100 minerals, 100 gas Decreased research time of "Increased Carrier capacity" upgrade Shield Battery: Increased starting energy to 100 Increased effective range of “Recharge Shields” ability
Overlord: Increased speed bonus for "Pneumatized Carapace" upgrade Decreased research time of "Ventral Sacs" upgrade Scourge: Increase hit points to 25 Hydralisk: Increased build time Queen: Increased range of Broodling by 1 Increase energy cost of Parasite to 75 Decreased Parasite casting range to 12 Defiler: Increased cost to 50 minerals, 150 gas Hatchery: Decreased the speed at which the Hatchery/Lair/Hive spawn new larva Decreased build cost to 300 minerals Increased build time Sunken Colony: Decreased cost of Sunken Colony upgrade to 50 minerals Decreased build time Increased attack rate of Sunken Colony Increased damage to 40 Spore Colony: Decreased build time Changed damage type to normal Greater Spire: Increased build time
Dragoon: Build time increased. Scout: Decreased cost to 275 minerals, 125 gas. Carrier: Supply cost decreased to 6. Templar: Psi Storm Damage reduced. Corsair: Disruption Web spell duration decreased. Zealot: Shields decreased to 60 and hit points increased to 100.
Queen: Decreased build cost to 100 minerals, 100 gas. Ultralisk: Supply cost decreased to 4. Queen's Nest: Spawn Broodling cost decreased to 100 minerals, 100 gas. Hydralisk Den: Lurker Aspect cost increased to 200 minerals, 200 gas. Hydralisk speed upgrade cost increased to 150 minerals, 150 gas. Spawning Pool: Increased build cost to 200 minerals Sunken Colony: Building armor increased to 2. Hit points decreased to 300.
I obviously wasn't around at the time, but looking at how the metagame developed and comparing that to these balance changes it's obvious that the game would have been vastly different if it weren't for some really well thought out balance calls on the side of blizzard.
Everything from the ultralisk and carrier having their supply decreased + Show Spoiler +
I'm pretty sure that 8 supply carriers would have been unviable.
to having storm not 1 shoot lurkers. To the 100 to 75 turret cost change.
Photon Cannon: Decreased build time - The Photon Cannons are already as slow as fuck to build, imagine how horrible it used to have been.
On September 20 2013 20:50 Birdie wrote: My bad, didn't realize there were such big patches :O
The pathfinding made Brood War easier to balance though, since it was such a huge aspect of the game that all races had to struggle with. So in some subtle way the races had a lot more similarities than in SC2.
On September 20 2013 20:50 Birdie wrote: My bad, didn't realize there were such big patches :O
The pathfinding made Brood War easier to balance though, since it was such a huge aspect of the game that all races had to struggle with. So in some subtle way the races had a lot more similarities than in SC2.
Yes: this absolutely. Everything is ten times harder to balance in SC2 because everything happens in ALL CAPS. How easy was it to concentrate the fire of a maxed ground army in one spot in BW? How often did that happen? How useful would it have been, for that matter (given you'd be stuck and wide open to being outmanoeuvred)?. Now think about SC2. How often do you see a maxed deathball with almost every unit able to fire at once? 50% of games? More?
EDIT: I'd love to be proved wrong about the inability of SC2 to reward tactical play. So, ideas:
1. Make ground units slower when moving up ramps (and faster when moving down them?)
This actually leverages the tendency of units to clump, slowing down the whole army.
On September 20 2013 20:50 Birdie wrote: My bad, didn't realize there were such big patches :O
The pathfinding made Brood War easier to balance though, since it was such a huge aspect of the game that all races had to struggle with. So in some subtle way the races had a lot more similarities than in SC2.
Yes: this absolutely. Everything is ten times harder to balance in SC2 because everything happens in ALL CAPS. How easy was it to concentrate the fire of a maxed ground army in one spot in BW? How often did that happen? How useful would it have been, for that matter (given you'd be stuck and wide open to being outmanoeuvred)?. Now think about SC2. How often do you see a maxed deathball with almost every unit able to fire at once? 50% of games? More?
What is amusing is that in sc2 maps with more turns and twists to get around allows for more flanks and careful army positioning.
The turns and twists will even get SC2 armys to travel in a konga line.
On September 20 2013 21:42 decemberscalm wrote: The turns and twists will even get SC2 armys to travel in a konga line.
True, but the skill required to overcome that is "Don't be a complete moron a-moving across the whole map". It's not exactly difficult to right click on a series of intermediate points and keep your deathball nice and round.
It already does reward tactical play. SC2 maps generally have plenty of chokes. 3 Base eco gets your 200/200 army up so quickly compared to BW even these chokes offer huge incentives to not attack into an enemy concave.
More fundamental issues are that the SC2 eco just doesn't reward taking more bases than you really need. If that was fixed then you still couldn't defend these bases due to defenders advantage and the need to intercept the enemy army to defend, sim city and powerful defensive units don't mean much in SC2 beyond a plantary fortress/nexus.
Z doesn't even factor in to even needed defense besides buying time, he has creep speed.
As for shift clicking around corners. Yeah it is extremely easy to circumvent. Yet we see konga lines in pro matches every now and than just like a good ole supply block. To err is human.
On September 20 2013 12:50 Falling wrote: Yeah, I do agree with decembercalm that it isn't just pathfinding/ isometric view imposed over grid that created microbility.
For my A-move by design blog, I tested the hellion and the vulture and few other units. And the biggest difference in micro handling is that the the vulture has a much shorter burst shot whereas the Hellion has to pause to ge off its entire flame cannon. In fact overall, BW has far more units that have frontloaded damage. Whereas many SC2 units have very long attacks that deal damage over time. (The biggest culprit is of course the collosus.)
Unit acceleration and deceleration into shooting combined with burst shot damage is a huge deal in creating micro opportunities and I do not think it is limited to the old BW engine.
Agreed. Both attack delay and the way a unit moves (positioning) affects the way how a unit can be micro'd. This is blatantly visible in Lane Pushing Games like Dota 2 and in the RTS it was based on - Warcraft III.
Your overall conclusions are sound, but your descriptions of how terrain, path finding, unit orientation and collision boxes work and interact in SC1 is just plain wrong.
Your analysis of how the tiles (or grids, as you call them) of the terrain interact with units is. well, just utterly wrong. Units do not "try to sit on top of a tile" as you claim. All that "bobbing around" of units is just because one collision box gets in the way of another.
And those pictures are just bad and totally improper to explain anything about the structural basics of pathfinding in BW. Here's another picture, directly from SCMDraft (map editor), displaying the important aspects much better:
green: terrain tiles grey: sub-tiles (these are the relevant ones for pathing; each tile is made up of 4x4 of them) red: collision boxes of the units. For ground units (except workers with mining command) these are not allow to overlap under normal circumstances, and if they ever do, resolving that becomes highest priority action for the moving algorithm, before any other action. This is why worker drills can disrupt units from attacking. greyed out areas: unwalkable sub-tiles, collision boxes of ground units are not allowed to overlap with these under normal circumstances, resolving terrain collision has priority even over resolving unit collision (although it is possible to transition unit collision into terrain collision, as demonstrated in the Blue Storm video).
As you can see from that picture alone, there is no difference at all between Dragoons, Vultures, Goliaths and Siege Tanks. they all have the exact same collision box and thus behave identical as far as pathfinding goes. So why does one need to micro them (and against them) differently? - Because of other differences like: - unit orientation: vultures always point in a certain direction, to have them ready to fire one must make sure they face the direction of the target. That's why they work best with patrol micro (patrol basically gives them a direction order on top of an attack order), dragoons on the other hand have no orientation, so they are always ready to fire and can be microed by hold position. Tanks are kind of in between, in that they are basically two units in one, one chassis and one turret, each with an orientation of its own. The chassis is facing into the moving direction, but the turret can still rotate freely and stay locked on a target in reach, thus resulting in an overall unit behaviour that is closer to that of the dragoon than the vulture. Goliaths also feature a turret, but a less mobile one that can only rotate a small angle, thus requiring the whole unit to be aimed at a target to attack - attack animation: A dragoon has to stand still for a while to "cough up" that lightball of his and giving it any new order before the projectile is launched will disrupt the attack, Vultures on the other hand fire instantly, if facing the target, and thus can keep moving constantly. Tanks and Goliaths also pretty much fire instantly. - unit speed and acceleration: units don't just stop when ordered to do so, but have a short phase of deceleration. This is relevant when using fast firing, fast moving units like vultures, because it means that they can fire while still moving and just keep moving, when given another move command right after the attack (also important for muta and shuttle micro, for example) - rate of attack: Goliaths pretty much fire one attack after another in rather short succession (not quite like Corsairs, but still...), whereas Vultures, Dragoons and Tanks have really long attack cooldowns, which is why the latter three are much better, or at least easier, to attack-move-micro. - projectile type: Goliaths (vs. ground) and Tanks do not have projectiles, their shots hit almost instantly. Vultures and Dragoons (or Goliaths vs. air), however, fire projectiles that only apply damage once they hit the target. This means that their attacks can be dodged by "removing" the target, like loading it into a transport or bunker, it also means that they are more prone to land overkills, i.e. fire more projectiles at a target than would be required to kill it (tanks do this too, however, especially in siege mode.).
Quick hacks to meet the game deadline. Two huge patches that completely changes the meta game. Stop patching leaving it in a "broken" state. Balanced by map makers.
On September 20 2013 23:02 forumtext wrote: Quick hacks to meet the game deadline. Two huge patches that completely changes the meta game. Stop patching leaving it in a "broken" state. Balanced by map makers.
On September 19 2013 16:03 Gaius Baltar wrote: I miss these blogs.
In the early years of WoL, great analysis pieces like this were a regular part of the TL experience, but it's rare to see one these days. I always admired how much the authors cared about the future of the game, and how they hoped they could make SC2 just that much better through their words. But nobody really writes these anymore, and to me it reflects the loss of hope for the future of SC2 you see many places in the community now. Even this piece, as great as it is, avoided making suggestions to the game going forward. Still, thanks a lot to TM. Best design blog in ages.
As much as I enjoyed the read I have to say you didn't quite deliver the punch. Whether by accident or by design bw on some levels offer superior depth compared to sc2 and frisbees are in no way less superior to baseball balls if they were created by messy accident.
The fun fact is that we needed sc2 to discover what makes bw so demanding game and what should be thanked for for it's beauty.
Yea it's crappy path finding but flying Frisbees are still more fun to watch
Hahaha, I am sorry for the off-topic, but I like the contrast between calm casting by Miker and Abver from Goodgame.ru (clip in Russian from Homestory cup with MC vs JYP stalker war) and hyped Korean cast
On September 20 2013 22:39 Freakling wrote: Your overall conclusions are sound, but your descriptions of how terrain, path finding, unit orientation and collision boxes work and interact in SC1 is just plain wrong.
Your analysis of how the tiles (or grids, as you call them) of the terrain interact with units is. well, just utterly wrong. Units do not "try to sit on top of a tile" as you claim. All that "bobbing around" of units is just because one collision box gets in the way of another.
And those pictures are just bad and totally improper to explain anything about the structural basics of pathfinding in BW. Here's another picture, directly from SCMDraft (map editor), displaying the important aspects much better:
green: terrain tiles grey: sub-tiles (these are the relevant ones for pathing; each tile is made up of 4x4 of them) red: collision boxes of the units. For ground units (except workers with mining command) these are not allow to overlap under normal circumstances, and if they ever do, resolving that becomes highest priority action for the moving algorithm, before any other action. This is why worker drills can disrupt units from attacking. greyed out areas: unwalkable sub-tiles, collision boxes of ground units are not allowed to overlap with these under normal circumstances, resolving terrain collision has priority even over resolving unit collision (although it is possible to transition unit collision into terrain collision, as demonstrated in the Blue Storm video).
As you can see from that picture alone, there is no difference at all between Dragoons, Vultures, Goliaths and Siege Tanks. they all have the exact same collision box and thus behave identical as far as pathfinding goes. So why does one need to micro them (and against them) differently? - Because of other differences like: - unit orientation: vultures always point in a certain direction, to have them ready to fire one must make sure they face the direction of the target. That's why they work best with patrol micro (patrol basically gives them a direction order on top of an attack order), dragoons on the other hand have no orientation, so they are always ready to fire and can be microed by hold position. Tanks are kind of in between, in that they are basically two units in one, one chassis and one turret, each with an orientation of its own. The chassis is facing into the moving direction, but the turret can still rotate freely and stay locked on a target in reach, thus resulting in an overall unit behaviour that is closer to that of the dragoon than the vulture. Goliaths also feature a turret, but a less mobile one that can only rotate a small angle, thus requiring the whole unit to be aimed at a target to attack - attack animation: A dragoon has to stand still for a while to "cough up" that lightball of his and giving it any new order before the projectile is launched will disrupt the attack, Vultures on the other hand fire instantly, if facing the target, and thus can keep moving constantly. Tanks and Goliaths also pretty much fire instantly. - unit speed and acceleration: units don't just stop when ordered to do so, but have a short phase of deceleration. This is relevant when using fast firing, fast moving units like vultures, because it means that they can fire while still moving and just keep moving, when given another move command right after the attack (also important for muta and shuttle micro, for example) - rate of attack: Goliaths pretty much fire one attack after another in rather short succession (not quite like Corsairs, but still...), whereas Vultures, Dragoons and Tanks have really long attack cooldowns, which is why the latter three are much better, or at least easier, to attack-move-micro. - projectile type: Goliaths (vs. ground) and Tanks do not have projectiles, their shots hit almost instantly. Vultures and Dragoons (or Goliaths vs. air), however, fire projectiles that only apply damage once they hit the target. This means that their attacks can be dodged by "removing" the target, like loading it into a transport or bunker, it also means that they are more prone to land overkills, i.e. fire more projectiles at a target than would be required to kill it (tanks do this too, however, especially in siege mode.).
Huh I guess I'll have to wait for Sayle to sum this all up for me a few times maybe then a few more in every future cast
Saw it on reddit with the title "An excellent overview of what makes BW and SC2 vastly different games - pathing." I find this title misleading because this blog is not really comprehensive, it's just really in-depth about this one factor [set of factors]. I am quite sure you can get *a lot* closer to "BW" without touching the pathing system itself. In other words, I much prefer the title you used here.
I truly appreciate this extra study material! I'll be diving back into this stuff soon enough.
On September 20 2013 23:02 forumtext wrote: Two huge patches that completely changes the meta game.
Where do you get this from, there have been a lot of smaller and even bigger adjustments over time, as well as a lot of bug fixes/workarounds for most of the really broken stuff (like CC slide or tanks under buildings), but overall there was just one total change of meta game, which was the publication of BW which introduced a whole bunch of new units, including many backbones of today's unit composition like medics, Corsairs or Lurkers.
[quoteBalanced by map makers.[/quote] This is just basic evolution, though. With the meta game approaching a state of "perfection", concepts that kept the game racially imbalanced just died out over time.
On September 21 2013 00:18 nimdil wrote: As much as I enjoyed the read I have to say you didn't quite deliver the punch. Whether by accident or by design bw on some levels offer superior depth compared to sc2 and frisbees are in no way less superior to baseball balls if they were created by messy accident.
You simply cannot expect a game developer to try reproducing something basically just incredibly messy and disfunctional in a new game, only because the predecessor happened to be played professionally on such a high level that using and overcoming what are basically just bugs and glitches became the defining benchmarks of their performance. And they even introduced certain aspects of it, like muta stacking and worker drilling, into SC2.
The fun fact is that we needed sc2 to discover what makes bw so demanding game and what should be thanked for for it's beauty.
Not really. As a mapmaker I have been well aware of the pain in the arse that BW pathfinding is on basically any level of the game, from basic economics to large scale combat.
Yea it's crappy path finding but flying Frisbees are still more fun to watch
Which is why so many more people are watching fisbee on TV than baseball... Wait. I got a nagging feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with this stance. Sit tight. I'll notify you as soon as I have figured out what it is...
I am not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if maps in brood war became progressively more difficult in terms of dealing with pathfinding issues to challenge the players.
I find it kind of hilarious the number of people that post something along the lines of "Great Blog! I definitely think that SC2 pathfinding needs to be changed."
You can't make an analysis like this without talking about the opportunity cost of input and vision in RTS, and how mechanical difficulty interacts with strategy. This is why I hate analogies to turn-based games and think they've done harm to our ability to discuss RTS. They aren't remotely similar and therefor aren't useful as comparison. SC2 is more like chess on one metric: it's less mechanical. But so are a billion games. Why not Checkers? Right, Checkers doesn't have the prestige of chess, and so isn't as useful for insinuating that BW is less cerebral.
I am not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if maps in brood war became progressively more difficult in terms of dealing with pathfinding issues to challenge the players.
Brb looking for maps first OSLs were played on and comparing it to Tving's OSL maps :D
Yeah, this definitely explains in part how I felt coming from Warcraft 3 to Starcraft 2. I played custom games in WC3 for a long, long time and only switched to 'ladder' in the twilight years of WC3 (2008-09), but from ~7 years of experience with the game I was able to play at an extremely high level very quickly just because of my 'micro'. When my friends asked me how I did it, I could only explain it as 'My units obey my commands better'; in actuality, I was making the most efficient clicks possible, moving my units the exact amount required to accomplish my goals (as a random example, moving my army to open a path so I can pull a unit back from the front lines, or getting 4-5 units to position themselves perfectly around an opponent's unit so you can surround it). There was definitely a level of 'magic' to it, something you get a feel for that can't really be explained. Obviously Warcraft 3 pathing was very different from BW pathing, but I also have the same feeling of tactical plays being absent in SC2.
I do want to say though that there are certain units / situations in SC2 that give off that same feeling for me. Workers, Marines, Reapers, Zerglings, Roaches, ect all have properties that make me feel like I can do more with them than I should be able to sometimes. Especially with workers, using mineral walking + hold position, I've been able to win fights I never should have been able to under normal circumstances. Starcraft 2 does have at least a little bit of magic in it, it's just a much less potent variation.
I am not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if maps in brood war became progressively more difficult in terms of dealing with pathfinding issues to challenge the players.
Actually I would think quite the opposite. As map-makers increased their craft, they would have a better understanding on how to make maps that allow good army movement rather than so clogged you need to go air or so open that there are not terrain features. How difficult the pathing is, is an easy measurement on how favoured Terran mech will be. And in that way, map-making is a balancing tool. Now you do get weird maps like Blue Storm where they make use of the different sizes of the units to create more windy paths for the larger units, but that's not exactly the same thing.
Perhaps my all time favourite post by Nightmarjaroo on mapmaking for BW. [Guide] Map Making There's a section on pathing, but the important thing is that BW mapmakers are concerned with good flow of armies. It's very easy to make stupid blocks to mess with pathfinding. (Just make a ramp with stacked Sprite, units sprite Temples near a common choke and see the fun you get as units don't recognize Sprites as blocks.) It would make for difficult pathfinding, but it would not make a good map.
There are so many things in here that give good ideas about how precise unit control can be emphasized more in SC2 without "making SC2 like BW". For example, if Hellion's turret movement has a severe decrease in turning speed, it encourages players to pay attention to the direction that their unit is facing. In addition, decreasing the amount of time that the Hellion has to stall before being able to obey the next command (ie moving for this example), players that pay constant attention to their Hellions are more likely to be able to positions themselves correctly for the next big shot and escape with their units intact. Making the stream of fire not hit all units at once, but travel along the 0.15 wide, 4.5 long line at a high, but not indefensible velocity, would even make anti-Hellion worker and Zergling micro all the better.
Applying a 30% speed nerf to units running up ramps can make ramps significantly harder to break for the attacker, particularly if armored units received a different nerf than light units. Think a full 50%. Imagine stimmed Marauders only being able to charge up a ramp at 1.6875 speed, while their stimmed Marine buddies bump into them and get in their way at 2.3625. Perhaps couple this with a flat 30% speed boost to units running down a ramp, or at least to rolling Banelings and wheeled units like the Hellion. It would be scary to charge up a creep-covered ramp where you risk running into Banelings rolling down at you at just barely under 5 speed. You'd have to keep your sluggish Marauders in front and split the crap out of your Marines, or find a different way around, or just use different tech to break the position.
As he mentioned, Blink is a gorgeously-designed spell that allows for many different degrees of expression of control. There has always been a spell with a similar role in zerg play, in burrow. However, due to burrowing taking a third of a second for Roaches, and even longer for everything else, it's quite risky to attempt it, to say nothing of a terran opponent using scan to partially negate the effects. Giving burrowed units a naturally lower target priority (maybe only a decrease of 1 would be needed) would force the opponent to focus fire all the more, as well as additional buffs to burrowed units (such as armor) to increase the likelihood of them surviving to unburrow and rejoin the engagement again. And needless to say, burrowing and unburrowing times would have to be decreased.
Changing the Colossus' attack to have greater start-up lag, and to not hit all of the units in its path at once, would give opposing players a chance to micro out of the beams' path. It would also encourage protoss players to stutter their Colossi so that not all of them are firing at once, or at very similar locations; anything to make it harder to micro out of is the goal for the protoss player. Colossi micro is certainly not unheard of already, but this would make their control all the more significant in medium-sized engagements. While the Colossus would itself remain a deathball unit, it would be a bit of an anti-deathball unit too, at least as far as the opponent could be concerned.
There are so many ways for SC2 to encourage unit micro and mid-battle positioning that are largely untapped. The game certainly does not have to be BW2 for it to emulate many of the factors that leg to BW being such a fun spectator sport. Bad pathfinding that makes the game unfun to play is not necessary to make a great viewer experience.
I am not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if maps in brood war became progressively more difficult in terms of dealing with pathfinding issues to challenge the players.
Actually I would think quite the opposite. As map-makers increased their craft, they would have a better understanding on how to make maps that allow good army movement rather than so clogged you need to go air or so open that there is not terrain features. How difficult the pathing is, is an easy measurement on how favoured Terran mech will be. And in that way, map-making is a balancing tool. Now you do get weird maps like Blue Storm where they make use of the different sizes of the units to create more windy paths for the larger units, but that's not exactly the same thing.
Perhaps my all time favourite post by Nightmarjaroo on mapmaking for BW. [Guide] Map Making There's a section on pathing, but the important thing is that BW mapmakers are concerned with good flow of armies. It's very easy to make stupid blocks to mess with pathfinding. (Just make a ramp with stacked Sprite, units sprited Temples near a common choke and see the fun you get as units don't recognize Sprites as blocks.) It would make for difficult pathfinding, but it would not make a good map.
On September 20 2013 12:33 decemberscalm wrote: Saying that you need BW pathing for a lot of micro things you could do in BW is downright false.
Moving shots for the vulture, archon, drone. SC2 is physically hardcoded to NOT let you do that with ground units. Me and Maverick use an insane work around to do it.
Air units? Most air units are tweaked so moving shot isn't very effective or rewarding. There is even a bug Lalush just found where if air units are slightly overlapping they will go to a dead stop. You see this often with vikings.
The air units themselves have no qualms with the inefficiencies of ground pathing. They way they are set up in BW encourages air dancing and micro. SC2 not so much.
Now lets see, dragoons and how they must stand in place to take a shot. This adds in some really nicely paced micro. Sure it is just stutter stepping but the degree of difficulty in it is amped up.
Zealots vs hydras. Hydralisks would have to stand in place to get a shot off, just like the zealot had to. Of course a zealot had to stand still long enough to attack, so if a hydralisk was retreating he couldn't get a shot off. This led to absolutely beautiful micro between both parties and had absolutely NOTHING to do with pathing.
Yes, both SC2 and BW are entirely different games due to many differences, but pathing isn't some huge barrier, blizzard literally did not look into how each unit in BW had a degree of weight and different control.
Compare a vulture to a marine. The vulture accelerated, and flew across the terrain. And then the marine was obviously more grounded with instant acceleration. Compare this to SC2 marine hellion. Hellions turn on a dime, acelerate on a dime, decelerate on a dime.
If you look carefully you will see just how much attention blizz payed to how units actually moved and fought in BW. A tank would keep tracking its target in BW. All it took to shoot was a stop or attack command. In SC2 a tank quickly swivels its turret to the default position even in the middle of combat. Same with the immortal.
In BW a marine would ready its gun, fire, lower its weapon, and then start moving.
In SC2 a marine will ready its gun, fire (you can immediately order a move command) and it will start moving despite it looking like it is shooting all of his allies.
Its this sort of inattention to micro detail that has a huge impact on the game.
In BW most weapons have a period in which the unit must complete their attack animation before being able to move again. This is literally non existant in sc2, the field to modify this does not exist. Moving shots? Bugged, and implemented poorly compared to the beautiful mutalisk dancing we saw in BW.
Even then, the worst offender is probably the insane movement speed sc2 units have compared to BW. That itself hurts melee micro much more worse than any improvement in pathing.
It isn't just pathfinding. Yes they are different games, but blizzard downright didn't pay very much attention to the small details that made BW micro so amazing.
These are very important points, I think. Since I abandoned Starcraft due to disgust with how Blizzard was handling the game I started playing fighting games. And one of the more striking things about them is that they are games of commitment. In an FPS you can move and shoot at the same time. But in a fighting game doing a move nails you in place, vulnerable. You put out a hitbox in some part of the screen, but that's it. It immediately makes positioning important.
It was that style of positioning-oriented play that I saw in the Dragoon fight in the Magpie's blog post. A slower form is found in positioning a fighting game character or deploying siege tanks.
The other thing is the sheer binary quality of SC2's engagements. A constant dance is great, but the DPS is so absurd, the area control abilities like FFs so crushing - they're literally the ability to unilaterally say that some brilliant position your opponent has taken is now actually atrocious. It's horrible to watch, and spits on everything the game feels like it should be about. If you watch some high-level match of Smash, you can see how it is a similar constant dance while remaining mobile that happens pre-fight in SC2 (something that's impossible with Street Fighter characters or Dragoons, their version is a bit more stilted).
But in Starcraft terms, they're spamming Storms, or dancing just around the edge of tank range. There's no ability to say that what you did is actually now invalid - everything has a counter but those counters need reads, you need to know what the opponent was going to do. You can punish bad positioning, but not just look and reactionarily rape him.
And most of all? It's not all over in one shot, so there's time to dance.
I'm not saying its better or worse, but starcraft2 doesn't feel like the successor to bw, it feels like a new series. I think I wouldn't have the issues with it as a game if it was just a new series. I'm not one to judge better or worse, but it just feels so different, and when the first game was as good at bw was, different is bad in a sequel. That being said this is a great blog, despite my disagreement over bw units not being better designed.
This blog is as depressing as it is good. Feels like SC2 can never be fixed now. Also makes me nostalgic. I can beat lots of people alone in both bw and sc2 but ut feels wery different in execution. Also reminds me how i was "pretty decent" (really really bad actually) as a P in bw but in sc2 I'm so hoplessly fucking aweful for no apparent reason. Well the reason is that all changes has worked against my strenghts when it came to P.
On September 21 2013 07:57 Jaaaaasper wrote: I'm not saying its better or worse, but starcraft2 doesn't feel like the successor to bw, it feels like a new series. I think I wouldn't have the issues with it as a game if it was just a new series. I'm not one to judge better or worse, but it just feels so different, and when the first game was as good at bw was, different is bad in a sequel. That being said this is a great blog, despite my disagreement over bw units not being better designed.
Almost every unit in BW is interesting, barring scouts and staple flying units(wraith/muta), which are straightforward.
Some people may think anachronistically, but... BW devs were the one who actually came up with marine + medic, MECH idea (catapults? artillary etc, thats the biggest close relation you've seen in RTS), scourge, vulture reaver, dark archon, DT, detectors, ghost +nuke etc.
Some emerged from playstyles some of the utility increased with "bad pathfinding", but all of them wouldn't work without their hardcoded aspects.
I think the idea of detector vs stealth unit is still to my thinking the best idea anyone ever put in RTS in terms of unit roles. And BW to this day has probably the most in depth detector/stealth unit graph (didnt check).
The last one two is imo brilliant, a detector/killer that is stealthed. Now give 1 race detector in flying supply and other with maphack. Madness.
Ah and i forgot about an actual assymetrical race design, you cannot describe in words how weird it was to play first mission as zerg after playing games Dune2/C&C95/RA/TA/KKND/WAR2 (all before SC1 i believe) this was assymetry as its core, *click on eggs* "eeeewww, gross".
I did not play BW, but reading this post was very interesting all the same. It occured to me though that you could make engagements more interesting by lowering the damage output of units/spells relative to their health. thus making engagements last longer and giving more chance to micro. for Instance you'd have to respread your units more often, blink more, need more ff's in a battle ect. Of course a lot of other things would have to be tweaked to maintain a balanced game. Any thoughts on that?
also the movement in Sc2 feel really unnatural, is like a block that slip above the ground. i think they shoul'ev keeped the 8 directional movement and refine it
On September 21 2013 15:15 ClarenceSc wrote: I did not play BW, but reading this post was very interesting all the same. It occured to me though that you could make engagements more interesting by lowering the damage output of units/spells relative to their health. thus making engagements last longer and giving more chance to micro. for Instance you'd have to respread your units more often, blink more, need more ff's in a battle ect. Of course a lot of other things would have to be tweaked to maintain a balanced game. Any thoughts on that?
I think you're right, actually. In general damage output is higher in Sc2, with some notable exceptions such as storm. But it would be better if damage was scaled down so that you don't just get incinerated when you try to micro in various ways.
What if you put an subtle spread-out option in the orders you give just like BW ? For example, hold position to make your units spread out and stop to make them clump... Same thing with move, a-move or attack. Or even having a command to specify the formation and spread like in other RTS ? We could have the awesome, tense and unpredictable fights from BW and keep the smooth pathfinding of SC2.
I know that it's the opposite of what the article says but since you so precisely pin-pointed what makes BW so awesome, there must be a way for SC2 to benefit from this.
How did I miss this post?? For sure the new go-to giant blog about BW vs SC2, nice work.
While I appreciate the methodical exposition, and while this is probably the best coverage of the subject matter I've seen in these "let me tell you how it is" pieces, I strongly dislike the thesis* that BW was special because you have to fight the game to make excellent plays. While it does make top level play impressive, and it does contribute to the feel of play, exclusively focusing on this unfairly eschews the underlying game design -- accidental or not -- that creates the strategic/tactical landscape, irrespective of the players' ability to control their pieces. (That last clause is tricky, I will try to explain it, because obviously player control has something to do with the gameplay.)
While it is certainly impressive to watch virtuoso players perform magic micro, this is not the realm that distinguishes the two games in the broadest sense. As you said in the piece, in SC2 the pace of engagements is such that it is more important to set up a good fight than to fight well. What we are really trying to say here is that the automatic and simple behaviors have better EV than any specially coordinated behaviors, in all situations. For the player, their only opportunity to gain value is sometime other than during the engagement, and since there isn't much left after an engagement, that time is before, the setup. This seems contrary to what most people look for in a game that is "easy to learn, hard to master", where superior players are provided opportunities to outplay their opponents.
What I'm driving at is that focusing on high level execution is looking at the issue backwards. Low level execution, and the gameplay dynamics in that regime, are where we find the illuminating differences. The timescale contributes to a situation where decision-making opportunities are even further limited.
Perhaps this is a purely pedantic point to make, because I don't think we would really argue about anything else. I just feel the need to combat the tendency to fetishize elite control that overcomes game systems. (Not that this was necessarily your intention.) I feel it is more important to highlight the problem of too much value for pedestrian control, and not enough delta for varying degrees of specialized control.
There is also something to be said about the timescale, game state readability, and spectator value, which you touched on, which is also fundamentally related to this discussion. Pathing is the 2nd order map between unit locations throughout time (unit speed being the trivial and deceptive 1st order map), and so it is probably the most important game feature besides the matrix of individual unit attributes like speed, size, and build time.
edit: * I'm not sure how much you meant to take this position, but it seemed like a recurrent undertone that I wanted to address.
t BW was special because you have to fight the game to make excellent plays.
I would like to make the case that move-shot or most any of the cool micro plays were not 'fighting the game' in any sense of the word. Anymore than needing to manually separate your marines to counter banelings is not 'fighting the game' because the game doesn't auto split for you.
t BW was special because you have to fight the game to make excellent plays.
I would like to make the case that move-shot or most any of the cool micro plays were not 'fighting the game' in any sense of the word. Anymore than needing to manually separate your marines to counter banelings is not 'fighting the game' because the game doesn't auto split for you.
Agreed! I suppose I was focusing on the attacking-up-a-ramp idea, which if we're going to sort out what's what... that is a severe case where pedestrian control is horrible EV compared to minimal but concentrated effort. Move-shot (let's pick mutas?) is a case where a certain threshold of effort and ability is required for a subtantial improvement in EV, even a regime-altering difference. And additional effort and/or ability can give some further returns on EV.
It might be dithering too much, but I like to think of muta micro as an opportunity for the player to obtain value through execution at their discretion, and pathing problems while attacking as a filter operating on everyone requiring a (much lower) minimal investment of execution, and bounding the aggresive possibilities even given superlative control. The former is pushing the possibilities of the game environment and the latter is a feature that defines the strategic situation.
To clarify, I mean to say that the difference in SC2 is due to the high-EV nature of the basic behaviors. This can also be construed as the lack of beneficial EV-for-cost of sophisticated behaviors which immediately conjures the contrast with all the cool micro in BW, but I see that as a secondary (though important) difference and not the fundamental one (where I single out pathing as a the defining factor). I will concede that it becomes a matter of opinion at this point but I just want to be clear about the assertion I'm making.
Very good article explaining a lot of why BW is what it was. But pathing aside, there are plenty of problems with SC2 unit design. The immortal is the prime example of the lazy, counter-based unit design philosophy.
On the other hand, this explains why SC2, despite being a "inferior game" to BW like so many claimed, has been more successful internationally. If SC2 were as mechanically demanding or had as much of a mechanical skill differentiator like BW did then the foreign scene probably wouldn't have existed because no foreigner would be able to play a half-decent game. So to the people who wish SC2 were more like BW, be careful what you wish for. Look at the terran race, the most mechanically demanding race in SC2, and how successful foreigner terran doesn't exist.
This blog made me sad. Broodwar y u so gud? *sniff*
On September 22 2013 18:07 painkilla wrote: On the other hand, this explains why SC2, despite being a "inferior game" to BW like so many claimed, has been more successful internationally. If SC2 were as mechanically demanding or had as much of a mechanical skill differentiator like BW did then the foreign scene probably wouldn't have existed because no foreigner would be able to play a half-decent game. So to the people who wish SC2 were more like BW, be careful what you wish for. Look at the terran race, the most mechanically demanding race in SC2, and how successful foreigner terran doesn't exist.
Pretty sure the fact that it surfaced 10 years after Bw and into a way, way larger and more developed market plays the bigger role there. By the time Bw was released most people didn't even have internet access.
I don't know how I missed this post. Easily one of the best things I read on TL, ever. Helped me summarize my own thought and get some new perspective as well.
may it be a stroke of luck that bw became the game it is, it is still genius design on every level. the graphics, the atomsphere, the music, unit voices, the individual units, racial identity, the game mechanics, almost every aspect is beyond perfect. sc2 simply cannot compete.
Its convenient to say that BW wouldnt be popular today. But history shows that you could launch BW and people would cherish it and it would be filled with both casuals and progamers (Korea). You just need to give them reason for that (Esport).
Among progamers in SC2 there are maybe 5 people without RTS background (BW/War3). How much RTS background players had at the start of BW? Close to none. Just watch first progaming matches of BW, its on the level of Starcraft 2 Bronze.
BW wouldn't be as hard game as it was back then, because people would already have hand speed and mindset of playing competetive RTS. But alas im rather afraid of how Esports is going toward mainstream. Newer generation of Esports is simply less mechanical in almost all fronts, be it FPS or RTS. And by extension of that is less impressive and entartaining. For both progamers and spectators.
It is wrong because, if it continues to the next generation we will end up with actualy computer chess games becoming an Esport.
On September 22 2013 21:32 reminisce12 wrote: may it be a stroke of luck that bw became the game it is, it is still genius design on every level. the graphics, the atomsphere, the music, unit voices, the individual units, racial identity, the game mechanics, almost every aspect is beyond perfect. sc2 simply cannot compete.
I agree, and also: even if hitting on the combination of elements in Brood War was a pure luck (which is maybe 20% true), it's quite hopeless that the sequel 15 years later still can't emulate those positive aspects.
On September 22 2013 23:09 DinoToss wrote: Its convenient to say that BW wouldnt be popular today. But history shows that you could launch BW and people would cherish it and it would be filled with both casuals and progamers (Korea). You just need to give them reason for that (Esport).
Among progamers in SC2 there are maybe 5 people without RTS background (BW/War3). How much RTS background players had at the start of BW? Close to none. Just watch first progaming matches of BW, its on the level of Starcraft 2 Bronze.
BW wouldn't be as hard game as it was back then, because people would already have hand speed and mindset of playing competetive RTS. But alas im rather afraid of how Esports is going toward mainstream. Newer generation of Esports is simply less mechanical in almost all fronts, be it FPS or RTS. And by extension of that is less impressive and entartaining. For both progamers and spectators.
It is wrong because, if it continues to the next generation we will end up with actualy computer chess games becoming an Esport.
I think strategy games appeal to the mainstream, League of Legends is a strategy game after all (it's a mix of rts, battle arena and card games, so it's two parts strategy). I don't think it's obvious that an RTS will never be the premiere e-sports again some time in the future, people like strategy games and with rts games there are benefits for spectators that don't exist for mobas.
I know nothing of broodwar, since I never played and, and never watched it, whenever someone said something along the line of "broodwar was better/more difficult/..." I just had to take their word for it. But this post is an incredible source of information, you explain things so well, and I dare even say I understand now and agree. (well you'll have to take my word for it) Thank you so much for writing this, I know my postcount doesn't tell so, but I've been browsing tl for 3 years now, and this is the "best" post I've ever read.
Sorry, but I am starting to be a bit frustrated with these threads. You all remind of the trolls in the HoN forums that told us all how good Dota2 was.
First: Where are the big Frisbee events compared to MLB?
Second: When I was posting in this thread earlier, I was told that my arguments were bad and that "people have to get out of a bubble that SC2 is evolving". That being obviously complete nonsense, I started to feel that I was talking to truthers. And that is what you BW nostalgia guys are. Truthers that one cannot discuss with, because it does not matter what I say and how good my arguments are. Even if SC2 had like 1800 billion billion viewers, you would still miss your old times.
I really do appreciate to know that all of you nostalgia guys really loved (past tense) and miss BW, a game that still exists, even tournaments are being played. I am bored with reading how good BW was, how hard to learn, how the bad pathing was so awesome, or any other limitation. My proposal would be: Why not tie one hand to your back while playing SC2? It would make the game so much harder, so much more enjoyable.
It is ok to love a game. I love Medieval 2: Total War, and think that any other TW game that came after is inferior to it, but that does not make go to a forum and whine the whole time how bad e.g. Napoleon is. I do not tell Napoleon players that their game needs Jihads or Crusades
The article of the OP is a good example of how destructive criticism can be disguised as constructive. He at first says he is "in the middle" of the extremes of opinions, but then he says the gameplay is seriously flawed, and admits he has no ideas how to fix it. This is not helpful, this is whining hidden behind a wall of "smart" writing.
You all feel you are contributing. If you would have an interest in contributing seriously, you would stop telling SC2 players "What is wrong with the game" and how great BW was. It was good for obvious reasons, but you will never understand it. You truthers like more to believe in miracles, that Blizzard has made a "lucky strike" with BW, completely ignoring the long history BW had to get through to be THE professional computer game on earth. You would go to the BW section, and discuss BW, watch BW streams, play BW, and be happy with BW. So long guys!
I am 33 now and I played tons of games since I was 7, I've also played dota and BW, but in my opinion it is SC2 and HoN that are better. My opinion. That does not make me go to a dota2 or BW forum and tell the players how elitist I am because I like a game they do not play.
You know what? Warcraft 1 was better than BW because you had control groups with only 4 units max! See how elitist I am? Nah, that was kidding.
EDit: Forgot to tell you that I won't make any more posts here in this thread. my opion is clear, and I've stopped talking to truthers here or anywhere else.
You know, I appreciate your comments. I've often felt the same regarding the BW brigade. Although, if you see it from their point of view, you can understand why some of them are shitty at SC2 and shitty with Blizzard.
But, I think you have misread Magpie's post (and, if so, given so much of the comment in this thread, you are not the only one). His point is that BW and SC2 are fundamentally different games and should be regarded as such. Therefore, asking for X feature in SC2 because BW had it may not necessarily work because SC2 has Y feature in it and is integral to the game.
As such, any development to the game can only come from within the parameters of the game itself.
On September 23 2013 08:36 papalion wrote: Sorry, but I am starting to be a bit frustrated with these threads. You all remind of the trolls in the HoN forums that told us all how good Dota was.
You missed the point. The OP basically explicitly said that this was not a thread to say why BW was better as you can see in this last quote
And please don’t misunderstand this post as asking for Broodwar pathfinding to be put into Starcraft 2, I am simply pointing out that the reason Broodwar had granularity was due to its faulty pathfinding. This does not mean Starcraft 2 needs bad pathfinding it simply means that Starcraft 2, due to its streamlined pathfinding, is a different game than Broodwar and hence can’t be measured with the same metrics as Broodwar.
On September 20 2013 22:39 Freakling wrote: Your overall conclusions are sound, but your descriptions of how terrain, path finding, unit orientation and collision boxes work and interact in SC1 is just plain wrong.
Your analysis of how the tiles (or grids, as you call them) of the terrain interact with units is. well, just utterly wrong. Units do not "try to sit on top of a tile" as you claim. All that "bobbing around" of units is just because one collision box gets in the way of another.
And those pictures are just bad and totally improper to explain anything about the structural basics of pathfinding in BW. Here's another picture, directly from SCMDraft (map editor), displaying the important aspects much better:
green: terrain tiles grey: sub-tiles (these are the relevant ones for pathing; each tile is made up of 4x4 of them) red: collision boxes of the units. For ground units (except workers with mining command) these are not allow to overlap under normal circumstances, and if they ever do, resolving that becomes highest priority action for the moving algorithm, before any other action. This is why worker drills can disrupt units from attacking. greyed out areas: unwalkable sub-tiles, collision boxes of ground units are not allowed to overlap with these under normal circumstances, resolving terrain collision has priority even over resolving unit collision (although it is possible to transition unit collision into terrain collision, as demonstrated in the Blue Storm video).
As you can see from that picture alone, there is no difference at all between Dragoons, Vultures, Goliaths and Siege Tanks. they all have the exact same collision box and thus behave identical as far as pathfinding goes. So why does one need to micro them (and against them) differently? - Because of other differences like: - unit orientation: vultures always point in a certain direction, to have them ready to fire one must make sure they face the direction of the target. That's why they work best with patrol micro (patrol basically gives them a direction order on top of an attack order), dragoons on the other hand have no orientation, so they are always ready to fire and can be microed by hold position. Tanks are kind of in between, in that they are basically two units in one, one chassis and one turret, each with an orientation of its own. The chassis is facing into the moving direction, but the turret can still rotate freely and stay locked on a target in reach, thus resulting in an overall unit behaviour that is closer to that of the dragoon than the vulture. Goliaths also feature a turret, but a less mobile one that can only rotate a small angle, thus requiring the whole unit to be aimed at a target to attack - attack animation: A dragoon has to stand still for a while to "cough up" that lightball of his and giving it any new order before the projectile is launched will disrupt the attack, Vultures on the other hand fire instantly, if facing the target, and thus can keep moving constantly. Tanks and Goliaths also pretty much fire instantly. - unit speed and acceleration: units don't just stop when ordered to do so, but have a short phase of deceleration. This is relevant when using fast firing, fast moving units like vultures, because it means that they can fire while still moving and just keep moving, when given another move command right after the attack (also important for muta and shuttle micro, for example) - rate of attack: Goliaths pretty much fire one attack after another in rather short succession (not quite like Corsairs, but still...), whereas Vultures, Dragoons and Tanks have really long attack cooldowns, which is why the latter three are much better, or at least easier, to attack-move-micro. - projectile type: Goliaths (vs. ground) and Tanks do not have projectiles, their shots hit almost instantly. Vultures and Dragoons (or Goliaths vs. air), however, fire projectiles that only apply damage once they hit the target. This means that their attacks can be dodged by "removing" the target, like loading it into a transport or bunker, it also means that they are more prone to land overkills, i.e. fire more projectiles at a target than would be required to kill it (tanks do this too, however, especially in siege mode.).
Huh I guess I'll have to wait for Sayle to sum this all up for me a few times maybe then a few more in every future cast
Sayle lost all credibility after he made the entire TL forum base believe that spam clicking attack with an SCV increases dmg by 23%.
Sat in an UMS for 30 minutes spam clicking - nothing happened *sob*
I am not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if maps in brood war became progressively more difficult in terms of dealing with pathfinding issues to challenge the players.
Demons forest crashed, burned and went to hell... (rightlyfully so!)
On September 21 2013 07:57 Jaaaaasper wrote: I'm not saying its better or worse, but starcraft2 doesn't feel like the successor to bw, it feels like a new series. I think I wouldn't have the issues with it as a game if it was just a new series. I'm not one to judge better or worse, but it just feels so different, and when the first game was as good at bw was, different is bad in a sequel. That being said this is a great blog, despite my disagreement over bw units not being better designed.
Almost every unit in BW is interesting, barring scouts and staple flying units(wraith/muta), which are straightforward.
Some people may think anachronistically, but... BW devs were the one who actually came up with marine + medic, MECH idea (catapults? artillary etc, thats the biggest close relation you've seen in RTS), scourge, vulture reaver, dark archon, DT, detectors, ghost +nuke etc.
Some emerged from playstyles some of the utility increased with "bad pathfinding", but all of them wouldn't work without their hardcoded aspects.
I think the idea of detector vs stealth unit is still to my thinking the best idea anyone ever put in RTS in terms of unit roles. And BW to this day has probably the most in depth detector/stealth unit graph (didnt check).
The last one two is imo brilliant, a detector/killer that is stealthed. Now give 1 race detector in flying supply and other with maphack. Madness.
Ah and i forgot about an actual assymetrical race design, you cannot describe in words how weird it was to play first mission as zerg after playing games Dune2/C&C95/RA/TA/KKND/WAR2 (all before SC1 i believe) this was assymetry as its core, *click on eggs* "eeeewww, gross".
Credits where its due, devs did their job.
Yeah it personally pisses me off when the people don't credit the devs.
Yes the game was balanced through map making, but the core ideas and decisions were made by the devs and they made an excellent job! Give credit where credit is due.
Ofc still tactical play is very important in every game, just the way it is executed is differenent in each game
Also i want to mention that there are mentionable differences how spells and some units are designed in bw and sc2: In bw, a spell does ONE thing doing dmg, providing shield etc, but in sc2, there are many skills and even units that has multifunctionality combining default attack with passive skill e.g.: fungal(dmg + immobile), marauder with concussive, medivac (transport, heal and now boost), mines (free burrow+free charge although huge splash dmg), zealot charge.
I dont want to prove that which game is better or worse, just that people should be aware of the major design differnces between bw and sc2.
If you classify SC2 as macro heavy, you've never seen BW
SC2 is plagued with easy mechanics, while BW's macro was a true challenge (no mining rally, no multi building selection, etc), and that's without counting the fact that being maxed was very rare in 1v1.
Very valuable OP. Spurred a lot of constructive discussion and enhanced a lot of people's visualization of BW mechanics. It does seem limited to just one reason, but just as valid nonetheless. Rather than make my own post, I felt like a lot of posters already said things better than I could. + Show Spoiler +
The units absolutely make a big difference. Playing zerg, lurkers+defilers are absolutely critical for map control. You think that a group of hydras can hold a ramp against m&m? Good luck. These units are what separate the zerg playstyles in both games, combined with the lack of muta micro in sc2. Hydras and lings are very fluid in BW as well so it's not the pathfinding. In ZvP lurkers need to be spread around and offer great positional control but are not easy to attack with, in ZvT lurker+defiler are used to push Terrans back slowly around the map and defend bases. This is in contrast to the all or nothing a-move ling-bane-muta attacks in sc2.
For terran, the synergy of medivac-marine-marauder encourages deathballing, whereas in BW with stronger tanks, and vultures and their mines, along with a lack of mech counter units like immortals promotes mech play. Stronger AOE units and overkill favour spreading out tank lines and pushing methodically towards the opponent, and fast and microable vultures promote harassment.
When I re-watch BW VODs today I often notice how slow players were at re-inforcing attacks. And how zerg players many times would not be attackign with their entire armies. Often a huge chunk of it would stand idle with all the newly hatched units. I keep thinking: "If this was SC2 UI and pathing, the defending player would die to the reinforcements".
They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs.
But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game.
The most evident way of spotting this phenomenon in pro games is in viking micro vs colossus. When players fire backwards with 4-6 perfectly separated vikings, they will keep their gliding motion while firing. But when the vikings are clumped before firing, they just halt at a stand still and fire.
De-stacking is made to take precedence over gliding in SC2 engine. If this was just an isolated example of lack of attention to detail I'd be more accepting of Blizzard. But really it's a pattern in SC2's entire design.
Pathing finding is only a small part of the story.
For one, unit design between the two games are so staggeringly different. HP creep, super mobile base destroyers, cliff walking, complete lack of turn rate, attack start up time, standing in place to finish your attack animation, gliding shots on the drone, archon.
What comes most to my mind is how excellent units are in SC2 are at base busting. Immortals, marauders, roaches, and banelings come to mind.
Next we come to some fundamental decisions. Take a look at Z. Would you ever see SC2 zerg building a nydus canal to transport units for defence?
No, you just a-move some super speed lings and mutas anywhere you want as long as you have creep spread. Fundamental difference in defence strategies
What about general base layouts? SC2 bases are defended by jockeying your army and make sure he isn't able to attack any of your bases when your army isn't there to intercept. What encourages things like storm drops more? What encourages just a-moving a few zealots?
To at least give you a very brief example. Compare zealots vs roaches to zealots vs hydras in BW. How much micro is there in both of these examples? In sc2 you simply kite backwards, the zealots have no input given to them to make them more effective. Now compare this to Zealots and hydras in BW. Lets assume we have sc2 pathing. If you are doing it correctly you probably are doing something more akin to blink micro for the hydras, while manually targetting weak units (or switching targets for zealots that are chasing hydras running away forever). Both sides are HEAVILY encouraged to make a wide flank, for ease of micro is to counter the opponents ability to outmaneuver you. This micro is similar to that awkward phase at the start of a tvp, 2 marines vs 1 zealot, except played out in a grander scale with much more micro required.
Blizz changed the fundamental nature of how melee vs ranged units work in Starcraft. In bw you had speedzealots. A slow hydralisk being pulled backwards would never get hit by that speedzealot. You would need to actually micro to kill it. In sc2, ranged units that are slower than a melee unit WILL get hit 100% of the time, constantly. They cannot retreat. So blizz did things like, make the zealot slower but give it charge so it at least hits some of the time. But does that encourage micro or nullify it?
Now imagine a pack of speedlings trying to chase a probe. In BW they will never kill the probe unless the probe runs towards the lings. The player must actually micro the lings to run past it, then confirm the kill. Of course the probe can juke that sort of attempt and get away.
Even with SC2's pathfinding, there were a lot of things they could have done differently in SC2. They could have made units bigger or decreased the range of ranged units. That would have lessened the lethality of massed clumps of ranged units. They could have strengthened positional play by introducing more units like siege tanks, lurkers and widow mines. They could have reduced the dps of all the mobile, fast moving units that all of SC2's most dominant compositions rely on. Like another poster said, they could have given melee units a pause before they attack, meaning they have to get in front of a retreating unit before they could do damage. They could have reduced to speed of ranged units to compensate.
The new pathfinding is here to stay. But there are still many other variables Blizzard could have tinkered with to bring back the tactical battles that we loved from BW. They might have to start by toning down the dps of huge clumps of ranged units.
Saying that you need BW pathing for a lot of micro things you could do in BW is downright false.
Moving shots for the vulture, archon, drone. SC2 is physically hardcoded to NOT let you do that with ground units. Me and Maverick use an insane work around to do it.
Air units? Most air units are tweaked so moving shot isn't very effective or rewarding. There is even a bug Lalush just found where if air units are slightly overlapping they will go to a dead stop. You see this often with vikings.
The air units themselves have no qualms with the inefficiencies of ground pathing. They way they are set up in BW encourages air dancing and micro. SC2 not so much.
Now lets see, dragoons and how they must stand in place to take a shot. This adds in some really nicely paced micro. Sure it is just stutter stepping but the degree of difficulty in it is amped up.
Zealots vs hydras. Hydralisks would have to stand in place to get a shot off, just like the zealot had to. Of course a zealot had to stand still long enough to attack, so if a hydralisk was retreating he couldn't get a shot off. This led to absolutely beautiful micro between both parties and had absolutely NOTHING to do with pathing.
Yes, both SC2 and BW are entirely different games due to many differences, but pathing isn't some huge barrier, blizzard literally did not look into how each unit in BW had a degree of weight and different control.
Compare a vulture to a marine. The vulture accelerated, and flew across the terrain. And then the marine was obviously more grounded with instant acceleration. Compare this to SC2 marine hellion. Hellions turn on a dime, acelerate on a dime, decelerate on a dime.
If you look carefully you will see just how much attention blizz payed to how units actually moved and fought in BW. A tank would keep tracking its target in BW. All it took to shoot was a stop or attack command. In SC2 a tank quickly swivels its turret to the default position even in the middle of combat. Same with the immortal.
In BW a marine would ready its gun, fire, lower its weapon, and then start moving.
In SC2 a marine will ready its gun, fire (you can immediately order a move command) and it will start moving despite it looking like it is shooting all of his allies.
Its this sort of inattention to micro detail that has a huge impact on the game.
In BW most weapons have a period in which the unit must complete their attack animation before being able to move again. This is literally non existant in sc2, the field to modify this does not exist. Moving shots? Bugged, and implemented poorly compared to the beautiful mutalisk dancing we saw in BW.
Even then, the worst offender is probably the insane movement speed sc2 units have compared to BW. That itself hurts melee micro much more worse than any improvement in pathing.
It isn't just pathfinding. Yes they are different games, but blizzard downright didn't pay very much attention to the small details that made BW micro so amazing.
Yeah, I do agree with decembercalm that it isn't just pathfinding/ isometric view imposed over grid that created microbility.
For my A-move by Design, I tested the hellion and the vulture and few other units. And the biggest difference in micro handling is that the the vulture has a much shorter burst shot whereas the Hellion has to pause to ge off its entire flame cannon. In fact overall, BW has far more units that have frontloaded damage. Whereas many SC2 units have very long attacks that deal damage over time. (The biggest culprit is of course the collosus.)
Unit acceleration and deceleration into shooting combined with burst shot damage is a huge deal in creating micro opportunities and I do not think it is limited to the old BW engine.
I feel like some of the successes of BW can be adapted into SC2 without fundamentally changing the game. A slight boost to the unit radii of marines and marauders would reduce the dps density of that composition, and having small terrain irregularities that discourage movement over specific types of ground would help units move more herky-jerky.
As much as I prefer playing SC2 to BW, the constant army positioning and repositioning isn't nearly as fun to watch as constant fighting and mid-battle micro.
BW default unit movement was highly suboptimal in terms of:
- Time taken to get an army across the map - Time taken to bring concentrated DPS to bear - Time taken to negotiate chokes or other difficult terrain
This created windows of opportunity for player input and positioning to influence the outcome of an engagement.
By those same metrics, default unit movement in SC2 is almost optimal. The only thing SC2 units are bad at is dodging splash damage. And what do we see? Right: the only meaningful examples of player micro involve the mitigation of splash damage. Lings vs Widow mines. Marines/Lings vs banelings. Viper vs Colossus. Bio vs Storm. Drops vs Tanks. In every other situation it's macro or preset unit counters that determine the outcome.
Imagine a racing game where the car automatically takes the perfect racing line, and all the driver needs to do is manage the accelerator and brake. We could talk all we wanted about how there's still an unattainable skill cap in doing that perfectly, or how there are still challenges to be appreciated in the pit lane or the team's R&D department, but it's still less fun for the driver, and (for most people) less varied and fun to watch.
So if unit pathing is off the table, what else could we make units less good at?
More fundamental issues are that the SC2 eco just doesn't reward taking more bases than you really need. If that was fixed then you still couldn't defend these bases due to defenders advantage and the need to intercept the enemy army to defend, sim city and powerful defensive units don't mean much in SC2 beyond a plantary fortress/nexus.
I'm not saying its better or worse, but starcraft2 doesn't feel like the successor to bw, it feels like a new series. I think I wouldn't have the issues with it as a game if it was just a new series. I'm not one to judge better or worse, but it just feels so different, and when the first game was as good at bw was, different is bad in a sequel. That being said this is a great blog, despite my disagreement over bw units not being better designed.
Almost every unit in BW is interesting, barring scouts and staple flying units(wraith/muta), which are straightforward.
Some people may think anachronistically, but... BW devs were the one who actually came up with marine + medic, MECH idea (catapults? artillary etc, thats the biggest close relation you've seen in RTS), scourge, vulture reaver, dark archon, DT, detectors, ghost +nuke etc.
Some emerged from playstyles some of the utility increased with "bad pathfinding", but all of them wouldn't work without their hardcoded aspects.
I think the idea of detector vs stealth unit is still to my thinking the best idea anyone ever put in RTS in terms of unit roles. And BW to this day has probably the most in depth detector/stealth unit graph (didnt check).
The last one two is imo brilliant, a detector/killer that is stealthed. Now give 1 race detector in flying supply and other with maphack. Madness.
Ah and i forgot about an actual assymetrical race design, you cannot describe in words how weird it was to play first mission as zerg after playing games Dune2/C&C95/RA/TA/KKND/WAR2 (all before SC1 i believe) this was assymetry as its core, *click on eggs* "eeeewww, gross".
Credits where its due, devs did their job
The common motif is that engagements should be digestible, allowing microability. The pace and flow from BW -> SC2 has been altered, without rectifying the environment to accommodate the new pace.
Amazing read that really puts SC2 in perspective for me. I've been trying to figure out what to look for and appreciate coming from a BW background. Thank you!
Thank you all so much for both the supportive and critical comments that have exploded into this thread. I didn't realize that this was going to blow up like this, but it gives me a lot of confidence to continue posting more.
A lot of people have mentioned the importance of other aspects of Broodwar that allowed it to be a great game including such aspects as unit design, hard code unit behavior, maps, etc...
I'm sorry I didn't touch on those subjects much, if at all, in this blog post. I was trying to stay focused on the subject at hand and I didn't want to stray into game balance and a discussion on general mechanics. However, I will try to organize my thoughts to respond to those points in future blogs. I greatly enjoy both Starcraft 2 and Broodwar for very much different reasons; which I will be discussing in more detail at a later time.
Thank you all so much for your responses, you guys have brightened up my month
Amazing post indeed. Its not about one game being better, both have their strength and while in SC:BW skill was more obvious and straight forward, SC2 is all about been decisive and making the right calls.
Your comparison to poker is spot on and while pokers lucky nature, just like SC2, can produce many setups, its the tension, bluffing, reading and recovering (without fighting in SC2s case mostly, just rebluffing/taking risks to recover etc) is the true skill, not moving your superior Army into the enemy.
Sadly thats very hard for the casual viewer to judge and casters would be challenged to explain every detail in the short timeframe. What we got from this is "AMAZING FORCEFIELDS" and Proplayers as casters.
Here comes the big problem SC2 has imo, you have to hype the "Movement" for Casuals and you have to hype the "Mindgames" for insiders, while both groups can only enjoy their own approch.
Protoss moves few Units to WT while taking his Nexus, Insiders now consider the different reads and implications, while Casuals are waiting for the action to start.
Zerg makes the right read with Overlord and goes 3 Hatch. Protoss sneaks out a Probe and suddenly the Insider wavers. Opening for Gatepressure? Scouting/Mapcontrol for midgame? Suddenly game gets a little tense as Zerg has no Gas yet. Casual yawns and has fun listening to Caster chatting away.
Protoss going 7 Gate, Zerg gets 2 Overlords in but doesnt see a thing, Insider is shocked and knows it wont be a long game gg go next, Casters starting to focus on Game, there might be fighting soon. Casuals starts to focus.
Units getting warped in, 5 minutes of "back and forth", play by play caster hyping things up, Casual is happy, Insider yawns.
Its good as it is with Casterduos and Balance, but either side can only enjoy half the game in SC2.
On September 20 2013 22:39 Freakling wrote: Your overall conclusions are sound, but your descriptions of how terrain, path finding, unit orientation and collision boxes work and interact in SC1 is just plain wrong.
Your analysis of how the tiles (or grids, as you call them) of the terrain interact with units is. well, just utterly wrong. Units do not "try to sit on top of a tile" as you claim. All that "bobbing around" of units is just because one collision box gets in the way of another.
And those pictures are just bad and totally improper to explain anything about the structural basics of pathfinding in BW. Here's another picture, directly from SCMDraft (map editor), displaying the important aspects much better:
green: terrain tiles grey: sub-tiles (these are the relevant ones for pathing; each tile is made up of 4x4 of them) red: collision boxes of the units. For ground units (except workers with mining command) these are not allow to overlap under normal circumstances, and if they ever do, resolving that becomes highest priority action for the moving algorithm, before any other action. This is why worker drills can disrupt units from attacking. greyed out areas: unwalkable sub-tiles, collision boxes of ground units are not allowed to overlap with these under normal circumstances, resolving terrain collision has priority even over resolving unit collision (although it is possible to transition unit collision into terrain collision, as demonstrated in the Blue Storm video).
As you can see from that picture alone, there is no difference at all between Dragoons, Vultures, Goliaths and Siege Tanks. they all have the exact same collision box and thus behave identical as far as pathfinding goes. So why does one need to micro them (and against them) differently? - Because of other differences like: - unit orientation: vultures always point in a certain direction, to have them ready to fire one must make sure they face the direction of the target. That's why they work best with patrol micro (patrol basically gives them a direction order on top of an attack order), dragoons on the other hand have no orientation, so they are always ready to fire and can be microed by hold position. Tanks are kind of in between, in that they are basically two units in one, one chassis and one turret, each with an orientation of its own. The chassis is facing into the moving direction, but the turret can still rotate freely and stay locked on a target in reach, thus resulting in an overall unit behaviour that is closer to that of the dragoon than the vulture. Goliaths also feature a turret, but a less mobile one that can only rotate a small angle, thus requiring the whole unit to be aimed at a target to attack - attack animation: A dragoon has to stand still for a while to "cough up" that lightball of his and giving it any new order before the projectile is launched will disrupt the attack, Vultures on the other hand fire instantly, if facing the target, and thus can keep moving constantly. Tanks and Goliaths also pretty much fire instantly. - unit speed and acceleration: units don't just stop when ordered to do so, but have a short phase of deceleration. This is relevant when using fast firing, fast moving units like vultures, because it means that they can fire while still moving and just keep moving, when given another move command right after the attack (also important for muta and shuttle micro, for example) - rate of attack: Goliaths pretty much fire one attack after another in rather short succession (not quite like Corsairs, but still...), whereas Vultures, Dragoons and Tanks have really long attack cooldowns, which is why the latter three are much better, or at least easier, to attack-move-micro. - projectile type: Goliaths (vs. ground) and Tanks do not have projectiles, their shots hit almost instantly. Vultures and Dragoons (or Goliaths vs. air), however, fire projectiles that only apply damage once they hit the target. This means that their attacks can be dodged by "removing" the target, like loading it into a transport or bunker, it also means that they are more prone to land overkills, i.e. fire more projectiles at a target than would be required to kill it (tanks do this too, however, especially in siege mode.).
Huh I guess I'll have to wait for Sayle to sum this all up for me a few times maybe then a few more in every future cast
Sayle lost all credibility after he made the entire TL forum base believe that spam clicking attack with an SCV increases dmg by 23%.
Sat in an UMS for 30 minutes spam clicking - nothing happened *sob*
IIRC this used to work for Zerglings with adrenaline upgrade
On September 20 2013 22:39 Freakling wrote: Your overall conclusions are sound, but your descriptions of how terrain, path finding, unit orientation and collision boxes work and interact in SC1 is just plain wrong.
Your analysis of how the tiles (or grids, as you call them) of the terrain interact with units is. well, just utterly wrong. Units do not "try to sit on top of a tile" as you claim. All that "bobbing around" of units is just because one collision box gets in the way of another.
And those pictures are just bad and totally improper to explain anything about the structural basics of pathfinding in BW. Here's another picture, directly from SCMDraft (map editor), displaying the important aspects much better:
green: terrain tiles grey: sub-tiles (these are the relevant ones for pathing; each tile is made up of 4x4 of them) red: collision boxes of the units. For ground units (except workers with mining command) these are not allow to overlap under normal circumstances, and if they ever do, resolving that becomes highest priority action for the moving algorithm, before any other action. This is why worker drills can disrupt units from attacking. greyed out areas: unwalkable sub-tiles, collision boxes of ground units are not allowed to overlap with these under normal circumstances, resolving terrain collision has priority even over resolving unit collision (although it is possible to transition unit collision into terrain collision, as demonstrated in the Blue Storm video).
As you can see from that picture alone, there is no difference at all between Dragoons, Vultures, Goliaths and Siege Tanks. they all have the exact same collision box and thus behave identical as far as pathfinding goes. So why does one need to micro them (and against them) differently? - Because of other differences like: - unit orientation: vultures always point in a certain direction, to have them ready to fire one must make sure they face the direction of the target. That's why they work best with patrol micro (patrol basically gives them a direction order on top of an attack order), dragoons on the other hand have no orientation, so they are always ready to fire and can be microed by hold position. Tanks are kind of in between, in that they are basically two units in one, one chassis and one turret, each with an orientation of its own. The chassis is facing into the moving direction, but the turret can still rotate freely and stay locked on a target in reach, thus resulting in an overall unit behaviour that is closer to that of the dragoon than the vulture. Goliaths also feature a turret, but a less mobile one that can only rotate a small angle, thus requiring the whole unit to be aimed at a target to attack - attack animation: A dragoon has to stand still for a while to "cough up" that lightball of his and giving it any new order before the projectile is launched will disrupt the attack, Vultures on the other hand fire instantly, if facing the target, and thus can keep moving constantly. Tanks and Goliaths also pretty much fire instantly. - unit speed and acceleration: units don't just stop when ordered to do so, but have a short phase of deceleration. This is relevant when using fast firing, fast moving units like vultures, because it means that they can fire while still moving and just keep moving, when given another move command right after the attack (also important for muta and shuttle micro, for example) - rate of attack: Goliaths pretty much fire one attack after another in rather short succession (not quite like Corsairs, but still...), whereas Vultures, Dragoons and Tanks have really long attack cooldowns, which is why the latter three are much better, or at least easier, to attack-move-micro. - projectile type: Goliaths (vs. ground) and Tanks do not have projectiles, their shots hit almost instantly. Vultures and Dragoons (or Goliaths vs. air), however, fire projectiles that only apply damage once they hit the target. This means that their attacks can be dodged by "removing" the target, like loading it into a transport or bunker, it also means that they are more prone to land overkills, i.e. fire more projectiles at a target than would be required to kill it (tanks do this too, however, especially in siege mode.).
Huh I guess I'll have to wait for Sayle to sum this all up for me a few times maybe then a few more in every future cast
Sayle lost all credibility after he made the entire TL forum base believe that spam clicking attack with an SCV increases dmg by 23%.
Sat in an UMS for 30 minutes spam clicking - nothing happened *sob*
IIRC this used to work for Zerglings with adrenaline upgrade
Just amazing, great write up. I love Starcraft, so it is awesome for me to have 2 so different Starcraft RTS games and quiet happy Sc2 didn't became a BW remake, probably because I still play BW as well. But I always wondered about all those BW players, they all used different commands to move units in BW. But when I see them in Sc2 they all seem to only utilize the attack move most of the time. It is mildly confusing for me since I prefer alot of different commands to move my units in Sc2 as well.
Incredible article. This is a fantastic read for those of us who weren't around for BroodWar and have wondered about the differences between BW and SC2 pathing. Thank you for posting!
I'm sad that some people seem to be misunderstanding this blog D: I really hope you do make more though :D Also Freakling, nice no-scope only you would know so much c:
On September 20 2013 03:25 LaLuSh wrote: Interesting and I agree pathing and limitations played a huge part to make Brood War what it was.
When I re-watch BW VODs today I often notice how slow players were at re-inforcing attacks. And how zerg players many times would not be attackign with their entire armies. Often a huge chunk of it would stand idle with all the newly hatched units. I keep thinking: "If this was SC2 UI and pathing, the defending player would die to the reinforcements".
You start to realize how hard it is to actually recreate BW-like gameplay in a different, more modern, engine. Especially for a game that shares a lot of the design parameters of its predecessor (200 supply cap, roughly the same size maps, roughly the same income rates and many of the same units).
What the designers of SC2 did well I think was to make the game more fast paced. Because to attain the same level of depth in a mechanically less challening game -- you must introduce something in order to put players under more stress. But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game.
They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs.
There's a lot of untapped potential in SC2. Even with its current pathing. In that I very much include the microability of units.
Just last week I realized a peculiar quirk of how Blizzard have designed air units in SC2. Air units will only glide if they are perfectly separated when ordered to fire! If they in any way overlap (in their separation radius, that thing that repels them from clumping together), all the units that overlap will come to an immediate halt when ordered to fire!
The most evident way of spotting this phenomenon in pro games is in viking micro vs colossus. When players fire backwards with 4-6 perfectly separated vikings, they will keep their gliding motion while firing. But when the vikings are clumped before firing, they just halt at a stand still and fire.
De-stacking is made to take precedence over gliding in SC2 engine. If this was just an isolated example of lack of attention to detail I'd be more accepting of Blizzard. But really it's a pattern in SC2's entire design.
I strongly agree with this, especially the bolded part. I agree that the differences in pathfinding make a huge difference, but I think the difference is exacerbated by the faster pace and faster, yet condensed economic growth.
I think that even with efficient pathfinding, there is plenty of micro potential, but as army sizes increase and critical masses are reached (which happens extremely fast in sc2), the advantage gained from superior micro decreases.
On September 20 2013 03:25 LaLuSh wrote: What the designers of SC2 did well I think was to make the game more fast paced. Because to attain the same level of depth in a mechanically less challening game -- you must introduce something in order to put players under more stress. But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game.
They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs.
I'd go further than that - if they change a game so much that the spectator's appreciation is supposed to be drawn to a different set of skills, i.e. the spectator shouldn't be focusing on the battles but on whatever happens before all these battles that is really deciding, does it still make sense to make the game look and act like StarCraft? Do we then even need to see the battle instead of focusing purely on the decision making, bluffs and strategy?
If Blizzard wanted to do a different game, they shouldn't have called it StarCraft. Seeing this product they came up with, what I'm left with is that they either had different goals but failed horribly or they just wanted to take advantage of the predecessor without putting too much thought or effort in. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bit of both.
Either way, this is what makes SC2 a bad game in my eyes. Not the fact that it's so different from BW, not that it's mechanically less demanding or its pathfinding is boring, but the fact that it's different and YET it pretends to be the same. It just doesn't work for me. Watching the commentators go nuts over a battle that has clearly been won 10 minutes ago and there's nothing either side can do with it - it's insulting to me as a viewer. But what are the casters supposed to do? It's not their fault the game is badly designed at its very core.
On September 20 2013 03:25 LaLuSh wrote: What the designers of SC2 did well I think was to make the game more fast paced. Because to attain the same level of depth in a mechanically less challening game -- you must introduce something in order to put players under more stress. But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game.
They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs.
I'd go further than that - if they change a game so much that the spectator's appreciation is supposed to be drawn to a different set of skills, i.e. the spectator shouldn't be focusing on the battles but on whatever happens before all these battles that is really deciding, does it still make sense to make the game look and act like StarCraft? Do we then even need to see the battle instead of focusing purely on the decision making, bluffs and strategy?
If Blizzard wanted to do a different game, they shouldn't have called it StarCraft. Seeing this product they came up with, what I'm left with is that they either had different goals but failed horribly or they just wanted to take advantage of the predecessor without putting too much thought or effort in. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bit of both.
Either way, this is what makes SC2 a bad game in my eyes. Not the fact that it's so different from BW, not that it's mechanically less demanding or it's pathfinding is boring, but the fact that it's different and YET it pretends to be the same. It just doesn't work for me. Watching the commentators go nuts over a battle that has clearly been won 10 minutes ago and there's nothing either side can do with it - it's insulting to me as a viewer. But what are the casters supposed to do? It's not their fault the game is badly designed at its very core.
But if they didn't make SC2 then we never wouldve learned the full story of the Queen of Blades D:
On September 20 2013 03:25 LaLuSh wrote: What the designers of SC2 did well I think was to make the game more fast paced. Because to attain the same level of depth in a mechanically less challening game -- you must introduce something in order to put players under more stress. But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game.
They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs.
I'd go further than that - if they change a game so much that the spectator's appreciation is supposed to be drawn to a different set of skills, i.e. the spectator shouldn't be focusing on the battles but on whatever happens before all these battles that is really deciding, does it still make sense to make the game look and act like StarCraft? Do we then even need to see the battle instead of focusing purely on the decision making, bluffs and strategy?
If Blizzard wanted to do a different game, they shouldn't have called it StarCraft. Seeing this product they came up with, what I'm left with is that they either had different goals but failed horribly or they just wanted to take advantage of the predecessor without putting too much thought or effort in. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bit of both.
Either way, this is what makes SC2 a bad game in my eyes. Not the fact that it's so different from BW, not that it's mechanically less demanding or it's pathfinding is boring, but the fact that it's different and YET it pretends to be the same. It just doesn't work for me. Watching the commentators go nuts over a battle that has clearly been won 10 minutes ago and there's nothing either side can do with it - it's insulting to me as a viewer. But what are the casters supposed to do? It's not their fault the game is badly designed at its very core.
But if they didn't make SC2 then we never wouldve learned the full story of the Queen of Blades D:
Ahh.. what a tragedy that would be, to have missed the grand story of Heart of the Swarm.
Good post OP. Definitely crystallizes many of the thoughts I've had about these two games since SC2 came out. Looking forward to a future post when you go over what decemberscalm went over
On September 20 2013 03:25 LaLuSh wrote: What the designers of SC2 did well I think was to make the game more fast paced. Because to attain the same level of depth in a mechanically less challening game -- you must introduce something in order to put players under more stress. But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game.
They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs.
I'd go further than that - if they change a game so much that the spectator's appreciation is supposed to be drawn to a different set of skills, i.e. the spectator shouldn't be focusing on the battles but on whatever happens before all these battles that is really deciding, does it still make sense to make the game look and act like StarCraft? Do we then even need to see the battle instead of focusing purely on the decision making, bluffs and strategy?
If Blizzard wanted to do a different game, they shouldn't have called it StarCraft. Seeing this product they came up with, what I'm left with is that they either had different goals but failed horribly or they just wanted to take advantage of the predecessor without putting too much thought or effort in. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bit of both.
Either way, this is what makes SC2 a bad game in my eyes. Not the fact that it's so different from BW, not that it's mechanically less demanding or its pathfinding is boring, but the fact that it's different and YET it pretends to be the same. It just doesn't work for me. Watching the commentators go nuts over a battle that has clearly been won 10 minutes ago and there's nothing either side can do with it - it's insulting to me as a viewer. But what are the casters supposed to do? It's not their fault the game is badly designed at its very core.
I don't think they changed the focus of the game intentionally, as the "terrible terrible damage" philosophy seems to imply that the battles are the focus, however the result of this philosophy is that the damage is so high (along with other factors) that micro during battles is less significant.
On September 20 2013 22:39 Freakling wrote: Your overall conclusions are sound, but your descriptions of how terrain, path finding, unit orientation and collision boxes work and interact in SC1 is just plain wrong.
Your analysis of how the tiles (or grids, as you call them) of the terrain interact with units is. well, just utterly wrong. Units do not "try to sit on top of a tile" as you claim. All that "bobbing around" of units is just because one collision box gets in the way of another.
And those pictures are just bad and totally improper to explain anything about the structural basics of pathfinding in BW. Here's another picture, directly from SCMDraft (map editor), displaying the important aspects much better:
green: terrain tiles grey: sub-tiles (these are the relevant ones for pathing; each tile is made up of 4x4 of them) red: collision boxes of the units. For ground units (except workers with mining command) these are not allow to overlap under normal circumstances, and if they ever do, resolving that becomes highest priority action for the moving algorithm, before any other action. This is why worker drills can disrupt units from attacking. greyed out areas: unwalkable sub-tiles, collision boxes of ground units are not allowed to overlap with these under normal circumstances, resolving terrain collision has priority even over resolving unit collision (although it is possible to transition unit collision into terrain collision, as demonstrated in the Blue Storm video).
As you can see from that picture alone, there is no difference at all between Dragoons, Vultures, Goliaths and Siege Tanks. they all have the exact same collision box and thus behave identical as far as pathfinding goes. So why does one need to micro them (and against them) differently? - Because of other differences like: - unit orientation: vultures always point in a certain direction, to have them ready to fire one must make sure they face the direction of the target. That's why they work best with patrol micro (patrol basically gives them a direction order on top of an attack order), dragoons on the other hand have no orientation, so they are always ready to fire and can be microed by hold position. Tanks are kind of in between, in that they are basically two units in one, one chassis and one turret, each with an orientation of its own. The chassis is facing into the moving direction, but the turret can still rotate freely and stay locked on a target in reach, thus resulting in an overall unit behaviour that is closer to that of the dragoon than the vulture. Goliaths also feature a turret, but a less mobile one that can only rotate a small angle, thus requiring the whole unit to be aimed at a target to attack - attack animation: A dragoon has to stand still for a while to "cough up" that lightball of his and giving it any new order before the projectile is launched will disrupt the attack, Vultures on the other hand fire instantly, if facing the target, and thus can keep moving constantly. Tanks and Goliaths also pretty much fire instantly. - unit speed and acceleration: units don't just stop when ordered to do so, but have a short phase of deceleration. This is relevant when using fast firing, fast moving units like vultures, because it means that they can fire while still moving and just keep moving, when given another move command right after the attack (also important for muta and shuttle micro, for example) - rate of attack: Goliaths pretty much fire one attack after another in rather short succession (not quite like Corsairs, but still...), whereas Vultures, Dragoons and Tanks have really long attack cooldowns, which is why the latter three are much better, or at least easier, to attack-move-micro. - projectile type: Goliaths (vs. ground) and Tanks do not have projectiles, their shots hit almost instantly. Vultures and Dragoons (or Goliaths vs. air), however, fire projectiles that only apply damage once they hit the target. This means that their attacks can be dodged by "removing" the target, like loading it into a transport or bunker, it also means that they are more prone to land overkills, i.e. fire more projectiles at a target than would be required to kill it (tanks do this too, however, especially in siege mode.).
This needs to be read by everyone.
Some other nitpicky stuff: units' collision boxes do not change based on orientation. Dragoons' boxes do not expand when the legs extend, ultras' boxes are always horizontally longer whether the unit is facing horizontally or vertically, vultures are actually always squares despite their appearance (as Freakling mentioned), etc.
I just wan to say wow. . . It is really enlightening? I really feel good reading this. It is something not many could write.
After reading, and watching video,
I feel SC1 limited pathfinding is more realistic. Where units movement are limited by accessible block of space? compare to SC2 every unit just go there, and rearrange themselves once they reach there.
Oso the battles, where there is human factors in controlling units, such as vulture and dragoon control. That cause realistic.
In SC2, like u say, like chess, not much u can do when battle begins. It loses some realistic feel I tink. I always feel BW feels more realistic and fun to watch than SC2, and I always cannot explain it 100%... After reading this blog, I kind off understand where this feel came from .
Some part of the blog, makes me feel SC2 feels like Robot basketball games, where robot have similar skillset and lack human factor. It is not as fun as real human playing basketball?
Or maybe streetfighter where 1 button = 1 move. I dont know,
Okay I am talking rubbish, I still think reason for my little bit dislike for SC2 come from the unit design. Like the hardcounters, unit design for specific reasons...(hellbat for ...zealot? Snipe for...spellcaster? Viking for...? etc..)
I really hate viking and thor, compare to the units they are going to replace, it is like a step backwards. EDIT: They feel like clumsy units. That is how I feel
The whole ecosystem is too man made, feels like tailor to make the game balanced and competitive.
On September 23 2013 08:36 papalion wrote: Sorry, but I am starting to be a bit frustrated with these threads. You all remind of the trolls in the HoN forums that told us all how good Dota2 was.
First: Where are the big Frisbee events compared to MLB?
Second: When I was posting in this thread earlier, I was told that my arguments were bad and that "people have to get out of a bubble that SC2 is evolving". That being obviously complete nonsense, I started to feel that I was talking to truthers. And that is what you BW nostalgia guys are. Truthers that one cannot discuss with, because it does not matter what I say and how good my arguments are. Even if SC2 had like 1800 billion billion viewers, you would still miss your old times.
I really do appreciate to know that all of you nostalgia guys really loved (past tense) and miss BW, a game that still exists, even tournaments are being played. I am bored with reading how good BW was, how hard to learn, how the bad pathing was so awesome, or any other limitation. My proposal would be: Why not tie one hand to your back while playing SC2? It would make the game so much harder, so much more enjoyable.
It is ok to love a game. I love Medieval 2: Total War, and think that any other TW game that came after is inferior to it, but that does not make go to a forum and whine the whole time how bad e.g. Napoleon is. I do not tell Napoleon players that their game needs Jihads or Crusades
The article of the OP is a good example of how destructive criticism can be disguised as constructive. He at first says he is "in the middle" of the extremes of opinions, but then he says the gameplay is seriously flawed, and admits he has no ideas how to fix it. This is not helpful, this is whining hidden behind a wall of "smart" writing.
You all feel you are contributing. If you would have an interest in contributing seriously, you would stop telling SC2 players "What is wrong with the game" and how great BW was. It was good for obvious reasons, but you will never understand it. You truthers like more to believe in miracles, that Blizzard has made a "lucky strike" with BW, completely ignoring the long history BW had to get through to be THE professional computer game on earth. You would go to the BW section, and discuss BW, watch BW streams, play BW, and be happy with BW. So long guys!
I am 33 now and I played tons of games since I was 7, I've also played dota and BW, but in my opinion it is SC2 and HoN that are better. My opinion. That does not make me go to a dota2 or BW forum and tell the players how elitist I am because I like a game they do not play.
You know what? Warcraft 1 was better than BW because you had control groups with only 4 units max! See how elitist I am? Nah, that was kidding.
EDit: Forgot to tell you that I won't make any more posts here in this thread. my opion is clear, and I've stopped talking to truthers here or anywhere else.
You did either not fully read (my guess) or comprehend the op. Here's a thought: when an op clearly put so much effort into his post, at least give him (and everyone else) the courtesy of completely reading it before going "amagad another sc2 bw thread gotta defend my gameeeeeeee".
Now I get that you're tired of shitty bashing threads of which there has been an abundance, but that is not the case here. The op broke the games down to the most basic level and examined the effects certain game mechanics have on players and observers. Now you might label this as "not constructive" because Blizzard can't completely rewrite pathing and unit AI and whatnot, but that's just stupid. It is very constructive in terms of the discourse the community has (should have) about the quality of the game(s). I have played Bw for 10 years, and stopped playing Sc2 (the game I had been waiting for for 10+ years) after a few months. Watching the game played in tournaments doesn't remotely give me the excitement that Bw did. And even though I considered myself a very good player at both games, I never really could say why. Now I can point to this thread. And you're completely missing the point with your analogies. Having "bad" pathing and unit AI is what made Broodwar harder to play/master and thus more exciting to play/watch. So yes, SC2 is "better" technically it's just not as much fun to play and watch.
Now please ignore all the statements broodwar developers have given out over the years how much of the game design has been "accidental" aka lucky and please do go on to confuse game mechanics with balancing and meta game changes that actually are what did evolve bw over the years. Also make sure to label everyone with a different view as conspiracy nuts or "truthers", especially in the light of player numbers in south korean pc bangs. I guess the people of Seoul (not to mention the progamers retiring from SC2 and streaming Bw) are all just blind fools following elitist TL-net truther propaganda.
You look cute in that corner with your fingers in your ears. Have a consolation cookie.
Edit: On a sidenote, I agree that HoN is a better game than Dota/2, the problem there is that S2 couldn't market water to a man dying of thirst.
Wow thanks OP! This helped me understand my own thoughts on why I don't like SC2 compared to BW and stopped playing after a few months. Worst thing is it is hard to even play BW now days with the lack of support fro Blizzard and all the lat issues. I think for most of us all we ever wanted was some better looking Frisbee and online support with SC2.
This post is so amazing I keep coming back to it. I explained it to some of my friends as how pathing works in bw compared to sc2 and how difficult it was back in the day
So this thread has been buried for one year in the dust? This was an enlightening read! It has given me the (probably) complete understanding of the essential difference between SC1 and SC2. Deathballs vs multiple spread out armies. Stalling and tactical walkarounds vs waves of direct confrontation over and over again. No bonjwa vs eras of absolute dominance.
Too bad, this also means the hopes of return for the legends of BW are very unlikely. On the other hand, we have something like Taeja who excels at intuition, game-reading, adaptation and decision-making. No surprises why he is like the most consistent with golden results.