Let me tell you a little bit about GunZ: The Duel.
It is February 2004. It's been six years since MAIET was founded in South Korea. The name stands for "Team Innovation." It's also been jokingly referred to as "putting the I back in TEAM." As you can see MAIET is team spelled backwards, with the "I" added. MAIET originally started as a team of five researches that wanted to create innovate games.
For the past year, the company has been working very hard on what will later turn out to be MAIET's breakthrough into international fame. The team members are excited. The Project GunZ: The Duel is about to go into beta testing.
GunZ: The Duel is a first person shooter game. MAIET's wanted to give gamers a chance to do the same stylish moves that you can also see in movies. Gun-wielders can shoot while rolling around, run on walls, and perform wall-jumps.
However, true freedom of movement is achieved when you are holding a sword. With a sword, you can dash out of the way with lightning speed like a ninja. You can launch your opponents into the air, where they are sitting ducks. And you can even block bullets with your sword.
The game was rapidly growing in popularity. And then, during beta-test, a critical flaw in the game engine was discovered. MAIET started getting emails. The forums were being flooded with protests.
What had happened? Somebody had discovered that you can switch to your gun instantly during the "slashing" animation of a sword. This led to the development of new moves not in the original game, for example, the aptly named "slash shot." Hit somebody with your sword, then switch to your shotgun and hit them at point blank range while they are stunned by sword hit.
The game had been balanced for sword vs gunfights. Sword-wielders need to get in range to hit, but they also move around much faster than gun-wielders. Now, it had become possible to move around like a sword-wielder and then switch to your gun instantly whenever you need to shoot.
People developed moves like the "half-step:" You jump up into the air holding your sword. Then you do a "dash" to move at lightning speed. During your dash, you slash, switch to your gun, shoot, and switch back to your sword. Here the sword slash is not even intended to hit anyone, you just use it to exploit the game-engine bug.
Now people who did these new moves were practically invincible. They moved around much faster than allowed by the game engine, and they were able to shoot from a distance too. They were impossible to hit and their shotguns and revolvers took your hp off fast.
These moves were very difficult to perform. You need a lot of keypresses in a short amout of time (high apm) and your timing needs to be very good. Most starcraft players would be able to do it, but among the newcomers to GunZ, the beta testers, there were not many that could do it.
The game's playerbase was still expanding fast, but so were the amount of complaints on the forums and in MAIET's email box. MAIET realized that, with such a steep learning curve, the existence of the exploit could potentially turn off new people trying GunZ. They were getting destroyed by the more experienced players that exploited the game engine. And besides, the programmers felt embarrassed that their engine allowed such an exploit.
After enough criticism from the players, MAIET finally decided to listen to the community. MAIET patched GunZ to fix the exploit. And so, they made the biggest mistake of their career. Almost instantly, hundreds of players left GunZ never to come back. And hundreds more were leaving every day. Far from making the game more appealing to new players, GunZ: The Duel almost vanished off the radar.
MAIET hadn't realized that the exploit was what had allowed the game to grow so fast. The exploit turned an otherwise ordinary and boring game into an action-packed, frantic shooting game, where you need to have lightning quick aim in your right hand and very good consistency in your left. One slip-up and you don't complete the move you intended, and you are taking the full damage of a shotgun hit for sure. And with the people moving around so fast, you BETTER have fast and accurate aim.
To their credit, MAIET realized their mistake and immediately published a letter of apology to the community. They promised that the "Korean style," as it was called, was to have a place in the game forever and they'd written code to ensure it would never accidentally be broken in later releases. Their open-mindedness is what allowed MAIET to grow from a small South Korean no-name into a game development company with international fame.
The moral of the story? Game producers don't know what it takes to produce a good, competitive game. An e-sport game. To complicate the matter, they get inaccurate feedback from the community. It seems very, very hard to make a good game "on purpose." It only happens by accident. With exploits. Like strafe-jumping in Quake, Korean style in GunZ, and all the things we've learned about the StarCraft engine over the years.
Deliberately programmed in stuff like "blink" simply isn't as amazing as discovered tricks like "muta stack."
And the bad thing about the new, consistent 3D engine of SC2, is that there aren't many glitches possible. They units will behave the way the programmers wanted to.
Completely agreed. Things that make or break a game is not something that is purposefully put in to make the learning curve steep. Half step, slash shot are all techniques that evolved through the exploit of the bug and made the game much more fun and enjoyable
I completely agree and I think this combined with that one article that was written about Broodwar having many "overpowered" things in it to make it dynamic and exciting but still balanced is what SC2 needs. It seems that Blizzard thinks they can make an exciting and compelling game simply by tweaking numbers back and forth until everything is perfectly "balanced", but that's not what is going to make an exciting game. It's going to make an incredibly balanced, bland, boring game. If they continue on the path they are right now with making sure to take care with every single unit and number in the game and tweaking numbers and ONLY numbers, they are going to end up with a game that isn't going to last because it won't be exciting to play or watch at all. It isn't the fact that marauders do 10/20/30 damage, or the fact that broodlords have 150 or 130 or whatever health that is going to make a competitive game. It's tweaking the actual characteristics of units to make them not so boring and push the boundaries of what is considered "overpowered" while still keeping a balance between the three races that is going to turn SC2 into an esport.
Agreed, but if sc1:bw had dozens of units in one control group, muta stacking would be OP, so for the game to be competitive, Blizzard should have fixed this glitch, like they fixed many others.
So now, with this 3d engine, MBS, dozens of units in 1 group, things are pretty much different. I am not sure exploits would be beneficial , but i may be wrong
I started playing GunZ when it first came out. The first time I saw someone slash canceling i was like WTF YOU HACKER!!! But then when I learned how to do it I rocked all the nubs. It really felt awesome because it was something that not a lot of people could do at that point, and it just made you such a strong player. Doing it perfectly was hard, but when you did it you were seen as either a Hacker or a Pro.
Dangit, GunZ was so good. Did the game ever officially come out?
damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
On May 09 2010 23:14 karebear wrote: damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
Not only that, but the fact that with superior micro the terran player could then possibly still beat those lurkers that initially seem "overpowered" to the casual observer. What made games like Broodwar and I'm assuming Gunz (never played it) so amazing was the fact that while they had so many seemingly overpowered things in them (dark swarm, lurkers, reavers, spider mines, siege tanks, etc etc) you could overcome them by having superior control and micro and being a better player in general. Now all there is left is completely straightforward units in SC2 that can't be overcome by superior control or microing, and can only be overcome by superior macro and just having more units than your opponent. Big blob armies clashing isn't exciting gameplay and it's what is going to kill SC2 in the long run as a competitive game.
This isn't as useful as you might think. How are you supposed to know, as a game developer, which glitch is helpful and which is truly destructive? As you say, community feedback is almost useless; it's all reactionary 'oh no oh no a bug we are doomed'. So how does Blizzard distinguish between an unstoppable 6-pool rush and mutalisk stacking? Between a larva bug and hold lurkers? We see here on TL constant complaints of imbalance here and there; how could Blizzard tell, if a bug truly walked the line? It would need the star sense of the BW pros. It may be that glitches give a sense of character to a game, but to rely on them is to rely on luck. I would much rather let my own game design decide whether my game sinks or swims.
Yay a game company fucked up, lets make an induction; every game company fucks up when it comes to esports!
You even mentioned strafe jumping, MAIET may have been incompetent idiots by taking out something that made the game great. Now theres ID software which actually made strafe jumping a centerpiece in their future games, in Quake Live you actually have to use this "glitch" to finish the practice halls.
Using this for Blizzard is also a bit flawed, we've seen numerous times that they listen to the community and know that the competitive gaming community is very different from the casual community. The whole phoenix moving shot thing appeared in the game like a week after there was huge discussion about the moving shot here, sure the mechanic wasn't exactly what we wanted but they might even fix that. They do listen and aren't going to fuck up like MAIET.
this is how it is on any video game u play competitively whether it be console or pc. games that were made to be played just for fun will turn into a heavily competivie game because of unintentional flaws the game has that can be exploited. those flaws being so small/complicated only a few ppl will be a ble to pull off and thus earn the name of being "pro" at that game because it sets a huge gap between the normal players and the pro players who exploit these things.
i used this example before but i still believe super smash bros is the biggest example. the game was never meant to be played on at a competitive level and infact the head designer hated the fact that it was. SSBM became huge at the competitive level despite the fact that it never was meant to be played competitively. when brawl came out they tried to erase what made melee so competitive (the wave dashing just as one of many examples) so the game can be enjoyed equally among all player types. yet it still failed, brawl still became competitive and alot of "new" tricks were found to distinguish the pro players from the normal players.
its like this in all games. basically all the devs have to do is worry about balance and once thats out the way the game will evolve in the competitive scene on its own.
Fantastic post, but SC2 isn't gunz. SC2 being easier will only bring in more sales for blizzard. I completely agree that all the non intetional micro bugs are what made SC1 a truly amazing e-sports game, but I still 100% believe SC2 will be a good e-sports game and also a fantastic game for the casual player, unlike SC1, where to be even D+ level (without cheesing every game) it required a ton more skill than just about any other RTS on the market save WC3.
Games can be competitive and glitchless. Look at Counter Strike, one of the first huge team games that really doesn't have any glitches that brought it to where it is. It is good because of solid gameplay that reinforces skill, teamwork and decision making. The better player will win.
Fizban140: Counter-strike has many bugs that makes 1.6 the superior game to Source.
First of all, spammable walls are a side effect from the engine of GldSrc - you can't get unspammable walls in 1.6. In source, spammable walls are removed, dumbing down gameplay.
Secondly, AWP quickswitch in 1.5 was basically a bug which was popularised by Ksharp. This bug involved animation cancelling of the AWP-afterfire. Swapping to a deagle and back to hte AWP would allow a quicker firing rate for the AWP rather than not switching.
Thirdly, and most important of all.. Duckrunning. Duckrunning is a technique used to run without making sound, it also screws up hitboxes, increasing the skill ceiling. Valve fixed Duckrunning in 2008, causing it to make sound when duckrunning, but prior to that it was super abused, and a very big part of Counter-strike - it still is, players regularly use duckrunning to muck up their own hitboxes, making it hard for the enemy to hit them.
Fourth.. HE grenade EXPLOSIONS pass through walls.
Fifth... Dropping guns or throwing nades at doors will open them - this bug is removed in Source, making it less viable to rush through doors such as nuke squeeky.
Sixth ... Bunnyhopping, no need to say anything about this.
Seventh - on de_nuke you can boost through nest roof by stacking two players and you go up through the roof.
Eighth.. Throwing grenades THROUGH walls.
Nineth ... There are many rooftop, skybox routes abused by top teams that make it part of the game.. Banana on inferno has one, Yard on nuke has one, you can defend dust2 short by boosting up to the roof that was NEVER intended to be a spot. 3 out of the 4 majorly played maps on Counter-strike have bugs that define and refine them.
All the bugs i've mentioned might not mean much to you, but Counter-strike is a game that is also built on bugs.
Now having said all that, I do disagree with the point being made that there has to be bugs for a great game to be made. WC3 didn't have any NOTEWORTHY bugs, and it was still the most internationally played RTS. (I said internationally, dont' rage at me)
I don't really consider bunny hopping a glitch, more just a sprint since you can't really bunny hop like you would in Quake. I forgot about duckrunning, but the point is is that you can ignore all the glitches and still be an amazing player. With the possible exception of bunny hopping.
I remember Gunz. The canceling technique was called "Butterflying" if I remember correctly, and basically dominated the matches if you ever got past level 10. Every round would consist of some 10 people furiously jumping and airdashing around wildly swinging swords and slashcanceling shotgun blasts. I left because it was too hard :p
A 1v1 between two expert butterflyers was incredible to watch tho.
@Fizban As with any other game in CS you need to know the game perfectly to have a chance at it.. It's just one of the things CS needs in addition to a host of other things..
Valve obviously considered bunnyhopping a glitch. From 1.3 to 1.6, they removed bunnyhopping.
It's back in Source, but you need a lot less feeling to do it in Source. Duckrunning is not possible to ignore at a high level of play in 1.6. most players don't break from duckrunning at all nowadays in the modern, 2010 CS, when it comes down to a clutch situation.
Bunnyhopping is a glitch in Quake that made it an amazing game. Bunnyhopping is a glitch in CS.. that got removed.
Very nice read, I agree that tricks such as in this game and the starcraft engine make the game much more fast paced and interesting. Try imagining brood war without any of the exploits and micro tricks, and you will see a boring game.
On May 10 2010 00:04 Newguy wrote: Very nice read, I agree that tricks such as in this game and the starcraft engine make the game much more fast paced and interesting. Try imagining brood war without any of the exploits and micro tricks, and you will see SCII.
I kid, I kid.
Anyway, does anyone have any more examples? I can only think of fighting games and FPS. Not too many RTSus.
Well said, I agree completely. This is actually my big fear concerning sc2. No matter what tricks they try to put into the game, only a game with incredible depth in terms of mechanics can really be competitive.
Before the release of the beta I was actutally certain that Blizzard would hide similar tricks in sc2's engine that would be discovered at some point. After seeing them handle the various balance issues and reading their interviews etc, I'm almost convinced they have no idea why Starcraft became what it is or how to make a similar game
And all that talk about Gunz made me nostalgic... It is such a fun game to play.
Yeah, SHAME ON YOU BLIZZARD FOR MAKING THE GAME TOO BUG FREE!
Its a bit ironic though. It's not easy (read: you have to be lucky) to get good bugs that make the game fun and challenging.
Where is the line between a bug thats abusable to such an extend where you have to remove it, and a good bug though? do you balance the game around said bugs?
there is alot of things that could go very very wrong.
How should game developers go on by making their game intentionally very hard for the pros, without making it too unintuitive for the newcomers?
What the RTS community really wants, seems to be some sort of devil child born from RTS and Fighting games, where you make units, and actually have to do "moves" with them (not abilities, but actual tricks) to be fully used.
But where does such moves become too hard?
Does game developers simply have to get lucky to make a good game?
I do agree with you, but I hope people aren't counting out things like this happening in SC2. Keep in mind that we've only had the game for a few months. Who know's what little tricks we will discover in the future?
On May 10 2010 00:44 Backpack wrote: I do agree with you, but I hope people aren't counting out things like this happening in SC2. Keep in mind that we've only had the game for a few months. Who know's what little tricks we will discover in the future?
Well, we'd be looking now because it's not '98, where there aren't even that many RTS's out or too much interest in the game at its release. IMO, SC2 is being given too much of a chance simply because it has the word "StarCraft" in its name. Not to mention the engine isn't very bug-friendly.
Nice read, overall it's bit difficult to distinct wheter the bug is game breaking or gives more depth allowing "technique".
I used to play Gunz from international to ijji, community went horrible over time, but the game had really high potential. Too bad MAIET never fully put it into use and gave it little to none support after initial release.
Back in day before shared cooldown on shotgun shots, just swapping resulted into shotguns spam that is nowadays comaparable to "reload shot" and lots of other stuff got minor "fixes" but players found workarounds.
I just think it's more to do with the immaturity of the games design world, rather than making a generalized statement which basically reads "you can't make e-sports intentionally competitive, only accidental bugs can do that." This is just not true. It's a design choice not to try and theory craft any complex micro into the game, that's clearly what blizzard have decided. Take muta for example, you could have a spell on them that boosts their speed for a short amount of time in a abstract manner, like acceleration on turning or something really odd like that. This could then in fact allow them to be microed in some way requiring high APM. But blizzard chose to keep it simple with abilities like blink, that are easy for casual demographics to understand, combined with a lack of knowledge of the competitive e-sports scene by their design team. The likely-hood of someone who actually understands and follows any esports, also being the head designer of a major gaming company is pretty small, and that's probably why we haven't seen a gaming company produce a game yet that's designed as an esport and works brilliantly as one. I mean why do you think blizzard is listening to the sc community? because they know they don't understand esports on any where near the same level as the collective that is TL. Very few companies when developing games listen to communities, i mean if you take any big casual game like the sims, the designers will pretty much do what the hell they want for the next expansions, they don't release a beta and patch in slowly new dogs in to seee how the 8 year old girls react to the balance changes! Because they know the fans aren't really going to tell them anything useful that they don't already know, they instead just observe reactions to different features by their demographics to decide what to do in the next game/version. The point is i don't think that making an esports thats awesome is beyond the capability of any humans, and only by random chance can it happen.
Sadly, I read through the whole OP wondering what exactly it had to do with starcraft. I was thrown a few morsels in the last 2 lines. I think the OP is stupid. For every "great" game that succeeded because of a "glitch", you can pull out 20 awesome games that did it right.
Anyways, the only thing that does concern me of SC2 is that it is pretty boring with the lack of... anything. There's little tactical consideration in the game and I do agree that OP abilities bring magic to the game.
On May 10 2010 00:56 Vexx wrote: Sadly, I read through the whole OP wondering what exactly it had to do with starcraft. I was thrown a few morsels in the last 2 lines. I think the OP is stupid. For every "great" game that succeeded because of a "glitch", you can pull out 20 awesome games that did it right.
Anyways, the only thing that does concern me of SC2 is that it is pretty boring with the lack of... anything. There's little tactical consideration in the game and I do agree that OP abilities bring magic to the game.
Care to name a few games as such with the success of BW? I'd be hard-pressed to find 20, or even a handful.
But yeah, I think SC2 is pretty much lacking any substance that would be needed to make it a success.
GunZ was bad because it was plagued by a shitty netcode (peer to peer style) that required you to lead your targets based on ping (for example if you ping 100 to someone you shoot about 1.5 bodies ahead of where you think they are going to be), hacks that still go on today, from blatant hacks to hacks that disconnect you, to what fucked the game up now (underclocking your CPU) that somehow makes you not need to lead and you're model skips everywhere making you not being able to be hit, and finally premium items, that gave you a significant advantage (healing items that healed 2x more than regular items, and clothing that gave you much more HP/AP than regular items), which many people were not willing to pay for (the healing items were 6$ a month, and that was too much for bad game). The developers took extremely long to patch or ban whoever used whatever hacks, and placed a huge emphasis on premium items to make a couple more dollars rather than a better, more balanced game.
Overall, if you lost you had a plethora of excuses to deploy, and that created a terrible community of immature idiots. (go on gunzfactor.com/forums if you want to witness it).
Great post, I absolutely agree. I've played GunZ for a while (not enough to get good at the stuff) but I watched the movies a lot. I remember there was one Korean who was absurdly good, much better than everybody else, though I forgot his name. Having very few (or better, one) player dominate like that is always a sign of a great game, where the personal skill of a player is highly significant and can be improved very far. Something that e.g. Wc3 didn't have, but BW still has after 12 years (Flash might be the most dominant player ever).
Yeah, SHAME ON YOU BLIZZARD FOR MAKING THE GAME TOO BUG FREE!
Its a bit ironic though. It's not easy (read: you have to be lucky) to get good bugs that make the game fun and challenging.
Where is the line between a bug thats abusable to such an extend where you have to remove it, and a good bug though? do you balance the game around said bugs?
there is alot of things that could go very very wrong.
How should game developers go on by making their game intentionally very hard for the pros, without making it too unintuitive for the newcomers?
What the RTS community really wants, seems to be some sort of devil child born from RTS and Fighting games, where you make units, and actually have to do "moves" with them (not abilities, but actual tricks) to be fully used.
But where does such moves become too hard?
Does game developers simply have to get lucky to make a good game?
You (and others) are missing the point. It's not necessarily about bugs. Muta stacking is not a bug for example. People always knew that BW keeps unit formations as long as the units are close enough together (the magic box) and selecting a remote units like an overlord breaks those formations, making the units move to the selected point individually. UMS maps where you needed to abuse this for casting mass psi storms and Garimtos (was it him? I can't find any reference to it anymore; maybe somebody remembers this) famous mass disruption web have been known pretty much since the beginning. It's about creating an engine that works on some basic rules, but does not foresee any possible situation. The more modern and complex games become, the more the programmers tend to cover any eventualities and thus have to write out how everything works out in the game. This reduces the possibility of players to find new stuff that they can abuse. Sure, sometimes those things are too easy to abuse, breaking the game. Then they have to be patched (like the reaver shooting right after being dropped in the initial BW). Others are too hard to abuse, or very hard, like goliath+dropship killing sunkens or tanks + dropship killing dragoons (<3 nazgul!). Some are just perfect.
Man I want some company to realize all this and make a good game again.
On May 10 2010 00:56 Vexx wrote: Sadly, I read through the whole OP wondering what exactly it had to do with starcraft. I was thrown a few morsels in the last 2 lines. I think the OP is stupid. For every "great" game that succeeded because of a "glitch", you can pull out 20 awesome games that did it right.
Anyways, the only thing that does concern me of SC2 is that it is pretty boring with the lack of... anything. There's little tactical consideration in the game and I do agree that OP abilities bring magic to the game.
Do you really believe that? Do you know how low level SCBW would be without the glitches that made it what it is today? Understandably, glitches aren't necessary in the development of a competitive community (for example, the game A.V.A on I J J I) however when they are found they raise the skill ceiling dramatically and require a higher level of hand speed, or a better understanding of the game. In sc2, with my pathetic ~120 apm, i often find myself out of resources, with my units being controlled fine, and all my nexii producing... and just sitting there. There's nothing to occupy all of MY hand speed, and i'm only a ~1400 plat player. When i watch vods of really good players, they are often a lot the same, the only difference between them and me is game execution. How many years is it until people have almost perfectly figured out the mental side of the game, and mastered the physical side? 2? 3? and then where does the competitive community go? Games like Starcraft, CS, etc. were and still are so good because they're so freakin' HARD. SC2 is easy, and while i fully support it's development as an e-sport and as a game, it's left me kind of disappointed so far.
Yeah I agree, anyone who's played BW properly knows there are plenty of glitches that enhance the game. And the glitches are only possible because of how sloppy the engine is. Blizzard did well by ignoring the glitches that made the game better and removing the ones that broke it. So it's luck that the glitches appear, but a good decision to keep them in.
It also highlights the importance of listening to complaints carefully. Of course the people who think something is imbalanced will have the loudest voice, but it doesn't mean they're right; the content majority just have no need to kick up a fuss.
The moral of the story? Game producers don't know what it takes to produce a good, competitive game. An e-sport game. To complicate the matter, they get inaccurate feedback from the community. It seems very, very hard to make a good game "on purpose." It only happens by accident. With exploits. Like strafe-jumping in Quake, Korean style in GunZ, and all the things we've learned about the StarCraft engine over the years.
I disagree with this statement. If you look at one common attribute between GunZ, Quake, Starcraft, CS, their is one common feature that is shared among all of them. The degree of control allotted to the player, and an inherently good, complex game ignoring Esports.
If a game is sufficiently complex AND enough control is allotted to the player, I think a basic principal would state that more likely then not, the players would engage in what could be called "emergent" play. If starcraft wants to be an Esport, well, they already got the second part down, all blizzard has to do is increase the amount of control alloted to the player. This doesn't have to be front loaded, IE: Make it really hard to move or mine, but back loaded too, in other words, make a complex ability or unit that requires a lot of micro to use successfully.
On May 09 2010 22:45 Phrujbaz wrote: Let me tell you a little bit about GunZ: The Duel.
It is February 2004. It's been six years since MAIET was founded in South Korea. The name stands for "Team Innovation." It's also been jokingly referred to as "putting the I back in TEAM." As you can see MAIET is team spelled backwards, with the "I" added. MAIET originally started as a team of five researches that wanted to create innovate games.
For the past year, the company has been working very hard on what will later turn out to be MAIET's breakthrough into international fame. The team members are excited. The Project GunZ: The Duel is about to go into beta testing.
GunZ: The Duel is a first person shooter game. MAIET's wanted to give gamers a chance to do the same stylish moves that you can also see in movies. Gun-wielders can shoot while rolling around, run on walls, and perform wall-jumps.
However, true freedom of movement is achieved when you are holding a sword. With a sword, you can dash out of the way with lightning speed like a ninja. You can launch your opponents into the air, where they are sitting ducks. And you can even block bullets with your sword.
The game was rapidly growing in popularity. And then, during beta-test, a critical flaw in the game engine was discovered. MAIET started getting emails. The forums were being flooded with protests.
What had happened? Somebody had discovered that you can switch to your gun instantly during the "slashing" animation of a sword. This led to the development of new moves not in the original game, for example, the aptly named "slash shot." Hit somebody with your sword, then switch to your shotgun and hit them at point blank range while they are stunned by sword hit.
The game had been balanced for sword vs gunfights. Sword-wielders need to get in range to hit, but they also move around much faster than gun-wielders. Now, it had become possible to move around like a sword-wielder and then switch to your gun instantly whenever you need to shoot.
People developed moves like the "half-step:" You jump up into the air holding your sword. Then you do a "dash" to move at lightning speed. During your dash, you slash, switch to your gun, shoot, and switch back to your sword. Here the sword slash is not even intended to hit anyone, you just use it to exploit the game-engine bug.
Now people who did these new moves were practically invincible. They moved around much faster than allowed by the game engine, and they were able to shoot from a distance too. They were impossible to hit and their shotguns and revolvers took your hp off fast.
These moves were very difficult to perform. You need a lot of keypresses in a short amout of time (high apm) and your timing needs to be very good. Most starcraft players would be able to do it, but among the newcomers to GunZ, the beta testers, there were not many that could do it.
The game's playerbase was still expanding fast, but so were the amount of complaints on the forums and in MAIET's email box. MAIET realized that, with such a steep learning curve, the existence of the exploit could potentially turn off new people trying GunZ. They were getting destroyed by the more experienced players that exploited the game engine. And besides, the programmers felt embarrassed that their engine allowed such an exploit.
After enough criticism from the players, MAIET finally decided to listen to the community. MAIET patched GunZ to fix the exploit. And so, they made the biggest mistake of their career. Almost instantly, hundreds of players left GunZ never to come back. And hundreds more were leaving every day. Far from making the game more appealing to new players, GunZ: The Duel almost vanished off the radar.
MAIET hadn't realized that the exploit was what had allowed the game to grow so fast. The exploit turned an otherwise ordinary and boring game into an action-packed, frantic shooting game, where you need to have lightning quick aim in your right hand and very good consistency in your left. One slip-up and you don't complete the move you intended, and you are taking the full damage of a shotgun hit for sure. And with the people moving around so fast, you BETTER have fast and accurate aim.
To their credit, MAIET realized their mistake and immediately published a letter of apology to the community. They promised that the "Korean style," as it was called, was to have a place in the game forever and they'd written code to ensure it would never accidentally be broken in later releases. Their open-mindedness is what allowed MAIET to grow from a small South Korean no-name into a game development company with international fame.
The moral of the story? Game producers don't know what it takes to produce a good, competitive game. An e-sport game. To complicate the matter, they get inaccurate feedback from the community. It seems very, very hard to make a good game "on purpose." It only happens by accident. With exploits. Like strafe-jumping in Quake, Korean style in GunZ, and all the things we've learned about the StarCraft engine over the years.
Deliberately programmed in stuff like "blink" simply isn't as amazing as discovered tricks like "muta stack."
Nice comparison, brings a refreshing perspective. Very good post, keep up the good work Phrujbaz.
On May 10 2010 00:56 Vexx wrote: Sadly, I read through the whole OP wondering what exactly it had to do with starcraft. I was thrown a few morsels in the last 2 lines. I think the OP is stupid. For every "great" game that succeeded because of a "glitch", you can pull out 20 awesome games that did it right.
Anyways, the only thing that does concern me of SC2 is that it is pretty boring with the lack of... anything. There's little tactical consideration in the game and I do agree that OP abilities bring magic to the game.
Care to name a few games as such with the success of BW? I'd be hard-pressed to find 20, or even a handful.
But yeah, I think SC2 is pretty much lacking any substance that would be needed to make it a success.
I'm sorry to say but.. broodwar didn't exactly succeed outside of Korea. And if the 9.5 million sales figure for starcraft over 12 years is accurate, let's be honest... who didn't buy starcraft or diablo 7 times because they lost their cds over the years?
In terms of just RTS, WC3 had comparable sales figures but age of empires, red alert, and command and conquer (to name a few) all did better than SC despite the lack of popular multiplayer.
Civ, warhammer....
SC was just lucky enough to be korea's driving product (I joke). Truth be told, I would have preferred an age of empires game succeeding. Now that was a deep, diverse and strategic game (and not because of the bugs or glitches =p).
Nice read. Brings back memories of that game and really highlights the point that sometimes a small mistake in how the game operates can become a new feature. GunZ really was a frantic shooter.
On May 09 2010 22:45 Phrujbaz wrote: Let me tell you a little bit about GunZ: The Duel.
It is February 2004. It's been six years since MAIET was founded in South Korea. The name stands for "Team Innovation." It's also been jokingly referred to as "putting the I back in TEAM." As you can see MAIET is team spelled backwards, with the "I" added. MAIET originally started as a team of five researches that wanted to create innovate games.
For the past year, the company has been working very hard on what will later turn out to be MAIET's breakthrough into international fame. The team members are excited. The Project GunZ: The Duel is about to go into beta testing.
GunZ: The Duel is a first person shooter game. MAIET's wanted to give gamers a chance to do the same stylish moves that you can also see in movies. Gun-wielders can shoot while rolling around, run on walls, and perform wall-jumps.
However, true freedom of movement is achieved when you are holding a sword. With a sword, you can dash out of the way with lightning speed like a ninja. You can launch your opponents into the air, where they are sitting ducks. And you can even block bullets with your sword.
The game was rapidly growing in popularity. And then, during beta-test, a critical flaw in the game engine was discovered. MAIET started getting emails. The forums were being flooded with protests.
What had happened? Somebody had discovered that you can switch to your gun instantly during the "slashing" animation of a sword. This led to the development of new moves not in the original game, for example, the aptly named "slash shot." Hit somebody with your sword, then switch to your shotgun and hit them at point blank range while they are stunned by sword hit.
The game had been balanced for sword vs gunfights. Sword-wielders need to get in range to hit, but they also move around much faster than gun-wielders. Now, it had become possible to move around like a sword-wielder and then switch to your gun instantly whenever you need to shoot.
People developed moves like the "half-step:" You jump up into the air holding your sword. Then you do a "dash" to move at lightning speed. During your dash, you slash, switch to your gun, shoot, and switch back to your sword. Here the sword slash is not even intended to hit anyone, you just use it to exploit the game-engine bug.
Now people who did these new moves were practically invincible. They moved around much faster than allowed by the game engine, and they were able to shoot from a distance too. They were impossible to hit and their shotguns and revolvers took your hp off fast.
These moves were very difficult to perform. You need a lot of keypresses in a short amout of time (high apm) and your timing needs to be very good. Most starcraft players would be able to do it, but among the newcomers to GunZ, the beta testers, there were not many that could do it.
The game's playerbase was still expanding fast, but so were the amount of complaints on the forums and in MAIET's email box. MAIET realized that, with such a steep learning curve, the existence of the exploit could potentially turn off new people trying GunZ. They were getting destroyed by the more experienced players that exploited the game engine. And besides, the programmers felt embarrassed that their engine allowed such an exploit.
After enough criticism from the players, MAIET finally decided to listen to the community. MAIET patched GunZ to fix the exploit. And so, they made the biggest mistake of their career. Almost instantly, hundreds of players left GunZ never to come back. And hundreds more were leaving every day. Far from making the game more appealing to new players, GunZ: The Duel almost vanished off the radar.
MAIET hadn't realized that the exploit was what had allowed the game to grow so fast. The exploit turned an otherwise ordinary and boring game into an action-packed, frantic shooting game, where you need to have lightning quick aim in your right hand and very good consistency in your left. One slip-up and you don't complete the move you intended, and you are taking the full damage of a shotgun hit for sure. And with the people moving around so fast, you BETTER have fast and accurate aim.
To their credit, MAIET realized their mistake and immediately published a letter of apology to the community. They promised that the "Korean style," as it was called, was to have a place in the game forever and they'd written code to ensure it would never accidentally be broken in later releases. Their open-mindedness is what allowed MAIET to grow from a small South Korean no-name into a game development company with international fame.
The moral of the story? Game producers don't know what it takes to produce a good, competitive game. An e-sport game. To complicate the matter, they get inaccurate feedback from the community. It seems very, very hard to make a good game "on purpose." It only happens by accident. With exploits. Like strafe-jumping in Quake, Korean style in GunZ, and all the things we've learned about the StarCraft engine over the years.
Deliberately programmed in stuff like "blink" simply isn't as amazing as discovered tricks like "muta stack."
Nice comparison, brings a refreshing perspective. Very good post, keep up the good work Phrujbaz.
On May 10 2010 00:56 Vexx wrote: Sadly, I read through the whole OP wondering what exactly it had to do with starcraft. I was thrown a few morsels in the last 2 lines. I think the OP is stupid. For every "great" game that succeeded because of a "glitch", you can pull out 20 awesome games that did it right.
Anyways, the only thing that does concern me of SC2 is that it is pretty boring with the lack of... anything. There's little tactical consideration in the game and I do agree that OP abilities bring magic to the game.
Care to name a few games as such with the success of BW? I'd be hard-pressed to find 20, or even a handful.
But yeah, I think SC2 is pretty much lacking any substance that would be needed to make it a success.
I'm sorry to say but.. broodwar didn't exactly succeed outside of Korea. And if the 9.5 million sales figure for starcraft over 12 years is accurate, let's be honest... who didn't buy starcraft or diablo 7 times because they lost their cds over the years?
In terms of just RTS, WC3 had comparable sales figures but age of empires, red alert, and command and conquer (to name a few) all did better than SC despite the lack of popular multiplayer.
Civ, warhammer....
SC was just lucky enough to be korea's driving product (I joke). Truth be told, I would have preferred an age of empires game succeeding. Now that was a deep, diverse and strategic game (and not because of the bugs or glitches =p).
I'll shut up now before I get banned.
Doing better in terms of sales does not equal a better game. Starcraft grew far more competitive than command and conquer, and its online players stuck around far longer. If you log on to command and conquer, you will probably see zero people online, but starcraft still has fans.
On May 10 2010 00:56 Vexx wrote: Sadly, I read through the whole OP wondering what exactly it had to do with starcraft. I was thrown a few morsels in the last 2 lines. I think the OP is stupid. For every "great" game that succeeded because of a "glitch", you can pull out 20 awesome games that did it right.
Anyways, the only thing that does concern me of SC2 is that it is pretty boring with the lack of... anything. There's little tactical consideration in the game and I do agree that OP abilities bring magic to the game.
Care to name a few games as such with the success of BW? I'd be hard-pressed to find 20, or even a handful.
But yeah, I think SC2 is pretty much lacking any substance that would be needed to make it a success.
I'm sorry to say but.. broodwar didn't exactly succeed outside of Korea. And if the 9.5 million sales figure for starcraft over 12 years is accurate, let's be honest... who didn't buy starcraft or diablo 7 times because they lost their cds over the years?
In terms of just RTS, WC3 had comparable sales figures but age of empires, red alert, and command and conquer (to name a few) all did better than SC despite the lack of popular multiplayer.
Civ, warhammer....
SC was just lucky enough to be korea's driving product (I joke). Truth be told, I would have preferred an age of empires game succeeding. Now that was a deep, diverse and strategic game (and not because of the bugs or glitches =p).
I'll shut up now before I get banned.
Starcraft sold 11 million sales by 2004.
As of May 08, Starcraft was STILL occasionally in the top 10 PC games sold AT THE CURRENT MOMENT
GunZ was the prime example of how you mess up a game.
I started playing in 2005 and was a member gk, unique and agent error in 2005 and part of basic/anathema from early 2006 onwards until we quit playing as them and then played with polse. For those of you who played, you might understand what that means in terms of where I was skill wise within that community.
Anyway, the game was ruined by maiet heavily shifting the balance between damage and armor/health to the armor side. By the time I quit playing for good (because I quit like 6 or 8 times lol) your effective health was nearly 3 times greater than it was in the beginning. And that armor, and especially the med kits, cost you money. That's right, you payed extra money to get a HUGE advantage. Think about in SC if you could pay money to have your workers not take up any food.
And AFAIK, they never fixed it. Really a shame, because all that health took away much of the advantage of positioning and instead devolved the game into who could shoot the fastest (since the lag was so terrible you cant really aim like the korean players could). Gunz was p2p, and having the balanced skewed so much made everyone able to tank massive amounts of shots if your ping was over about 35.
When I started playing I was in highschool. Most people who played the game were much younger. That meant that by the time exited beta I had some money but most of these kids didnt. Did I ever feel bad that these kids had literally zero chance? A little. But did it stop me from buying everythnig under the sun? Nope.
This doesnt include the cheating. There was sooooo sooo much. In late 2005 approximately 24 thousand characters were deleted in the span of about 2 days. Why? Because even though MAIET had been told EXACTLY which part of their game code was allowing people to delete characters (you could send admin delete requests to the server database from any account) they did nothing. Oh, and there was the whole thing about them constantly lying to those of us playing about when the final version would be released. Not delaying it, just flat out lying.
Gunz was an accident. An accident that created the best movement in any game imo. But the company that ran it is THE model on how you screw up something great.
The pattern I see blizzard taking for sc2 is more trying to get people to play strategically as opposed to controlling units well. Kind of the opposite of war3 imo.
While you do bring up an interesting point, it is also somewhat invalid as GunZ was pretty much built around these game mechanics, and unlike Starcraft, was the entire game. While I am not entitled to speaking about aspects such as Mutalisk stack in Starcraft as I was never into the multiplayer community, it is just a small part of the game, an aspect unlike the game mechanic of GunZ. So when MAIET decided to remove this aspect, they took away the core of the game, while Blizzard, by removing Mutalisk stack only removes an aspect they do not wish to be in Starcraft 2, but this does not influence the core of the Starcraft 2 mechanics if you see where I am trying to get.
That being said, Blizzard must exercise caution when fixing micro intensive bugs such as the Mutalisk stack, while it does balance the play a lot more, the game might loose some of its 2 mechanics if you see where I am trying to get.
That being said, Blizzard must exercise caution when fixing micro intensive bugs such as the Mutalisk stack, while it does balance the play a lot more, the game might loose some of its unique aspects, as was the case with GunZ, thus making the game un-appealing to its player base, but I do not think this is likely to happen with Starcraft 2 due to the game's nature, balance and wide variety of strategies.
On May 10 2010 02:40 Sakkosekken wrote: While I am not entitled to speaking about aspects such as Mutalisk stack in Starcraft as I was never into the multiplayer community, it is just a small part of the game...
Let me assure you that fine unit control, sometimes manifest in what some would call glitchy behavior, was pivotal to the evolution of BW and will always remain paramount to the depth of choices in any single BW game.
If it aint completely unstoppable, dont fix it. If it is completely unstoppable, give the players 3 months and it wont be completely unstoppable anymore, and go back to step one.
Gunz is an awesome game I can SS and BF but thats about it not particularly good at aiming then again I played that before like SC so maybe I'l be better now.
I am kind of confused how anyone could seriously agree with this? The entire statement seems to be that Blizzard should have a buggy and exploitable engine for sc2 and then you throw up a FPS with a as people have stated in this thread a very buggy and exploitable engine.
That doesn't exactly sound like a good idea to me. I do understand what you are trying to get across however, I feel you just used a poor example that is trying to cover up the point that you feel SC2 isn't dynamic enough and things like Blink isn't good enough and that you feel a more faithful copy of Broodwar would of been the better solution. Am I somewhat on the mark?
Blink also is an amazing use of units. Individual unit blinking's to save the unit, blinking from main to main on Lost Temple, Scrap Station, blinking back after sniping a unit and taking nothing but shield damage all of that makes Blink a fun and dynamic ability. I am unsure why you even used Blink as an example because if anything it's one of the few "Look at that!' abilities in SC2 that even someone who's never seen the game can appreciate.
Ignoring all of this Blizzard makes changes off of what they collect not from the forums. Unless it's a game breaking bug or unit(larva not dieing on cancel) they wait to see how people react to it before they just fix it. Roaches, Immortals and the slow marauder ability all took how long before they nerfed them? They didn't listen to the tears of the forum they waited until they felt "yeah that's a tad too strong" and had the data to support it.
Please don't act like this isn't blizzards first walk in the world of programming a game. It's not. Thank you for pointing out this nifty game and it's video's shame it didn't work out better.
On May 10 2010 03:29 Parnage wrote: I am kind of confused how anyone could seriously agree with this? The entire statement seems to be that Blizzard should have a buggy and exploitable engine for sc2 and then you throw up a FPS with a as people have stated in this thread a very buggy and exploitable engine.
That doesn't exactly sound like a good idea to me. I do understand what you are trying to get across however, I feel you just used a poor example that is trying to cover up the point that you feel SC2 isn't dynamic enough and things like Blink isn't good enough and that you feel a more faithful copy of Broodwar would of been the better solution. Am I somewhat on the mark?
Blink also is an amazing use of units. Individual unit blinking's to save the unit, blinking from main to main on Lost Temple, Scrap Station, blinking back after sniping a unit and taking nothing but shield damage all of that makes Blink a fun and dynamic ability. I am unsure why you even used Blink as an example because if anything it's one of the few "Look at that!' abilities in SC2 that even someone who's never seen the game can appreciate.
Ignoring all of this Blizzard makes changes off of what they collect not from the forums. Unless it's a game breaking bug or unit(larva not dieing on cancel) they wait to see how people react to it before they just fix it. Roaches, Immortals and the slow marauder ability all took how long before they nerfed them? They didn't listen to the tears of the forum they waited until they felt "yeah that's a tad too strong" and had the data to support it.
Please don't act like this isn't blizzards first walk in the world of programming a game. It's not. Thank you for pointing out this nifty game and it's video's shame it didn't work out better.
The last bit of the post
The moral of the story? Game producers don't know what it takes to produce a good, competitive game. An e-sport game. To complicate the matter, they get inaccurate feedback from the community. It seems very, very hard to make a good game "on purpose." It only happens by accident. With exploits. Like strafe-jumping in Quake, Korean style in GunZ, and all the things we've learned about the StarCraft engine over the years.
Deliberately programmed in stuff like "blink" simply isn't as amazing as discovered tricks like "muta stack."
I'm pretty sure it means that sometimes games are good due to bugs and them trying to make muta stack just doesn't turn out anywhere near as good as it was in the origional SC
Unlimited unit selection would break Muta stack.. but I agree with whomever said previously that Blizzard needs to tweak unit characteristics to make them more interesting and then balance them around micro, rather than numbers.
On May 10 2010 03:29 Parnage wrote: Please don't act like this isn't blizzards first walk in the world of programming a game. It's not. Thank you for pointing out this nifty game and it's video's shame it didn't work out better.
Please don't act so imba pro.
The OP states that most "balance" comes from the players themselves as they create new and unique ways to conquer the game.
BW being a very good example, for instances Dragoons being attack move did shit all, which is why pros will control the Dragoons individual at times to get the maximimum benefit.
I never read anywhere in the OP that Blizzard should release a sketchy, bug filled game on purpose for the benefit of people to come out with their own exploits, just that some exploits in games are use to benefit of competitive players. Nowhere in the post does it even demeanor Blizzard.
And individual Blinking is not nearly impressive as Hold Shotting with a stack of Mutas. You try.
Halo 3 is insanely popular and has no real glitches (flag tossing maybe, but not really helpful) that are hugely ingrained into the gameplay. The Call of Duty series is like that too.
I like the example. Tribes is another series that was literally defined on bugs like skiing, making a game otherwise developed as a slow paced tactical team game into a game where every player moves around at 200 kph.
How much of a bug was skiing in Tribes? The maps really seemed like they were designed to support it so some extent. I played it from the start but I really can't remember if skiing was suppose to be in or not, I think I picked it up my first day playing it.
This is kind of going in a circle, but at what point does a glitch become a feature? Obviously skiing supported the maps and game perfectly and still provided a balanced game (although Tribes 1 and Tribes Classic for T2 was pretty heavily favored for light offense, while T2 was a nice balance.).
On May 10 2010 23:34 Fizban140 wrote: This is kind of going in a circle, but at what point does a glitch become a feature?
When developers start implementing it as a feature of the game.
Look at what happened with quake, the strafejumping/bunnyhopping was originally just a bug, but it got accepted as being "standard", being in every quake game after it, even getting "improved" in Q4 with the sliding thing, other games such as painkiller/warsow also implementing.
Blizzard doesn't have to make a buggy engine just to hope that some things will break. But they could have taken a very close and good look at the sc1 engine and seen what good things it has done (such as the moving shot) and have implemented it.
(For the next one who posts, OMG it's a new game, new micro, new ways):
Starcraft 2 is the successor of starcraft 1, why take out things that has made starcraft1 the e-sports game it is today? Why not take those few things that made the game so good, and reimplement them instead of making them easier?
I mean do you know what would have happened if ID software never added strafejumping again with the motto "it's a new game, youll find new stuff, learn to adapt", then Q3 would never have been the esports that it is/has been today.
A lot of the micro that was required in SC1 was just moving your units around the map and buildings units. MBS has been added and units path much better. Bio terran required tons of micro just to move as a ball. Should they remove some of the new features to make the game more difficult to play?
We dont need bugs. We just need features that are hard to execute, not necessary to play competetively but will give an edge to the one who can execute them well enough, that actully feel worth while and not gimmicky; so that the top tier players can distinguish themselves, creating a learningcurve and thus a gaming hierarchy that means something, gives status and respect, but without scaring away casual gamers etc.
With the division system in place (or rather a system that would work better at distinguishing diffrent skilllevels) aswell as with the limitation of smurfing, much of this is already in place. The casual gamer should no longer be in danger of beeing dominated by someone much better utilizing techniques that is way beyond the casual players skilllevel. Left to implement are the actual features, but as stated, they can not be arbitrary, not gimmicky, not to much effort for to little gain, but not to much gain either, etc etc. In other words, meaningful MICRO.
Someone mentioned phoenixes and the new move-shoot mechanic as an exampel of how Blizzard listens; but to me its a blatant exampel of Blizzard NOT understanding what is needed to give the game depth. They are focusing on width, for economical reasons one would imagine, but if they want an esport with the lifespan of BW, they need to focus equally on depth aswell. Well see, im not giving up hope. Because I believe that Blizzard actually wants to achieve something more than just a cash-cow.
While I like the glitches in Starcraft BW, not a single one was really game-changing except muta stacking, and that's not even really a glitch, just a feature of how the game groups units. A lot of glitches DID get fixed in BW because they were gamebreaking (flying drones, infinite minerals...). BW would have still been a fantastic game and not nearly much different if you removed Dragoon stupidity (so attack move worked just as well), or allowed vultures to moving shot with attack command instead of patrol command, or didn't allow probes and scvs to jump over minerals.
Also, this is a perfect example of a community not knowing much about making a great game, yet having massive confidence in their own opinions. You see it in every game with an old, "hardcore" fanbase.
I was listening to the Idle Thumbs podcast and Jake Rodkin, who's a game designer of adventure games, made this point brilliantly. That feedback (whether on the forums or whatever) from the dedicated community is usually a symptom. When the community complains about something and suggests some fix (usually the most unimaginative fix that panders directly to them), the game designer should treat this suggested fix as a symptom to be solved, not a cure to be implemented.
In other words the community is good at knowing something is wrong, but its terrible at fixing it.
On May 09 2010 22:54 craaaaack wrote: Nice read, I fully agree.
YES SO RIGHT!!!
Blizzard dont get it, that more spells/spellcasting isnt the "micro" we want and need. we need things like patrol/hold micro to make the units more effective.
On May 09 2010 22:54 craaaaack wrote: Nice read, I fully agree.
YES SO RIGHT!!!
Blizzard dont get it, that more spells/spellcasting isnt the "micro" we want and need. we need things like patrol/hold micro to make the units more effective.
There are a hell of a lot of people who claim to speak for the "we" in the starcraft 2 community.
The game's success isn't due to the unique play style the glitches provide but in fact, their difficulty.I played GunZ for years and the more advanced moves(combination of moves) are OBSCENELY difficult to pull off even randomly when training, let alone in an actual fight. The game is in a really bad shape, it has major flaws but they can't really change or improve anything since the essence of the game is based on these glitches. The only thing that keeps it going is its solid community.
Difficulty: Thats what made GunZ fun and unique.
Its the reason I still enjoy playing quake3 like nothing else after 10 years - because I can log on to quakelive and occasionally get schooled by someone thats simply better than me. Theres a challenge involved that no features, graphics, ACHIEVEMENTS, or anything else can replace.
Its the reason Call of Duty12345678 sucks so much - the first time I entered the game I went on a 30 frag kill spree - the game is boring and based on luck almost entirely. Theres piles of other random content just to keep you busy but essentially, the game isn't all that challenging.
Its the reason why MMOs like Lineage2 are better than World of Warcaft (I feel like I'm gonna get torched for this one ). In L2, while being the absurd grindfest cheater heaven that it is, once you reach endgame you get to enjoy exciting pvp pretty much all of the time, giant alliance battles and never ending political conflicts. While in WoW, you just raid the same bosses over and over and over again just you can gear up for the next bosses that will arrive on the next patch/expand along with 10 new levels. Sure theres a million other things to do but I really feel those are there more to keep you occupied or are like prerequisite to raiding/whatever than actually to challenge you or to have fun with.
That being said I really fear SC2 is going the wrong way so far, from this point of view at the very least. Wouldn't it be awful if the final release of the game was just a dumbed down version of Broodwar with shiny new features/graphics/content? If I was blizzard I'd focus more on getting the challenge part into the game, rather than facebook chat intergration, this way it will take longer for people to master it. Because when you challenge people creativity and determination sparks in the best of them, leaving out the ones that aren't up for the challenge, and quality is produced. But if you rely on features, repetitive and easy gameplay the only thing you would be producing is zombies that generate $2 million for a few hours buying a virtual horse.
GunZ is a great game when played at the competitive level. I would love to be good at it, but I'm just not. I can butterfly but thats it. People are very talented at this game and there is such a steep learning curve that I am completely turned off by it now. VERY few can pick up gunz today and beat the vets who have been playing and glitching since 2004.
This article was very eye catching to me because I just re downloaded gunz for the first time in two or three years yesterday, when this was posted. I thought my sc2 skills would help me out with keying fast enough in gunz to keep up with at least noobish players. I was very wrong. I made a room called "First Time" and levels 1-5 were doing k-style shit everywhere. Not even fun.
I think blizzard has reached something in sc2 which doesn't allow room for glitches like in scbw and gunz. Their game engine is very tight and the units act like their supposed to. This allows for a learning curve that is not based off of glitches like it is in gunz. Noobs will be playing together in sc2 and having a blast. People are getting good at sc2 because they are getting good at the skills blizzard wants them to. IMO, if there was no glitching like that in guns to allow kstyle glitch moves, it would be more fun for me and for newcomers. I think gunz should have roughed it out and let the vaginas flake off because they couldnt own noobs like they used to. I would have been able to relate my experience with the UT series (particularly instagib game mode which requires intensive accuracy and strategic movement and prediction). I think I have good aim, and I can't apply it because I have to hit [space w w lclick shift e q shift dd] or some shit like that just to fire one shit (you know, while slashing, dashing, and sword blocking simultaneously like gosu vets.
SCBW eventually lost an audience too, when everything got figured out and the engine was exploited to the fullest in melee mode. Like if you are not tight playing on iccup against most D+ players (who all have like 200apm at least) you are fish in a bucket. My friends tried to pick up SCBW year ago, and they were completely turned off by how you need to know EVERYTHINGG for the game to be playable and fun. Even most UMS games are like "pro or gtfo" "dl = ban"
This comparison is just another way of saying SC2 is too easy QQQQQQQQQQQQ
Obviously it isn't, since the same people win the tournaments, they must be doing something right, no?
Almost all of these current top SC2 players have backgrounds in other RTS games, they are not new to fastpaced gameplay, they all know what macro and micro is and how to utilize them.
Even without difficult glitches and such, some players prove better than others, even in such an easy game as SC2! Peculiar...
As for the CS bunnyhopping etc. as far as I know these glitches aren't allowed at the serious tournaments and/or leagues.
On May 11 2010 00:57 FieryBalrog wrote: While I like the glitches in Starcraft BW, not a single one was really game-changing except muta stacking, and that's not even really a glitch, just a feature of how the game groups units. A lot of glitches DID get fixed in BW because they were gamebreaking (flying drones, infinite minerals...). BW would have still been a fantastic game and not nearly much different if you removed Dragoon stupidity (so attack move worked just as well), or allowed vultures to moving shot with attack command instead of patrol command, or didn't allow probes and scvs to jump over minerals.
Also, this is a perfect example of a community not knowing much about making a great game, yet having massive confidence in their own opinions. You see it in every game with an old, "hardcore" fanbase.
I was listening to the Idle Thumbs podcast and Jake Rodkin, who's a game designer of adventure games, made this point brilliantly. That feedback (whether on the forums or whatever) from the dedicated community is usually a symptom. When the community complains about something and suggests some fix (usually the most unimaginative fix that panders directly to them), the game designer should treat this suggested fix as a symptom to be solved, not a cure to be implemented.
In other words the community is good at knowing something is wrong, but its terrible at fixing it.
Holy shit I love you. Now I don't have to write a thoughtful post.
Catering to the communities every whim and not optimizing your game is not the way to go about making an e-sport. GunZ had a small user base compared to any true competitive game. Competitive games that are made popular by how poorly they were coded are in the minority and the ones that are do not rely solely on bugs and exploits for their success.
GunZ is just an example of a developer and a community working together to keep their very tiny symbiotic relationship going. It is not a basis for any argument on how to design an e-sport worthy game.
On May 10 2010 19:45 Fizban140 wrote: Halo 3 is insanely popular and has no real glitches (flag tossing maybe, but not really helpful) that are hugely ingrained into the gameplay. The Call of Duty series is like that too.
These are bro games. No offense, but these are the standard games that moms and dads buy their kids for their xbox on Christmas and birthdays. These kids grew up into bros and started playing a little more serious. Now they crush "Christmas noobs"
people play sc because they want to and they know its the shit. a lot of people play cod and halo because it was the game shoved down their throat.
On May 10 2010 19:45 Fizban140 wrote: Halo 3 is insanely popular and has no real glitches (flag tossing maybe, but not really helpful) that are hugely ingrained into the gameplay. The Call of Duty series is like that too.
These are bro games. No offense, but these are the standard games that moms and dads buy their kids for their xbox on Christmas and birthdays. These kids grew up into bros and started playing a little more serious. Now they crush "Christmas noobs"
people play sc because they want to and they know its the shit. a lot of people play cod and halo because it was the game shoved down their throat.
So because you don't think Halo 3 is e-sport worthy that makes it not so?
How many Halo 3 tournaments do you think there were compared to GunZ? Think about that a minute.
Sorry but these games aren't even comparable, some imprecise weird(protip weird means hella bad) hybrid shooter created by 5 enthusiasts in Korea is not even a speck on the world of gaming and Yo Team Liquid, i'm really happy for you and i'ma let you finish - but Starcraft 2 is the biggest strategy game launch of all time.
OF ALL TIME!
Honestly I'm seriously pissed at you stupid dicks who keep making these style of threads and claim to know what is best for starcraft as a game and a community. Blizzard could of easily mined starcraft for it's potential as a mmo franchise and instead they are release a rts that should be the most balanced strategy game launch ever. As opposed to something unbalanced as fuck say like original starcraft when it first launched. All you assholes begging for a re skinned starcraft 1 can still play brood war. Anyone who claims something like muta micro which appeared like what 7-8 years after starcraft launched made the game what it was so much to the point that all that buggy ass ai needs to come over to starcraft 2 need to calm down.
Like seriously please stop making these thread because Dustin Browder is reading TeamLiquid and if you keep driving him to tears he's gonna pull the plug and make a Starcraft mmo. If my level 56 Protoss Zealot ends up tanking an ultralisk while I get healed by a 55 Terran Medic Imma straight up find and murder you guys.
On May 10 2010 00:03 nihoh wrote: Valve obviously considered bunnyhopping a glitch. From 1.3 to 1.6, they removed bunnyhopping. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfS9i5Z5Hw8
Bunnyhopping is a glitch in Quake that made it an amazing game. Bunnyhopping is a glitch in CS.. that got removed.
i came buckets back in 01 after my first time making b2r in q3dm6. same as i came buckets when i saw the bunnyhops in dde2 on dm4 (i think it's dm4 .. never played qw ).
audio got disabled due to copyright fuck ... it's disturbed - remember iirc.
that beeing said ... some bugs rock, some dont. i'm off watching dde2 ... you all should too.
No matter how advanced games get, there will always be "flaws" and "glitches" to be exploited into unintentional competitive perfection and SC2 will be the same, there just needs to be half a decade of experimentation and a formation of a complex meta-game from a devout fanbase.
Sure the incredible balance and complex dynamics of SC1 was a fluke in many ways but that doesnt mean many things Blizzard implemented for specific effects are ignored.
On May 10 2010 00:25 Snowfield wrote: Yeah, SHAME ON YOU BLIZZARD FOR MAKING THE GAME TOO BUG FREE!
Its a bit ironic though. It's not easy (read: you have to be lucky) to get good bugs that make the game fun and challenging.
Where is the line between a bug thats abusable to such an extend where you have to remove it, and a good bug though? do you balance the game around said bugs?
there is alot of things that could go very very wrong.
How should game developers go on by making their game intentionally very hard for the pros, without making it too unintuitive for the newcomers?
What the RTS community really wants, seems to be some sort of devil child born from RTS and Fighting games, where you make units, and actually have to do "moves" with them (not abilities, but actual tricks) to be fully used.
But where does such moves become too hard?
Does game developers simply have to get lucky to make a good game?
It's funny you say that, as I've always thought of sc1 as half fighter half RTS, the high apm requirement, the counter and counter-counter mindgames. When you micro a reaper(vulture) to kill 4 zealots while macroing it definitely feels like I'm playing blazblue or GGX or something =p
I never thought I'd say this but maybe the randomness needs to come back, like when you watch basketball and there's a really long shot going for the basket, everyone holds their breath waiting to see if it will go in or not, even though it's pure skill on the player's side, the uncertainty from the spectator's side really does add to the intensity imo. Watching scarabs and mines do craziness really got me on the edge of my seat in sc1.
(Though I'd be happy if all air units had the animation cancelling/ sc1 style moving shot back)
On May 10 2010 00:03 nihoh wrote: @Fizban As with any other game in CS you need to know the game perfectly to have a chance at it.. It's just one of the things CS needs in addition to a host of other things..
Valve obviously considered bunnyhopping a glitch. From 1.3 to 1.6, they removed bunnyhopping. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfS9i5Z5Hw8 It's back in Source, but you need a lot less feeling to do it in Source. Duckrunning is not possible to ignore at a high level of play in 1.6. most players don't break from duckrunning at all nowadays in the modern, 2010 CS, when it comes down to a clutch situation.
Bunnyhopping is a glitch in Quake that made it an amazing game. Bunnyhopping is a glitch in CS.. that got removed.
Bunny hopping was fucking stupid to play against, as is the current duck jumping to fuck with models. What about the old style flashes? There's plenty of silly tricks that would improve the game if they were removed. I'm willing to bet anyone that thinks bunnyhopping was the best thing ever didn't actually play competitive CS when it was around. You just thought it was awesome to go long A on D2 in 5 seconds, but you didn't deal with the kind of retardedness that ensued in serious place.
You need to keep in mind that this is a matter of opinion too. I thought 1.5 was the best competitive version of CS, but most people would consider it to be 1.6, which tightened up the engine a lot. Everyone thought games would just come to a halt and rushes would be gone when +move was taken out, and everyone, myself included, was completely wrong.
Either way, the idea that bugs need to be in a game or the notion that SC2 doesn't have bugs and will therefore fail, is stupid. Does the OP realize how long it took people to discover most of the mechanics that are commonplace today? And who are you to determine that a bug like muta stacking or mineral hopping is fair, but obs over turret isn't?
I know very few people here follow hardcore MMO PvP, but in 2007 a game was released that was supposed to fix all the mistakes Blizzard had made with WoW, and would be a truly skill based PvP game, and the devs took into account all the recommendations of the hardcore WoW PvPers. That game was Fury. It sucked hella balls. You fools don't know what you're talking about.
On May 10 2010 00:25 Snowfield wrote: Yeah, SHAME ON YOU BLIZZARD FOR MAKING THE GAME TOO BUG FREE!
Its a bit ironic though. It's not easy (read: you have to be lucky) to get good bugs that make the game fun and challenging.
Where is the line between a bug thats abusable to such an extend where you have to remove it, and a good bug though? do you balance the game around said bugs?
there is alot of things that could go very very wrong.
How should game developers go on by making their game intentionally very hard for the pros, without making it too unintuitive for the newcomers?
What the RTS community really wants, seems to be some sort of devil child born from RTS and Fighting games, where you make units, and actually have to do "moves" with them (not abilities, but actual tricks) to be fully used.
But where does such moves become too hard?
Does game developers simply have to get lucky to make a good game?
It's funny you say that, as I've always thought of sc1 as half fighter half RTS, the high apm requirement, the counter and counter-counter mindgames. When you micro a reaper(vulture) to kill 4 zealots while macroing it definitely feels like I'm playing blazblue or GGX or something =p
I never thought I'd say this but maybe the randomness needs to come back, like when you watch basketball and there's a really long shot going for the basket, everyone holds their breath waiting to see if it will go in or not, even though it's pure skill on the player's side, the uncertainty from the spectator's side really does add to the intensity imo. Watching scarabs and mines do craziness really got me on the edge of my seat in sc1.
(Though I'd be happy if all air units had the animation cancelling/ sc1 style moving shot back)
Rts community =/= you. Also blazblue sucksssssssssssssss assssssssssssssssssssss if you wanna talk about a sf4 sc hybrid maybe I'll be on board.
Alot of the time the dagger was really ignored in the metagame cause it was considered an inferior weapon by both the sword users and dagger users. However, me and a group of tight friends formed D-style clans such as Keuk, 1/4Katana, Sicaria, and such. I had a great time in those clans using dagger rather than the boring sword. I don't know why, maybe we were masochists, but we enjoyed being at a disadvantage compared to k stylers. to give an example:
On May 11 2010 01:53 FireBlast! wrote: No matter how advanced games get, there will always be "flaws" and "glitches" to be exploited into unintentional competitive perfection and SC2 will be the same, there just needs to be half a decade of experimentation and a formation of a complex meta-game from a devout fanbase.
Sure the incredible balance and complex dynamics of SC1 was a fluke in many ways but that doesnt mean many things Blizzard implemented for specific effects are ignored.
Yes, there will always be flaws and glitches.
No, these glitches will not nearly be as useful as previous serendipitous glitches that we (a) already know about and (b) know make the game awesome.
The people who say that these bugs are only important because of the amount of control given to those who use them are right. At the same time, future bugs in SC2 are by no means guarenteed to change the metagame. Even if they do change the metagame, are you even sure that they won't be patched out? What would have happened if, say, muta stacking was considered a "bug" and patched out of the game? If magic boxes no longer existed?
Pretty much the same exact thing happened with Super Smash Bros Melee and Super Smash Bros Brawl.
Melee had a small cult competitive scene. For a few years no one knew about wave dashing, crouch canceling, wave landing, and dash canceling. Though all of these were important, wave dashing was by far the definitive glitch of Melee. This was because it gave you so many options as a player. You could chose how far you wanted to dash. Dashing allowed you to attack and retreat with any move that you could perform from the standing position or even move while shielding. The number of options it opened up was incredible, at least for some characters. The game was horribly imbalanced but it didn't matter.
Then Brawl came out. Now, Nintendo had the exact opposite approach from Blizzard when it came to the sequel. The competitive melee scene, small as it was, wasn't even on its radar. Leaders of the project emphasized how they wanted everyone to win. Tripping was somehow supposed to make the game more fun. People held out that perhaps, despite everything Brawl had going against it, maybe it could still live up to Melee. Maybe there would be new glitches discovered later.
There weren't As far as new glitches went, people knew what they were looking for. Some glitches were discovered, and some of these glitches were even impressive, or interesting. But the competitive game just wasn't the same. Now, Brawl, as far as I know, still has competitions and such. It's a newer game and its shiny. But did it live up to Melee, were there new amazing glitches discovered to replace those which had been removed? No. In fact, some of the fans went so far as to hack the game just so that they could program a bunch of them back in to one extent or another.
The fact is that whether SC2 lives up to SC1 or not is up to Blizzard. They control the standard, they control the game, they control what sort of things are and aren't difficult for the player, and what options the player has. It's up to them. Right now though, even with the addition of scootshoot on the pheonix, I don't think they get it.
Starcraft quadrupled, possibly quintupled those games sales figures.
Could you stop making crap up?
Counter-Strike should be higher than 4.2 million.. Up until the middle/end of 1.5, CS was a free download. Actually it was a free download in 1.5 and 1.6 (if you had half-life) So CS could be anywhere from 2nd to 13th place..
On May 11 2010 01:32 keV. wrote: GunZ was such a piece of shit game. Why is anyone even talking about it.
ima take a wild guess here and say you were probably terribad at the game, played for an hour and proceeded to rage quit because you got raped. dunno how your even a starcraft player.
On May 11 2010 00:57 FieryBalrog wrote: While I like the glitches in Starcraft BW, not a single one was really game-changing except muta stacking, and that's not even really a glitch, just a feature of how the game groups units. A lot of glitches DID get fixed in BW because they were gamebreaking (flying drones, infinite minerals...). BW would have still been a fantastic game and not nearly much different if you removed Dragoon stupidity (so attack move worked just as well), or allowed vultures to moving shot with attack command instead of patrol command, or didn't allow probes and scvs to jump over minerals.
Also, this is a perfect example of a community not knowing much about making a great game, yet having massive confidence in their own opinions. You see it in every game with an old, "hardcore" fanbase.
I was listening to the Idle Thumbs podcast and Jake Rodkin, who's a game designer of adventure games, made this point brilliantly. That feedback (whether on the forums or whatever) from the dedicated community is usually a symptom. When the community complains about something and suggests some fix (usually the most unimaginative fix that panders directly to them), the game designer should treat this suggested fix as a symptom to be solved, not a cure to be implemented.
In other words the community is good at knowing something is wrong, but its terrible at fixing it.
i like your insight, thanks for the post. i really think your onto some truth here
On May 10 2010 19:45 Fizban140 wrote: Halo 3 is insanely popular and has no real glitches (flag tossing maybe, but not really helpful) that are hugely ingrained into the gameplay. The Call of Duty series is like that too.
It depends what you mean by Halo 3...
MLG has taken Halo 3 and bastardized it so that they took everything out. Granted, I do like how it plays MLG style, but on the other hand, you gotta admit that it was a balance issue that users dealt with and not necessarily something the game designers intended.
As for glitches, when I followed the scene there was so much bitching about this. Apparently Halo 2 had some button glitch that let you melee/BR or double melee really quickly. There's also a bullet returning glitch that happens even on LAN where you'll fire your gun and the bullet will fail to come out, so another bullet will magically appear in your BR.
However, I will say this, Halo 3 is more popular, simply because it's "next." The quality and depth of the game doesn't particularly matter as long as people are willing to play it. For Smash Bros., Brawl is way more popular than Melee in terms of turnout, but almost everyone will consider Melee a better game.
With that said, believe it or not, the depth of a game doesn't really matter as much. As long as the game is still fun for me, I'll continue to play it, and I'm pretty sure that's what most people will do as well. Game mechanics, glitches, bugs, they're all there and I can either play it or not, and it's Blizzard's job to make sure that the game is always fresh whether it's with the game engine/mechanics or things outside of the game like tournaments/events/etc.
I don't think it's a matter of a game's "competitive viability as an e-sport" but rather, is it fun and sustainable? Can you get people to play one game for a long period of time and keep it fresh?
Fizban140: Counter-strike has many bugs that makes 1.6 the superior game to Source.
First of all, spammable walls are a side effect from the engine of GldSrc - you can't get unspammable walls in 1.6. In source, spammable walls are removed, dumbing down gameplay.
Secondly, AWP quickswitch in 1.5 was basically a bug which was popularised by Ksharp. This bug involved animation cancelling of the AWP-afterfire. Swapping to a deagle and back to hte AWP would allow a quicker firing rate for the AWP rather than not switching.
Thirdly, and most important of all.. Duckrunning. Duckrunning is a technique used to run without making sound, it also screws up hitboxes, increasing the skill ceiling. Valve fixed Duckrunning in 2008, causing it to make sound when duckrunning, but prior to that it was super abused, and a very big part of Counter-strike - it still is, players regularly use duckrunning to muck up their own hitboxes, making it hard for the enemy to hit them.
Fourth.. HE grenade EXPLOSIONS pass through walls.
Fifth... Dropping guns or throwing nades at doors will open them - this bug is removed in Source, making it less viable to rush through doors such as nuke squeeky.
Sixth ... Bunnyhopping, no need to say anything about this.
Seventh - on de_nuke you can boost through nest roof by stacking two players and you go up through the roof.
Eighth.. Throwing grenades THROUGH walls.
Nineth ... There are many rooftop, skybox routes abused by top teams that make it part of the game.. Banana on inferno has one, Yard on nuke has one, you can defend dust2 short by boosting up to the roof that was NEVER intended to be a spot. 3 out of the 4 majorly played maps on Counter-strike have bugs that define and refine them.
All the bugs i've mentioned might not mean much to you, but Counter-strike is a game that is also built on bugs.
Now having said all that, I do disagree with the point being made that there has to be bugs for a great game to be made. WC3 didn't have any NOTEWORTHY bugs, and it was still the most internationally played RTS. (I said internationally, dont' rage at me)
Source rapes 1.6. The only reason people play 1.6 is because they have bad computers. I've been playing source for years and I don't see how it is in any way a worse game than 1.6.
As for the OP, you interpret things very very wrong.
The point of the story is that developers should not overreact to unexpected things. Sometimes bugs/glitches/unintended exploits add depth to the game and increase the skill ceiling. Other times they completely dumb down the game by making everything else obsolete and making it one-dimensional.
It is the duty of the game developer to observe and see if bugs are beneficial or detrimental to the game. I would hardly call muta stacking or hold lurkers detrimental. I also wouldn't say drone floating was beneficial. Things will always have to be looked at on a case by case basis.
Another example: In sc2 not long ago there was a bug where eggs could be reverted into larva at no cost. This enabled zerg players to do early pool rushes with 10-12 lings instantly as opposed to 6. It clearly was a bug, but blizzard was right to respond to it and fix it because it was ruining the game.
Just because a game has no bugs/glitches/strange things to exploit that a casual would not know about doesn't make it bad. These are more often than not detrimental. People still play chess yet the rules are simple and not exploitable.
I would say it's rather an accident when engine flaws add to the game. I think if it wasn't for muta stacking ZvT would've been much harder for zergs to the point where the game balance would've been questionable. ZvZ would've seen scourge > muta forever. I would argue that without these bugs BW is quite imbalanced. It's luck that the bugs balance the game. However, blizzard could not possibly have known that at the time it was discovered.
The problem right now as it relates to SC2 is they're trying to balance the game, but little exploits and bugs throw off the balance of the game while they're balancing it. It's like trying to solve an equation where half of it is unknown. Blizzard is going to purge every bug they find in order to make balancing feasible. Later down the road if things are discovered I don't think Blizzard will have a reason to nuke them out of existence so fast.
ima take a wild guess here and say you were probably terribad at the game, played for an hour and proceeded to rage quit because you got raped. dunno how your even a starcraft player.
Terrible janky trash isn't made good by the fact it has a high skill cap, he could go just play a good shooter or a good fighter not some shitty combo, just because it has a theoretically great competitive scene. Who's the judge of that though? Oh right some insular community. You can have your fun, but don't come out and try to tell everyone that it's the one of best competitive experiences and expect not to have some backlash for it.
The bugs aren't what make Starcraft Brood War at all. They just provide new ways to control units, and that's where variation of army control comes in. It only facilitates how players learn to control and move around units. Positioning and control is key when it comes to moving around an army in Starcraft 1, and the way armies are controlled are VERY varied between different army compositions.
The important thing is varied ARMY control AND positioning, not specifically single-unit micro. Shuttle/Reaver is not nearly as effective without a Dragoon/Zealot army behind it, Vulture micro is not as important as good mine placement and tank positioning, and Mutalisk micro is ALL about positioning and is GREATLY bolstered by Zerglings. It's the positioning and complex army control such bugs may or may not produce in the game on top of the unit design. Such things are what made Starcraft 1 so great.
Problem is, this layer of tactical thought is more or less missing from Starcraft 2.
Honestly OP I think you are just plain wrong, and I'm surprised so many people are jumping on your bandwagon. You try to make connections between things that really aren't there, like Starcrafts popularity as an E-sport being due to glitches. Don't quote me on this but I think Starcraft was at its peak as an e-sport before muta stacking even was discovered. In the vast majority of games you will not see many bugs besides muta stacking and stop lurker and thats about it. It does not take any special skill to stop lurker. Moreover I think the most entertaining Starcraft to watch (and I think many would agree with me) is Lurker ling defiler vs SK Terran. The core meta game of this matchup involves absolutely no glitches. I would argue that watching Muta micro isn't actually very entertaining comparatively regardless of how much more skill it takes. TvP also involves no glitchs what so ever in the core metagame and is arguably the second most entertaining match up. Saying that its popularity as an e sport is due to some glitches that basically rarely come into play in the majority of the games is downright idiotic and intellectually indefensible. Furthermore the vast majority of skill based actions (cloning mm micro spreads ect..) in SC (save mutastacking) involve absolutely no glitches.
I agree with this title SO much. I strictly like to seek out games like this with "high technical skill", and the fact that its glitches just makes it a little bit more interesting. Particularly games that the community themselves seem to shape through discoveries.
Examples: Super Smash Bros. Melee, There are a lot of glitches in this that make you play at very fast speeds and chain together combos never meant to be chained together.
Gunz: Yeah I learned everything there was to learn in this game, took extreme amounts of finger memory and a few nights of my hand hurting like hell. The reward was greater though, flying around like the matrix, gunning my opponents, and owning face.
Starcraft: We all know whats up here :D
Halo 2: Double-shot, Quad-shot, BxB, and sword lunging across maps with the rocket/sword combo, except they patched that glitch, bad bungie
Halo 1: Double wack, blowing weapons to your self with grenades, many other small glitches that have less to do with combat.
I think if a company like blizzard could purposefully add depth to their games through purposefully adding "glitches", they could attract the competitive community like crazy, even the casual community, because they have fun just figuring out glitches.
I absolutely hated this game, I would be running around with a shotgun trying to shoot people in the face and they would be jumping around doing all these crazy things. I eventually learned how to do the HH step and Flash step, but I never enjoyed K-style like I enjoyed playing E-style. It made it almost impossible to win without using these glitches, and that's what ruined the game for me.
It just wasn't fun using the flash step and H step to win, sure I could all kill an entire enemy team, sure I was good at it, but it just didn't feel like I was actually playing the game, it felt like I was mashing buttons in a combination to instantly win.
On May 11 2010 04:27 Floophead_III wrote: Source rapes 1.6. The only reason people play 1.6 is because they have bad computers. I've been playing source for years and I don't see how it is in any way a worse game than 1.6.
Really? The computer argument?
1.6 is fundamentally better than Source for 1 reason and it's not a bug, like he said. The netcode and hitboxes are just better. It's pretty much that simple. CS 1.6 still contains the best hitscan registry of any FPS ever made.
On May 11 2010 05:00 Shindrah wrote: Halo 2: Double-shot, Quad-shot, BxB, and sword lunging across maps with the rocket/sword combo, except they patched that glitch, bad bungie
That's not really appropriate because on standard maps, it results in too much pressure on the dynamic of the game. It's fair in modes set up that everyone has access to those weapons, but it arguably drives the game dynamic too much on maps that by default have only 1 launcher and 1 sword.
Something really similar happened in the fighting game genre. Did you know that combos were originally a bug, unintended by the programmers? In vanilla Street Fighter 2 you could do those exploits, and instead of fixing it Capcom realized that it promoted a higher skill level so instead of patching it they embraced it. In later revisions of Street Fighter 2 more possible combos were added and the UI even told you when you did one.
Same thing with kara throw, which was a bug that you cancelled an animation which made your character move forward to instantly throw after, which increases the throw distance. Again, this bug was embraced, and Street Fighter IV has kara throws.
Crossups (the act of hitting the hitbox of the opponent on the opposite side of his Y axis, so that you must block in an inverse manner otherwise you get hit) were also a bug, same story Capcom saw it made the game better so they kept it. That's not to say every bug should be kept of course, Capcom fixed alot of things between games, but they saw which ones were beneficial for the game and which ones weren't.
On May 11 2010 05:07 TLOBrian wrote: It just wasn't fun using the flash step and H step to win, sure I could all kill an entire enemy team, sure I was good at it, but it just didn't feel like I was actually playing the game, it felt like I was mashing buttons in a combination to instantly win.
I havent played Gunz in a very, very long time but I hazard to bet I would still beat you in a 1 on 1. Im not saying that to brag, just that the moves were not auto win in any way, shape or fashion. And the way the game works at low ping the movement becomes secondary to aim, which was sad because there is no way to have a good experience playing if youre American =/
However, your comment in bold is most interesting to me. Because I felt exactly the same, although for a completely different reason. And that is the fact that in Gunz, you dont aim at people, you aim in front of them. And boy could I not stand that. Went back to CS and never really wanted to play Gunz again, unless I had friends on.
p.s. GunZ fundamentally does suck; pay for items ruined the game.
The game's success isn't due to the unique play style the glitches provide but in fact, their difficulty.I played GunZ for years and the more advanced moves(combination of moves) are OBSCENELY difficult to pull off even randomly when training, let alone in an actual fight. The game is in a really bad shape, it has major flaws but they can't really change or improve anything since the essence of the game is based on these glitches. The only thing that keeps it going is its solid community.
Difficulty: Thats what made GunZ fun and unique.
Its the reason I still enjoy playing quake3 like nothing else after 10 years - because I can log on to quakelive and occasionally get schooled by someone thats simply better than me. Theres a challenge involved that no features, graphics, ACHIEVEMENTS, or anything else can replace.
Its the reason Call of Duty12345678 sucks so much - the first time I entered the game I went on a 30 frag kill spree - the game is boring and based on luck almost entirely. Theres piles of other random content just to keep you busy but essentially, the game isn't all that challenging.
Its the reason why MMOs like Lineage2 are better than World of Warcaft (I feel like I'm gonna get torched for this one ). In L2, while being the absurd grindfest cheater heaven that it is, once you reach endgame you get to enjoy exciting pvp pretty much all of the time, giant alliance battles and never ending political conflicts. While in WoW, you just raid the same bosses over and over and over again just you can gear up for the next bosses that will arrive on the next patch/expand along with 10 new levels. Sure theres a million other things to do but I really feel those are there more to keep you occupied or are like prerequisite to raiding/whatever than actually to challenge you or to have fun with.
That being said I really fear SC2 is going the wrong way so far, from this point of view at the very least. Wouldn't it be awful if the final release of the game was just a dumbed down version of Broodwar with shiny new features/graphics/content? If I was blizzard I'd focus more on getting the challenge part into the game, rather than facebook chat intergration, this way it will take longer for people to master it. Because when you challenge people creativity and determination sparks in the best of them, leaving out the ones that aren't up for the challenge, and quality is produced. But if you rely on features, repetitive and easy gameplay the only thing you would be producing is zombies that generate $2 million for a few hours buying a virtual horse.
I was going to try and refute a few points but I can tell that you never actually played CoD or WoW which are both actually pretty competitive. Try to go on a 30 frag kill streak against some good players in CoD 2, I doubt you will get a kill.
On May 11 2010 05:07 TLOBrian wrote: It just wasn't fun using the flash step and H step to win, sure I could all kill an entire enemy team, sure I was good at it, but it just didn't feel like I was actually playing the game, it felt like I was mashing buttons in a combination to instantly win.
I havent played Gunz in a very, very long time but I hazard to bet I would still beat you in a 1 on 1. Im not saying that to brag, just that the moves were not auto win in any way, shape or fashion. And the way the game works at low ping the movement becomes secondary to aim, which was sad because there is no way to have a good experience playing if youre American =/
However, your comment in bold is most interesting to me. Because I felt exactly the same, although for a completely different reason. And that is the fact that in Gunz, you dont aim at people, you aim in front of them. And boy could I not stand that. Went back to CS and never really wanted to play Gunz again, unless I had friends on.
p.s. GunZ fundamentally does suck; pay for items ruined the game.
The netcode/game engine was what ruined the game before the items. The items just further fucked it up. Lagshields and weirdly clocked computers made some people unhittable, and left little room to see if they were hacking or just had a weird internet connection.
The game's success isn't due to the unique play style the glitches provide but in fact, their difficulty.I played GunZ for years and the more advanced moves(combination of moves) are OBSCENELY difficult to pull off even randomly when training, let alone in an actual fight. The game is in a really bad shape, it has major flaws but they can't really change or improve anything since the essence of the game is based on these glitches. The only thing that keeps it going is its solid community.
Difficulty: Thats what made GunZ fun and unique.
Its the reason I still enjoy playing quake3 like nothing else after 10 years - because I can log on to quakelive and occasionally get schooled by someone thats simply better than me. Theres a challenge involved that no features, graphics, ACHIEVEMENTS, or anything else can replace.
Its the reason Call of Duty12345678 sucks so much - the first time I entered the game I went on a 30 frag kill spree - the game is boring and based on luck almost entirely. Theres piles of other random content just to keep you busy but essentially, the game isn't all that challenging.
Its the reason why MMOs like Lineage2 are better than World of Warcaft (I feel like I'm gonna get torched for this one ). In L2, while being the absurd grindfest cheater heaven that it is, once you reach endgame you get to enjoy exciting pvp pretty much all of the time, giant alliance battles and never ending political conflicts. While in WoW, you just raid the same bosses over and over and over again just you can gear up for the next bosses that will arrive on the next patch/expand along with 10 new levels. Sure theres a million other things to do but I really feel those are there more to keep you occupied or are like prerequisite to raiding/whatever than actually to challenge you or to have fun with.
That being said I really fear SC2 is going the wrong way so far, from this point of view at the very least. Wouldn't it be awful if the final release of the game was just a dumbed down version of Broodwar with shiny new features/graphics/content? If I was blizzard I'd focus more on getting the challenge part into the game, rather than facebook chat intergration, this way it will take longer for people to master it. Because when you challenge people creativity and determination sparks in the best of them, leaving out the ones that aren't up for the challenge, and quality is produced. But if you rely on features, repetitive and easy gameplay the only thing you would be producing is zombies that generate $2 million for a few hours buying a virtual horse.
I was going to try and refute a few points but I can tell that you never actually played CoD or WoW which are both actually pretty competitive. Try to go on a 30 frag kill streak against some good players in CoD 2, I doubt you will get a kill.
He probably meant MW1 or 2 where it's all just pubbing. CoD 1 and 2 were totally different.
I dont really agree.. If you havent played gunz (i have for 5 years now), you wouldnt know the type of community the game has, or that its really just a one trick pony.
You exploit game mechanics to cancel your moves so you can move into other moves faster.
Example: Reload Shot. If you have 2 shotguns on, you shoot one, hit reload, switch to the other gun, and it will shoot as if it has no cooldown.
The community is awful (im not excluded in this :3) Its like..I'd call it the mexican drug cartel ghetto of the internet.
On the "pro" forums, a post could be described as this
Random1: LOL I BEAT THIS GUY, I ONLY WON 11-9 BUT I FREAKIN TRASHED HIM HES SO BAD I WIN DEMOLSIHED EZ *screenshot*
random 2: posts 1248 screenshots of beating poster 1
etcetera.
Games that rely on exploitation, while seemingly cool at the start, really show their true colors when the game starts dying and theres only about 200 people online average, which is what gunz has turned into.
An EXCELLENT analogy. This topic is well-articulated and nails Blizzard to the wall.
I made this point in my video: "What's wrong with Starcraft 2" over two years ago, and predicted a lot of what we see in the game today. Not everything I said has come true, but I tried pointing out the obvious fact that people like Dustin Browder have no idea what made Starcraft a unique gem. Sure, it was a good game for its time, but so is Gears of War.. Nobody will remember Gears of War a few years from now..
What's wrong with Starcraft 2 video, made in 2007:
[EDIT] Wait, wait! You're all missing the point of the OP. His point was that Blizzard unintentionally created an incredibly competative game in 1997, ment to be played on the normal speed. Forget all this talk about "bugs" and "exploits". The core mechanics of the game allowed indefinite player skill, and is the reason most of us are on this website right now. Those mechanics were unintentionally put in place by Blizzard, exploits or not. They could just as well have included no "faster" speed setting, and none of us would be on TL today. Starcraft 2 simply doesn't have all those mechanics. Some more skilled developers might have been able to pull it off, but the game engine that is in place now restricts gameplay more than anything.
I'm not sure this is the best analogy, take games like DotA or HoN, are there any unintended exploits or bugs that the creators didn't include in their original game design that somehow makes the game more fun and competitive? No. And any unintended bugs or exploits are fixed with the next patch.
Take, for example, getting a radiance on flying monkeys in HoN. The aoe dot effect wasn't intended to work on couriers, but for a while it did and players exploited that. It was patched quickly. Did the game's skill cap suddenly drop? Did the player base exodus to a new game in hordes? Is HoN any less competitive of an e-sport? No.
This has to be the WORST example possible to fight your idiotic "sc2 needs more bugs" debate you all keep bringing up.
The bug in that game allowed for a combo that shouldnt have been allowed. It altered the way the game is played. The glitch turned into a feature.
Take the same game, and now every once and a while decide the combo doesnt work. There is no reason for this, just bad luck. Does this make the game better? NO.
Failed scarab AI was fun to watch, but aggravating as hell to experience. It makes the game fun to watch, but aggravating to play. Who ever watched their own scarab glitch out and go "OMG THAT WAS AWESOME, I LOVE THIS GAME!" No on. It pisses you off.
On May 11 2010 10:46 tontonba wrote: I'm not sure this is the best analogy, take games like DotA or HoN, are there any unintended exploits or bugs that the creators didn't include in their original game design that somehow makes the game more fun and competitive? No. And any unintended bugs or exploits are fixed with the next patch.
Take, for example, getting a radiance on flying monkeys in HoN. The aoe dot effect wasn't intended to work on couriers, but for a while it did and players exploited that. It was patched quickly. Did the game's skill cap suddenly drop? Did the player base exodus to a new game in hordes? Is HoN any less competitive of an e-sport? No.
The amount of reflexes and innovation required to win a korean Starcraft tournament can only be examplified by combining chess and world class table tennis.
I'm sorry, but your comparison falls short. Skill in DotA is determined by knowledge of all the item and skill abilities, and teamplay. Starcraft has that - and those extra mechanics that allow players to become untouchable simply because of their reflexes and quick thinking. The point is that unintended mechanics in Starcraft raised the glass ceiling above human ability. Starcraft 2 mechanics are intentionally put into the game, but do not require the same amount of agility to pull off. Most progamers confirmed this after weeks of playing the beta, it simply doesn't have that special something - that doesn't mean it's a bad game.
Starcraft 2 is a GREAT game, and bugs/exploits are not what made Starcraft BETTER. What made Starcraft BETTER was that it had BETTER gameplay mechanics.
Starcraft 2 is a GREAT game, and bugs/exploits are not what made Starcraft BETTER. What made Starcraft BETTER was that it had BETTER gameplay mechanics.
Even though that may be the case don't agree with the op because GunZ is mad terrible bro and comparing it to starcraft2 is like comparing a poo stain in your underwear to the mona lisa.
I don't get why it's called "bugs" or exploits. Bugs and exploits would be like the recent larva canceling exploit. Anyone can pull them off and 6 pool others.
However, the skill set to do the 'exploits' in Gunz is (somewhat) skill based. It is extremely hard to pull off, and that's the key difference. Players want to be able to 'improve' and this is a measurable quantity.
APM could be considered an exploit in SC2. If someone can work 2ice as fast as I can, doesn't mean they 'exploiting' anything. APM allows a player to both macro and micro, and the Gunz trick allowed a player to both move fast and shoot. They aren't exploits
On May 11 2010 11:37 LSB wrote: I don't get why it's called "bugs" or exploits. Bugs and exploits would be like the recent larva canceling exploit. Anyone can pull them off and 6 pool others.
However, the skill set to do the 'exploits' in Gunz is (somewhat) skill based. It is extremely hard to pull off, and that's the key difference. Players want to be able to 'improve' and this is a measurable quantity.
APM could be considered an exploit in SC2. If someone can work 2ice as fast as I can, doesn't mean they 'exploiting' anything. APM allows a player to both macro and micro, and the Gunz trick allowed a player to both move fast and shoot. They aren't exploits
Nicely put. The term "exploit" can't be applied to something that requires more skill than what your opponent is doing.
One key difference: Macro was unintentional in Starcraft, where it is intentional in Starcraft 2. As the OP pointed out, every time game developers intentionally implement new mechanics to raise the skill ceiling, it fails.
On May 11 2010 10:46 tontonba wrote: I'm not sure this is the best analogy, take games like DotA or HoN, are there any unintended exploits or bugs that the creators didn't include in their original game design that somehow makes the game more fun and competitive? No. And any unintended bugs or exploits are fixed with the next patch.
Take, for example, getting a radiance on flying monkeys in HoN. The aoe dot effect wasn't intended to work on couriers, but for a while it did and players exploited that. It was patched quickly. Did the game's skill cap suddenly drop? Did the player base exodus to a new game in hordes? Is HoN any less competitive of an e-sport? No.
The amount of reflexes and innovation required to win a korean Starcraft tournament can only be examplified by combining chess and world class table tennis.
I'm sorry, but your comparison falls short. Skill in DotA is determined by knowledge of all the item and skill abilities, and teamplay. Starcraft has that - and those extra mechanics that allow players to become untouchable simply because of their reflexes and quick thinking. The point is that unintended mechanics in Starcraft raised the glass ceiling above human ability. Starcraft 2 mechanics are intentionally put into the game, but do not require the same amount of agility to pull off. Most progamers confirmed this after weeks of playing the beta, it simply doesn't have that special something - that doesn't mean it's a bad game.
Starcraft 2 is a GREAT game, and bugs/exploits are not what made Starcraft BETTER. What made Starcraft BETTER was that it had BETTER gameplay mechanics.
I agree with everything you just said, but it doesn't really address my post. I was arguing the topic of how unintended bugs/exploits affect the viability of a game as an e-sport. I'm not arguing whether dota/hon has the same skill cap as sc:bw or not.
On May 11 2010 11:30 Perfect Balance wrote: The point is that unintended mechanics in Starcraft raised the glass ceiling above human ability.
What unintended mechanics? Muta-stack? Vulture and Muta patrol-micro? Notice, those aren't Protoss mechanics and, in fact, Protoss doesn't have such mechanics at all - the only glitches Protoss have can't be controlled and player can only suffer from them (like occasional goon path-finding issues). Does that mean that top Protoss players could never be as skilled as top zerg and terran players? Does that mean that Protoss is worser race than Zerg and Terran? =)
On May 11 2010 11:30 Perfect Balance wrote: The point is that unintended mechanics in Starcraft raised the glass ceiling above human ability.
What unintended mechanics? Muta-stack? Vulture and Muta patrol-micro? Notice, those aren't Protoss mechanics and, in fact, Protoss doesn't have such mechanics at all - the only glitches Protoss have can't be controlled and player can only suffer from them (like occasional goon path-finding issues). Does that mean that top Protoss players could never be as skilled as top zerg and terran players? Does that mean that Protoss is worser race than Zerg and Terran? =)
Toss have plenty. For example, goon hold position micro and corsair moving shot. And possibly magic boxes for spells.
On May 11 2010 11:50 Fizban140 wrote: Macro was unintentional? Please explain that before my head explodes.
Starcraft 1: Blizzard would have implemented auto-mining if they could, it was unintentionally left out. Blizzard implements speed settings by random, NOT because of progaming. Tried playing on normal? Blizzard has no advanced AI coding, units unintentionally need more control and skill to master.
Example:
"Toss have plenty. For example, goon hold position micro and corsair moving shot. And possibly magic boxes for spells".
Starcraft 2: Blizzard implements auto-mining, because they can, then try to compensate with gimmicky abilities like MULE. Blizzard gives us Multiple Building Selection (MBS), because they can, try to compensate with add-ons and more unit abilities. Blizzard removes some essential units from the game because they think they can intentionally re-create the intricate unit-duels of Starcraft, and pays more attention to unit design than function. Failing once again.
All of these decisions, and tons of others, proves beyond a doubt that developers (especially ones that previously worked for EA) don't know the first thing about making games that we here at TL enjoy. The bottom line is, I don't feel like playing the Starcraft 2 beta, I'd rather play a game from 1997, that's a major problem to someone who's been looking forward to it for many years.
On May 11 2010 11:30 Perfect Balance wrote: The point is that unintended mechanics in Starcraft raised the glass ceiling above human ability.
What unintended mechanics? Muta-stack? Vulture and Muta patrol-micro? Notice, those aren't Protoss mechanics and, in fact, Protoss doesn't have such mechanics at all - the only glitches Protoss have can't be controlled and player can only suffer from them (like occasional goon path-finding issues). Does that mean that top Protoss players could never be as skilled as top zerg and terran players? Does that mean that Protoss is worser race than Zerg and Terran? =)
Toss have plenty. For example, goon hold position micro and corsair moving shot. And possibly magic boxes for spells.
These are unintended mechanics that "raised the glass ceiling above human ability"? I mean, seriously? =)
On May 11 2010 12:03 Perfect Balance wrote: Starcraft 2: Blizzard implements auto-mining, because they can, then try to compensate with gimmicky abilities like MULE. Blizzard gives us Multiple Building Selection (MBS), because they can, try to compensate with add-ons and more unit abilities. Blizzard removes some essential units from the game because they think they can intentionally re-create the intricate unit-duels of Starcraft, and pays more attention to unit design than function. Failing once again.
I don't wanna touch your third example cause it's way too vague, but how exactly are first two can be called failures?
On May 11 2010 12:03 Perfect Balance wrote: Blizzard implements auto-mining, because they can, then try to compensate with gimmicky abilities like MULE. Blizzard gives us Multiple Building Selection (MBS), because they can, try to compensate with add-ons and more unit abilities.
You do realize that for the most part, the competitive community has deemed these as suitable replacements, right? For the most part, very few people complain that macro is not mechanically demanding enough.
Honestly, if you don't like SC2 that's fine. But you can't really try to pretend that the competitive community is 100% on-board with you because that's pretty much not true. Many top players have issues with certain aspects of the game, but are satisfied enough with it to keep playing.
On May 11 2010 12:03 Perfect Balance wrote: Blizzard implements auto-mining, because they can, then try to compensate with gimmicky abilities like MULE. Blizzard gives us Multiple Building Selection (MBS), because they can, try to compensate with add-ons and more unit abilities.
You do realize that for the most part, the competitive community has deemed these as suitable replacements, right? For the most part, very few people complain that macro is not mechanically demanding enough.
Honestly, if you don't like SC2 that's fine. But you can't really try to pretend that the competitive community is 100% on-board with you because that's pretty much not true. Many top players have issues with certain aspects of the game, but are satisfied enough with it to keep playing.
These are also aspects of many other successful rts franchises, there's more sales to be gained by including these features than will be pushed away by their addition. They also improve the gameplay for people not at the highest levels of play as even A level players would still have idle workers every once in awhile in sc1. So I don't get why all these C/D level players think auto mining is a ruinous feature. It's inclusion increases their potential for improvement, you guys are just putting the pussy on a pedestal :\. The best players will still find ways to pull ahead. Thinking the features that enable their skills to shine need to be par for the course with the ones that existed in BW is fallacy.
A higher APM player will always have an advantage. There is just so much to do in this game if a player with a higher APM actually makes use of their clicks they can beat a lower APM player who isn't making as many useful actions. You can still position units in a fight, target fire, go back to your base and sim city and maybe even micro a harass on their mineral line. If you can do all that at the same time with perfect control, congratulations you have the highest APM in the world.
On May 11 2010 13:46 Fizban140 wrote: A higher APM player will always have an advantage. There is just so much to do in this game if a player with a higher APM actually makes use of their clicks they can beat a lower APM player who isn't making as many useful actions.You can still position units in a fight, target fire, go back to your base and sim city and maybe even micro a harass on their mineral line. If you can do all that at the same time with perfect control, congratulations you have the highest APM in the world.
I'm gonna disagree on alot of things here and ima try to make a point for each
This idk its just wrong, or else youd see players (for example) such as nada beating savior always as he has a 200+ apm advantage.
in sc2 atleast i have about 60 apm and im 1550~ plat right now, most players i play are 90++ yet im sitting at a 98-70? or so record because everything is sooooo much easier.
Lastly, with the new macro mechanics i believe just about everyone can do this, id say being able to harass and fight at the same time is the only real exception to this..
there's a difference between effective apm and actual apm. And apm is always a correlative; it certainly doesn't predict the winner. Higher effective apm doesn't hurt though, and there's usually a base minimum you need to play at a certain level.
Woh woh woh let's not get off topic in this thread, discussing the merits of BW vs SC2. Stick to the point mainly that GunZ is terrible and its players are the worst kind of swine imaginable.
i dont get it. why are you comparing a niche game with a tiny audience to the biggest game of the decade.
just looking at the vid and the comments that game is broken for competitive play. Sure it take skill but its only 1 skill, the game doesnt seem to have balanced maps like quake, or any direction in the maps (just wide halls and open area?) the game has horrible netcode and from what i see is entirely hitscan or melee, which makes it a game of who has the better ping in the end. I dont see any sixth sense control over multiple item spawns, or players taking a positional or tactical advantage, or even any grace in moving around the map. all are things you would see in any worthy ql tourney finals. This game should have died off with the 500 ppl that still play it a long time ago.
the only conclusion i can come up with is that you think sc2 will be bad cos it wont play like some silly 1 trick exploit game.
The faster, smarter player should win in SC2. However blizzard decides to do this is up to them ultimately. Really winning is all that matters to most competitive people. Having fun comes from winning and the feeling that you are better than your opponent on a mental and physical level. This should be the focus when balancing and changing/adding mechanics.
On May 11 2010 00:57 FieryBalrog wrote: While I like the glitches in Starcraft BW, not a single one was really game-changing except muta stacking, and that's not even really a glitch, just a feature of how the game groups units. A lot of glitches DID get fixed in BW because they were gamebreaking (flying drones, infinite minerals...). BW would have still been a fantastic game and not nearly much different if you removed Dragoon stupidity (so attack move worked just as well), or allowed vultures to moving shot with attack command instead of patrol command, or didn't allow probes and scvs to jump over minerals.
Also, this is a perfect example of a community not knowing much about making a great game, yet having massive confidence in their own opinions. You see it in every game with an old, "hardcore" fanbase.
I was listening to the Idle Thumbs podcast and Jake Rodkin, who's a game designer of adventure games, made this point brilliantly. That feedback (whether on the forums or whatever) from the dedicated community is usually a symptom. When the community complains about something and suggests some fix (usually the most unimaginative fix that panders directly to them), the game designer should treat this suggested fix as a symptom to be solved, not a cure to be implemented.
In other words the community is good at knowing something is wrong, but its terrible at fixing it.
While I see where you're coming from, the way of thinking you purport is harmful. As an aspiring game designer, reading that hurt a little bit. You just took Jake Rodkin's words and bent them to your convenience - to the extent of implying that it is best to ignore your community beyond their initial raising of a flag.
Communities are often powerful, wonderfully creative, and unique entities that can and will expand the life of your game. When provided with a creation kit or modding tool, community members will try their ideas for you, and easily cull the greats from the flops. - Their input is not decidedly terrible, just woefully untested.
Starcraft 2 is unlikely to be the most amazing RTS on release day, but the Galaxy Editor gives me reason for hope. If Blizzard doesn't get it right, eventually the community will - and if we're lucky, Blizzard will pay attention to these mods while assembling The Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.
Why dumb down a game for newbs, when you have a ladder placement system that puts all the newbs at the bottom and the good players at the top and they will never play each other.
The game needs to be designed around expert play, and high skill/speed. Not around making it easier for newbs.
I remember when this used to be the main game I played. I was super untalented at it though, I think it took me a month of play before being even able to do butterfly correctly. I eventually managed to do more advanced moves like the half-step. I wish they balanced the game more though instead of making every player play with sword and double shotgun. Playing any of the other weapons was pretty useless.
I wish all you GunZ players would give up trying to convince anyone here that your horrible game was worth playing. It wasn't. You all should have been playing CS, no excuses.
Being good at GunZ is like being good at TF2, no one cares. It is a collection of casual shooter players who like to pub and nothing more.
On May 11 2010 09:57 Tundera wrote: I dont really agree.. If you havent played gunz (i have for 5 years now), you wouldnt know the type of community the game has, or that its really just a one trick pony.
You exploit game mechanics to cancel your moves so you can move into other moves faster.
Example: Reload Shot. If you have 2 shotguns on, you shoot one, hit reload, switch to the other gun, and it will shoot as if it has no cooldown.
The community is awful (im not excluded in this :3) Its like..I'd call it the mexican drug cartel ghetto of the internet.
On the "pro" forums, a post could be described as this
Random1: LOL I BEAT THIS GUY, I ONLY WON 11-9 BUT I FREAKIN TRASHED HIM HES SO BAD I WIN DEMOLSIHED EZ *screenshot*
random 2: posts 1248 screenshots of beating poster 1
etcetera.
Games that rely on exploitation, while seemingly cool at the start, really show their true colors when the game starts dying and theres only about 200 people online average, which is what gunz has turned into.
This post warrants at least some attention. I'm not sure how the implications play out with regard to the OP's point, but I think it's a bit foolish to disregard it.
So true, there are so many examples where "abusable bugs" were what made a game great:
- SCBW: Mutastacking - Do I need to say more?
- Super Smash Brothers Melee: Dash-Dancing, Dash-cancelling, chain-throws, short-hop-dash-cancelling, dashgrabbing etc. All stuff that wasn't in the game intentionally but made it such a great and demanding game.
- Tekken: wavedashing and stuff related to that.
- WC3: Possibility to switch Items with cooldowns to other heroes to use them again right away. zeppelin-bug where you could staff the zeppelin and instantly pick up the hero himself to staff it back with the zeppelin. "AI-Bugs" that could be abused with fast creeping with Trees etc., Also, killing own Units to deny getting XP etc - who knows what was actually planned of all that stuff?
- Diablo2: Possilibility to get rushed through the game - I highly doubt that was intentionally, but it allowed for stuff like low-level-Duels with chars that completed the game and got all the additional skillpoints n stuff, but are only like lvl 10 or 15 etc.
That's all stuff I kinda miss in SC2 atm and with the Engine being so incredibly awesome, I don't really know how much of that stuff is gonna be discovered, but I hope we'll find stuff that's comparable to Mutamicro in SCBW, whit what I mean: Demanding but highly rewarding Tricks you can pull off!
I strongly disagree. Perhaps a bit idealistic view, but I'll explain. A game is a set of rules where you apply your skills in the best possible way to win. But in a competitive game the rules should be set clearly and be transparent to everyone. If a player does not follow the rules, he/she is a cheater. When you play chess, do you try to steal a piece from the board when your opponent doesn't watch? Foe me Starcraft (and even SC2) is deep and complex enough to not require any bugs. What's the difference between vulture's "lay mine" pathing bug and invulnerable drone? Both shouldn't be possible according to overall game rules? and Boxer using first one cheats as bad as some noob who doesn't know any other strat than second one.
I'm confused, people say they want bugs? Well go out and find them, play with the units, do things that no one would ever really consider doing... You probably can't even, they will just happen one day and people will go "woah, what just happened there?!?!" and then they will try reproducing them...
If Blizzard intentionally created mechanics to be exploited (whose to say they haven't btw), then advertised them and said "here, try this", that would be a lot lot worse than what they are doing now, ie making a solid game.
The game is still young, there is so much yet to be discovered, considering the amount of tourny's that are being played, and the popularity of the beta, I have no doubt, absolutely none that Blizzard have what it takes to make a great game.
At the moment a casual player can pick it up, spend a few days learning and end up somewhere mid silver to gold... Do you think anybody would do that if they had to spend weeks mastering a micro trick?
The barrier to entry was incredibly high for Starcraft... Blizzard needed to lower that, and they have for Starcraft 2... Whether it raises or not during its lifespan is yet to be seen, but at the moment, its great the amount of new players that are being drawn into the game, watching tournaments, trying to learn and get better, and it only means good things for gaming as a whole.
(i am one of these people by the way, and if I had to learn skills that were relevant to sc1 to be even midly competitive in sc2... Then I might as well go and play sc1.)
Bottom line, comparing any game that is Really late in it's lifespan to a 3 month old game is absolutely ridiculous.
On May 11 2010 18:12 keV. wrote: I wish all you GunZ players would give up trying to convince anyone here that your horrible game was worth playing. It wasn't. You all should have been playing CS, no excuses.
Being good at GunZ is like being good at TF2, no one cares. It is a collection of casual shooter players who like to pub and nothing more.
Oh that was mean... But it felt good.
Except TF2 has a fairly thriving competitive scene so that was a terrible comparison. Stop accidentally complementing GunZ idiot.
On May 11 2010 18:31 kickinhead wrote: So true, there are so many examples where "abusable bugs" were what made a game great:
- SCBW: Mutastacking - Do I need to say more?
- Super Smash Brothers Melee: Dash-Dancing, Dash-cancelling, chain-throws, short-hop-dash-cancelling, dashgrabbing etc. All stuff that wasn't in the game intentionally but made it such a great and demanding game.
- Tekken: wavedashing and stuff related to that.
- WC3: Possibility to switch Items with cooldowns to other heroes to use them again right away. zeppelin-bug where you could staff the zeppelin and instantly pick up the hero himself to staff it back with the zeppelin. "AI-Bugs" that could be abused with fast creeping with Trees etc., Also, killing own Units to deny getting XP etc - who knows what was actually planned of all that stuff?
- Diablo2: Possilibility to get rushed through the game - I highly doubt that was intentionally, but it allowed for stuff like low-level-Duels with chars that completed the game and got all the additional skillpoints n stuff, but are only like lvl 10 or 15 etc.
That's all stuff I kinda miss in SC2 atm and with the Engine being so incredibly awesome, I don't really know how much of that stuff is gonna be discovered, but I hope we'll find stuff that's comparable to Mutamicro in SCBW, whit what I mean: Demanding but highly rewarding Tricks you can pull off!
All very good examples. Not surprised when I saw you were from Switzerland. I think our average american friends on TL are younger than the average european member, and perhaps they don't have enough experience to compare games from yesteryear with SC2.
The main issue, the point of the OP, was that the gameplay mechanics that allowed Starcraft to be broadcasted over national television in Korea, were unintentionally put into the game by Blizzard. New mechanics have been intentionally put into SC2, and most progamers can (and have) attest to the fact that it's not going to reach Starcraft's potential. That doesn't mean SC2 is a bad game, just like Gears of War isn't a bad game.
You're just playing SC2 exactly how the game designers imagined you'd be playing SC2, and game designers fail at implementing new gameplay mechanics that raises the skill ceiling.
On May 11 2010 18:52 skipgamer wrote: I'm confused, people say they want bugs? Well go out and find them, play with the units, do things that no one would ever really consider doing... You probably can't even, they will just happen one day and people will go "woah, what just happened there?!?!" and then they will try reproducing them...
The OP is a little confusing on this yes. People don't necessarily want bugs. They just want a harder game where you can do more. As it is SC2 is not as hard as SC1, even with the macro mechanics they added. Micro is a lot less prevalent and the macro itself is easy enough such that, at least for me as a newbie, I'm a lot better with macro in SC2 than in SC1.
Bugs just sometimes happen to allow for this.
However, counting on bugs in SC2 is ridiculous. If Blizzard doesn't understand why a particular bug might be liked by the community, they will patch it and "fix" it. Also, assuming that a suitable bug will exist is quite silly. Look at what happened between Super Smash Melee and Brawl. Brawl reduced a bunch of the engine errors and now you got a game which is about as mechanical as a rock tied to a stick.
As a result, hoping that SC2 will have magical bugs that actually fix the game is completely silly. At the very least Blizzard needs to be more on board with making the game more challenging than it is now.
If Blizzard intentionally created mechanics to be exploited (whose to say they haven't btw), then advertised them and said "here, try this", that would be a lot lot worse than what they are doing now, ie making a solid game.
Inability to deny something is a foolish reason to hope for it.
The game is still young, there is so much yet to be discovered, considering the amount of tourny's that are being played, and the popularity of the beta, I have no doubt, absolutely none that Blizzard have what it takes to make a great game.
Yeah, sure. But SC1 was greater than great. SC1 and 2 are similar enough that there isn't as much to discover in SC2. And sure, SC2 will be successful, even competitively successful. But it could be so much more than simply a successful game. It could be the best bloody sequel to the best bloody game ever made.
At the moment a casual player can pick it up, spend a few days learning and end up somewhere mid silver to gold... Do you think anybody would do that if they had to spend weeks mastering a micro trick?
The barrier to entry was incredibly high for Starcraft... Blizzard needed to lower that, and they have for Starcraft 2... Whether it raises or not during its lifespan is yet to be seen, but at the moment, its great the amount of new players that are being drawn into the game, watching tournaments, trying to learn and get better, and it only means good things for gaming as a whole.
(i am one of these people by the way, and if I had to learn skills that were relevant to sc1 to be even midly competitive in sc2... Then I might as well go and play sc1.)
Making the game easy only makes the game boring in the long run. I guess what you're saying is that you wouldn't play SC2 if it had the skill ceiling of SC1. That's a ridiculous position. You and I probably will not ever reach the skill ceilings of either game. Honestly that's a good thing.
I first got into the SC1 scene, I got into it because I could comprehend how extremely awesome it was that these players were building these armies and microing them at the same time. Every coordinated movement seemed magical and full of win.
When I watch SC2 now I just don't get the same feeling at all. Part of it might be the game's young age, yes... but again I think it's unreasonable to hope beyond hope that some bug will fix things or that Blizzard will "get it" suddenly all by themselves.
As a result, hoping that SC2 will have magical bugs that actually fix the game is completely silly. At the very least Blizzard needs to be more on board with making the game more challenging than it is now.
You're missing the point. We're not saying that Dustin Browder should make the game better and more competative than Starcraft - we're saying he's not fit to do so. A tiny minority of the competative games on the market today can be attested to game designers purposely implementing features to encourage hardcore competition. These features were unintentional in the prequal, then carried over with slight mutations to the sequal. The less these designers touch the core coding of the competative game, the better the game turns out.
The POINT is that game designers like Dustin Browder have proven themselves unable to create new micro/macro mechanics that raise the skill ceiling, again, and again, and again.
Examples of macro/micro mechanics:
- SCBW: Mutastacking - Do I need to say more?
- Super Smash Brothers Melee: Dash-Dancing, Dash-cancelling, chain-throws, short-hop-dash-cancelling, dashgrabbing etc. All stuff that wasn't in the game intentionally but made it such a great and demanding game.
- Tekken: wavedashing and stuff related to that.
- WC3: Possibility to switch Items with cooldowns to other heroes to use them again right away. zeppelin-bug where you could staff the zeppelin and instantly pick up the hero himself to staff it back with the zeppelin. "AI-Bugs" that could be abused with fast creeping with Trees etc., Also, killing own Units to deny getting XP etc - who knows what was actually planned of all that stuff?
- Diablo2: Possilibility to get rushed through the game - I highly doubt that was intentionally, but it allowed for stuff like low-level-Duels with chars that completed the game and got all the additional skillpoints n stuff, but are only like lvl 10 or 15 etc.
SC:BW: Lifting barracks to give Siege Tanks vision, reavers harassment with shuttles, patrol micro, dragoon hold position micro, none of the unit duels in Starcraft turned out how the game designers envisioned it. If they had, it would never have been a competative game!
Why? Because:
Game designers like Dustin Browder have proven themselves unable to create new micro/macro mechanics that raise the skill ceiling, again, and again, and again.
My own point is that without the support of the developer SC2 will never improve mechanically. It's just the way it is because only the developer can make changes.
Your point seems to be that developers improving the game is impossible barring the adoption of accidental features that were discovered in the older game.
These points are not even necessarily contradictory.
The place where you should have quoted me would be:
People don't necessarily want bugs. They just want a harder game where you can do more.
That is indeed a bit of a misunderstanding on my part but in no way does it invalidate the rest of my post. Unless you get Dustin Browder and the rest of the devs on board, SC2 will not be improved mechanically and you will be playing mods for the rest of the game's life.
On May 09 2010 22:54 craaaaack wrote: Nice read, I fully agree.
YES SO RIGHT!!!
Blizzard dont get it, that more spells/spellcasting isnt the "micro" we want and need. we need things like patrol/hold micro to make the units more effective.
There are a hell of a lot of people who claim to speak for the "we" in the starcraft 2 community.
im sorry i was talking for maybe 90% of former Starcraft 1 users that were able to reach C+ or better and not some players from other RTS games (HELLO C&C). the thing is that sc2 doesnt allow perfect controll. i mean you could use a single vulture and kill million of speedlings if the opponent just a attacked and you controlled your vulture with patrol micro. the only way to stop this was to micro better or build a ranged unit yourself. in sc2 a simple a move with speedlings will be enough if you have enough of them, because they are fater and will autosurround, so that you cant hit and run. IMO it should need micro to stop a microed unit from the opponent.
i think when people figure out how to FE as fast and safe as possible, the game will become a huge ranged ball vs ranged ball timing attack fest, with the loser of that first fight GGing.
i think when people figure out how to FE as fast and safe as possible, the game will become a huge ranged ball vs ranged ball timing attack fest, with the loser of that first fight GGing.
Remember when vultures and tanks faced off against zealots and dragoons? One side was static, the other had to break through a wall. It was technically challenging, different every time, visually pleasing, and had the potential to go either way depending on unit control.
In any given situation, you could lose all your dragoons without doing any damage, or kill 4 tanks without losing a single unit. Unit duels are too similar in SC2, because the pathing and coding of each unit is based on some "advanced micromolecular physics simulation" that makes every unit behave the same. This is a problem with the game engine, and one of the things that the developers failed to predict. This is why SC2 "feels" inferior, it's the basic coding of the game that allows less control over units.
On May 11 2010 02:20 Pieguy314 wrote: Alot of the time the dagger was really ignored in the metagame cause it was considered an inferior weapon by both the sword users and dagger users. However, me and a group of tight friends formed D-style clans such as Keuk, 1/4Katana, Sicaria, and such. I had a great time in those clans using dagger rather than the boring sword. I don't know why, maybe we were masochists, but we enjoyed being at a disadvantage compared to k stylers. to give an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dgksmipC6o excuse the somewhat mediocre music.
God this game looks so sick. And I loved the music. I really wish I would have known about this title when it was in its hayday. It looks like all the micro skill of Starcraft in an FPS. It's like Halo but with massive amounts of skill involved.
On May 11 2010 22:11 phyvo wrote: Making the game easy only makes the game boring in the long run. I guess what you're saying is that you wouldn't play SC2 if it had the skill ceiling of SC1. That's a ridiculous position. You and I probably will not ever reach the skill ceilings of either game. Honestly that's a good thing.
I first got into the SC1 scene, I got into it because I could comprehend how extremely awesome it was that these players were building these armies and microing them at the same time. Every coordinated movement seemed magical and full of win.
When I watch SC2 now I just don't get the same feeling at all. Part of it might be the game's young age, yes... but again I think it's unreasonable to hope beyond hope that some bug will fix things or that Blizzard will "get it" suddenly all by themselves.
Making the game easy doesn't only make it boring in the long run.
It makes the game more accessible to new players... When I say new players I don't mean new to SC2... I mean new to Starcraft as a whole. If it is going to have Any chance of becoming a successful e-sport in the west it needs to become a household name, and whether it is liked by the competitive community or not this means the average joe needs to understand at least somewhat how to be successful (and muta micro simply isn't something the average joe would understand).
And I am saying I wouldn't play SC2 if it had the skill ceiling of SC1. I'm not ashamed of it, and I don't see why it is a ridiculous argument. There is a point where a game requires too much time investment that non hardcore competitive gamers turn off. They don't want to invest that much time...
I think you're vastly under-estimating Blizzards knowledge of why SC was successful... I just believe they are deliberately taking SC2 down another path... It might not be as good as starcraft to the hardcore starcraft players... But I am damn certain the way they are going it will be more successful.
On May 11 2010 18:12 keV. wrote: I wish all you GunZ players would give up trying to convince anyone here that your horrible game was worth playing. It wasn't. You all should have been playing CS, no excuses.
Being good at GunZ is like being good at TF2, no one cares. It is a collection of casual shooter players who like to pub and nothing more.
Oh that was mean... But it felt good.
CS and GunZ are very very very very different. I used to play both - IMO GunZ stayed fun longer than CS though they both eventually got boring (Starcraft never does though ;D)
Gunz takes skill.. Starcraft does not (for the sake of this point) Starcraft is a strategy game. Starcraft condones "smarts" and "out-thinking ur opponent" not "skills and out-maneuver". Its like people that are good at chess, they are not going to be good at playing soccer. And conversely, you don't need to be smart in gunz but instead dexterity driven.
I am not saying skill does not exist in starcraft, it does. (think micro)
but how much of it plays in the game is far less compared to FPS and especially games like GunZ.
Most people that do well in starcraft are either people that don't have a life and spend 10 hours a day practicing build (think: Idra) or people that are just creative, smart, and quick learners (think:whitera/thelittleone)
On May 12 2010 07:56 virgozero wrote: Gunz takes skill.. Starcraft does not (for the sake of this point) Starcraft is a strategy game. Starcraft condones "smarts" and "out-thinking ur opponent" not "skills and out-maneuver". Its like people that are good at chess, they are not going to be good at playing soccer. And conversely, you don't need to be smart in gunz but instead dexterity driven.
I am not saying skill does not exist in starcraft, it does. (think micro)
but how much of it plays in the game is far less compared to FPS and especially games like GunZ.
Most people that do well in starcraft are either people that don't have a life and spend 10 hours a day practicing build (think: Idra) or people that are just creative, smart, and quick learners (think:whitera/thelittleone)
There are so many stupid things in this post.
If you think that White-Ra doesn't mass game you are really ignorant. Even if he only got recognition late, he has been around forever and his Gameitoss account on ICCUP always had a sick amount of games each seasons. http://www.iccup.com/gamingprofile/Gameitoss.html
1000 games during season 11 for example ....
Having dedication and skills and being a mass gamer aren't incompatible.
On May 12 2010 07:56 virgozero wrote: Gunz takes skill.. Starcraft does not (for the sake of this point) Starcraft is a strategy game. Starcraft condones "smarts" and "out-thinking ur opponent" not "skills and out-maneuver". Its like people that are good at chess, they are not going to be good at playing soccer. And conversely, you don't need to be smart in gunz but instead dexterity driven.
I am not saying skill does not exist in starcraft, it does. (think micro)
but how much of it plays in the game is far less compared to FPS and especially games like GunZ.
Most people that do well in starcraft are either people that don't have a life and spend 10 hours a day practicing build (think: Idra) or people that are just creative, smart, and quick learners (think:whitera/thelittleone)
There are so many stupid things in this post.
If you think that White-Ra doesn't mass game you are really ignorant. Even if he only got recognition late, he has been around forever and his Gameitoss account on ICCUP always had a sick amount of games each seasons. http://www.iccup.com/gamingprofile/Gameitoss.html
1000 games during season 11 for example ....
Having dedication and skills and being a mass gamer aren't incompatible.
I was wrong about whitera I am sorry. I just listen on HD's channel that whitera is in his 30s so I assumed he had a family or some heavier obligation and thus less time to play.
I stand corrected but I believe my point is there.
The thing about these glitches, is that they are unpredictable. We need something solid to build on, not just flimsy hopes that SC2 will have interesting glitches. We just don't know that yet.
What we get from that is that if a glitch is present, in some cases, it's better to keep it. The glitch itself is not important; it's the effect. The game needs components that scale with the skill of the player - to give the feeling of progress.
It takes time to master a game, it took Starcraft years and an expansion to become a worthwhile e-sport. This game is in beta, fancy tricks with the game engine are going to happen, this is absolutely a fact. There are certain things that blizzard can do to improve the game-play, but to my knowledge no one has come close to mastering this game - not by a long shot. You talk about difficulty making a game great, I don't see where that is lacking in Starcraft 2, I do see the void of anyone capable of reaching a high level of play in Starcraft 2. Time will help fix this, that and guided and planned feedback to blizzard.
I find it also amusing that people are predicting that Starcraft 2 will not reach the height of Broodwar, when in actuality in terms of popularity it seems to have done so - in beta no less (In Europe and North America). A poll on this very site asking what people prefer to watch had 60%+ in favor of SC2. I can't predict the future but I ask yourself what a poll of similar dialogue a year from now would yield. I would find it hard to believe if Broodwar would even get 20% of the votes.
There are still things to tweak with this game, that is certain, but I firmly believe that once the players get this game down extremely well the idea that this game is boring to watch, or that there's something wrong with the mechanics will fade away - gradually.
On May 11 2010 18:12 keV. wrote: I wish all you GunZ players would give up trying to convince anyone here that your horrible game was worth playing. It wasn't. You all should have been playing CS, no excuses.
Being good at GunZ is like being good at TF2, no one cares. It is a collection of casual shooter players who like to pub and nothing more.
Oh that was mean... But it felt good.
Except TF2 has a fairly thriving competitive scene so that was a terrible comparison. Stop accidentally complementing GunZ idiot.
Fairly thriving huh? That makes no sense. Use a thesaurus and try for some middle ground.
TF2 has no competitive scene. It is about as competitive as L4D or HL2 death match.
On May 12 2010 08:06 dan_dark wrote: i play gunz, i like gunz, i cant do halfstep/butterfly/k-style but i use e-style (accurate rapid fire with basic of sword fight)
but i hate when i kill someone and they go: "OMG SPRAYER NOOB SPRAYER!!" its f-ing e-style thats why i left gunz, but i'll be back
SPRAY: Shooting Perfectly Right At You :D
if a k-styler can't kill you, then they're not good enough at k-style, or you have aimbot
personally, i've always done h-style, because e-style was freakin boring, i'd rather play cs than that shit. k-style was too fucking hard, and not nearly as rewarding as learning starcraft.
so i could do a basic butterfly, that wall-step thing, the occasional flash step, and multiple wall run. i sucked, i knew it, but w/e
This thread is excellent, and the comparison with Gunz is very accurate. I wish we had more of these discussions going, instead of everyone being so complacant.
Completely agree on how real pro games are made by accidents. Check this out
BF2142 Knife only mode (EA tries to take down servers but the community is still there since 2007), 70% people play for points, 30% plays for esports!
THIS IS "THE" closest game to a sport no joke. Its not as heavy on strategy as it is on starcraft but FAR FAR heavier than ANY game including gunz on skills department.
The amount of deception, accuracy, dexterity, mind games is just phenomenal.
As players play on they develop styles of their own and like sports, everyone has good and bad days depending on their mood as every aspect of a person will have some level of factor in this game.
Wow. You're right when you say that exploits / glitches attract people... It seems that the "skillful" things in a game are always done through an exploit.
game hasn't even been released so of course there won't be any bugs discovered yet people forget that things like muta stacking didn't get discovered years after the game was released and they are just hoping that a ton of bugs get discovered within the first couple days of the game
GunZ was really fun back in day when the canceling was just found out and people weren't the worst (if not worst at least they are in top percentage) assholes ever.
I really like how it changed gameplay overall, you could see different playstyles emerge back then. Developers though, never payed attention to community and barely updated the game leaving the huge flaws that held it back from becoming a great game there.
Long story short it devolved into small elitist community (in a bad way) that taught new players all the wrong stuff and all the bad players that had learned a trick or two raged wheter they were beaten via traditional shooting or by outplaying them in their own game.
While I still like to play a game once in awhile... I prefer to do it with some friends to minimize the ping and/or to have a good game.
Exploiting unexpected things has chance to bring out amazing stuff, but doesn't draw a line between skill and lack of it.
On May 09 2010 23:14 karebear wrote: damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
I would definitely disagree......
burrowed banelings youre waiting to manually detonate in perfect harmony with the lings coming in from the flank is equally appealing.
On May 09 2010 23:14 karebear wrote: damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
I would definitely disagree......
burrowed banelings youre waiting to manually detonate in perfect harmony with the lings coming in from the flank is equally appealing.
Nononono youre so wrong. They totally should explode as soon as a unit steps on them (Like landmines) but spamming hold with 1000 apm like progamers would be able too makes them not explode until you actually stop spamming(which is when the army is in good position).
On May 09 2010 23:14 karebear wrote: damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
I would definitely disagree......
burrowed banelings youre waiting to manually detonate in perfect harmony with the lings coming in from the flank is equally appealing.
Nononono youre so wrong. They totally should explode as soon as a unit steps on them (Like landmines) but spamming hold with 1000 apm like progamers would be able too makes them not explode until you actually stop spamming(which is when the army is in good position).
Yea thats way better. Not.
Lol. You shoulda played Brood War. Grouping lurkers with an ovie and pressing H works just as well as spamming, ya know? But then again I wouldn't expect something as exciting in SC2
On May 09 2010 23:14 karebear wrote: damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
I would definitely disagree......
burrowed banelings youre waiting to manually detonate in perfect harmony with the lings coming in from the flank is equally appealing.
Nononono youre so wrong. They totally should explode as soon as a unit steps on them (Like landmines) but spamming hold with 1000 apm like progamers would be able too makes them not explode until you actually stop spamming(which is when the army is in good position).
Yea thats way better. Not.
Lol. You shoulda played Brood War. Grouping lurkers with an ovie and pressing H works just as well as spamming, ya know? But then again I wouldn't expect something as exciting in SC2
I think he was referring to the fact that there aren't any hold banelings in SC2? I'm not sure if this is true
I used to play Gunz heavily a few years back. It is probably one of the best free shooters out there. I was one of the nub sprayers that raped a lot of people with the automatic rifles and smgs. I usually got whined at by the k-stylers but its all good my kill/death ratio was good.
That being said, I know that k-style absolutely dominated 1v1 duels so I generally only played 8-16 player games (even though 16 player usually lagged too much).
There isn't a clear 'message' in the OP that I can really extract, but I'm guessing there's a degree of 'SC2 makes too much stuff too easy' opinion contained in it, by way of analogy - so thats (vaguely) what I'm going to respond to.
What, precisely, is a game? We can dispense with definitions that have to do with ephemeral stuff like 'fun', because given that we're on TL we are clearly more concerned with competition, and fun that it provides, than fun provided directly by the game outside of competition.
What, then, are competitive games? They are, quite simply, a set of arbitrary limitations (rules, basically). Basketball is defined as a game in which one has to dribble - and dribbling renders certain things that would otherwise be possible impossible (I can't think of a good example, I suck at basketball). All of the limitations imposed in any and all games are arbitrary by definition - nothing outside of the game itself explains why a particular rule is there, and most of the time explaining why a rule is there requires reference to more ephemeral stuff like 'balance'.
The misconception I see sometimes, to use SC as an example, is that things like the 12 unit group limit and only being able to select one building at a time inherently made the game require more "skill". This is a misconception because "skill" is badly defined. To simplify greatly, there are two major skills that are being deployed in any SCBW game (or in any game period, for that matter). The first is that of making decisions as to what to do. Faced with DTs, say, in a PvP, players can choose to make Observers, and this is often the right decision. The second is the skill involved in executing that decision. In the DT/Obs example, its not a particularly hard task - but when the decisions involve, say, making a ton of units at the same time, something like MBS makes the execution of that decision easier than it would be without it.
That said, games exist on a continuum of possible skill 'balances'. A game like Chess has (basically) no 'execution' skillset - barring paralysis, everyone is capable of moving a pawn, as long as they know the rules of how pieces move. Executing a strategy isn't, in fact, a matter of execution, but a matter of strategically breaking down your grand idea into individual moves.
On the other end of the continuum, you have games like Golf - where there is (almost) no strategy involved, and the skill deployed is almost entirely a skill of executing the best possible shot. There is some strategy in picking shots, but I think my point is clear. One could imagine a version of SC where players are faced only with streams of binary, and must input commands in binary, and so forth. In such a version, it seems likely that the difficulty involved in executing long, complex strategies would be so great that the best players would be those who could make, say, 6 zerglings in the minimum time consistently - because of the 'UI limitations' imposed on other players, reacting to such a strategy would be near impossible.
Thus games can be described as focusing to X degree on "execution" and to Y degree on "strategy". Any focus on execution must carry with it a correspondingly lower focus on strategy, and vice-versa. This is where people get confused with regards to SCBW vs SC2, or bug exploits making a game 'more skillful', and so forth. To take the GunZ example, the discovery of quickswitching (I dont know what its actually called but this seems descriptive enough) doesn't necessarily make the game 'more skillful' - although in this case it probably did, because while it increased focus on execution skills, it also increased the totality of available strategies.
At the end of the day, what the "right" balance between execution and strategy focuses is is a matter of personal opinion. Some people like to shoot pistols competitively - something with a massive focus on execution skills, and others like to play chess - something with a massive focus on strategy skills. It is impossible to make a reasoned argument as to why one is better than another.
If you think SCBW is better because of the extra UI limitations placed on players, great. You should play what you think is the best game, obviously. But arguing that SC2 is less skillful purely on the basis of it lacking some of those limitations is ridiculous (and flawed). There is simply a greater focus on strategy, as a corollary to the lessened focus on execution.
[edit] Jesus, that was longer than I thought it was.
This is a pretty good post. I played GunZ for a long time with a couple friends who happened to be pro FPS players and I schooled them so bad at GunZ because it required a lot of actions to be good at.
Before I quit I could move around the map without ever touching the ground using steps and slash shots and even though they had better reaction time and point accuracy, they couldn't keep up with it and remain accurate. It was deffinately an FPS of it's own category much like CS1.6 was for quite some time. If i played them at Q or CS I would get shit on so hard, but GunZ was so much different.
Another example is TF2's sniper nerf. Here's a link to my friend's sniper video. He happens to be the best awper I've ever seen and after picking up TF2 he schooled pretty good with the sniper until they nerfed it making him have to stand in place in order to fire. It ultimately killed competative TF2.
Sometimes being able to exploit the engine such as quick switching out of zoom by pulling out your knife makes the game better. it adds an element of skill that some players can do and others can't.
There isn't a clear 'message' in the OP that I can really extract, but I'm guessing there's a degree of 'SC2 makes too much stuff too easy' opinion contained in it, by way of analogy - so thats (vaguely) what I'm going to respond to.
What, precisely, is a game? We can dispense with definitions that have to do with ephemeral stuff like 'fun', because given that we're on TL we are clearly more concerned with competition, and fun that it provides, than fun provided directly by the game outside of competition.
What, then, are competitive games? They are, quite simply, a set of arbitrary limitations (rules, basically). Basketball is defined as a game in which one has to dribble - and dribbling renders certain things that would otherwise be possible impossible (I can't think of a good example, I suck at basketball). All of the limitations imposed in any and all games are arbitrary by definition - nothing outside of the game itself explains why a particular rule is there, and most of the time explaining why a rule is there requires reference to more ephemeral stuff like 'balance'.
The misconception I see sometimes, to use SC as an example, is that things like the 12 unit group limit and only being able to select one building at a time inherently made the game require more "skill". This is a misconception because "skill" is badly defined. To simplify greatly, there are two major skills that are being deployed in any SCBW game (or in any game period, for that matter). The first is that of making decisions as to what to do. Faced with DTs, say, in a PvP, players can choose to make Observers, and this is often the right decision. The second is the skill involved in executing that decision. In the DT/Obs example, its not a particularly hard task - but when the decisions involve, say, making a ton of units at the same time, something like MBS makes the execution of that decision easier than it would be without it.
That said, games exist on a continuum of possible skill 'balances'. A game like Chess has (basically) no 'execution' skillset - barring paralysis, everyone is capable of moving a pawn, as long as they know the rules of how pieces move. Executing a strategy isn't, in fact, a matter of execution, but a matter of strategically breaking down your grand idea into individual moves.
On the other end of the continuum, you have games like Golf - where there is (almost) no strategy involved, and the skill deployed is almost entirely a skill of executing the best possible shot. There is some strategy in picking shots, but I think my point is clear. One could imagine a version of SC where players are faced only with streams of binary, and must input commands in binary, and so forth. In such a version, it seems likely that the difficulty involved in executing long, complex strategies would be so great that the best players would be those who could make, say, 6 zerglings in the minimum time consistently - because of the 'UI limitations' imposed on other players, reacting to such a strategy would be near impossible.
Thus games can be described as focusing to X degree on "execution" and to Y degree on "strategy". Any focus on execution must carry with it a correspondingly lower focus on strategy, and vice-versa. This is where people get confused with regards to SCBW vs SC2, or bug exploits making a game 'more skillful', and so forth. To take the GunZ example, the discovery of quickswitching (I dont know what its actually called but this seems descriptive enough) doesn't necessarily make the game 'more skillful' - although in this case it probably did, because while it increased focus on execution skills, it also increased the totality of available strategies.
At the end of the day, what the "right" balance between execution and strategy focuses is is a matter of personal opinion. Some people like to shoot pistols competitively - something with a massive focus on execution skills, and others like to play chess - something with a massive focus on strategy skills. It is impossible to make a reasoned argument as to why one is better than another.
If you think SCBW is better because of the extra UI limitations placed on players, great. You should play what you think is the best game, obviously. But arguing that SC2 is less skillful purely on the basis of it lacking some of those limitations is ridiculous (and flawed). There is simply a greater focus on strategy, as a corollary to the lessened focus on execution.
[edit] Jesus, that was longer than I thought it was.
The issue is not about SCBW being more skillful due to its UI limitations, it's about the amount of skill required to play the game in general. UI limitation is one of many factors that makes SCBW, a skillful game.
I'll use musical instruments as an example: First we have the "recorder". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorder Probably the most easiest instrument to play in the world. Second we have the flute I'm not saying it's the hardest instrument to play, as soon as you get the hang of it it's quite easy (I play it). It is harder to play than a "recorder". =_=;; Let's see... If you are really good (I mean really good) at playing the recorder, people will be impressed and you are encouraged to play better. That's a big fun factor. However, people are more impressed when I play the flute (even at mediocre level) than when I play the recorder. Why? It's harder to do, much more skill is involved, learning curve is much steeper. You would think if you have more "fun" playing the recorder than the flute, then you will keep playing the recorder right? Nope. No matter how fun playing recorder is it's all about mastery. A skill required by a person by playing/doing an activity. I like playing the recorder but I gain very little skill/mastery from it (not none). That's the importance and definition of skill/mastery.
I'm sure SC2 has a lot of skills/mastery you can acquire. However, current state of SC2 does not have the amount of skill/mastery sc1 has. I'm not saying removing UI limitation (This includes MBS, Smartcasting, auto-mining) makes the game bad in anyway (it makes it better) but it certainly takes away a lot of skill factor. In fact I think it's good UI limitation was removed in SC2, you feel less restricted and feel the freedom like a RTS game should. However what Blizzard has fail to do in SC2 is implementing more "skill factor" to make up for the skill/mastery lost after UI limitation was removed. IN FACT, they removed as much skill factor as possible. EMP is no longer projectile (skill of dodging a projectile), tactical placements like lurker positioning and darkswarm (PDD? oh please) and etc etc.
SCBW Skill/Mastery > current SC2 Skill/Mastery full stop. And if Blizzard does not deal with these issues it will be as skillful as WC3 ("recorder"). I'm not saying recorder is bad at all (it's great), just that flute is much better.
You never know what "Glitches" we will find 2 years down the road, unless Activision makes SC3 before then and then 2 more expansions, just to make more money. You never know.
On June 06 2010 10:02 StarMasterX wrote: I used to play Gunz heavily a few years back. It is probably one of the best free shooters out there. I was one of the nub sprayers that raped a lot of people with the automatic rifles and smgs. I usually got whined at by the k-stylers but its all good my kill/death ratio was good.
That being said, I know that k-style absolutely dominated 1v1 duels so I generally only played 8-16 player games (even though 16 player usually lagged too much).
rifler's generally had better aim then the rss shotgun sprayers, actually.
On May 11 2010 01:32 keV. wrote: GunZ was such a piece of shit game. Why is anyone even talking about it.
A game(CS) with a huge community and a major company backing it has more popularity and a bigger competitive scene than a game that has poor funding and F2P(GunZ) derp?
The competitive ceiling on gunz and CS is the same(i've played both ), with gunz lacking in the teamwork department. Thus 5v5 CS> 5v5 GunZ obviously, no question here, and maybe a little in the audio (a whoosh can mean so many things), However, GunZ and CS have the same focus on accuracy, and no one gives a shit at higher competitive games about flashy swords(because its fairly easy to do after a while), it all comes down to aim. i mean really, just give me some evidence or comment that even remotely suggests that you've played gunz at any level of competitiveness and i'll concede, but it's obvious you haven't , hence why i made this post.
tl;dr small base of players != lack of competition
The purpose of OP's post is to argue that unintentional game glitches sometimes adds a new level of depth to gameplay that makes it viable to be played competitively. I cannot deny the truth of this in a lot of cases, Gunz, SC:BW, Street Fighter 2, but what solution can this mean for SC2?
I am assuming, and I might be assuming wrong, but OP wants things like unlimited unit groups, MBS and maybe smartcasting removed. I am also inferring that OP prefers SC:BW style glitching, such as mutalisks stacking. If this is what OP is saying SC2 should have, he has defied his own logic. The glitches that allowed practiced hands an advantage in SC:BW are glitches of the SC:BW engine. If those glitches were to be ported into SC2, it should no longer be a glitch but a feature. It would be no different from the Blink you have mentioned.
It is also impossible to expect that SC2's inherent engine will have these so deemed "positive" glitches. While glitches such as roll canceling have arguably improved gameplay to a otherwise less interesting game, most glitches found should be fixed. Infact all the "positive" glitches are exploits, unintended bugs that give one player and advantage.
Oh my Gunz, that takes me back. I used to be on the top of the league back when the beta was still around.
But yes I certainly do agree that discovered glitches did enhance the lifespan of games. For shooter games like Gunz and Quake, I suppose their lifespans practically hinged on the discovery and the mastery of this glitches (both of which have very high learning curves - more so for Quake).
In fact it's these games that keep me playing them again and again just because of the high learning curve, it's as if once you reach a certain competency you can pat yourself on the back for your hard work as you literally decimate those whose skills are inferior t oyou.
On May 09 2010 23:14 karebear wrote: damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
I would definitely disagree......
burrowed banelings youre waiting to manually detonate in perfect harmony with the lings coming in from the flank is equally appealing.
Nononono youre so wrong. They totally should explode as soon as a unit steps on them (Like landmines) but spamming hold with 1000 apm like progamers would be able too makes them not explode until you actually stop spamming(which is when the army is in good position).
Yea thats way better. Not.
Lol. You shoulda played Brood War. Grouping lurkers with an ovie and pressing H works just as well as spamming, ya know? But then again I wouldn't expect something as exciting in SC2
I think he was referring to the fact that there aren't any hold banelings in SC2? I'm not sure if this is true
I was being sarcastic about sc2 not having any hold banelings making it worse than bw which had lurker hold.
On June 06 2010 12:47 starcraft911 wrote: This is a pretty good post. I played GunZ for a long time with a couple friends who happened to be pro FPS players and I schooled them so bad at GunZ because it required a lot of actions to be good at.
Before I quit I could move around the map without ever touching the ground using steps and slash shots and even though they had better reaction time and point accuracy, they couldn't keep up with it and remain accurate. It was deffinately an FPS of it's own category much like CS1.6 was for quite some time. If i played them at Q or CS I would get shit on so hard, but GunZ was so much different.
Another example is TF2's sniper nerf. Here's a link to my friend's sniper video. He happens to be the best awper I've ever seen and after picking up TF2 he schooled pretty good with the sniper until they nerfed it making him have to stand in place in order to fire. It ultimately killed competative TF2.
Sometimes being able to exploit the engine such as quick switching out of zoom by pulling out your knife makes the game better. it adds an element of skill that some players can do and others can't.
Excellent post
Any exploit/glitch that you abuse is also abusable by others. While it sets the skill ceiling higher it doesnt mean its better for you to separate yourself from other players. Once youre at a high standard of skill, all your enemies should be able to do the same thing. At least if youre not a noobbasher (who quits all placement matches and then ownes the copperleague just for the sake of it). Now if we adopt this on BW this would mean: There is muta stacking and it makes the skill ceiling higher. But if you play any enemy, he WILL use muta stacking (if youre not a noobasher again). Which makes it a nonunique skill. Now if you completely removed mutastacking, it would indeed be boring. But what if you made them stack automatically while moving, without the larva/ovi exploit? Now even noobs would be able to do it, yet that doesnt mean that your games with higher skilled enemies are going to be boring or less exciting. Only noobbashing would become a bit harder for you.
Its true that with smartcast every 40 apm noob can spam you with mediocre forcefields and storms, which he wouldnt have been able to in BW. He will still lose to you if you are better. Sc2 is just way less about mouseskillls than BW and way more about strategy and positioning and even more so in fight microing due to the counter system. When you see protoss complaining about imbalanced roaches, and then you watch them engaging a fight with lets say 5 immortals 5stalker 10zealots vs 60lings and 10 roaches. The lings flank the immos/stalkers while the zealots vaporate to the roaches. A better player would have won the fight with better micro and focussing only roaches with the immortals.
On June 06 2010 08:02 Ryoo wrote: Omg this thread got me playing GunZ again... and isn't GunZ a third person shooter and not first person?
Technically it's still a first person shooter; you just happen to see your character from a distance.
this is literally the dumbest post ive ever seen on tl
How is it "dumb?" Your point of view is that of your character, so your view is first-person. An actual third-person shooter is a game where your point of view does not follow your character's point of view, and is usually fixed at a bird's-eye-view. Just because you don't see from your character's eyes in GunZ doesn't make it a third person shooter.
On June 06 2010 10:02 StarMasterX wrote: I used to play Gunz heavily a few years back. It is probably one of the best free shooters out there. I was one of the nub sprayers that raped a lot of people with the automatic rifles and smgs. I usually got whined at by the k-stylers but its all good my kill/death ratio was good.
That being said, I know that k-style absolutely dominated 1v1 duels so I generally only played 8-16 player games (even though 16 player usually lagged too much).
rifler's generally had better aim then the rss shotgun sprayers, actually.
I don't think this is necessarily true - it really depends on your playstyle. The people that do sprays + k-style sword usually have great aim, but generally the standard e-style "sprayer" has pretty bad aim. Shoot into a mob, hope for the best.
After I read a post of someone who had played Gunz, I went on google and searched "Gunz the Duel e-sports" and I found this thread. It honestly brought made me feel really warm inside to see that some people really will acknowledge Gunz as a competitive game and not just bash it. I mean seriously, I feel really really happy right now knowing that the game that I've played for years since it came out international actually had some attention.
I used to write up articles and competitive guides on Gunz to share and help people out in the community. If the game really flowered and grew exponentially you'd be able to describe me as "The Day9 of Gunz". But the community was never even close to as awesome as the starcraft community was. It was really out of control how "bad mannered" (BM is an understatement for some of these people) the community would be. Usually it would be a handful of people causing a lot of ruckus but then it became quite apparent that it was more than just 20% of the game's population that were very very bad mannered. I think because of that, the community never grew as it should have because new players were so put off by how unfriendly people were in the game. And so I quit trying to promote the game to new people and just played the game for what it was- I'm so ashamed of my failure to help the community.
http://www.gunzfactor.com/f43/make_difference-223244.html That was a plea from a user to the community to try to help it make a better place. 2 years later I can see that the community has gotten a bit better but is now suffering from a very low playerbase, with very little signs of improvement unless something drastic is done. Most of the trouble makers of the community have quit but so have the few that were trying to help the community as well. It's really a sad thing to watch as the game dies, I just don't know how it can recover.
In terms of competitiveness today, the skill required in Gunz has grown to the point where the game has become very dynamic. I mean, the level of skill on the highest levels of play have been steadily increasing year after year after year, just like how Broodwar has. It's grown to the point where very small differences in your mechanical skill in Gunz can make a big difference, and the slightest mistakes will cost you the game. The level of skill is so high now that it has caused the value of teamwork and tactics to rise exponentially. You can no longer be a beast player with near perfect aim and be able to win all the time, it's as if Gunz has gone from a very "individual skill" based game to a more team oriented one due to how good players have become. There have even been periods of time where Gunz had its own Bonjwa team of players, Sparta, who had dominated tournaments nearly every month (not sure if they still play now). I spoke with one of their members and apparently they also play other games very competitively. They ranked among the Top 5 in the US when they played 3v3 arenas in WoW.
That being said, it's quite evident that Gunz has the potential to become a very deep and entertaining competitive game that may be even worthy of being an e-sport. The game is still growing in the terms of how much skill, teamwork, and strategy is required to become top competitive team.
But unfortunately the community has failed to grow and be as supportive, I myself am a failure as well. I seriously envy communities like TL, I really wish Gunz had the same type of community. I can only imagine how enjoyable it would be to be part of a community as nice as TL in Gunz.
When I first saw this crappy quality video in '06 it got me really excited that Gunz might possibly become something great. But my dreams have been crushed, my boyhood dreams have yet to come to fruition.
Sorry for reviving a dead thread.. I had some really good memorable times in Gunz, so I feel a bit emotionally attached.. Forgive me =(. If there had to be a moral to my stupid wall of text, then be grateful for having such a wonderful community here at TeamLiquid.
SC2 will undoubtedly have an infinitely larger e scene than gunz does... so I dont see how your view that gunz knows better how to make an e sport can have any merit at all
On July 07 2010 08:02 superman. wrote: SC2 will undoubtedly have an infinitely larger e scene than gunz does... so I dont see how your view that gunz knows better how to make an e sport can have any merit at all
That is totally not what I'm trying to say. If anything I'm just glad that people even acknowledge Gunz as a game or even possibly as a Competitive game. Trying to compare the 2 would be ridiculously stupid.
If anything I'm just bowing my head and saying "thank you" a thousand times for just learning a little bit about the game. I'm not trying to oppose anybody, ffs... Just "thank you". I know I shouldn't have made a post like that in a SC2 forum, but seeing a thread here about Gunz... it's just really personal man.
On July 07 2010 08:02 superman. wrote: SC2 will undoubtedly have an infinitely larger e scene than gunz does...
And that's the saddest part about this entire thread. That a game can have so much larger of a scene simply because of its name and advertising.
On July 07 2010 08:14 oursblanc wrote: I'm sure SC2 will reach this level of refinement and infinite skill ceiling too.
Unless something's changed about it, I really doubt it.
(P.S. I've never played Gunz before but I can acknowledge that it takes a huge amount of coordination and skill to be at the top of the game. It doesn't matter if it's because of an exploit/glitch or just the way the game is itself, there NEEDS to be ways like that to allow better players to set themselves further apart.)
a fps glitch is COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the sc2 balancing process. and you're dumber then a nut if you consider a balanced rts dull. and I sit here typing and erasing considering if I should bother explaining this to you. I'll go to my main point, high level play is learning everything about every unit and then using your units as effective as possible. not exploiting glitches.
IMO: This post should be moved from the sc2 section or closed have a nice day
On July 07 2010 08:39 Joseki wrote: Random question - Is there a good private gunz server with kstylers and no hackers? I would still play if there was.
You shouldn't be asking that here =P just search around in the gunz communities and not TL. I feel bad for reviving this thread, but I just wanted to express my feelings about how tragic a game that had so much potential could die out because of the lack of support it got from the company it was produced from. But my woes fall upon deaf ears, which I understand.
Someone close this thread and end it just like how Gunz is steadily dying and fading away.
On July 07 2010 08:24 godlfishs wrote: a fps glitch is COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the sc2 balancing process. and you're dumber then a nut if you consider a balanced rts dull. and I sit here typing and erasing considering if I should bother explaining this to you. I'll go to my main point, high level play is learning everything about every unit and then using your units as effective as possible. not exploiting glitches.
IMO: This post should be moved from the sc2 section or closed have a nice day
In GunZ, you use the fact that slashing your sword cancels delay to perform many actions in very quick succession, giving you an edge versus a player not exploiting this "glitch." This quickly developed into what is known as K-style, and its growth from glitch into commonplace tactic is very similar to that of Muta micro. Muta stacking is a glitch (not originally intended to be part of the game). In order to use Mutas as effectively as possible, you stack them. These two things are not mutually exclusive.
On July 07 2010 08:37 PhiliBiRD wrote: this seem extremely irrelevant to the SC2 forum. i dont even understand why it hasnt been moved.
On July 07 2010 08:39 Joseki wrote: Random question - Is there a good private gunz server with kstylers and no hackers? I would still play if there was.
You shouldn't be asking that here =P just search around in the gunz communities and not TL. I feel bad for reviving this thread, but I just wanted to express my feelings about how tragic a game that had so much potential could die out because of the lack of support it got from the company it was produced from. But my woes fall upon deaf ears, which I understand.
Someone close this thread and end it just like how Gunz is steadily dying and fading away.
I agree with you, OP. But really, what do you want them to do? Should they make a game riddled with bugs and hope that one of them revolutionizes gameplay?
It's a lose-lose situation. Game companies try to make perfect games without bugs. Yet if they succeed, they miss out on some things that have made some of the best games of all time.
Until a game company comes along that's brilliant enough to purposely implement things like muta-stacking and moving shot, there's really no way they can win.
It really is interesting though, think about all the patches that blizzard has done. Some of these patches may have gotten rid of something really cool equivalent to Muta-stacking. But honestly there's not much they can do about it.
If a company can develop something that brilliant, they must have some serious geniuses on the development team.
Lol i made a Sc2 thread on Gzf a while ago... Only tie between SC and GunZ i see is that Idra is almost at the level of BM as the average gunz player... Fkn played gunz for 5 years... so hard to not be a BM asshole on SC2 coming from the worst gaming community EVER haha.
More on topic, NO game will reach the level of how gunz' mechanics are exploited... But i love to see little tricks like that in games
On July 07 2010 10:28 Evolve wrote: Lol i made a Sc2 thread on Gzf a while ago... Only tie between SC and GunZ i see is that Idra is almost at the level of BM as the average gunz player... Fkn played gunz for 5 years... so hard to not be a BM asshole on SC2 coming from the worst gaming community EVER haha.
More on topic, NO game will reach the level of how gunz' mechanics are exploited... But i love to see little tricks like that in games
Lol
Idra: cheesy faggot
Avg Gunz player: lul who dis kid? ez trash
If anything we could be proud of the amazingly high level of BM in Gunz >.> Any other community aside from Gunz is like heaven in terms of BM. I mean seriously you could be the president and these people would walk up to you and still BM.
On July 07 2010 10:28 Evolve wrote: Lol i made a Sc2 thread on Gzf a while ago... Only tie between SC and GunZ i see is that Idra is almost at the level of BM as the average gunz player... Fkn played gunz for 5 years... so hard to not be a BM asshole on SC2 coming from the worst gaming community EVER haha.
More on topic, NO game will reach the level of how gunz' mechanics are exploited... But i love to see little tricks like that in games
Lol
Idra: cheesy faggot
Avg Gunz player: lul who dis kid? ez trash
If anything we could be proud of the amazingly high level of BM in Gunz >.> Any other community aside from Gunz is like heaven in terms of BM. I mean seriously you could be the president and these people would walk up to you and still BM.
ROFL wtf? wowwww youre such a newgen baddie... UCing tankset with pmed LOL, getskill, then get@mebro /chatmake EZTRASH /chatinvite SlashShotPro1998 /chatinvite SlashShotPro1998 /chatinvite SlashShotPro1998 /chatinvite SlashShotPro1998
(But lost legit)
Im pretty sure AryaVarwin from GunZ (hugely overrated, trained by korean player in early days) made a thread on Gzf saying that shes top1 platinum league, so shes "Basically the best player of Sc2 in the world at the moment"... Never loled so hard
I am really sick of the idea that there needs to be some sort of hidden trick in SC2. Or multiple hidden tricks. What's wrong with laying all the tools out to a player, then letting each individual player do their best?
Besides, as many people have already pointed out, not every glitch is a good glitch. Sliding buildings, allied mines, gaswalk and many other SC:BW "glitches" are not allowed in competitive play.
It's not like everyone found out about these BW glitches like muta stacking right away, even. That was a relatively late invention. BoxeR first whipped out allied mines during a pro match confusing everyone.
As it is, there's already the ability to keep void ray's charged by microing them to shoot themselves, or abusing creep tumor radius by vomiting creep up cliffs or onto islands. It's not like there aren't glitch-like abuses to be found in SC2. They're just not the same as BW, and OH NO, there's no muta stacking.
I don't think you need to be exploiting bugs to have a highly skilled game. Why can't you just find innovative and clever ways to use and combine the things available to you? I don't think SC2 needs bugs at all, I think it needs constantly evolving strategies and synergies.
Another example of this is the super smash series, in super smash bros melee the game was played just like the N64 version until players found a way to slide, cancel ending lag, and other character specific glitches. at that point the game grew in popularity, was picked up by MLG for many seasons, and was nintendo's top selling game for many years after its release.
A few years later its sequel brawl was released with all these fun competitive glitches removed, they slowed the overall pace of the game and by all means made it a simple game.
Its unfortunate to think that this is going to happen to sc like it has to many great games, (gunz, halo, smash)
I hope blizzard will not make this the case with sc2 even though they may have made that mistake already with WOW with a constant decline with each expansion (personal opinion of arena system)
What unintended mechanics? Muta-stack? Vulture and Muta patrol-micro? Notice, those aren't Protoss mechanics and, in fact, Protoss doesn't have such mechanics at all - the only glitches Protoss have can't be controlled and player can only suffer from them (like occasional goon path-finding issues). Does that mean that top Protoss players could never be as skilled as top zerg and terran players? Does that mean that Protoss is worser race than Zerg and Terran? =)
Protoss has the reaver micro: IE droping and then picking up before the shot hit.
There's a similar example to this in Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, aka jk2. The difference is it was designed to be elitist, rather than accidentally being so, but was patched to please the general public in the same manner. Developers are perfectly capable of making competent games without coding such horrible engines that they can be easily glitched.
Seriously... I think anyone who's played GunZ for more than a few weeks had an average APM well above any starcraft 2 APM monkey could ever dream of :D
On July 07 2010 13:47 Santriell wrote: How many APM in GunZ ?
Seriously... I think anyone who's played GunZ for more than a few weeks had an average APM well above any starcraft 2 APM monkey could ever dream of :D
Lmfao any 3rd party programs that count APM in any game? Id love to find out my apm... ive played that game from 15-20 years old, i bet its over 350.
Hopefully blizzard leaves in some glitches intentionally... glitches make every game a little bit better, and make practicing more broad... Gives a bit more of a learning curve... maybe then people will stop bitching so much as to how its so 'dumbed down' and 'simplistic', after they learn some forms of advanced play, and think themselves a higher tier.
On July 07 2010 13:47 Santriell wrote: How many APM in GunZ ?
Seriously... I think anyone who's played GunZ for more than a few weeks had an average APM well above any starcraft 2 APM monkey could ever dream of :D
Lmfao any 3rd party programs that count APM in any game? Id love to find out my apm... ive played that game from 15-20 years old, i bet its over 350.
Hopefully blizzard leaves in some glitches intentionally... glitches make every game a little bit better, and make practicing more broad... Gives a bit more of a learning curve... maybe then people will stop bitching so much as to how its so 'dumbed down' and 'simplistic', after they learn some forms of advanced play, and think themselves a higher tier.
Google "APM detector". I checked my APM today and it easily went to 400 - 450 with passive relaxed play (well I wasn't walking but you know what I mean). Spamming something RHS with DFS can get you well around 600.
haha, i used to spam locked flash-steps until the action started for gunfights
i doubt the apm goes above 300 average, considering how fast you have to select-box and hotkey switch in starcraft to get that actual number---also considering flash-step is basically (4 keyboard strokes and 1 mouse click) 5 actions a second, but on peak it should be as high as any peaking player on BW
really any game, like street fighter at high level can get very intense with button presses-necessary or not
i wouldve kept playing gunz if it wasn't so gay.... dressing up as pirates and shit, or all the other fruity looking characters and outfits you could choose. Pissed me off lol
On May 10 2010 00:03 nihoh wrote: @Fizban As with any other game in CS you need to know the game perfectly to have a chance at it.. It's just one of the things CS needs in addition to a host of other things..
Valve obviously considered bunnyhopping a glitch. From 1.3 to 1.6, they removed bunnyhopping. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfS9i5Z5Hw8 It's back in Source, but you need a lot less feeling to do it in Source. Duckrunning is not possible to ignore at a high level of play in 1.6. most players don't break from duckrunning at all nowadays in the modern, 2010 CS, when it comes down to a clutch situation.
Bunnyhopping is a glitch in Quake that made it an amazing game. Bunnyhopping is a glitch in CS.. that got removed.
Bunny hopping was fucking stupid to play against, as is the current duck jumping to fuck with models. What about the old style flashes? There's plenty of silly tricks that would improve the game if they were removed. I'm willing to bet anyone that thinks bunnyhopping was the best thing ever didn't actually play competitive CS when it was around. You just thought it was awesome to go long A on D2 in 5 seconds, but you didn't deal with the kind of retardedness that ensued in serious place.
Bunny hopping has enhanced every single FPS it's ever been fortunate enough to grace and CS without it is simply bad.
May I introduce you to the Quake III engine? Which till today I believe is the most competitive FPS engine around thanks to strafejumping. I believe I took well over 2 days of practice spread out over a month to master the basics of strafejumping. And even then in heated battle situations I still panic and my strafejumping goes awry. Quake III Arena for example requires more than just a godly aim, there are so many dimensions in a battle such as battle awareness, ammo conservation, weapon use, map control, etc.
I'm surprised this wasn't brought up because the fundamentals to the Q3 engine was the abuse and exploitation of the strafejump/bunnyhop glitch that literally pushed the skill ceiling so high. Not to mention other semi-competitive games also spawned from the engine, RtcW/Enemy Territory, Jedi Knights II are just a couple of examples.
Can I just point out that games like Halo have almost no bugs and have sold as many copies as BW, and are more well known as well as more widely played.
SC2 will be more well known, and more widely played. Whether it becomes an e-sports phenomenon is, as you said, up to the players. Blizzard is doing all they can to make this game appealing to everyone, even pro players.
I know this post is old, but there are now many things like this that have been discovered. The void ray shift-clicking trick is devastating and probably overpowered, but it still shows that there are still things to discover.
i played this game years ago in early beta. didnt liked it due to third person view. else the concept was fun. secret hint for shooter lovers who are looking for a hardcore game with many room for free movement.
yes, i agree with you too, in bw there are still a lot of "BUG"s like walking material, this is impossible in reality but it make the game more interesting!
On July 07 2010 13:47 Santriell wrote: How many APM in GunZ ?
Seriously... I think anyone who's played GunZ for more than a few weeks had an average APM well above any starcraft 2 APM monkey could ever dream of :D
Lmfao any 3rd party programs that count APM in any game? Id love to find out my apm... ive played that game from 15-20 years old, i bet its over 350.
Hopefully blizzard leaves in some glitches intentionally... glitches make every game a little bit better, and make practicing more broad... Gives a bit more of a learning curve... maybe then people will stop bitching so much as to how its so 'dumbed down' and 'simplistic', after they learn some forms of advanced play, and think themselves a higher tier.
Google "APM detector". I checked my APM today and it easily went to 400 - 450 with passive relaxed play (well I wasn't walking but you know what I mean). Spamming something RHS with DFS can get you well around 600.
Haha lol it's probably true. The current keyboard isn't able to keep up with the speed of my presses when I play Gunz right now.
On July 07 2010 17:58 ordos wrote: Can I just point out that games like Halo have almost no bugs and have sold as many copies as BW, and are more well known as well as more widely played.
SC2 will be more well known, and more widely played. Whether it becomes an e-sports phenomenon is, as you said, up to the players. Blizzard is doing all they can to make this game appealing to everyone, even pro players.
I know this post is old, but there are now many things like this that have been discovered. The void ray shift-clicking trick is devastating and probably overpowered, but it still shows that there are still things to discover.
Wrong
Halo: CE had around 5+ bugs that improved competive play(double beatdown, backpack reload etc) Halo 2 just got crazy with the bugs. There were bugs were you could shoot faster with guns, beatdown faster, reload faster. Improved competitive play dramatically Halo 3 has none really.
Great post. Unfortunately some companies have to learn from their mistakes. The 'exploits' definitely make the game more complex. It's a paradox to programmers.
Halo: CE had around 5+ bugs that improved competive play(double beatdown, backpack reload etc) Halo 2 just got crazy with the bugs. There were bugs were you could shoot faster with guns, beatdown faster, reload faster. Improved competitive play dramatically Halo 3 has none really.
Animation cancelling isn't a bug, it's a limitation of the gaming engine
On November 19 2010 07:18 Dagon wrote: Hey, i know bumping old threads îs sometimes frowned upon but i was wondering if any TLers still play gunz? Any chatroom/server?
I just started playing it and it îs fun as hell.. Trying to learn some k-style now, but damn, îs it difficult..
Probably should just start/revive a thread in Sports & Games. This thread is more about SC2 than Gunz.
I played this game AGES ago. I took my clan to the tourny for ijji but we lost first round because our 4th never showed. Stopped playing it because I had the 'sliding' glitch if your computer is too good.
You (and others) are missing the point. It's not necessarily about bugs. Muta stacking is not a bug for example. People always knew that BW keeps unit formations as long as the units are close enough together (the magic box) and selecting a remote units like an overlord breaks those formations, making the units move to the selected point individually. UMS maps where you needed to abuse this for casting mass psi storms and Garimtos (was it him? I can't find any reference to it anymore; maybe somebody remembers this) famous mass disruption web have been known pretty much since the beginning.
No, people didn't know about muta stacking from the beginning. The technique was discovered by Shark or JulyZerg sometime in '04 (which I'm sure you'll note is not the year SC was released). Like most interesting manipulations of the game engine, it took time to discover both the trick and proper application of the trick.
BW Elitists: chill the fuck out. We're 5 months post-release and you're acting like this game makes WoW look taxing because the community hasn't yet discovered cool bugs / engine manipulations (btw, they have). I know, being able to ctrl-group multiple buildings is an affront to your undoubtedly oov-like macrofingers and insults your nub-crushing epeen. Dune players thought the same thing when WC came out and allowed for multiple unit selection.
I just skimmed because I'm not reading 14 pages :/ not trying to single you out guy. It's been an interesting thread save for the BW tears. The question of just how to strike a balance between unintended mechanics and learning curve is not easy to answer, and time will tell if Blizzard nailed that in BW by serendipity or genius.
Having played this game for 10 years now, I can confirm this is one of the most difficult but rewarding games I've come across.
GunZ: the duel is still very much kept alive within small communities across the world.
For any of you that are interested in playing, you can just pick a private server and ask anyone for help, most people will be glad to help out newcomers.