Throughout Teamliquid’s extensive history of Starcraft 2 coverage, we’ve had a knack of criticizing Blizzard’s design philosophy while offering very little praise in return. I still stand by the belief that this criticism is not at all misguided, but rather well-intentioned and meant to help Starcraft 2 achieve the same, if not greater, success as its illustrious predecessor. However, we realize that some people simply don't share our concerns and dismiss our well-intentioned complaints as not constructive criticism, but mere whining. Thus, I present to you today an article whose entire focus is on what Blizzard did right, and how it’s up to us to use the tools we’re given. I tell you this because we sit at the cusp of a new dawn. Blizzard has done their part, and they did a hell of a job. Now it’s up to us to shape this game into what we’ve always dreamed it could be. Some may complain that the micro is lackluster, the macro is dumbed-down, and the mechanics are underwhelming, the exact opposite of what the true successor of Brood War should be. I will not argue for or against these sentiments, but I will say that Starcraft 2 has the potential to be more intense, more demanding both physically (mechanically) and mentally (strategically) than our beloved original. It offers more flexibility and options, and opens up worlds of opportunities that are ours for the taking. I will describe to you just one of these worlds. It’s up to us to realize this and seize it.
A New Set of Tools
When Starcraft 2 was unveiled, we were given three dazzling and unique macro mechanics to compliment the three strikingly different races. But what flew under the radar was another triumvirate of upgrades from Brood War that open up countless possibilities and are just begging to be abused.
The Medivac
I can just imagine the Blizzard development team comfortably throwing around potential unit ideas whilst lounging on their plush leather sofas one fine morning when one of them gets smacked with the fist of inspiration and says, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we put a firebat on a vulture? Like, remember how vultures used to decimate mineral lines? Well, now it can do that five times faster.” And then another guy jumps in. “Or maybe we could combine the medic and the dropship. You know, those two units that just flat-out win games TvZ in Brood War?” And then some guy in the corner pipes up, “Or maybe we could put together like four goliaths, a valkyrie, and two unsieged siege tanks to get a super awesome mech unit of death that kills everything…” But that’s beside the point. What we’ll focus on here is the medivac, a huge leap forward in unit design that combines the best of both units while sacrificing virtual nothing in the merging. Rather, it synergizes and streamlines drops and gives the unit itself more flexibility and more roles in the Terran army. It’s really a two for one unit that sadly is, the majority of the time, only being used to half of its potential. But just imagine how nuts Flash or Fantasy would go if all of their medics could fly around and pick up their armies and drop them anywhere on the map, especially on maps with winding walls and haphazard terrain, or even just between the ledge from high to low ground outside of a main base. It’s like giving Terran the ability to doom drop. And with green healing lasers to boot.
The sexy offspring of Starcraft's only lesbian couple.
The Nydus Worm
Perhaps the most ferocious-looking creature in the Swarm is not dedicated to fighting, but rather to transportation – the nydus worm. Towards the beginning of the beta, nydus worms were abused pretty extensively before their build time doubled in patch five and Protoss and Terran players started adapting their play, placing pylons and supply depots around the perimeter of their base. Moreover, as the midgame became more and more about massing just enough units to stop that one big attack, Zerg players found themselves less and less able to shell out the requisite 250/300 for a fully operational branch of the network. But the flexibility of instantaneous transportation cannot be underestimated. Pop your entire army into his base just as he moves out, then pop them back to your main just in time to defend (or just evacuate them if he decides to call off his attack to deal with the problems back home). Raid far away expansions in the blink of an eye, keep your opponent on his toes at all times and keep his eyes glued to his minimap, paranoid of where you’ll strike next. You can even steal otherwise unreachable island expansions or perform cool mining tricks. Sure, there’s a hefty price to pay for such freedom of movement, but in the right hands, it’s well worth it.
Straight out of Starship Troopers and straight into your worst nightmares.
The Warp Gate
Who needs rally points when you can warp in your army anywhere you want? Need some quick reinforcements for a big battle? No problem, warp them in. But cutting down the reinforcement travel distance of that big attack is but one of the many uses this flexible building can offer. Send out some probes and proxy some hidden pylons at possible expansions. Warp in high templar on cliffs overlooking mineral lines. Drop immortals to obliterate his main while warping in sentries to perma-block reinforcements from his ramp. Scatter pylons throughout the map to cut down travel distance for expansion strikes or simple army reinforcement. Warp Gates give Protoss a much-needed mobility boost and open up worlds of harassment opportunities to keep their opponents on their toes. It’s yet another great example of something that opens up so many options for one player without shutting down the other player’s. It’s simply a well-designed structure.
Just one huge bundle of awesome.
The Mobile World
The Classic Counters
With all this talk of incredible mobility, you may wonder, what about Brood War? Why was drop play relegated to the sidelines as a straightforward macro style dominated the scene? There are many answers to this question: human limitation is but one of them. Another answer is that harass was relatively easy to deal with, but extremely hard to pull off effectively. The Zerg had the inexpensive scourge to stop any kind of shuttle or dropship play, and hydralisks with readily available speed overlords shut down quirky dark templar or reaver antics. Protoss had corsairs against doom drops and vulture drops were easily cleaned up with a few dragoons and photon cannons. Terrans had spider mines and missile turrets which absolutely destroyed recalls (along with well-placed EMPs). Playing with a super passive turtle style helped immensely as well. And in TvZ, they had map control and constant pressure on their side. But let’s look to SC2. Where are the scourge and the corsairs and the spider mines? Detection is no longer readily available on overlords, and covering an entire base with a forest of missile turrets is extremely expensive. Imagine trying to deal with dropships in Brood War without scourge. Impossible? Probably not, but infinitely more difficult. But there’s one more key difference between Starcrafts one and two that make harass so much stronger in the second.
The Second Type of Harass
What do you think of when someone says harass? Probably a flock of mutalisks picking away at an SCV line, or maybe some cloaked banshees or hellions wreaking havoc in an unprotected main. Perhaps a lone thor and medivac perched on the natural cliff of Lost Temple, or a single dark templar laying waste to an infant expansion. In all of these examples, the harassing player does some sort of economic damage with an extremely mobile unit to set his opponent back. In fact, with the exception of the thor and possibly the hellion, all of the aforementioned units can be considered “harassment units” – extremely good at messing with your opponent but less than optimal when it comes to big battles. In exchange for getting these units that are stat-wise pretty lackluster, the harassing player forces his opponents hand – the defending player must invest in defense, and the harassing player has a good chance of dealing some significant damage. However, once the harass is dealt with and that big ball of doom starts rolling out, what happens to the harassing player? Does he just get walked over, or does he have enough of an army to defend? And, more importantly, does he have other options? That is, can he continue harassing past the early stages of the game?
The epitome of harassment.
A key advantage of Starcraft 2 over Brood War, one of the things I think Blizzard got absolutely right, is the great mobility options. We have the nydus worm and doom drops, we have medivacs, we have warp gates and warp prisms and proxy pylons. We have everything we had in Brood War, and much much more. This means that we can transport huge armies almost instantaneously to faraway expansions, regardless of map control and map presence. So, you can strategically organize multiple strike forces, split up your army, and force your opponent to split up his army as well, and capitalize on such situations. You can drop eight marauders at his third, sneak four hellions behind his mineral line at his natural, and, at the same time, drop twelve more marauders in his main, forcing your 1a-ing opponent to split his army and split his attention. Or maybe plant a nydus overlooking his third, and when he sends his army to deal with it, nydus his main while baneling dropping his natural. The possibilities are endless – possibilities that all you master strategists salivate at the thought of as you theorycraft your hearts out. So how is this so different from the aforementioned classical harassment? The answer is simple: you’re giving perfectly competent fighting units the mobility of a typical harassment unit (think of an ultralisk with wings). And what do you accomplish? You force strategic thinking: how should I split my army? Where do I harass and how do I go about doing so? And you force execution as well: can I harass three fronts while successfully microing all of my units, all while macroing and taking more expansions? Essentially, you make the game come down to a matter of both multitasking and hand speed as well as well-planned strategy, bridging two worlds at war that many long ago dismissed as unbridgeable. Indeed, this seems like a godsend from Blizzard, the holy grail that would unite the “strategic thinking and the “blazing fast execution” communities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6R7maYAAKk
Flash. Bridging mind and mechanics since 2008.
Flash. Bridging mind and mechanics since 2008.
Back to Reality
This seems almost too good to be true, doesn’t it? So why is it that each game seems to be just a huge one base all-in attack or turtling off of two or three bases until you’re maxed, followed by a single game-ending battle? What’s stopping this style of play from becoming mainstream?
Roadbumps
First, there are the tech costs. Nydus worms and the overlord drop upgrade are expensive, as well as building medivacs if you want to go mech. A single 300/300 (or lack thereof) can change the game when you’re forced to pump out just enough units to hold off that one game-breaking attack, especially on maps like Steppes of War. And sometimes you may not have time to wait for that single warp prism while busily chronoboosting immortals.
Second, the existing early and midgame style of play exactly counters any type of harass-centered play. Prominent among these are one base all-ins and two base timing attacks. You can’t exactly harass someone when he’s got all his units camped inside his base behind fifty turrets because you’re not able to abuse mobility in the slightest. However, what you can do is harass when he moves out to attack, forcing him to choose between defending and consequently delaying his timing or going all-in. Again this is impossible on maps like Steppes of War, but really shines on maps like Desert Oasis.
Third, there exist structures that I like to call “lazy defense,” the most notorious being the Planetary Fortress. What I mean by “lazy defense” is that the defender can always just plop down a Planetary Fortress and ten missile turrets, or twenty photon cannons or ten spine crawlers and a spore crawler and have the peace of mind of being completely immune to harass at any particular expansion. And the harassing player can have all the mobility in the world, but if he tries to attack that expansion, he’ll simply end up losing his entire army and consequently the game. What this “lazy defense” does is shut down options for the harassing player. Once the clusterfuck of photon cannons is set up, the expansion is no longer vulnerable to attack. This gives the harassing player one less target and the defending player one less location to worry about. Essentially, such things reward lazy play without giving the active player an option to counter it. And this is not something we want to happen.
Kind of like playing Sunken Defense.
Most importantly, though, what’s holding us back is our mindset. Though we criticize the Kwanros and Horang2s of Starcraft 2 for cheesy all-in play, for relying on luck and dumb opponents to eke out easy wins, we commit to those one base attacks that are not an ounce more difficult to execute. We bash the game for being too easy when we choose strategies that our grandmothers could pull off. Of course the game is going to be easy if all you do is a four warpgate attack or a baneling bust. We use these builds because they are simple, effective, and get results. But once we start figuring out the defensive timings and the appropriate responses, what will happen? How will the game grow? Will we be stuck in the Brood War mindset of sit back and macro up a big army and then micro your heart out in that one deciding battle? Or will we use the new tools that Blizzard has given us and take the game to another level entirely? In this case, the burden lines squarely on our shoulders.
The Future
Change is just around the corner. Players like TheLittleOne, White-Ra, and even streamer sensation CellaWeRRa, have been abusing mobility at the highest levels of play with great success. There are many things that can be done to usher in a new era of play: decreasing tech costs is the obvious solution. A less direct answer, but one with a far greater impact is to increase rush distances on maps. Desert Oasis is a prime example of a map where mobility can and should be abused to its fullest, whereas on Steppes of War, such harassment is simply not possible because there’s literally just a ten second walk separating one natural from the other. Also, the aforementioned “lazy defense” options available for each race must have a solution. In Brood War, this was much less of an issue, with the existence of dark swarm, irradiate, and the lack of Planetary Fortresses and smart siege tanks. However, in Starcraft 2, there are simply no counters to an expansion with a Planetary Fortress, twenty missile turrets, and a single viking. I absolutely loved the old corruption ability because it was able to shut down defensive structures as well as stall unit production and upgrade progress. It was such a flexible spell that suddenly lost half of its usage for no reason. It offered a cost-effective way to counter “lazy defense,” something much needed to fill the hole left by the absence of dark swarm. Eventually we will need counters to “lazy defense” if such harass styled play is to see the light of day. However, the most important thing that needs to be changed is our mindset. Blizzard has given us so many new tools to work with, and at the moment, we’re forgoing them in favor of what is easy, what is simple to execute. As largely Brood War veterans moving on to a new game, we have propagated and popularized a playstyle that embraces the old and ignores the new. We focus simply on macro and micro and complain how it is lacking in the new game engine without realizing the new doors that have opened up all around us. The Korean pro oGs.Zenio echoes these sentiments for the migrating Warcraft III community:
I mean… I think so far that a lot of Warcraft III players are playing Starcraft II. They’re trying too hard to play the game like Warcraft III. How should I say this… they focus too much on microing units with special abilities, or trying to fight major battles with an army they’ve saved up. That’s not Starcraft. You have to make stuff quickly, burn through it quickly, and expand all the while. The Warcraft III players like to play off one base and complete their unit combinations.
But I have hope. As we perfect our micro and our macro, we will look beyond the horizon for new ways to improve, to weed out the chobos and to discover the true stars of the game. The only thing that’s stopping us is a closed mind and our own physical limitations. We have a long way to go, but I strongly believe that our future, and the future of this game, will indeed be great.What lies beyond the horizon?