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This is an article by Blizzard that I believe was added with the most recent patch to the launcher/BW:RM, or at the very least I see no topic about it in either SC2 or SC sections with a similar title.
https://starcraft2.com/en-us/news/21509420
We met with David Kim, Dustin Browder, and Bob Fitch to discuss the origins of StarCraft's most iconic units. -- From the article preview available through the Battle.net Launcher
To give some more substance to this OP, the general flow of the article is that they explain how they approached the process of selecting which units to keep, modify, or create for SC2. They discuss why they kept the BattleCruiser, removed the Dragoon, so on and so forth.
Personally, I found it an interesting read to see how Blizzard, at least at this time, looks back on the units released in 1998 and to hear more theoretical explanations for the decisions that they made. I would say that it feels more earnest and better-explained than some of the statements I've read in the past from Blizzard concerning both BW and SC2, although I admit that I haven't read that many.
I think it would be relevant for both BW and SC2 fans to read through, which in my opinion certainly seems to be a focal point of their approach to the universe - making the new palatable to the older players and vice versa. This is to say that I wasn't sure which section of the forum to share this in (BW/SC2/Blogs/PM a moderator for a community post or something), but since BW is where I spend most of my time and I found it relevant to my interests, I figured I'd share it here. I also had to shorten the article name to fit in the title and give it a tag.
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Interesting stuff thanks for sharing!
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What exactly are we supposed to discuss?
Great read thanks for sharing!
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On June 23 2018 01:34 CHEONSOYUN wrote: What exactly are we supposed to discuss?
Great read thanks for sharing! Well, I was thinking that there can be discussion as to whether or not you agree with the theoretical foundations of the units discussed.
For example, I agree that the BattleCruiser is an iconic unit and making it smaller or faster would have ruined its legacy. I don't agree that Dragoons were "brainless" in the sense that the article is pushing, that they were just 1a2a3a'd everywhere, but I do see why they might have needed an overhaul or removal in the face of the improved movement AI. I don't think an exploding unit like the Baneling was a necessary or welcome addition to early game control, but I do agree that it has its merits because it gave birth to MKP's marine splitting.
Overall, I think that it is clear that they were appealing to casual gamers despite conceptualizing of the game during the golden era of competitive Brood War. They were in a tough spot in terms of the standard set by the predecessor, and thus trying to please as many people as possible may have been the top priority over making it more similar to BW.
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I am just still upset by the fact that they removed the reaver for the colossus. How can they say they removed the dragoon because it was brainless and add in the colossus?
Although I like the Medivac and the Warp Prism.
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I think it's odd they say medics engage in a Terran being "passive". If anything I think Medics allow a Terran to be aggressive.
Otherwise you move a force of marines out and one stim and they're damaged and weak. WIth medics, it allowed terrans stim and attack more often without having to worry about the whole army being at less HP, which allows for more aggressive stances on the map.
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When the F is SC3 going to hit US shelves... been waiting on that one as sc2 was more or less a disappointment competitively and graphically. Its fine and good to replace units like Dragoon with Stalker, or Firebat with Reaper, but you really need a clear picture of the map and how to strategically attack your opponent and sc2 is far too dark and shadowy on appearance to be complete.
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On June 23 2018 03:21 404AlphaSquad wrote: I am just still upset by the fact that they removed the reaver for the colossus. How can they say they removed the dragoon because it was brainless and add in the colossus?
Although I like the Medivac and the Warp Prism. In my opinion there are two potential answers. One is that they couldn't make EVERY unit have special abilities (although they certainly upped the average amount of spellcasters and abilities overall, or at least it appears that way). As a result, if much of your tech up to the Reaver/Colossus spot already has spells and abilities, it could make sense to simplify that unit in order to maintain the average level of complexity. This leads into my second potential answer, which is that the original Reaver was difficult to control aggressively for low level players, so they made the Colossus much more flexible and easy to use. To perhaps explain it better, if you 1a2a3a 3 groups of Dragoons and we assume there are no Mines or Lurkers or anything like that, then their efficacy when micro'd vs. when they aren't micro'd goes up by say 25%. However, if you 1a2a3a 3 groups of army containing a Reaver, the efficacy when micro'd vs. when it isn't micro'd goes up much more than that. So, by making the Dragoon-esque unit more micro-dependent and having a better profit potential from said micro, they had to lower the micro potential of some of the other units like the Reaver which had a micro potential that was way, way higher than Dragoons, Stalkers, and other army units. My knowledge of SC2, especially post WoL, is limited at best so I may be completely off-base here but that's my impression.
On June 23 2018 05:14 SchAmToo wrote: I think it's odd they say medics engage in a Terran being "passive". If anything I think Medics allow a Terran to be aggressive.
Otherwise you move a force of marines out and one stim and they're damaged and weak. WIth medics, it allowed terrans stim and attack more often without having to worry about the whole army being at less HP, which allows for more aggressive stances on the map. I thought the same thing at first, but I think this can be explained again by them talking about lower level players who you see just having a group of bio sitting at the choke of their base for extended periods of time throughout the game and not about, say, Nada's SK Terran. The way they talk about the old units and the explanation for the new units really reveals to me what their target market was when they considered these changes. This is just a round-about way of pulling a Sakurai "This game is meant for casual party play," statement, even though it contrasts with the "ready for eSports" image that they were projecting for SC2 around the time of WoL launch. I think that there is a cognitive dissonance somewhere in there, or just a dissonance between the marketing team and the game developers' theories going into the game.
On June 23 2018 06:42 funnybananaman wrote: When the F is SC3 going to hit US shelves... been waiting on that one as sc2 was more or less a disappointment competitively and graphically. Its fine and good to replace units like Dragoon with Stalker, or Firebat with Reaper, but you really need a clear picture of the map and how to strategically attack your opponent and sc2 is far too dark and shadowy on appearance to be complete.
Why do you assume that SC3 would be more like BW than SC2? I find it hard to believe that they will go back to the more "cartoonish" BW sprites and clear-cut models.
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i understand that they needed stuff to counter other stuff but one thing i rly like about BW is, that it's not that hard rock/paper/scissors based as other RTS tended to be.
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Thanks for the read. I still think it was a mistake for Blizzard to remove units such as the Vulture, which I believe is sorely needed in SC2. "This is Starcraft TWO" is not an excuse for removing something that wasn't broken (they could've tweaked it, you know...)
OH WELL
Chow.
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On June 23 2018 08:22 Jealous wrote: Why do you assume that SC3 would be more like BW than SC2? I find it hard to believe that they will go back to the more "cartoonish" BW sprites and clear-cut models.
I would believe in a sc3 concept that looked like a combination of sc:bw and sc2, the black humor and sarcasm of sc:bw combined with the streamlined UI of sc2, with MBS and unlimited numbers of unit selectable, as examples, but without the warcraft-esque abilities like warp prism and other such bullshit. And maybe with a 4th race i have asked a few friends about that idea like adding a xel-naga ancient toss race, or a human/alien infested zerg/terran hybrid race, looking like the infested command center/terran soldier of broodwar, maybe 5 races in total. i think that would sell and be popular in the fan base and community. Ever since sc2 had been first announced in 2006 or whenever, i have been expecting a sc3 in the back of my mind. blizzard would do well to make that before we all get old and die.
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I think the most interesting take away from this, is for at least for me, is the idea that they had all of these ideas and they didn't know how they were going to play out. And how could they?
They're talking about how they expect how they'd need to change the Baneling but they didn't really have to as the Zergs got better as the Terrans got better.
It just makes me appreciate how monumental a task making StarCraft II must have been - surely they had no idea that this is where the game would be now, eight years after release.
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On June 23 2018 10:29 funnybananaman wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 08:22 Jealous wrote: Why do you assume that SC3 would be more like BW than SC2? I find it hard to believe that they will go back to the more "cartoonish" BW sprites and clear-cut models. I would believe in a sc3 concept that looked like a combination of sc:bw and sc2, the black humor and sarcasm of sc:bw combined with the streamlined UI of sc2, with MBS and unlimited numbers of unit selectable, as examples, but without the warcraft-esque abilities like warp prism and other such bullshit. And maybe with a 4th race i have asked a few friends about that idea like adding a xel-naga ancient toss race, or a human/alien infested zerg/terran hybrid race, looking like the infested command center/terran soldier of broodwar, maybe 5 races in total. i think that would sell and be popular in the fan base and community. Ever since sc2 had been first announced in 2006 or whenever, i have been expecting a sc3 in the back of my mind. blizzard would do well to make that before we all get old and die. Well, I guess one can dream.
I don't see an RTS in our future that won't include MBS and automine and all of those other "QoL" elements which I think contribute to the challenge that is Brood War. Having more races is certainly an interesting idea, but at the same time I feel like the SC2 engine has already given us the playground to create something of that nature, no? If someone was interested in that pursuit, it could have already been a reality.
On June 23 2018 10:49 Frudgey wrote: I think the most interesting take away from this, is for at least for me, is the idea that they had all of these ideas and they didn't know how they were going to play out. And how could they?
They're talking about how they expect how they'd need to change the Baneling but they didn't really have to as the Zergs got better as the Terrans got better.
It just makes me appreciate how monumental a task making StarCraft II must have been - surely they had no idea that this is where the game would be now, eight years after release.
Yes, thank you for this post, it put into words what I was getting at to some extent but didn't express as clearly as you have. It was (is?) popular to talk poorly about Kim and the rest of the dev team and how they handled SC2 from the BW perspective. In some ways, it is justified, I believe. In many other ways, I know that the task was a mountain to climb and I think that they have certainly achieved what I would call "success," even if it's not the overwhelming success that BW had. Ultimately, the gaming landscape changed around the time of SC2's emergence in ways that I think very few could have predicted, and changed the way we view SC2.
At the same time, you ask "how could they" know how the things were going to play out. Certainly, the development of anti-Baneling micro was something that took plenty of time to develop, and thankfully ran against their predetermined ideas of buffing the unit. However, if the game had been put to more rigorous testing in Alpha and Beta than it was, with perhaps more back-end analysis, it could have turned out differently. I was tangentially involved in the process and I know for a fact that while they did seek out a lot of Korean progamers and gathered their thoughts and opinions on the matter, I think that if SC2 launch was pushed back another year to allow for a year of progamer testing and analysis, then the product that would have landed would have been much different IMO.
Then again, as I mentioned before, the climate was changing. One must also consider the number of patches and the ups and downs they went through in the years to come, and the fact that patches are still coming... despite it being way more than one year since release. Clearly, the art of making a fine-tuned RTS is a troublesome venture, and I think it would be for everyone. I don't know. This article gives me such mixed feelings, haha.
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Well firstly I want to say thank you for posting the article - it was a hoot to read.
I think success is relative, so when you compare Brood War to StarCraft II, well, I think in a lot of ways you're comparing apples to oranges. I first want to say that say that I think Brood War is art - the game is phenomenal. That said, I think when they made it, it really was lightning in a bottle. I don't think the... "magic" (for lack of a better term) of Brood War will be recreated in our life times.
But, like the development of StarCraft II, it appears to me that the developers of StarCraft 1 had no idea that it was going to turn into monumental success that they did - they were trying to create something that wasn't "WarCraft in Space", not essentially do what amounted to the creation of e-sports. (I'm not actually sure if StarCraft more or less kick started e-sports, so feel free to correct me).
And I think you're right - if they had another year of testing, it's likely StarCraft II would have been a much different product. Again, we can't really know - we can speculate, but we can't actually know for sure. It wouldn't have been a logical contradiction for StarCraft II to have the same "magic" as Brood War. It could have happened. I think it would have been unlikely, but it could have been possible.
Instead we ended getting something that's entirely different than Brood War, and I think this is where people have different opinions. Going back to my earlier point about success being relative, with the advent StarCraft II, e-sports really got their start in the West. But would have it happened anyways? What if they did take an extra year to work on the game? Would have the same things have happened? Most likely not, but we don't know - and can't know - if the differences between that theoretical scenario and our reality would have been for the better or for the worse.
I think overall it's amazing the journey that has occurred that has lead us to this point - a million of things could have had happened differently which would result in us being in a much different place than we are now. And the thing is, we can ask ourselves "but what if?" all day long, but we can never know. (Not that it's not a fun question to ask though.)
I actually think StarCraft II is more of a commercial success than Brood War, at least in places that aren't South Korea. If anecdotal perception is to be taken into account (and the views on my GSL highlight videos compared to my ASL highlight videos), than StarCraft II seems to be more popular than Brood War. But more successful?
Depends on how you define success!
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@Jealous, Please answer this.
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@Jealous, You don't want to answer, no problem, but please don't stab me in the back.
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