StarCraft II

[sinij]

What is more important (to me) that in reality SC2 was very frusturating game, it is one of the few games where during ladder matches I felt very infuriated by a number of losses. Strategies are too cookie-cutter and mechanically simple, and generally resulted in guaranteed loss if you don't correctly counter them. Great deal of people all the way to Diamond specialized in one build, often early timed push like 9 roaches, and did that every match, blindly and without scouting... it was much harder to stop it than to execute it.

In SC2 teching is underpowered and all tech trees are bottom-heavy (i.e. MMM can take you endgame), as a result pumping out most units for a timed attack is a lot more important than anything else. This resulted in low number of functional build variations, so you generally can't tech up to counter pushes way you could in SC1.

For example you can't counter MM or roach pushes with immortals, you have to go heavy into Gate to hold it off and only then you will have an option to bring robo tech into your army (and by that point immortals are irrelevant).

TL;DR SC2 is too much massing of low-tier units and not enough strategy.

[Fordel]

They'll never remove the Thor from Multiplayer, it would piss off everyone who bought the CE of the game.


They put Mass Recall on the Nexus instead, it's going to make for some crazy'ness.

[Teugeus]

Bit of a sidetrack but anyone had a look at the Blizzard Dota info that was divulged at blizzcon  ? Looks intriguing to say the least when compared to the direction that Valve are taking with Dota 2. Things like mercenary camps to bolster your minions and siege heroes that can outrange towers seem to suggest a willingness to move the genre forward, much like LoL has done with Dominion mode.

[bhodi]

I won't come back until they change the spawn larvae queen mechanic.

[Malakili]

TL;DR SC2 is too much massing of low-tier units and not enough strategy.

Somewhat ironically, the good AI in SC2 makes this possible.  There is plenty of strategy in SC2 though, the problem is that it quite frankly doesn't matter all that much until you are better than a lot of people will ever get. 

[Fordel]

That's what Starcraft has always been though? It's a Macro game, executing a poor plan very efficiently has always been superior to executing a good plan poorly.

[sinij]

TL;DR SC2 is too much massing of low-tier units and not enough strategy.

Somewhat ironically, the good AI in SC2 makes this possible.  There is plenty of strategy in SC2 though, the problem is that it quite frankly doesn't matter all that much until you are better than a lot of people will ever get.  

It didn't matter that much at high plat/diamond level I played in 1v1 and 2v2, that is better than something like 75% of all players.

Here is scenario - my PT team developed strategy where we'd get VR + Thor by 7ish minute mark. It required precision timing, cross-building gas, exact donation of minerals at key timings... fairly involved build with razor thin timings. Then to pull it off it required very precise micro of VR , SCVs and Thor. What was the best way to counter this? 4 gate warpgate stalker or 4 rax marine massing from ONE of the opponents. Dur Dur Vanilla builds would beat it every time unless they panic and forget to micro.

Or

When I played PZ, TT would CRUSH us with simple 2x MM pushes, we would fight off first wave and get contained then at 10 minute mark medicas show up and its game over. We finally solved it with RUSHING one of Ts with 7 roaches, 5:30 immortal and 3 zealots. It would work, but only if Terran builds marauders; they only had to never build a single marauder (or double wall for a stalemate) to be perfectly safe.



All throughout the game MORE LOW TIER UNITS seems to be universal answer to everything. Some units, like Brood Lords, never seen use because of how T1.5-centric the game is.

[Ingmar]

There was a flight of nearly 30 brood lords in the finals at Blizzcon this year - and it wasn't beaten by low level troops, it was beaten by insane micromanaging of a giant mob of ghosts sniping.

[jakonovski]

There was a flight of nearly 30 brood lords in the finals at Blizzcon this year - and it wasn't beaten by low level troops, it was beaten by insane micromanaging of a giant mob of ghosts sniping.

Games at the very top are pretty much always markedly different from what happens among plebs.

[Malakili]

There was a flight of nearly 30 brood lords in the finals at Blizzcon this year - and it wasn't beaten by low level troops, it was beaten by insane micromanaging of a giant mob of ghosts sniping.

Games at the very top are pretty much always markedly different from what happens among plebs.

Thats not a problem with the game, thats a problem with people sucking at the game (myself included).

[Fordel]

2v2 isn't balanced... but tech rushing for 7 minutes with no real defense means you have a shitty build. That's not a game problem.

[sinij]

There was a flight of nearly 30 brood lords in the finals at Blizzcon this year - and it wasn't beaten by low level troops, it was beaten by insane micromanaging of a giant mob of ghosts sniping.

Games at the very top are pretty much always markedly different from what happens among plebs.

Thats not a problem with the game, thats a problem with people sucking at the game (myself included).

No, this IS a problem with game. When everyone but top 1% are "sucking at the game" and have boring game, then problem is the game and not players.

[sinij]

2v2 isn't balanced... but tech rushing for 7 minutes with no real defense means you have a shitty build. That's not a game problem.

1v1, 2v2 ... none of it is balanced outside of T1 massing. That is the main point.

As to tech build I posted, getting rushed is not a problem - we had clear responses to any scouted early pressure. Problem is that when you DO get VR+Thor to enemy base that early they are still not effective against T1 massing.

[Fordel]

I don't know what to tell you, the game isn't rush to BattleCrusiers and win.


It's a Macro game, cost effectiveness rules everything, it's always worked that way. T1 is going to be the backbone of any army. /shrug

[Malakili]

2v2 isn't balanced... but tech rushing for 7 minutes with no real defense means you have a shitty build. That's not a game problem.

1v1, 2v2 ... none of it is balanced outside of T1 massing. That is the main point.

As to tech build I posted, getting rushed is not a problem - we had clear responses to any scouted early pressure. Problem is that when you DO get VR+Thor to enemy base that early they are still not effective against T1 massing.

Sounds like you are really bad at Starcraft 2, sorry.   You choose two units which do high damage v. armored big units, and complain when the opponent shows up with light armored units.  There is no inherent reason why your build should beat lower tech units, thats your problem.   If your opponent is going marine marauder, stargate tech is probably the worst possible choice.  Thats a you problem.  You could rush templar with storm + chargelots, you could rush one base colossus.  Meanwhile, you friend has factories with tech labs if he is going thors, make siege tanks would be useful in such a situation instead of just massing thors.   

Again, this isn't a problem with the game, this is a problem with your strategy.  Sorry.

Also, pure tier 1 units don't actually win, most of the time, your premise is flawed.    Lets look at the current meta game.

TvZ - Terran is probably going marine/tank, adding on thors later, medivacs later.  Ghosts in the later game.  So we have a tier 1 unit as the bulk of the army, with some serious tech support.  Z is probably going ling/bling/muta, transitioning into Broodlord. 

PvT - MMM is a solid opener, adding on, critically, ghosts in the later game.  Protoss is probably going either  templar or colossus tech, or both, with heavy upgrades being pretty central to this matchup on both sides.

PvZ - Colossus are still central to this matchup, as are blink stalkers.   We've seen more stargate play lately, even motherships, one of the hardest things to tech up to in the game.   Zerg are usually going for some kind of infestor mid game, but roach/hydra isn't unheard of.  Lategame we seen Broodlords frequently.


Not doing mirror matchups.    Basically, you're just plain wrong, and if you are losing to mass tier one units, your strategy is either poorly conceived, or poorly timed, or both. 

[RUiN 427]

I can't wait to see what pro level games look like with the new units and mechanics.

[sinij]

 There is no inherent reason why your build should beat lower tech units, thats your problem.   If your opponent is going marine marauder, stargate tech is probably the worst possible choice.

Yes, that is my problem with SC2 - teching up is largely pointless when T1 is so strong, as a result game regresses into mindless pump-o-rama of T1. "My opponent" is always going to go MM, because it can take him endgame. T can win any game with MM into MMM into MMM + G.  Thinking like that leaves me with "tech is probably the worst possible choice" in nearly all situations, so I am left with massing stalkers every game, nevermind that stalkers are bad against marauders, if you ram enough of them down Ts throat early enough and micro blink you still can win. How many blink stalkers vs MM races takes before it gets boring? For me - not that many.

I clearly stated in my example that VR+Thor build did not work and was easy to stop with T1, I brought it up as a demonstration that teching in general is rather pointless.

PvT - MMM is a solid opener, adding on, critically, ghosts in the later game.  Protoss is probably going either  templar or colossus tech, or both, with heavy upgrades being pretty central to this matchup on both sides.

Last I played P didn't generally survive long enough to bring colossus out before getting MMMed at 10 minutes mark. You must not be playing good Terrans if they let you get colossus, templars with full energy or both in any game.

[Fordel]

Teching to the exclusion of maintaining a proper army is useless, yes.

M to MM, to MMM to MMM+G is hardly T1 by any means.

[DLRiley]

  There is no inherent reason why your build should beat lower tech units, thats your problem.   If your opponent is going marine marauder, stargate tech is probably the worst possible choice. 

Yes, that is my problem with SC2 - teching up is largely pointless when T1 is so strong, as a result game regresses into mindless pump-o-rama of T1. "My opponent" is always going to go MM, because it can take him endgame. T can win any game with MM into MMM into MMM + G.  Thinking like that leaves me with "tech is probably the worst possible choice" in nearly all situations, so I am left with massing stalkers every game. Zzzzz....

I clearly stated in my example that VR+Thor build did not work and was easy to stop with T1, I brought it up as a demonstration that teching in general is rather pointless.

Protos high tier death ball of 4-6 void rays, colossus, with some sentry/stalker beats all mm all day long. No fug that, 2 colossus with any combination of warpgate spam beats straight mm.

Anyway your problem with the game has less to do with its balance and not knowing build orders, its just being bad. Really really bad. Which is understandable, but don't expect anyone to take your rant seriously. "oh noes i can't turtle and pump tier 4!"

[sinij]

Well, if I am bad then so is 75%+ of all players, very likely including all of you. I didn't like SC2 as a game, and I wasn't alone at that. Couple of my SC1 buddies who I kept in touch all agreed with me. We are all back to occasionally playing SC1.

[Malakili]

 There is no inherent reason why your build should beat lower tech units, thats your problem.   If your opponent is going marine marauder, stargate tech is probably the worst possible choice.

Yes, that is my problem with SC2 - teching up is largely pointless when T1 is so strong, as a result game regresses into mindless pump-o-rama of T1. "My opponent" is always going to go MM, because it can take him endgame. T can win any game with MM into MMM into MMM + G.  Thinking like that leaves me with "tech is probably the worst possible choice" in nearly all situations, so I am left with massing stalkers every game. How many blink stalkers vs MM races takes before it gets boring? For me - not that many.

I clearly stated in my example that VR+Thor build did not work and was easy to stop with T1, I brought it up as a demonstration that teching in general is rather pointless.

Teching to a thing that isn't cost efficient against your opponent is pointless.  Thats what tech gets you, cost efficiency v. certain units.  If you are facing MM without one of 1) Storm or 2) Colossus you aren't making good decisions.  You should/could also have chargelots and heavy upgrades.  Why are you so dead set on going Stargate tech.  The fact that your chosen tech path is bad against t1 terran units doesn't mean "tech is probably the worst possible choice" it means, stargate tech is bad v. mass barracks units.  

Also, as Fordel said, MMM + G + upgrades isn't "t1" either, for what it is worth.  

[Ingmar]

I brought it up as a demonstration that teching in general is rather pointless.

It demonstrates nothing of the kind, though; it just demonstrates that your one particular build was bad against a popular Terran one. Nothing about that experience is necessarily applicable to other builds.

What is applicable is that if you can't deal with the first engagement at lower tier you'll never get to the higher tier to see what happens there in the first place.

[DLRiley]

Well, if I am bad then so is 75%+ of all players, very likely including all of you. I didn't like SC2 as a game, and I wasn't alone at that. Couple of my SC1 buddies who I kept in touch all agreed with me. We are all back to occasionally playing SC1.

Yes I'm "bad" but not crying from my anus bad. There is a difference. 75% of the player base blames their own skill for being bad. You blame the game.

[Fordel]

Well, if I am bad then so is 75%+ of all players, very likely including all of you. I didn't like SC2 as a game, and I wasn't alone at that. Couple of my SC1 buddies who I kept in touch all agreed with me. We are all back to occasionally playing SC1.

Yes, pretty much anyone who isn't hitting Masters on the NA ladder can be considered bad at the game, it's a very hard game to get good at, and literally impossible to master. It's kinda why it's such a big deal 

[jakonovski]

As far as I'm concerned SC2 went a little bit too hardcore, making it kind of impossible to play multiplayer after the honeymoon period. They should've made it possible to extract gameplay nuance without dropping every other game you play.

[Fordel]

Which is a funny thing since there's another chunk of the playerbase that thinks SC2 made everything too easy.

[DLRiley]

If I pratice I can hang for a few minutes against a platinum, but that's about it. SC2 is far easy to play for me than SC1, I find that mostly because of BNET2 and the ability to just hop on and practice, instead of having to find and join a room where people are playing standard and not some mod or co-op map.

[jakonovski]

Which is a funny thing since there's another chunk of the playerbase that thinks SC2 made everything too easy.

That's probably the chunk that only plays SC2 and calls people nooblords. 

[DLRiley]

Which is a funny thing since there's another chunk of the playerbase that thinks SC2 made everything too easy.

That's probably the chunk that only plays SC2 and calls people nooblords. 

err what?

[Samwise]

Well, if I am bad then so is 75%+ of all players, very likely including all of you. I didn't like SC2 as a game, and I wasn't alone at that. Couple of my SC1 buddies who I kept in touch all agreed with me. We are all back to occasionally playing SC1.

Yes I'm "bad" but not crying from my anus bad. There is a difference. 75% of the player base blames their own skill for being bad. You blame the game.

God help me, but I actually get what sinij is saying here.  He's not saying that it's the game's fault he's "bad" at it, he's saying that this:

Games at the very top are pretty much always markedly different from what happens among plebs.

means that most people who play the game don't get to see very much of its breadth, and that's a flaw.  Really great competitive games are the ones that are enjoyable at all levels of play.

On the other hand: meow meow, we like noob tears.

[Ingmar]

That's probably down to the sheer difficulty of making sure most matches are against truly equal opponents. The reason games so often end in or shortly after tier 1 units is probably mostly down to the fact that the game can't get the matchmaking down that exactly, and a relatively small difference in play skill makes a big difference in the end result. If I'm 10% better than you, I'll probably beat you 80% of the time. That's hard for any matchmaking system to deal with, let alone one that has to rely on just the pool of players that are currently online and that needs to make sure you get a match quickly.

(Incidentally this is why I prefer games like Blood Bowl for multiplayer strategy, because the strong random element gives the worse player more opportunities to stay in the game and hurt the better player.)

[DLRiley]

Well, if I am bad then so is 75%+ of all players, very likely including all of you. I didn't like SC2 as a game, and I wasn't alone at that. Couple of my SC1 buddies who I kept in touch all agreed with me. We are all back to occasionally playing SC1.

Yes I'm "bad" but not crying from my anus bad. There is a difference. 75% of the player base blames their own skill for being bad. You blame the game.

God help me, but I actually get what sinij is saying here.  He's not saying that it's the game's fault he's "bad" at it, he's saying that this:

Games at the very top are pretty much always markedly different from what happens among plebs.

means that most people who play the game don't get to see very much of its breadth, and that's a flaw.  Really great competitive games are the ones that are enjoyable at all levels of play.

On the other hand: meow meow, we like noob tears.

Naw sinji blaming the game. In sc1 i can just tech up and rolf, in sc2 i tech up and get creamed oh my. Though i don't know how he managed to scrub some moniker of success in sc1, his complaint that all the game comes down to at his level, a real low level, is tier 1 spam is kinda funny considering that all the cheesy fast tech play utterly dominates the pub play up until diamond. You'd be lucky to find anyone decent at macro to the point where they can reliably pump more tier 1 units faster than your able to void ray bomb them.

[Malakili]

Games at the very top are pretty much always markedly different from what happens among plebs.

means that most people who play the game don't get to see very much of its breadth, and that's a flaw.  Really great competitive games are the ones that are enjoyable at all levels of play.

On the other hand: meow meow, we like noob tears.

It has nothing to do with noob tears, it has to do with playing a game and just arbitrarily thinking your strategy should win.  Thats why we all jumped on him, because he did a dumb fucking build that was terrible and felt butt hurt that he couldn't win with it.  A bad player can execute a good strategy badly and experience plenty of the game, in fact, as long as the players are of reasonably similar skill level, you can get decent games at any level.

Sinij was executing a terrible strategy fine, by the sound of it, and then complaining there is no strategy in the game. 

TL;DR SC2 is too much massing of low-tier units and not enough strategy.

Just because your strategy is bad, doesn't there isn't strategy to the game.  It just means you don't understand the game well enough to be making strategies.  It'd be like some random scrub (say, me for example), drawing up a football play and then when the defense destroys my QB complaining that all the defense has to do is run around and that the game takes no strategy.

[sinij]

all the cheesy fast tech play utterly dominates the pub play up until diamond.

When I started SC2 it placed me into gold, even after practicing I could never get past low diamond, considerably worse than my SC1 record. Yes, there is no denying that I am not great SC2 player, I get boggled down in multitasking letting my micro drop, as a result I could not play Zerg at adequate level to save my life. Larva management was an anchor on my neck that would inevitably drown me, no matter how hard I try, kitchen timers and all.

As I was moving up the ranks variety of strategies that could work, or that I would see used against me, went way down. I'd say by the time I got into diamond I would only see 1-2 builds PER RACE in 1v1 and 2-3 PER COMP in 2v2. That greatly bugged me, I specifically worked hard on practicing and trying to make non-standard builds, or counters to specific race, but could not ever make anything other than "vanilla" work at the same level. At some point it became "dear god, anything but the usual" and some of quirky builds were born to get inevitably crushed by "the usual". Whenever I went with anything even remotely different I'd drop from diamond and win my matches not because of my build, but usually by capitalizing on micro/timing mistakes you'd see in lower leagues.

My proudest SC2 moment was figuring out how to beat TT with PZ at a diamond level, I ended up developing non-standard early aggression build that relied on breaching choke with 5:30 immortal supported by roaches then hanging on against inevitable MM counter push. Went from 10% Win Ratio to 95%. The only reason it worked so well is because nobody expected to see anything non-standard at that level, so they couldn't understand what they saw scouting. Simple bunker would have stopped this push, but the only time it was done when matchmaking punished my team for a winning streak by setting us up for sure-loss against world-class team.

[DLRiley]

Again that is a problem with the players not the game. Truly dynamic play only comes from a handful of really talented players, because not only can they "have a fresh build" and execute the build order perfectly but they also can "react and think ahead" to what the opponent can do. You'd be lucky to find a diamond player that moves beyond getting their build order, macro on point, let alone adjusting it to accommodate what you learn from scouting and what they already scouted about you. For example if I get my macro correct, which I rarely do, I can hang with players that are gods compared to me because my other game senses are better, though no where near pro sense. In short its really hard for PRO players to move beyond their standard comfortable build orders, let alone a playerbase lucky to face a low diamond. For example I could go mech vs protos and win, but I have my limits and it will take an insane amount of practice and breaking my fingers to learn the fundamentals. I wish there was a way to play the game just on my build/strategy game sense and rely less on actually having to keep up with all the little bits of execution needed to keep my macro on point, but that wouldn't be starcraft.