Starcraft 1 vs Starcraft 2

Every game will have it's all ins and cheese, I don't see how you could avoid that.

 

They're more prevalent in SC2.

 

SC 2 was the worst written game I had the displeasure of watching my friend play since I started watching people play games. It was just terrible.

However, the mission design was great.

Let me explain before you hate.

Every single mission had different objectives. When I was a kid, RTS games had one objective each mission: destroy all enemy buildings. SC 2 has dozens of different objectives. Find the trains. Escort, protect, build, survive, mine, and so on. They got very creative with their mission objectives, more so than I remember 1 being.

Of course, it's a pity that was all wasted since you can just build marines and win every mission with that instead, from what I saw.

 

The BW comparison does not figure into my criticism of Warpgates and Spawn Larvae. I think they were both put into the game because of Dustin Browder's poor understanding of BW, but that doesn't preclude them from being good mechanics. Creep spread in sc2, for instance, is pretty great, and makes the game deeper and more interesting.

The reason Warpgates are bad is because they undermine the existence of defender's advantage by removing reinforcement time. Reinforcing being easier for the defender is a staple of most strategy games, and for a good reason - it stops the player with the larger army from instantly winning, which would render any investment in economy or tech pointless - you have a smaller army at one specific point, and you die. This is why Warpgates are bad. Protoss being balanced around Warpgates results in (tl;dr about why can come later, if you don't know on your own) them either all-ining, or turtling, which makes for boring gameplay.

Spawn Larvae is not as bad as Warpgates, and could possibly be salvaged, but in its current incarnation it makes Zerg core units suck ass. Zerglings were the best tier1 unit in the game in BW, but that was possible because production (aka larvae) actually cost money in that game. Similarly, BW Hydras were so much better than Roaches. Only high-tech gas-intensive Zerg units are allowed to not suck ass, because good early units would lead to an even more powerful version of the current ZvP roach max, which is only barely managable because roaches suck ass. So what playstyles does this leave Zerg with? Yes, either an all-in or turtling to a deathball.

Terran is really the only non-boring race, because their production mechanics actually allow them to have good, microable units. Amusingly enough, instead of making the other two races better, Blizzard seems intent on gutting Terran aggressive opportunities until they also either all-in or turtle.

I'm not entirely sure what you want me to link to, since all of this happens in a vast majority of high-level games.

 

So what? Turtling and going all-in are both valid types of play. Boring? Hardly, I don't know about you but watching early aggression where every mistake counts is pretty entertaining, and there are no true turtling games either, there are always plays being made even in long macro-oriented games. I remember watching MLG Providence a while ago and being thoroughly entertained at all the great games played, especially Leenock's upsets which came one after the other, so this theorycrafting that somehow proves SC2 is a boring game seems out of touch with reality. Maybe the lack of Korean commentators and their enthusiasm makes it seem less exciting to you?

 

Well, I guess that if you find turtlefests and all-ins entertaining, then you're Dustin Browder's target audience, godspeed. Honestly, even most GSL games are boring and one-sided. Anything involving Protoss is boring as hell, and ZvZ is usually not much better. TvZ is fun, or at least used to be until Zergs discovered that they can just turtle to 3 base Hive, and with the recent Queen buff, it seems like Blizzard wants Terrans to do the same. TvT is probably the best matchup in SC2, just becomes really tedious on easily splittable maps.

Compared with BW, where stuff constantly happens, it's all very passive and boring. I wouldn't even mind all-ins too much, if the grand majority of them wasn't about making units and a-moving them across the map.

 

It's not very passive and boring, I'll grant you that when it happens (because you mistakenly seem to imply that all games are cheese or turtlefests) it's not quite as mano-a-mano as so-called 'standard play', but if you can't recognise good plays being made in each of those circumstances then you're no better than Idra raging at the end of games about how enemy is an 'all in noob'.

 

I can recognize good play, but you don't really need it to win with all-ins in sc2. Turtling effectively is a bit more difficult, but mostly comes down to having a good build, scouting at the correct timings, and having units properly positioned. But, most of all, it's boring to watch and play.

 

Watch the SC1 games I posted on page 1 and then try to find any SC2 games as good as those. You can't

 

Here are a couple of nice games I found. SC2 is worst game ever, eh?

 

The first game was pretty uneventful, with only one thing going on at a time and baneling targeting/build order deciding everything.

Second game just seemed really one sided, with the Terran player doing uneventful drops every so often and the Zerg player attack moving him with mutalisks, banelings and zerglings for the most part.

There wasn't much micro or aggression, the battles never took up more than a limited space and the games just seemed really textbook and generic. As an example of SC2's enjoyability you could have done better. Marine King's early TvZ for example, is something I'd rate as being on par with SC1's enjoyability. But even that isn't as good as the games I linked to before.

 

If you don't like those two games then I can see why you wouldn't like the game in general. That said, I don't agree with your excuses for the most part. DRG vs Leenock had great positioning plays and Leenock's ling baits in particular were really fun to watch. I don't see where you're coming from saying there's no micro or aggression here, how can a 14 minute non-cheese game be anything but? Had DRG not made that blunder towards the end and left his hydras exposed, it would have been a very close game. I picked that one to prove that even short games can be thrilling, and let's face it, this game was much more satisfying to watch than Baby vs Miracle - a first half full of masterful wraith micro but then one mistake and Baby doomed himself for the rest of the game. Seeing something like that leaves me really jaded, from an audience standpoint.

Stork vs MvP was great, I haven't seen anything like that since I stopped watching BW games. My only gripe with it is that it would have ended much sooner and less memorably had there been a few recalls, if you know what I mean. I admit that my second game was just me browsing though some of Leenock's games on youtube and picking one of his longer ones, but I don't have the luxury of going through an entire tournament bracket and posting my favourites.

I'm not familiar with MK's early TvZ style, but I'm inclined to think that it's something similar to what could be seen in BW, right? You seem to have very niche tastes when it comes to what makes a game of Starcraft good, so I guess it's no surprise that you don't like SC2 as much cause it plays differently than BW, but that doesn't make it less entertaining in general for a lay spectator looking for flash or for a player looking for skill in execution.

 

Just to nitpick, that was actually above average length for a SC2 game. They tend to be closer to 10-12 minutes on average iirc.

Stork's strategy was to invest every single penny into low tech units and power his way through MVP. Since that didn't work out he couldn't afford going for arbiters.

Basically he had very good marine control and abused it when fighting banelings. This was back around the time that SC2 was released, so his style may have changed more recently.

Also while the topic is on replays, I'll drop some more GomTV ones that I bookmarked (along with brief description of why they're notable).
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/929 (long, close game TvP)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/878 (aggressive TvT)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/835 (lots of harassment PvZ)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/834 (aggressive zerg ZvP)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/774 (cheese then comeback ZvP)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/773 (mass lings ZvP)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/767 (ZvZ (may have bookmarked this accidently))
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/733 (comeback TvZ)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/722 (comeback PvZ)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/697 (drawn out, multiple base relocations TvP)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/691 (aggressive zerg PvZ)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/688 (5 rax TvZ)
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/644 (battlecruiser fight TvT)

I've got a few more but I didn't make descriptions of why they were notable and I can't remember. Plus I've listed too many already.

 

Don't forget Broodwar has had over 10 years to produce epic games, SC2 is still young.

 

There's gonna be a lot of progress soon in that regard, cause now that Kespa is transitioning to SC2, almost a hundred seasoned veterans will burst onto the scene at the end of this year. The most interesting thing is that Kespa teams do their practicing internally, instead of on public ladder games like SC2 players, so you're gonna start seeing a lot more strategies debut at tournaments.

 

I'm sure League of Legends will soon become as epic as Brood War too, with the amount of players it has.

 

I can't seem to watch these; is a gom account needed or am I being retarded?

 

I'm pretty sure you need a Gom account. You can sign up for free though, it's only the SC2 VODs that you need to pay for.

 

Ty, watching english broadcast of Proleague right now. So weird to see Carriers that aren't completely useless o_O

 

That's strange, I can see them fine without an account. Maybe it's got some weird country restriction?

 

And if we count average 12 year inflation rate + the growth of salaries to white collar employees what do we get you fucking teenage tard?

 

That's not a good argument. The whole RTS genre is much better understood now (or at SC2 release/beta) than it was when SCBW came out, or first started professional competitions. So the evolution that happened in BW over 10+ years is much quicker here.

And a game does not necessarily get better as it's played more - take SCBW ZvZ for example, yes it's interesting in its own way, but definitely still not very multidimensional after all this time. Some games are just better than others.
Also you can go back and watch BW games from 10 years ago, and see how entertaining that still is compared to a usual SC2 game.

 

ZvZ is funny. It's actually gotten less multi-dimensional over time. In the past, players were so bad that they occasionally made it to the late game:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4