Is SC2 just Fastest Map?

Hey Team :)

Since playing so much LoL lately I actually have been giving StarCraft 2 a lot of thought. It annoys me that I play so much LoL and hardly any SC2 now. Probably because I lament how much I used to enjoy Brood War.

StarCraft 2 is a sick game on its own, for sure. But ever since it came out, idk, it's just never quite reached that same feel Brood War had. I know we still have two expansions to go, but in the back of my mind I know that whatever is wrong with StarCraft 2 is probably in the engineering, and not something that can be addressed with different units and more single player missions.

What I think is wrong with it, has been inspired by the very well-thought and explained thread over at Team Liquid, 'Breadth of Gameplay in SC2' by Barrin.

He basically explains that he believes there is too many resources per base in StarCraft 2. He went ahead and created a few maps (he is actually an old school map maker) with less resources, and while I have not played them, reports from some well-known players are positive, some of them even saying it felt WAY more Brood War like.

This was pretty confusing to me. It still wasn't solving the problem for me. No matter how much I thought about it, all I could imagine about having less resources in StarCraft 2 is just smaller battles of the same clumpy shitty death-ball units raping each other in seconds with the slightest micro fucking leading to the death of a full bio ball.

Then I remembered Fastest Possible Map Ever from Brood War. It was like a light-switch went on. StarCraft 2 obviously isn't actually Fastest Map, but the thing is, it's closer to Fastest Map than any of the Brood War maps ever were.

Think about when you played Fastest Possible Map Ever, I know a lot of you did. In fact, that's where my StarCraft started out. What happens on Fastest Possible Map is actually strikingly similar to, although a bit more extreme than, StarCraft 2. You've got lots of units in a very short period of time (think 4gate), there's way less incentive to expand, and you max out way faster.

In StarCraft 2, the idea of maxing out on one base isn't really that crazy. In fact, I've seen bomber do it many times on streams of some of the American guys. It's stupid and looks OP.

In Brood War, the idea of maxing out on even two bases seems pretty unlikely. If you do it (an example would be NaDa's pioneering Tornado push), it pretty much has to win, or you don't get a third and you lose.

I think that when you play StarCraft 2, it feels like each expansion is starting a new game of Fastest Map. It's like you start out with a base, and often times you'll make as many units as you can get away with. Haven't won yet? Expand and start Fast Map again. Mass up again. Still haven't won? Expand and start Fast Map again.

Obviously it's not 100% like that but that's what I mean when I say that StarCraft 2 is a closer to being Fastest Map than Brood War was. I feel like this Barrin guy is on to something.

Only problem is, would Blizzard slow-up their game (by reducing mineral fields at bases) making it arguably less enjoyable for newbie spectators, for the sake of a more fun-to-play game?

I hope they would. Because Brood War was way more fun than LoL. And at the moment I find StarCraft 2 to be less fun than both. I could never, EVER get bored of Brood War.

I agree that sc2 is missing the fun factor that bw had. I don't think the development team agrees though :(.

The great irony of SC2 is that the new high ground mechanic in SC2 makes it play like a a 2D game where height advantage essentially doesn't matter as long as you have vision, unlike brood war which plays like a 3D game since height advantage is such a huge deal. The only thing that matters in SC2 is concave and that shit gets old really fucking fast.

Shroom wrote:

This was pretty confusing to me. It still wasn't solving the problem for me. No matter how much I thought about it, all I could imagine about having less resources in StarCraft 2 is just smaller battles of the same clumpy shitty death-ball units raping each other in seconds with the slightest micro fucking leading to the death of a full bio ball.

^^ This is correct. When the thread Barrin wrote up came out I got pretty excited. But after about 20 games or so on these new maps I realised that it really didn't fix anything, it was just the same shit except slower. In my opinion it actually made the game worse, there's also a huge problem with the mineral to gas ratio in those maps, there doesn't seem to be a good combination of gas geysers to minerals. In my mind Sc2 was meant to be played with 8 mineral fields and 2 gas geysers. I don't feel the macro in Sc2 is the main problem. I actually quite like the macro in Sc2 (although I do feel most of the units should cost less supply).

The main problem I feel Sc2 has is that the units are all 1 dimensional. You can only do a few things with them and it is not skill based (with the exception of blink stalker micro, marine splitting etc).

For example, you can do a ton of stuff with a vulture and while not all of the things are unique to the vulture, the micro for the non-unique action is unique (it feels a lot different to snipe a templar with vultures than it does with goliaths or siege tanks).

In Sc2 it's more about DOING the action rather than how you execute the action. An average master leaguer can stutter step marines almost as good as a GSL player, but there is a hell of a lot of difference between a bw pro and an amateur in terms of something like mutalisk micro or any kind of micro for that matter.

Anyways, I can't say everything about what I think are the issues with Sc2 because It's extremely hard to explain and would take a long time with a ton of writing.

Accidently quoted instead of editing...

Good post Gil, I agree.