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We've finally got a professionally employed English caster. GOMTV is currently running the GOMTV Star Invitational, with sixteen of the best or most influential Starcraft players. On top of that, they are broadcasting a separate ENGLISH stream online with the hopes of capitalizing on the foreign market. Tasteless (the commentator who has done Blizzcon, WWI, and WCG) will be doing solo commentary for the entire tournament, and is in the talks to begin commentating on further tournaments.
I'm posting this hear because GOM is gauging their future actions based on the response and traffic that this project generates from foreign sources. I know some people enjoy casually watching Starcraft, and this is fairly easy way to watch professional games with english commentary.
You can watch the recorded games here: http://gsi.gomtv.com/vod/
When the live games are up, you can watch by clicking the VIEW LIVE link here: http://gsi.gomtv.com/
To see the schedule for the game, you can refer to TeamLiquid's Calendar: http://teamliquid.net/calendar/month_details.php?calendar_year=2008&calendar_month=2#day_19
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1) With Brood War came the Medic and Lurkers. Medics to help keep Marines alive against swarms and to make Stimpacks worthwhile, and Lurkers to counter inevitably large groups of Terran infantry. This seems good in theory and you can say it was purposefully balanced. What you would expect to see in any game is Terran to move out to Zerg's base and fight Lurkers there, while Zerg tries to push Terran back by leapfrogging Lurkers.
This isn't what happens. In 75% of StarCraft games, both professional and competitive amateur games, Zerg will open Mutalisks. Why Mutalisks when their counter is infantry? Well, it was found (through fluke) that if you group Mutalisks with a far away unit, they stack up in the air. They move as one but attack as many. Do you think this ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJVait72LOU ) is something Blizzard considered when the game was made?
You may think this is a gimmick and doesn't affect balance, but it absolutely does. If this wasn't in the game Zerg would be dominated by Terran, but this little trick restores balance so that Z = T on most maps.
2) The evolution this game has seen is actually quite shocking. Back when the game was "solve" (around 2004), we would see professional Protoss losing to Zerg about 70% of the time. In 2007 a fairly unknown Protoss player named Bisu came along and invented a build that I won't go into. But suffice it to say now all Protoss players open with some variation of the Bisu build, and P = Z on most maps.
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Basically what I'm saying is that the balance of a game like this is something that can be done at the macroscopic level by math. Sure cost * building time * damage rate = constant will work for most things. But how do you factor in the mobility of a Mutalisk harass or the evolution of the new builds? You can't, things like this can only be balanced microscopically by experience. And no, I don't think making previous games gives you the experience to balance Starcraft, you have to have either a serious talent, or experience playing. Which is why I'm scared for Starcraft 2's balance.
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Your point about it changing the game is true. My point is that it lowers the skill ceiling. No one can play at the highest level. It's not a hand speed limitation, but the game is just so hard no one can understand all the tactics and be mechanically strong enough to execute them. It's to hard.
Remove mechanic requirements such by introducing MBS makes the game easier as a whole. Sure it also makes it easier for newbs to play, but obviously I'm being selfish and I don't care about them. Sure it might be balanced, but it takes skill out of the game while not replacing it with anythnig. The argument that players are going to become strategically better by having less to do is simply wrong.
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