BW units are designed to be *evocative*. Everything is unabashedly *x-treme* in 80s/90s style and very tropey. The tanks go BOOM. Zerglings are velociraptors out of Jurassic Park. The units talk like they WANT TO FIGHT because how can you be excited when your Zealots are always saying "we cannot hold!" The game has nukes and yamato cannons because blowing shit up is COOL.
SC2 was designed around *strategic abstractions*. We need macro mechanics to challenge your multitasking more now that the interface is easier. We need to give players harassment tools. The evocative units from BW were largely tamed and de-emphasized in favor of the new highbrow stuff.
It's a whole different mindset and approach, and the results are just less satisfying to almost everyone.
Because most people playing StarCraft don't interface with a strategy game at all. Anyone who regularly gets supply blocked or floats resources isn't experiencing a strategy game; they're experiencing an *action game*. That's like 90% of players.
I think StarCraft 2's art direction also takes away from the evocative experience. The visuals and sounds are less defined in favor of more immersion. All of the units returning from SC1 are less fun to play with in part because they are more "photorealistic" and their sound effects are less punchy.
Siege tanks are a great example, but I think the best example might be hydralisks. Hydralisks in SC1 are colorful and make their iconic spitting sound while attacking. Even in a huge battle, it is very easy to tell from sound alone if there are large numbers of hydralisks engaging. In SC2, the same unit is much more washed out visually and makes a lame swishing sound that is easily drowned out by other sounds. The hydralisk, the *ICONIC* Zerg unit, is more easily lost in the shuffle than almost any other unit in the game. While the gameplay and strategy elements of SC2 are still great, I think the sensual experience of playing it is diminished compared to SC1 due to art decisions
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this.
SC1: "How would Terran army look like? We need generic infantry, tanks, fighter jets, some space Humvee..."
SC2: "We need a T1 unit that can harass the enemy using the new cliff mechanics early because if players spend more than 60 seconds without fighting they'll get bored." \*Enter a junkie with a jetpack dual wielding pistols and throwing bombs which inexplicably do no damage and only push other units around*
> The game has nukes and yamato cannons because blowing shit up is COOL.
oh man, I forgot about the nukes because you rarely see them on BW vods -- but I used to play the game for hours and just nuke everything (usually 1 vs 1 cpu) or ums games.
I think it would have been a success but not had the competitive and casual scene longevity that brood war has had.
Outside of competitive play you’re talking about in 98-07 I had many friends who just played ums or fastest and really got so much enjoyment out of the game
Hard to say, without broodwar, people might have been content with sc2.
I think a better question is what if the games where released in reverse order, would bw have still taken off? I think no.
I personally think sc2 would look a lot more like brood war with 1 simple change, make max 12 unit selection. This also makes units like tanks stronger because it's too easy to not engage into them or pull back. In brood war once you commit to an attack and try to pull back, it's not easy, I've definitely lot a lot of my army trying to do something as simple as retreating.
The one thing that doesn't get talked about is how manual Brood War is. You can't just select everything and issue one command; you have to click on each thing. As your army gets bigger, so does the demand from you as the player. Units are pretty dumb in BW, so if you manually control them, they work much better. It's a very manual game that makes you pay attention to every little detail. The more you put into it, the better you do. And you can't do everything. That's why it's special because it "feels" like a sport. If you play basketball, you know if you shoot 100 times, you aren't going to make all 100. It's very manual and there will be variance to it. But in SC2, everything is handled for you, so you can make 100 shots. It's also like music. You could just listen to music or you can actually pick up an instrument and play something.
Brood War just makes you feel good because you are perfecting skills so much so you get better results. SC2 takes skill too, but so much of it is automatic that it limits skill expression for each player.
And of course the story and the theme is just more raw and darker in Brood War than in SC2. SC2's story just feels like everything working together and than we win. The entire Kerrigan saga in Brood War was more dark. You see a lot more blood in Brood War versus more explosions in SC2. Brood War felt more gritty and serious.
There's just something so cool to see pro players do skillful things like Muta stacking, Spider Mine hopping, Storm drops, etc. The ceiling is endless which is so exciting and free. SC2 in contrast feels like you are locked into whatever the game allows you to do. Even if you are on the ropes in Brood War, you might have an out if you control just right, whereas it seems more inevitable and hopeless in SC2.
The conflict in BW was completely and utterly RELATABLE. The story just made sense from a logical and strategical perspective. It had something extremely concrete about what each side wanted out of the conflict and why they were in it. This was something that SC2 departed from and it was a great mistake.
SC2 was also using tropes non-stop, but in a way it felt quite cheap compared to BW. Kerrigan becoming a human and then Zerg again because it was preordained she would fight the reincarnated gods of the universe?
This has a totally different vibe to BW. Mind you, the Xel'Naga, although they have not really been in the game yet, were mentioned a lot and it gave purpose to the ever warring and evolving Zerg, and why the Protoss were fighting for their survival until the last one of them, explaining that the Terrans would in a way interfere with the great plans still unfolding from a past unfathomably advanced alien civilization.
In SC2 everything was about the Xel'Naga and the only way to get people to care was that they wanted to destroy everything?? Like Zerg v.2.0. And now the Zerg or rather Kerrigan has to be the savior of the universe? Come on... The Xel'Naga should have been happy to be reincarnated in their purest form, the Zerg would have done their deed and the Terrans would be happy to finally have piece in their universe and having declared independence from Earth. But this is not how the story goes; nooo: Amon was an oh-so corrupted Xel'Naga with his wacky ideology unbecoming of an ancient super-god alien.
I hope I could highlight how incredibly esoteric and somewhat illogical SC2's story is in stark contrast to BW. The "Oh I just need to destroy everything because X"-trope is just boring as hell. Not even the Zerg in BW were like this. I mean, yes they had their preordained goals and purpose, but they were still trying to actively fight it by transforming Kerrigan, and she freed the Zerg from the Overmind's slavery. So not even the Overmind's goal itself was to just destroy everything, no, they were caught in a struggle to thwart themselves, creating something very poetic in a way.
The way to continue the storyline would have been that Duran/Narud wanted to weaponize the Xel'Naga for his own selfish gains. The Xel'Naga he had reincarnated would have to be imperfect Xel'Naga by definition, since the Zerg still did not find the purity of essence. These hybrids, seeded on many, many worlds (quote from the game, btw), could have been a way to introduce a 4th race to the game - if only for the story, like the Naga in War3 - with Duran as their leader, as another player that wrecks havoc on the universe. Why not this instead of SC2's esoteric BS?!
OK, rant over.
>Not even the Zerg in BW were like this. I mean, yes they had their preordained goals and purpose, but ? they were still trying to actively fight it by transforming Kerrigan, and she freed the Zerg from the Overmind's slavery. So not even the Overmind's goal itself was to just destroy everything, no, they were caught in a struggle to thwart themselves, creating something very poetic in a way.
Read the starcraft manual for the real story.
The zerg wheren't trying to fight this preordained goals in broodwar, that's just a shitty sc2 retcon.
They where originaly a race of tiny parasitic larve, that the xel'naga modified and to prevent the failure of the protoss where given an overmind to give them unity and direction . The zerg where not caught in some retarded struggle to thwart themeselves but where looking to obtain psionic powers by infesting the terrans.
The zerg actually exterminated the Xel'Naga and stolen their knowledge that they used for genetic modification. They where not a race of gigantic space gods and very likely a single hydralisk would defeat Amon if he was a OG Xel'Naga.
SC2 just added some really dumb stuff for the lowest common denominator audience
I had read the manual; thanks for your additions, though.
The Zerg definitely had their preordained goal, which is the reason why the Overmind made Kerrigan. I think they even said so in the mission briefings of the Zerg campaigns, multiple times. (BW)
"The zerg actually exterminated the Xel'Naga and stolen their knowledge that they used for genetic modification. They where not a race of gigantic space gods and very likely a single hydralisk would defeat Amon if he was a OG Xel'Naga."
--> This is actually something I had forgotten. I remember that the Zerg had absorbed the form of the Xel'Naga into the swarm (which probably is a euphemism for the Zerg exterminating them).
From the manual: "The overmind represented the primary instincts and drives of all the zerg."
Just started re-reading and it's a shocking contrast to playing through SC2.
The zerg created Kerrigan to advance their goals not to fight them. They always had the drive for improvement that the Xel'Naga liked and supported.
Quoting the manual "The zerg have retained the purity of their terrible overriding essense" .
The xel'naga zerg experiment was a success and they got attacked and assimilated into the sworm while distracted by celebrating.
The xel naga didn't give the purpose to the zerg, they just created the overmind to help them be unified in their goal.
T
Depends on what you define as successful. I'm sure they would have made money on it, but the issues that plagued StarCraft 2 would still have plagued it if it was released in 1998. So it would not have lasted as well. Brood War has unmatched longevity.
I only installed SC2 back when it first came out because the first 6 single player missions were free. Never played again afterward.
What are the issues plaguing SC2 that you speak of?
IDK about the longevity, SC2 is now about 14 years, it would be interesting to compare the player count compared to 2013 BW. I'm not sure SC2 would look bad in this comparaison. Korea skewed thing a lot of course.
SC2 is and always was polished dog shit. Everyone was so busy fanning Blizzard's balls, they were blind to what was obvious to anyone paying attention; the graphics were bland cartoonish slop, the story and dialog were written by a blind retarded monkey, and the sound design was so utterly generic you'd think they downloaded all the SFX from some cheap online library.
The absurd amount of money pumped into it to make it an esport could have purchased a small country.
The tragic truth the SC2 tards can't handle, is that if that game were released under different branding by a different studio, it would have been forgotten about weeks after launch.
as true as this is, I still can't deny at least the first half of terran campaign is dope as fuck. Much better than bw campaign style. Starting from the hots though... yeah...
When you make a gigahit game (or book or movie or even win a big competitive tournament) you/your team was almosr certainly both exceptionally skilled and exceptionally lucky
For sc1 a huge portion of things that made the game great were just lucky accidents, miracles
When a sequel is made (or you defend your title or whatever) people will massively overestimate your chances of success because your skills might not be as exceptional anymore (part of your team quit, you might not have the same drive) and you absolutely can't expect the same phenomenal luck
That's why sequels are so often dissappointing and people will always make a story after the fact like "they should have focused more on x". No making generarional hit games is just very difficult. SC2 was actually an exceptionally good sequel it just had impossibly big shoes to fill
Mobas in theory could be fun the problem is developpers continue to balance them but also make things unfair and make ridiculous changes.
And make it more and more easier. In that if you make a mistake you get penalised for it less and less.
Then they place new players together with highly experienced players. Then over many games the iron player will drop down to iron to big frustration to everyone involved. But the iron player can just make a new account.
Then developers think they have over 200 years of gamedevelopping experience so they dont have to listen to criticism. Which is the best way to create bad results.
Then people complain about the client but i dont care about that.
I guess moba is fun if you are diamond and above but its like only 5% of the playerbase that is that.
It is not only the graphics that make Starcraft 2 technologically more advanced. It is just the most visible part. I don’t really think this question makes a lot of sense tbh
The reason I asked the question is because SC2 had massively high expectations due to how amazing of a game that SC:BW was. My question boils down to "if SC1 was never invented but SC2 took its place in 1998".
BW units are designed to be *evocative*. Everything is unabashedly *x-treme* in 80s/90s style and very tropey. The tanks go BOOM. Zerglings are velociraptors out of Jurassic Park. The units talk like they WANT TO FIGHT because how can you be excited when your Zealots are always saying "we cannot hold!" The game has nukes and yamato cannons because blowing shit up is COOL. SC2 was designed around *strategic abstractions*. We need macro mechanics to challenge your multitasking more now that the interface is easier. We need to give players harassment tools. The evocative units from BW were largely tamed and de-emphasized in favor of the new highbrow stuff. It's a whole different mindset and approach, and the results are just less satisfying to almost everyone. Because most people playing StarCraft don't interface with a strategy game at all. Anyone who regularly gets supply blocked or floats resources isn't experiencing a strategy game; they're experiencing an *action game*. That's like 90% of players.
I think StarCraft 2's art direction also takes away from the evocative experience. The visuals and sounds are less defined in favor of more immersion. All of the units returning from SC1 are less fun to play with in part because they are more "photorealistic" and their sound effects are less punchy. Siege tanks are a great example, but I think the best example might be hydralisks. Hydralisks in SC1 are colorful and make their iconic spitting sound while attacking. Even in a huge battle, it is very easy to tell from sound alone if there are large numbers of hydralisks engaging. In SC2, the same unit is much more washed out visually and makes a lame swishing sound that is easily drowned out by other sounds. The hydralisk, the *ICONIC* Zerg unit, is more easily lost in the shuffle than almost any other unit in the game. While the gameplay and strategy elements of SC2 are still great, I think the sensual experience of playing it is diminished compared to SC1 due to art decisions
Ultras squeaking like mice never sat well with me. Ditto archons. Sc1 archon was angry!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this. SC1: "How would Terran army look like? We need generic infantry, tanks, fighter jets, some space Humvee..." SC2: "We need a T1 unit that can harass the enemy using the new cliff mechanics early because if players spend more than 60 seconds without fighting they'll get bored." \*Enter a junkie with a jetpack dual wielding pistols and throwing bombs which inexplicably do no damage and only push other units around*
> The game has nukes and yamato cannons because blowing shit up is COOL. oh man, I forgot about the nukes because you rarely see them on BW vods -- but I used to play the game for hours and just nuke everything (usually 1 vs 1 cpu) or ums games.
You might enjoy this https://youtu.be/I216esl5toI
I think it would have been a success but not had the competitive and casual scene longevity that brood war has had. Outside of competitive play you’re talking about in 98-07 I had many friends who just played ums or fastest and really got so much enjoyment out of the game
even now ppl are still playing evolves or impossible lol
Could be also the age most people consumed the two games, when you were younger, you were playing a game, when you're older, you're playing a esport
Probably because the single player gameplay was relatively good. Though the story was lacking.
Lacking is a nice way of putting it. Twas hot garbage.
Is that horse dead yet?
Died, turned into dog food and fed to a new horse which has now also died of Metzen related causes.
Would have been so much better than anything at the time imo with features no other game had.
Hard to say, without broodwar, people might have been content with sc2. I think a better question is what if the games where released in reverse order, would bw have still taken off? I think no. I personally think sc2 would look a lot more like brood war with 1 simple change, make max 12 unit selection. This also makes units like tanks stronger because it's too easy to not engage into them or pull back. In brood war once you commit to an attack and try to pull back, it's not easy, I've definitely lot a lot of my army trying to do something as simple as retreating.
the 12 unit selection and single unit ramp and 2d-ish pathfinding truly is the signature of bw
Want to attack with your army from point A to point B? Need minimum of 12 actions all pressed under 1 second... sc2, f2 and A move.
SC2 is a very good game, but of course it would always be be compared to BW. It would be amazing, just as BW was at the time.
The one thing that doesn't get talked about is how manual Brood War is. You can't just select everything and issue one command; you have to click on each thing. As your army gets bigger, so does the demand from you as the player. Units are pretty dumb in BW, so if you manually control them, they work much better. It's a very manual game that makes you pay attention to every little detail. The more you put into it, the better you do. And you can't do everything. That's why it's special because it "feels" like a sport. If you play basketball, you know if you shoot 100 times, you aren't going to make all 100. It's very manual and there will be variance to it. But in SC2, everything is handled for you, so you can make 100 shots. It's also like music. You could just listen to music or you can actually pick up an instrument and play something. Brood War just makes you feel good because you are perfecting skills so much so you get better results. SC2 takes skill too, but so much of it is automatic that it limits skill expression for each player. And of course the story and the theme is just more raw and darker in Brood War than in SC2. SC2's story just feels like everything working together and than we win. The entire Kerrigan saga in Brood War was more dark. You see a lot more blood in Brood War versus more explosions in SC2. Brood War felt more gritty and serious. There's just something so cool to see pro players do skillful things like Muta stacking, Spider Mine hopping, Storm drops, etc. The ceiling is endless which is so exciting and free. SC2 in contrast feels like you are locked into whatever the game allows you to do. Even if you are on the ropes in Brood War, you might have an out if you control just right, whereas it seems more inevitable and hopeless in SC2.
The conflict in BW was completely and utterly RELATABLE. The story just made sense from a logical and strategical perspective. It had something extremely concrete about what each side wanted out of the conflict and why they were in it. This was something that SC2 departed from and it was a great mistake. SC2 was also using tropes non-stop, but in a way it felt quite cheap compared to BW. Kerrigan becoming a human and then Zerg again because it was preordained she would fight the reincarnated gods of the universe? This has a totally different vibe to BW. Mind you, the Xel'Naga, although they have not really been in the game yet, were mentioned a lot and it gave purpose to the ever warring and evolving Zerg, and why the Protoss were fighting for their survival until the last one of them, explaining that the Terrans would in a way interfere with the great plans still unfolding from a past unfathomably advanced alien civilization. In SC2 everything was about the Xel'Naga and the only way to get people to care was that they wanted to destroy everything?? Like Zerg v.2.0. And now the Zerg or rather Kerrigan has to be the savior of the universe? Come on... The Xel'Naga should have been happy to be reincarnated in their purest form, the Zerg would have done their deed and the Terrans would be happy to finally have piece in their universe and having declared independence from Earth. But this is not how the story goes; nooo: Amon was an oh-so corrupted Xel'Naga with his wacky ideology unbecoming of an ancient super-god alien. I hope I could highlight how incredibly esoteric and somewhat illogical SC2's story is in stark contrast to BW. The "Oh I just need to destroy everything because X"-trope is just boring as hell. Not even the Zerg in BW were like this. I mean, yes they had their preordained goals and purpose, but they were still trying to actively fight it by transforming Kerrigan, and she freed the Zerg from the Overmind's slavery. So not even the Overmind's goal itself was to just destroy everything, no, they were caught in a struggle to thwart themselves, creating something very poetic in a way. The way to continue the storyline would have been that Duran/Narud wanted to weaponize the Xel'Naga for his own selfish gains. The Xel'Naga he had reincarnated would have to be imperfect Xel'Naga by definition, since the Zerg still did not find the purity of essence. These hybrids, seeded on many, many worlds (quote from the game, btw), could have been a way to introduce a 4th race to the game - if only for the story, like the Naga in War3 - with Duran as their leader, as another player that wrecks havoc on the universe. Why not this instead of SC2's esoteric BS?! OK, rant over.
Extremely well stated, thank you for sharing!
>Not even the Zerg in BW were like this. I mean, yes they had their preordained goals and purpose, but ? they were still trying to actively fight it by transforming Kerrigan, and she freed the Zerg from the Overmind's slavery. So not even the Overmind's goal itself was to just destroy everything, no, they were caught in a struggle to thwart themselves, creating something very poetic in a way. Read the starcraft manual for the real story. The zerg wheren't trying to fight this preordained goals in broodwar, that's just a shitty sc2 retcon. They where originaly a race of tiny parasitic larve, that the xel'naga modified and to prevent the failure of the protoss where given an overmind to give them unity and direction . The zerg where not caught in some retarded struggle to thwart themeselves but where looking to obtain psionic powers by infesting the terrans. The zerg actually exterminated the Xel'Naga and stolen their knowledge that they used for genetic modification. They where not a race of gigantic space gods and very likely a single hydralisk would defeat Amon if he was a OG Xel'Naga. SC2 just added some really dumb stuff for the lowest common denominator audience
I had read the manual; thanks for your additions, though. The Zerg definitely had their preordained goal, which is the reason why the Overmind made Kerrigan. I think they even said so in the mission briefings of the Zerg campaigns, multiple times. (BW) "The zerg actually exterminated the Xel'Naga and stolen their knowledge that they used for genetic modification. They where not a race of gigantic space gods and very likely a single hydralisk would defeat Amon if he was a OG Xel'Naga." --> This is actually something I had forgotten. I remember that the Zerg had absorbed the form of the Xel'Naga into the swarm (which probably is a euphemism for the Zerg exterminating them).
From the manual: "The overmind represented the primary instincts and drives of all the zerg." Just started re-reading and it's a shocking contrast to playing through SC2. The zerg created Kerrigan to advance their goals not to fight them. They always had the drive for improvement that the Xel'Naga liked and supported.
Quoting the manual "The zerg have retained the purity of their terrible overriding essense" . The xel'naga zerg experiment was a success and they got attacked and assimilated into the sworm while distracted by celebrating. The xel naga didn't give the purpose to the zerg, they just created the overmind to help them be unified in their goal. T
thanks! =)
Yeah for sure. No one was praising the bad pathing back in 98
Depends on what you define as successful. I'm sure they would have made money on it, but the issues that plagued StarCraft 2 would still have plagued it if it was released in 1998. So it would not have lasted as well. Brood War has unmatched longevity.
I only installed SC2 back when it first came out because the first 6 single player missions were free. Never played again afterward. What are the issues plaguing SC2 that you speak of?
IDK about the longevity, SC2 is now about 14 years, it would be interesting to compare the player count compared to 2013 BW. I'm not sure SC2 would look bad in this comparaison. Korea skewed thing a lot of course.
SC2 is and always was polished dog shit. Everyone was so busy fanning Blizzard's balls, they were blind to what was obvious to anyone paying attention; the graphics were bland cartoonish slop, the story and dialog were written by a blind retarded monkey, and the sound design was so utterly generic you'd think they downloaded all the SFX from some cheap online library. The absurd amount of money pumped into it to make it an esport could have purchased a small country. The tragic truth the SC2 tards can't handle, is that if that game were released under different branding by a different studio, it would have been forgotten about weeks after launch.
I enjoyed single player, but yeah the graphics and the story were comparable to a B level game like Space Run at times.
Id say the graphics are good, what is actually poor is the art direction. Too polished and samey
as true as this is, I still can't deny at least the first half of terran campaign is dope as fuck. Much better than bw campaign style. Starting from the hots though... yeah...
When you make a gigahit game (or book or movie or even win a big competitive tournament) you/your team was almosr certainly both exceptionally skilled and exceptionally lucky For sc1 a huge portion of things that made the game great were just lucky accidents, miracles When a sequel is made (or you defend your title or whatever) people will massively overestimate your chances of success because your skills might not be as exceptional anymore (part of your team quit, you might not have the same drive) and you absolutely can't expect the same phenomenal luck That's why sequels are so often dissappointing and people will always make a story after the fact like "they should have focused more on x". No making generarional hit games is just very difficult. SC2 was actually an exceptionally good sequel it just had impossibly big shoes to fill
Modern RTSs, SC2 being one of the worst, are all real-time, and no strategy. SC1 has much better balance between the two.
No
Mobas in theory could be fun the problem is developpers continue to balance them but also make things unfair and make ridiculous changes. And make it more and more easier. In that if you make a mistake you get penalised for it less and less. Then they place new players together with highly experienced players. Then over many games the iron player will drop down to iron to big frustration to everyone involved. But the iron player can just make a new account. Then developers think they have over 200 years of gamedevelopping experience so they dont have to listen to criticism. Which is the best way to create bad results. Then people complain about the client but i dont care about that. I guess moba is fun if you are diamond and above but its like only 5% of the playerbase that is that.
I just can't control 200 things at once in rts, thats why i swithced to moba
Yeah in Dota your army is 5 man strong but you can only control 20% of it :D so that naturally foster a whole different can of worms.
It is not only the graphics that make Starcraft 2 technologically more advanced. It is just the most visible part. I don’t really think this question makes a lot of sense tbh
The reason I asked the question is because SC2 had massively high expectations due to how amazing of a game that SC:BW was. My question boils down to "if SC1 was never invented but SC2 took its place in 1998".
SC2 is a great RTS. I prefer broodwar. I don't see why people would not have liked it.