As a guy who grew up in the age of Xds~Grrr, Elky and Boxer, looking at a whole state of gaming and cybersport in moderan are makes me sad. We are aimed towards simplisness and casuality and money. Not by passion and love for the games. You should get ur ass up Tasteless and invest your time into changing that, not reacting to that :)
Diablo 3 sold well because of d2's fame but we saw how that turned out. Sc2 just wasn't an amazing game and it had the wrong pricing model. League was already out and ahead of the game model wise. If you want to understand why, just look at storm gate. Same devs and over a decade later the game looks confused and underwhelming. Even blizzard understood how mid sc2 was after they saw a wow mount made more money than sc2 ever did. Sc2 "died" so long ago and bw is still around because it's just a better game and more interesting.
Lmao ye. People are insane, the first game is 25 years old, a quarter century. Nothing lives for ever. Thumbs down to video, im tired of those stupid takes.
@@googleslocik your coping hard my dude, game has been dead for like 8 years. IT had a terrible run, in a time where esports exploded sc2 went the opposite way. Yes it was an insanely impactful game in terms of esports, and it had its moment in the sun, but to lie or even act like sc2 has been in a good spot for the last 8 years is crazy
@@jonmacdonald2193 How am i coping? Over what? SC2 had a good run, ... 10years ago. I have no delusion over the game being dead, it saw no new entries in half a generation, kids have no idea what it is. Where did i say it was in good spot over last few years?
@@jonmacdonald2193 It's been on life support since the great balance decision in late Wings of Libery to make Infestors broken good, it's been slowly bleeding out since then.
reforged was messed up. I've never seen a game get destroyed so hard by its creator. What blizzard did should be borderline illegal. They should have left WC3 as an option
they fucked up a lot @@moonasha, but at least you can play bnet again with your old cdkey and balance patches (after the BM nerf i didnt check in for a long time so now is better than ever)
That section on SC2 being so simple it's just a game of mind games and strategies with GMs having the same macro as pros is just so wrong it almost invalidates his entire opinion on SC2 vs BW
This aspect of the original video bothers me as well. It is clear that he has no understanding of SC2 (and is extremely biased) if he's claiming a diamond player could ever beat a high level pro. A high level player can beat a lower level player simpy by out multitasking them and outmacroing them. While the deathball phenomenon has been an issue in the past, it's much less prevalent now than in was in the past. Watch the recent series between Clem and Serral to see a good example of how high level SC2 play has evolved past the deathball phenomenon.
Yeah it's so wrong it's not even funny. There's not a GM or even other pro on earth that will hit every inject the way Serral does. Even all time great World Champions like Rogue, Dark and Reynor you can visibly see the difference in macro between them and Serral.
In my opinion: It was so good out of the gate. They nearly completely ruined the game though by doubling the miners in ROTV though, and adding complicated first tier units with super advanced micro, particularly the adept and reaper. A player could win the game with 2 well microd reapers in seconds. Though that may have “sped it up” for pro gamers and made the action start faster, the game became this warp speed micro battle super fast - which is super not fun for most players, and nearly impossible for new players (I actually miss the slower early game, mostly because it gave casters a chance to really shine, as as a team player allowed for strategy and banter). It also made things tough to watch in the sense of: oh look, every single Terran game we have to watch a reaper poking around for 2 minutes. I was really really good at teams (and pretty good at 1’s) in Wings of Liberty. I had to take time off but I really miss it. I can’t even play LOTV - despite serious background gameplay, going all the way back to sc1, it’s so fast, so complicated, so quickly it’s just not fun and the only people playing are regulars who crush me. It’s too bad. Most of all the problem is too quick to fast, and I’d imagine even pro players are sick and tired of adepts and reaper micro early game…especially reapers. Terran early game reapers is awful to have to watch (and play, for pro players) every single game.
I think the "artificial" balance vs "organic" balance distinction is very poorly framed. It seems much more productive and accurate to examine community driven vs developer driven balance, and secondly map balance vs unit/building balance. There is an interesting discussion to be had about the pros and cons of each, but the original video barely covers any of it in the interest of pushing its thesis that developer intervention = bad.
@@inteallsviktigt Because, well, it is broken. It doesn't matter whether you fix it by changing the units, changing the maps, or changing tournament rules. If you have to do any of those it was originally broken.
"Games are better when they ORGANICALLY evolve with strategies instead of people constantly changing the game to account for the latest strategic innovations... Anyway, let's talk about how map-makers constantly had to change te game to account for the latest strategic innovations. In fact, if the maps weren't constantly changing over the years to compensate for the evolving strategies of the player base using units and armies in ways we never thought of previously - the game would never be alive to this day." It's interesting though to highlight the relative pros and cons of nerfing a unit's damage vs nerfing a unit's usefulness by designing maps where they aren't as useful. The map changes are more indirect and might have other significant side-effects, but they allow people to know exactly what the unit does and see how the battlefield is changing to make it weaker. Great for an esport.
I appreciate you making this. The video was being shared a lot when it came out but, like many "SC2 dead" videos, it was missing a lot of important information and just fueling more toxic posts between people seeking validation for liking one game but not the other.
these ``death of a game`` youtube genre got too popular now people with 0 intelligence and knowledge of a game are making these videos, last week a saw a video about another game that the guy couldnt even say the name of the characters correctly and said the game is dead while tens of thousands still play it.
It's not just SC2 videos. It's like "RTS is dead" videos when its quite clear that is not a true narrative. And I agree alot of these videos are made by people who don't play these games alot.
@@02Machiavelli SaiyanKCM understands BW better than Tasteless. I'm not saying that as a dig at Tasteless, it's just a fact. Not all vids are clickbait nonsense, and if you look at the other 99% of that channel, it's just casts.
People been saying SC2 is dead for 12 years or more. I was obsessed for the first 4 years after it was released and recently returned a viewer watching casters cast matches at least once a day.
Harstem, Lowko and Winter make watching SC2 fun. I think if more people start to see the game as chess on steroids it changes the way you look at it. The game is cinematic, requires skill and dexterity at the high levels and there is enough coaching online with guys like PIG that make it easier for the average joe to get into the game and get to a stage where the game is fun.
@@thewealthofnations4827 Unfortunately it's only the core minority that still likes the game for some reason and says stuff like this. For most the game simply isn't fun. And honestly, your argument is also simply dumb, if a game requires hours and hours of studying before being fun, it's something that's not supposed to be, it's a failure. Which it is since Blizzard abandoned it and the playerbase is shrinking and people even drop it to return to it's prequel. A chess game on steroids is a problem, too, not a feature. Imagine you play Need for Speed on 16x speed, would that be more fun for you? According to your argumentation it should. But in reality the speed actually dumbs it down. Or imagine you can only have fun riding a bike if your average speed is close to a competitive athlete. I wonder if it even makes sense talking about this. With the arguments you've written here you could very well that prefers blaming the audience for not liking your product, like the woke do, instead of considering changing it so it appeals to more people. I didn't have the best experiences with the SC2 community.
For me, the beginning of the downfall of SC2 happened when Blizzard introduced WCS. There were so many organic tournaments that were starting to take off and provide a cool organic pipeline for up-and-coming talent. The problem? If a WCS tournament were running, you could not broadcast another tournament with WCS points at that same time. An example: Blizzard scheduled its NA tournaments during the NASL timeslots, which effectively killed NASL. Now, they could run them if they weren't part of WCS, but why would any pro attend if they couldn't earn points toward their ranking? I always felt like that move, while important to Blizzard's bottom line and control of their IP, was what set of a series of dominoes that set us on the path that we're on now. I also totally agree with Tasteless that the original video dramatically misunderstands SC2, especially the game in its state right now. The guy even said he never played Legacy of the Void, so he has no frame of reference for what the game is actually like today. The skill ceiling is still insanely high and players are making incredible plays to this day. Hell, just today I saw Parting lift and immediately cancel the lift of cyclone to save a low health phoenix by cancelling the attack animation. It was insane micro and he had fraction of a second to make that decision. Both games have merit, they're just very different from each other.
This happens everywhere, not just in esports. Combat sports and pro wrestling see similar situations wherein a major company elbows indie promotions out of the way to produce their own shows in a region. That then stifles or even kills the regional scene.
Its been an issue for people since the early days of SC2. Namely, many big brood war fans couldn't get over the changes and idealized BW so much as the "perfect game" that they thought all of sc2's problems were the ways it deviated from sc2. The truth is, blizzard did a damn good job making sc2 maintain a decent amount of the "essence" of sc BW while also making it suitably modern. They faced the same issue that anyone making a sequil to something legendary will face- how to live up to it. They certainly created a game with many exciting moments, a very high skill ceiling, and amazing tricks and micro moves. Now there are issues, the deathball being one of them, but hardcore BW fans often don't fully understand SC2, or cant help but compare it unfavorably to BW. The problem is that in their eyes BW is perfect, and everything else would fall short. There are many things that could be criticized about BW too, but because it was first, and because of the nostalgia people have about it, it will always be perfect for them. For example, the game can be very long/slow, there are issues of balance, and the pathing/difficulty of the game is a big barrier for new players in 2024. With all that said, it truly is an amazing game with incredible strategic depth and display of skill. I just think the issue is that in many hardcore BW fans eyes, noting could ever have matched BW. They are different games, but both amazing and quite possibly the best two RTS games of all time.
No one can argue that top to bottom SC2 is an incredible game. 3 massive campaigns, deep co-op experience, and satisfying ladder play. To date it is still one of the most complete gaming experiences from a holistic point of view.
I'm gonna disagree with you a bit. Yeah, you have 3 big campaigns, but HotS was friggin stupid. I did not enjoy it at all, and LotV was kinda meh. So yeah, plenty of 'content,' but is it really worth it? Co-op is great, I'll agree with that. It's really the best part of the game. Now ladder... I don't play ranked 1v1 anymore, but I've been playing ranked 3v3 lately, and I can say that this is probably the most miserable gaming experience I've ever had, holy crap. And all the maps are designed like 1v1 maps. It's so stupid, but nobody cares about team games anyway, so whatever, I guess. But what about custom games? Or have we all just collectively agreed to forget about it...
wings of liberty wasnt that good, too many timed missions taking away all the fun, didint bother buying heart of swarm and legacy because of how unsatisfying wings of liberty was on top of the bad story writing and lore retcons and anti player changes.
@@soldier22881 well, you're not missing much. WoL really was the high point for sc2 storytelling, but even then it doesn't come close to BW's campaign.
I think it's also important to note that Brood War also had balance patches, which is especially noticeable when playing the campaign where the shortened length of the disruption web means you can't just casually mill about on the mission that introduces them.
25:00 This is the paradox of old RTS. A modern game coming out with Brood War level control schemes would be TORN APART for being clunky, old and user-unfriendly. It would not survive in the modern market long enough to make any sort of substantial footprint. Starcraft Remastered only sold as well as it did because it had the legacy of SC:BW and the name recognition through that and SC2. But at the same time you have to admit that the game is only as successful as it is at least in part BECAUSE of the clunk. The difficulty to control things is an element of skill that can add to the hype, competitive nature of the game at the highest levels, and that keeps the game fresh for players to keep coming back to as they continue to improve in their ability to control. I'm not good at putting words to this issue but the paradox of controls is probably the #1 thing that isn't talked about NEARLY enough when the whole "Is RTS Dead / Why RTS Fails" debate pops up.
I think it all comes down to eSport culture and how really widespread it is beyond all the inflated shiny tournaments fed by micro transaction money and used as mere marketing. If you think about a game like Dwarf Fortress that released publicly after 20 years of Alpha development and which has the worst most convoluted controls in the history of gaming... It was well received by nerds, by big nerds mostly because it's a fantastic game but it's actual hell to learn let alone to master. Bottom line, when it comes to Speed Running, eSport, or hardcore games it doesn't really matter the quality of life or user interface, if it's good it's going to be appreciated but you need the right culture for such complex and difficult title to really be appreciated because their qualities greatly overshadow any flaws and sometimes even the flaws are appreciated making the game more challenging for speed runners, pro gamers or hardcore ppl in general
@@markmuller7962 But that's the thing with Dwarf Fortress, it's been around 20 years and was started as a passion project. It faced no major commercial pressures and didn't have to conform to modern UI design. It's also a niche game with no desire for mass market appeal. A large part of Speed Running is the nostalgia element as the most popular games in the community are also those with huge nostalgic appeal. Contrast this with a large scale commercial project which needs to hit considerable sales numbers today. You're going to need broad market appeal or your business is going to tank.
You are 100% correct about this. It is the same exact thing that keeps Super Smash Bros Melee alive and well to this day and made Halo 2 tournaments so popular back in the day as well. Cool unintended mechanics that can be developed to insane levels of skill makes games insanely interesting and replayable.
As far as the "two worlds" of games go... I do really miss when a game would just release and then stay that way. I enjoy coming back to Brood War knowing that all my knowledge is still intact and that anything I learn can still be used later. I also think it's incredibly beautiful when a game's meta turns into an arms race of players going back and forth developing new strats to one-up each other. These advantages are sorely missed in live service games, whose metagames are stuck in perpetual adolescence. By the time the players have really figured out what is super great on the patch, a new one rolls around and we're on to the next season. I'm glad that live service games exist because to be frank a lot of people just prefer it when the meta gets shaken up every now and again, even if they are for artificial or contrived reasons (I think Saiyan's wording is appropriate). I think that players who enjoy this kind of thing are not just a new breed either - if the technology to constantly update games existed in 1998 I think they would be all over it then as well. I think the addition of live service has greatly expanded the audience of people who enjoy video games today. I do, however, lament that this form of development has outright replaced the sort of release-and-move-on type of game development from the past. Game dev studios just outright don't do games unless they're live service any more, which in many cases means that a game's first or second year or even entire lifespan of history can just get deleted in an instant. I know people back in the day used to clown on Call of Duty and Fifa for releasing the exact same game year after year but at least this means I can go back and play my favorite version whenever I want. For games like League of Legends I can't downpatch and go play an older version with my friends, I have to play what Riot has deemed to be the correct and current meta. At the end of the day I can't complain too much. My taste is clearly for non-live-service games and any which are around today will probably still be around in the future. I am very grateful that Starcraft Remastered did not butcher the game in the same way that Warcraft III Reforged did, but I really felt like such a crazy person to even express this opinion at all. I really am grateful that Saiyan just came out of the gate swinging with his point, even if you don't fully agree with it, because just blurting out the sentiment gets you and your chat and your comment section and hopefully many other people to speak about this idea in more depth.
As primarily a fighting game player there is a similar tension between frequent balancing vs letting it ride for a while, and a similar segment of the community that gets nostalgic for the old days of a game having years and years for the meta to develope and evolve. I think its important to point out that the downside of games not getting patched is that broken stuff persists. While it's easy to get nostalgic for games like Brood War or SF 3rd Strike that were so rich from the jump that they had a deep well of meta to keep exploring, the truth is that for every generation defining game there were dozens of broken or less sophisticated games that released and died bc they didnt have the depth. We remember and revere the exceptions rather than the rule. So while I agree that patches somewhat keep us from getting super deep metas, it also means that the average game is much more balanced and playable than 15 years ago, which means the overall quality of the games is much higher.
@@CF565 this is survivor bias. We like that brood war hasn't changed so we can use our old skills, but only because brood war still exists. No one cares that, I don't know, Red Alert hasn't received a balance patch in ages. OP might complain that league of legends makes changes, but it's almost certain that the game dies without them.
As someone who has played a lot of games, I 100% agree with your first idea. I think the game that suffered from this the most was World of Warcraft. A lot of people came back years later wanting to jump back in and the game was literally a completely different game and in order to play again they had to relearn classes, abilities, specs, game systems, areas, etc. etc. It was very alienating to these people many of them bounced off the newer versions and just quit right away.
You can and should complain. live services are predatory and the death of video games. it's all about gambling and addiction, not creating a good game.
Main problem with SC2 IMO - so few ways of being cost-effective, make 1 mistake you most likely have no ways of playing yourself back in to the game. The opponent has to make an mistake. Maps have "balanced" this by making games longer, but still feels kinda bad imo. This also makes holding territory feel bad, you often need to plop down ur army / be ready to rotate it to defend. 2 large armyblobs will smack into each other for most part of the game. And often makes defenders advantage a non-factor depending on races. You either snowball or get snowballed.
100%. Which is why I have moved on to other more casual RTS games like Battle For Middle Earth 2. SC2 is just too fast, you spend 10 mins scouting and building up your army/eco. Then you look away for 1 sec and you whole army is gone. Its not fun, its actually very little fighting and micro going on for the average player. The game gets decided so fast you dont get to enjoy and use the army you have built. You can lose to so much bs as well, its one of the few games I can get really angry playing.
Tasteless, your commentaries are enlighting, please give us more of this content. In my personal experience, I became a SC2 competitive scene fan since Serral win at WSC 2018 (I know it was a "lil" late but I'm really glad to have found it) and have enjoyed every tournament since then. I would love to support it so it will continues for a long long time. PS. I started to watch ASL too and it's sick!! As viewers we can enjoy BW and SC2 at the same time 😊
I think the "rock, paper, scissors" gameplay philosophy that permeated around the time of SC2's development was overall harmful to RTS in general. You'd get very clunky interactions from "hard counters" that felt artificial. In Brood War, a unit's ability to counter another was based off micro, positioning and sim-city. It was like a beautiful dance. Whereas in SC2, if your unit is meant to counter another unit, it felt more like accepting the terms and condition put down by the designer
I think people forget that everyone ASKED for Blizzard to make control groups infinite. That was a huge complaint about War3, so Blizzard gave everyone what they asked for.
Thats why the community shouldnt balance any game. Just look at latest community patch for SC2. Its terrible. Arty once said he want Dark Swarm to reduce dmg by 90% and buff half of the terran upgrades. LMAO
@@ChokedByHalo1 The last community patch was the best patch that ever came to SC2. But if you listen to only one person like Arty, this isn't community. Blizzard instead needed 4 fking years to change the Swarmhost, the community was never this slow. The community actually suggested changes before Heart of the Swarm got released, which Blizzard implemented AFTER LotV released, and they were STILL the right changes. Faster Viking landing is one example. Blaming the community and blaming infinite control groups is just stupid, it's like blaming LoL for SC2s death. Although LoL released in 2005.
The control groups are fine in SC2. It's not the core issue. The core issue is how FAST everything is and how fast units dominate gameplay (Marines), which decreases the strategic aspect and increases the reactionary. If a game is decided not whether the player picked the better strategy, but whether he reacted immediately to the WM drop, gameplay becomes dull after a while. Most people have put it this way.
@@nightmareTomek Loaded question fallacy. Ill respond to one thing - last SC2 patch is shit, mainly because it has shown who exaclty is the "community" that balances the game. Its B listers that always cry, never improve, like HeroMarine.
While all Tasteless's points are valid, I just don't think it's addressing the elephant in the room... RTS games as a whole are just not as appealing to modern audiences and it's not due to balance. Please just ask a few of your gamer friends why they're not into RTS/SC, almost 0 will mention that the balance is off compared to old RTS games, or the botched e-sports scene, or any of the myriad of other things I've seen mentioned in the comments or in this video. Your much more likely to hear: - Too much to keep track of. - I don't like 1 on 1 competitive games - It seems too daunting to get into etc, etc
This is it. RTS games are to hard and to much work for the modern gamer. So many team games are popular now and u can always have things to blame so it's not ur fault, ppl to help carry u etc. And less intense to play. U shouldn't need such high apm to play
100%. There’s no new players coming in. The balance and whole sc1 vs sc2 argument is irrelevant. That’s for the salty old RTS players to argue about because we have no other good games to play. The true issue with RTS is like you said, there’s none coming out because they’re too expensive for a small studio to make and there’s no appetite for them among general gaming audiences. People want teammates to blame, it’s a problem with fighting games too
@@HieronymousLex You are right. I would say the solution is to make a RTS that is focused on teamplay. 4v4 or 5v5 games RTS, and balanced around that. My favorite RTS is Battle For Middle Earth 2. It's a blast, a bit more casual than SC, but still a proper RTS. People still play it today even though the official servers are down, and its a blast. However, almost EVERYONE plays 4v4 in that game, which is that max player capacity. And its the most fun mode by far. As you said, people find comfort in teamgames. If you lose you can always blame it on your team, and use that as a defensive mechanism. But the game becomes alot more chaotic and fun in teamgames imo. You can also balance the room if you have a stronger player, let him play with a weaker one. If we get a high quality RTS that is focused on teamplay 3v3, 4v4 I think it could be a massive success. Obviously 1v1 games would also be possible on it as well. 1V1 is so lonely though compared to teamgames, and a 1v1 focused RTS with Esport in mind will not succeed today unless it brings something more to the table. I believe it needs to be a good teamgame as well.
Tasteless stuttered a bit on SC2 being "the best selling game of all time" on release. It was the best selling RTS of all time: "At the time of its release, StarCraft II became the fastest-selling real-time strategy game, with over three million copies sold worldwide in the first month." I never played SC2, but watching it during WoL was such a joy.
When it comes to balance, as fundamental as maps balancing is the skill required vs game automation that plays a big role as *the less a game is automated the more the individual human skill matters to overcome eventual imbalances*
What is the reason for reaching a skill ceiling? I mean imagine a game where skill ceiling is in reach for a human. What will happen next? We will have X-number of players who are the best. But you can't single out THE best, because they are all on the same level. And as a result you can't have 1 person winning based on pure skill. Because their skill is at the same level (remember they're all at the ceiling level) the winner will be decided by something else like better respawn position, favourable match-up etc. @@James-uk4xi It's like putting a bunch of people in the room that has ceiling height about 1,5m (5 feet). And being the tallest (the most skilled) in that situation is pointless because everyone is just as tall as the room (ceiling) allows them to be. While if you put them in a room with normal ceiling where they can actually stand upright. You'd be able to see who the tallest (the most skilled) is easily.
@@James-uk4xi I also think it's not that clear that SC2 even has a lower skill ceiling than SC1 in the first place. I mean, nobody actually does it (other than bots), but *TECHNICALLY* you can micro your workers to mine faster in SC2 - workers decelerate as they get closer to a mineral patch (and as they return from it), so if you move command a worker next to a mineral patch before mining from that mineral patch then the worker won't decelerate. This can allow a worker to mine considerably faster if you manually tell workers to move next to a mineral patch before telling it to gather from it, and move next to the CC/nexus/hatchery before telling it to return the minerals. There's also another trick that terrans can do with bunkers - if you put a bunker between 2 vespene geysers, then you can use only 4 SCVs to fully saturate both refineries by sending the SCV into the bunker, setting the rally point to the other end of the bunker and then unloading the SCV to allow it to travel faster, and then repeating it in the other direction on the return trip. Now.. nobody actually does this, because they have better things to spend their APM on - but if we're talking about some mythical "skill ceiling" somehow mattering then I think the skill ceiling for SC2 might actually be even higher than for SC1.. and if someone argues that it doesn't matter because nobody plays that way, then that's kind of just proving the point that the skill ceiling doesn't really matter as long as it's too high for a human to reach, which kind of negates the entire argument of the skill ceiling having any kind of importance - either way they have more things that need doing than they'll ever be capable of doing.
Starcraft 2 struggled a lot in the beginning because it was competing against games that were free. In 2011-2013 I remember playing SC2 religiously in middle school and all my friends were playing LOL or Dota 2 because it was free. No one wanted to shell out $60 to pay for a game so I basically was the only person who played regularly (besides like two other people). The pro and casual scene was okay at the time though since there was tons of players with interesting personalities (Idra, Destiny, etc) and tons of content creators churning out tons of videos (Day9, Husky, HDStarcraft, etc). I think tons of problems happened all at once between 2013-2016 that caused the game to die immediately: -Lots of content creators stopped all at once. Husky and HDStarcraft stopped creating content at almost the same time. Destiny quit streaming SC2 to switch to league, etc. -Lots of pro players retired all at once. I'm talking Idra, Nestea, MVP, Jaedong, Stephano, MC, etc, all the top players who a lot of fan enjoyed watching suddenly stopped playing. -Balance issues, oh my god, everyone remembers fucking SH/raven/tempest games that completely sapped casual and professional games. -LOTV kind of made the game a lot worse because they basically completely got rid of the early game. A lot of early game cheesy strategies immediately became non-viable In general though, one of the biggest problems was that Blizzard never made SC2 monetizable. There was no army skins or voice packs like other games had and the fact that the game wasn't free was a big hurdle to a lot of people who were used to playing games that were free. Playing 1v1 games is fun but at a certain point everyone hits a plateau and there needs to be some incentive to play beyond just trying to get better at a game and getting ladder points. Other games you get to play with your friends and even in BW you get to play Fastest Map or 2v2v2v2 BGH with your friends. There just isn't the same experience in SC2 which almost exclusively focuses on 1v1. The other thing too is e-sports in general just never became as big as people predicted it would. There are a ton of different games but none of them became super big and money is distributed across all these games which keeps prize pools down. Most games are difficult to watch if you don't understand what is going on. There's no easy way to tell what's happening in a game for a casual viewer and it's difficult to tell who is winning a game if you don't already play it. Part of watching sports is getting to see people do things you could only dream of physically but you don't really get that same sense of awe in watching e-sports.
I STARTED playing SC2 about two years ago, well after they had already "stopped supporting the game." As disappointing as Blizzard is as a company nowadays, SC2 is some of the most fun I've ever had in a game, especially the Co-op mode. And I still love watching competitive gameplay. Shoutouts to great content creators like Harstem and uThermal, and the casters and orgs that continue to support the game; as well as custom gameplay like Synergy's race swap campaigns, and the in development "StarCraft 2 Archipelago" which functions as a robust randomizer! The development team and community have made this into the gift that keeps on giving.
One disagreement is the idea that map based balance is somehow more organic than balance via updates and patches The map designers go in with a deliberate idea. It's not luck. THey use the strengths and weaknesses to try and make it balanced.
Yeah I'm not a fan of the word choice. It doesn't feel like he got to the core idea: The numbers and the map designs are interlinked. Spawn distances are informed by rush build times and costs as well as the power levels of those rushes. What's considered balanced is up to people to decide how much counterplay to allow vs. how many rushes remain viable vs. what's interesting to watch. Whether you go about adjusting those variables via maps or numerical changes isn't inherently better or worse IMO. Of course changing the maps produces different side effects than changing numbers so one may be a better approach than the other when trying to hit a sweet spot for balance. I agree Brood War is balanced via its maps and managed to also hit a sweet spot in terms of interesting viable tactics and strategies. But I disagree that balancing through map design is inherently better than through changing numbers.
Balance updates are ok if the goal is to balance the game and that's not what happens in live service games. It's not like you see complete revolutions in the fundamentals of be pro map making, it's mostly slightly adjustments plus some occasional weird experiment. You're definitely missing the point of balance patches in my eyes because the patching should stop when a game is fairly well balanced or at least they should aim at balancing the game giving breathing space for the meta to settle instead of changing stuff and adding units every 3 months to "shake things up" or "keep things fresh"
@@markmuller7962 But sc2 hasnt have a new unit in 7 years. Balance patches comes once a year.. Most of the balance is also just slight adjustment (ex: movement speed goes from 3.5-4.2). There are the occasional weird experiments that lots of the time doesnt stay past 1 patch.
You compared StarCraft to Go as if they're very different but actually they're very similar, and playing StarCraft early in my life helped me to convert my skills into Go (and be quite successful at it, now having played over 50 international tournaments). In Go there is 'macro and micro' component, you have to balance and choose whether to spend your attention (moves) on localized fights and technique or to focus on general direction of play - either is situation dependant. The memory component is not as profound, while you can perfect some openings to give you a slight edge in general the player with better understanding of the game will win it in the middle game regardless of the opening. Just like in starcraft you're trying to control territory and have some presence everywhere on the map (board), play probing moves that may lose you points but force your opponents hand into making a decision and that then helps you to counter it. And more than anything it's about balance, when playing at a high level you're always trying to not be too greedy and overexpand (also known as 'thin' and 'weak' groups) but at the same time you're trying not to take it too slow and let your opponent run away with it. Essentially the goal is to be patient and keep the game balanced and wait for your opponents mistake to then capitalize on it. Trying to force the issue is very risky and will often lead to a loss, but it can also a good resource for going 'all in' and complicating the game to a point beyond the abilities of any human to untangle it in their head to the end (before playing a move) and then all bets are off and you may have a chance to win after all. On the StarCraft balancing question, I love Broodwar because it stands out in how overpowered all units are, and many games including StarCraft 2 often go into this nerfing spiral for the sake of balance, which just makes the game less and less fun over time. I think buffing a unit can inspire people to experiment with it and be creative while nerfing a unit feels like someone broke into your house and broke one of your fingers. And still many game developers consider nerfing and buffing the same thing just in opposite directions - which is true mathematically but not true for game experience.
The point was that video game are going to have a mechanical aspect. Aiming is they key gameplay in FPS. In RTS, controlling units and building bases is the core gameplay. People have argued forever that RTS are 'real time STRATEGY' games and not ''spam clicking competitions'. But the fact is that trying to remove the mechanical aspect through automation to 'free up time' for more strategy has always been a pipe dream. I get you wanted to do your Go speech. but the only overlap is when you play chess or go on bullet and you need mouse skills not to flag.
I enjoyed this video. I think it would be cool if you did more "game design / analysis" style videos. Between SC1 and SC2, you could go unit by unit and describe how each impacts the overall game, what incentives they create, and how they contributes to interesting or uninteresting gameplay. For example, which single unit do you think creates the most interesting gameplay? For each game? For each race? Which unit is the worst? I am not talking about power level, but in terms of strategy and tactics. Now that there are new RTS games being worked on, I would be interested in your ideas and perspectives on topics like this.
I feel like what makes these games that you listed: MvC2, Melee, Brood war, so timelessly good. I'd throw quake 3 or 2 into that category as well. Is that the games are so impossible to master with non existent skill ceilings, and the reason they're so hard and rewarding is that the way to play the best is to totally abuse the mechanics in ways that was never intended. I don't know if multiple building hotkeys was a considered decision or if it was just easier with the limitations of the technology. We know worker drills are likely just a way to make workers mine properly and not just bounce off each other doing nothing, yet it creates an entire new mechanic to learn and master, that pros show regularly to defend impossible situations. I totally lost interest in starcraft 2 after WoL because the deathball just mash together, 1 person wins, became so boring, and the 'perfect' pathing that turned everything into a literal ball of death just made the game so uninteresting. Too much convenience it turns out just makes things boring when things are going your way, and frustrating when they're not.
The control group limits were intentional design. There was an interview with one of the devs I forget who years ago where they talked about that. They never knew it was going to be a big esport but they did think it was going to be a party game you would play with your friends. One of the ways they approached the design was with the mindset of making the game have too much to do so you had to choose what you would focus on at any given moment.
TLDR: Brood War continues to thrive because the Korean scene has never been affiliated with Blizzard, even to this day. With the SC2 scene, Blizzard collapsed and lost all of the people that organized SC2 events, and anyone else who made the scene what it was, due to various scandals at the company. There's literally just nobody left at Blizzard who CAN run the events anymore. This really has _nothing_ to do with how the games are balanced, so I have no idea why so much of his video focuses on that. BW might be facing the exact same thing if their events were as closely tied with Blizzard.
Games that naturally and organically develop their competitive scene don't need the mother company to run or finance events no matter the shenanigans you're talking about
@@markmuller7962 It's incredibly difficult, arguably impossible, to naturally and organically develop a competitive scene to the point where it can be an actual esport and players can actually make a living out of it. There are no other games, in this day and age, with a organic scene.
@@2639theboss Do you really think Brood War had a cynical live service profit driven gaming company financing the scene during the golden decade? Same thing for other classic esports btw but those didn't blow up because Korea choose SC. Besides, the real take out of your sentence is the fake esport culture of flashy events funded by micro transaction used as mere marketing to sell more micro transactions, money can buy cool events and stages but it can't reverse the culture of 2 continents in 1 decade turning esport from an unhealthy activity for losers to a proper sport to respect, it just doesn't happen and what we're seeing is purely money driven. The actual esport culture probably still very small kinda like speed-running or hardcore-nerd titles like Dwarf Fortress and that's why we don't have sport-like esports anymore, the big money games have taken over even even in Korea with modern, smooth and colorful live service titles that offer huge money prices. It's not one bubble, it's more like a collection of bubbles clumped together and occasionally one pops up and one "sport" magically disappear into nothing because the mother company abandon it. It can't be a bubble because it's very profitable but you can guess the magnitude of speculation by these "esports" that pops and disappear strictly for monetary reasons. Still the Moor's Law exist and soon or later we'll have a generation that's nerd enough and gamer enough to clean the scene up and finally turn this clown fest into something serious
@@markmuller7962 Im aware how BW grew, but the problem is that the environment literally doesnt exist anymore. There will probably never be another scene like BW. It doesnt matter if its money driven. If the only way for ESports to be viable given the current consolidation of the gaming industry is to be in part or wholly supported by the dev, thats what its going to be. CS2 is going through that now. Im not saying its good, but its reality.
@@2639theboss A reality that you're forced to accept if your career depends on it (like casters) but it's completely unnecessary for everyone else especially if you're an hardcore gamer or nerd
I remember my interest declining around HoTS. Really sad but it was all due to the balance getting screwed up and just seemed like Bilzz didn't care about some basic features. I was shocked to learn over this Christmas the AOE2 gets stronger viewership than SC2.
It's funny that waaay back in the microsoft gaming zone (that's 2003-ish) I saw AoE 2 die from within because basically ALL relevant matches (1v1, any tournment ever) only running effectively "steppes of war" (1v1 arabia) now the game is kind of back to where it deserves... an RTS for people that are too slow for brood war, they finally learned that they can play different maps, it's quite funny
@@zaftnotameni I bought AOE2 on sale over the break and it's great. Can't believe I missed it as a kid. Finding the macro much more difficult than BW & SC2 though
20:55 IIRC, Blizzard had wanted something like 50% of all revenue/profits. The Koreans argued that they grew the scene themselves without any Blizzard support and that they only wanted a cut of the revenue once it became big enough. In addition, some of the smaller teams like STX and WeMade claimed that with this type of model, they would go under and potentially leave Proleague without enough teams. Is this IP theft? I don't know but I understand the situation from both sides. This is akin to Nintendo coming in and asking for 50% of profits from the smash melee scene. The only difference is that smash is broadcast on twitch while BW was on TV.
Agreed. This is my first time hearing about blizz suing korean tv networks over broodwar. Claiming it is IP theft feels like classic corporate over-reach. Fair enough if they were re-broadcasting GSL etc without permission but broadcasting their own leagues using starcraft as the medium sounds like fair use to me. Also its strange they only started suing them around the time sc2 came out? How did it work out in the end?
Shout out to Artosis, Paladin and KCM to keep the BW foreign scene going. Much love from Brazil Sc2 is a great game that I also watch it from time to time, hope it doesnt die after Stormgate. Time will tell
If you're talking about falpal then how can you, the casts are unwatchable because a lot of things are missed, etc. For casuals... Sure but if you really want the appreciate the details, the guy is NOT the guy to watch.
@@MrATL90 same for me. it just looks like they took a specific direction in art development and they target it towards young players. which is good if they succed it may even bring some players to sc2. but im not gonna play it as it is, it just looks bad even if its still beta. the art direction they took is not for me.
I think SC2's "time to kill" is a huge issue with making the game less approachable for non pro level players. The nature of smart casting spells, big aoe damage attacks and abilities, units clumping perfectly and being able to stack up units into dense concentrations turns a lot of the fighting into a "blink and you lose" feeling experience. Then there are the very efficient harassment units that can delete a mineral line of workers in a few moments which seem to end up being some of the most chaotic to balance. The cludgy nature of BW unit movement and control tends to make fights drag out longer and becomes a bit more like a skirmish than just A moving a deathball. It really becomes difficult to enjoy the game from a more casual player perspective when balance around TvZ for example is based on Terrans who can split marines vs banelings at a pro level but the player in silver/gold gets ran over by them. I also think MOBA games sapped the energy out of the RTS genre in general as it pulled in people who like the crazy micro aspect of games like WC3 and SC but struggle with balancing it with the macro gameplay of base management/unit production. It let players hyper focus on the micro mechanics because your generally only controlling 1 unit. Then you have the other side of it with games like the Total War franchise which focused more on the big army strategy/unit comp stuff and made micro less required to feel successful.
100%. Which is why I have moved on to other more casual RTS games like Battle For Middle Earth 2. SC2 is just too fast, you spend 10 mins scouting and building up your army/eco. Then you look away for 1 sec and you whole army is gone. Its not fun, its actually very little fighting and micro going on for the average player. The game gets decided so fast you dont get to enjoy and use the army you have built. You can lose to so much bs as well, its one of the few games I can get really angry playing.
Yes. At its core the issues of SCBW vs SC2 boils down to the fact that engagements in BW are longer, base building and control in BW is more deliberate, you can actively change how things go, macro and micro happen in extended periods. Basically, you can FEEL yourself influence the game. Winning and losing feels like Boxing for 12 rounds where exchanges happen over long periods of time until one of you bows out. SC2's problem was always its speed and efficiency, and everything is smarter, as a result worker lines evaporate faster, deathballs blow up faster than you can micro your casters, same for bases. There are obviously tons of nuance, but at the end of the day It doesn't FEEL like you're influencing the game, everything FEELS like a coinflip. SC2 is boxing where one guy falls in the first 3 rounds and you're like what happened? It's not fun for players, it;s not fun for spectators. When armies engage, a new player is taught to go back to macroing instead of trying to salvage an engagement with micro and that's a PROBLEM. People want to engage with their armies, they want to see the stuff they built duke it out.
The video being reacted to has a very common misconception. Often game devs absolutely know a strategy or unit is NOT overpowered and that the community just needs to get good. However, it is the COMMUNITY that is pressuring the devs to patch the non-problem instead of learning to counter it. And if the devs don't, large portions of the playerbase quit because people are telling them the game is broken, "solved", etc. I have seen so many players announce a game is solved 2 weeks after a patch launches, or that a unit with a 30% win rate is wildly OP. Balance Patches are primarily about COMMUNITY SENTIMENT. Balance Patches exist to address perceived unfairness more than actual unfairness. Devs don't WANT to rebalance their games all the time, that takes time and money. They could spend that time on making new things instead! Usually a balance patch exists not to punish players for using a unit against the way a developer intends, but because other players are not having fun and are quitting the game because of it. They're seeing the player count drop because the meta feels unfair (even if it isn't unfair). Devs rarely nerf PvP units because THEY don't like what players are doing with it, they usually nerf stuff because OTHER PLAYERS don't like what the first players are doing with it.
Na thats not it: BW is much more of a strategy game, just that SC2 is so dumbed down as a mobile game that only strategy matters, nothing else. Doesn't mean that you need a big brain for SC2,
"A player can hit a build with no difference between their macro and a professionals macro in sc2" what game is he watching 😮 Also what "waves of pros" moved to brood war from sc2?
For example pro player in broodwar can reach spawning pool 15 sec faster than amateur due to mining optimization. In SC2 both can hit it at the same time. All the best players from BW era went back to BW, despite having successs in SC2 (Jaedong, Flash, Bisu..) Only the players who were never at the top in BW stayed with SC2.
Yeah but the BW players moved back to BW ages ago. The video made it sound like people are currently leaving sc2 since he's talking about its current state.
@@dustincintron1682 He was partly right. Guys like me went back to Brood war after getting tired of StarCraft 2 and its community for 1v1. My experiences were having people tell me they'd find my family and harm them, Setting my house on fire and S* wording my throat. So after racking up 25k games i called it good and went back to the Brood war Campaign.
All I know is... I miss playing TvZ: Bio (marine, marauder, medivac, wm) vs Zerling, muta baneling. The responsiveness and pace of that match were beautiful. I love SC 1 do not get me wrong, but SC II was an upgrade, they improved responsiveness and added a different skill expression. You can be proud of yourself if you are good (or were) in one of these games (maybe both!). I remember the passion and emotions when I had my first matches vs Masters players in 2016... What a beautiful experience, what a journey. Even I remember my first SC games, playing Broodwar in 2002 when I was a little child (6 or 7 years old)... I did not understand the game but I fell in love :´)
Doesn't seem like a good comparison, if people still play SC2 in 20 years with zero patches in between you can will be able to use builds used 'years ago' and maps will have to adjust to get this 'organic balance' if new overpowered strategies are discoverd
Sc2 will linger on for a while. It won't grow but it doesn't need to. People often forget that "dead" games can still have small scenes. There's still a really active Command and Conquer community. Not my thing but play or follow the games you love without worrying about how alive or dead they are. BW is the better game but if you like SC2 better, do what you want to do! Good reaction, Tasteless. Thoughtful commentary. Thanks for all the content!
Saiyan overstated how much you can "go back" in Brood War by omitting to recognize (as Tasteless did) that LotV is effectively the BW equivalent for SC2. HOWEVER, Tasteless also understated how apt that comparison is by omitting to talk about how BW was effectively set in stone at release, whereas LotV has been receiving continual patches. So yes, it's not QUITE fair to compare the two games, because an SC2 player 20 years from now should be able to go back to early LotV games and still use the same builds... But... not EXACTLY, because some of the balance patches are still surely going to have a big impact. So we're only just NOW getting to that "frozen in stone" point with the final balance patch. Except that frozen in stone point has come SO late after the initial release and frenzy of early SC2! We can't know for sure, but it FEELS like this frozen in stone point has come basically at the end of SC2's lifecycle... whereas SC1's freezing came relatively early on, setting the stage for everything that came afterwards.
sc2 was done for me since the worker change from 5 or so to 12 - all the early rushbuilds dead, which is what i love to see in games - just look the Rain - ZeLot series of artosis
Yeah I think it cut a ver important part of the game out. "Was it "boring" to outsider never watching SC before? Sure but it's omission made the game strats so much simpler and uninteresting because you had less to worry about.
In truth is not because of rush builds that it broke the game; it is because it promoted different openers with advantages and disadvantages each that largely appealed to personal player playstyles while having an impact in how the midgame would play out. You could be aggressive, you could play safe or you could be greedy. Now you have rushed techpaths, rushed expansions, rushed lategame while Zerg got a huge boost due to how explosive the larva mechanic can be with its economy.
The first major hit to SC2 came when they left brood lord infestor unpatched for more than 6 months at the tail end of Wings of Liberty. I knew so many people who quit SC2 at that point, and by the time HOTS released they were into other things like LoL.
You're right about some games being left as is. StarCraft Brood War, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Smash Brothers Melee. They all have flaws but the games are genuinely great.
Third Strike as well. The parrying is what separates the casuals from the elite players. Broodwar micro and macro management is what separates big game hunter map players to pro level maps whatever they are now.
@@JL-ku7wo I left 3rd Strike out because of the difference of top tier to low tier characters. Chun, Ken and Yun have so many advantages compared to comparable characters. Chun's SA2 is way too effective and having 2 bars gives her way too much leverage with how meter gets spent like EX moves. Ken's SA3 has the same issue except that having a short bar gives him a quick high damage burst. Genei Jin is pretty busted and Yang having a similar SA kind of makes that point. Don't get me wrong, I love Third Strike but it needs an update. I'm looking forward to it being a main title at Evo!
I agree with his sentiment about SC2's balance feels artificial at times with how heavy handed, short sighted, or how strange some balance changes could feel(thors and BCs getting nerfed during WOL). WOL zerg having some early defense issues that lead into queen buffs than accidentally lead to brood lord infestor. Giving an easy to produce backbone spell caster like HT feedback which has resulted in a bunch of balance decisions that would probably be easier to fix by giving the spell to a different unit rather than tweaking it every couple of patches. Though he is wrong about SCBW pros saying they didn't want balance changes. The pros were interested but didn't trust Blizzard to not leave them hanging if they made a bad change. An experiment of rebalancing the ghost as a 2 supply unit would probably be welcome if it would be reverted if deemed a failure by the community. Scout tweaks would also be interesting along with medic stuff Artosis mentioned once. Though something I really dislike from both communities is the obsession with the game being hard and that is why the game is good. Rather than the game being fun despite it being difficult.
What went wrong? For a game that is 13 years old? Covid did not help. The Chinese tournament WESG had $200K 1st place prize money and because of Covid it is no more. I do not want a pissing contest between 2 and brood war. I think they are both incredible games and along with AOE2 it is the best sequel of alltime.
I was a Terran player in mostly team games. Playing got to tedious because of increase in the intensity of Terran micro to keep up with Protoss and Zerg with the expansions.
Simplicity and units having solid attack/defense stats is what made SCBW great. Like when they make games nowadays they have this "try hard mode" all the time they innovate a unit/character. Every unit has this amazing ability in modern games which just ruins the fun. Even new RTS and FPS games now is similar to a MOBA/RPG game with 1 billion abilities and upgrades. Pure numbers and regular attack/defense stats with NONE or ONLY ONE ability is all the units need. They dont need 3-4 different abilities, it becomes impossible to balance. Simplicity is what made SCBW, WC2, Doom, Quake, Unreal, Diablo2, and many other old games great.
i agree with mostly of what you`re saying and get your point but putting wc2 as an example is not a great idea lol, w3 is more complex and it stood the test of time as the better and most loved game. w3 is actually a great example that a game can have multiple skills in characters and be complex while still being fun to play, have a great pacing, long fights, micro potential, etc,etc.w3 being so infinite in possibilities(world edit/custom) is exactly what literally shaped the pc gaming to this day. w3 is a complex game like sc2 but it has totally different balance so not everything is black and white, simple is not always better, but in the case of sc2 the game needs fundamental balance changes on how the game works to make people have more fun.
4:58 , They Had the big "Artosis Pylon" energy , thats why. Starcraft 2 doesn't have that. Tassels and Arty , you're the best English caster of RTS industry. I vote for that ! 👍💎 P.S. i got my "Serious Gig" on starcraft back in 2014-2016 when i heard of you two also cast this very old game. You two saved it during the final days of WCG tournaments . Much Love Tassels and Arty ! 🤗
I had to copy paste this comment because I think it's a nice insight to sc1 old fans mindset: "You didn't understand anything of what I said if you think that I don't play sc2 "despite it being a fantastic game"... As I said previously I am and I've been very well informed on sc2 and the sc2 esport from freaking 2009 given that I was literally crying tears of joy when the sc2 trailer came out... I know sc2, I played sc2 and I know I don't like it. Is it a far better game than WOL? 100% it is better but not enough, many the fundamental flaws still there and some new flaws were added like the shrinking of the early game/shenanigans by switching to the 12 workers. I could continue for an hour but that said... Gamers that are happy with their competitive game don't generally go around frantically scouting for a better game, it just doesn't happen and that's the whole point in an *Hypothetical* scenario in which LOTV is a great game you're hardly gonna convince me to switch game because I'm good with what I have and especially sc2 has been the source of so many disappointments that's probly way down the list of hypothetical games to scout to find a better one. *It had to be good 10 years ago or at least decent* , and it wasn't that hard, it had a predecessor, a huge sport to be funded upon FFS now after 10 years they introduce features pushing good players in splitting their armies? Are you kidding me? 10 years of horrendous death balls and now you start broodwarise it? Are you guys for real? I'm happy where I am guys, I don't need your insane gaming life full of fake balance patches and shenanigans, I like sport, I like good sports, I like solid and reliable good sports and that's about it"
content appreciated. SC1 fan here... i stopped following in 2002 and got into other games and got back in during the pandemic in 2020, and was blown away following up on 18 years of history. now i watch all the ASLs. But sometimes I do like watching world-championship level SC2... even though I don't know the game as well. It is still fun. But not as fun as ASL.
Is Starcraft2 dead? I was one of the founding members of GSL. I think back of the days when I was working at GSL. How when there were many of the staff who had such passion and there was big hype and excitement from the fans back then. And I asked myself "was all that passion and effort in vain?", and also asked "Is Starcraft2 truly dead?" To answer that question, we need to ask a more fundamental question; why do we play game? It is a question I've been asked by my parents countless times. "Why waste time on such unconstructive activity" "If you had invested time in studying as much as in gaming you would be working at Samsung now" To be frank, I can't say they were wrong. Let's face it, gaming is an activity that is not necessary for survival. While it is a great recreational activity, mankind have existed fine even before gaming was invented. Also there are many more "constructive" activities that one can do. While I do make a living from industry that is based on gaming, I don't actually make money just by playing games. Very few of us actually make a living from playing game. Then why do we insist on playing? Why do we persue this activity so called waste of time? Because that's what makes us human. We are not animals that act purely on instinct of survival, nor are we machines with specific purpose and task and operate with efficiency. We are human, and therefore we sometimes do things just for the fun of it. Fun. You know, sometimes when I go to my folk's place. I take out my old super nintendo and have a go on super mario world, sometimes with my brother. And you know what? we still have fun. The game hasn't gotten any patches, DLCs or expansions since its release. It is still the same super mario world as when I first played it when I was 9. It's more than 30 years old, but to me Super Mario World is not dead. Why? Because I still have fun with it. Fun. That's all that matters. So I ask again. Do you still have fun with Starcraft2?
Nothing lasts forever. The pissing contest beetween broodwar and sc2 is just unesscessary. I think your reply is excellent as it speak to the "why" of why we even play games in the first place. Fun. Broodwar wouldnt stand a chance if it were released today. It would make it as an indie game, the only reason it still retains popularity despite its crudeness and imperfection is purely people viewing the world through rose tinted glasses and thinking back to happier times and younger days.The super mario world analogy is perfect.
I remember that cinematic they released shortly after the trailer with Kerrigan talking and showcasing the zerg and having the muta fly toward a sunset.
Also the "game changing abilities" are very fun to watch compared to let's say the sc2 HT storm which is very underwhelming to me. "it works because everything is op" like the sc2 community like to say which sounds so funny to me for some reason
There is no such thing as "IP Theft". Theft results in the original owner not having the thing that was stolen. Blizzard has its game, has its servers, has its code, etc. COPYING is NOT THEFT. Releasing a product that someone else made and claiming you made it is FRAUD not theft and the victim is the BUYER, not the original creator. It's hard for people to comprehend a world without IP law, but a few hours reading Stephen Kinsella's work on the topic will explain so much that the cherished tradition of governments forcibly prohibiting people from using their own creativity and skills to add to the world's prosperity easily becomes clearly wrong.
For me growing up with online BW custom maps as almost one of my first games I played, and SC2 being one of the only esports I've really watched. The guy tasteless watched makes a lot of good points why he and the community _loved and still loves BW and came back to it_ . For me, almost all the same reasons are what I would point at as to why SC2 would be the _better or more enjoyable esport_ of the two in my opinion. For competition and viewers. The thing I REALLY don't agree with is that SC2 is too easy to get into, that is just bonkers. Are we really going to gatekeep like the second hardest esport to learn (?) because there is a single game above it that is even harder? An example of what I mean with that it could be a good reason as to what someone loves about BW, but at the same time a reason why I think SC2 would be the better all in all competetive esport.
I do think the barrier to entry for SC2 is a lot lower the BW as there is a lot of content for casual players such as co op, customs campaigns and customs game modes. I do agree with you when from a esports perspective
Very well said, I agree with your points, your perspective is very balanced, fair, and well rounded. Also appreciate you commenting on the video and correcting it where you felt it was inaccurate or wrong.
No it's not dying, it's because good casters leaving the scene, (I'm looking at you Artosis!) I remember the golden days of 2010-2013 when we had so many good casters: day9, TotalBiscuit, InControl, dApollo, djWheat, HuskyStarcraft, HDStarcraft, Khaldor, and of course, you guys the casting Archons. For me back then, watching Starcraft 2 tournament was more exciting than watching anything else in the world (MLG, Dreamhack, GSL, TSL, etc. GDI I miss those days!
Casters go where they can make a living (everyone needs to eat and a place to sleep). If there's no money in it then they need to find another way to survive. So it does really come down to raising money whether it's through sponsorships, through the publisher, or through fans directly. I do agree that casters have a significant impact on drawing more eyeballs to events, creating more value for sponsors. I personally miss the BW days watching Proleague and MSL/OSL.
I think that the pace of a game is of big influence on how players perceive a game. Sc2 is just very fast in pace, to players like me (i am not a good player) And sure we can macro very easily in Sc2. But if 2 balls of units connect. The outcome is often, 1 group of base destructors remains. And it is often over at that point too. This was hardly the case with BW. You had larger unit groups than the ramps allowed. I had no love for the huge ramps that were created later on. And each geoup of units was a ball of its own. Meaning that there was less to work with for base destruction, after the 2 sides collided. Except of course for an air armadda. A faster pace means a slower learning. You cannot learn from mistakes if you can't observe your mistakes. Observing your mistakes in old RTS games were very easy. Also, everytime when i return to starcraft and broodwar. I still get this nostalgic feeling.
It is funny how people can have such different opinions...I was playing BW and I cannot emphasize enough how much SC2 is better lol This is completely ridiculous for me to hear that people enjoy not being able to move normally units, having to return to the base like a robot to manually click everything... This is so dumb and uninteresting!!! Who gives a fuck if you can get close to a dumb machine by making many clicks???? The whole point of an RTS is the STRATEGY not fucking basic repetitive manual useless mecanics!!!!! I have 0 fun telling myself "wow he is so good he goes quickly to his base to click everything so he just has a bigger army". I am amazed by STRATEGIES, mind game etc... Otherwise it is like enjoying watching Platinum vs Gold player..."oh he knows the hotkeys => so he is faster => so he has a bigger army => so he wins".... SC2 only suffers from the fact that the genra is not appealing because the entry skillcap is super high and this is just not the vibe currently....that's it. Other than that the game is just amazing and mind blowing. The level of the semi-final of Clem vs Serral at winter 2023 is the most impressive esport game of all times hands down.
You are right tasteless. I was a noob zerg main and quit during HoTS because swarm hosts and 1+ hour long games. It also made watching esports awful. I played brood war as a child and only stopped because sc2 release killed bw servers. Everyone left for sc2 or LoL. Sc2 also released without chat rooms. So many friends from brood war lost in the times before discord... blizzard sucks
Thanks for watching! There are some parts I would change if I could and things I would have added to this video to make it more complete. I think most of the criticism is fair and and I don't think i gave enough credit to sc2 for being a hard game.
Don't get blinded by the reverence for the legendary caster here, most of his objections comes from he's need for a live service title which is what grants him a stable job as a caster basically while completely ignoring the current miserable state of the esport bubble funded by micro transactions and used as mere marketing for more micro transactions. Almost no one in the sc2 community is provided with the pride and integrity to strive for a title that resembles a real sport and that's because the real esport culture minus the bubble is still very small, kind of the size of speed-running or hardcore-nerd games like Dwarf Fortress. Casters like Tasteless are at the forefront of an undeveloped but very profitable culture/industry made of scarcity-era people that most of all need money and the most stable job possible especially after a life of uncertainty during their young age. Bottom line, i could easily debunk 90% of Tasteless objections to your video and I did multiple times in this video replies but this comment is already too long. Keep the hard work
Nearly the entirety of that video by Saiyan contained some of the worst takes I've heard, and I've watched Bethesda fans trying to convince others that Starfield is good. Saiyan seemed entirely Korean focused in terms of game popularity which is always going to make SC2 look worse through the optics of 2023-2024, and he clearly tapped out of giving a shit about SC2 when he quit playing, because his video amassed a bewildering amount of misinformed and outdated talking points and just all-round came across like he wanted to give BW a reach around. What a bizarre video targeted towards SC2-hating BW fans.
I think another big aspect that personally makes me enjoy SC1 more than SC2, is just visual clarity. Starcraft 2 just has too many effects and a lot of units just "melt" into each other. In SC1, most units are more distinct, have their own little movement patterns, keep more distance and just pop off the background better (with some being an exception, like Mutas obviously). Also, the way units move in SC2, they all feel too elastic (with groups always kind of "compressing" on arrival before "deflating" and spreading out) - which sometimes makes it harder to tell at a glance how much is really moving around.
The fact that so many people in the sc community don't have the pride and integrity to strive for a competitive title that resembles an actual sport but instead roots for the live service models that are always driven by money angry cynical companies... It's absolutely disheartening and concerning on the real state of the esport culture in our world
He's right about Blizzard trying to force "correct" usage of units, but it was less about rebalancing them and more about designing them from the beginning to be extremely one dimensional and gimmicky. That's the main difference between the two games: SC2 is, like all modern blizzard games, dominated by gimmicks.
He indeed is quite wrong. Designing a unit vs balancing are two completely different things. Overall Blizzard didn't change unit designs or roles that much from balancing like he is implying. Some units though have changed over time like cyclone and tempest but even their roles haven't really changed.
I don't know what Brood War has that SC2 doesn't because I haven't played Brood War since 2000 and I play SC2 every day. I even managed to enjoy all the campaigns. Maybe it's just my eternal optimism painting everything pink ;)
The "freak accident" has some truth in it as we see the most popular but especially the healthiest eSports out there are the ones that turned competitive naturally from the bottom up instead of being sold as esports through company money balloons
There was a statement made on the blizzard support on starcraft which was the whole of starcraft2 made less profit than the first store mount on WoW. Which when you look at that there is a big reason why a profit driven company pivoted away from working with it. Its sad but when your looking at a lot of effort and little money compared to little effort and a lot of money, profit driven is always going to follow the lot of money.
Definitely sad, and it's not even a smart business decision. There's value in a tentpole IP than just how much its games made. No one's going to think about the "WoW mount that made more money that SC2 universe". But a large number of people are aware of the Starcraft brand. There is significantly more potential in the Starcraft brand than the "WoW mount that made more money than SC2" brand. IMO it's just not being realized.
Loved this video. Thank you! I'd like to see people dive more into how the mechanical gloss of SC2 could be adjusted so that less of the difficulty comes from reaction speed, and more comes from difficult execution and decision making. I think this is an important topic going into the Stormgate era
Alright. Ill say it. I disagree. Lol. Its what sets SC apart. Its part of why starcraft is so fantastic. It is not your typical rts except for the fact that starcraft reinvented the genre in its own image. That micro depth is not overvalued from the other parts. Its just critical at elite levels where its the zenith of skill to manage it all and still have reactability. Those who loathe it are like backup quarterbacks that want the rules to be different because then they could start. All of the critical moments decided by that reactibility and micro is on the foundation of doing all the other stuff up until that moment properly. You dont get to even make the marginal difference if the game wasnt already on the knifes edge from perfect macro decisions
I went to my first Starcraft tournament in 98, I've won my first quake 2 tournament in 99 *super local, I've been to multiple CS torunaments (as shittiest playuer on the team). NOBODY CALLED IT ESPORTS. The prizes were keyboard and mice and FUCKING RESPECT from super small community. GET OFF MY LAWN RIGHT NOW, BUT IT WILL NEVER BE AS GOOD AS WE HAD IT. the experience of playing competitive video games wasn't limited to the best 300 people on the planet on a massive stage in a stadium. GOM made twitch. the 240p free stream was what forced everyone to move somewhere else.
correct me if i'm wrong ... but to my knowledge, blizzard wanted to participate (and partly seize control) in the korean BW e-sport scene and step in AFTER it turned out succesful ... at which point the korean companies involved didnt want to deal with blizzard anymore, as they already had an established market, which blizzard did nothing for.
what 9:15 really highlights as starcrafts 2's biggest problem is its absolute lack of visual clarity and anti-clutter which BW does have. Death balls and attack particles obscure everything in your field of vision in sc2.
SC2's visual clarity is incredible. Not once in my life have I felt I can't understand what's happening on the screen while playing, even when I was just starting out and learning.
I'd argue that BW has pretty horrible visual clarity actually. You can't see very clearly under dark swarm, its pretty normal to stack air units as much as possible, interceptors are really large and clutter up the screen much more. My default bias is for everything BW but visual clarity is certainly one the things that I think SC2 improved.
Game stops receiving updates: Abandoned by devs, ded game. Game keeps receiving updates: """ArTiFiCiAl BaLaNcE""" SC2 definitely had some issues, but fuck me "Artificial Balance" is one of the worst takes ever unless you're the one in a million game that has perfect "natural" balance off the bat, which has more or less never happened, or, if it has, is usually at the expense of a dozen dead units on the roster. For every SC1 there's hundreds of dead RTS games that didn't have that natural dynamic. There is no inherent advantage to not balancing games post-release.
I think what he was trying to get at was the perceived inability for the devs to reach a unit design/balance and map balance equilibrium that produced the kinds of matches players want. And the devs not letting a meta settle. This was true for Overwatch, so it's not a stretch to think they took the same bad approach here. I agree there's no inherent benefit to not patching a game.
Maybe it's a weird take , but I've been watching SC2 for a long time and what I love when watching pro plays is the fact that their skill got to a point where it's almost a "real" war , it's as if you're watching how a races with that tech or bio would fight if they were in that situation , it's really immersive and I find myself always rooting for the terrans for that reason ! :D As much as I respect the SC1 it will never give me that level of immersion due to pathing of the units amongs other stuff
@@markmuller7962 You made me chuckle, but at the top level there aren't much deathball vs deathball fights anymore. The pros split their army in multiple groups and attacks are happening all over the map. For us mortals this is not possible, so we end up mostly deathballing anyway, since it's easier. SC2 is too fast to play, but very enjoyable to watch.
@@Poebz-mv1cg Yes, if SC2 was to make to its 60% speed, it will be much easier to play like BW, but also be less enjoyable to watch at the highest level.
difference between Brood War (and frozen throne) and Heart of the Swarm is that they didn't really change or remove any content, they just added new stuff that caused new interactions (to my knowledge, I used to play SC, SC2, and Warcraft 2 and 3 quite a bit)
It's clear you have a lot more experience than I do with these games, but I think that's an important distinction between the 2 games. Expansions in SC2 feel VERY different, almost as though they're different games with the same graphics, while Brood War feels like the same game, just with some new units added
Holding tournaments and broadcasting matches is not IP theft. Maybe you could argue that it would be IP theft to broadcast the entire single player campaign or something, but companies like Blizzard and Nintendo take it too far when they go after people that are just trying to spread the game, as basically free advertising, because they love it. Buying something and using it publicly is definitely not IP theft unless viewing it is all it has to offer, like a book or a movie.
The biggest problem with Heart of the Swarm was watching Stephano win tournament after tournament by maxing out on roaches at 6:30. Blizzard didn’t fix that until several massive tournaments were ruined by this boring meta.
Vert interesting video. I still think that Saiyan makes a valid point about the constant patching of SC2. Look at the latest Cyclone changes; it's basically a new unit! But the Achilles heel of SC2 has to be deathballs, they ruin the game. 12 units control groups is one way to avoid that, I think that Stormgate will find another way to avoid them too.
my school had a computer lab that was open to the public. 25$ cad for 1 year unlimited access. me and my buds lived there playing lan games and making tournaments (top prize 75$). was literally the most fun thing i did as a kid
Many mistakes were made in the history of sc2 but a lot went right too imo. LotV is a way better game than WoL was in my opinion. Brood war and sc2 differ a lot in (macro) mechanics, but one is not better than the other, it's a matter of preference. I think a modern rts like sc2 requires more patches in order to keep it balanced, but I don't see that as a bad thing. I also think that one of the reasons brood war is still around because it rests on an incredible legacy. The macro mechanics make it an amazing game, but it makes it incredibly hard to pick up today. I honestly think you cannot make a successful game like brood war today, the landscape has changed too much. Which, ironically, is very good for bw, because there simply will never be a newer game like it. BW will live forever :-). On the other hand, I think you can make another rts like sc2 that can take over the torch of sc2. And perhaps it's time.
I'm a month late to this conversation but wanted to give my anecdote on SC2. When I first played in WoL, it took quite a while to get a understanding how to use zerg. When MC came out with the sentry build it was a complete game changer. SC2 imo began the slow descent into chaos when the swarm host came in. My favorite unit and imo the worst unit to ever come to SC2 before the viper got parabombs and destroyed in the GSLs. Memehost was once 100 mineral 200 gas and had the locust upgrade, essentially nullifying mech and ground protoss armies. Eventually in LotV the balance patch 3.8 had memehosts now mobile deployments of locusts that FLEW. My favorite memory is when I decimated Avilo 3-0 with my nydus worm queen memehost all-ins - because the memehost was FAST AF BOI. Eventually they slowed it down and yet made it cheaper, and is now considered the fastest dps anti-ground build you could go for short of 2/1/1 bio tank. I eventually stopped playing in 2021 as not only did things stagnate from blizzard, the general sentiment of F2P and blizzard no longer caring for SC2 made smurf epidemic impossible to manage for new players, therefore plugging up talent. No real point to be made here besides I took advantage of a meme unit and blizzard's hasty attempts to balance the patches. Remember when reapers did 10 damage grenades in LotV? Remember when adepts did 32 dmg to light? Remember when mocore rushes could break you? Remember infested terrans getting upgrades from evo chamber like other Z units? Yeah
I loved starcraft 2, it basically caused me to spend 2 years trying to become a pro and seriously impacted my life. But ultimately the game is flawed to the core and more or less unfixable because of the deathball problematic. The way pathfinding, collision, etc. works in this game (on top of being able to select infinite units) just leads to two deathballs walking towards each other. Broodwar has created a game that almost feels like chess or go. There is almost no other rts like this.
Chess doesn't have RNG lol. Broodwar you spawn on a 4 player in a 1v1 and have a 33% chance of finding the enemy base on the first scout path. Can lose the game because you guessed wrong, lol. If SC2 is a flawed game, I'll never understand how Broodwar gets a pass despite having a shit load of its own problems. Lol People still struggling to seperate nostalgia from critical thought.
@@Flavalicious Broodwar is just better to watch, the collision system, the graphics, the sounds, it just works. SC2 was always a fake hype e-sport. Everyone was trying so hard to make it exciting. Although I can admit, after 20 years, pro broodwar is becoming a little stale as well. In last year we've rarely seen someting completely new.
@@Flavalicious It's not nostalgia if you are actively playing the game and can compare first hand. The reason I brought up chess is that in brood war you have to be very strategic and you often have back and forth games. Yes the mechanics are super hard but they are not actually what makes the game interesting. In brood war you set up defenses, try to secure areas, have multiple armies, etc. In Starcraft 2 you usually just make one death ball and make it clash with your opponents death ball. This is a huge flaw in the game that cannot be fixed. It does not mean that the game is unplayable or not a good game because of it. It just means that there is a pretty big issue with the game that will always be there. There is no solution for it in the framework of the game. That is the only point I was tryin to make.
@@filipu4143 i disagree lol. Watching a terrain sit in their base for 30 mins before they can get onto the map is boring as fuck. If it wasnt for just straight up enjoying the tastosis banter there would be no reason to watch anything from the ASL. There is only 1 reason BW esports isnt as dead as Sc2 and its because it was a form of national entertainment in Korea and the sequel never caught on in the same way.
Go watch Clem vs solar in ESL masters 2023 and tell me it’s not as back and forth as a high level BW tvz. Believe me as a 20 broodwar player the newer sc2 pro matches can be very broodwar like
This video contains so many bad takes it is just hilarious. Tasteless luckily pointing a lot of them. But as some people have already pointed out in the comments, Saudis "saving" esports is also a bullshit take. Personally I would rather see esports become smaller than let Saudis take control with their sports washing and blood money.
I can launch SC2 and get even a 4v4 in less than a couple minutes at any time of day... it is a ridiculously alive game. lol People are so silly. Also smash Melee is only growing again because of community patches that have fixed bugs and allowed for online play, etc.. And he's calling SC2 dead because it's not getting patches anymore... while extoling the virtues of Brood war not getting patches for a long time... I don't think this dude knows how to put together a cohesive argument.
Your so right. Most people who talk up broodwar could never get out of F rank. They just think it’s great because they remember bgh in 2000. The actual experience for bw is brutal these days. I play it but I can’t get anyone else to try it.
It's about time! Yeah, i had goosebumps when SC2 was announced, it was the first game I ever bought on pre sale. I too played like crazy, then played less in HotS and much less in LotV. I got all achievments in story mode, but I almost didnt play PvP later on.
@@YoureWrongImRightGetOverIt at release, wings of liberty, heart of the swarm, and legacy of the void were $60 a pop. Wanted to support sc and blizz at the time, so I bought each campaign on release at full price.
So ur mad at them cause you bought 3 separate offline content, filled with story and replayability in one of the best games ever made in the world? Man you can say so much about activision blizzard and their terrible ways last years but this is NOT it, the company is terrible but what you did was totally fair and paying for complete content is actually the best thing to do right now. Ur just mad cause of money, go complain about all the food you bought over 10 years that was "wasted" too
Correction! SC II was the best selling RTS of all time, not best selling game of all time. Thanks for watching everyone!
You should pin this, it's way down the list of comments for some peculiar reason
The entire problem with SC2 was hard counters and too fast of a game.
As a guy who grew up in the age of Xds~Grrr, Elky and Boxer, looking at a whole state of gaming and cybersport in moderan are makes me sad. We are aimed towards simplisness and casuality and money. Not by passion and love for the games. You should get ur ass up Tasteless and invest your time into changing that, not reacting to that :)
Diablo 3 sold well because of d2's fame but we saw how that turned out. Sc2 just wasn't an amazing game and it had the wrong pricing model. League was already out and ahead of the game model wise. If you want to understand why, just look at storm gate. Same devs and over a decade later the game looks confused and underwhelming.
Even blizzard understood how mid sc2 was after they saw a wow mount made more money than sc2 ever did.
Sc2 "died" so long ago and bw is still around because it's just a better game and more interesting.
@@marloncebo242 SC2 is also still around, has more tournaments, more viewers and more prize money. Inferiority complex much?
SC2 is 14 years old. If its dieing, it had a really good run.
Lmao ye. People are insane, the first game is 25 years old, a quarter century.
Nothing lives for ever. Thumbs down to video, im tired of those stupid takes.
@@googleslocik your coping hard my dude, game has been dead for like 8 years. IT had a terrible run, in a time where esports exploded sc2 went the opposite way. Yes it was an insanely impactful game in terms of esports, and it had its moment in the sun, but to lie or even act like sc2 has been in a good spot for the last 8 years is crazy
@@jonmacdonald2193
How am i coping? Over what?
SC2 had a good run, ... 10years ago. I
have no delusion over the game being dead, it saw no new entries in half a generation, kids have no idea what it is.
Where did i say it was in good spot over last few years?
@@googleslocik bruh why you coping?
@@jonmacdonald2193 It's been on life support since the great balance decision in late Wings of Libery to make Infestors broken good, it's been slowly bleeding out since then.
Wc3 guy here, still missing features we had before reforged. Never seen a community so decimated after a relaunch
Took the game that worked off u and left u with a broken one instead
reforged was messed up. I've never seen a game get destroyed so hard by its creator. What blizzard did should be borderline illegal. They should have left WC3 as an option
they fucked up a lot @@moonasha, but at least you can play bnet again with your old cdkey and balance patches (after the BM nerf i didnt check in for a long time so now is better than ever)
its coming back, wc3 is the all time best game after all
Yep and look at Diablo 4 that has just been realized. A total disaster and most of the community are gone.
That section on SC2 being so simple it's just a game of mind games and strategies with GMs having the same macro as pros is just so wrong it almost invalidates his entire opinion on SC2 vs BW
This aspect of the original video bothers me as well. It is clear that he has no understanding of SC2 (and is extremely biased) if he's claiming a diamond player could ever beat a high level pro. A high level player can beat a lower level player simpy by out multitasking them and outmacroing them.
While the deathball phenomenon has been an issue in the past, it's much less prevalent now than in was in the past. Watch the recent series between Clem and Serral to see a good example of how high level SC2 play has evolved past the deathball phenomenon.
@@cgtrout100 percent. I played bw since lotv and just came back to sc2 and it’s so much different. Much better to watch and ladder is much better
Yeah it's so wrong it's not even funny. There's not a GM or even other pro on earth that will hit every inject the way Serral does. Even all time great World Champions like Rogue, Dark and Reynor you can visibly see the difference in macro between them and Serral.
In my opinion:
It was so good out of the gate. They nearly completely ruined the game though by doubling the miners in ROTV though, and adding complicated first tier units with super advanced micro, particularly the adept and reaper. A player could win the game with 2 well microd reapers in seconds.
Though that may have “sped it up” for pro gamers and made the action start faster, the game became this warp speed micro battle super fast - which is super not fun for most players, and nearly impossible for new players (I actually miss the slower early game, mostly because it gave casters a chance to really shine, as as a team player allowed for strategy and banter).
It also made things tough to watch in the sense of: oh look, every single Terran game we have to watch a reaper poking around for 2 minutes.
I was really really good at teams (and pretty good at 1’s) in Wings of Liberty. I had to take time off but I really miss it. I can’t even play LOTV - despite serious background gameplay, going all the way back to sc1, it’s so fast, so complicated, so quickly it’s just not fun and the only people playing are regulars who crush me.
It’s too bad.
Most of all the problem is too quick to fast, and I’d imagine even pro players are sick and tired of adepts and reaper micro early game…especially reapers. Terran early game reapers is awful to have to watch (and play, for pro players) every single game.
I like how all the critical comments on the original video are deleted lol
I think the "artificial" balance vs "organic" balance distinction is very poorly framed. It seems much more productive and accurate to examine community driven vs developer driven balance, and secondly map balance vs unit/building balance. There is an interesting discussion to be had about the pros and cons of each, but the original video barely covers any of it in the interest of pushing its thesis that developer intervention = bad.
Well it is. Why fix what isn’t broken. Things don’t need to be perfectly balanced
@@inteallsviktigt Because, well, it is broken. It doesn't matter whether you fix it by changing the units, changing the maps, or changing tournament rules. If you have to do any of those it was originally broken.
"Games are better when they ORGANICALLY evolve with strategies instead of people constantly changing the game to account for the latest strategic innovations... Anyway, let's talk about how map-makers constantly had to change te game to account for the latest strategic innovations. In fact, if the maps weren't constantly changing over the years to compensate for the evolving strategies of the player base using units and armies in ways we never thought of previously - the game would never be alive to this day."
It's interesting though to highlight the relative pros and cons of nerfing a unit's damage vs nerfing a unit's usefulness by designing maps where they aren't as useful. The map changes are more indirect and might have other significant side-effects, but they allow people to know exactly what the unit does and see how the battlefield is changing to make it weaker. Great for an esport.
"Did I ask this question approximately a decade too late?"
*Yes.*
I appreciate you making this. The video was being shared a lot when it came out but, like many "SC2 dead" videos, it was missing a lot of important information and just fueling more toxic posts between people seeking validation for liking one game but not the other.
these ``death of a game`` youtube genre got too popular now people with 0 intelligence and knowledge of a game are making these videos, last week a saw a video about another game that the guy couldnt even say the name of the characters correctly and said the game is dead while tens of thousands still play it.
It's not just SC2 videos. It's like "RTS is dead" videos when its quite clear that is not a true narrative. And I agree alot of these videos are made by people who don't play these games alot.
@@02Machiavelli SaiyanKCM understands BW better than Tasteless. I'm not saying that as a dig at Tasteless, it's just a fact. Not all vids are clickbait nonsense, and if you look at the other 99% of that channel, it's just casts.
Tasteless knows both games really well. That guy obviously doesn't have a clue about SC2@@MundaneDave
@@Poebz-mv1cg He's spot on. Cope, fanboy.
Saiyan's regular videos of KCM casts is a monstrous contribution to the English speaking fan-ship for Korean Broodwar.
People been saying SC2 is dead for 12 years or more. I was obsessed for the first 4 years after it was released and recently returned a viewer watching casters cast matches at least once a day.
Harstem, Lowko and Winter make watching SC2 fun. I think if more people start to see the game as chess on steroids it changes the way you look at it. The game is cinematic, requires skill and dexterity at the high levels and there is enough coaching online with guys like PIG that make it easier for the average joe to get into the game and get to a stage where the game is fun.
it's like Tastosis saying hellbat pushes sucks and there are decent ammount of games won by terrans with that strat
I switched to sc2 in 2022 because i queued for 1 hour and 20 minutes just to find a match in broodwar
uthermal is another fun to watch guy
@@thewealthofnations4827
@@thewealthofnations4827 Unfortunately it's only the core minority that still likes the game for some reason and says stuff like this. For most the game simply isn't fun. And honestly, your argument is also simply dumb, if a game requires hours and hours of studying before being fun, it's something that's not supposed to be, it's a failure. Which it is since Blizzard abandoned it and the playerbase is shrinking and people even drop it to return to it's prequel.
A chess game on steroids is a problem, too, not a feature. Imagine you play Need for Speed on 16x speed, would that be more fun for you? According to your argumentation it should. But in reality the speed actually dumbs it down. Or imagine you can only have fun riding a bike if your average speed is close to a competitive athlete.
I wonder if it even makes sense talking about this. With the arguments you've written here you could very well that prefers blaming the audience for not liking your product, like the woke do, instead of considering changing it so it appeals to more people. I didn't have the best experiences with the SC2 community.
For me, the beginning of the downfall of SC2 happened when Blizzard introduced WCS. There were so many organic tournaments that were starting to take off and provide a cool organic pipeline for up-and-coming talent. The problem? If a WCS tournament were running, you could not broadcast another tournament with WCS points at that same time. An example: Blizzard scheduled its NA tournaments during the NASL timeslots, which effectively killed NASL. Now, they could run them if they weren't part of WCS, but why would any pro attend if they couldn't earn points toward their ranking? I always felt like that move, while important to Blizzard's bottom line and control of their IP, was what set of a series of dominoes that set us on the path that we're on now.
I also totally agree with Tasteless that the original video dramatically misunderstands SC2, especially the game in its state right now. The guy even said he never played Legacy of the Void, so he has no frame of reference for what the game is actually like today. The skill ceiling is still insanely high and players are making incredible plays to this day. Hell, just today I saw Parting lift and immediately cancel the lift of cyclone to save a low health phoenix by cancelling the attack animation. It was insane micro and he had fraction of a second to make that decision. Both games have merit, they're just very different from each other.
This happens everywhere, not just in esports. Combat sports and pro wrestling see similar situations wherein a major company elbows indie promotions out of the way to produce their own shows in a region. That then stifles or even kills the regional scene.
very true. i remember NHL players not being able to compete in the onlympics. not sure if its still like this i dont watch it anymore@@TheSonnyGo
Money ruined esports
So you're saying hes right? @@TheSonnyGo
Its been an issue for people since the early days of SC2. Namely, many big brood war fans couldn't get over the changes and idealized BW so much as the "perfect game" that they thought all of sc2's problems were the ways it deviated from sc2.
The truth is, blizzard did a damn good job making sc2 maintain a decent amount of the "essence" of sc BW while also making it suitably modern. They faced the same issue that anyone making a sequil to something legendary will face- how to live up to it. They certainly created a game with many exciting moments, a very high skill ceiling, and amazing tricks and micro moves. Now there are issues, the deathball being one of them, but hardcore BW fans often don't fully understand SC2, or cant help but compare it unfavorably to BW. The problem is that in their eyes BW is perfect, and everything else would fall short.
There are many things that could be criticized about BW too, but because it was first, and because of the nostalgia people have about it, it will always be perfect for them. For example, the game can be very long/slow, there are issues of balance, and the pathing/difficulty of the game is a big barrier for new players in 2024. With all that said, it truly is an amazing game with incredible strategic depth and display of skill. I just think the issue is that in many hardcore BW fans eyes, noting could ever have matched BW.
They are different games, but both amazing and quite possibly the best two RTS games of all time.
No one can argue that top to bottom SC2 is an incredible game. 3 massive campaigns, deep co-op experience, and satisfying ladder play. To date it is still one of the most complete gaming experiences from a holistic point of view.
I'm gonna disagree with you a bit.
Yeah, you have 3 big campaigns, but HotS was friggin stupid. I did not enjoy it at all, and LotV was kinda meh. So yeah, plenty of 'content,' but is it really worth it?
Co-op is great, I'll agree with that. It's really the best part of the game.
Now ladder... I don't play ranked 1v1 anymore, but I've been playing ranked 3v3 lately, and I can say that this is probably the most miserable gaming experience I've ever had, holy crap. And all the maps are designed like 1v1 maps. It's so stupid, but nobody cares about team games anyway, so whatever, I guess.
But what about custom games? Or have we all just collectively agreed to forget about it...
wings of liberty wasnt that good, too many timed missions taking away all the fun, didint bother buying heart of swarm and legacy because of how unsatisfying wings of liberty was on top of the bad story writing and lore retcons and anti player changes.
@@soldier22881 well, you're not missing much. WoL really was the high point for sc2 storytelling, but even then it doesn't come close to BW's campaign.
@@lotgc thanks man, may fortune smile upon you brother
I think it's also important to note that Brood War also had balance patches, which is especially noticeable when playing the campaign where the shortened length of the disruption web means you can't just casually mill about on the mission that introduces them.
The only relevant SCBW patch was changing the s.pool price from 150 to 200. Their later patches sent us back every time.
25:00 This is the paradox of old RTS. A modern game coming out with Brood War level control schemes would be TORN APART for being clunky, old and user-unfriendly. It would not survive in the modern market long enough to make any sort of substantial footprint. Starcraft Remastered only sold as well as it did because it had the legacy of SC:BW and the name recognition through that and SC2.
But at the same time you have to admit that the game is only as successful as it is at least in part BECAUSE of the clunk. The difficulty to control things is an element of skill that can add to the hype, competitive nature of the game at the highest levels, and that keeps the game fresh for players to keep coming back to as they continue to improve in their ability to control.
I'm not good at putting words to this issue but the paradox of controls is probably the #1 thing that isn't talked about NEARLY enough when the whole "Is RTS Dead / Why RTS Fails" debate pops up.
I think it all comes down to eSport culture and how really widespread it is beyond all the inflated shiny tournaments fed by micro transaction money and used as mere marketing.
If you think about a game like Dwarf Fortress that released publicly after 20 years of Alpha development and which has the worst most convoluted controls in the history of gaming... It was well received by nerds, by big nerds mostly because it's a fantastic game but it's actual hell to learn let alone to master.
Bottom line, when it comes to Speed Running, eSport, or hardcore games it doesn't really matter the quality of life or user interface, if it's good it's going to be appreciated but you need the right culture for such complex and difficult title to really be appreciated because their qualities greatly overshadow any flaws and sometimes even the flaws are appreciated making the game more challenging for speed runners, pro gamers or hardcore ppl in general
@@markmuller7962 But that's the thing with Dwarf Fortress, it's been around 20 years and was started as a passion project. It faced no major commercial pressures and didn't have to conform to modern UI design. It's also a niche game with no desire for mass market appeal. A large part of Speed Running is the nostalgia element as the most popular games in the community are also those with huge nostalgic appeal.
Contrast this with a large scale commercial project which needs to hit considerable sales numbers today. You're going to need broad market appeal or your business is going to tank.
Came here to say this, thanks for saving me some time ❤
You are 100% correct about this. It is the same exact thing that keeps Super Smash Bros Melee alive and well to this day and made Halo 2 tournaments so popular back in the day as well. Cool unintended mechanics that can be developed to insane levels of skill makes games insanely interesting and replayable.
Remastered sold well because BW has 10/10 integrity as a game, Redditor.
As far as the "two worlds" of games go...
I do really miss when a game would just release and then stay that way. I enjoy coming back to Brood War knowing that all my knowledge is still intact and that anything I learn can still be used later. I also think it's incredibly beautiful when a game's meta turns into an arms race of players going back and forth developing new strats to one-up each other. These advantages are sorely missed in live service games, whose metagames are stuck in perpetual adolescence. By the time the players have really figured out what is super great on the patch, a new one rolls around and we're on to the next season.
I'm glad that live service games exist because to be frank a lot of people just prefer it when the meta gets shaken up every now and again, even if they are for artificial or contrived reasons (I think Saiyan's wording is appropriate). I think that players who enjoy this kind of thing are not just a new breed either - if the technology to constantly update games existed in 1998 I think they would be all over it then as well. I think the addition of live service has greatly expanded the audience of people who enjoy video games today. I do, however, lament that this form of development has outright replaced the sort of release-and-move-on type of game development from the past. Game dev studios just outright don't do games unless they're live service any more, which in many cases means that a game's first or second year or even entire lifespan of history can just get deleted in an instant. I know people back in the day used to clown on Call of Duty and Fifa for releasing the exact same game year after year but at least this means I can go back and play my favorite version whenever I want. For games like League of Legends I can't downpatch and go play an older version with my friends, I have to play what Riot has deemed to be the correct and current meta.
At the end of the day I can't complain too much. My taste is clearly for non-live-service games and any which are around today will probably still be around in the future. I am very grateful that Starcraft Remastered did not butcher the game in the same way that Warcraft III Reforged did, but I really felt like such a crazy person to even express this opinion at all. I really am grateful that Saiyan just came out of the gate swinging with his point, even if you don't fully agree with it, because just blurting out the sentiment gets you and your chat and your comment section and hopefully many other people to speak about this idea in more depth.
Ok but devs should be honest in live service games calling the changes for what they are... Changes
As primarily a fighting game player there is a similar tension between frequent balancing vs letting it ride for a while, and a similar segment of the community that gets nostalgic for the old days of a game having years and years for the meta to develope and evolve.
I think its important to point out that the downside of games not getting patched is that broken stuff persists. While it's easy to get nostalgic for games like Brood War or SF 3rd Strike that were so rich from the jump that they had a deep well of meta to keep exploring, the truth is that for every generation defining game there were dozens of broken or less sophisticated games that released and died bc they didnt have the depth. We remember and revere the exceptions rather than the rule.
So while I agree that patches somewhat keep us from getting super deep metas, it also means that the average game is much more balanced and playable than 15 years ago, which means the overall quality of the games is much higher.
@@CF565 this is survivor bias. We like that brood war hasn't changed so we can use our old skills, but only because brood war still exists. No one cares that, I don't know, Red Alert hasn't received a balance patch in ages. OP might complain that league of legends makes changes, but it's almost certain that the game dies without them.
As someone who has played a lot of games, I 100% agree with your first idea. I think the game that suffered from this the most was World of Warcraft. A lot of people came back years later wanting to jump back in and the game was literally a completely different game and in order to play again they had to relearn classes, abilities, specs, game systems, areas, etc. etc. It was very alienating to these people many of them bounced off the newer versions and just quit right away.
You can and should complain. live services are predatory and the death of video games. it's all about gambling and addiction, not creating a good game.
Main problem with SC2 IMO - so few ways of being cost-effective, make 1 mistake you most likely have no ways of playing yourself back in to the game. The opponent has to make an mistake. Maps have "balanced" this by making games longer, but still feels kinda bad imo.
This also makes holding territory feel bad, you often need to plop down ur army / be ready to rotate it to defend. 2 large armyblobs will smack into each other for most part of the game. And often makes defenders advantage a non-factor depending on races. You either snowball or get snowballed.
well said
100%. Which is why I have moved on to other more casual RTS games like Battle For Middle Earth 2. SC2 is just too fast, you spend 10 mins scouting and building up your army/eco. Then you look away for 1 sec and you whole army is gone. Its not fun, its actually very little fighting and micro going on for the average player. The game gets decided so fast you dont get to enjoy and use the army you have built. You can lose to so much bs as well, its one of the few games I can get really angry playing.
Tasteless, your commentaries are enlighting, please give us more of this content.
In my personal experience, I became a SC2 competitive scene fan since Serral win at WSC 2018 (I know it was a "lil" late but I'm really glad to have found it) and have enjoyed every tournament since then. I would love to support it so it will continues for a long long time.
PS. I started to watch ASL too and it's sick!! As viewers we can enjoy BW and SC2 at the same time 😊
I think the "rock, paper, scissors" gameplay philosophy that permeated around the time of SC2's development was overall harmful to RTS in general. You'd get very clunky interactions from "hard counters" that felt artificial. In Brood War, a unit's ability to counter another was based off micro, positioning and sim-city. It was like a beautiful dance. Whereas in SC2, if your unit is meant to counter another unit, it felt more like accepting the terms and condition put down by the designer
I think people forget that everyone ASKED for Blizzard to make control groups infinite. That was a huge complaint about War3, so Blizzard gave everyone what they asked for.
Thats why the community shouldnt balance any game. Just look at latest community patch for SC2. Its terrible.
Arty once said he want Dark Swarm to reduce dmg by 90% and buff half of the terran upgrades. LMAO
@@ChokedByHalo1 The last community patch was the best patch that ever came to SC2. But if you listen to only one person like Arty, this isn't community. Blizzard instead needed 4 fking years to change the Swarmhost, the community was never this slow. The community actually suggested changes before Heart of the Swarm got released, which Blizzard implemented AFTER LotV released, and they were STILL the right changes. Faster Viking landing is one example.
Blaming the community and blaming infinite control groups is just stupid, it's like blaming LoL for SC2s death. Although LoL released in 2005.
The control groups are fine in SC2. It's not the core issue. The core issue is how FAST everything is and how fast units dominate gameplay (Marines), which decreases the strategic aspect and increases the reactionary. If a game is decided not whether the player picked the better strategy, but whether he reacted immediately to the WM drop, gameplay becomes dull after a while. Most people have put it this way.
@@nightmareTomek Loaded question fallacy. Ill respond to one thing - last SC2 patch is shit, mainly because it has shown who exaclty is the "community" that balances the game. Its B listers that always cry, never improve, like HeroMarine.
@@ChokedByHalo1 Is the SC2 community full of morons?
While all Tasteless's points are valid, I just don't think it's addressing the elephant in the room... RTS games as a whole are just not as appealing to modern audiences and it's not due to balance.
Please just ask a few of your gamer friends why they're not into RTS/SC, almost 0 will mention that the balance is off compared to old RTS games, or the botched e-sports scene, or any of the myriad of other things I've seen mentioned in the comments or in this video. Your much more likely to hear:
- Too much to keep track of.
- I don't like 1 on 1 competitive games
- It seems too daunting to get into
etc, etc
This is it. RTS games are to hard and to much work for the modern gamer. So many team games are popular now and u can always have things to blame so it's not ur fault, ppl to help carry u etc. And less intense to play. U shouldn't need such high apm to play
...because no good RTS's are being made at all. just 7/10 mediocrities.
100%. There’s no new players coming in. The balance and whole sc1 vs sc2 argument is irrelevant. That’s for the salty old RTS players to argue about because we have no other good games to play. The true issue with RTS is like you said, there’s none coming out because they’re too expensive for a small studio to make and there’s no appetite for them among general gaming audiences. People want teammates to blame, it’s a problem with fighting games too
@@HieronymousLex You are right. I would say the solution is to make a RTS that is focused on teamplay. 4v4 or 5v5 games RTS, and balanced around that. My favorite RTS is Battle For Middle Earth 2. It's a blast, a bit more casual than SC, but still a proper RTS. People still play it today even though the official servers are down, and its a blast. However, almost EVERYONE plays 4v4 in that game, which is that max player capacity. And its the most fun mode by far.
As you said, people find comfort in teamgames. If you lose you can always blame it on your team, and use that as a defensive mechanism. But the game becomes alot more chaotic and fun in teamgames imo. You can also balance the room if you have a stronger player, let him play with a weaker one.
If we get a high quality RTS that is focused on teamplay 3v3, 4v4 I think it could be a massive success. Obviously 1v1 games would also be possible on it as well. 1V1 is so lonely though compared to teamgames, and a 1v1 focused RTS with Esport in mind will not succeed today unless it brings something more to the table. I believe it needs to be a good teamgame as well.
Tasteless stuttered a bit on SC2 being "the best selling game of all time" on release. It was the best selling RTS of all time:
"At the time of its release, StarCraft II became the fastest-selling real-time strategy game, with over three million copies sold worldwide in the first month."
I never played SC2, but watching it during WoL was such a joy.
and look what bobby did to it.... omega sad
WoL was the best.
I uninstalled Starcraft 2 and went back to the campaigns for StarCraft 1 and Brood War.
When it comes to balance, as fundamental as maps balancing is the skill required vs game automation that plays a big role as *the less a game is automated the more the individual human skill matters to overcome eventual imbalances*
How big of a point is that when no human can reach the skill ceiling of either game?
What is the reason for reaching a skill ceiling?
I mean imagine a game where skill ceiling is in reach for a human. What will happen next?
We will have X-number of players who are the best. But you can't single out THE best, because they are all on the same level. And as a result you can't have 1 person winning based on pure skill. Because their skill is at the same level (remember they're all at the ceiling level) the winner will be decided by something else like better respawn position, favourable match-up etc. @@James-uk4xi
It's like putting a bunch of people in the room that has ceiling height about 1,5m (5 feet). And being the tallest (the most skilled) in that situation is pointless because everyone is just as tall as the room (ceiling) allows them to be.
While if you put them in a room with normal ceiling where they can actually stand upright. You'd be able to see who the tallest (the most skilled) is easily.
@@James-uk4xi I also think it's not that clear that SC2 even has a lower skill ceiling than SC1 in the first place. I mean, nobody actually does it (other than bots), but *TECHNICALLY* you can micro your workers to mine faster in SC2 - workers decelerate as they get closer to a mineral patch (and as they return from it), so if you move command a worker next to a mineral patch before mining from that mineral patch then the worker won't decelerate. This can allow a worker to mine considerably faster if you manually tell workers to move next to a mineral patch before telling it to gather from it, and move next to the CC/nexus/hatchery before telling it to return the minerals.
There's also another trick that terrans can do with bunkers - if you put a bunker between 2 vespene geysers, then you can use only 4 SCVs to fully saturate both refineries by sending the SCV into the bunker, setting the rally point to the other end of the bunker and then unloading the SCV to allow it to travel faster, and then repeating it in the other direction on the return trip.
Now.. nobody actually does this, because they have better things to spend their APM on - but if we're talking about some mythical "skill ceiling" somehow mattering then I think the skill ceiling for SC2 might actually be even higher than for SC1.. and if someone argues that it doesn't matter because nobody plays that way, then that's kind of just proving the point that the skill ceiling doesn't really matter as long as it's too high for a human to reach, which kind of negates the entire argument of the skill ceiling having any kind of importance - either way they have more things that need doing than they'll ever be capable of doing.
@@markmuller7962 Thanks that's very helpful
@@asdfqwerty14587 Haha yeah.. Don't forget the ridiculous, mind boggling blink micro the bots do. Stuff is hilarious
Starcraft 2 struggled a lot in the beginning because it was competing against games that were free. In 2011-2013 I remember playing SC2 religiously in middle school and all my friends were playing LOL or Dota 2 because it was free. No one wanted to shell out $60 to pay for a game so I basically was the only person who played regularly (besides like two other people).
The pro and casual scene was okay at the time though since there was tons of players with interesting personalities (Idra, Destiny, etc) and tons of content creators churning out tons of videos (Day9, Husky, HDStarcraft, etc).
I think tons of problems happened all at once between 2013-2016 that caused the game to die immediately:
-Lots of content creators stopped all at once. Husky and HDStarcraft stopped creating content at almost the same time. Destiny quit streaming SC2 to switch to league, etc.
-Lots of pro players retired all at once. I'm talking Idra, Nestea, MVP, Jaedong, Stephano, MC, etc, all the top players who a lot of fan enjoyed watching suddenly stopped playing.
-Balance issues, oh my god, everyone remembers fucking SH/raven/tempest games that completely sapped casual and professional games.
-LOTV kind of made the game a lot worse because they basically completely got rid of the early game. A lot of early game cheesy strategies immediately became non-viable
In general though, one of the biggest problems was that Blizzard never made SC2 monetizable. There was no army skins or voice packs like other games had and the fact that the game wasn't free was a big hurdle to a lot of people who were used to playing games that were free. Playing 1v1 games is fun but at a certain point everyone hits a plateau and there needs to be some incentive to play beyond just trying to get better at a game and getting ladder points. Other games you get to play with your friends and even in BW you get to play Fastest Map or 2v2v2v2 BGH with your friends. There just isn't the same experience in SC2 which almost exclusively focuses on 1v1.
The other thing too is e-sports in general just never became as big as people predicted it would. There are a ton of different games but none of them became super big and money is distributed across all these games which keeps prize pools down. Most games are difficult to watch if you don't understand what is going on. There's no easy way to tell what's happening in a game for a casual viewer and it's difficult to tell who is winning a game if you don't already play it. Part of watching sports is getting to see people do things you could only dream of physically but you don't really get that same sense of awe in watching e-sports.
Don’t you think it was DOTA that decimated RTS? I think thst was the main thing.
I STARTED playing SC2 about two years ago, well after they had already "stopped supporting the game." As disappointing as Blizzard is as a company nowadays, SC2 is some of the most fun I've ever had in a game, especially the Co-op mode. And I still love watching competitive gameplay.
Shoutouts to great content creators like Harstem and uThermal, and the casters and orgs that continue to support the game; as well as custom gameplay like Synergy's race swap campaigns, and the in development "StarCraft 2 Archipelago" which functions as a robust randomizer! The development team and community have made this into the gift that keeps on giving.
One disagreement is the idea that map based balance is somehow more organic than balance via updates and patches
The map designers go in with a deliberate idea. It's not luck. THey use the strengths and weaknesses to try and make it balanced.
Not just ideas -- ideas informed by a lot of data.
Yeah I'm not a fan of the word choice. It doesn't feel like he got to the core idea: The numbers and the map designs are interlinked. Spawn distances are informed by rush build times and costs as well as the power levels of those rushes. What's considered balanced is up to people to decide how much counterplay to allow vs. how many rushes remain viable vs. what's interesting to watch.
Whether you go about adjusting those variables via maps or numerical changes isn't inherently better or worse IMO. Of course changing the maps produces different side effects than changing numbers so one may be a better approach than the other when trying to hit a sweet spot for balance.
I agree Brood War is balanced via its maps and managed to also hit a sweet spot in terms of interesting viable tactics and strategies. But I disagree that balancing through map design is inherently better than through changing numbers.
Balance updates are ok if the goal is to balance the game and that's not what happens in live service games.
It's not like you see complete revolutions in the fundamentals of be pro map making, it's mostly slightly adjustments plus some occasional weird experiment.
You're definitely missing the point of balance patches in my eyes because the patching should stop when a game is fairly well balanced or at least they should aim at balancing the game giving breathing space for the meta to settle instead of changing stuff and adding units every 3 months to "shake things up" or "keep things fresh"
@@markmuller7962 But sc2 hasnt have a new unit in 7 years. Balance patches comes once a year.. Most of the balance is also just slight adjustment (ex: movement speed goes from 3.5-4.2). There are the occasional weird experiments that lots of the time doesnt stay past 1 patch.
@@TheMysmich Do you really think that we're talking about the abandoned game instead of the past 10 years of live service speculations?
You compared StarCraft to Go as if they're very different but actually they're very similar, and playing StarCraft early in my life helped me to convert my skills into Go (and be quite successful at it, now having played over 50 international tournaments). In Go there is 'macro and micro' component, you have to balance and choose whether to spend your attention (moves) on localized fights and technique or to focus on general direction of play - either is situation dependant. The memory component is not as profound, while you can perfect some openings to give you a slight edge in general the player with better understanding of the game will win it in the middle game regardless of the opening. Just like in starcraft you're trying to control territory and have some presence everywhere on the map (board), play probing moves that may lose you points but force your opponents hand into making a decision and that then helps you to counter it. And more than anything it's about balance, when playing at a high level you're always trying to not be too greedy and overexpand (also known as 'thin' and 'weak' groups) but at the same time you're trying not to take it too slow and let your opponent run away with it. Essentially the goal is to be patient and keep the game balanced and wait for your opponents mistake to then capitalize on it. Trying to force the issue is very risky and will often lead to a loss, but it can also a good resource for going 'all in' and complicating the game to a point beyond the abilities of any human to untangle it in their head to the end (before playing a move) and then all bets are off and you may have a chance to win after all.
On the StarCraft balancing question, I love Broodwar because it stands out in how overpowered all units are, and many games including StarCraft 2 often go into this nerfing spiral for the sake of balance, which just makes the game less and less fun over time. I think buffing a unit can inspire people to experiment with it and be creative while nerfing a unit feels like someone broke into your house and broke one of your fingers. And still many game developers consider nerfing and buffing the same thing just in opposite directions - which is true mathematically but not true for game experience.
Very interesting and fun to read post. Thanks!
The point was that video game are going to have a mechanical aspect. Aiming is they key gameplay in FPS. In RTS, controlling units and building bases is the core gameplay. People have argued forever that RTS are 'real time STRATEGY' games and not ''spam clicking competitions'. But the fact is that trying to remove the mechanical aspect through automation to 'free up time' for more strategy has always been a pipe dream. I get you wanted to do your Go speech. but the only overlap is when you play chess or go on bullet and you need mouse skills not to flag.
I enjoyed this video. I think it would be cool if you did more "game design / analysis" style videos. Between SC1 and SC2, you could go unit by unit and describe how each impacts the overall game, what incentives they create, and how they contributes to interesting or uninteresting gameplay. For example, which single unit do you think creates the most interesting gameplay? For each game? For each race? Which unit is the worst? I am not talking about power level, but in terms of strategy and tactics. Now that there are new RTS games being worked on, I would be interested in your ideas and perspectives on topics like this.
I feel like what makes these games that you listed: MvC2, Melee, Brood war, so timelessly good. I'd throw quake 3 or 2 into that category as well. Is that the games are so impossible to master with non existent skill ceilings, and the reason they're so hard and rewarding is that the way to play the best is to totally abuse the mechanics in ways that was never intended. I don't know if multiple building hotkeys was a considered decision or if it was just easier with the limitations of the technology. We know worker drills are likely just a way to make workers mine properly and not just bounce off each other doing nothing, yet it creates an entire new mechanic to learn and master, that pros show regularly to defend impossible situations. I totally lost interest in starcraft 2 after WoL because the deathball just mash together, 1 person wins, became so boring, and the 'perfect' pathing that turned everything into a literal ball of death just made the game so uninteresting. Too much convenience it turns out just makes things boring when things are going your way, and frustrating when they're not.
The control group limits were intentional design. There was an interview with one of the devs I forget who years ago where they talked about that. They never knew it was going to be a big esport but they did think it was going to be a party game you would play with your friends. One of the ways they approached the design was with the mindset of making the game have too much to do so you had to choose what you would focus on at any given moment.
Games that just weren't made to be an esport are often long lasting games
TLDR: Brood War continues to thrive because the Korean scene has never been affiliated with Blizzard, even to this day. With the SC2 scene, Blizzard collapsed and lost all of the people that organized SC2 events, and anyone else who made the scene what it was, due to various scandals at the company. There's literally just nobody left at Blizzard who CAN run the events anymore.
This really has _nothing_ to do with how the games are balanced, so I have no idea why so much of his video focuses on that. BW might be facing the exact same thing if their events were as closely tied with Blizzard.
Games that naturally and organically develop their competitive scene don't need the mother company to run or finance events no matter the shenanigans you're talking about
@@markmuller7962 It's incredibly difficult, arguably impossible, to naturally and organically develop a competitive scene to the point where it can be an actual esport and players can actually make a living out of it.
There are no other games, in this day and age, with a organic scene.
@@2639theboss Do you really think Brood War had a cynical live service profit driven gaming company financing the scene during the golden decade?
Same thing for other classic esports btw but those didn't blow up because Korea choose SC.
Besides, the real take out of your sentence is the fake esport culture of flashy events funded by micro transaction used as mere marketing to sell more micro transactions, money can buy cool events and stages but it can't reverse the culture of 2 continents in 1 decade turning esport from an unhealthy activity for losers to a proper sport to respect, it just doesn't happen and what we're seeing is purely money driven.
The actual esport culture probably still very small kinda like speed-running or hardcore-nerd titles like Dwarf Fortress and that's why we don't have sport-like esports anymore, the big money games have taken over even even in Korea with modern, smooth and colorful live service titles that offer huge money prices.
It's not one bubble, it's more like a collection of bubbles clumped together and occasionally one pops up and one "sport" magically disappear into nothing because the mother company abandon it.
It can't be a bubble because it's very profitable but you can guess the magnitude of speculation by these "esports" that pops and disappear strictly for monetary reasons.
Still the Moor's Law exist and soon or later we'll have a generation that's nerd enough and gamer enough to clean the scene up and finally turn this clown fest into something serious
@@markmuller7962 Im aware how BW grew, but the problem is that the environment literally doesnt exist anymore. There will probably never be another scene like BW.
It doesnt matter if its money driven. If the only way for ESports to be viable given the current consolidation of the gaming industry is to be in part or wholly supported by the dev, thats what its going to be.
CS2 is going through that now. Im not saying its good, but its reality.
@@2639theboss A reality that you're forced to accept if your career depends on it (like casters) but it's completely unnecessary for everyone else especially if you're an hardcore gamer or nerd
I remember my interest declining around HoTS. Really sad but it was all due to the balance getting screwed up and just seemed like Bilzz didn't care about some basic features. I was shocked to learn over this Christmas the AOE2 gets stronger viewership than SC2.
It's funny that waaay back in the microsoft gaming zone (that's 2003-ish) I saw AoE 2 die from within because basically ALL relevant matches (1v1, any tournment ever) only running effectively "steppes of war" (1v1 arabia)
now the game is kind of back to where it deserves... an RTS for people that are too slow for brood war, they finally learned that they can play different maps, it's quite funny
I left during swarm host meta. As a Zerg player I couldnt stand it. Plus games were over an hour long every time with those swarm hosts. So awful
@@zaftnotameni I bought AOE2 on sale over the break and it's great. Can't believe I missed it as a kid. Finding the macro much more difficult than BW & SC2 though
AOE2 is definitely a good game
Exact same thing happened to me. Grinded from bronze to masters in WOL, dropped it after HOTS dropped
20:55 IIRC, Blizzard had wanted something like 50% of all revenue/profits. The Koreans argued that they grew the scene themselves without any Blizzard support and that they only wanted a cut of the revenue once it became big enough. In addition, some of the smaller teams like STX and WeMade claimed that with this type of model, they would go under and potentially leave Proleague without enough teams. Is this IP theft? I don't know but I understand the situation from both sides. This is akin to Nintendo coming in and asking for 50% of profits from the smash melee scene. The only difference is that smash is broadcast on twitch while BW was on TV.
Agreed. This is my first time hearing about blizz suing korean tv networks over broodwar. Claiming it is IP theft feels like classic corporate over-reach. Fair enough if they were re-broadcasting GSL etc without permission but broadcasting their own leagues using starcraft as the medium sounds like fair use to me. Also its strange they only started suing them around the time sc2 came out? How did it work out in the end?
Shout out to Artosis, Paladin and KCM to keep the BW foreign scene going. Much love from Brazil
Sc2 is a great game that I also watch it from time to time, hope it doesnt die after Stormgate. Time will tell
If you're talking about falpal then how can you, the casts are unwatchable because a lot of things are missed, etc. For casuals... Sure but if you really want the appreciate the details, the guy is NOT the guy to watch.
"It's a great game bu it may die at the first real RTS release in years"
Vai pro Warcraft 3 porra
idk man, SC2 will stay for me cause Stormgate looks so childish or like a fairytail graphics. I don't like it
@@MrATL90 same for me. it just looks like they took a specific direction in art development and they target it towards young players. which is good if they succed it may even bring some players to sc2. but im not gonna play it as it is, it just looks bad even if its still beta. the art direction they took is not for me.
I think SC2's "time to kill" is a huge issue with making the game less approachable for non pro level players. The nature of smart casting spells, big aoe damage attacks and abilities, units clumping perfectly and being able to stack up units into dense concentrations turns a lot of the fighting into a "blink and you lose" feeling experience. Then there are the very efficient harassment units that can delete a mineral line of workers in a few moments which seem to end up being some of the most chaotic to balance. The cludgy nature of BW unit movement and control tends to make fights drag out longer and becomes a bit more like a skirmish than just A moving a deathball. It really becomes difficult to enjoy the game from a more casual player perspective when balance around TvZ for example is based on Terrans who can split marines vs banelings at a pro level but the player in silver/gold gets ran over by them.
I also think MOBA games sapped the energy out of the RTS genre in general as it pulled in people who like the crazy micro aspect of games like WC3 and SC but struggle with balancing it with the macro gameplay of base management/unit production. It let players hyper focus on the micro mechanics because your generally only controlling 1 unit. Then you have the other side of it with games like the Total War franchise which focused more on the big army strategy/unit comp stuff and made micro less required to feel successful.
Very well put together
100%. Which is why I have moved on to other more casual RTS games like Battle For Middle Earth 2. SC2 is just too fast, you spend 10 mins scouting and building up your army/eco. Then you look away for 1 sec and you whole army is gone. Its not fun, its actually very little fighting and micro going on for the average player. The game gets decided so fast you dont get to enjoy and use the army you have built. You can lose to so much bs as well, its one of the few games I can get really angry playing.
Yes. At its core the issues of SCBW vs SC2 boils down to the fact that engagements in BW are longer, base building and control in BW is more deliberate, you can actively change how things go, macro and micro happen in extended periods. Basically, you can FEEL yourself influence the game. Winning and losing feels like Boxing for 12 rounds where exchanges happen over long periods of time until one of you bows out.
SC2's problem was always its speed and efficiency, and everything is smarter, as a result worker lines evaporate faster, deathballs blow up faster than you can micro your casters, same for bases. There are obviously tons of nuance, but at the end of the day It doesn't FEEL like you're influencing the game, everything FEELS like a coinflip. SC2 is boxing where one guy falls in the first 3 rounds and you're like what happened? It's not fun for players, it;s not fun for spectators.
When armies engage, a new player is taught to go back to macroing instead of trying to salvage an engagement with micro and that's a PROBLEM. People want to engage with their armies, they want to see the stuff they built duke it out.
The video being reacted to has a very common misconception. Often game devs absolutely know a strategy or unit is NOT overpowered and that the community just needs to get good. However, it is the COMMUNITY that is pressuring the devs to patch the non-problem instead of learning to counter it. And if the devs don't, large portions of the playerbase quit because people are telling them the game is broken, "solved", etc. I have seen so many players announce a game is solved 2 weeks after a patch launches, or that a unit with a 30% win rate is wildly OP.
Balance Patches are primarily about COMMUNITY SENTIMENT. Balance Patches exist to address perceived unfairness more than actual unfairness. Devs don't WANT to rebalance their games all the time, that takes time and money. They could spend that time on making new things instead! Usually a balance patch exists not to punish players for using a unit against the way a developer intends, but because other players are not having fun and are quitting the game because of it. They're seeing the player count drop because the meta feels unfair (even if it isn't unfair).
Devs rarely nerf PvP units because THEY don't like what players are doing with it, they usually nerf stuff because OTHER PLAYERS don't like what the first players are doing with it.
27:02 I’m glad you acknowledge that BW is less a strategy game played against an opponent, and more a manual dexterity game played against the UI.
lol cope
Na thats not it: BW is much more of a strategy game, just that SC2 is so dumbed down as a mobile game that only strategy matters, nothing else. Doesn't mean that you need a big brain for SC2,
SC BW was not only online on tv illegally... it was being downloaded and played illegally!!! BW got popular cause it was hacked and free to play!!
"A player can hit a build with no difference between their macro and a professionals macro in sc2" what game is he watching 😮
Also what "waves of pros" moved to brood war from sc2?
For example pro player in broodwar can reach spawning pool 15 sec faster than amateur due to mining optimization. In SC2 both can hit it at the same time. All the best players from BW era went back to BW, despite having successs in SC2 (Jaedong, Flash, Bisu..) Only the players who were never at the top in BW stayed with SC2.
Yeah but the BW players moved back to BW ages ago. The video made it sound like people are currently leaving sc2 since he's talking about its current state.
@@dustincintron1682 He was partly right. Guys like me went back to Brood war after getting tired of StarCraft 2 and its community for 1v1. My experiences were having people tell me they'd find my family and harm them, Setting my house on fire and S* wording my throat.
So after racking up 25k games i called it good and went back to the Brood war Campaign.
All I know is... I miss playing TvZ: Bio (marine, marauder, medivac, wm) vs Zerling, muta baneling. The responsiveness and pace of that match were beautiful. I love SC 1 do not get me wrong, but SC II was an upgrade, they improved responsiveness and added a different skill expression. You can be proud of yourself if you are good (or were) in one of these games (maybe both!).
I remember the passion and emotions when I had my first matches vs Masters players in 2016... What a beautiful experience, what a journey.
Even I remember my first SC games, playing Broodwar in 2002 when I was a little child (6 or 7 years old)... I did not understand the game but I fell in love :´)
Doesn't seem like a good comparison, if people still play SC2 in 20 years with zero patches in between you can will be able to use builds used 'years ago' and maps will have to adjust to get this 'organic balance' if new overpowered strategies are discoverd
"Dedicated players like me"
*Didnt play LotV*
sad! you should get a job so you can play
@@pinroshan020 Might not have been clear, but I wasn't referring to myself
Sc2 will linger on for a while. It won't grow but it doesn't need to. People often forget that "dead" games can still have small scenes. There's still a really active Command and Conquer community. Not my thing but play or follow the games you love without worrying about how alive or dead they are. BW is the better game but if you like SC2 better, do what you want to do!
Good reaction, Tasteless. Thoughtful commentary. Thanks for all the content!
I think it's also a bit weird to label SC2 as dead while glorifying BW considering SC2 still has more viewers than BW does.
the CnC scene is awesome. Tournaments, nice mods like generals in RA3 and so one. Awesome to watch if u like it.
Saiyan overstated how much you can "go back" in Brood War by omitting to recognize (as Tasteless did) that LotV is effectively the BW equivalent for SC2. HOWEVER, Tasteless also understated how apt that comparison is by omitting to talk about how BW was effectively set in stone at release, whereas LotV has been receiving continual patches.
So yes, it's not QUITE fair to compare the two games, because an SC2 player 20 years from now should be able to go back to early LotV games and still use the same builds... But... not EXACTLY, because some of the balance patches are still surely going to have a big impact.
So we're only just NOW getting to that "frozen in stone" point with the final balance patch. Except that frozen in stone point has come SO late after the initial release and frenzy of early SC2! We can't know for sure, but it FEELS like this frozen in stone point has come basically at the end of SC2's lifecycle... whereas SC1's freezing came relatively early on, setting the stage for everything that came afterwards.
Sc2 is still getting balance updates tho
sc2 was done for me since the worker change from 5 or so to 12 - all the early rushbuilds dead, which is what i love to see in games - just look the Rain - ZeLot series of artosis
Also killed sc2 for me aswell. stupid attempt to make the game more fun to watch at the cost of actual fun gameplay.
the early rush builds were fun, but the first 5-10 minutes of sc2 were so dull
Yeah I think it cut a ver important part of the game out. "Was it "boring" to outsider never watching SC before? Sure but it's omission made the game strats so much simpler and uninteresting because you had less to worry about.
In truth is not because of rush builds that it broke the game; it is because it promoted different openers with advantages and disadvantages each that largely appealed to personal player playstyles while having an impact in how the midgame would play out. You could be aggressive, you could play safe or you could be greedy.
Now you have rushed techpaths, rushed expansions, rushed lategame while Zerg got a huge boost due to how explosive the larva mechanic can be with its economy.
@@waterbloom1213 exactly
The first major hit to SC2 came when they left brood lord infestor unpatched for more than 6 months at the tail end of Wings of Liberty. I knew so many people who quit SC2 at that point, and by the time HOTS released they were into other things like LoL.
You're right about some games being left as is.
StarCraft Brood War, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Smash Brothers Melee.
They all have flaws but the games are genuinely great.
Third Strike as well. The parrying is what separates the casuals from the elite players. Broodwar micro and macro management is what separates big game hunter map players to pro level maps whatever they are now.
@@JL-ku7wo I left 3rd Strike out because of the difference of top tier to low tier characters.
Chun, Ken and Yun have so many advantages compared to comparable characters.
Chun's SA2 is way too effective and having 2 bars gives her way too much leverage with how meter gets spent like EX moves.
Ken's SA3 has the same issue except that having a short bar gives him a quick high damage burst.
Genei Jin is pretty busted and Yang having a similar SA kind of makes that point.
Don't get me wrong, I love Third Strike but it needs an update. I'm looking forward to it being a main title at Evo!
I agree with his sentiment about SC2's balance feels artificial at times with how heavy handed, short sighted, or how strange some balance changes could feel(thors and BCs getting nerfed during WOL). WOL zerg having some early defense issues that lead into queen buffs than accidentally lead to brood lord infestor. Giving an easy to produce backbone spell caster like HT feedback which has resulted in a bunch of balance decisions that would probably be easier to fix by giving the spell to a different unit rather than tweaking it every couple of patches.
Though he is wrong about SCBW pros saying they didn't want balance changes. The pros were interested but didn't trust Blizzard to not leave them hanging if they made a bad change. An experiment of rebalancing the ghost as a 2 supply unit would probably be welcome if it would be reverted if deemed a failure by the community. Scout tweaks would also be interesting along with medic stuff Artosis mentioned once.
Though something I really dislike from both communities is the obsession with the game being hard and that is why the game is good. Rather than the game being fun despite it being difficult.
What went wrong?
For a game that is 13 years old?
Covid did not help. The Chinese tournament WESG had $200K 1st place prize money and because of Covid it is no more.
I do not want a pissing contest between 2 and brood war. I think they are both incredible games and along with AOE2 it is the best sequel of alltime.
I was a Terran player in mostly team games. Playing got to tedious because of increase in the intensity of Terran micro to keep up with Protoss and Zerg with the expansions.
Simplicity and units having solid attack/defense stats is what made SCBW great. Like when they make games nowadays they have this "try hard mode" all the time they innovate a unit/character. Every unit has this amazing ability in modern games which just ruins the fun. Even new RTS and FPS games now is similar to a MOBA/RPG game with 1 billion abilities and upgrades. Pure numbers and regular attack/defense stats with NONE or ONLY ONE ability is all the units need. They dont need 3-4 different abilities, it becomes impossible to balance. Simplicity is what made SCBW, WC2, Doom, Quake, Unreal, Diablo2, and many other old games great.
And a more suitable pathing for an RTS despite being old af.
How the sc2 devs thought that the death ball was ok is beyond me
I agree. Gotta lean into the best parts of the game, basic combat is very emergent.
i agree with mostly of what you`re saying and get your point but putting wc2 as an example is not a great idea lol, w3 is more complex and it stood the test of time as the better and most loved game. w3 is actually a great example that a game can have multiple skills in characters and be complex while still being fun to play, have a great pacing, long fights, micro potential, etc,etc.w3 being so infinite in possibilities(world edit/custom) is exactly what literally shaped the pc gaming to this day. w3 is a complex game like sc2 but it has totally different balance so not everything is black and white, simple is not always better, but in the case of sc2 the game needs fundamental balance changes on how the game works to make people have more fun.
4:58 , They Had the big "Artosis Pylon" energy , thats why. Starcraft 2 doesn't have that.
Tassels and Arty , you're the best English caster of RTS industry. I vote for that ! 👍💎
P.S. i got my "Serious Gig" on starcraft back in 2014-2016 when i heard of you two also cast this very old game. You two saved it during the final days of WCG tournaments . Much Love Tassels and Arty ! 🤗
Im weary about the sportswashing that is going on
I had to copy paste this comment because I think it's a nice insight to sc1 old fans mindset:
"You didn't understand anything of what I said if you think that I don't play sc2 "despite it being a fantastic game"... As I said previously I am and I've been very well informed on sc2 and the sc2 esport from freaking 2009 given that I was literally crying tears of joy when the sc2 trailer came out... I know sc2, I played sc2 and I know I don't like it. Is it a far better game than WOL? 100% it is better but not enough, many the fundamental flaws still there and some new flaws were added like the shrinking of the early game/shenanigans by switching to the 12 workers.
I could continue for an hour but that said... Gamers that are happy with their competitive game don't generally go around frantically scouting for a better game, it just doesn't happen and that's the whole point in an *Hypothetical* scenario in which LOTV is a great game you're hardly gonna convince me to switch game because I'm good with what I have and especially sc2 has been the source of so many disappointments that's probly way down the list of hypothetical games to scout to find a better one.
*It had to be good 10 years ago or at least decent* , and it wasn't that hard, it had a predecessor, a huge sport to be funded upon FFS now after 10 years they introduce features pushing good players in splitting their armies? Are you kidding me? 10 years of horrendous death balls and now you start broodwarise it? Are you guys for real? I'm happy where I am guys, I don't need your insane gaming life full of fake balance patches and shenanigans, I like sport, I like good sports, I like solid and reliable good sports and that's about it"
content appreciated.
SC1 fan here... i stopped following in 2002 and got into other games and got back in during the pandemic in 2020, and was blown away following up on 18 years of history. now i watch all the ASLs.
But sometimes I do like watching world-championship level SC2... even though I don't know the game as well. It is still fun. But not as fun as ASL.
idk man, what I do know is that sc2 is about the only game that no matter what day, time of day I can que and get a match within a min. Top masters.
Is Starcraft2 dead?
I was one of the founding members of GSL.
I think back of the days when I was working at GSL.
How when there were many of the staff who had such passion and there was big hype and excitement from the fans back then.
And I asked myself "was all that passion and effort in vain?", and also asked "Is Starcraft2 truly dead?"
To answer that question, we need to ask a more fundamental question; why do we play game?
It is a question I've been asked by my parents countless times.
"Why waste time on such unconstructive activity"
"If you had invested time in studying as much as in gaming you would be working at Samsung now"
To be frank, I can't say they were wrong.
Let's face it, gaming is an activity that is not necessary for survival.
While it is a great recreational activity, mankind have existed fine even before gaming was invented.
Also there are many more "constructive" activities that one can do.
While I do make a living from industry that is based on gaming, I don't actually make money just by playing games.
Very few of us actually make a living from playing game.
Then why do we insist on playing? Why do we persue this activity so called waste of time?
Because that's what makes us human.
We are not animals that act purely on instinct of survival, nor are we machines with specific purpose and task and operate with efficiency.
We are human, and therefore we sometimes do things just for the fun of it.
Fun.
You know, sometimes when I go to my folk's place. I take out my old super nintendo and have a go on super mario world, sometimes with my brother.
And you know what? we still have fun.
The game hasn't gotten any patches, DLCs or expansions since its release.
It is still the same super mario world as when I first played it when I was 9.
It's more than 30 years old, but to me Super Mario World is not dead.
Why? Because I still have fun with it.
Fun. That's all that matters.
So I ask again. Do you still have fun with Starcraft2?
Nothing lasts forever. The pissing contest beetween broodwar and sc2 is just unesscessary. I think your reply is excellent as it speak to the "why" of why we even play games in the first place. Fun.
Broodwar wouldnt stand a chance if it were released today. It would make it as an indie game, the only reason it still retains popularity despite its crudeness and imperfection is purely people viewing the world through rose tinted glasses and thinking back to happier times and younger days.The super mario world analogy is perfect.
I remember that cinematic they released shortly after the trailer with Kerrigan talking and showcasing the zerg and having the muta fly toward a sunset.
Also the "game changing abilities" are very fun to watch compared to let's say the sc2 HT storm which is very underwhelming to me.
"it works because everything is op" like the sc2 community like to say which sounds so funny to me for some reason
There is no such thing as "IP Theft". Theft results in the original owner not having the thing that was stolen. Blizzard has its game, has its servers, has its code, etc. COPYING is NOT THEFT. Releasing a product that someone else made and claiming you made it is FRAUD not theft and the victim is the BUYER, not the original creator. It's hard for people to comprehend a world without IP law, but a few hours reading Stephen Kinsella's work on the topic will explain so much that the cherished tradition of governments forcibly prohibiting people from using their own creativity and skills to add to the world's prosperity easily becomes clearly wrong.
For me growing up with online BW custom maps as almost one of my first games I played, and SC2 being one of the only esports I've really watched. The guy tasteless watched makes a lot of good points why he and the community _loved and still loves BW and came back to it_ . For me, almost all the same reasons are what I would point at as to why SC2 would be the _better or more enjoyable esport_ of the two in my opinion. For competition and viewers. The thing I REALLY don't agree with is that SC2 is too easy to get into, that is just bonkers. Are we really going to gatekeep like the second hardest esport to learn (?) because there is a single game above it that is even harder? An example of what I mean with that it could be a good reason as to what someone loves about BW, but at the same time a reason why I think SC2 would be the better all in all competetive esport.
I do think the barrier to entry for SC2 is a lot lower the BW as there is a lot of content for casual players such as co op, customs campaigns and customs game modes. I do agree with you when from a esports perspective
Very well said, I agree with your points, your perspective is very balanced, fair, and well rounded.
Also appreciate you commenting on the video and correcting it where you felt it was inaccurate or wrong.
No it's not dying, it's because good casters leaving the scene, (I'm looking at you Artosis!) I remember the golden days of 2010-2013 when we had so many good casters: day9, TotalBiscuit, InControl, dApollo, djWheat, HuskyStarcraft, HDStarcraft, Khaldor, and of course, you guys the casting Archons. For me back then, watching Starcraft 2 tournament was more exciting than watching anything else in the world (MLG, Dreamhack, GSL, TSL, etc. GDI I miss those days!
Casters go where they can make a living (everyone needs to eat and a place to sleep). If there's no money in it then they need to find another way to survive. So it does really come down to raising money whether it's through sponsorships, through the publisher, or through fans directly.
I do agree that casters have a significant impact on drawing more eyeballs to events, creating more value for sponsors. I personally miss the BW days watching Proleague and MSL/OSL.
Fucking wild that two of those names you mentioned have passed away
Gettin old ain't easy
I personally enjoy watching starcraft 2 way more than 1
Saiyan's a great caster. I'd also shout-out Falcon Paladin as well. Support our boys!
I think that the pace of a game is of big influence on how players perceive a game.
Sc2 is just very fast in pace, to players like me (i am not a good player)
And sure we can macro very easily in Sc2.
But if 2 balls of units connect. The outcome is often, 1 group of base destructors remains. And it is often over at that point too.
This was hardly the case with BW. You had larger unit groups than the ramps allowed. I had no love for the huge ramps that were created later on.
And each geoup of units was a ball of its own. Meaning that there was less to work with for base destruction, after the 2 sides collided. Except of course for an air armadda.
A faster pace means a slower learning. You cannot learn from mistakes if you can't observe your mistakes. Observing your mistakes in old RTS games were very easy.
Also, everytime when i return to starcraft and broodwar. I still get this nostalgic feeling.
i rly loved and i am still loving SC2. Thats so sad about the fate of that game. All my hopes are now to Stormgate!
I second this.
It is funny how people can have such different opinions...I was playing BW and I cannot emphasize enough how much SC2 is better lol This is completely ridiculous for me to hear that people enjoy not being able to move normally units, having to return to the base like a robot to manually click everything... This is so dumb and uninteresting!!! Who gives a fuck if you can get close to a dumb machine by making many clicks???? The whole point of an RTS is the STRATEGY not fucking basic repetitive manual useless mecanics!!!!! I have 0 fun telling myself "wow he is so good he goes quickly to his base to click everything so he just has a bigger army". I am amazed by STRATEGIES, mind game etc... Otherwise it is like enjoying watching Platinum vs Gold player..."oh he knows the hotkeys => so he is faster => so he has a bigger army => so he wins"....
SC2 only suffers from the fact that the genra is not appealing because the entry skillcap is super high and this is just not the vibe currently....that's it. Other than that the game is just amazing and mind blowing. The level of the semi-final of Clem vs Serral at winter 2023 is the most impressive esport game of all times hands down.
You are right tasteless. I was a noob zerg main and quit during HoTS because swarm hosts and 1+ hour long games. It also made watching esports awful. I played brood war as a child and only stopped because sc2 release killed bw servers. Everyone left for sc2 or LoL. Sc2 also released without chat rooms. So many friends from brood war lost in the times before discord... blizzard sucks
the startin worker change from 5 or so to 12 was deadly. All the earlygame gone
Great content, keep making stuff like this I appreciate your perspective being in both games
Thanks for watching! There are some parts I would change if I could and things I would have added to this video to make it more complete. I think most of the criticism is fair and and I don't think i gave enough credit to sc2 for being a hard game.
Don't get blinded by the reverence for the legendary caster here, most of his objections comes from he's need for a live service title which is what grants him a stable job as a caster basically while completely ignoring the current miserable state of the esport bubble funded by micro transactions and used as mere marketing for more micro transactions.
Almost no one in the sc2 community is provided with the pride and integrity to strive for a title that resembles a real sport and that's because the real esport culture minus the bubble is still very small, kind of the size of speed-running or hardcore-nerd games like Dwarf Fortress.
Casters like Tasteless are at the forefront of an undeveloped but very profitable culture/industry made of scarcity-era people that most of all need money and the most stable job possible especially after a life of uncertainty during their young age.
Bottom line, i could easily debunk 90% of Tasteless objections to your video and I did multiple times in this video replies but this comment is already too long. Keep the hard work
Nearly the entirety of that video by Saiyan contained some of the worst takes I've heard, and I've watched Bethesda fans trying to convince others that Starfield is good.
Saiyan seemed entirely Korean focused in terms of game popularity which is always going to make SC2 look worse through the optics of 2023-2024, and he clearly tapped out of giving a shit about SC2 when he quit playing, because his video amassed a bewildering amount of misinformed and outdated talking points and just all-round came across like he wanted to give BW a reach around. What a bizarre video targeted towards SC2-hating BW fans.
I think another big aspect that personally makes me enjoy SC1 more than SC2, is just visual clarity. Starcraft 2 just has too many effects and a lot of units just "melt" into each other. In SC1, most units are more distinct, have their own little movement patterns, keep more distance and just pop off the background better (with some being an exception, like Mutas obviously).
Also, the way units move in SC2, they all feel too elastic (with groups always kind of "compressing" on arrival before "deflating" and spreading out) - which sometimes makes it harder to tell at a glance how much is really moving around.
The fact that so many people in the sc community don't have the pride and integrity to strive for a competitive title that resembles an actual sport but instead roots for the live service models that are always driven by money angry cynical companies... It's absolutely disheartening and concerning on the real state of the esport culture in our world
He's right about Blizzard trying to force "correct" usage of units, but it was less about rebalancing them and more about designing them from the beginning to be extremely one dimensional and gimmicky. That's the main difference between the two games: SC2 is, like all modern blizzard games, dominated by gimmicks.
He indeed is quite wrong. Designing a unit vs balancing are two completely different things. Overall Blizzard didn't change unit designs or roles that much from balancing like he is implying. Some units though have changed over time like cyclone and tempest but even their roles haven't really changed.
I don't know what Brood War has that SC2 doesn't because I haven't played Brood War since 2000 and I play SC2 every day.
I even managed to enjoy all the campaigns. Maybe it's just my eternal optimism painting everything pink ;)
The "freak accident" has some truth in it as we see the most popular but especially the healthiest eSports out there are the ones that turned competitive naturally from the bottom up instead of being sold as esports through company money balloons
There was a statement made on the blizzard support on starcraft which was the whole of starcraft2 made less profit than the first store mount on WoW. Which when you look at that there is a big reason why a profit driven company pivoted away from working with it. Its sad but when your looking at a lot of effort and little money compared to little effort and a lot of money, profit driven is always going to follow the lot of money.
Definitely sad, and it's not even a smart business decision. There's value in a tentpole IP than just how much its games made. No one's going to think about the "WoW mount that made more money that SC2 universe". But a large number of people are aware of the Starcraft brand. There is significantly more potential in the Starcraft brand than the "WoW mount that made more money than SC2" brand. IMO it's just not being realized.
Yes and the sc2 community wanting a sport driven purely by profit within a live service model tells us a lot on the state of the esport culture
Loved this video. Thank you! I'd like to see people dive more into how the mechanical gloss of SC2 could be adjusted so that less of the difficulty comes from reaction speed, and more comes from difficult execution and decision making. I think this is an important topic going into the Stormgate era
Absolutely, the reaction speed skill can't be the most appealing mechanical skill in an RTS, maybe a FPS but definitely not a RTS
Alright.
Ill say it.
I disagree. Lol. Its what sets SC apart.
Its part of why starcraft is so fantastic. It is not your typical rts except for the fact that starcraft reinvented the genre in its own image.
That micro depth is not overvalued from the other parts. Its just critical at elite levels where its the zenith of skill to manage it all and still have reactability.
Those who loathe it are like backup quarterbacks that want the rules to be different because then they could start.
All of the critical moments decided by that reactibility and micro is on the foundation of doing all the other stuff up until that moment properly.
You dont get to even make the marginal difference if the game wasnt already on the knifes edge from perfect macro decisions
@@richardwhite6062 are you talking about Brood War or SC2? Because SC2 has way more of "oops your army evaporated in 2s, you missed it"
@@debostahn whoosh
@@richardwhite6062 cool you're one of those
I went to my first Starcraft tournament in 98, I've won my first quake 2 tournament in 99 *super local, I've been to multiple CS torunaments (as shittiest playuer on the team). NOBODY CALLED IT ESPORTS. The prizes were keyboard and mice and FUCKING RESPECT from super small community. GET OFF MY LAWN RIGHT NOW, BUT IT WILL NEVER BE AS GOOD AS WE HAD IT. the experience of playing competitive video games wasn't limited to the best 300 people on the planet on a massive stage in a stadium. GOM made twitch. the 240p free stream was what forced everyone to move somewhere else.
Yeah he's wrong on the skill ceiling. True SCBW is more mechanically intensive... but SC2 made up for that with more units and abilities.
correct me if i'm wrong ... but to my knowledge, blizzard wanted to participate (and partly seize control) in the korean BW e-sport scene and step in AFTER it turned out succesful ... at which point the korean companies involved didnt want to deal with blizzard anymore, as they already had an established market, which blizzard did nothing for.
what 9:15 really highlights as starcrafts 2's biggest problem is its absolute lack of visual clarity and anti-clutter which BW does have. Death balls and attack particles obscure everything in your field of vision in sc2.
Alongside that I remain convinced that 2D is the right graphic for RTS
SC2's visual clarity is incredible. Not once in my life have I felt I can't understand what's happening on the screen while playing, even when I was just starting out and learning.
I'd argue that BW has pretty horrible visual clarity actually. You can't see very clearly under dark swarm, its pretty normal to stack air units as much as possible, interceptors are really large and clutter up the screen much more. My default bias is for everything BW but visual clarity is certainly one the things that I think SC2 improved.
Every time SC guys mention Melee and vice versa, it makes my heart happy. Two best games. Two best communities.
Man really out here with that Saudi copium package.
Game stops receiving updates: Abandoned by devs, ded game.
Game keeps receiving updates: """ArTiFiCiAl BaLaNcE"""
SC2 definitely had some issues, but fuck me "Artificial Balance" is one of the worst takes ever unless you're the one in a million game that has perfect "natural" balance off the bat, which has more or less never happened, or, if it has, is usually at the expense of a dozen dead units on the roster. For every SC1 there's hundreds of dead RTS games that didn't have that natural dynamic. There is no inherent advantage to not balancing games post-release.
I think what he was trying to get at was the perceived inability for the devs to reach a unit design/balance and map balance equilibrium that produced the kinds of matches players want. And the devs not letting a meta settle. This was true for Overwatch, so it's not a stretch to think they took the same bad approach here.
I agree there's no inherent benefit to not patching a game.
Love your content man, never give up your passions and i hope for nothing but success in your future!
Maybe it's a weird take , but I've been watching SC2 for a long time and what I love when watching pro plays is the fact that their skill got to a point where it's almost a "real" war , it's as if you're watching how a races with that tech or bio would fight if they were in that situation , it's really immersive and I find myself always rooting for the terrans for that reason ! :D As much as I respect the SC1 it will never give me that level of immersion due to pathing of the units amongs other stuff
You have a weird take on real war if you think that armies moving like a liquid clumped in a ball are realistic
@@markmuller7962 You made me chuckle, but at the top level there aren't much deathball vs deathball fights anymore. The pros split their army in multiple groups and attacks are happening all over the map. For us mortals this is not possible, so we end up mostly deathballing anyway, since it's easier. SC2 is too fast to play, but very enjoyable to watch.
@@Poebz-mv1cg Yes, if SC2 was to make to its 60% speed, it will be much easier to play like BW, but also be less enjoyable to watch at the highest level.
difference between Brood War (and frozen throne) and Heart of the Swarm is that they didn't really change or remove any content, they just added new stuff that caused new interactions (to my knowledge, I used to play SC, SC2, and Warcraft 2 and 3 quite a bit)
It's clear you have a lot more experience than I do with these games, but I think that's an important distinction between the 2 games. Expansions in SC2 feel VERY different, almost as though they're different games with the same graphics, while Brood War feels like the same game, just with some new units added
Holding tournaments and broadcasting matches is not IP theft. Maybe you could argue that it would be IP theft to broadcast the entire single player campaign or something, but companies like Blizzard and Nintendo take it too far when they go after people that are just trying to spread the game, as basically free advertising, because they love it. Buying something and using it publicly is definitely not IP theft unless viewing it is all it has to offer, like a book or a movie.
The biggest problem with Heart of the Swarm was watching Stephano win tournament after tournament by maxing out on roaches at 6:30. Blizzard didn’t fix that until several massive tournaments were ruined by this boring meta.
That was the end of Wings of Liberty.
This has got to be the Classic andy SC2 equivalent
WoL GOAT. despite its flaws. Making Harass specific units suck.
Vert interesting video. I still think that Saiyan makes a valid point about the constant patching of SC2.
Look at the latest Cyclone changes; it's basically a new unit!
But the Achilles heel of SC2 has to be deathballs, they ruin the game.
12 units control groups is one way to avoid that, I think that Stormgate will find another way to avoid them too.
Death balls, to many free units and to many patches. Some players and play styles could suffer a bit from patches
my school had a computer lab that was open to the public. 25$ cad for 1 year unlimited access. me and my buds lived there playing lan games and making tournaments (top prize 75$). was literally the most fun thing i did as a kid
Many mistakes were made in the history of sc2 but a lot went right too imo. LotV is a way better game than WoL was in my opinion. Brood war and sc2 differ a lot in (macro) mechanics, but one is not better than the other, it's a matter of preference. I think a modern rts like sc2 requires more patches in order to keep it balanced, but I don't see that as a bad thing.
I also think that one of the reasons brood war is still around because it rests on an incredible legacy. The macro mechanics make it an amazing game, but it makes it incredibly hard to pick up today. I honestly think you cannot make a successful game like brood war today, the landscape has changed too much. Which, ironically, is very good for bw, because there simply will never be a newer game like it. BW will live forever :-).
On the other hand, I think you can make another rts like sc2 that can take over the torch of sc2. And perhaps it's time.
I'm a month late to this conversation but wanted to give my anecdote on SC2. When I first played in WoL, it took quite a while to get a understanding how to use zerg. When MC came out with the sentry build it was a complete game changer.
SC2 imo began the slow descent into chaos when the swarm host came in. My favorite unit and imo the worst unit to ever come to SC2 before the viper got parabombs and destroyed in the GSLs. Memehost was once 100 mineral 200 gas and had the locust upgrade, essentially nullifying mech and ground protoss armies. Eventually in LotV the balance patch 3.8 had memehosts now mobile deployments of locusts that FLEW. My favorite memory is when I decimated Avilo 3-0 with my nydus worm queen memehost all-ins - because the memehost was FAST AF BOI.
Eventually they slowed it down and yet made it cheaper, and is now considered the fastest dps anti-ground build you could go for short of 2/1/1 bio tank. I eventually stopped playing in 2021 as not only did things stagnate from blizzard, the general sentiment of F2P and blizzard no longer caring for SC2 made smurf epidemic impossible to manage for new players, therefore plugging up talent.
No real point to be made here besides I took advantage of a meme unit and blizzard's hasty attempts to balance the patches. Remember when reapers did 10 damage grenades in LotV? Remember when adepts did 32 dmg to light? Remember when mocore rushes could break you? Remember infested terrans getting upgrades from evo chamber like other Z units?
Yeah
I loved starcraft 2, it basically caused me to spend 2 years trying to become a pro and seriously impacted my life.
But ultimately the game is flawed to the core and more or less unfixable because of the deathball problematic. The way pathfinding, collision, etc. works in this game (on top of being able to select infinite units) just leads to two deathballs walking towards each other.
Broodwar has created a game that almost feels like chess or go. There is almost no other rts like this.
Chess doesn't have RNG lol. Broodwar you spawn on a 4 player in a 1v1 and have a 33% chance of finding the enemy base on the first scout path. Can lose the game because you guessed wrong, lol.
If SC2 is a flawed game, I'll never understand how Broodwar gets a pass despite having a shit load of its own problems. Lol
People still struggling to seperate nostalgia from critical thought.
@@Flavalicious Broodwar is just better to watch, the collision system, the graphics, the sounds, it just works. SC2 was always a fake hype e-sport. Everyone was trying so hard to make it exciting. Although I can admit, after 20 years, pro broodwar is becoming a little stale as well. In last year we've rarely seen someting completely new.
@@Flavalicious It's not nostalgia if you are actively playing the game and can compare first hand.
The reason I brought up chess is that in brood war you have to be very strategic and you often have back and forth games. Yes the mechanics are super hard but they are not actually what makes the game interesting. In brood war you set up defenses, try to secure areas, have multiple armies, etc. In Starcraft 2 you usually just make one death ball and make it clash with your opponents death ball. This is a huge flaw in the game that cannot be fixed. It does not mean that the game is unplayable or not a good game because of it. It just means that there is a pretty big issue with the game that will always be there. There is no solution for it in the framework of the game. That is the only point I was tryin to make.
@@filipu4143 i disagree lol. Watching a terrain sit in their base for 30 mins before they can get onto the map is boring as fuck. If it wasnt for just straight up enjoying the tastosis banter there would be no reason to watch anything from the ASL.
There is only 1 reason BW esports isnt as dead as Sc2 and its because it was a form of national entertainment in Korea and the sequel never caught on in the same way.
Go watch Clem vs solar in ESL masters 2023 and tell me it’s not as back and forth as a high level BW tvz. Believe me as a 20 broodwar player the newer sc2 pro matches can be very broodwar like
This video contains so many bad takes it is just hilarious. Tasteless luckily pointing a lot of them.
But as some people have already pointed out in the comments, Saudis "saving" esports is also a bullshit take. Personally I would rather see esports become smaller than let Saudis take control with their sports washing and blood money.
I can launch SC2 and get even a 4v4 in less than a couple minutes at any time of day... it is a ridiculously alive game. lol
People are so silly.
Also smash Melee is only growing again because of community patches that have fixed bugs and allowed for online play, etc..
And he's calling SC2 dead because it's not getting patches anymore... while extoling the virtues of Brood war not getting patches for a long time... I don't think this dude knows how to put together a cohesive argument.
Your so right. Most people who talk up broodwar could never get out of F rank. They just think it’s great because they remember bgh in 2000.
The actual experience for bw is brutal these days. I play it but I can’t get anyone else to try it.
It's about time! Yeah, i had goosebumps when SC2 was announced, it was the first game I ever bought on pre sale. I too played like crazy, then played less in HotS and much less in LotV. I got all achievments in story mode, but I almost didnt play PvP later on.
All these years later i cant believe i paid $180.00 for sc2. Its one of the pillars of why blizzard will never get a cent from me ever again
What on earth did u buy that was $180? Sc2 is one of the greatest RTS games ever made and ur mad about it? Lol wtf kind of comment is this?
@@YoureWrongImRightGetOverIt at release, wings of liberty, heart of the swarm, and legacy of the void were $60 a pop. Wanted to support sc and blizz at the time, so I bought each campaign on release at full price.
So ur mad at them cause you bought 3 separate offline content, filled with story and replayability in one of the best games ever made in the world? Man you can say so much about activision blizzard and their terrible ways last years but this is NOT it, the company is terrible but what you did was totally fair and paying for complete content is actually the best thing to do right now. Ur just mad cause of money, go complain about all the food you bought over 10 years that was "wasted" too