Starcraft 2

[buhwhyen]

Just some updates on the game, from what I've read about the current build at Blizzcon. The game currently is gas dependent. Supposedly gas heavy units >> mineral only units. And, gas mechanics have changed - now you can only mine like 300? or 500 gas before your geyser shuts down temporarily. Meaning you don't get a constant flow of gas, so it seems like gas management will be a much bigger theme. What scares me is the potential that gas stealing will become ridiculously annoying/abundant if its possible to do early game.

Blizzard also took a stance a while back on the concerns a lot of Korean SC players had, multiple building selection. Basically, in SC1 you can only select 1 building at a time. In WC3, for example, you can select and hot key multiple buildings to a single button. So all your barracks can be 0, all your factories, 9, etc. This makes for easy macro, which is the scary part. In WC3, having 3 of any single unit producing building, barracks, factory, etc, is overkill. So who cares if you bind 2 buildings to do ALL your macro to 2-3 buttons instead of 4-6? Unit count never goes above 30, it hardly gets past 24. But in SC2, unit counts will be huge (bigger than SC1, I think), the ability to constantly macro will probably be much more important than SC1 cause it seems like macro > micro. So Blizzard's stance is to keep multiple building selection in SC2. I think it gives people who played SC1 seriously a huge advantage over those who didn't (even though I'm pretty sure it was a move to even the playing field, overall) because APM won't really go down significantly, so if you don't have to spend that much APM Macro'ing, you can spend that APM Micro'ing/controlling your army.

Theres also been a LOT of changes to Zerg mechanics in particular. Mainly the way hatcheries work. Now, in order to produce say 3 drones from a single hatchery, you have to click "d" for drone -3- times, instead of select all larvae and then "d" once (yeah, as if Zerg players needed more things to do - read: higher APM). Overall this change really fucks Zerg. With the onset of MBS (multiple building selection) which was originally Blizzard's solution to this zerg mechanic change, but I doubt Zerg players will really be able to effectively use MBS cause not all hatcheries create the same unit (except in certain cases, but generally you want some hatcheries to create different units). Selecting say 3 hatcheries and clicking the hot key for drone would create 3 drones, 1 from each hatchery. Creep damages non-zerg buildings if used offensively, the lack of creep damages zerg buildings. Queens have going through constant change cause they're still borken good. Nydus worms got changed (thank fucking god), into nydus networks... basically you can enter/exit at ANY nydus on the map. And you can store up to 255 units in the nydus network, exiting them at any time at any living nydus - if all nydus canals die, all units inside die. They introduced Changelings, a new zerg unit thats created from overlords. Basically it changes color and appeareance to match the player's race and color. So if you approach a blue terran player, your changeling would become a blue marine. The terran player has to realize the unit is not his (he can't control it, but automated defense doesn't kill it), supposedly dies in 1 hit to pretty much everything, but still lame. Roaches...are the same, more or less. The only new thing I read about roaches was they have an upgrade that increases the hp regen of roaches (cause they totally need that).

Theres also the advent of easy probe/scv/drone management, a change that comes from WC3. Basically you rally your workers from your nexus/cc/hatch to a mineral patch or gas geyser, and it automatically starts mining right after finishing. This game totally does everything for you. There better be a fuckton to micro, otherwise its gonna be WC3 w/o heroes.

I also wonder how viable this game is for over internet play...I'm honestly worried with the graphics I've seen in some game play videos that games over free servers (battle.net) will have serious lag problems.

Oh...and I've also seen building queues..also from WC3. With this you can queue a SCV to build multiple buildings in a row after they finish (same for toss).

Theres also the idle worker pop-up thats convenient. Whenever you have idle workers (scvs, probes, drones) theres a small icon that pops up in the bot left side of your screen with a number next to it or on the corner of the icon signifying the number of idle workers you have. CLicking on the icon centers the screen on and selects the idle worker, similarly you can cycle through idle workers if you have more than one. (Same as in WC3, again)

EDIT:
Random thought. I fucking hate the new graphics. Everything is so difficult to distinguish: terrain, unit type, attack graphics (most of them). Clearly I don't know what everything looks like and shouldn't be able to easily identify everything at first glance, but I really can't easily distinguish between a marine and a scv. Unit graphics look hella ugly, building graphics...are still pretty bad overall. Hell, I can barely SEE sunken colonies (or whatever the equivalent is now).

[buhwhyen]

EDIT:
Something important I forgot, about the game play. I was wrong about how protoss warp gates worked... They have no "rally" associated with them, which is partially a downside. Basically you select your warpgates, go to a pylon powered area, and instantly materialize units. Then the warp gate goes into a cooldown mode for some period of time, then you can again warp in more stuff to anywhere. This means 0 build time, but the building has a cooldown, so you can't queue. And you have to physically point to where you want your stuff to spawn. But still super good, overall it crushes down build times hella far, makes for some sick reinforcing in huge numbers too.
***************

So, I got the beta on Friday. Took forever to install because you have to torrent download 1.6 gbs and it doesn't allow you to control ul/dl rates, so according to my router, it was eating up ~110 kb/sec ul (my entire ul allocation) and only dl at roughly 300-400 kb/sec. The game itself installs relatively quickly, but apparently you have to go through the patching one by one. So, since there are 10 patches out currently, you download and update 10 times when you try to launch the game.

Just to say this outright, before getting into anything about the game itself. The current beta only has multiplayer capabilities. You can do 1v1, or 2v2 ladder, or create your own 1v1 or 2v2 games (custom games that can either be public or private, but don't affect your "ladder" ranking). In custom games you can play against the computer, but only the very easy difficulty is unlocked, which is super bad. So if you buy into the beta, expect to be playing against people, not computers.

The most recent projected release date of SC2 is ~6 months away. But actually it depends on how the recent Korea Cock Block rating shit goes down. (I'll post about this in the next post).

My first impression of the game is that it feels very warcraft 3 like, in how the cursor moves around and boxes stuff. Honestly, it feels really clunky compared to scbw, and takes some getting used to.

Contrary to what I previously thought, the game move exceedingly fast, or so it feels. The beginning of the game is even more brain dead than scbw, but it picks up pretty quickly. I think the game felt really fast mostly because the interface is really awkward if you played scbw at any decent level. The biggest issue I'm having atm, is not having save screens (f2, f3, f4) to move around. So transferring probes to expansions, and even gathering troops at my rally is really annoying.

Multiple building selection is absolutely necessary in the way the game has been implemented. In some ways I think that Blizzard had designed some of the macro around being able to hot key either buildings, or units and buildings together.

Example 1:
-Hot keying a queen and a hatchery.
So if I hot key a queen and a hatch to 6, I can double click on 6, hit v? and click on the hatchery to inject larvae. Which is fine and dandy, but that also means that for every hatchery I intend to inject larvae into (that doesn't have another hatchery w/ queen on the same screen), NEEDS a hot key. And frankly this really does feel like a chore to constantly inject larvae, and have ANOTHER hot key group for all your hatcheries so you can actually macro out of them.

So for a 3 base zerg with say 3 hatcheries and 3 queens, you NEED 4 hot key groups to macro properly. You'd be fucking yourself you ever have a 4th area where you have hatches/queens. Cause that's a lot of clicking every 25 seconds.


Example 2:
-Chrono boosting buildings (cuts build time by 50%)
So chrono boost has undergone a lot of changes, the 3 biggest ones are that you:
1) can only use it on your own buildings (you could chrono boost your ally in 2v2, previously)
2) you can only chrono boost a building that has already completed (you can't speed up the build time of the building itself)
3) the duration was cut from 30 seconds to 20 seconds (LOL)

So if you want to chrono boost your gateways, you need to hotkey a nexus with a gateway, double click on that hot key, and hit c (for chrono boost) and click on a gateway. Repeat <x> times for how much energy you have and gateways you want to or can boost.

This sounds alright..but it's again annoying, because if you're building both gateway units and robotics bay units (which you will be in almost every scenario), you either need to build your robo bays near your gateways, or have another hot key group for nexus + robo bay.

Similar to the macro problem with zerg, you really should have another hotkey group for your gateways alone, though it isn't absolutely necessary, like it is for zerg. SC2 implemented a lot of WC3 shit, including tab switching within a control group. Basically you can have your nexus + gateways hot key'd and hit tab to switch from selecting the gateways to the nexus' or vice versa.


For terran...it's slightly different. Terran doesn't have any funky macro mechanic like protoss and zerg. They just get ad-ons for more or less every unit producing structure. And you get a choice of either:
1) reactor
2) tech lab

The trade off is basically, reactors allow you to build 2 units at once in a single building. IE, 2 marines out of 1 barracks, 2 hellions out of 1 factory, etc. But you're limited in terms of tech levels you can produce.

Which leads to tech labs. Tech labs allow you to produce higher "tech" units. So you can only produce tanks and thors if you have a tech lab attached to your factory, and similarly you can only build marauders out of barracks with tech labs.

What I first found odd was the fact that if you have say 2 barracks, 1 with a tech lab, 1 with a reactor. If you hot key them together and queue 4 marines, all 4 marines will be built in the tech lab barracks, and none in the reactor barracks. So what ends up happening is you have to hot key all your barracks with reactors in 1 control group, and all your barracks with tech labs in another. Repeat for factories/starports (though you'd probably just want tech labs for both of these, I think).


This whole annoying macro catastrophe is actually because Blizzard made another unannounced change in a recent patch, which removed the ability to use a building's icon to target a spell. So..in other words, previously you could have all your nexus' and gateways and robo bays hot key'd together, then just hit c for chrono boost, and click on a gateway or robo bay icon in the selected group (the icons where you normally see all the units in the selected control group). Which would allow you to easily chrono boost all your stuff without having to make a ton of hot key groups. And for zerg, you could inject larvae in a similar fashion.



There are upsides and downsides to the pace of the game, overall. On one hand, it does lead to quick games without a lot of mindless macro'ing and you get to the "action" a lot quicker, if you choose to do so. However, at the same time, some of the more common rushes only involve sometimes as little as 3 units. Which in a lot of cases can be a game ending timing attack if you aren't prepared for it.

I've been mostly playing against the computer just trying to get a feel for the races, but overall, so far I'm having issues keeping my money down off 2 bases.


In terms of the game as a whole, I did some reading and apparently Protoss is dominating on English servers, and Zerg is dominating on Korean servers...which really doesn't surprise me. As I see it now, to play Zerg you really need super strong mechanics. Being able to properly utilize inject larvae requires a lot of effort, but realistically, you can get way MORE larvae than you'd ever need out of a few hatcheries. And there seems to be a lot of situations where you DON'T want 1 queen for every hatchery you have, because you can't possible use all the larvae.

And protoss are cheesy and overall really solid. They've been getting a lot of nerfs, but I still think they're borderline overpowered overall. The other races are really forced to either do certain builds, or just flat out lose. IE, terrans really have to go marine/marauder (the new marine/medic) because 1-2 tanks and a wall in can no longer stop a protoss player from breaking a ramp. 1 immortal, 1 zealot, and 1 stalker can kill 4 marines, 1 tank and a wall in really easily. For zerg, they really just seem to NEED roaches in almost every game. Roaches are similar to mutas and lurkers in scbw. Zerg can build a handful of roaches, and use those to survive while they build up an economy.


Funny priority coding in this game too. Apparently workers are ALWAYS targeted first. Over everything else. So a lot of terran players were actually bringing 4-15 scvs to every battle, particularly in TvT, because they soaked so much damage compared to marines, and did a decent amount of damage themselves. SCVs got their health reduced (i think that's all that got nerfed) to try and discourage bringing scvs to every battle.

[buhwhyen]

So, last week? Or it might have been the week before that. Starcraft 2 received an AO rating in Korea. So, since a large majority of the current pro gamers are actually <18 years old (not sure if "adult only" refers to Korean standards for being an adult or not, in Korea you're considered an adult after you turn 20), and most PC bangs (pc cafe's) have a youth crowd, this would more or less destroy any hope of a strong e-sports scene in Korea.

There's a lot of debate whether or not this is because of a recent political stance taken by the Korean ministry to reduce addiction to video games in general. I know a they're requiring some sort of "fatigue" system to be incorporated into a lot of the RPG/MMO type games where you lose effectiveness of some form the longer you play.

There's also supposedly some sort of curfew for games being enforced to all non-adults. That is, their internet gets shut off for x number of hours during the day during a scheduled time. Which is hilariously lame. Reminds me of how China tried to curb the addiction to Wow (still trying?) by instating a cap for the number of hours you can play.

But in any case, Blizzard has 30 days to file for some sort of retest or objection to the AO rating. I think they're going to have them retest the game when they finish their RC? version (I forget the acronym, but its not the retail, but the expected/prototype version of the game during the last stages of beta testing).

[buhwhyen]

So...interestingly when you first play against other people, you have 5 "trial" games. Basically ladder games with no points or value associated with them to let people get adjusted to the game. You also play these games on novice versions of the maps (basically both entrances, your and your opponent's is blocked by destructible rocks to prevent really early rushes.). Then after that, you have to play a bunch of "placement games" which determine which ladder division you get placed in initially. Helps match you with people roughly your skill level, in theory.

Balance wise...the game still needs some help. At the moment certain builds are just flat out better than others. To the point where you really don't even bother using a lot of the units, sadly. I already started feeling similarly in one of my games that I almost lost because I tried to not use the "counter" to marauders. And frankly, I would have lost that game if the terran player macro'd and expanded properly.

Seems like at the moment, terran almost always use marine/marauder to some extent, unless they try to cheese with banshees. Occasionally you mix in other stuff to help counter other units, but the core of almost every terran build is marine/marauder. Which is just dumb.

Similarly, protoss basically do the same build with few variations. Either you proxy, or you do some 1-2 gate tech to immortals/colossus. That's really about it...fast expanding isn't viable because you can get overrun so easily early on, it's not even funny.

Zerg basically just...tries to macro up without dying. And relies on out macro'ing the other person. Their end game army is pretty awful, comparatively. Fast expanding is almost unpunishable, which is retarded, people are complaining that even bunker rushing doesn't usually work unless you have close starting positions.

The game is fun...but I'd really appreciate some variation in the game play. It seems like it's really just gonna tunnel vision on 1-2 build orders and that the end of it. Most of the balance changes are nerfing things that are "too good," but nothing addresses the problem of over reliance on certain units (protoss are over reliant on immortals and colossus, cause they counter practically everything except air). Terran are over reliant on marauders, which have an upgrade that slows target's movement on hit (LOL) and they do extra damage to armored units, which is most non tier 1 units, they can stim pack, and they have more hp than marines, and they're cheap as hell to make, and they're tier 1, but require a tech lab (oh no).

EDIT:
With all that being said...the game is still in the beta testing stage. Hella time for things to be changed, though I doubt Blizzard is really willing to rework the game to the point where things are changed significantly enough to impact the meta game and general usage of units.

It'll probably be similar to starcraft 1, where the expansion finally (magically) balanced the game. I really don't think with the current units available, things will really balance out in a way to allow/encourage creative/innovative/non standard (cookie cutter) play.

[Pikachu]

What you said about Terrans having no macro tricks.. I thought they had this thing to make SCV's mine faster. It's done at the expense of scanning, though, right? Is it just not viable to use because scanning is vital?

[buhwhyen]

Terran's have mules. Which you can think of a super scvs. They just return more minerals per trip (pretty sure you can't use them to mine gas). The trade off is, yes, scan. The lack of a macro mechanic I refer to is that they just get more money from this, and as such, really isn't required for their game play. Can it help? Yeah, but you do need to stock pile a little bit of scan to make sure you don't die to stupid DT shenanigans, or otherwise burrowed crap randomly wandering the map. Also scan duration is hella long and the radius is pretty big, so you can actually get a lot more information out of it than before.

You see a lot of mules being used throughout the game, but the other races have no real alternative for their macro mechanics, and in some sense, mule'ing too much can actually cause you lots of problems cause you mine out WAY faster than your opponent. Which is a really flawed way of really increasing macro because you have to be able to expand at a faster rate.


So...really what I'm trying to say is...the macro mechanics terran received aren't consolidated and the other races don't need to think about what to use.

Zerg get inject larvae, you get 4 more larvae for 25 energy. There's a delay on when the larvae spawns, but that means with only 2 queens, every 25 seconds you can get -8- extra larvae on top of the regular larvae spawns (was roughly 1 larvae every 11? or 14? seconds in scbw, not sure what it is in sc2). So they can build more shit all at once for the cost of queens, which is really minimal, like 150 or 100 minerals.

Protoss actually got the best macro mechanic, in the end. Chrono boost increase build efficiency by 50% for 20 seconds. What this means is when you have 3 nexus, or even 2. You can boost up to 8 or 12 buildings every 100 seconds. Meaning over the course of say 600 seconds, or 10 minutes. You'll end up with a fuckton more units out of the same number of gateways/robo facilities. Not to mention the upgrade to warp gates essentially doubles? the build efficiency of a normal gateway. And warp gates can also be chrono boosted to reduce the cooldown on warping, which gives protoss the ability to slam gateway units the fuck out.

Chrono boost can also be used on upgrades, cause that's fair. Chrono boost is also used a lot to recover from harass, you can build a lot of probes in no time at all if you have 2+ nexus' producing probes.

Terran...got mules and reactors. Reactors are similar to inject larvae, with a huge limitation of only being able to produce low tier units. They *require* tech labs to function. So realistically, any money you gain from the mules, you end up spending a large portion of it on extra barracks and tech labs to produce the marauders you want for your army. Or similarly extra factories and or star ports, everything either wants or needs an add-on.

[buhwhyen]

After playing a bunch of games today...I noticed a few things, doing some reading/listening to podcasts, I learn-ed some more stuffs.

First, out of the 30ish games I played, only 2 did I, or even get close to, max out at 200/200. Most games ended with me under 100 supply.

Second, there really isn't a substitute for certain units, at some point you will always want to get stuff, or you end up losing. For protoss, immortals or colossus are always needed. Terran always need marauders. Zerg always need roaches or mutas.

For some reason people just generally refuse to expand their main and natural expansions, dunno why. And this is happening in the "platinum" division, basically people who supposedly don't suck ass. Though I think a lot of them actually do.

Scouting in this game is actually more important than in SCBW. Not scouting is similar to not scouting a terran player in TvZ going 2 port wraith. Bad times, and most of the time you end up losing cause you didn't scout 1-4 units being produced.

Marauders are fucking brain dead easy. You thought Protoss was 1a2a3a win in SCBW? Marauders are even easier to use than a mid game protoss army. At least with protoss you needed to have zealots AND dragoons. Marauder timing rushes can brutalize a protoss unless he's adequately prepared.

Pylons are fucking weak as hell, actually, so are supply depots. Pylon hp is 200/200, which seems...not too bad at first, but then take into consideration almost every "good" midgame unit get massive bonus damage vs armored, and suddenly pylons drop faster than cannons in SCBW. I actually have to build 2-3 pylons, and even then a lot of people still aim for pylons instead of cannon.

And really, that's a big reason why Protoss can't fast expand anymore. Forget focusing on sim city and stopping lings from getting up your ramp. They'll just fucking kill your pylon and you insta lose. The chokes are not nearly small enough to sufficiently block with just a forge, not to mention zerglings are relatively faster in SC2 than in SC1 and way easier to get tons of early on.

Protoss really need better fucking anti air. Seriously. The shit is ridiculous. Stalkers are just about as useless as dragoons are vs air, which is pretty pathetic. Archons are laughable, they do less damage than in SCBW, and they things do not stack at all in this game, not to mention their splash radius is shit, if they even do splash damage. The corsair replacement, phoenix's do pitifully to actually kill other air units, 8 phoenixs lose to 12 mutas. Void rays are not useful at all against air units, and carriers obviously won't do. Which leaves psi storm, which got nerfed, and is actually somehow worse against mutas than it was in SCBW. And cannons...are actually your best choice, wtf. They do DOUBLE stalker damage (stalkers on do 10 damage against non-armored units, cannons do 20). And are beefier than stalkers, with 150/150 hp/shields. If they didn't cost so much gas, I think just about everyone would mass air against protoss, cause they just don't have really good anti-air, but their ground units are quite strong overall.

The only thing preventing Terran players from abusing the shit out of banshees against Protoss is the fact that banshees have energy. High templars have feedback (without research, they come with it no matter what). Feedback does 100% damage:energy burned. Actually, high templars are a large part of the reason why terran HAS to use marauders against Protoss. Cause their other alternatives: thor, ghosts (which are still used), and banshees all have energy which leads to tons of free damage on top of storm, which is great against bio Terran builds.

Why doesn't Terran mech? Because it:
1) Costs more gas than you have. Siege tanks are super gas intensive, like 250? 275?, considering you get 5 gas per return and gas geysers only have 2500 gas per...bad times. Granted you get 2 gas geysers per base...but it still is way too much gas to support. (Gas geysers are un-minable after they deplete now) So you can no longer get 20+ tanks and just destroy anything that comes into range.

2) Hellions, the vulture replacement, basically can only kill bionic units. They have an aoe fire attack, similar to firebats. But have no spider mines, or any other ability for that matter to do reasonable damage to armored units, and they don't have much hp to soak damage. The upside is hellions (I think) only cost minerals, though their utility goes down really fast as the game progresses.

3) Tanks siege/unsiege slow as fuck. Mobility was already terrible in SCBW for meching Terrans. It's far worse in SC2, so much so that people have just flat out abandoned siege tanks more or less. The prevalence of being mobile and not being so limited by ways to get to your opponents base makes siege tanks invite counter attacks anytime you start to move out of your base.

4) Their splash damage is pathetic. Seriously, even with how much ground units clump together, the splash damage is not nearly as butt fucking scary as it was in SCBW.

5) Other races got crazy tank counters. Protoss most prevalently, has immortals which LOL at siege tanks. Similarly being able to blink your dragoons into the tank line is pretty hilarious.


Zerg really is a pure macro crazy machine. Like... I actually agree with what the feedback from the Korean servers have been...which is Zerg are really just pretty damn overpowered. The official response is that no match up is statistically skewed even to 6:4. To which I say there aren't enough macro oriented zerg players exploiting the safety spawn larvae offers, rather than trying to just straight win off 2 bases.

What's scary about zerg atm, is that they can just flat out take map control in PvZ, mass lings is pretty damn viable considering how many you can get, and even scarier, you can easily transition to "standard" play after getting like 20-30 lings early on. Spawn larvae allows zerg to really recover pretty easily, as long as they don't throw away units early on, which any decent player won't.

There's a pretty long period of time where, as a Protoss player, I just can't feel comfortable pushing out when there are lings outside my base. It's not that I can't defend my ramp, but more that zerglings are SO much faster than other units in this game, that it's super easy to get surrounds and spawn larvae allows zerg to build enough shit to hold off your push even if you make it to his natural. If you exploit this timing window where you really can't be attacked, you could easily secure another 1-2 mining bases, and just shit out units and threaten counter attacks. Losing 1 mining base, when you still have 3 left, means not a ton when you're taking out 1 out of 2 mining bases of your opponent.

And mass roach/hydra is also so brain dead easy that I actually Lol'd when I had higher tech and an equal size army which lost to it. Roaches enmass are pretty aggrivating. There are a lot of times where I think I'll win, but don't. However, there are a lot of times where I don't think I'll win, but I do. The regeneration rate of roaches really makes largish scale battles (20+ roaches) really difficult to predict. If your units auto target properly, then you'll probably win. If your immortals decide to shoot zerglings, you will die quite messily.

Which brings me to another qualm I have with PvZ as it's played on US servers...Why do people constantly zergling rush (1 base pool/gas first, rather than fast expo) if a Protoss that goes for any variation of 1 gate tech or 2 gate can easily stop it cold. If I do the super fast 1 gate don't make anything other than probes up till ~18-20 food build, I can essentially scout the zerg in time, and chrono boost 1 zealot to block my entrance and be completely safe from 6 ling rushes.

And on top of that...unless it's a 2 player map with close starting positions, hatch first is almost 100% safe in PvZ. Even proxy 2 gate in the middle of the map isn't even close to guaranteed to win. Often times I see 2 gate proxies fail in PvZ, just cause its so easy to crap out tons of lings once your queen gets out, and the queen itself is pretty strong in the early game.

A lot of the changes made to the game so far have turned out to be mostly in response to a lot of cheese builds that people have come up with. I was doing some research, apparently they had to change queens to move slower on non-creep terrain because in ZvZ, some korean player(s) discovered that you would autowin if your opponent did any non-(whatever) build and you did this stupidly strong zergling/queen push.

Similarly, changes to spine crawler walk speed were made to prevent offensive sunken contains in PvZ (WTF), they would literally walk them up to the front of your base and contain you at your own choke point.

Marauder's concussive shells (on hit, units are slowed - movement speed is lowered temporarily) an upgrade because there were certain early timing pushes were it was really obnoxious because you could easily deny your opponent's scout by walling your choke, and proxy 2 more barracks and do a stupidly strong 3 barracks marauder push early on with stimpack.

The underlying problem is that Blizzard apparently has a design philosophy that goes something like:
-We expect every unit to have some purpose or place, even if the situation where it's useful is obscure/doesn't come up often. IE, they want everything to be useful in some way in their eyes, even if they become niche units with retardedly narrow scope.

-We expect that certain units are "core" units, that have an essential role in <x> race's army. (Which is mostly what is being change in the patches) And have no intention of changing their role in the game.

-We take into consideration the data that we have gathered in making adjustments in the patches. Even though we release a new patch more often than once every 2 weeks. (Apparently they can gather conflicting, yet sufficient data to make changes, between beta servers to make balance changes)

Apparently the game's evolution is massively different between each server (region). In the US servers, there's a lot cheesy rushes an just early aggression in general. People really don't expand more than once before the game is over. European servers are also pretty aggressive, though their aggression is more focused on strong mid game timing rushes and cute micro or otherwise tricks.

In Korea the game is a huge macrofest. Which is obviously why zerg dominates in Korea. There's a lot more emphasis and effort being put into finding safe ways to fast expand, which as we all know will be the answer if it's even 80% safe against most builds.

My current musing is something along the lines of comparing sc2's meta game evolution to that of sc1. US and European servers are really starting from the beginning with early aggression and very little expanding. Very similar to early sc1. There's also very little variation in build orders, which is also similar to sc1. The "other" units, the ones that are currently unused might turn out to be templar for protoss (early in sc1, templar were more or less ignored, actually spell casters in general were ignored).

But in Korea, they just jumped past the cute micro and early aggression shit and went straight to 2005-2006. If they can really find ways to micro and defend a lot of the early aggression, then Korea will once again be leading the world in Starcraft. I have a feeling that this will be the case, despite popular belief otherwise.

Why? Because it's not like all Korean players are macro bots. In fact almost every really good zerg build has come from a Korean player (in current SC2). Not to mention all sorts of crazy all-in builds that wreck the shit out of anyone that doesn't do something similarly crazy all-in ish. And on top of all of this, the crowd in Korea is apparently butt fucking huge, even without ANY pro gamer involvement in the beta. Apparently, being top 100 on a US server is equivalent to being top 500 on a Korean server (LOL). Not that this really surprises me, cause playing ICCUP on US/European time is totally different than playing on Korean time. If I played sc1 with only US/European players, I have no doubt I'd get to at least B+. If I played during Korean hours, I think I'd be lucky to get past C+/B-.

[Pikachu]

K, I think I get what you're saying in these posts, so lemme try to regurgitate a few points back in my own words:

Terran's mechanic doesn't count because they're just mining faster, which isn't enough of a macro mechanic compared to the other races' gimmicks because Z and P actually allow for faster burn rate/build time of what you harvest. While it's fine and dandy to get extra minerals, it doesn't count for dick unless you have an outlet for it.

Gas heavy units are pretty good, but you don't get gas very often. I get the feeling that as soon as you get the gas, you can crank the unit out really fast (nh), but you better protect that investment or you lose out.

As a corollary to the above point, some TL posts seem to give me the impression that mineral-based units are pretty f'n good, which helps build the backbone of the army, while gas units add bite and can make the difference in an individual fight. I know that's generalizing quite a bit, but I'm kinda musing about that feedback from a design perspective.

Korean players have faster hands and bigger player pool. FTW.

[buhwhyen]

SC2 release date confirmed july 27, 2010.
www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=123265

Kespa's response kicks blizzard in pants.
www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=123275

[Pikachu]

A few problems with Kespa's reasoning, assuming the translation is fairly accurate:

"E-sports is a newly emerging sports industry based around video games, and is a gaming business as well as a sports-entertainment business that provides game developers an opportunity to increase revenue and customer satisfaction, and provides sponsors the opportunity to promote and market their products. Taking these features into consideration, if a game is to become a popular E-sports competition, the game developer and the E-sports organization must have a flexible relationship. If a game achieves success as an iconic E-sports competition (note: KeSPA does not name Starcraft specifically), and the developer pursues profits by declaring that their copyright is valid in the sports industry as well, then that is a large obstacle for E-sports’ growth and establishment as a future sports-entertainment industry."

Anyone who wants to broadcast pro sports events (e.g. NHL, NFL, NBA, etc.) has to go through licensing fees. Pursuing fees is not necessarily a large hindrance to e-Sports. It can legitimize the activity by putting a market value on contractual broadcast rights, actually (though this might mean someone else besides Kespa can get in on the action, but that has more to do with a hindrance to Kespa and not necessarily e-Sports). Similarly, if you want to broadcast a TV show, you have to buy the rights as well. Legal precedence supports Blizzard here, and arguing about industry growth and/or barriers is not going to help much.

Kespa does at least go on to say that they were willing to pay "reasonable" fees, though that is a very subjective measurement. They also complained that they'd only be able to use the game for a year, which I assume means some annual royalty. What I don't understand here is why a multi-year contract wasn't proposed on Kespa's end so that they could have a stable league (their words). Assuming they did propose this, I don't see why they wouldn't bring it up in such a loaded moment to further paint Blizzard as unreasonable. My take on this is that they didn't.

But...

A few dick moves on Blizzard's part, assuming the truth on Kespa's take on the situation:

I think broadcast/licensing fees should become one and the same. Separating the two is like double charging shipping fees in car sales. Auditing Kespa's finances is complete bullshit. A few people responded in that TL thread saying that this means Kespa has something to hide, and that's just outright ignorance. It sounds like Kespa isn't a public entity (or Blizzard wouldn't need to demand auditing rights), and so looking that closely at their balance sheets means exposing their business to Blizzard completely. Blizzard may own the game, and IP rights do extend to broadcasts, but beyond that, Kespa ought to be free to run their own shift without giving away trade secrets. This is the kind of secondary content that Kespa does have the rights to.

What's really strange about this case is that if anyone broadcasts a copyrighted product for profit on TV, they need to pay some royalty. At the same time, most leagues, especially sports, use a product/game that has no copyright. My earlier sports analogy only goes so far, because precedence is a guide, not a rule. Given the demands Blizzard is making, such as approval of league management, sub-licensing fees on sponsorships, and so forth, makes me believe their goal is to have the league for itself.

From a legal perspective, Kespa really can't say dick. Nothing protects them right now, and if Blizzard wanted to shut them out of SC2, they could. From a business perspective, Kespa is actually in lots of danger. They're the ones who who face an existential crisis, because the worst case scenario for them is that they lose their biggest draw and potentially die off. Can they survive w/o SC? Maybe, but that is shakier ground than Blizzard. Blizzard can live on without the e-Sports scene. Sure, they miss out on untapped revenue, but they stand a much bigger chance of survival because e-Sport's leverage is limited given its nascent form. No call for boycotts from the e-Sports crowd is going to project a believable threat.

At this point, I'm interested in seeing how this goes down, but I hope other companies and communities learn to pay attention to this case study. I wonder if SC2's scene has the power to just drown out Kespa's BW scene. There really is no way to tell, because the quality of the product isn't the only determining factor. Legitimacy, newness, marketing, and industry presence affect the outcome. Even player quality gets drowned out, because no one will care how great Jaedong is if no one buys into BW and no one is there to appreciate his skill. What happens to Kespa if Blizzard provides the bigger stage to play upon in the long run and the e-Sports teams' sponsors demand that they head to the bigger stage (so they get better exposure)?

On the other hand, what if S.Korea becomes this uncrackable bastion? If they're a big enough thorn in Blizzard's side, then maybe they might go to a legal fight. I think Blizzard's current strategy is to threaten the above scenario and get Kespa to dance to their tune. If Kespa believes they can survive without SC2, then I hope they have deep war coffers to match Vivendi. That would be a battle I don't see them winning.

A third scenario might be that Blizzard will decide it's not worth it to put money towards going after Kespa (though that'd surprise me greatly... cutting off negotiations so publicly at the announcement of SC2's release is a bit chilling) without giving them rights to SC2. Implicitly, this will mean that Kespa will be around for as long as they can keep a BW audience *in spite* of SC2's existence. In other words, Kespa would have to play out a delicate balance in their existence - big enough to survive, small enough to make it not worth it for Blizzard to turn their gaze toward them ever again.

[buhwhyen]

Well. Just keep in mind that there are differences with Korean law and American law. Not knowing the nuances can affect your own perspective. Particularly in regards to precidence. I have no idea how American and Korean law work in regards to International stuff. But I remember reading that Korean law does hold a number of differences, particularly in regards to claiming "back logs" of IP rights 5+ years after the fact. Not to mention the terms of use from the original starcraft most likely did not include any number of things that are being exploited, legally.

The licensing fees are not a huge issue, it's more they don't want to be completely regulated by Blizzard on a yearly basis, which would NOT lead to a stable league. Blizzard's track record is to do ABSOLUTELY nothing until they see potential for profit. What did they do for Starcraft/Warcraft until the games gained enough popularity on their own to have large scale torunaments? Nothing. They didn't host dick shit for tournaments, or offer any sort of support for organizations who tried to start up any sort of e-sports league.

This was the way it was for over 5 years. Then they started Blizzcon, but even then that was more a PR event to keep people interested in what they had planned for the future. Hosting a tiny, not even 32 man tournament yearly? And they want to become the center of e-sports? The only event that I know of that they publicly sponsored was the last GOMtv tournament. But seriously, what's 1 major tournament in 12 years of the game's existence?

But either way. Blizzard is also claiming a lot of IP rights in regards to secondary products produced by Kespa. Frankly, they have zero right, in any country's law to demand that Kespa submit their pro-teams AND corporate sponsors to Blizzard's demand/control. What the fuck is that? There's no doubt they expect to pay IP/licensing fees, but Blizzard's demands are more like you should pay us for everything that you've done, because it's our game.

And the only time Blizzard has ever really argued with Kespa is when Kespa tried to license broadcasting rights themselves, in Korea. Which is way out of Kespa's rights. But Blizzard is now trying to exert similar control over Kespa because SC1 leagues will still be going during the SC2 launch. If Blizzard gains control over pro teams, corporate sponsors, and Kespa, a large portion of their audience won't be completely distracted by SC1 and ignore SC2.

You know it's gonna happen. SC1 pro gamers will continue to play SC1. Why? Because it's their job, and they get paid pretty damn well to do so. Corporate sponsors will NOT jump over to Blizzard's side when they have no semblance of an organized league. If anything, corporate sponsors will go with whatever leads them to having more broadcasted time and the star players which will endorse their products. Who the fuck has ever heard of Artosis, Idra, Nony, White-Ra, Koll, Strelok, Sen, Grrr, etc. in their home country? I actually doubt anyone but me knows the majority of big name non-korean starcraft players.

Seriously, if you walked around in America, and you asked some random guy if they knew who <x> famous American starcraft player was. They'd not only not know, they'd probably think you're a fucking nerd/geek/loser. Really, Korea is one of the few places where good players really have a, not only publicly recognized (to an extent), but a uniquely dual-gendered fan base. Everywhere else, it's just other "gamers" who play the game and follow someone who's way better than they are.

Kespa really can't do much at this point, except try to re-open negotiations. But it's really not like Kespa doesn't have any cards. They have literally the best RTS players under contract and a lot of large international companies backing their pro teams. I doubt either of them will rebel outright if Blizzard doesn't show more support for Kespa. Cause despite Kespa's hatred from America and other foreign countires. It is quite widely accepted in Korea. I think it's more likely that some pro gamers will retire and play SC2 without a pro team (which will reverse 12 years of progress in e-sports), and the rest continue playing SC1 if Blizzard doesn't re open negotiations.

Really. We don't need any more regression for e-sports. Take Counter Strike for example. For a while CS 1.6 was deemed perfect. In Europe and actually a few teams in Korea, were able to gain corporate sponsorship. But then CS source came out, and what happened? The community mostly dissolved and split. Why? Because some players went left, some went right. The difference between this and starcraft? No kespa and no collective agreements between the teams (yes the pro teams in Korea are actually supporting Kespa's decision in this matter).


Honestly. What is Blizzard going to do? They're gonna shut out the most dedicated audience they have? It's honestly hilarious to hear about the distribution of "skill." You probably know that basically no A-team pro gamer in Korea plays SC2. Yet, in Korea there are almost 3 times as many platinum divisions as there are in US and EU. These are all people who have jobs, go to school like everyone else in the world.

Blizzard is already failing in terms of Battle.net 2.0. If you've heard about a recent "offline" tournament held in China. The Blizzard servers actually just flat out failed. The ENTIRE asian servers lagged so badly that people couldn't stay connected, even when they could stay connected it was like watching a movie on slow. Seriously, I doubt Blizzard will get their shit together to properly be able to host E-sports in any reasonable capacity. They just don't fucking understand what needs to be done.

Even now with the beta. If you go back to play SC1, which I refuse to do atm because of this issue, you'll cringe going back to the beta. Why? Because at any point during the day, more so during "peak hours," you can feel the lag. It's actually pretty analogous to HDTV lag for fighters. People who are used to muta micro and M&M micro in SC1 feel the input lag and delayed response of units. But if you just started playing SC2, it probably doesn't feel all that awkward.

Partially this is because Blizzard is again thinking that people no matter where they are in the world, will have "broadband" so their connections will be the same as they are "in house" like when Blizzard plays right next to their servers in Irvine.

Changes to net code? The big one is that they upped the "low" latency to 125 ms. If you've played in a SC1 B.net game and upped the latency to "extra high, you've increased the buffer time to allow for more "lagless" play. Though at another expense...

This becomes technical, but the basic idea is that 125 ms is a buffer time. So when you click a button or do anything in game. The game allows 125 ms for that command/input to reach your opponent and relays it to their computer. So essentially you do not *feel* any lag if you can constantly send/receive information in under this "buffer" time but this also means that every click you make is also essentially delayed by that much time. This sounds "fine," but really it's not. (the increase was from 100ms to 125ms)

Why? Because now you not only feel more delay with your clicks, but your games are also ALL routed through Blizzard servers. Previously more of a P2P scheme was used. What does this mean? Instead of going straight through my computer to my opponents computer. Information has to go from my computer to the closest Blizzard server then to my opponent. What does this do? It adds another series of nodes into the networking equation. It does add more than one, in fact in most cases, a lot more than one.

Again, this shouldn't be a huge problem, right? Wrong. Blizzard has come out and publicly announced that they think playing online is the new way things work, and that LAN just isn't necessary (bullshit by the way, but I'll pass on this for now). But think about it. If a game is hosted on a Blizzard server, lets say that server is in Irvine. I'm playing from San Diego, not too bad for sending information. But if I'm playing in a tournament, where my opponent in in Europe? Information he sends has to go to Irvine, processed and relayed/routed to me. Or vice versa, I have to send information to a server in Europe.

The extra communication time and information processing time is absolutely huge, particularly with a game that is or can be played in "HD," the amount of information that needs to be sent and processed is larger. Yes you only "need" to send information about that is/isn't moving or whatever, but the server still needs to be able to handle the higher def graphics itself to manage the game. And not only your game. And hilariously, since the game has the capability to be played in HD, means the servers must actually run HD settings no matter what, so even if you play in low settings, the server has to play in high settings at all times.

There's already plenty of empirical evidence supporting the fact that having players in Europe play on US servers and having US people play in Europe servers leads to lag. In every case I've seen players always have to "deal" with lag. Which in a competitive environment, is not acceptable. The argument that people should "learn to deal with lag" is utter bullshit.

Given the way the internet works (best try scheme) and inherent packet loss that comes with sending information across half the world. There's no way you'll be able to really play an online tournament in a similar fashion to the way you play at a LAN. There will always be stability problems. And think about it. The last TSL had $10k up for grabs for first place. If Blizzard's servers lagged and you "lost a game because of lag," what happens? Nothing. You just lose upwards and probably beyond $5k in prize money cause Blizzard can't host MULTIPLE servers to provide a "lagless" gaming environment when a single server can support the entire world for SC1 (see ICCUP. yes they only have 1 server for the entire world).

Which leads to more shit about the demand for LAN play. But Blizzard almost definitely won't allow this because of the potential to circumvent their "authority" but frankly, you can only have so much control over your own game. DRM in this fashion is only going to bind and constrain any efforts to make the game more competitive. Any frankly, good fucking luck to anyone who plans to host a tournament with no chat channels. Since there's a limit of 6? chat windows you can have open at any given time.

By the way, there are rumors that people are having a good deal of success with emulating b.net 2.0. So likely, there will be an emulated version you can throw on your own server and play locally like that. Not surprisingly.

[buhwhyen]

After thought on IP rights.
Where do IP rights end? I understand you want to get credited and make money off broadcasted events of your game. But does that really make any logical sense for a video game?

Popular examples/analogs include major sports leagues, BUT I don't see the correlation between the NFL/NBA/etc and Blizzard. All the afore mentioned leagues are much more like Kespa than Blizzard. Blizzard is more like the guy(s) who created basketball/football/etc however many years ago. And I doubt their families are getting royalties paid to them, if there even is a singular group credited for creating the sports.

Actually if you analog the situation with Kespa, they'd be much closer to SRK running evo, though on a more regular basis. Does SRK pay royalties to host capcom fighting game tournaments? Does ANYONE pay royalties to any company that made a video game that they host tournaments/leagues for?

This is actually a pretty unique situation that I honestly don't think any amount of precedence applies to. Kespa is the first major organization to even bring video games, video games, to the point where they can be marketed to the general population just as a sport would. The world cyber games (WCG) is again a once a year tournament with, to my knowledge no one claiming royalties from the games they market. They stream their games world wide online, and have corporate sponsors for their tournaments. They've even hosted starcraft for at least 5 years.

As a side note, European FPS games have had a run at a "pro gaming" scene. But it has mostly died out with achieving only moderate, at best, success. But again, ever hear of any FPS game company claiming royalties on organizations making "pro" leagues out of their games? I haven't.


The big question here is whether IP rights extend to:
-Only publicly broadcasted (via TV/Cable) games.
-Organized leagues.
-Internet streaming of their game.
-Any organization making a profit off their game.
*If yes, does this also apply to non-profit organizations?

[Pikachu]

Yes, there are differences in Korean and American law, but there are international standards put into place for software. At some point, Blizzard can and will make enough noise to get an international court to pay attention (and frankly, if I were that court, I wouldn't ignore this, because there's a lot of decisions that could be made that'd impact future issues).

You touched on why I basically find this interesting. Legally, you have to try and start with precedence similar to what already exists, while recognizing that whatever you're looking at is a first time case. This is a case that hasn't happened before, because sports leagues don't pay a royalty on football, because no one owns that idea.

I figured SRK would come up. Fact of the matter is that if Capcom decided to pursue things the way Blizzard did, we'd have more answers. There are some differences from the corporate standpoint here. One, the SF series was obscure and didn't make as much money as SC:BW. Two, Capcom does not have as big of a set of asshats with money to swing like Blizzard does. Reality limits what you can and/or want to pursue. I think ideally, we'd want to see what is happening with fighters now to happen to the SC scene. Capcom shows a lot more love to its fans, and there are community insiders that have turned into corporate insiders, which just benefits everyone. The future is pretty good for SF at this moment and we're seeing growth that we dimly dreamed of back in 2001. Lesson learned here? Capcom's humility has served them better than Blizzard arrogance. [side note: If Blizzard got some juicy slice of the Kespa pie, I still don't think Capcom would try to jeopardize the symbiotic relationship with its community... too high risk. But Blizzard has no such crutch, and I think that's what makes them dangerous.]

Things like well run tournaments and a thriving scene, however, aren't going to hold in a court. It does Kespa no good to have their attorneys talk about how they're the only ones who can provide a service that Blizzard can't.

I personally think that no company has pursued what Blizzard has pursued because the cost to benefit ratio has never been as lucrative as this situation with Kespa. I'm not as willing to pursue the idea that just because no one has thought to do this as an argument for a company not having rights. There simply isn't a ruling to make things clear. Let's consider people doing this for free. Youtube channels actually get shut down over showing video game content. Do all companies go after them? No. But it has happened before. I think a good example is what happened to DSP, where I heard he got his account banned over a Fallout playthrough. Then again, guys like 4pp and deceasedcrab are doing just fine. Plain inconsistency even on the part of companies, even, but if Youtube gets a cease and desist order, they'll be obeying it to cover their own ass. I think, however, that Jon747 has had Kespa down his throat for a time in the past as well, or was that another channel?

At this point, it's exactly as you put it. How far do the IP rights go? Up to some licensing fees for a larger operation, one as big as Kespa? You betcha. Small LAN center? They'll get away with it even if it's illegal, with the caveat that they're the only ones and they're not a part of a trend. It'll probably be similar to what wakes the RIAA sleeping giant.

On that note, even non-profits are subject to fees. I think a more accurate term for IP usage here is that royalties are owed when revenue is pulled in through the use of copyrighted/trademarked material.

So I guess it'll come down to what you've projected then. Fractured tournament scene, maybe a hardcore one for the Koreans, and I'd wager a scrubbier one for non-Koreans. That's assuming Blizzard even allows for this to happen. It's all a fairly gay clusterfuck that Blizzard could have prevented.

[buhwhyen]

This change is just fucking epic fail on such a hilarious level.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=31kSA0Guqpo

Keep in mind this change apparently affects hellions too (vulture replacements)

Quote from TL:
FrozenArbiter: "Someone please tell Blizzard that when we say moving shoot, we really mean Animation Cancelling"

PROTOSS
Phoenix
-Can now attack while moving.

[Pikachu]

That is demented.