The Ui still needs a lot of work and Cross adaptations with the Replay UI. As an Example, in AoE2DE you can now see Production and is much more zoomed out. A lot of noobs would remember to constantly produce workers and units.
For sure, but that’s by design. Part of developing your macro skills in SC2 is remembering to do things at certain intervals. The same goes for unit upgrades, making supply, and matching production to income, etc. etc. It does make the game less accessible since people need to develop muscle memory.
I suspect a future SC3 will have less of those mechanics in the game loop.
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It’s always a question of which niche you want to fill.
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No games ever become a dead game until their corporate servers go offline. Then some enterprising hacker finds ways to breathe life back into it if only in a minimal state.
There’s plenty of action in the SC:BW & SC2 scene. If another sequel incarnation of the game comes along it will foster the legacy of this game securing it to its rightful immortal status.
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Meaningful discussions
Frankly I also prefer games where there is more micro skill to show than macro. SC2 is all about that and it was boosted by LotV with the 12 worker and macro oriented where even expanders cannot get punished.
My power has always been in shutting down the opponent before he macros, that’s why my TvT is over 70% even in over 100 games of the mu.
LotV made it all about macro and expanding as the main decisive factor to win.
Sadly SG has the same macro element but it is a mixture of sc2 and war3 as unlike SC2 battles there are with units with more life. not this insta kill like in SC2
Many toss say how EMP and its over for toss, um No cause they can run away. But 2-3 storms on the bio and the game is decided
----- Just realized replying to a 2022 thread, ded forum auto close these, P.S they should unban my mains from here without goba and less activity look how peaceful i am
I agree with the spirit of the thread slower pacing and more focus on the unit control in the fights > ever escalating never ending macro feels more like creep and drone make simulator half the time. That being said now a days broodwar feels stupidly slow paced and half the skill came from making the units actually do what you wanted them to which felt bad. Wc3 is a great game but the strategy their took a backseat to micro much like pure apm and macro dominates here. The exception was FFA and sc2 1v1 did an incredible job of this in WoL which was my favorite for sure. Other than lurkers every add since then feels meh. I would love a game that’s pacing is between w3 and sc2 and the skill cap for macro adn general play is only around 100 apm.
Which is a thread topic I wrote a long time ago that you personally disagreed with at the time.
“Starcraft has become Harrasscraft” or something along those lines.
In HoTS, I could go to toe-to-toe with GM’s in 2v2, by focus solely on phoenix and my ally on tanks.
in LoTV the GM’s were able to style on us in 2v2 like no tomorrow, I would argue it was even worse than fighting a GM in 1v1. Neither phoenix nor tanks could come out in time to restore order and resume the slow game pacing of HoTS that I exceled in.
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Back before the SC2 became a dead game, it was common knowledge that SC2 was more of a mechanical game than a strategical game. Here is an ex-MVP poster stating as much:
SC2 isn’t an RTS, because RTS implies that strategy is a dominant factor in winning, if not THE dominant factor of the game. But, in modern SC2, multitasking & endurance are much more important than strategy. Uthermal has been to GM with absurd strategies like mass marines; I’ve done it with mass swarm hosts in all matchups. Clearly the strategy is not relevant to the outcome, because terrible strategies are able to get into the highest performance bracket. What is it that is deciding the outcome, then? Mechanics. SC2 is in the “EAM” category aka “Endurance & Multitasking”, not the “real time strategy” category.
I literally just beat a Grandmaster Zerg with swarmhost ultralisk. This countered mass mutalisks. In a strategical game, swarm host / ultra would never beat mutalisks because you don’t have any anti-air. But, I was able to constantly wear him down with a double-nydus making him run his mutas this way and then that way. I won with superior multitasking, and I did this despite using a dumpster-tier strategy.
SC2 used to have a decent emphasis on strategy, but with the modern 5-7 base economy, the only factor that decides the game’s outcome is how well you multitask, because the sheer number of bases/buildings/units that have to managed is absolutely staggering. SC2 deleted probably 90% of its player-base by shifting the economy from 1-3 base plays to 5-7. It was a colossal design mistake. At the same time as SC2 bombed, games like League became popular. At this moment, League has 1400x more players. SC2 is an extremely niche multitasking game that roughly 0.07% of RTS players like.
Back off on the multitasking requirements by 10% and you’d probably double the number of players.
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This is not a casual gamer game. I havent played an actual game of sc2 for over a decade because it just too “sweaty” flooded with “asians” no offense. I just wana build an army an kill some sh$t but cant because the game is over in 10 minutes and im dead
Sc1 brood war was awesome. Games were exciting sh$t was epic, now…no no thank you. Even on arcade theres only a few games i do like. Multi player is just too hardcore. Not fun anymore 
Main problem Terran and toss can counter units simply by microing and problem with Zerg has very little with this.
Say fg can instant kill marines and force Terran to ghost then it be more strategy then not. Right now marines can easy micro against fg so no need to build ghost.
Rts means counter and this game bearly deals with hard counters it’s more soft and switch into reversal.
To make it more rts is needed hard counters
No the main issue is as they said this is macro simulator and not RTS. But its too late now here is to hoping someone makes an AAA rts that looks and feels this clean without making the skillcap infinite. If it was like you get to some reasonable amount like 100 and you could do most things fine it would be great but its literally feels much like “did you try and play the game and not just learn the correct mechanic’s and hotkeys for best solved builds you noob” and that feels terrible. I don’t think this is a fixable issue anymore its what this game is now but coming back to 12 drone town makes it even more escalated and with one basing being a non viable option like it was in WOL makes it feel even more repetitive. However if you like macro simulator and balance for the skill over strategy I could see people liking the pacing better but not for me. Its an old game its too late to make a sweeping change and i think this is a big part of why so many people sandbag myself included I don’t want to have to try my hardest I want placed where I can play relaxed half paying attention and do whatever strategy I think is cool and if that means a few leagues lower than I could be trying to play macro sim then so be it. I will legit be playing this game and think “pretty sure this is when I’m supposed to worker scout but I just cant be bothered to do that”. If its so hard that every game I think " know what to do but its so annoying and frustrating a would rather lose doing what i want" then the skill cap was maybe too ambitious for the game. Like real talk if they slowed he game down to 1/8 speed imagine how good the pros would be in those games we haven’t even got near ceiling on individual unit micro as the game goes on the bots have 10k apm and still cant get it right.
It’s probably why the most popular stuff in SC2 is Arcade, Co-op and Campaign, why modded campaigns are immensely popular and why this will most likely continue to be the case forever. There are so many bad units that go against the very essence of RTS, which is broad unit control, build orders, and your army being powerful not by the power of individual units, but the variety or overwhelming size of your army, or the sheer power of your economic-industrial complex.
Micro-heavy units are just bad to play against, and to use them, let’s just say, no-build missions in Starcraft has never been a good idea, for narrative purposes I get why they’re there, but none of them have ever been inherently interesting on repeat playthroughs, and they’re only good in Warcraft 3 due to its RPG mechanics and (mostly) persistent heroes.
If you removed the Swarm Host, Mothership Core, Widow Mine, Baneling, Infestor, Hellbat/Hellion, High Templar, Disruptor, Liberator, Remove the Raven’s seeker mine, Picking up of Sieged Tanks (always was and is stupid as hell) Adept, Oracle, and the Cyclone then introduced the Scourge, and the Firebat to multiplayer, then lastly reverted the LOTV change where mineral field contents were reduced, I feel fairly confident that the game would improve massively after rebalancing around that change, and imo, it would be for the better.
The reality is very simple, some units are so unfun to play against that the only solution is to remove it, the idea that Blizzard had of introducing one or two units per expansion to the game was inherently flawed from the start.
It’s inherently against the whole point of an RTS to have spellcasters that have spells that just deal free damage imo. It’d be better if those spells were, like in Warcraft 3, gated and locked to a single unit you could only have 1 of, aka, some kind of Hero unit, being able to have multiple units that deal free damage, or require micro to be any good aren’t fun to play with/against.
Broodwar’s biggest problem is that the factions are blatantly imbalanced, some factions inherently require less skill to be good with than others just by how they were designed almost at the ground level.
If one wanted to see mineral line harassment much less And have faster games at the same time, you’d increase minerals per trip by 3x and cut the maximum saturation number by 1/3rd, possibly even make workers have 0 second acceleration if they’ve mined/returned resources in the past say… 3 seconds.
It’s always felt like the problems in Melee have always been extremely solvable.
I’ve also always disliked having no choice but to use Mules, or you die, use Warpgate, or you die, use Larva Injection, or you die, it’s always felt very “We downgraded your faction as a joke, deal with it” considering Scanner Sweep is almost never used, getting potentially 1K more minerals per 50 energy on multiple orbitals really doesn’t get beat by a bit of extra intel, and honestly, the only other part about Mules that I like but still dislike, is the repairing side, it’s just a free repairing unit (even if the actual repairs still cost resources) even if the life is timed. Without Warpgate, Protoss just can’t get stalkers out effectively and they die, feels like their solution should’ve been a training time reduction, or a unit buff. Investing Res into one upgrade and a pylon vs a pylon and a warpgate makes proxy rushes less risky, and I’ve never liked that in my entire time of playing the game. Protoss is the only faction that gets to do this and it just feels raw in the culinary respect. I think Larva Injection is the only one that might feel alright, if it didn’t just mean that Queens more or less don’t have a real combat purpose, since they’re mostly just a bad hydralisk with a non-autocast heal that makes creep tumors.
Spells in RTS games feel like they should only ever create vulnerabilities, but, imo, spells like Stasis needed to be a channelled ability, similar to how a Nuke is. It’d be interesting if a spellcaster had to channel the abilities that deal damage, and they only deal it over longer periods of time, but tbh this is a minor gripe ultimately.
In the end, my gripes that make me not play it, that made me stop are all the unnecessary bloat units that make melee completely unfun to play with/against, the unecessary extra micro stuff added to things like the Siege Tank, gimmicky one trick unit like the Widow Mine/Baneling and the mineral count change itself told me that the designers at the time weren’t playing the game.
Beating my opponent with one unit was never what was fun, using a vast arsenal of tools to outfox my opponent was always what was fun for me. I will never not remember the time I did a timing attack and, upon seeing that my opponent was walling their 2nd, decided to rush a quick SCV for a forward bunker placed in their natural behind the mineral line. I used that and built 1rax on the low ground, flew it up and started bunker hopping to the wall. Ended up winning that game after I took my natural, genuinely my favorite moment. Even fighting opponents where we bashed deathballs together over and over, practically stalemating for over 30 minutes, or the one time I somehow couldn’t beat someone with blatantly better macro than me, who went mass BC and I somehow didn’t win despite using Marine/Viking until the map was mined out save for one base, which I eventually took, a bit after the 1:30:00-2:00:00 mark.
Also I agree with OP on Photon Overcharge, it wasn’t needed, what was needed, was a slight nerf to certain strats that were utterly killing protoss players no matter what they did. Personally, the game would also improve if Stimpack was nerfed and stuff was adjusted to fit. The game has too much gimmicky crap in it, RTS has always ever been about the big picture more than the little picture, this isn’t Warcraft, which in 3 became 50/50 big/little picture. I don’t want Starcraft 2 to be Warcraft 3 and never would.
Everything added post WoL to Melee did nothing but make other units simply redundant when all that was needed was simple adjustments. I stopped playing because of them, Apologies for the rambling. I want to return to melee and go some laddering, but the state of melee is an abject joke, it’s genuinely no wonder Artosis stopped playing for Broodwar.
Despite its absolutely broken balance, Broodwar is less of a mess than 2 is right now.
Let’s keep this beatiful thread alive.
To all people who hate present state of SC2 write whatever comes to your mind. I agree with 99% of all complaints written here. SC2 became garbage APM/multitasking game with almost zero emphasis on strategy. Do you have some decent plan or tactics to beat your opponent ? Nope. Your opponent beats you because they clicked twice as fast as you ! Outmultitasked you. Outmicroed you. Outclicked you.
Okay, here goes:
The game would greatly benefit from a ranked mode, where each player got either 1 or 2 bases only, on a short corridor map, possibly with static defenses disabled.
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They definitely should have alternate game modes. There should be capture the flag and way point control. Imagine a sc2 tournament with 9 maps and each map has 3 modes; the mode is picked randomly. It would be hilarious listening to the casters freak out when a zergling captured the flag and started running back. Waypoint control would have 7 waypoints on the map and you need to control 4 of them for at least 2 minutes. Some waypoints could give you minerals and others could give you gas, and others could cost minerals or gas to keep. Imagine a guy about to win, having control over 4 waypoints, but then runs out of minerals to keep one of them.
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som body should get their act together and fix this the is is annionging
nailed it pretty hard.
The silver silver lining at least of the mmr roughly works so assuming i play all my games casually and don’t ever turn it on you end up somewhere you can chill in game and do what you want. Its to the point if i see a worker scout then it like starts moving around my base when I right click one guy on it I’m like yea feels like too much apm for my taste next game XD. Like I don’t think I have ever played a game where trying my hardest to win wasn’t the most fun way to play but here we are lol. It baffles me but down in the trenches you get the random other people like me with the no scout low apm spam 80+ drones or probes blind with no units and im like ahh yes these are my people lol.
Why am I the only one mentioning the elephant in the room: that the reason the game was dead even before craptavision did its thing is because of 5-ish vile POSs (the only one whose name I remember is Life) that seemed like paragons of esports. For only later did they reveal the extent to which their spite and weakness had corrupted them. Their motivation imo was that they relished the chance to tear down what was and indulge themselves however they wanted. In other words, “Some men just want to see the world burn.”