StarCraft I vs StarCraft II Gameplay&Units

Hello guys, I just wanted to tell you guys about my opinion about the StarCraft II Gameplay. Now I am not being biased on anything. This is purely my opinion, so please don't think I hate SCII or something.

I think StarCraft Brood War had better units and better gameplay. In my opinion, StarCraft II is a game that could get really boring in about two or three weeks. I personally got boring too. Because the unit compositions in every game are pretty similar to each other. For example, Protoss, Stalker+Immortal+Colossus or Zealot+Stalker+Colossus and so on. Terran, MMM, MM+Siege Tank and so on. These unit compositions are pretty similar to each other. In StarCraft II, the pure mech build from Terran almost disappeared from the game. Which means Factory units now became like a supporting unit for the main army. This leaves the Terran to always go for Bionic build or Bio+Mechanic like MM+Siege tank. This gets really boring to the Terran players IN MY OPINION and for the opponent too. If it was TvP, the Protoss player would scout and know that it would be bionic build and it will forever be. I've played TvP so many times looking at marauders and marines dying over and over and over again, with my same unit composition all the time. Now with the stronger what-counters-what, unit composition will be almost always the same.

Now on the other hand, Protoss desperately needs a stronger unit in the early game, which means that there aren't any strong units in Gateway. In Broodwar, the Protoss unit composition mostly came from Gateway with those Zealots and Dragoons+Templar or Archon. Protoss was never a fun race to choose, but their overwhelming power and pushing out with huge army was the best part. Now in StarCraft II, Protosses don't overwhelm in anyways. They start to get stronger in the mid-late game with the Robotics facility units, which means you can never win with zealots+stalkers+sentries. Even if there were lots of colossi, they get countered by air units so easily, and Colossi are really hard to replenish, which means that you have to sit and wait again for another big army. Protoss can never advance in the late game without the robotics facility units. Now that robotics facility became like need-it-really-badly building, this gets boring. Because in the early-mid game, you cannot ever have a battle with terrans with marines and marauders, because marauders just counter any protoss units so badly.Protoss always have to rely on Robo units. They have to wait until some decent number of colossi or immortals. This tells us that Protoss does not have such a great power in the early-mid game like in Brood War. If it s ZvP, and if Zerg went for hydra+ling, they will have low possibility of winning in the big battle(not including the force field, just the pure army fight). This shows that there should always be one big huge fight except in the early game.

That leaves the Zergs. Zergs actually have lots of choices to choose, such as Roach+Ling, Roach+Hydra, Muta+Ling or Hydra+Ling. I think Zerg is better right now than in Brood War, so no comment on that.

In conclusion, units now counter units so badly, that creates like a domino effect, for example if Terran makes marines then Protoss would have to make zealots, and if they make zealots, Terran will make marauders, if they make marauders, Protoss would make immortals, if they make immortals, Terran will make ghosts and so on and so forth. This just gets really boring as this creates similar unit compositions in all games.

I've just played a Brood War game and I feel it's so much better than SCII in terms of gameplay and units. I still love SCII.

Sorry for my bad English please understand and this is my opinion

 

I can't say I agree with this, because you are comparing a game which right now has 11 years worth of strategies and army compositions evolved in it's back with a game that has only like 4 months... We still haven't seen anything yet and the game's got tons of strategies that will evolve in the future...

As for protoss on bw being boring... Hell they were the most interresting race! Arbiters were possibly the coolest unit in the game! I remember making 4 arbiters and 4 shuttles, fill the shuttles in with reavers/dts/goons and recall the shuttles in the enemy's main base wipe out a few buildings and lots of workers and when his army came to kill my drop, load the units back in the shuttles and recall from another arbiter in one of his expos do the same with a second expo and then use my last arbiter to recall everything back to safety.... Now if that's uninterresting, I can't guess what is, but every time I pulled it off correctly I felt so awesome!


Protoss are not using drops at all in sc2 while they have a very cool new system for that... Also army compositions are static because people saw that something generally works and keep doing it over and over, but I'm sure than in the near future we'll see many new stuff in play.


The terran merge of medi+dropship has given a new dynamic to terran drops, and is a reason that terran don't move so much into mech play...

Have you yourself tried different stuff than the usual that works in your games?

I played like 8 games a couple of days ago with protoss and tried 8 very different strategies, all of which gave me some interresting results to consider, and that's only against terran and protoss, no zerg opponent.

I personally never get bored trying out new stuff... Thing is that with the ladder system people are somewhat afraid to experiment cause if you lose you lose points and that makes you feel bad, and also keeps you from trying the same thing again...

How about trying going for the same army composition but from different paths? You want units A,B and C? How will the game evolve if you go for A first, then B then C? How about the reverse?


You know trying out these stuff make the game interresting... I can't say one is more interresting than the other, but both have equal depth, with sc:bw having 11 years for people to explore while sc2 only having 4 months...

If you wish to make a comparison it would be better to compare the first months of broodwar with the first months of starcraft2(since the first months of the actual sc1 were people trying to learn anyway)...


Another thing is that SC2 has a limited amount of maps still, while SC:BW had acquired an immense amount of maps over the years, with iccup maps adding lots of interresting new stuff...


I'm not saying SC2 is better than SC:BW, just that you shouldn't be too hasty to make a verdict since sc2 is still young... The fact that it offers so many new cool stuff is good in itself, nostalgia over old units like arbiters, lurkers, science vessels or whatever might make people say: "oh man, sc2 units suck, bring back the old ones", but people have not tried the sc2 units enough yet.

It took years for terran to start using vultures in sc:bw, but then the unit became very popular... But it really took years for it to be established as a unit with good potential...

 

I cannot really agree with this. First, I don't think anyone is going to allow u to recall 4 times, I think a good Terran player would EMP around a lot. Second, I don't see how you can use 8 "very" different strategies with Protoss. Third, even if I go with the different path and different strategy, I still end up with the same unit composition. We almost always see immortals and colossi in the late game. Fourth, you mentioned about how bout the reverse of unit a,b,c. I don't know how it works out, are you saying to go for colossus first, then stalker then zealot? I don't see how this works. I agree that I should know that SCII is a new game and it shouldn't be compared to the 11-years old game. I agree that we will have to see about this with Blizz coming up with new patches in the future.

 

it just takes a few corsairs to escort the first arbiter for disruption web on ground defenses and killing a possible vessel if it's up. Now if the terran is able to have a good enough force to defend all his expos, then good for him but then you don't need to drop, you just attack the front door and when he moves you're free to drop again. AS for the 3 subsequent recalls, they're not at the same place. You start with the weakest base and when he mobilizes to kill your drop then you move the second and 3rd arbiters in another base to do some more damage. If you encounter resistance, just use your last arbiter which is somewhere safe, like your base and recall your dropped forces there. I didn't say it works every time because if it did then it'd be cookie-cutter and such things don't really exist in strategy games.

As for the unit composition that's "the same" whatever path you choose: Are you suggesting that in SC:BW you could play and end up with different compos every time? The same amount of different combinations is roughly the same it's just not as many in sc2 that are used yet. If you don't like immortals and colossi in the late game, then why use them in your own games? Go a different path and make it work...

As for the order in which you do things, no i don't mean going for colossus before making zealots, of course. If you wanted to have let's say VRs and DTs in your army by the mid game, try it once with getting VRs first DTs second: see how it works, what it forces your enemy to respond with and how you can pull it off. Then try the reverse, see what the enemy responds with and how you can react to that. The tech tree starts splitting after the cybercore, so at that point you start getting options.

How often have you seen motherships used in games? They're a freaking awsome unit that with the right army below it can perform really well against certain compositions. I've seen a korean match where the protoss player went only archon/zealot with some storms cast here and there and won... It wasn't top pro level, but still was pro(both players were in well known clans, don't remember which though), how many times have you seen, or even tried this in your own games?

Kaelaris posted an awsome strategy for PvP recently including zealots/immortals/Void rays in his youtube channel. How many times have you seen that one? I tried it twice and was amazed at how well it works.


The majority of the players will use what they think is good because that's they see, but that doesn't mean that there are no other strategies that can't be used effectively.


As I told you it took years for vultures to be used SC:BW. Years! The compositions that you can use in BW and the various strategies were evolved over 11 years of competitive play. The situation with strategies and combos available was even worse at the early stages of the game than it is on sc2 currently.

As for the 8 different strategies I've already mentioned 2 completely different ones here, add a dt rush into phoenix harass into mothership that I tried successfully the other day, different variations of the 4gate build, a 1gateFE into colossi, zealot/archon mix, DT into HT gateway play, phoenix harass into colossi...

Add whatever random thing you want, so long as you find a good timing to perform something that sounds good it can work... Your enemy has a xel'naga tower? Make 10 hallucinations and push to that tower with a seriously threatening force and force him to play defensive after seeing what you've massed and use the time gained to tech to something good.

The game doesn't evolve with blizzard's patches, it evolves with players working out ways to beat things they encounter and that takes time both for an idea to come up and then for that idea to be practiced enough to make it work, then you'll see that strategy work on some tournament and say "whoah, cool stuff, i'll do this".

Till then, who forces you to not try out stuff yourself? Why not play with a specific strategy not evolving colossi or immortals or whatever bothers you till you make it work?

Use your imagination and try to make things you like work by rearranging build orders, trying different time frames for attacking, trying to bluff doing various stuff. That's how starcraft evolved and that's how sc2 will given enough time...

With the same amount of units in the same or similar roles, you have an equal amount of options to work with. It's not like SC2 has half the units of SC1 and you've got such restrictions...

I think Kiwikaki did an insane blink stalker/mothership combo once, that used blink stalkers to become annoying and pushed by blinking into the enemy's main with a huge blink stalker force, forced the enemy zerg to make tons of roaches and surround him with an absurd amount of units and right before they came in range to clear his stalkers he recalled them back to base! How many times have you seen something similar?


What I want to say is: Don't judge the game's potential only by your own experience of it. And if you're annoyed that what you've experienced so far is boring, think of an interresting idea and work it enough to make it work. It's really as simple as that...

 

I personally think it's the other way around, SC2 offers much more variety. In SC1, there were lots of units that were bad in almost every situation: firebats, ghosts, wraiths, valkyries, scouts, dark archons, queens, and devourers come to mind. Also notable with Terran bio, which were hideously weak against tanks and psi storms, making them unviable in both TvP and TvT. SC2 finally fixed that, with combat shields for marines and the addition of marauders, while making every other unit useful in certain circumstances. Reapers are a great opener in team games, phoenixes are amazing for picking off drops and lifting expensive units like tanks and immortals, and corrupters are great for maintaining air dominance which is much more of a factor in SC2.

There are others. I usually do a 3 gate zealot+sentry push early on. High templar and void rays are also good in that matchup.

They can also add ghosts or vikings, and banshees are good for early harass. I've even seen ravens sometimes.

I really think that is a good thing, because pure mech was pretty much the only thing Terran could do against Protoss in SC1. Bio was disallowed due to imbalanced psi storm.

Robotics has always been the need-it-really-badly building, because it makes observers.

Again, I find early zealot+sentry pushes almost unstoppable against Terran, just force field behind the marauders so they can't stim and run, set up guardian shield, and watch your zealots slice them all to ribbons.

 

Out of curoiesty what league are you in?

I ask becuse I've noticed the real difference between bronze and gold players now I'm firmly in the silver. Gold players, more often than not, are more unpredictable as well as having better reactions in general than bronze players especialy.

Still if you see predictablity... abuse it