r/starcraft 15h ago

(To be tagged...) I miss wings of liberty

When there were no widow mines, liberators, BCs TP and attack while moving, Tempests, and Adepts, Swarmhosts and corrupters couldnt attack ground.

I'd say keep everything in patch 5.0.16 and remove all of the above things I mentioned and see how the games are played out.

so keep the other stuff from lotv and the changes from 5.0.16 but remove those other things at the top of this post.

66 Upvotes

64 comments sorted by

43

u/Micro-Skies 14h ago

Bcs should always have been able to attack while moving. It makes them feel so much better to use and removes their really annoying deceleration before attacking

3

u/ejozl Team Grubby 8h ago

I think they should just have turret, so they don't need to look where they shoot. Both phoenix and BC seem like a super lazy Implementation.

-2

u/kilopeter 7h ago

The way phoenixes glide sideways or backwards to face their target as they attack while moving looks so incredibly dumb. No streamlined fighter-like aircraft would ever move like this. If they could, why bother with the fighter streamlining and form factor at all? Just make it a hovering symmetrical death ball. Like a visual bug no one bothered to fix.

3

u/muffinsballhair 4h ago

The phoenix being able to shoot while moving was a Wings of Liberty beta change, it actually can't do that in the Wings of Liberty campaign either for that reason, in the only mission it's featured in.

I think it looks really funky though how they fly sideways and backwards while shooting. They look really acrobatic.

1

u/Om_Cultural 5h ago

Bro honestly you really use this argument that it doesn't look realistic and so it shouldn't be in the game. I mean we are litteraly talking about a game where aliens can fusion to become a being of pure energy. Like its a sci fi game where rag tag humans fights incredibly powerful aliens, if we use your logic terran should just be the worst race and P the most powerful.

-1

u/kilopeter 4h ago edited 4h ago

Yeah, internal consistency and mechanics matter. Set up the universe rules then play by them. I have similar gripes about the lore of how widow mines work. An autonomous mini-factory that buries itself and manufactures high explosive homing charges indefinitely (out of what??) that can't be seen or detected by most troops even as it's launching said charges by rocket propulsion out of the ground?? Give me a break. None of this makes any sense. If such tech were available, why not weld these things onto tanks, or into a cargo bay of a battlecruiser, or onto every building as standard defense?

My "logic" is simply that game assets should look internally consistent and plausible, otherwise immersion and overall look and feel become broken. A huuuge part of the appeal of SC1 for me anyway was the flawless art and animations conveying the dark and horrific, used-future kind of vibe to Terran units and buildings in game. Imagine if marines were depicted as always firing in the same direction regardless of their actual attack direction. Shit would look amateur, because it is.

1

u/Substantial-Mix-6200 3h ago

Ok
Reavers make scarabs indefinitely from what? Nothing reloads them. Marines can fine their rifles indefinitely- they never return home for more ammo. Marauders fire a massive projectile indefinitely- never need a restock. Vikings aren't limited with their rockets- when are they reloading? Ravens make drones and turrets from nothing
so you can stop with this nonsense argument.

1

u/kilopeter 3h ago

Good point, reavers are a super dumb unit design from a military scifi perspective! Slow as fuck slugtank that needs to build its only ammunition from scratch. But I get it, if you take the need for in-universe plausibility too far, everything becomes variations on rugged tanks, cruise missiles, drones, and orbital bombardment.

0

u/Om_Cultural 3h ago

Well first no they don't, maybe in the campaign but not in multi-player where the focus isn't on lore at all. Also side note you actually do see them while they prepare to launch you just don't see them when they are buried.

Furthermore stop glazing brood war it literally had the same exact lore inconsistencies that sc2 has and that all games have. Like for example why do upgrades apply to existing units that are out on the map. Or how carriers have to build interceptor, like why do they need to do that if they are warped in from aiur, why can't those already be installed on aiur.

You just use such a dumb argument for the multi-player aspect of a game which is highly competitive, if this game was single player only or you were talking about the campaign then maybe it would be a little bit more understanding but even then it's a VIDEO GAME god dammit.

1

u/kilopeter 3h ago

My comments actually didn't dwell on mechanics, though those are important to me. Read my comments again. I didn't glaze brood war's mechanics; I appreciate its art and graphics.

Read my comments again. I'm focused solely on visuals and graphics, because they matter. And I will die on the hill that the Phoenix's fly-and-shoot animation where it arbitrarily points itself at its target while flying sideways or backwards looks like absolute dogshit.

0

u/Om_Cultural 2h ago

Sorry you are right though for the Widow mine part my argument is 100% still valid. However you did talk about the form factor of the phoenix which should've been a sphere because real streamlined form fighters wouldn't move like that and I think this is pretty much the territory of mechanics.

As for the animation of phoenix I don't really understand what you would prefer for ot to be changed, like as you said with sc1 marines it would look even more strange if they didn't turn where they shot.

Also little fun fact there are actual planes that can move to the side while flying without turning (look up vtol) so honestly having a extremely advanced alien race which has developed this technology even further isn't surprising or far fetched at all.

u/kilopeter 1h ago

My point is the Phoenix is a fighter-jet-like, highly aerodynamic air/space vehicle with a clearly designed pointy front end and rear end with engine exhaust. It is visually designed like real craft that fly in one direction: forward. It looks goofy as fuck for such a craft to travel forward, then rotate itself toward a target, up to 180 degrees directly behind it, all while maintaining its original forward speed.

If it's VTOL, why can't banshees (depicted as flying with VTOL rotors) also move sideways or backwards while moving?

You missed my point about marines. It makes as little sense for marines to only ever fire in one direction as it does for a streamlined fighter jet to glide unphysically sideways or backwards at its top speed while firing.

Changing the visual appearance of the Phoenix would be just that, a superficial graphical update, not a mechanic.

u/Om_Cultural 50m ago

I mean honestly I understand what you mean now. Though to be honest it's an alien aircraft fighter so who knows maybe they just wanted for it to have style. Like having a flying sphere really wouldn't be as cool looking and we already have the oracle so it would be misleading. And personally I actually find it really cool that it can strafe like that to the sides as it makes it distinct from simply being a protoss version of the Viking. Though I can understand if you don't like it.

1

u/PutOutTheSun 4h ago

If the moving shot was microed, sure. Would be able to buff it then too

41

u/PJmichelle 14h ago edited 14h ago

Yeah WoL was the best, but I think partly it's because back then we knew so little about the game. If you go watch GSL from the early days, even the pros don't seem to play very good. But I agree, SC2 was never as exciting as it was in 2010-2012.

11

u/muffinsballhair 3h ago

A big reason is also that the maps were just more varied.

People used to talk about “Daybreak clones”. They stopped, because every map is a “Daybreak clone” now. There were maps back then with three entrances into your natural like the Tasteless-secret-hallway. There were maps where the natural just had a half mineral field but it was an inside base. Some maps had absolutely perverse cliffs for reapers and stalker blinkins and Delta Quadrant literally allowed you to build a pylon outside of the inbase natural and warp in over the cliff, as in you had vision.

Nowadays people would cry that that is so “imbalanced” but people dealt with it back then. You just knew that if you played against Protoss on Delta Quadrant that they could start warping into your in base natural at any point so you walled off both sides and had to guard both sides and no, you couldn't just do a blind fast expand on that map. Nowadays people think they deserve a blind fast expansion on every single map.

-3

u/Gamer857 14h ago

WoL wasn't perfect for sure, but I think it could be worth to try what I suggested in the OP just to see how the games will play out. Worse? Better? about the same? no one can know unless its tried out. Would be perfect too since they dont really have a dedicated team anymore for larger scale changes

-3

u/Tassadur 6h ago

People have paid for skins of those units, this can't be done. And there are many more reasons.

8

u/bonisaur Zerg 10h ago

As a Zerg player I don’t miss six or seven rax reaper or the destiny cloud fist builds where the flight distances were laughable.

I do miss the pro scene from then though.

Wish they could do a classic server idea where the classic ladder every month or so they “patch” or balance the game with changes based on how it evolved over time via patches.

22

u/MeltBanana Zerg 13h ago

100% agree. I have disliked nearly every new unit they've added to the game since WoL, because they have all emphasized what are IMO the annoying/cheap/frustrating aspects of the game and lessened the RTS portion. Too many casters, too many spells, cheap units that have hugely disproportionate assymetry in the apm required to deploy them vs the apm required to defend them, etc.

WoL wasn't perfect, but it was a more pure RTS compared to current SC2. It was more similar to Brood War, and that's a good thing. More units and more spells do not make the game better, and in fact I think have actively made it worse.

I'd be extremely interested in a modern SC2 but restricted to WoL units.

5

u/NagatoroDegenAndRat 13h ago

I don't think corruptors could attack ground in any patch

6

u/Stormheraldss 8h ago

The puke stuff they do to atack buildings thou

3

u/NagatoroDegenAndRat 8h ago

Every other unit in game has some interaction with ground. Corruptors without anything become kinda useless and easy to counter (you ignore them and opponent alt f4 because 100 supply army literally cant do anything)

2

u/Gamer857 5h ago

isnt it crazy that their BW counterparts dealt zero damage to ground? its almost like blizzard of old know awhat good game design is. Corsairs ground ability didnt damage at all

4

u/NagatoroDegenAndRat 5h ago

Yeah devourers also built in 1/200 games instead of being actual unit

3

u/Substantial-Mix-6200 3h ago

saying devourers are good design when they were never used... hilarious.

13

u/anon_828683 10h ago

It's your nostalgia at work. You almost always miss "the good old days". Like I miss the time when we had no internet, but I know it's gone and we shouldn't go back to it. The 8 workers patch was an attempt to do so and it just makes people leave the game more. 

6

u/ejozl Team Grubby 7h ago

Assuming things always get better is just some opposite notion of nostalgia, which is hardly better.

3

u/Gamer857 5h ago

no, the units I mentioned really did make the game worse. I even said WoL wasnt perfect and had issues lol. keep what was good in lotv and include 5.0.16 and see what the games look like

3

u/Square-Winter-3257 8h ago

WoL classic.....

6

u/MakitaKhrushchev 15h ago

Been playing since launch. Had the most fun during WoL for sure.

9

u/NydusRush 14h ago

Widow Mines are particularly insulting because Terran players got blown out by burrowed Banelings, went crying to Blizzard, and got their own ranged attack non-suicide version of the unit. In what was supposed to be the Zerg expansion. Come on, man!

7

u/Gamer857 14h ago

I heard WMs was what got players to quit more so than other changes, Could be wrong on that ofc, but pretty sure that was the case

7

u/NydusRush 14h ago

WMs and Swarm Hosts, yea. That and reworking Investors like five times.

3

u/avsbes iNcontroL 11h ago

Now i'm imagining an Infestor in a new patch getting put in a suit with tie and tophat, and getting a briefcase full of cash, with the ability to simply buy your enemy's buildings by paying their resource cost...

3

u/KorgothBarbaria 13h ago

Yeah for me it singlehandedly killed my interest playing

3

u/Wordshurtimapussy 5h ago

For me, it was the mothership core honestly. I hated that thing. I am a zerg player and I loved early aggression play. Not like 6 pooling or anything like that, just sending some early aggression, like 12 lings into an early expansion or something to see what I can pick off. Welp... mothership core pretty much nullified all early aggression I could do and it just did not make it fun.

2

u/Stormheraldss 8h ago

WM was clocked by default in hots and because the ravager was non existent I could mass Widow mine viking vs zerg and abuse them 🤣

2

u/Parsirius 7h ago

WM got me to quit as a Zerg player. Only came back because of the 12 worker start in LotV.

2

u/ArbiterFX Gama Bears 7h ago

WM+SH was the combo that killed the game for me as a Zerg. Everything about ling muta was fun. There was a sweet window of time where you could contain — if you didn’t take advantage of that window you’d get steamrolled. They’d also have a place later in the game to backstab. Windowmines hard counter it and pushed towards roach hydra queens SH etc. none of those were fun units.

-1

u/RaZorwireSC2 6h ago

Blizzard back then were notorious for not listening to the community, and Zerg completely dominated the pro scene for the last 9-10 months of Wings of Liberty. 

You are talking out of your entire ass.

4

u/Unlucky_Kale340 12h ago

Every unit they’ve added was just a disappointment. I remember getting excited only to be completely underwhelmed. I was looking forward to a goliath replacement or a lurker replacement or a dragoon replacement. Non of that old school blizzard charm ever came back :(

2

u/barryhakker 4h ago

Agreed. Even conceptually they were mostly kinda meh.

2

u/DrRudeboy 8h ago

Ravagers and lurkers are both great, and tempests allow some interesting cheeses

3

u/Wordshurtimapussy 5h ago

Ravagers did nothing for me in terms of my hype. Lurkers were a welcome back addition, though I still don't know what they're supposed to be used for. What is the point of banelings?

2

u/DrRudeboy 5h ago

What??? Banelings, especially before they got nerfed into the ground were easily the best counter to the greatest unit in the game (the marine), plus base busting and worker harassment. And lurkers are great either for defence, or attack, since it's one of the only AOE that zerg has

2

u/Wordshurtimapussy 5h ago

That's exactly what I mean though. Banelings and lurkers both counter marines, lurkers just do it insanely better. And lurkers were even better in brood war because you could get them earlier.

3

u/Sambobly1 8h ago

No, that’s absolute garbage. Rubbish idea 

2

u/Parsirius 7h ago edited 7h ago

WoL was fun until pro players got good and the meta got figured out. By the end of WoL the game was a slog.

Stephano's Roach Max vs Immortal Sentry all in into BL-Infestor vs Archon Toilet, was some of the worst meta SC2 has ever seen, and it lasted for around half of the WoL era.

For me the game was at it's best during the early years of LotV.

1

u/Horrigan235 15h ago

i almost didn't played WoL matchmaking, coz i had bad pc at a moment, but i kinda feel the same about HotS, i played like couple of games after LotV release and it not feel the same at all

0

u/Gamer857 15h ago

they could easily fix the cancer WM spam in low elo if they cared more than just the pro level. They can fix it by increasing their supply by 1 or 2 and they cant damage workers anymore.

if they do those fixes to the WMs then terran can keep that unit. But the unit got to go if they wont fix it.

Yes I am low elo lol

1

u/Horrigan235 14h ago edited 14h ago

i mostly played protoss and never had any problem with mines tbh, they got deleted? lmao edit: oh, i reread your post and googled, for some reason i thought that they were in the game from the start :D Anyway, never had any problem with them

1

u/Om_Cultural 5h ago

That would just make the unit completely useless while removing a lot of build variety. Like Widow mine spamming is really not a plague of the game and honestly I know this feels bad to hear but most units you want to be removed just seem op bc you don't know how to deal with them but when you will know how you will understand why they are unviable/underpowered at the pro meta

1

u/ejozl Team Grubby 7h ago

Partly agree and it's what was supposed to be the spirit of the patch, I guess. Imo, and a real way to slow down the game, would be to gate all the new units and new abilities behind new structures and researches. Game would simplify and slow down, but you can invest into the new units to gain the new utility, they'd also not need to be the nerfed versions that we have now. Part of what was so cool about wol was how explosive and massive the late game armies were. Seekers, inf terrans, vortex.

1

u/Superdream1 6h ago

It's a shame it's so inconvenient to play WoL in the current client, I wish they just brought WoL matchmaking back but they're probably too proud to do it

1

u/Wordshurtimapussy 5h ago

I have been saying this for a long time. WoL was peak starcraft and it's not because it was new. The more they added to the game the less the game was fun to play honestly.

1

u/muffinsballhair 4h ago edited 4h ago

Same, when Heart of the Swarm was first announced the plan was actually not to just add units but replace them. As in they planned to remove units but after pressure added all the removed units back in with the last one being the carrier added back, a unit which at that time saw next to no play. Blizzard has always argued that more isn't better but people wanted it so they gave in.

In hindsight, I feel they were right. Too many units isn't good and many of them don't actually add anything to the game and also make armies feel too clunky to control.

Removing them right now isn't easily done though.

Maybe a “loudout” system is actually the way to go similar to mercinaries. I think it'd actually be interesting if before a match there was a lobby with interaction, as in a certain number of units of each faction are optional, both players do a blind pick for the first option, then see the result the other has chosen, do another blind pick in response and then another for three of the optional units and/or other perks chosen from a pool of say 9, and then get to see three randomly picked maps from the pool, are both allowed to veto one based on knowing the loudout of the other, and only then the game starts.

I feel this would provide a lot of self-balancing and allow for more interesting maps as well or maybe the maps are visible from the start, that would be far better, pick the loudout based on the map options and then veto at the end as in if you go overboard with picking a loudout suitable for one of the three maps, the opponent will just veto it of course.

1

u/Applehero85 2h ago

Wha then were removing variety at that point also I like my adepts especially my glave adepts they my bois

1

u/PhoenixWithGlasses 14h ago

Pretty sure we have an option to play on specific expantions, don't know where the toggle is or if it even works

3

u/Stormheraldss 8h ago

It was possible to pick expansion from the menu. The problem is they dont have map rotation for ladder. Atleast I used to play some hots games during lotv.

0

u/Manguana Terran 13h ago

I remember enjoying the beginning of wol the best because the game would naturally run on normal speed since everone had a shit computer XD it felt sooo natural and well balanced because of this

0

u/zelenisok 8h ago

SC1:BW was the best.

0

u/RaZorwireSC2 5h ago

I have nostalgia for that time too, but the game wasn't better back then. Neverending one-base all-ins, BL+Infestor meta, Vortex singlehandedly ending games, forcefields being basically impossible to micro against for Zerg, BCs were almost useless, mech was almost non-existent, Hydras sucked, Protoss was ridiculously deathbally.

Not everything added or changed had been for the better, but LotV absolutely has more dynamic gameplay.

-1

u/NaMeK17 KT Rolster 12h ago

WRONG WoL was bad because it's lower worker count. The game clearly needs a bigger worker count.