I think because the game has changed so dramatically since WOL you'd actually need to test this(especially early all in strategies). Replays, while good, are limited in value because they don't have the units from HOTS/LOTV.
@@PiGstarcraft I'd be curious about like... 12 worker start but your first supply + tech building (choice of rax/engineering, gate/forge, pool/evo) builds free and instantly. Skips the startup, but it restores the situation where your first tech choice could happen as soon as 15 supply instead of ~20. It doesn't give us back the 6pool, but it does open up fast tech builds
I gotta say, PiG is so legitimately hyped to commentate this match. As a fellow nerd, it warms my heart to see this level of nerdness/passion for gaming!
As a campaign modder and frequent replayer, the slower worker starts of the WoL maps definitely make the openings more boring, especially when you've played missions enough that you know what you need to do to start up. That said, I still have fonder memories of playing with 6 worker start than 12 workers; probably some nostalgia in that evaluation (not much, 12 workers is old enough that I have nostalgia for those times too), but also as a more casual melee player, the buildup time helps ease into the game, make a plan, have some actual value to scouting. Feels like in those days, it was a valuable piece of information whether a protoss was building a gas vs a nexus, nowadays the decisionpoints are pushed further back and consequently there's fewer of them tech/macro-wise. I've seen this 6 worker start discussion play out in the community enough times that I've fallen into and back out of love with the "go back to 6 workers" idea already. Nowadays, I'd say I'm more interested in testing out a 8, 9, or 10 worker start, alongside some other retro experiments. The point in favour of slower early game that I always really liked was the idea of tech being slower, so it's actually a decision. In WoL and HotS, BCs actually felt _late game_, armies felt qualitatively different between early, mid, and late game. Nowadays, it's possible to rush out BCs in 4 minutes, the only way armies feel different across different stages of the game is in amount rather than tech, with the exception of skytoss. (and even then, I've played enough metal-league 2v2s to know that cannon turtle+rush 2~3 stargate carrier is really common on ladder, hits fast for my skill level, and is powerful if you don't respond with aggression). As other commenters have pointed out, I think the bigger dynamic shift was the bases mining out faster, having more and easier bases, 3 and 4 player maps disappearing from the 1v1 pool, and balancing around fast expand being the norm. Artosis also discussed this; I disagree with his assessment that 6 worker start would be a magic cure-all to bring us back to the glory days, but I agree with the assessment that liberators in particular warped a lot of map design and contributed to all the maps feeling samey. The modern style of map design and game dynamics feels stale to me even while I recognize it as being refined, fast-paced, and frenetic, in large part because it always feels uniformly fast-paced and frenetic. The maps have the same start positions, roughly the same base layouts, always have 2 players, the same width of chokepoints across the map, roughly the same attitude towards gold bases and watchtower positioning, employ the same styles of liberator anti-cheese/deadzone requirements, have roughly the same number of reaper jump spots, you expand across the map in roughly the same pace and style every game, etc, etc. Makes me wish for the days of having Metalopolis, Blistering Sands, or Steppes of War in the pool just to mess with people.
People just want nostalgia but the reality of it is: it's just pressured cheese plays as it's SO Ridiculous you wait 5 Minutes to see to races clash but a player is cheesing the other. I don't see how cheesing is fun. Imagine in finals a player cheeses the other for the trophy the audience came and watched a cheese. This is just embarrassing for game design. You talk about 6 workers but the real change was nerfing the mineral line. It boggles my mind how people are discussing 12 workers to 6 as it being good for the game as it would just make things SLOW. We should ask ourselves was the Mineral patch change good for the game? I think it was because it forces the defensive player to push for a risk slope, without jeopardizing the audience as it's incredibly boring to watch 1 base defensive plays. It also puts cheese plays in check because you can have access to gas for defending a cannonrush really quick. It also favors quick ninja expansions which is a weapon against cheese. If we want nostalgia back. BRING BACK OLD MAPS !!! What are we aiming for? Variations? Then design more Units! or a new path in the tech tree! A New big late game unit for each race! We want to have fun not to stare a command center doing his thing.
I think the thing this really shows is just that the game is really not that different outside of the very early game where you have a longer period of very small numbers of units (like 3 reapers vs 4-6 lings), as economies are being built up. The meta in TvZ was still this heavy split-pressure with drops and bio, the same as it is now. The bigger change in LoTV was probably just the mineral patches. Bases half-mining out in 60% of the time and forcing players to expand more aggressively is a huge deal compared to the number of starting workers. Maps are bigger and have more "safe" bases that are easy to secure now out of necessity, because if players can't expand, they just lose. Zerg would likely be completely dominant if the game was still played on those HoTS maps (if they were changed to LoTV minerals) with the more difficult to secure 3rd/4th bases. Also, the loss of 4 player maps. 3-4 player maps added a really interesting dynamic to the game with early scout patterns that's just missing now because some cheese timings hit so much faster.
I think one thing I noticed here was the delay in tech, especially for zerg. Maybe it was just Life's style I can't remember, but Hive seemed so much slower, which created more of a mid-game mid-tier tech back and forth for a bit. Which I think is cool. Having a battle of simply marines medi's tanks vs ling bane muta while slowly moving into higher tech causes some chaos. In the current state I don't really see that much anymore. Its mostly the early game pressure holds straight into ghosts, lurkers, infestors, vipers.
As someone who played StarCraft before broodwar even came out. It’s fine to start with less workers. You can have fun stuff happen. You can allow weird maps. It’s a good time.
nah, even nowadays no audience cares about the first 2 mins. I think Harstem had a good point, the only argument for 6 workers is you make it harder for new comers.
@ Are you speaking to new players or new viewers? Nobody likes the first 2 minutes. I like it. But in the name of shaking up the pro scene, we could start with gas mining available also. That would spice it up.
@@MrChachSC2 No body cares about watching the first 2 mins of modern SC2. TH-camrs skip them if they have a mind to go through their viewing statistics. 6 workers was much more welcoming to new players. It turned the 2 min early game into 6-8 mins. And minerals ran out after 18 mins of mining back then which lead to games that could potentially take over an hour. No body wants this anymore 😆 "we could start with gas mining available also. That would spice it up." w8 i dun get it, what?
@@Broockle Well instead of slowing the game down since you say it’s such a negative, we could adjust the options at the opening of the game. For instance we could make one gas ready to mine at the beginning. You start with a Nexus and an assimilator, for instance. Same amount of workers but you can start mining gas immediately.
@@MrChachSC2 o... i mean, it does come across as facetious but if you're serious then... To be clear u mean, 6 workers, the old minerals that mine out at 18 mins, but one of your gases is already built... I mean it's not gonna speed up ur expansion at all, and I imagine most players would put all their workers on minerals to get the expo up first. There are some tech options this would speed up like if you wanna 1 base cloak banshee rush faster... I mean you're almost incentivizing cheese in that sense with the free gas. I can't say for sure but I don't feel good about this idea 😅
I found early game to be far far FAR more creative with fewer workers back in the day. Much larger risk vs. reward factor, so yes, I think this would be a hugely positive change.
I do agree that there is a lack of variety and..strategic punishability? In SC2 atm. But after watching these games I don't know if 6 worker starts would really be the solution.
One thing people forget is that 16 workers in LoTV mine like 24 workers oversaturation did in HoTS. 3 base LoTV plays more like a 4 base HoTS build did
Some notes on 1st game; Terran went 3cc but couldnt get his wall up in time to stop zerglings Zerg was able to get an overseer in time to stop the cloak banshee The timings make much more sense Also, Terrans did definitely make concaves and focus banelings, thats how Marineking Prime made his name. Insane splits and focus fire on banelings.
I'm not a hardcore fan but I do enjoy broodwar. While the games are different I enjoy the slow start to rts games. It's like a large build up for a fight compared to instantly getting into action the first minutes of the game. While "nothing" maybe lost by skipping the first 4 minutes. I do think it there is value in watching the players starting out. Scouting, tech builds, and countering is definitely interesting.
0:50 actually, the problem is that TH-cam's compression algorithms gradually degrade every video over time. By 2014, as you saw, we already had 1080p video. Its just that 10 years of storage, compression, decompression, etc mean that the older videos begin to look terrible.
@@Swoodivarius Yep, as someone else mentioned YT is constantly getting new and better compression algorithms, which require videos to be uncompressed and recompressed to take up less space. Each time its done the video gets worse, so old videos tend to look much worse than their resolution suggests they should.
I don't think 6 worker start is better. However I think bumping cc and nexus supply up(don't remember hatchery) to be able to start above 10 supply made eco builds better since you effectively also got half of a pylo/depot (10 to 15) more That and also people constantly crying to get every build that looked OP nerfed as soon as possible, are what limited builds. How many aggressive allins have we nerfed over the years just because it looked imba?
One additional thing to note, I know "F2 to the other side of the map" is probably just used as a figure of speach, but it's worth noting that there is no select all army key in HOTS, that wasn't added until LOTV. I do like a lot of the quality of life changes in LOTV, they are legitimate improvements on the game but at the same time I do miss a lot of the skill differentiators in old starcraft, like saturation checks, boxing your mineral line and counting the amount of rows to check your worker saturation rather than seeing the worker count on each base. And control group managment took a lot more effort. HOTS was the period of time where I was playing a lot of Starcraft, and now I mostly just watch, it was fun to try and learn all the higher level mechanics back in the day.
Life was such an exciting player. I guess Reynor + Dark is his analogue but still no one else always looked like he was at the brink of death then pull off miracles of Life over and over again. We need some less dynamic players to showcase how much worse HOTS is to today's game, sort of unfair to choose an epic series like this. How about Snute vs Showtime?
6 workers start just let the pace of the game even out so much. That chaotic moments feel faster with a slow build up. The players get to show off more creativity in the start, with more time to play mind games. And the casters CAN use that time in tournaments to talk about player history, or in friendlies to interact with stream.
Nowadays people would just watch tik tok on their cellphones for 5 minutes. We want to see BIG BATTLES. The early game in starcraft is just "oh the reaper killed 2 probes! Wow". The existence of zerglings in the game just makes so the Zvx match up a zergling party as it's too much of an effective unit in the early game. Zerglings on the screen for 2 minutes are you kidding me. No.
I think some people are misunderstanding the benefit of 6 workers over 12 workers. A 12 worker start does make the game faster and it erases the slow/boring parts of the early game which a lot of people dislike. However what you gain with a 6 worker start is strategic variability. When you have less workers each worker is a bigger percentage of the total which means that -as the game progresses- each additional worker changes the game more, allowing for different build orders in the early game. Furthermore, when each worker is more valuable (because there's less of them) losing them is also more impactful which incentivizes players to be more offensive in the early game (again, further amplifying the scope of strategic decisions a player can make). Having said that a few things came to mind while watching these games. Mining out the 1st base takes a looong time, even longer than BW actually. It also took more time for the action to get going at the start of the game compared to BW. I think the reason for this is that in BW workers mine double per trip what they mine in sc2. So I think both changes implemented into sc2 would spice the game up both strategically and pacing-wise (at least compared to WoL and HotS). Basically, reduce starting workers to 6, make them mine double per trip. Personally I would also make it so you start getting marginal decrease of mining per worker after 1 worker per patch is mining (basically, 2 workers don't perfectly synchronize on one mineral patch). This last change incentivizes players to take extra bases and reduces the amount of workers needed to keep a late game economy going (increasing the amount of army units in the game, which means more action).
They were made of the same paper since sc1 came out. Still same paper today. Those were Life's, they seem made of rubber dodging bullets, but they are paper, Life does all the dodging. There were rumors in Korea that his father was an army pilot, and that his mother was a muta.
I had and still have this weird respect for these games and never skipped 😅 Nowadays I have video speed controller and would prbly x4 the beginning everytime.
Note that none of these games showed anything interesting in the early game - it was just get up to a couple of bases, build a reasonable number of workers and secure the ramp. Far more impactful were the nerfed widow mines and thors, which made midgame Mutas not immediately disintegrate, and the lack of ghosts, which meant ultralisks actually survived to do damage.
I miss the old mineral harras and mining a bit before starting the command center because each mineral was so much more valuable early game. And killing a worker with a full mineral load hurt a bit more.
We need to bring more variety to map pool too, all the maps in starcraft 2 are almost the same, with small differences, a good idea might be to have more open maps, something like arabia-arena in Age of Empires 2. The lack of variety in maps makes the game very predictable, and it gets boring after some time, cuz u feel playing the same match over and over.
Man it has been almost 10 years since Life got caught cheating, my heart still breaks into a million pieces every time. What an incredibly waste of talent, I so wish he would have had good people around him to keep him on track.
Hey PiG has anyone suggested instead of starting with less workers, just remove 1 or even 2 of the close mineral patches from the expansions in order to devalue and slow down the economic explosion that's making players rush to 3 bases every game rn? The other thing might be increasing the build time of command base structures by 1 or 1.5 production cycles or simply change their stats to make them much more vulnerable while under construction without incentivizing turtling
This was such a good series, you should cast more older games. Theres a GSL code A match between Inno and Stork where Tastosis talk about how LOTV was so much like broodwar, lol
I think for watching games and series 12 is better. But I mostly stopped playing, when it became 12 workers. It is just more bases you have to get an defend etc. In Wol/HotS a lot of stuff happened on one base and two bases was already midgame. Now you need to manage 5, 6 ,7 bases after like 10 minutes and imo it is less fun and more stressful.
Especailly as zerg. Their bases are their infrastructure as well so they are much more vunurable to a base snipe. Zerg somehow became a defensive race :D
@@notrather5514 Yeah but if you play against terran or protoss you're nearly guaranteeed to spend less on turtling than them and also be able to move your defenses around. Problem I'm just now realizing could be fixed is that my expansions get sniped before defenses are up... that could be solved with creep spread.
@@gezenews Sadly crawlers are really bad because they cost a drone, and therefore a larva. You really have to defend with units always and you have to have multiple control groups just so you can mine :D (at least after 3rd base)
@@notrather5514 larva not that expensive with 2 queens and 2 hatcheries. I'm finding denying gas + quick expand + turtle to tech wins every game as zerg. yes def expensive but guarantees econ and with very little money zerg dominates the map early.
If I recall correctly, Life used to play with the very old school inject method. He had all hatches in one hotkey and each individual inject queen had their own hotkey, while his creep spread queens were all bundled in one special hotkey. good old 44v55v66v xD
It would actually be interesting to go back and recast some of the best of the best finals/tourneys from WOL and HOTS time. Cast the first GSL finals with fruitdealer!
Artosis yelling at people on ladder that they do random things that cannot be defended in SC1 and it's not proper playing...after some years, wanting to bring the same pain to SC2, and complaining that good players do not lose to random stuff that they could not have been prepared for. And now people making videos about this :)
I for one would love to see some tournaments played with a 6 or 8 worker version with current units and specs. Also the voice quality is unmatched. I love hearing the game in 420p. Teh music is beautiful. And what was the other thing I had to say to avoid being dumped in a void for 7 months? Oh, right, I did enjoy watching the slower paced early game of these 2034 Katowice games.
I think, what everyone likes, and what was on full display in this series is a long actionpacked midgame. these days at the pro level we see, especially in TvZ they rush to lategame and by 10 minutes we're in a stale boring match where both sides are mostly on defense and the fights don't feel impactful because they are but a small piece in the greater "I'm mining more of the map than you" war with the ultimate objective to outlast, this is also v boring however I don't think the 6 worker start is doing any good here, like, it prolongs the early game, which is also boring to have go on for so long, but not the midgame. I think to improve the game in this direction what needs to be looked at is not the 12 worker start but the mechanisms that shorten the midgame and reverse/change that but that's not the 6 worker start.
first 8 minutes look identical except less action By 8 minutes in modern LOTV they are already fighting multiple times to protect 3rd or 4th or in base doing harass etc
I love the sound. I like it with no game sound. Your voice is beautiful. Also, theeeee, err, visual quality is unmatched. I love that you're recording in 144p. Also, a bronze league question - is it possible that, instead of the start being too fast, the risk/reward calculation is too beneficial to greedy expansions? All three factions seem to rush to 3 base (or, for Terrans, go for a very fast 3rd CC in the main) with as little tech as they can get away with. How would the game change if expansions (or maybe expansions except for the natural) would have either fewer mineral patches or lower-value minerals in order to make tech more valuable compared to a economically greedy build? tbh, my first thought is "probably quite bad for Zerg", since I believe that gold bases tend to be very good for Z. But I'd be curious what Pig would think about this.
Someone said it on your vid yesterday and after thinking about it a bit, I think they're right. Make the build time for workers longer. They said double, but that's too much. The exact number is worth experimenting with. It may be worth even making playing more with CC, Hatch, Nexus build timer too. (i.e. Shorter but more expensive or the inverse. Either way.) It makes harass more dangerous, it allows more production buildings to be active. More army is more fights. More fights is more excitement for viewers. Scouting for potential harass would be non-negotiable. Surprise builds more effective when the scouting does fail. With that said, every race would need some sort of eco comeback mechanic like the Mule. Losing 2 workers and never being able to recover is bad design too.
It might need even more adjustments. For example, Terrans can build their CC in the main. Help to saturate it. Then fly to second. Zerg can build a macro hatch. What do Protoss have? They must expand
@@sashasemennikov157 Nexus build time decreasing seems prudent. Not every change needs to be the same across all races, you know? Drones and SCVs building slightly longer than Probes may make more sense.
If i i remember correctly the early WOL maps were much smaller than the giant macro maps you have now. If 6 workers isn't the fix, maybe its map size. The massive maps encourage huge macro play.
I mentioned this on the other video, but change the map slightly to have gold in the main (not all but a few ) which would make the workers far move valuable because of the lower count, but the game still faster to get going because of the similar starting income
Even aside from the larger drone count discussion, I am enjoyed watching these older games with modern commentary. The unique perspective might make it worth digging deeper into historical games even though the video quality is even worse.
Reaper arrives at four minutes. It's all I need to see. Changing from 6 to 12 just saved Time from Human lives. As Pure as it is. If you want 1 base plays change the Mineral patches back to 1500 that was the real change. Do you guys want 1 base plays? I don't.
What if we just make the number of workers at the start a variable of the game as well? Either make in random (but mirrored for both players), or make it like maps where certain starting numbers can be banned / picked. This way the combination of factors to make up for unique games shoot up significantly.
I liked the maps, and think that if lower worker starts can allow for more variety in map design like 3p and 4p maps that I'd take the slower start. I think there's more overall positive excitement in a new map pool than a balance patch.
Here is how I would fix the lack of variance issue without touching the amount of workers. So instead of the current map-veto we have a MAP-RACE-SELECTION like thus: 1) Player A selects a MAP 2) Player B selects his RACE 3) Player A selects his RACE but it CANNOT be the same as B's race The above would promote skill across all races, level the playing field, and promote ingenuity and variance. EXAMPLE 1, two great players bo5: Maru (Terran) VS Serral (Zerg) FIRST MATCH 1) Maru picks Terran favored map against Zerg 2) SERRAL chooses TERRAN (takes the map advantage and makes both play off race) 3) MARU chooses PROTOSS (as it is closer to his playstyle than Zerg, and the map is bad for Zerg) NEXT MATCH 1) Serral Pick neutral map 2) MARU could pick Terran or Zerg, chooses TERRAN 3) SERRAL picks ZERG NEXT MATCH 1) Maru Picks neutral map 2) SERRAL picks ZERG 3) MARU Picks TERRAN NEXT MATCH 1) Serral Pick neutral map 2) MARU chooses ZERG 3) SERRAL picks PROTOSS NEXT MATCH 1) Maru Picks Protoss favored map against Zerg 2) SERRAL picks ZERG (could have gone Protoss too) 3) MARU Picks PROTOSS The end result would be some classic main race matchups more neutral maps, and then some curve balls with off races. EXAMPLE 2 - a lesser player against great player, say HARSTEM (Protoss, overall rank about 30) vs CLEM (Terran, overall rank top3 at least): Harstem always pick TERRAN RACE when available, and always chooses maps that are bad for Terran (if such exists...). This would allow Harstem to play creative build orders, one off-race against another off-race, or play main-race against main-race on favorable maps only. Sure, Clem would still be the heavily favored here, but there is significantly higher chances for an upset and there will be much more variance regarding actual play. Possible NEGATIVES: CON 1: We see less great play, as players play more with their off-races? -Valid point, but not a big issues, as players nowadays are so ridiculously good even on their off-races - so we would not see sub par play, and we could enjoy more variance/creativity. CON 2: We cannot enjoy the brilliance of TvT, PvP, ZvZ anymore! -Is this truly a CON?
It looks better when you divide that blizzard clock by 1.4 so that 23min game is actually just 16 minute game and then you realise its not that far from current game while also giving more time for managing bases and planing tech switches/responses to them etc.
You know, when you look at these games it really doesn't look all that different, except at the very beginning where nothing happens for another minute and a half or so. Maybe looking at a few more cheesy games would change that calculus, but really whet it's looking like is that the issue isn't the 6-vs-12-worker start, but that the point at which builds diversify, namely gas, starts so late. Maybe try another set of games, keeping to 12 or at least 10 workers, but have both players start with 100-150 gas? That way your first tech choice for both sides is much easier to justify, and you can immediately jump to that point in the game where choices other than worker production and expansion need to start happening.
As a Broodwar player, I think 12 worker start is RIDICULOUS.... It would be like starting with a 2nd nexus and core finishing, in broodwar. It was the beginning of the end of SC2
The combination of slightly smaller maps, bases that don't mine out quickly and difficult-to-take 4th and 5th bases make for fast paced exciting games (once you get past the 6 worker slow start) that seem to have been lost in today's obsession with the late game. Would be good to have a more varied map pool.
The 2014 game was so much more engaging. The slower start allowed me as a player to calm down and get things in order, while as a viewer it also allows me to really focus in on those small little battles and understand whats happening. This is the case not just for this game, but games in general I watched or played back then. As a player now, I feel like everything just moves too fast. I've never been great.. low masters NA.. but I really feel the game has gotten worse since 12 worker start. Also as a viewer, now the games are way too chaotic and I can't really understand what's happening and the massive 200/200 turtles are really *really* boring.. Oh, I forgot to mention, the faster worker start also killed 3 player and 4 player maps. Now the map pool is restricted to be so boring.
Late game Bases use to be more exposed. Reduced modern base resources forces players to expand more. (So maps are forcing the game play 6 workers are looking to change) The game is a lot more "solved" as far as units vs units what should A do what should B do. (This makes me think six workers wont make a huge difference) Micro skills where a lot more taxed by harder to work macro systems. (Players desires have pushed the focus to micro because they find Macro less interesting game play) A lot of the "exciting moments" came from mistakes that players made which people have learnt solutions. (Players dislike upsets) My thoughts are that players push "comfortable" design but the uncomfortable things that make for "exciting gameplay". Popular "liked" maps become the norm to play on because players like them. Over time this has caused map makers to make more comfortable maps. Steps of war arguably the worse map ever made for competitive SC2 was a crazy coin flip but it was exciting there has to be a middle ground of map design. The thing I feel a lower worker count will change is scouting. This is the reason we no longer play on 4 player maps because you can not scout fast enough. I commented on the last video about this that consider a raw starting minerals and maybe gas to slow down econ while speeding up plays to be made. A small randomizer on the resources at the start of a map is going to make build orders harder to perfect forcing more mistakes forcing "exciting gameplay". This does have the same issue with scouting. Im not going to lie there was only so many times back in the day I wanted to listen to Artosis and Tastles go over the same tactical choices for five minutes before anything interesting happened. Going back and watching a few games isnt bad but game after game after game viewer retention is probably even worse now than back then. I use to almost always have something else I was doing for the first five minutes while it was running in the background if I was watching live and if I was walking a VoD it was double speed or skipped.
Best way forward: have the number of workers be anywhere from 8-12 determined at random by the game engine at start of each match. Just not knowing your build order in advance would shake up the meta enormously
That offhand comment about rapid casting makes me wonder what would happen if they removed it. Or added a tournament rule that forbids using it. Would we really use much? The discussion about macro and strategic variety is important but the comparative ease of having perfect micro also seems important to me.
I would love to see some modern custom games with 6 worker starts even just a best of 5 showmatch and then pausing every minute or so to compare supply, econ, and tech to see how much we lose
What about starting with 8 workers and 150 minerals? maybe it will make aggressive openings more viable and so players need to get defensive units/structures sooner as well
I think when people are talking about how it was better with 6 workers start is more correlation than causation. I think what people remember from the 6 worker start is that people simply didn't have very optimized strategies yet, and the meta wasn't "solved" yet, but that's something that just naturally would've happened over time even if the worker counts didn't change.
Pig isn't saying 6 worker start was better, he is saying that the huge jump to 12 workers created some problems when it comes to strategic diversity, so if we tinker with the staring worker count we might make the game more strategic and shake up the meta without throwing away too much of the good things 12 worker start gave us.
@@norberthiz9318 I think the strategic diversity only existed because people had unoptimized builds though, that's my point. I think that if builds were just as optimized with 6 workers as they were with 12 workers that you'd still see very repetitive games - maybe the exact builds being used would be slightly different, but I think a lot of those diverse builds.. were actually just bad builds that only worked because they were playing against other bad builds, and would've been dropped as people improved their builds.
Especially giving margin of error becomes smaller as the skill goes up. Nowadays if maxpax loses oracle in the opening, he is dead. If serral loses more than 3 workers to the oracle harassment , it’s a gg.
Watching this it really isn't much of a slower start. I welcome any change that will shake the game up cause it really has gotten stale and too predictable.
That’s because almost all games (except the first) started casting at ~12 workers 😂 There are other heroes changes that we need to look into if we want to change things
maybe reverting to this version isn't the best idea. But going down to 6 workers, having a ton of drastic game play changes. im 100% Fuckin ready. bring some fresh vibes to this dead trash game and its ONLY a bad game because its THE SAME GAME. this game is another absolute gem that just doesn't have the care or patches it RIGHTFULLY deserves.
Was wc3 better to watch? Yes. Lubing up your audience for minor swap back to wc3 might add some spice back to RTS. Longer fights, more races, tavern heroes. Watching creeping and items are fun, watching creepjacks are fun. Talk to grubby!!!!!!!!
The funniest part about this disucssion is people complaining the early game of 6 workers is too boring, but the late game 50/50 map divide where two 200 supply armies turtle up is somehow more desirable. I say, Go Extreme. 4 Workers and get maps that stop giving every player so many 'free' bases. The fact "natural" expansion is so ingrained Stormgate still has them shows the thinking on this problem runs deep, so you need to do something extreme to shake it up.
But why? For me Star Craft is about building,exapnding and fighting. Devolving the game into all ins mainly imho is bad. All ins should be possible, but alwys a gamble, and an outlier , not the norm. 2 200 armies supply turtling occurs so very rarely in modern sc2.
@@firestarter000001 When I was young, StarCraft was a Strategy Game, where all in was a strategy that could be used to punish someone that rushed tech or econ, which forced those players to have more strategies. Why not just start the game with an expansion per each player and 30 workers and tier 2 units? Why not start the game with a 10 minute truce so they can build to their hearts content? My extreme examples should suggest that there is so far into the game where even 12 worker advocates suggest would be too far.
@@Pangora2 There is a golden middle for sure here. I could also mock the 6 workers opening, asking why not go for 2 workers... Imho 12 workers is the golden middle. And you still have to punish greed (just yesterday Pig casted Astrea/Maxpax serie where Astrea in second game realizes Maxpax got to greedy and punishes it instantly) , tough the optimal, lowest gamble, play is to be economic oriented. And imho its how it should be, all ins should be possible, but should be a gamble and an outlier, not the best strategy.
now this was a game of starcraft. I miss HotS. LotV is so fast paced, the expac race kinda gets boring after some time. You didn't rush the late game in this era, there was more of an early and mid game, that's what makes sense.
How much do we actually learn from videos like this that show old championships? The clock isn't accurate, the casts are intentionally skipping 1.5 minutes in the casts, and we aren't particularly confident that the build execution is optimal. Life is flushing banes down the toilet through detonations. I would like to see how we feel about an 8 worker start at the end of 1 year to see if everyone wants to go back.
I don't see Taeja playing anyone? It's just him... no one else is in the other booth and there isn't even an opposing race on the other side of the map. This is the craziest thing since Krispen Wah and Hull Cogan.
Game 1: nothing happens before 12 workers mark (except building workers) Game 2: casting starts at 11-13 workers Game 3: casting starts at 11-11. Almost immediately goes to 11-13 Game 4: casting starts at 12-14 In none of the games we see anything meaningful before ~12 workers. Which is equivalent to the modern start. Means, difference is not in the worker count, but something else
I want to emphasize that if we want change current state, workers ain’t it. We need to look at other changes that enabled current gameplay and work on them
as someone who still plays sc2 at a highlevel, please god do not change the worker count. The build up was slower and it gets you into the action slower. PLZ NO
Nope, it's just another help to people who turtle and macro the best, which is fine, but you might remember those days where you could get diamond just memorizing build paths. I know. I did with roach. Now I rejoin the game after 5-10 years, I use one single hotkey, and can almost get plat. Even better, the more I learn the unit matchups (no infested terrans D: ) I actually start winning more. Imagine that, the actual reaction part of the game, not the macro and build path, has more of an influence. If the game had been released like this, starcraft wouldn't be dead right now.
less information is better , it's better to watch the game with obvserver vision and follow what is happening in the game instead of just looking at the supply number all game every game , and these games were sick with a fun hype re-cast
Yes, 6-worker start early game is boring. That being said; maps were more interesting. And yes, 12-worker early game is also, you guessed it, boring. I think we just need to accept that StarCraft 2 is fundamentally boring, to watch, pre-4 minutes. Tone down the frequency of 14-base macro maps. We know how those maps play out and yet they make up 80% of the map pool each season. We’ve been playing on the same map for 7+ years.
if my memory is correct, during the era of HOTS, when terran sucked, Maru won every tournament, when terran got buffed to the sky, Maru became suck.......Also, Taeja was the only one terran who could play protoss in late game......during summer
The thing that made HotS sad is Swarm Host, other than that, i remember enjyoed watching HotS back in 2014/2015, and i'm still sad that i'm reminded of lilbow
Whatever you want to fix, reintroducing lost time and slow starts is NOT the way. It is BORING as hell to do wait for economy to kick in. Life is SHORT ENOUGH already to lose days in hour life waiting for 6 more workers for a very unclear benefit that could without a doubt be achieved tuning other metrics: it's only mathematics after all.
It's fucking boring if you're a mindless drone that fast expands every game. 1 base builds tech before expand were more viable to punish bs like this. The point being that starting with more workers always favors ecobat the detriment of other builds.
what you have to keep in mind when looking at these old games is that for most of HotS the meta was ling bane muta in tvz, I remember this being so annoying and boring at the time
The thing we really lost going to 12 worker starts was the insane tangents that tastosis would wander off onto later in a night of casting.
Harstem has amazing tangents though. He will start them any time there’s a lull in the action
they also did it with the 12 workers and then interrupt themselves with a „hold on we have a …“ or something
I think because the game has changed so dramatically since WOL you'd actually need to test this(especially early all in strategies). Replays, while good, are limited in value because they don't have the units from HOTS/LOTV.
Running some showmatches today to get more of a feel for it. Stay tuned for tomorrow's video
@@PiGstarcraftare these streamed?
@@PiGstarcraft I'd be curious about like... 12 worker start but your first supply + tech building (choice of rax/engineering, gate/forge, pool/evo) builds free and instantly. Skips the startup, but it restores the situation where your first tech choice could happen as soon as 15 supply instead of ~20. It doesn't give us back the 6pool, but it does open up fast tech builds
I gotta say, PiG is so legitimately hyped to commentate this match. As a fellow nerd, it warms my heart to see this level of nerdness/passion for gaming!
As a campaign modder and frequent replayer, the slower worker starts of the WoL maps definitely make the openings more boring, especially when you've played missions enough that you know what you need to do to start up. That said, I still have fonder memories of playing with 6 worker start than 12 workers; probably some nostalgia in that evaluation (not much, 12 workers is old enough that I have nostalgia for those times too), but also as a more casual melee player, the buildup time helps ease into the game, make a plan, have some actual value to scouting. Feels like in those days, it was a valuable piece of information whether a protoss was building a gas vs a nexus, nowadays the decisionpoints are pushed further back and consequently there's fewer of them tech/macro-wise.
I've seen this 6 worker start discussion play out in the community enough times that I've fallen into and back out of love with the "go back to 6 workers" idea already. Nowadays, I'd say I'm more interested in testing out a 8, 9, or 10 worker start, alongside some other retro experiments.
The point in favour of slower early game that I always really liked was the idea of tech being slower, so it's actually a decision. In WoL and HotS, BCs actually felt _late game_, armies felt qualitatively different between early, mid, and late game. Nowadays, it's possible to rush out BCs in 4 minutes, the only way armies feel different across different stages of the game is in amount rather than tech, with the exception of skytoss. (and even then, I've played enough metal-league 2v2s to know that cannon turtle+rush 2~3 stargate carrier is really common on ladder, hits fast for my skill level, and is powerful if you don't respond with aggression).
As other commenters have pointed out, I think the bigger dynamic shift was the bases mining out faster, having more and easier bases, 3 and 4 player maps disappearing from the 1v1 pool, and balancing around fast expand being the norm. Artosis also discussed this; I disagree with his assessment that 6 worker start would be a magic cure-all to bring us back to the glory days, but I agree with the assessment that liberators in particular warped a lot of map design and contributed to all the maps feeling samey. The modern style of map design and game dynamics feels stale to me even while I recognize it as being refined, fast-paced, and frenetic, in large part because it always feels uniformly fast-paced and frenetic. The maps have the same start positions, roughly the same base layouts, always have 2 players, the same width of chokepoints across the map, roughly the same attitude towards gold bases and watchtower positioning, employ the same styles of liberator anti-cheese/deadzone requirements, have roughly the same number of reaper jump spots, you expand across the map in roughly the same pace and style every game, etc, etc. Makes me wish for the days of having Metalopolis, Blistering Sands, or Steppes of War in the pool just to mess with people.
People just want nostalgia but the reality of it is: it's just pressured cheese plays as it's SO Ridiculous you wait 5 Minutes to see to races clash but a player is cheesing the other. I don't see how cheesing is fun. Imagine in finals a player cheeses the other for the trophy the audience came and watched a cheese. This is just embarrassing for game design.
You talk about 6 workers but the real change was nerfing the mineral line. It boggles my mind how people are discussing 12 workers to 6 as it being good for the game as it would just make things SLOW.
We should ask ourselves was the Mineral patch change good for the game?
I think it was because it forces the defensive player to push for a risk slope, without jeopardizing the audience as it's incredibly boring to watch 1 base defensive plays. It also puts cheese plays in check because you can have access to gas for defending a cannonrush really quick. It also favors quick ninja expansions which is a weapon against cheese.
If we want nostalgia back. BRING BACK OLD MAPS !!!
What are we aiming for?
Variations?
Then design more Units! or a new path in the tech tree!
A New big late game unit for each race!
We want to have fun not to stare a command center doing his thing.
I think the thing this really shows is just that the game is really not that different outside of the very early game where you have a longer period of very small numbers of units (like 3 reapers vs 4-6 lings), as economies are being built up. The meta in TvZ was still this heavy split-pressure with drops and bio, the same as it is now.
The bigger change in LoTV was probably just the mineral patches. Bases half-mining out in 60% of the time and forcing players to expand more aggressively is a huge deal compared to the number of starting workers. Maps are bigger and have more "safe" bases that are easy to secure now out of necessity, because if players can't expand, they just lose. Zerg would likely be completely dominant if the game was still played on those HoTS maps (if they were changed to LoTV minerals) with the more difficult to secure 3rd/4th bases.
Also, the loss of 4 player maps. 3-4 player maps added a really interesting dynamic to the game with early scout patterns that's just missing now because some cheese timings hit so much faster.
I think one thing I noticed here was the delay in tech, especially for zerg. Maybe it was just Life's style I can't remember, but Hive seemed so much slower, which created more of a mid-game mid-tier tech back and forth for a bit. Which I think is cool. Having a battle of simply marines medi's tanks vs ling bane muta while slowly moving into higher tech causes some chaos. In the current state I don't really see that much anymore. Its mostly the early game pressure holds straight into ghosts, lurkers, infestors, vipers.
As someone who played StarCraft before broodwar even came out. It’s fine to start with less workers. You can have fun stuff happen. You can allow weird maps. It’s a good time.
nah, even nowadays no audience cares about the first 2 mins.
I think Harstem had a good point, the only argument for 6 workers is you make it harder for new comers.
@ Are you speaking to new players or new viewers? Nobody likes the first 2 minutes. I like it. But in the name of shaking up the pro scene, we could start with gas mining available also. That would spice it up.
@@MrChachSC2
No body cares about watching the first 2 mins of modern SC2. TH-camrs skip them if they have a mind to go through their viewing statistics.
6 workers was much more welcoming to new players. It turned the 2 min early game into 6-8 mins.
And minerals ran out after 18 mins of mining back then which lead to games that could potentially take over an hour.
No body wants this anymore 😆
"we could start with gas mining available also. That would spice it up."
w8 i dun get it, what?
@@Broockle Well instead of slowing the game down since you say it’s such a negative, we could adjust the options at the opening of the game. For instance we could make one gas ready to mine at the beginning. You start with a Nexus and an assimilator, for instance. Same amount of workers but you can start mining gas immediately.
@@MrChachSC2
o... i mean, it does come across as facetious but if you're serious then...
To be clear u mean, 6 workers, the old minerals that mine out at 18 mins, but one of your gases is already built... I mean it's not gonna speed up ur expansion at all, and I imagine most players would put all their workers on minerals to get the expo up first.
There are some tech options this would speed up like if you wanna 1 base cloak banshee rush faster... I mean you're almost incentivizing cheese in that sense with the free gas.
I can't say for sure but I don't feel good about this idea 😅
I found early game to be far far FAR more creative with fewer workers back in the day. Much larger risk vs. reward factor, so yes, I think this would be a hugely positive change.
I do agree that there is a lack of variety and..strategic punishability? In SC2 atm. But after watching these games I don't know if 6 worker starts would really be the solution.
One thing people forget is that 16 workers in LoTV mine like 24 workers oversaturation did in HoTS. 3 base LoTV plays more like a 4 base HoTS build did
Some notes on 1st game;
Terran went 3cc but couldnt get his wall up in time to stop zerglings
Zerg was able to get an overseer in time to stop the cloak banshee
The timings make much more sense
Also, Terrans did definitely make concaves and focus banelings, thats how Marineking Prime made his name. Insane splits and focus fire on banelings.
I'm not a hardcore fan but I do enjoy broodwar. While the games are different I enjoy the slow start to rts games.
It's like a large build up for a fight compared to instantly getting into action the first minutes of the game.
While "nothing" maybe lost by skipping the first 4 minutes.
I do think it there is value in watching the players starting out.
Scouting, tech builds, and countering is definitely interesting.
Wol was low drone count to and hots
0:50 actually, the problem is that TH-cam's compression algorithms gradually degrade every video over time. By 2014, as you saw, we already had 1080p video. Its just that 10 years of storage, compression, decompression, etc mean that the older videos begin to look terrible.
we need to learn how to preserve videos or a lot of human knowledge and culture will be lost
Source on this? It wouldn't make any sense to compress an already-compressed video
@@Swoodivariusmore efficient algorithms iterations and economics make it make sense for Alphabet.
lol you haven't seen what they did with crystal clear 360p videos from 2010. They nuked the bitrate. It just looks like barf now
@@Swoodivarius Yep, as someone else mentioned YT is constantly getting new and better compression algorithms, which require videos to be uncompressed and recompressed to take up less space.
Each time its done the video gets worse, so old videos tend to look much worse than their resolution suggests they should.
I don't think 6 worker start is better. However I think bumping cc and nexus supply up(don't remember hatchery) to be able to start above 10 supply made eco builds better since you effectively also got half of a pylo/depot (10 to 15) more
That and also people constantly crying to get every build that looked OP nerfed as soon as possible, are what limited builds. How many aggressive allins have we nerfed over the years just because it looked imba?
Immortal Sentry comes to mind.
One additional thing to note, I know "F2 to the other side of the map" is probably just used as a figure of speach, but it's worth noting that there is no select all army key in HOTS, that wasn't added until LOTV.
I do like a lot of the quality of life changes in LOTV, they are legitimate improvements on the game but at the same time I do miss a lot of the skill differentiators in old starcraft, like saturation checks, boxing your mineral line and counting the amount of rows to check your worker saturation rather than seeing the worker count on each base. And control group managment took a lot more effort. HOTS was the period of time where I was playing a lot of Starcraft, and now I mostly just watch, it was fun to try and learn all the higher level mechanics back in the day.
Life was such an exciting player. I guess Reynor + Dark is his analogue but still no one else always looked like he was at the brink of death then pull off miracles of Life over and over again.
We need some less dynamic players to showcase how much worse HOTS is to today's game, sort of unfair to choose an epic series like this. How about Snute vs Showtime?
6 workers start just let the pace of the game even out so much. That chaotic moments feel faster with a slow build up. The players get to show off more creativity in the start, with more time to play mind games. And the casters CAN use that time in tournaments to talk about player history, or in friendlies to interact with stream.
Nowadays people would just watch tik tok on their cellphones for 5 minutes. We want to see BIG BATTLES. The early game in starcraft is just "oh the reaper killed 2 probes! Wow". The existence of zerglings in the game just makes so the Zvx match up a zergling party as it's too much of an effective unit in the early game. Zerglings on the screen for 2 minutes are you kidding me. No.
I think some people are misunderstanding the benefit of 6 workers over 12 workers.
A 12 worker start does make the game faster and it erases the slow/boring parts of the early game which a lot of people dislike. However what you gain with a 6 worker start is strategic variability. When you have less workers each worker is a bigger percentage of the total which means that -as the game progresses- each additional worker changes the game more, allowing for different build orders in the early game. Furthermore, when each worker is more valuable (because there's less of them) losing them is also more impactful which incentivizes players to be more offensive in the early game (again, further amplifying the scope of strategic decisions a player can make).
Having said that a few things came to mind while watching these games. Mining out the 1st base takes a looong time, even longer than BW actually. It also took more time for the action to get going at the start of the game compared to BW. I think the reason for this is that in BW workers mine double per trip what they mine in sc2.
So I think both changes implemented into sc2 would spice the game up both strategically and pacing-wise (at least compared to WoL and HotS). Basically, reduce starting workers to 6, make them mine double per trip.
Personally I would also make it so you start getting marginal decrease of mining per worker after 1 worker per patch is mining (basically, 2 workers don't perfectly synchronize on one mineral patch). This last change incentivizes players to take extra bases and reduces the amount of workers needed to keep a late game economy going (increasing the amount of army units in the game, which means more action).
Thanks for this PiG, love to FINALLY see some traction in the starting worker count discussion after 8 years!
1:09:19 I Love the Sound, I like it with no game sound, your voice is beautiful ❤️ and the visual quality is unmatched 😂🤞✌️
Wow Muta used to not be made out of paper and could actually kill stuff? Amazing!
They were made of the same paper since sc1 came out. Still same paper today.
Those were Life's, they seem made of rubber dodging bullets, but they are paper, Life does all the dodging. There were rumors in Korea that his father was an army pilot, and that his mother was a muta.
back in the day. i fast forwarded every game to the 6-7 min mark.
Games took soooooooooooooooooooooooooo long.
I had and still have this weird respect for these games and never skipped 😅
Nowadays I have video speed controller and would prbly x4 the beginning everytime.
@@gezenews so true, i forgot about that. the avg game back in the day was 20 mins. now 20 mins is a long game.
...unless it was an sOs or Has game 🤡
@@47ness5 i dont think has was playing in hots or lotv.
Note that none of these games showed anything interesting in the early game - it was just get up to a couple of bases, build a reasonable number of workers and secure the ramp. Far more impactful were the nerfed widow mines and thors, which made midgame Mutas not immediately disintegrate, and the lack of ghosts, which meant ultralisks actually survived to do damage.
Showing Taeja games is an interesting choice because he basically played proto-modern builds.
I miss the old mineral harras and mining a bit before starting the command center because each mineral was so much more valuable early game. And killing a worker with a full mineral load hurt a bit more.
We need to bring more variety to map pool too, all the maps in starcraft 2 are almost the same, with small differences, a good idea might be to have more open maps, something like arabia-arena in Age of Empires 2. The lack of variety in maps makes the game very predictable, and it gets boring after some time, cuz u feel playing the same match over and over.
Man it has been almost 10 years since Life got caught cheating, my heart still breaks into a million pieces every time. What an incredibly waste of talent, I so wish he would have had
good people around him to keep him on track.
Hey PiG has anyone suggested instead of starting with less workers, just remove 1 or even 2 of the close mineral patches from the expansions in order to devalue and slow down the economic explosion that's making players rush to 3 bases every game rn? The other thing might be increasing the build time of command base structures by 1 or 1.5 production cycles or simply change their stats to make them much more vulnerable while under construction without incentivizing turtling
This was such a good series, you should cast more older games. Theres a GSL code A match between Inno and Stork where Tastosis talk about how LOTV was so much like broodwar, lol
What a fun game. Thanks for the cast :)
Edit: Series of games. Got a bit excited during the first game and forgot it was a series!
I think for watching games and series 12 is better. But I mostly stopped playing, when it became 12 workers. It is just more bases you have to get an defend etc. In Wol/HotS a lot of stuff happened on one base and two bases was already midgame. Now you need to manage 5, 6 ,7 bases after like 10 minutes and imo it is less fun and more stressful.
Especailly as zerg. Their bases are their infrastructure as well so they are much more vunurable to a base snipe.
Zerg somehow became a defensive race :D
@@notrather5514 Yeah but if you play against terran or protoss you're nearly guaranteeed to spend less on turtling than them and also be able to move your defenses around. Problem I'm just now realizing could be fixed is that my expansions get sniped before defenses are up... that could be solved with creep spread.
@@gezenews Sadly crawlers are really bad because they cost a drone, and therefore a larva. You really have to defend with units always and you have to have multiple control groups just so you can mine :D (at least after 3rd base)
@@notrather5514 larva not that expensive with 2 queens and 2 hatcheries. I'm finding denying gas + quick expand + turtle to tech wins every game as zerg. yes def expensive but guarantees econ and with very little money zerg dominates the map early.
@gezenews You are not a zerg player, right?
Man, watching Taeja was great
Damn the nostalgia. Watched this live in Katowice, first time there as well.
lucky as hell
If I recall correctly, Life used to play with the very old school inject method. He had all hatches in one hotkey and each individual inject queen had their own hotkey, while his creep spread queens were all bundled in one special hotkey. good old 44v55v66v xD
oh geeze i used this till 2015, it was so much harder than it needed to be lol
It would actually be interesting to go back and recast some of the best of the best finals/tourneys from WOL and HOTS time. Cast the first GSL finals with fruitdealer!
Artosis yelling at people on ladder that they do random things that cannot be defended in SC1 and it's not proper playing...after some years, wanting to bring the same pain to SC2, and complaining that good players do not lose to random stuff that they could not have been prepared for. And now people making videos about this :)
Case in point, Artosis' chat loves that shit. His entite thesis is that designing the game for the pros does not make it fun to watch.
I for one would love to see some tournaments played with a 6 or 8 worker version with current units and specs.
Also the voice quality is unmatched. I love hearing the game in 420p. Teh music is beautiful. And what was the other thing I had to say to avoid being dumped in a void for 7 months? Oh, right, I did enjoy watching the slower paced early game of these 2034 Katowice games.
I think, what everyone likes, and what was on full display in this series is a long actionpacked midgame.
these days at the pro level we see, especially in TvZ they rush to lategame and by 10 minutes we're in a stale boring match where both sides are mostly on defense and the fights don't feel impactful because they are but a small piece in the greater "I'm mining more of the map than you" war with the ultimate objective to outlast, this is also v boring
however I don't think the 6 worker start is doing any good here, like, it prolongs the early game, which is also boring to have go on for so long, but not the midgame.
I think to improve the game in this direction what needs to be looked at is not the 12 worker start but the mechanisms that shorten the midgame and reverse/change that but that's not the 6 worker start.
first 8 minutes look identical except less action
By 8 minutes in modern LOTV they are already fighting multiple times to protect 3rd or 4th or in base doing harass etc
At 8 min, Serrals hive is almost half way done. Not really the same :D
In game timer was 1.5 times faster
I love the sound. I like it with no game sound. Your voice is beautiful. Also, theeeee, err, visual quality is unmatched. I love that you're recording in 144p.
Also, a bronze league question - is it possible that, instead of the start being too fast, the risk/reward calculation is too beneficial to greedy expansions? All three factions seem to rush to 3 base (or, for Terrans, go for a very fast 3rd CC in the main) with as little tech as they can get away with. How would the game change if expansions (or maybe expansions except for the natural) would have either fewer mineral patches or lower-value minerals in order to make tech more valuable compared to a economically greedy build?
tbh, my first thought is "probably quite bad for Zerg", since I believe that gold bases tend to be very good for Z. But I'd be curious what Pig would think about this.
Someone said it on your vid yesterday and after thinking about it a bit, I think they're right. Make the build time for workers longer. They said double, but that's too much. The exact number is worth experimenting with. It may be worth even making playing more with CC, Hatch, Nexus build timer too. (i.e. Shorter but more expensive or the inverse. Either way.)
It makes harass more dangerous, it allows more production buildings to be active. More army is more fights. More fights is more excitement for viewers.
Scouting for potential harass would be non-negotiable. Surprise builds more effective when the scouting does fail.
With that said, every race would need some sort of eco comeback mechanic like the Mule. Losing 2 workers and never being able to recover is bad design too.
It might need even more adjustments.
For example, Terrans can build their CC in the main. Help to saturate it. Then fly to second.
Zerg can build a macro hatch.
What do Protoss have? They must expand
@@sashasemennikov157 Nexus build time decreasing seems prudent.
Not every change needs to be the same across all races, you know? Drones and SCVs building slightly longer than Probes may make more sense.
GREAT follow up video im loving it
If i i remember correctly the early WOL maps were much smaller than the giant macro maps you have now.
If 6 workers isn't the fix, maybe its map size. The massive maps encourage huge macro play.
Loved the quality, audio is amazing
I mentioned this on the other video, but change the map slightly to have gold in the main (not all but a few ) which would make the workers far move valuable because of the lower count, but the game still faster to get going because of the similar starting income
Even aside from the larger drone count discussion, I am enjoyed watching these older games with modern commentary. The unique perspective might make it worth digging deeper into historical games even though the video quality is even worse.
Reaper arrives at four minutes. It's all I need to see. Changing from 6 to 12 just saved Time from Human lives. As Pure as it is. If you want 1 base plays change the Mineral patches back to 1500 that was the real change. Do you guys want 1 base plays? I don't.
The video quality is perfect for the speeds my internet is running at.
What if we just make the number of workers at the start a variable of the game as well? Either make in random (but mirrored for both players), or make it like maps where certain starting numbers can be banned / picked. This way the combination of factors to make up for unique games shoot up significantly.
I liked the maps, and think that if lower worker starts can allow for more variety in map design like 3p and 4p maps that I'd take the slower start. I think there's more overall positive excitement in a new map pool than a balance patch.
One positive about the lower quality video is the banelings look like they glow brighter
Here is how I would fix the lack of variance issue without touching the amount of workers. So instead of the current map-veto we have a MAP-RACE-SELECTION like thus:
1) Player A selects a MAP
2) Player B selects his RACE
3) Player A selects his RACE but it CANNOT be the same as B's race
The above would promote skill across all races, level the playing field, and promote ingenuity and variance.
EXAMPLE 1, two great players bo5: Maru (Terran) VS Serral (Zerg)
FIRST MATCH
1) Maru picks Terran favored map against Zerg
2) SERRAL chooses TERRAN (takes the map advantage and makes both play off race)
3) MARU chooses PROTOSS (as it is closer to his playstyle than Zerg, and the map is bad for Zerg)
NEXT MATCH
1) Serral Pick neutral map
2) MARU could pick Terran or Zerg, chooses TERRAN
3) SERRAL picks ZERG
NEXT MATCH
1) Maru Picks neutral map
2) SERRAL picks ZERG
3) MARU Picks TERRAN
NEXT MATCH
1) Serral Pick neutral map
2) MARU chooses ZERG
3) SERRAL picks PROTOSS
NEXT MATCH
1) Maru Picks Protoss favored map against Zerg
2) SERRAL picks ZERG (could have gone Protoss too)
3) MARU Picks PROTOSS
The end result would be some classic main race matchups more neutral maps, and then some curve balls with off races.
EXAMPLE 2 - a lesser player against great player, say HARSTEM (Protoss, overall rank about 30) vs CLEM (Terran, overall rank top3 at least):
Harstem always pick TERRAN RACE when available, and always chooses maps that are bad for Terran (if such exists...). This would allow Harstem to play creative build orders, one off-race against another off-race, or play main-race against main-race on favorable maps only. Sure, Clem would still be the heavily favored here, but there is significantly higher chances for an upset and there will be much more variance regarding actual play.
Possible NEGATIVES:
CON 1: We see less great play, as players play more with their off-races?
-Valid point, but not a big issues, as players nowadays are so ridiculously good even on their off-races - so we would not see sub par play, and we could enjoy more variance/creativity.
CON 2: We cannot enjoy the brilliance of TvT, PvP, ZvZ anymore!
-Is this truly a CON?
It looks better when you divide that blizzard clock by 1.4 so that 23min game is actually just 16 minute game and then you realise its not that far from current game while also giving more time for managing bases and planing tech switches/responses to them etc.
You know, when you look at these games it really doesn't look all that different, except at the very beginning where nothing happens for another minute and a half or so. Maybe looking at a few more cheesy games would change that calculus, but really whet it's looking like is that the issue isn't the 6-vs-12-worker start, but that the point at which builds diversify, namely gas, starts so late. Maybe try another set of games, keeping to 12 or at least 10 workers, but have both players start with 100-150 gas? That way your first tech choice for both sides is much easier to justify, and you can immediately jump to that point in the game where choices other than worker production and expansion need to start happening.
I love both the video quality and the sound of your voice, gottit!
Back in the day, there was more than one map
As a Broodwar player, I think 12 worker start is RIDICULOUS.... It would be like starting with a 2nd nexus and core finishing, in broodwar. It was the beginning of the end of SC2
The combination of slightly smaller maps, bases that don't mine out quickly and difficult-to-take 4th and 5th bases make for fast paced exciting games (once you get past the 6 worker slow start) that seem to have been lost in today's obsession with the late game. Would be good to have a more varied map pool.
The video quality may be low, but not the quality of your work mate! Much love from the other side of the desert.
The 2014 game was so much more engaging. The slower start allowed me as a player to calm down and get things in order, while as a viewer it also allows me to really focus in on those small little battles and understand whats happening. This is the case not just for this game, but games in general I watched or played back then.
As a player now, I feel like everything just moves too fast. I've never been great.. low masters NA.. but I really feel the game has gotten worse since 12 worker start. Also as a viewer, now the games are way too chaotic and I can't really understand what's happening and the massive 200/200 turtles are really *really* boring..
Oh, I forgot to mention, the faster worker start also killed 3 player and 4 player maps. Now the map pool is restricted to be so boring.
Late game Bases use to be more exposed. Reduced modern base resources forces players to expand more. (So maps are forcing the game play 6 workers are looking to change)
The game is a lot more "solved" as far as units vs units what should A do what should B do. (This makes me think six workers wont make a huge difference)
Micro skills where a lot more taxed by harder to work macro systems. (Players desires have pushed the focus to micro because they find Macro less interesting game play)
A lot of the "exciting moments" came from mistakes that players made which people have learnt solutions. (Players dislike upsets)
My thoughts are that players push "comfortable" design but the uncomfortable things that make for "exciting gameplay". Popular "liked" maps become the norm to play on because players like them. Over time this has caused map makers to make more comfortable maps. Steps of war arguably the worse map ever made for competitive SC2 was a crazy coin flip but it was exciting there has to be a middle ground of map design.
The thing I feel a lower worker count will change is scouting. This is the reason we no longer play on 4 player maps because you can not scout fast enough. I commented on the last video about this that consider a raw starting minerals and maybe gas to slow down econ while speeding up plays to be made. A small randomizer on the resources at the start of a map is going to make build orders harder to perfect forcing more mistakes forcing "exciting gameplay". This does have the same issue with scouting.
Im not going to lie there was only so many times back in the day I wanted to listen to Artosis and Tastles go over the same tactical choices for five minutes before anything interesting happened. Going back and watching a few games isnt bad but game after game after game viewer retention is probably even worse now than back then. I use to almost always have something else I was doing for the first five minutes while it was running in the background if I was watching live and if I was walking a VoD it was double speed or skipped.
One thing to keep in mind is pre-LotV "Spawn Larva" didn't queue up and took longer to finish
Best way forward: have the number of workers be anywhere from 8-12 determined at random by the game engine at start of each match. Just not knowing your build order in advance would shake up the meta enormously
worth mentioning back then people's PCs and monitors weren't as good, it's easier to target fire banes with 300+ fps on a 240hz+ display
When I’m in a saying “versus” wrong competition and my opponent is PiG 😱
That offhand comment about rapid casting makes me wonder what would happen if they removed it. Or added a tournament rule that forbids using it. Would we really use much? The discussion about macro and strategic variety is important but the comparative ease of having perfect micro also seems important to me.
*lose, not use
I would love to see some modern custom games with 6 worker starts even just a best of 5 showmatch and then pausing every minute or so to compare supply, econ, and tech to see how much we lose
What about starting with 8 workers and 150 minerals? maybe it will make aggressive openings more viable and so players need to get defensive units/structures sooner as well
I think when people are talking about how it was better with 6 workers start is more correlation than causation. I think what people remember from the 6 worker start is that people simply didn't have very optimized strategies yet, and the meta wasn't "solved" yet, but that's something that just naturally would've happened over time even if the worker counts didn't change.
And that’s why they want to shake it up, if we change the worker count all the builds will change.
@@MrChachSC211 worker stark kappa
Pig isn't saying 6 worker start was better, he is saying that the huge jump to 12 workers created some problems when it comes to strategic diversity, so if we tinker with the staring worker count we might make the game more strategic and shake up the meta without throwing away too much of the good things 12 worker start gave us.
@@norberthiz9318 I think the strategic diversity only existed because people had unoptimized builds though, that's my point. I think that if builds were just as optimized with 6 workers as they were with 12 workers that you'd still see very repetitive games - maybe the exact builds being used would be slightly different, but I think a lot of those diverse builds.. were actually just bad builds that only worked because they were playing against other bad builds, and would've been dropped as people improved their builds.
Especially giving margin of error becomes smaller as the skill goes up. Nowadays if maxpax loses oracle in the opening, he is dead. If serral loses more than 3 workers to the oracle harassment , it’s a gg.
What if players also started with a barracks a pool and a gateway.
1. With 6 workers
2. With 12 workers.
How would the game look?
Ppl be like: 6 worker starts too boring
Me: *holding my breath frequently during this incredible series*
Watching this it really isn't much of a slower start. I welcome any change that will shake the game up cause it really has gotten stale and too predictable.
That’s because almost all games (except the first) started casting at ~12 workers 😂
There are other heroes changes that we need to look into if we want to change things
I miss this era of sc2. Muta ling bane is so fun to watch.
But widow mines and mothership core did make me quit for a long while...
maybe reverting to this version isn't the best idea. But going down to 6 workers, having a ton of drastic game play changes. im 100% Fuckin ready. bring some fresh vibes to this dead trash game and its ONLY a bad game because its THE SAME GAME. this game is another absolute gem that just doesn't have the care or patches it RIGHTFULLY deserves.
Was wc3 better to watch? Yes. Lubing up your audience for minor swap back to wc3 might add some spice back to RTS.
Longer fights, more races, tavern heroes. Watching creeping and items are fun, watching creepjacks are fun.
Talk to grubby!!!!!!!!
The funniest part about this disucssion is people complaining the early game of 6 workers is too boring, but the late game 50/50 map divide where two 200 supply armies turtle up is somehow more desirable.
I say, Go Extreme. 4 Workers and get maps that stop giving every player so many 'free' bases. The fact "natural" expansion is so ingrained Stormgate still has them shows the thinking on this problem runs deep, so you need to do something extreme to shake it up.
But why? For me Star Craft is about building,exapnding and fighting. Devolving the game into all ins mainly imho is bad. All ins should be possible, but alwys a gamble, and an outlier , not the norm. 2 200 armies supply turtling occurs so very rarely in modern sc2.
@@firestarter000001 When I was young, StarCraft was a Strategy Game, where all in was a strategy that could be used to punish someone that rushed tech or econ, which forced those players to have more strategies.
Why not just start the game with an expansion per each player and 30 workers and tier 2 units? Why not start the game with a 10 minute truce so they can build to their hearts content?
My extreme examples should suggest that there is so far into the game where even 12 worker advocates suggest would be too far.
@@Pangora2 There is a golden middle for sure here. I could also mock the 6 workers opening, asking why not go for 2 workers... Imho 12 workers is the golden middle. And you still have to punish greed (just yesterday Pig casted Astrea/Maxpax serie where Astrea in second game realizes Maxpax got to greedy and punishes it instantly) , tough the optimal, lowest gamble, play is to be economic oriented. And imho its how it should be, all ins should be possible, but should be a gamble and an outlier, not the best strategy.
@firestarter000001 I agree on that. I hope we learn what's possible by experimenting.
Taeja was the player that inspired Clem. Can't deminish the OG
now this was a game of starcraft. I miss HotS. LotV is so fast paced, the expac race kinda gets boring after some time. You didn't rush the late game in this era, there was more of an early and mid game, that's what makes sense.
How much do we actually learn from videos like this that show old championships? The clock isn't accurate, the casts are intentionally skipping 1.5 minutes in the casts, and we aren't particularly confident that the build execution is optimal. Life is flushing banes down the toilet through detonations.
I would like to see how we feel about an 8 worker start at the end of 1 year to see if everyone wants to go back.
We should really bring Life back to SCII.
I don't see Taeja playing anyone? It's just him... no one else is in the other booth and there isn't even an opposing race on the other side of the map. This is the craziest thing since Krispen Wah and Hull Cogan.
Game 1: nothing happens before 12 workers mark (except building workers)
Game 2: casting starts at 11-13 workers
Game 3: casting starts at 11-11. Almost immediately goes to 11-13
Game 4: casting starts at 12-14
In none of the games we see anything meaningful before ~12 workers. Which is equivalent to the modern start.
Means, difference is not in the worker count, but something else
I want to emphasize that if we want change current state, workers ain’t it. We need to look at other changes that enabled current gameplay and work on them
Well analysis. Changing the starting worker counts is clearly not the right approach to shake things up.
And there was no early pool all in either. And it is only 1 matchup represented.
Its a way too small sample size to draw such conclusions.
as someone who still plays sc2 at a highlevel, please god do not change the worker count. The build up was slower and it gets you into the action slower. PLZ NO
I miss Bio vs Ling bane Muta. Used to be some of the best starcraft I've ever seen.
Nope, it's just another help to people who turtle and macro the best, which is fine, but you might remember those days where you could get diamond just memorizing build paths. I know. I did with roach. Now I rejoin the game after 5-10 years, I use one single hotkey, and can almost get plat. Even better, the more I learn the unit matchups (no infested terrans D: ) I actually start winning more. Imagine that, the actual reaction part of the game, not the macro and build path, has more of an influence. If the game had been released like this, starcraft wouldn't be dead right now.
love the insights from the starcraft historians in the chat
Potentially solution. Have series of 12 and 6 workers.
less information is better , it's better to watch the game with obvserver vision and follow what is happening in the game instead of just looking at the supply number all game every game , and these games were sick with a fun hype re-cast
Did they ever gamble on the number of banelings that would get accidentally detonated in a game?
Yes, 6-worker start early game is boring. That being said; maps were more interesting. And yes, 12-worker early game is also, you guessed it, boring. I think we just need to accept that StarCraft 2 is fundamentally boring, to watch, pre-4 minutes. Tone down the frequency of 14-base macro maps. We know how those maps play out and yet they make up 80% of the map pool each season. We’ve been playing on the same map for 7+ years.
if my memory is correct, during the era of HOTS, when terran sucked, Maru won every tournament, when terran got buffed to the sky, Maru became suck.......Also, Taeja was the only one terran who could play protoss in late game......during summer
just now the new patch went live
perfect timing lol
The thing that made HotS sad is Swarm Host, other than that, i remember enjyoed watching HotS back in 2014/2015, and i'm still sad that i'm reminded of lilbow
Would be nice to see a real timer to compare the time of the ingame events.
Whatever you want to fix, reintroducing lost time and slow starts is NOT the way. It is BORING as hell to do wait for economy to kick in. Life is SHORT ENOUGH already to lose days in hour life waiting for 6 more workers for a very unclear benefit that could without a doubt be achieved tuning other metrics: it's only mathematics after all.
People act like they were locked in their bases until 20 supply.
It's fucking boring if you're a mindless drone that fast expands every game. 1 base builds tech before expand were more viable to punish bs like this. The point being that starting with more workers always favors ecobat the detriment of other builds.
The map design is the much more prevalent feature than the worker number.
did players not use spell casters all that often in 2014?
4 Workers, 50 minerals is the only valid start option.
bro thaths my favourite plays of all time Life vs Taeja only bangers
what you have to keep in mind when looking at these old games is that for most of HotS the meta was ling bane muta in tvz, I remember this being so annoying and boring at the time
Life was peak when workers were 6 start
Its my boy Taeja my favourite player what a legend.