Starcraft II and spring (popularity)

[JohannesH]

6┬║-there isnt enough 1v1s or 2v2s to start= bad learning curve = bad gameplay experience

Actually I don't think this is a downside - at least not for TA based games. Any newbie will just get overrun by any decent player which should be pretty frustrating. In team games you have way more chances to watch other people's play and try to copy that improving your play. The downside probably is that your teammates will shout at you for your sucky play...

Bleh... Good player will overrun a noob in any half decent game? The point is that people play others of their skill ofc. But often they don't and that was the problem.

When compared to Starcraft your point also isn't really valid at all. Blizzard recently has allowed 3v3 and 4v4 and it actually seems to suck as Starcraft really is build upon the whole 1v1 thing. There exist some videos of tactics which can be used in games with more players and which are a 99% victory tactic like 4 players sending 2 Zerglings each to one enemy totally crippling that one and making Zerg pretty unfair in games with many players - winning the following 3v4 usually isn't a big deal...

It's easy to teach some strats to noobs in TA spring too, which will allow them to easily rape any team of similar experience who don't know how to respond or scout for lab share/mass combomb/etc. Just requires a tiny bit of skill and more importantly cooperation with your team.

I don't see any fit for this term though as those units don't really have any advantage in terms of a higher "tech level" giving them something like a better bang for bucks but they simply are big and expensive units which still can be easily countered by units at lower "tech levels" and are a mere choice to use them as a new strategy but no units of higher value...

That's how high tier units often are in TA mods too

All this sending in a probe for scouting and harassment resulting in nothing but mindless clickspamming just as things like building stuff to block the ramps and then oops two Zerglings rushed through and you have lots of fun with microing you Zealot or whatever you have after them - I hate stuff like that as for me that's "work" but not "fun".

It's mindless only if you have a very dull mind

[Master-Athmos]

It's easy to teach some strats to noobs in TA spring too, which will allow them to easily rape any team of similar experience who don't know how to respond or scout for lab share/mass combomb/etc. Just requires a tiny bit of skill and more importantly cooperation with your team.

I still think that people learn more from teamgames than from 1on1s. The latter would require watching the replay and an in-depth knowledge of all the units and for a newbie that's unlikely to happen as he doesn't know anything about the huge unit arsenal in e.g. TA mods and next to no one I know of actually watches his replays - only advanced players who really want to get competitive do that as far as I know...

Watching what your teammates do and see how things turn out is more "educational" than just losing a game because you did something wrong and as a noob you don't really know what went wrong. In a good teamgame your teammates will point out what you should do now bringing you in the right direction...

In the end there's a difference between teamgames and 1on1s though which you only learn by playing those special types - you won't be good at 1on1s if you just played teamgames as things are quite different here...

That's how high tier units often are in TA mods too

Well tech levels make sense here though as you even have an entire upgraded economy on a higher level bundled with more expensive units you can afford with the respective economy. Units at higher tech levels also usually have serious advantages in TA games like better stats in general or more range / damage which just crushes lower tech units (or even everything when talking about nukes). In Starcraft everything has to be balanced against everything which denies such a concept for that game which is why I'm confused as to why this term seems to get used...

It's mindless only if you have a very dull mind

Well when picking up a game like Starcraft I want to play a real time strategy game and no reaction time test or a clicking contest. I play other games when I want something like that and that's one of the reasons why I never liked Starcraft for anything more than just some little matches for fun with my friends. I don't want to say that it's a silly game or something but those simply are things I really hate about Starcraft. I'm fine with others liking this - but for me this just kills any ambition to play it competitive...

[PRO_rANDY]

TA/Spring and Starcraft/2 both give me a lot of fun to play. Which one people will prefer is down to their individual preferences and what they want out of the game.

Since I find both games equally "fun" to actually play, for me, SC2 pulls ahead since I am a competitive player looking for top level play. SC2 offers tournaments, ladders, organisation, clans, financial reward, a much greater number of "high skilled" players - it's not even comparable with the TA/Spring scene.

[Neddie]

Since I find both games equally "fun" to actually play, for me, SC2 pulls ahead since I am a competitive player looking for top level play. SC2 offers tournaments, ladders, organisation, clans, financial reward, a much greater number of "high skilled" players - it's not even comparable with the TA/Spring scene.

This sums up most of what needs to be said.

[el_matarife]

Free software is free if your time is worthless.

Scifi is making the same point a lot of other people have been making forever, just in a rather incoherent way.

Starcraft will be easy to setup, you'll have no trouble finding a game even at the worst off peak hours, and they'll patch it to the point that you'll probably never see a bug after the first month.

I don't know what people here make an hour, but I guarantee that you spend so much time invested in trying to get Spring to work or get a game together or dealing with bugs that you could have bought a copy of Starcraft 2 many times over.

[dimm]

tournaments, ladders, organisation, clans, financial reward, a much greater number of "high skilled" players - it's not even comparable with the TA/Spring scene.

Most of that is because spring isn't popular enough.

Spring has to be marketed better. Or lets do the world a favor and kill off marketing with sites like listal and ulike.

Can't the game play in SC be borrowed either as theory and effect or as just a bodily rip off? Is there any chance someone will make a mod alot like your average rts? No scrap, resources are in specific spots, tech is divided by small set of units, practically everything has a counter, the units are really colorful... Call it Average rts!

To Matarife: And with the spring engine the SC team could make a game in a week. Also have you ever used Firefox and all of its community add-ons? It really isn't about the price. And your last paragraph is completely not what happens to me. Use tasclient.

[Wartender]

speaking of popularity/marketing, how about my idea of making a portable version of spring (oh look, it already exists! less work!) and putting it on portableapps.com, it's pretty popular, and look, warzone 2100 is already there. Let's give them some competition ^^.

the only thing it would take is to organize the portable version of spring into the folders required by portableapps.com. If i had the knowledge to do so i would but i have no idea how to do it, however it doesn't seem like a lot of work, and i'm sure it would attract new players.

[zwzsg]

To perfectly conform to portableapps specifications, it's not sufficient to be portable. They also have some requirement with the separation of data and settings, and well, to make it short, I need springsettings.exe to support the --config option.

See:
- http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22461
- http://projects.springlobby.info/issues/1310

[zerver]

I played Red Alert series quite a bit but never liked SC mainly because I prefer mechs to "bio" mechs, or whatever you are to call those slimy creatures.

You cannot make any kind of comparison between Spring and SC because Spring is not a game.

That said, maybe some Spring mods would benefit from bundling up engine + mod + lobby + popular maps into a single, noob friendly download.

[Hobo Joe]

That said, maybe some Spring mods would benefit from bundling up engine + mod + lobby + popular maps into a single, noob friendly download.

Agreed, I know nothing about packaging an .exe but I may learn just so I can do this and make it easier for people.

[luckywaldo7]

To be honest, I don't really think that its the download and install that drives people away, as much as the lack of single player content.

I can't reall you how many people I have successfully helped get started in spring, only to quit because I told them there was no campaign mode and because the ai didn't work for them (fffuuu AAI).

I think it would be a tremendous improvement if there was an easy way to launch missions from the lobby, and also if games could whitelist compatible ai.

[el_matarife]

To Matarife: And with the spring engine the SC team could make a game in a week. Also have you ever used Firefox and all of its community add-ons? It really isn't about the price. And your last paragraph is completely not what happens to me. Use tasclient.

I don't see how the extensibility of the engine is relevant since that's for developers, not end users. End users care about results, not methods, and while the lineup of UI gadgets is nice, I think they care about polish more.

And saying "Hey you need to use this 3rd party software because the out of the box experience sucks" is part of the problem. If I went and bought a copy of Starcraft 2 tomorrow, I'd say you were insane if I had to use a different multiplayer client because the one included simply doesn't work.

That said, maybe some Spring mods would benefit from bundling up engine + mod + lobby + popular maps into a single, noob friendly download.

And if this doesn't add people, it will have subdivided Spring's already small player base maybe to the point of catastrophic failure as people wouldn't be able to get public games together anymore. That's pretty much already the case outside of Euro primetime for mods that aren't BA on Delta Siege Dry or some of the HunterW maps.

Not to mention if you bring a bunch of new people into a subpar experience, half of them will bash Spring everytime it is mentioned elsewhere. "Spring is a pain to install" "Spring doesn't have any players" "Spring software is just buggy", etc.

I think it would be a tremendous improvement if there was an easy way to launch missions from the lobby, and also if games could whitelist compatible ai.

The problem with this is, if an AI update comes out and make it work with a mod yet it may be months before the mod is updated to reflect that. It needs to have a dual whitelist where the AI lists the mods it works with, and the mod lists AIs that are known to work with it. If the combination is on either list as "working", then it should reflect that fact.

[dimm]

Its Rai that works with everything and is most stable. eai that plays best ba. Cai is for complete annihilation..

The main installer just needs to be better, like with tasclient and rai instead of anything else. Also with more widgets perhaps? Well that's for the problems of installation. I think the users that really want polish aren't linux users.

I recently played wac 3 and the things i like compared to most spring mods are the high hp points of buildings so cant run-by miniunit raid, the relatively few buildings and units, and the concentration of resources. Basicly theres alot less to manage in the game. And i have had the too many problems to manage issue for a while. So how about making blizardlike the spring mod that emphasizes all the major gameplay points that have been in wacraft and spacecraft throught the ages?

[luckywaldo7]

I think it would be a tremendous improvement if there was an easy way to launch missions from the lobby, and also if games could whitelist compatible ai.

The problem with this is, if an AI update comes out and make it work with a mod yet it may be months before the mod is updated to reflect that. It needs to have a dual whitelist where the AI lists the mods it works with, and the mod lists AIs that are known to work with it. If the combination is on either list as "working", then it should reflect that fact.

That is silly, all it requires to update the game is a single person with the skills to edit a text file. There is no reason it should take months.

Regardless, it is far far far better to be missing a potential usable AI then to be listing broken ones. Im telling you, I help people frequently and broken AI's are scaring them away.

[SwiftSpear]

Ya know, on a side note, if someone has 3 uncloaked ban(cheese? =D)shees and doesn't ahve the presence of mind to make a single viking they deserve to lose. Unfortunately I see this happening a lot. Terran players going all in into banshees with little regard of how to protect them.

I figure that you have basically a 1 in 3 chance of your opponent making mass stalkers and rendering your viking useless, be hell, you can still land them and do probe harass with them, so useless is a bit of a stretch. Meh well, anyway...

It's interesting the balance line SC2 rides. All of the all in options are counterable with a non all in option due to defenders advantage. It takes some doing to know what has to be done to counter every possibility though without making an all in move yourself.

[el_matarife]

That is silly, all it requires to update the game is a single person with the skills to edit a text file. There is no reason it should take months.

Regardless, it is far far far better to be missing a potential usable AI then to be listing broken ones. Im telling you, I help people frequently and broken AI's are scaring them away.

Except Spring mod developers tend to disappear for weeks or months at a time. The white list has to be on both the AI and mod so either developer can make it work.

And I agree with you, broken ANYTHING out of the box scares people away. A fresh Spring install shouldn't throw any error messages, require any updates, etc.

[Neddie]

To be honest, I don't really think that its the download and install that drives people away, as much as the lack of single player content.

The last time that 1944 looked at the problem, we were under the impression that somewhere between ninety seven and ninety nine percent of players never made it into a game, but it is difficult to determine where in fact they fell out. However, supplementary information - personal accounts, a focus group - seems to indicate that a majority never get to even trying to play single player because the game is not installed in a clear manner and there is no direct path to play. zwzsg offered to help us with a single player launcher, as did koshi.

[Forboding Angel]

Ya know, on a side note, if someone has 3 uncloaked ban(cheese? =D)shees and doesn't ahve the presence of mind to make a single viking they deserve to lose. Unfortunately I see this happening a lot. Terran players going all in into banshees with little regard of how to protect them.

I figure that you have basically a 1 in 3 chance of your opponent making mass stalkers and rendering your viking useless, be hell, you can still land them and do probe harass with them, so useless is a bit of a stretch. Meh well, anyway...

It's interesting the balance line SC2 rides. All of the all in options are counterable with a non all in option due to defenders advantage. It takes some doing to know what has to be done to counter every possibility though without making an all in move yourself.

That's true. There was a game not too long ago of TheLittleOne vs some other top tier player, adn he used vikings to devastating effect in that game. I would bet cash money that people didn't realize how versatile vikings are until they saw that game.

[PRO_rANDY]

^ you are thinking of the game vs the Tiwanese player Sen on Kulas Ravine?

[Forboding Angel]

Yep I'm pretty sure that's the one. Both of them like their cheese so it makes for epic games