Відео

Man thank you for including a full uncut fight at the end with no voice over. The explanations were great too. Nice vid!

i forgot how much i loved your videos, great video

In my playthrough the fucking horses spawned inside the boss room lmfao Thank you Dark Souls II.

Where is the bonfire in the fridged outskirfs though. The fuck😊l

Is medieval ages again, I don´t gonna to buy AoE2 again, simple as that.

I have a bigger issue with tower rushes, but my reasoning is very similar to brownbear. You can adapt and basically continue to play your own game against a boar steal, and the better player will normally win regardless. With a tower rush, you are forced to play the enemy's game. The counter play is to build your own towers and vil fight. It's a very boring way to play, I would prefer to fight with military.

One thing I'm surprised I haven't seen you (or anyone to my knowledge for that matter) point out is that StarCraft 2's fast paced fights *are* an accessibility feature, particularly at the advanced beginner and intermediate level. It's a similar design paradigm as what's been going on in the past few years with fighting games, where a lot of newer fighting games have ramped up the damage a player can get off of one interaction, so that players don't have to win as many interactions to win a match. I see the same thing play out in SC2 compared to other RTS games, especially compared to both Brood War and the upcoming games vying to be its successor. Having a lower time-to-kill means that, outside of complete newcomers, winning a game means only having to really win one, maybe two, fights, and winning a fight can often just mean using the splashy abilities once or twice, which allows a generally weaker player to beat a stronger player sometimes. With a higher time-to-kill, fights are longer, mistakes pile up more on the side of the weaker player, and the stronger player more consistently wins. That being said, the tradeoff as I see it is whether the focus is placed on making players feel progress through wins and losses, or finding some way to present their progress more granularly, even if they lost 10 games in a row (which I find fighting games do naturally on account of having a health bar showing you how close the match was). I think the coarse-grained results you point out bias players strongly towards viewing wins and losses as the only thing that matters, with the quality of the match leading up to that point being secondary, hence my argument that low time-to-kill is an accessibility feature. The other tradeoff I find with SC2, with its lower time-to-kill, is that it causes the "game" to feel much more split between the playing of the game to execute what you think you know, and the not playing of the game to actually develop and adapt to opponents, sorta like gridiron football. Games with a higher time-to-kill feel better in the moment to learn, adapt, and generally feel fully engaged with while playing; removing or reducing that sense of a split between playing the game and somehow being engaged with it while not playing.

AoM is a great single-player experience. It’s cozy, the smaller unit variety is easier to wrap your head around, and the in-game encyclopedia is a wonderful way to lose hours. I dunno about the competitive scene, but it was a great PC experience, days and days of fun to be had. Sure, AoE 2 eventually got way more content, but AoM’s base game was nothing to sneeze at, and I’d take the fun and spectacle of having myth units any day over more varied human armies.

im just going to dig out my old xp machine with the compaq CRT

As i do, i encounter max 3 horses First one, between the first 2 houses, i ignore it until the second house where i kill it. Second and third ones (yes, two of them) are spawned between the second house and the bridge before the boss (so i ignore the third house). I completely ignore them and i run towards the boss area. This is my way in which i dont consume any of the flask (maybe 1 or 2 little gem) Time: max 3 minutes every run

PROSTAGMA?

Tip: blue smelter takes longer to get up if he does the AOE with the jump

Shit take that whining about the campaign was hard to listen to whaaa I have too many unit options, whaaa these missions are too long give me 1/3 the mission, whaaa I have to build a base in a rts game, whaaaaaa I couldn’t beat the army so I had to abuse the leashing mechanics sounds like whine-alot-itis

it's so cool that you're making videos again! I love all your commentary on SC2 and also I've watched every video you made on the comparisons from SC2 to the Age of Empires series as I play both frequently. I was inspired by that series and made an Age of Empires 2 Mod (No Age Total Conversion) as a way to see what AOE2 would be like if it played as a more fast paced game like Starcraft. I really tried to push the speed of building up and make it more asymmetric, but would be curious to know your thoughts on it and wether it makes AOE2 more interesting or breaks the core game. Anyways you always have great quality videos!

23:00 so units on a slope are less effective than units properly stanced? 🤔 🤔 🤔

I think GiantGrantGames said it best: "If more people knew that most starcraft II matches were more like two drunk toddlers fencing with pool noodles, I think the intimidation factor would be significantly lower."

I gotta say, and I know it's not related to the topic, but I seriously love your channel. I really wish you had more views and I have no idea why you don't. Please keep it up.

I prefer your slower more nomal paced videos as i am not a adhd adderall riddled zoomer with a warped mind. Personally i find videos like that insulting and condescending, and very annoying. Which is why i'm happy ive discovered your channel! Terrific video

Been binging your stuff lately. Truly wonderful stuff. I wonder, has this game gotten attention by the devs in the past year? Perhaps you could make an update video, if so.

have you considered that starcraft 2 is not the most popular rts because of it's faster speed but in spite of ? The more likely reasons to me are polish, sci-fi setting, flavor, nostalgia, modes like coop and arcade, balance, gameplay loop and length or even that it's made by blizzard.

This stuff was so beautiful, i shouldn't have invested my whole life into it

come back to aoe3 parfait

Last time you uploaded, I had a house. 🥲

wtf ur back! fantastic video

sorry chief but I have to call bullshit on this one No other game requires you to learn 3 different types of keyboard combinations and memorizing 4 minutes of actions to play mediocrely

I agree, SC2 is not inaccessible, and I find the argument that "units die too quickly so it's inaccessible" pretty puzzling. You can play the campaign on easy or compete in low bronze league and your skills will meet adequate challenge, and in competitive play you'll find people who struggle just as much with their army dying quickly as you do. Take piano playing, is it extremely hard in the beginning? Yes. Is it inaccessible because of that? I don't think so. You just need to start on a low level and accept that it's a long journey to near the skill ceiling. Also, it's not that hard to right click your army back even if you're slow. Just don't a-move without looking at your army if you're slow and it won't get melted offscreen. (to be safe, move your army back a bit before looking elsewhere) I think people are just frustrated that they can't do flashy plays like the pros. In a Moba, you can basically do anything a pro can do (visually). In SC2, you probably can't get and micro a huge army while dropping 2 places at once if you're in bronze league. But that's ok. So, what does it even mean that SC2 is inaccessible? I don't know. A game with a high skill ceiling can't not be hard.

Link your substack on your YT channel page.

Hell yes, another Brownbear video

I think strategy is the opposite of what's sacrificed in coop, though I may be talking semantics. To me coop is doubling down on the strategy compared to multiplayer. Very few games in multiplayer do you need to think. It's 99% execution and practically just an action game. Meanwhile, coop, especially harder difficulties is about managing your more limited setting and creating strategies around it. In lower levels people tend to have similar approaches even though its possible to brute force it with execution. Coop takes away the execution barrier and management skill floor that multiplayer has by reducing variability because you don't have to worry about cheese or your opponent doing something unexpected.

I was discussing 'the difficulty' argument 10 years ago in one of my essays on teamliquid. The game is as difficult as the players you are facing, so the difficulty localized not in the game but in 'the player'. In fact, the UX and UI of sc2 is so polished that the game is actually extremely accessible, which makes the 'human' aspect of it shine much more prominently as you do not fight the interface - just yourself and the player

starcraft content in 2024 wow

Great to see you back on youtube! I think you're right that this is the biggest mistake that the RTS and SC2 communities make about SC2. Love your substack and looking forward to watching more videos from you in future.

Well, as an AoE2 convert from SC2, aoe is a fraction as accessible in every single department, so SC2 wins hands down there. But it's still way more fun than SC, so it isn't everything. From master league to 1200 ELO, I get crushed now but the game is way deeper. While the game is slower overall, combat is actually faster in AoE2, a 40 min game can be decided with a single shot. It has a lot of single player and coop content however which is very very accessible.

Something like Age of Empires 2 isn't more accessible because it's slower (which itself depends on how you define slower, they have similar APM requirements but AoE2's matches have slower pacing because more setup is required). I wouldn't say it's more accessible at all, and frankly, I prefer the complexity that comes with that. SCII is one of the most accessible RTS games on the market thanks to its comparatively limited builds and counters, arcadey map design, good faction balancing, reliable unit behavior and drastically simplified economy compared to a lot of other RTS games. Anything in the Age series being a prime example. In something like Age of Empires 2, since that's the example mentioned here, you not only have to put more effort into getting your economy up and running and into properly defending yourself, but any mistakes you make are much harder to correct and much more punishing because everything takes so much longer to do and any losses you suffer will hurt you more in the long run. Add onto that the fact that almost any enemy faction can and will use any strategy available in the game, and it means you need a much greater level of game knowledge to predict what the enemy will do and how to effectively counter it. This is before we get into map design, which I think is incredibly important. AoE leaves many more valuable assets in exposed areas and makes it much harder to defend yourself from attack. Both on the homefront and when seeking out advantage through things like gold deposits, relics, etc. None of this comes without similar APM, either, as AoE 2 can be and typically is played very quickly at high levels with APMs of 3-400. Same goes for SCII. SCII demands less in terms of strategy and game knowledge while having faster paced matches with similar micromanagement. It's a mechanical game. It demands fast rather than well considered execution, and speed is much easier to train than strategy. When I introduce people to RTS games this is the game I usually show them because it's free, easy to grasp at the basic level, and has a decently high skill ceiling for those that want to push themselves. It is not, however, nor has it been since its inception, the "hardest game in the world" as some people (who almost exclusively play Star Craft) like to tell themselves. There are many RTS games that present greater challenges when it comes to strategy and execution. The Age series (almost as a whole), Empire Earth (I and II), etc. All have universally higher skill floors, similar skill ceilings, demand more game knowledge at higher levels, and force you to put more effort into planning out your strategy. They're less popular (though that's changing with AoE2), but that does not mean that they are less difficult, or somehow paradoxically more accessible as some people want to suggest. There are also other games that take one or two aspects and make them essential to master in order to achieve success, which SCII doesn't. Warcraft 3, for example, has an almost absurd emphasis on force composition and correct rather than fast action. There's no faking your way to victory through good macro in that game. Homeworld, similarly, has very strong counters that need to be accounted for and also introduces entirely new concepts with its true 3D map design, which takes a lot of getting used to.

apologies but this misses what accessibility really is, you touch on things that affect the accessibility but not on the problem itself. accessibility is very simple 1. can the player identify the problem? 2. can the player identify the appropriate solution? 3. can the player learn from the outcome of their solution? yes, co-op is more 'accessible' because the problems and their solutions are not as relevant, but this is a simple way out of the problem and does not really solve any of the issues of RTS I run a personal project called 'Make RTS Great Again' in my spare time problem solving this. Thing is, ive found that one of the main problems with the genre is that those invested in it are heavily biased by the 'curse of knowledge' and don't really remember how they learnt, nor pay appropriate attention to how newcomers learn (the same trap you appear to have fallen into). The problems are missed and they just spend their time reducing the micro/pace and then default the rest to standard and ineffective tutorials rather than addressing the 3 above points during the production phase and incorporating effective solutions. StarCraft is NOT an accessible game, it may have success in lowering the barrier of entry here and there with its alternative game modes but they have never addressed its problems directly. *Shrugs* maybe AI will make it more accessible at some point by providing analysis of what went wrong and what could be done to prevent it in future (though doing so may spoil the game by revealing its limits)

One interesting change around accessibility for a RTS is currently being done by the team at Immortal: Gates of Pyre. I'd be curios if you have played the game and you have some opinions about it.They have made something similar to what Axiom was trying to do, but in another context. It feels just a tiny bit slower than SC2, but the accessibility is done in a different context. We don't know about its future success, but I think its the closest we'll get to an "accessible" competitive RTS.

I much prefer the video format but your articles are also a lot of fun to read! Keep up the good work!

hey beautiful! Glad to have you back.

Great video! I enjoy your written articles but will always have a soft spot for your video essays.

Love your thoughtful content! Your postscript on the substack article was about writing more about SC2 co-op's seamless multiplayer through strong implicit incentives to cooperate. Did you ever get a chance to write that article?

Welcome back 😊

Quality stuff

I was just thinking about rewatching your sc2 vs AOE videos, guess it's time!

I was literally just thinking about you and your well thought out videos. Keep making them you magnificent man.

Nice video, interesting examples

Really baffled that in the story mode of the definitive edition, choosing new cards don't tell you where the cards can be sent. You have to blindly pick new cards while not knowing if you can even us it because you're maxed out/

Really interesting video

44:03 When you get jumpscared even though you know it's coming Disruptor: Goodbye to all your hellbats

Watching this series in the present day is a trip with AoE2:DE's revival dragging RTS back into relevance to the point where I am now learning this game after leaving Brood War behind over a decade ago. I found it interesting that you came to the conclusion of army composition vs. micro that you did. For me, Age of Empires has always been defined by proper army composition. Micro is possible, but it is incredibly sluggish and tends to be dominated by cavalry or expensive units as the value in saving/killing some random units usually isn't there. The pikemen vs. hussar example is an interesting one as the real counter here is in cost: pikemen cost food/wood and are massed easily while hussar cost gold. This is why Age tech trees are so expansive - you can get high tech splash damage units like high templar or mangonels or cannons, you can get beefy unstoppable units like knights or ultralisks or archons, but in Age exclusively can you get cheap trash whose sole purpose is to counter those other units if placed in the right situation (Starcraft does have filler units like zerglings, marines, etc., but they're less counter units and more generic DPS or damage sponges). In equal numbers, the expensive units always win, but Age is built around creating those compositional advantages to snowball into economic or military ones. In contrast, Starcraft (my primary reference here is Brood War) is far more fluid with its counter system. A zealot is roughly even against 4 zerglings in terms of cost and combat efficiency, but the zerglings lose nothing if they get a full surround while the zealot can kill 2-3 lings if fighting in a small chokepoint. Starcraft also plays around with its tech system to focus on paradigm shifts rather than just making units stronger. +1 attack doesn't just make zealots 10% more cost effective - it gives them the ability to 2-shot zerglings, so the calculus of what is a reasonable engagement radically shifts. This means that fights between the same army compositions change based on tech upgrades and micro rather than the unit selection itself - hydras lose to zealots until the hydras get speed/range and then the zealots win again with legs/charge until the hydras arrive in massive enough numbers. This is why timing feels so important in Starcraft - if you hit while your army composition has an advantage, you can win an important fight and start to snowball. Age of Empires can have this, too, with the age-up system, myth powers, home city shipments, and with some units like catapults/priests/chariot archers appearing only in later ages, but those paradigm shifts are often of limited scope or quantity per game while the rest of the game focuses on compositional and economic efficiency. For a concrete example, +1 air carapace allows a control group of mutalisk (with proper micro) to stop most marine pushes of near any size across the map until the terran can tech up into extra attack or into even one valkyrie or science vessel with irradiate. In contrast, 3 spearmen will not stop 6 knights even if fully upgraded into halberdier, and 3 minotaur don't really want to engage into 6 hersir, regardless of either side's upgrades or abilities. In summation, I think this all touches on your first video of fixed vs. random map generation. Competitive Age could have always switched to fixed maps, but has largely stuck to random as it is more interesting to identify randomly vulnerable resources and force your opponent into suboptimal compositions and thereby win the game (I'm pretty sure gold starves are a huge meta focus in all Age games, though I'm still learning here). That said, Age's flexible tech tree allows for some counterplay. Vulnerable resources in Starcraft would be a death sentence - you often can't switch to a tech/unit that costs less gas, you would just be behind. Using fixed map generation also allows Starcraft players to identify one of the many inflection points in the tech tree to target and play for, making pre-planned build orders and timings much more important and much less flexible than in Age, where such inflection points are far more transient and frequently less interesting.

I'm sorry, what was the name of the book?