> The gameplay balance and idiosyncrasies have been painstakingly preserved from the original game. Mutalisk stacking, magic-boxing, unit pathfinding, control-group limitations, and more will all remain intact, allowing veteran players to enjoy playing and watching high-level competitive matches as before.
I get that esports are serious business by now, but are we really at a point where we have to stay bug-compatible with old releases?
You do realize that Street Fighter 2 "super canceling" was a bug, which has been painfully recreated in virtually every future 2d Fighting Game, right?
Within a gaming community, bugs can often become features.
Mutalisk Stacking is an important strategy for Zerg players, and requires the Magic Box to work. So... yeah. Unless you want to completely screw high-level Zerg players over... you have to recreate Mutalisk Stacking and Magic Boxing. Its part of the balance of high-level play.
Some bugs, like animation cancelling, turned out to make the games why more technical and challenging. It would dumb the game down to take it out. It's not a bug anymore, it's a feature.
Its not so much a "glitch" but an idiosyncracy. There's a special magic box "size" that you eventually learn in Starcraft. When all the units are "inside" of the Magic Box, they will move as a group, synchronously.
However, if even just one unit is "outide" of the Magic Box, they will all move individually.
The technique of "Mutalisk Stacking" involves burrowing a Zergling, and then making a group of 11 Mutalisks + 1 Zergling as a group. The burrowed Zergling is always outside of the box, and therefore the Mutalisks will "stack" on top of each other (moving as if they were individuals). You control them perfectly synchronized.
Because the Mutalisks are all flying units, they'll "stack" together.
Here's an example video of JaeDong's expert Mutalisk Stacking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4ipBj1sO3M . Notice how the Marines instantly die before the Medics can heal them... but the intense focus-fire and micro ability of JaeDong allows the Mutalisks to instantly KO Marines.
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In contrast, the Protoss player would use the Magic Box to perform Dragoon Dancing instead. In this case, the Protoss player wants to keep the Dragoons all together inside of the Magic Box (while the Zerg Example above was the opposite). You want your Dragoons to stay in formation during a Dragoon dance, which requires them to be "inside" the magic box.
Because the Dragoons are grounded units, they'll bump into each other as the AI pathfinding gets confused.
In contrast, look at how Reach uses these Dragoons. They are perfectly synchronized, because of the "opposite" effect of the Magic Box.
I don't know if concept exists in SC but in dota 2 (dota and warcraft 3), casting a spell, making an attack has a "backswing" animation that does nothing. if you give a new order, you can cancel this animation and go to next order. For example attacking and ordering moving towards as soon as projectile is launched. It does not make you attack faster but it lets you to move and attack at the same time.
Many of the top competitive games are good by accident, brood war is a classic example. Yes, it should stay bug-compatible, otherwise they can call it starcraft 3.
I get that esports are serious business by now, but are we really at a point where we have to stay bug-compatible with old releases?