|
Folca May 05 2010 10:22. Is there still a way to contact Blizzard of this issue? I mean, I'm pretty sure you did, but what if Teamliquid was behind your back with these kinds of situations.. Not saying they will, but with your valid argument, you never know.
I heartily agree with whatever TL can do to change the UI. I spent ~3 hours trying to change a unit's price and attack animation, and still haven't had much luck...
Of course I'm not extremely experienced in different types of editors, but when compared to the SC1 editor, it's ridiculously more difficult to do even simple things.
|
On May 05 2010 10:22 Folca wrote: Is there still a way to contact Blizzard of this issue? I mean, I'm pretty sure you did, but what if Teamliquid was behind your back with these kinds of situations.. Not saying they will, but with your valid argument, you never know.
I posted on their mapping forum. The link is on page 2 and page 3 I think.
I've also used my connections to get the word in as best I can, but I did that a very long time ago and it has had no impact. I don't have much hope for that.
/e
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24630623479&sid=5000
|
agreed OP and I also must comment on the effort you've put into this. well done.
|
Interesting read OP. Any links/forum where I can learn more about modding?
|
FREEAGLELAND26780 Posts
Damn good post. Without a key, I started off being impressed by SCII's graphics and new units, oohing and aahing over the small things. Then, slowly the complaints started, and I found myself amongst them. Even after getting a Beta Key and playing the game a few times, I find myself going back to BW. While I'm not a modder, I can see perfectly what you're getting at.
Somebody front page this, please. 6/5
|
wow
this is another gem of a viewpoint on the whole matter. we had everything ranging from the noob's "gut feeling" impressions to the well founded analyses of people like saracen, lalush and drone and now we get this new perspective from a modder's point of view who has delved to the very core of all the previous blizz titles. i respect this a lot and it can't be as easily discarded as most of the unsubstantiated criticisms which couldn't really pinpoint their issues.
can only quote morrow again here, in my eyes this still holds true:
"sc1 and sc2 is like the difference between guitar and guitar hero"
____
i think one must see sc2 as a completely different game from sc1. like wc3 different. having the right counters at the right time to annihilate the enemy army is much more important and therefore scouting has a way higher priority now because you can't as easily fight yourself out of situations where you're faced with superior unit compositions (check here + Show Spoiler +On April 21 2010 03:51 Liquid`Drone wrote: [...], all the game-turning spells of brood war, were all possible for the opposing player to if not defend completely against, then at least reduce the effectiveness of. in fact, I think watching a zerg player instantly split out his one irradiated muta from the bunch, or a zerg player perfectly dodging storms with his 4 control groups of hydralisks is just as exciting (or quite possibly more) as watching the protoss player throw those storms. the game added new gameplay-changing aspects like force field which won't be removed (i fear) and subtracted other aspects like you explained with reavers and solid min(e/d) games.
as the game(play) develops also the positive aspects of sc2 which make the game a new game will be emphasized more (by high level play) and provide for an excitement for sc2 on its own. we'll see a routined use of roach's burrow vs force fields for example and i think micro has to be somewhat reinvented (as the ai is totally different and people now rely more on their applicable macro skills from bw).
_____
thanks for writing up this article, should have done so in the starcraft 2 section. too much work put into it to only be a small light in the blogs section (other threads of this scale have been featured as with saracen).
|
We will see how gameplay turns out.
The sound design is.... unbelievably bad.
GUI's are extremely unimpressive.
|
On May 05 2010 17:30 cascades wrote: Interesting read OP. Any links/forum where I can learn more about modding?
This is a question I cannot easily answer because modding is just as complex as actual game design if not moreso because you often end up running a one-man show. What are you specifically desiring to learn about?
Maybe I could copy-paste some of my modding-related articles from CC onto here?
|
Was a good read from a different perspective, agreed with most of it.
|
After reading your thoughts I began to think of something of my own: It'd be kinda interesting if the Colossus had an attack that forced it to stop and dedicate some time to the attack. Like an attack that hits once and hard (boom, 80 damage), then immobilizes the Colossus momentarily. This is just an offhand thought and not a true suggestion, but the whole point is (and you touched on it) is that spider mines, reaver blasts, siege tanks (When I was younger and playing SC I'd literally siege and unsiege them over and over just because of the sound effect) had the potential to tip the scales of balance in the blink of an eye (and for the receiving end, a few more blinks to accept their sad truth). That simply doesn't exist anymore in sc2. Good post.
|
On May 03 2010 04:37 IskatuMesk wrote:
Flame on.
Do you think it's possible that third-party editors could make SC2 mods something more palatable to you or even the mod community?
|
This is horrible news IskatuMesk, and may destroy my hope for SC2. This isn't a niche community....sure there are only a few modders, but there are tens of thousands of more people who play and enjoy their mods.
Here is one of my posts from a while back about the design rule that was in SC1 but not SC2 (tldr version = the powerful map editor will allow modders to fix any flaws inherent in the main game) --- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=4752107 + Show Spoiler + This touches on something that I learned a while back about SC2 that took away a lot of my faith in it being a suitable successor to SC1.
That is the approach to the unit relationships like is mentioned in the OP, specifically units that do special types of damage to other units. When I heard that x unit does additional damage to armor, I knew that the wrong approach was being used.
In SC1 there were three types of damage, and three types of unit sizes. What this did is make certain units counter other units, but not such hard counters as we see in SC2. It created a natural cyclic relationship with this simple scheme in combination with unit cool-down time, speed, and size. This is more mathematically consistent and has allowed SC1 to evolve over the years imo. Unit sizes, cool-down times, speeds, and basic damage types are fundamental and allow a natural flow.
When a unit is designed to destroy another specific unit (for example, having specific attributes such as doing extra damage to another unit), and an interlocked set of three races are created this way, the game can never play in a way other than what the developers intended at the time of creation.
Now this is just complete theory on my part, and I haven't played the game and actually don't know all the details of it. It may actually be how I just described SC1, I don't know. But if it is tweaked so that units have too complex a set of attributes, I believe my theory has merit.
I think they have a great game engine, and a lot of other things going for them. They also have pros scrutinizing this and they intend on making a trilogy, so I'm confident that if the scenario I described is accurate, it will get fixed. And even if it doesn't, the tools will be available for a user to create their own version of the game.
|
Jesus fucking christ, what an amazing post.
This makes me want sc2 to be delayed for another 5 years, I'd be cool with it. I just miss the sc1 units so much now TT
|
Reading the title I expected a whiny post with complaints about MBS. What I instead got was a half hour reading with alot of good information, quotes and statements that are really worrying to me. I have never played starcraft2 as I've refused to play the beta (mainly due to my computers graphic card is not yet up to the task) and so when I read these kind of post it just makes me shiver. Personally I was good at broodwar and I was very good at using the editor, even though I never modded like you, I was able to create anything that the game allowed. I've seen pictures of the editor and it looks like nothing I've ever seen, your detailed description of it just confirms it -- doesn't blizzard even care? Please let this be a wake-up call for blizzard... read this! Thanks for writing this and giving us a tiny insight of what you do, I know how much it takes to do the things you've done. Let's hope blizzard listens.
Why is this not on 1st page?
|
Really awesome post. I hope that progress gets made in some form or another and you stick with what you enjoy working on.
|
|
I opened this thread originally to laugh at the replies because I was bored and people always flam people who make these. however while I was reading it I realized how much SC2 took a step in the wrong direction, and with each patch it gets worse. let's look at the most recent patch. it made the games general lack of micro and the complete bullshit arrangement of units that is the protoss race worse. with the pheonix changes, or should I say the complete removal of skill necessary to "micro" them, it made me realize that even though blizzard shouldn't focus on making 2 billion dollars on SC2 (because they could release a pet for WoW and make the same amount of money) they should have focused on making the game not suck. yes it's fun. but every game is build order wins or macro. In it's current state SC2 WILL NOT become the popular, balanced, and difficult game brood war was.
In terms of the pro scene, the competetive non pros, and the BGH games. Starcraft 2 will TANK. all it will be good for is the UMS games which is retarted IMO. so theyruined a near perfect game with sloppiness and only wanting money. They made a whole new game (and they made it fairly shitty game with cool features.
thumbs down blizzard.
|
On May 03 2010 04:53 Empyrean wrote: Definitely one of the better posts I've read in a while. I don't even know where to begin, but you bring up excellent points and it's at the very least worth a read.
I generally agree with you on mostly everything, though without the depth of experience you do in mapmaking/modding. This poster said exactly what I was going to say. Also, my older brother used to mod so I remember your name, if vaguely.
|
Fuck. This was such a sexy post. I agree with everyone thinking that this was a "oh i don't like mbs war3 players suck" then was drawn into one of the best written posts of all time.
Fantastic work. I have NO idea why or how you have been unnoticed so far. Blizzard REALLY REALLY needs to get you to work for them. Or Relic or whoever. I understand your standards are high but I think the community can benefit HUGELY with your involvement in the game.
Fantastic post sir. Many many thanks.
|
On May 09 2010 16:05 mykyoyo wrote:Do you think it's possible that third-party editors could make SC2 mods something more palatable to you or even the mod community?
Hi,
This is what we thought about wc3 but it was never the case. In fact, the developers for wc3's community were even lazier than ours. A good example is the 3ds importer for models - it's ancient and only works for max 5.1. You can't even run that version in Vista or Windows 7, so if you use those OS' you can't import models into 3ds max which is bad for kitbashers/editors. It also can only import one animation at a time. Additionally the guy responsible for mdlvis, the tool used to convert WoW models and one of the better model editors, jumped ship and hasn't been seen for over a year.
While it is certainly plausible for someone to make an editor that parses the xml files in a tidy and coherent fashion I wouldn't put money on it happening for a very long time. That said I am in close contact with the majority of active sc1 programmers and will be talking to them about it if this mess makes it to release.
|
|
|
|