I am sure I will get flamed to hell and back by what I am about to say. I implore you to have patience and continue reading on to understand my reasoning.
"Starcraft 2 is one of the greatest disappointments in my entire gaming life."
One may ask, "Well why do you say that?"
To understand my viewpoint, one must consider what it is I have done all my life.
For a decade I have modded Starcraft: Brood War. I have modded Warcraft 3. I have modded Diablo 2. I have modded Halo PC, Neverwinter Nights, Age of Wonders 2, and beyond. Many would consider me the greatest of Starcraft modders - a title granted only by the decay of Starcraft modding and being the last one standing. Chances are if you've modded Starcraft you've heard my name. But you aren't modders, are you? You have no idea who I am, or what I do, or what significance it plays in my viewpoints of the sequel.
Believe me friend, I have been to hell and back already.
Starcraft drew me in my youth with one thing. Not Proleague, not Micro, but immersion. Through the concept of Immersion, the most powerful element any one game can have to open the gates to the mind, Starcraft had changed my life. This is a bold statement to make, but indeed it was Starcraft that carried me through the darkest ages and it is because of Starcraft that I have done what I have done. Starcraft opened the world to modding up before my eyes and it is because of this one game, this one factor, that I undertook everything from music composition to modeling.
I attempted music composition early into my Starcraft modding but could not improve my skills because of my severe mental ailments. But I did attempt it.
Starcraft and I, we have a certain bond that most players will never have. I have been in the thick of the game, tearing it apart bit by bit to not only understand how it works but how to make my own game through it. Starcraft is a very limited game to mod but, as you can see, I achieved much. Much many thought impossible in such limits.
I have been there. I have done that.
When sc2 was announced many years ago I felt as though I at long last had purpose. For so many years I had wandered aimlessly. I was still fighting to write my novel - a ventured still left unfinished - and had attempted many previous games to mod. Warcraft 3 had two critical issues that killed all of my two dozen projects: broken computer AI and broken pathing.
Yeah, been there, too.
I approach all games these days from the standpoint of a modder. No, not a mapper. A modder. For mappers wc3 was a dream come true. For modders it was a living hell virtually unusable.
Warcraft 3's editors was amongst the worst editors I had ever used at the time. The unit editor was disorganized and sloppy, riddled with arbitrary limits and oddities that weren't at first apparent. Most things I wanted to do could not be done without triggers or JASS - things you couldn't bring into a mod environment without tearing apart Blizzard.j and trying to compensate for performance issues that would occur from large-scale usage. In this respect maps were always superior, for maps were much smaller scale and more easy to control. But I was not such a man that I thought a lone map was worthy of so much time invested. Needlessly I pursued map projects and wasted more time and energy.
Extremely early terrain screenshot from the Loladins of Legend AoS.
With mod projects virtually impossible in wc3, I attempted campaigns instead. This was where issues with the computer AI completely crippled project after project. From the AI refusing to navigate simple terrain to the time-proven "Destroy a tower and run back home" glitches, my Active Map concepts were totally impossible in wc3.
The irony is that with wc3 I learned a great deal about the importance of Terrain and how it effects gameplay and immersion.
So, when I first heard about Starcraft 2, I had high hopes. By now I did not allow myself to have hope - too many games, like Earth 2160 and Neverwinter Nights 2, had failed horribly to come remotely close to their precursors much less improve anything. But this was Blizzard, right? Yes, Warcraft 3 sucked for what I was trying to do, but that's because they were still recycling the same engine over and over again. At least with sc2 they said they were making a new engine. Surely they'd riddle the game with stupid arbitrary limits but at least the major problems that have been crippling me all these years would be solved.
I wrapped up my last Starcraft project, Armageddon Onslaught, and said good-bye to my life friend. I was still regularly watching professional gaming but my days of participating in modding were long over. I hadn't played vanilla SC competitively in nearly 8 years, but retained a fairly strong grasp of how the game played and what made it play that way. Anything that was not immediately obvious to me made its way into my head through Day[9] Daily and other such resources. I recommended these resources to all other modders. I helped many modders balance and design their mods, for a characteristic most modders had in Starcraft was a terrible, virtually non-existent, understanding of gameplay in general. This lead to retarded economy changes like those seen in Ad Adstras and many of the one-hit wonders.
I had made a Starcraft AI called ZAPOC that could hit Ultra tech by the 6 minute mark. This was without the C++ enhanced BWAPI. ZAPOC is the strongest non-API AI at this time. Its development was fraught with hardcoded problems, like all AI.
I would be lying if I said my mods were successful, because they weren't. Nothing I have ever done has tasted the waters of success. This is from a combination of severe mental issues and the habit of modding terribly dead games. But I've found that it's the old games that are the best to mod. This is because companies do not consider modders in their game design, Blizzard included. Warcraft 3's editor was tacked on, a stripped down version of their Dev tool. When Frozen Throne was still young, I questioned Blizzard on their forum as to their plans of correcting many issues in the editor, like the unusable AI tool. Brett Wood soon responded with a post akin to,
"We know about the issues with the editor and do not plan to fix them."
Surely enough, to this date the editor remains just as irritating to use and just as broken as it was before. But the editor still had its strong points; making great terrain was easy and relatively quick. The unit editor was a total mess but at least it was somewhat organized. A general section would contain most elements related to each other, but not always (Armor was a fair ways away from health which made changing these attributes a bit annoying).
This took minutes to make at most.
I was modding Halo long before Custom Edition was never mentioned. Editing maps was an extremely hilarious and amusing process. To make those platforms one had to edit a tree log and resize it in a third-party tool, then string a bunch together to create the multi-level platform I had created. I was also experimenting with my first encounters with custom skins.
Starcraft to me is unrivaled in the gaming scene. Not just as an RTS, but as a game. The only games that have nearly the kind of depth of Starcraft are all rogue-likes, including Dwarf Fortress.
I had never heard of Rogue-likes until I discovered Dwarf Fortress through an Australian friend.
Dwarf Fortress is a game that uses ascii text. All it took was the reading of Boatmurdered to get me hooked to it. I use the Mayday tileset, which makes the graphics what you see here.
Dwarf Fortress is a mix of sim city, the Sims, and Dungeon Keeper. The depth of this game cannot be expressed. No two fortresses will ever play the same.
The goal of the game is to guide your band of dwarves through life. You embark on a randomly generated map to an area of your choosing. These areas can contain a vast number of geological features - freezing Blizzards, lava, skeletal groundhogs and zombie whales. You do everything from strike deep into the earth to assemble dwarven armies to drown pointy-eared faggots in a pit of fiery justice.
The new Dwarf Fortress version recently released completely overhauls the underground and adds over 150 Z-levels of depth to any given map. It adds physics to weapons and armor.
Aw crap, demons!
After I had been acquainted with Dwarf Fortress (largely when I poked a glowing pit and subsequently penetrated by a mass of tentacle demons), I asked myself a question.
"Why don't more games feature this kind of gameplay? That is to ask, why are modern games so shallow?"
DF is a game developed largely by one guy. It's had a long time to mature. This guy doesn't know how to make graphics, so he uses ascii text. Third parties have made several tileset/graphic mods. It is true that graphics are amongst the most critical aspects to both this question and the reasoning why DF and other rogue-likes have not totally demolished commercial gaming. Simple to say, many people cannot stomach the graphics as they are too accustomed to their shinies. At first I was much the same way.
But then I had to ask myself, "Wait, aren't I already playing ancient games anyway?"
The most recent game I played regularly was Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic. A Turn-based strategy similar to Heroes of Might and Magic 4. Likewise, I also modded the game.
By modding AoW2 I learned even more about gameplay. Specifically the relationships and the importance of units being properly defined. AoW2 was a very limited game unit-wise, you could only do so much with customing units. The minimum damage range was always 1-*, so the tier 10 mega dragons of death I had added were always still capable of doing next to no damage upon impact. Also, custom abilities were totally impossible.
As a long-time fan of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, I pressed on with this project despite the grand limitations of the game. The project took over a year to die, a death caused by the editor corrupting the data of the game.
The lack of unit diversity hurt this mod, much the same way the lack of racial and unit diversity kills Dawn of War and Supreme Commander. None of the races in these RTS' have truly defining attributes, merely renamed and slightly modified units (until you hit Experimentals in Supcom anyway). These are amongst many factors that restricted these games from ever reaching the pinnacle of Starcraft.
Through every one of my many mods, and all of my years of gaming, I had garnered a strong understanding of what makes games work. And through this understanding I bring to you today what I feel is amongst Sc2's greatest weaknesses.
Gameplay
Starcraft 1 had several iconic units that represented a great deal in terms of mechanics and gameflow as well as "potential". These include the Reaver and Vulture, both units you are doubtlessly familiar with. No other RTS in existence has the kind of depth these two units alone introduce into the game.
The vulture represents a critical and fundamental break away from the concepts of Hard Counters, a system that destroys any RTS. At first glance, the Vulture is hard-countered by Dragoons because, other than shields, the Vulture's concussive damage does shit-all to dragoons. But it has an ability - spider mines - that makes all the difference in the world.
The vulture, frail and relatively harmless to many units in the game, is a critical component in most Terran play. Even in TvZ - largely dominated by bionic play - many players have successfully and vigorously used Vultures to great extent.
Vultures add many things to the game. Geometric importance - the power of terrain. Mines become harder to deal with on the ridges of Heartbreak Ridge, mines can be problematic in narrow valleys, mines can be used to forced armies to move in a certain direction to bluff hidden expansions, the tactical and strategic possibilities of the Vulture alone are grand and significant.
Without mines, Vultures offer something to high-level players - hit and run. There have been many topics about hit and run to date, I need not recite their content. I was partially capable of moving-shots with vultures, something I used to great extent against the lesser-skilled players of the modding community.
But mines neither vultures themselves required high level play to make use out of. Anyone can stick mines in front of a Gateway and get effectiveness out of them. It's the experienced players that understand the psychological effect of mines and how this can be applied to map control. Mines effect every map uniquely, as do tanks, reavers, carriers, and most other units.
The Reaver is another critical unit and represents another key element - High Risk High Reward. Much of the Reaver's unit mechanics can be attributed to the Scarab, which is also a unit, and has unit pathing; it can get stuck on shit. Some people have said this isn't possible in sc2 - well, it is. It's doable in wc3, very easily I might add.
But we don't need the Vulture nor the Reaver in sc2. It's a new game, right?
But when Sc2 replaced these units it did not account for what they represented. The Reaver, such a pivotal unit with synergy to the Shuttle, was replaced by the Colossus, a unit that demands no skill from the user to maximize its potential, and a unit that gets little out of the hands of an experienced user. The "skill ceiling" of the Colossus is shallow indeed. We have seen "Colossus" drops - in fact it's one of the first things I did as Protoss - but there's nothing exciting about them. There's nothing that requires any effort. The Reaver demanded the user to fire at the right target at the right time to maximize its damage. The colossus fires faster and is significantly more effective at the Reaver's job. It's also more durable and easier to get - something made so by the dominance of Robo play at this time.
To me, the Colossus is amongst the weakest links in all of Starcraft 2. It is this way because it fails to fill the void left behind by the Reaver. I am not saying to remove the Colossus and add back the Reaver - as much as that would please me greatly - but rather, the Colossus needs mechanics that make it as interesting and fun to use as the Reaver. The Colossus offers absolutely nothing to the game but takes away a great deal.
The Hellion is much the same way, virtually useless outside harassment. Without mines, the void of map control and geometric importance completely cripples Terran mech play. This problem is further compounded by the appearance of units with huge health pools and insane damage versus armored on top of Siege Tanks being overly expensive and left out on the buff tree outside of attack speed.
Even bionic play has been "dumbed down". Marauders have 125 health, can stim, can be healed, can slow, and do 10+10 damage to armored - a level of DPS in sc1 reserved only for upper-end units. This brings us to the Holy Trinity - Marauders, Roaches, and Immortals - units that have destroyed Starcraft 2's gameflow. Units I feel should be completely overhauled.
The reluctance of change.
Browder is a great man at PR but I've yet to see any indication of him being any good at game design. Although he boasts the willingness to add and remove units at a whim, we get answers like this -
Q: With the large discussion on Zerg changes, is there any planned? Or do you believe that they're not being used fully? A: We are looking at changes to the Corruptor. We are looking at the balance on Ultralisk and Infestor. We are not planning to introduce new units at this time, though we shall see as Beta progresses. =)
While this is indeed a beta, as I well know, it seems to me that Blizzard from the start has been unwilling to make change where change is necessary. They have insisted to keep the Mothership in the game from the very beginning - doing absolutely everything in their power to keep this unit in multiplayer where it does not belong. This tells me that Blizzard is, in fact, unwilling to make change.
I could go on and on about how Starcraft 2's gameplay has disappointed me in so many ways. From the terrible and recycled map design to the Holy Trinity to geysers, I don't even know where to begin. It's not that I am not accustomed to change, it's that I feel much of the first game's splendor, openness, and dynamic has been lost. Due to the presence of exceedingly strong hard counters SC2 has become a game of rock-paper-scissors. Even worse is the bloated numbers. Browder's obsession with "Faster, More Intense!" has caused certain units to balloon to insane levels of health and damage, making the counter problem even worse and further degrading the value of terrain.
The removal of the ability to target units in your group with any kind of ability is one change that leaves me scratching my head in total confusion. The return of Infested Terrans in particular made me removed a few clumps of hair over the course of an hour, and the completely random changes to Templar tech have caused permanent hair loss entirely.
It is fairly obvious by now that Blizzard is constantly making internal patches we are told nothing about. As they have also failed to give any kind of reasoning behind their changes, I can only make wild guesses as to why Roaches and their cousins still remain the way they are.
I am of the minority when I say these things. I am one of only a handful of people who think this way. Yet, the game is still in beta, and two expansions that will be adding units await us. It took sc1 a long time to truly gain momentum. But I feel that if the game does not change dramatically that it we will see a remake of wc3 - custom maps will totally dominate the userbase. We'll get into that in a bit.
There are things in sc2 other than gameplay that drive me up the wall and across the ceiling.
Sound
Starcraft 2's voice acting overall is amongst the worst I have ever heard. That's saying a lot considering who I am and where I've been. I feel that I could assemble a team of voice actors from the modding community that could produce far better Protoss voices within a week. If we were being paid a tenth of what the Blizzard actors were being paid I could make them dance naked in the rain with mailmen to the beat of Slim Shady.
The fact is, is that Blizzard's sound design has been on a steady decline since Warcraft 3. 90% of WoW's acting is absolutely horrible with a few factors - the only ones they chose to hire that are actually actors - being good. It seems to me that many of Sc2's units are voiced by the exact same guy - particularly the Protoss. And we all know how awful the Zerg sound; that isn't acting, that's just inexperienced and awful sound engineers in general.
I've been told that even my experiments are commercial-quality level by fellow modders. I cannot speak highly of my voice acting because I have never been put on the pedestal to produce commercial-level acting, nor do I desire to ever do voice work for a published title. I have always and will always work for myself.
I have done voice acting for nearly 15 years, ever since I was just a child. When I first picked up computing amongst the first things I did was start figuring out how to digitalize my voice. I specialize largely in the voice acting of villains, demons, dragons, that sort of thing. But I've also voice acted Protoss and Zerg.
I force myself to adhere to a standard and level of quality I cannot possibly hope to obtain. Nothing I do is ever considered final. I am constantly redoing the same voice over and over searching for the absolute best diction and prose, the absolute best settings. Xul`Amon and The Great Destroyer are voices I have worked on for years.
The problem is of course that Blizzard depends on actors who are not actually actors but rather random employees. It's true that a few of Blizzard's employees make decent actors but the large majority of Protoss voices in sc2 make me cringe. It's not just the voices, but the writing itself. Metzen is one of the weakest writers in the industry (LOL THE ARTIFACTS ARE THE KEY TO THE END OF ALL THINGS), and whoever is writing the unit dialogue is not much better.
But it's okay. It's beta, right?
Oh, wait.
Q. Will there be any more voice acting changes for the units and such before the final release? A. No, the actors are final, though we may choose different "takes" they did in the studio or change some of the processing on their audio.
This absolutely bamboozled me. I could not possibly understand how they think the Protoss acting is any good, but the Zerg are just unbelievable. Now, the majority of Zerg is not actual acting, but you'd think they'd mention that if they wanted it to be known. If the Zerg remain the way they are at release this will be truly horrible. They are uncomparable to any level of amateur or professional editing much less Starcraft 1 which, in my opinion, represents the absolute pinnacle of sound engineering and acting along with titles Beast Wars, infinity-engine games, and Reboot.
The more Blizzard talks about Starcraft 2 the more I wonder where the company I once knew had gone. The motto "It's finished when it's finished" seems to have been discarded aside.
But that's okay. I'm a gods-damned modder, and a voice actor. I never intended to play the campaign or melee anyway. To me, Starcraft 2 is just a playground. Pleased I was, then, when the editor finally appeared. At long last, a chance to see what it was I was going to be working with for many years to come.
The Editor
Immediately I was beset with how ugly the editor was. I am almost certain this editor is an early alpha and not the real thing. I cannot possibly fathom the Blizzard campaign team using this editor to make their campaign. That would be unbelievable.
Where can I possibly begin?
The problem with its editor is not its powerful, for it is indeed powerful. The problem lays within the interface. I had already been completely confounded by the decision to make battle.net 2.0 as grossly horrid as it currently is.
This is battle.net 0.5. Blizzard seems to think this bloated, wasteful interface is an improvement over wc3 which did not require you to scroll down to see the entire player list. The only improvement over sc1 in all of Battle.net 2.0 is that you can drag players around to change teams. There are no chat rooms, no Online Replays, and not much hope for seeing either before an expansion right now. We have yet to hear if chat rooms will come at all - the "group" system seems to hint that Blizzard is doing all they can to avoid adding them. Why?
But the editor is 10x as bad.
Even just the Terrain editor is weird and haphazard. It seems as though Blizzard ignored previous editors like Earth 2150, Neverwinter Nights 2, even Titan Quest. Starcraft 2's editor boasts -100 to +100 height levels but only three cliff levels, the map size is still restricted to 256x256 - a problem when Sc2's units and buildings are bigger than sc1 and utterly crippling for major mods or campaigns - and the actual tools leave a great deal to be desired.
My biggest gripes with terrain editing are the placement tool and water. You need multiple types of water for every height level, and the placement tool is nearly useless in determining how stuff is going to actually be placed. It is exceptionally difficult to make straight, symmetrical walls and water can only be placed in these big squares. On the bright side, you have a LOT of options to play with regarding water. It's just the interface that is bad.
This is the Titan Quest map editor. Note the placement gizmo but, more importantly, you can tell the editor how big the tool is on top of a height level that is not dependent on the water type itself. This is what sc2's editor needs to look like by release. Any less is simply laziness.
But, wait. Blizzard does not actually support their editor. All this talk about their editor and they do not communicate with modders nor do they physically support the editor itself.
Can't be that bad, though, right?
Enter the Data Editor. Blizzard's most hyped and overblown part of the toolset.
The Data Editor is the most disorganized, lazily arranged application I have ever seen in my entire life. Unit Name and Unit Description are on totally opposite ends of the list and, when you switch it to GUI mode, you are met with every developer's worst nightmare - this hideous mess.
Now, hold on. Let's take a step back and think back. What were we working with in Starcraft 1? Hint - it wasn't Staredit.
This is Datedit, the successor to Arsenal. Programmed by BroodKiller, this editor's interface has been perfected over years of community feedback and with my personal guiding hand. Note how clean and simple to use it is. Sections are divided by tabs and attributes are organized by relationship - unlike sc2, health and shields aren't separated by score options.
Yeah, sc2 has a lot more options. That's no reason for it to be as sloppy as it is.
Datedit unit flag editor. Looks simple, doesn't it? That's because it is. Anyone can jump into this editor and do whatever they want with it. Myself, an ancient modder, was immediately lost and confused in sc2's clusterfuck disaster. The prospect of making a project anywhere near the scale of what I'd been producing in previous games using this interface is overwhelmingly terrifying.
Datedit weapons.dat editor. The only problem any newbie has ever come to me regarding this editor is unexpected crashes from changing weapon behaviors from non-existent iscript headers on certain graphics. Something you'd be highly unlikely to encounter in sc2 seeing as you could turn ANYTHING into a weapon in wc3. Oh, wait. I've heard of people having problems with something as simple as making a new unit. Personally, when I duplicated a water entry it reset the duplicate's altered settings.
Sc2's editor looks powerful but I expect few major mods to ever be created, just like Warcraft 3. Did I mention that SC2's "mod" system is just a campaign editor like wc3? You can't actually make a real mod in Starcraft 2 without using external editors yet again. It seems to me that Blizzard doesn't even know what a mod really is - something that globally changes the entire game. But whatever, that's really easy to get past (replace patch mpq in latest version patch folder).
In any event, the data editor has left me without hope for any salvation. For years Blizzard has ignored all of my efforts to communicate with them and try to help them design the layout of their editor. Now I am met with this disaster and am asking myself, "What next?"
I do not like Sc2. I do not like what Blizzard has done to it. After we had worked so hard to establish standards and usable, good programs in Starcraft 1 and Diablo 2, Blizzard just throws us this in sc2. Their excuse for the terrible interface is "Making maps is a very technical job". Um, yeah.
I don't know what else there is I can say. I've used a lot of bad editors in my life, but few editors I've come across are this badly laid out. Maybe they'll fix it, but judging by Brett Wood's response with wc3 (who is lead for sc2's editor), I have serious doubts of major, necessary changes being made. I'm sure everyone will enjoy triggers and terrain just like they did with wc3. Just as I'm sure campaigns and mods will be very rare like wc3.
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.
Because Blizzard didn't cater to a niche group of players, it's a bad game?
LIke, sorry it didn't meet your standards, but you have to realize that your niche is not one that's of particular concern to Blizzard. I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at with this post.
we should all be able to empathize on the sections concerning the reaver/collosus and the vulture / hellion, but this was an eye-opener into blizzard's haphazard effort concerning modding.
Someone should definitely link this to the blizzard team (if they would consider it at all).
On May 03 2010 04:55 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: Because Blizzard didn't cater to a niche group of players, it's a bad game?
LIke, sorry it didn't meet your standards, but you have to realize that your niche is not one that's of particular concern to Blizzard. I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at with this post.
Just my thoughts. Nothing more. Take as you will. I am a niche, this is true, and I make up a vast minority. But I felt that I would speak anyway.
blizzard just wants you to buy the premium editor. and it sounds like you will, so from their perspective, they made the right call.
I have heard nothing of a premium editor and doubt such a thing will ever exist. As it stands right now I am not purchasing Starcraft 2 at all.
/edit
Datedit is totally made from scratch. Staredit is not a modding application and has no relation to what I do in Starcraft 1.
Read it all. Don't know what to say as I haven't installed SC2. I'm dreading it because of thoughts regarding things you say. Sound is an important aspect to a game. Think about SC 1. If you hear "MY LIFE FOR AIUR". or the sound of zerglings popping or a siege tank firing, you know instantly what it is and it has an effect on you. What little I've heard of SC2 sounds makes me think dry, boring, uninspiring. I hope the music is decent at least.
Great post, I think it's critical that modders respond in this fashion because good mods will ensure an extended lifetime for sc2. I hope blizzard reads your posts and thinks about the issues you bring up without getting offended xD
Honestly, I couldn't wait for the Galaxy Editor. When we finally got it, and it was loading for the first time I remembered how I thought Warcraft3's editor was a complete buggy mess with a horrible layout. I couldn't wait for the Galaxy Editor because hey, Warcraft's 3's editor was made in the early 2000s (in development), alot of UI lessons were learned since then, like Web2.0 design (see: Bnet2, new Steam, Facebook, etc). Surely Blizzard learnt alot from Warcraft3. Not to say that the editor should have a UI like web 2.0, I'm saying people learned alot from UI design since the early 2000s.
I was shocked when it finished loading at how similar to Warcraft3 the layout was, and very dissapointed.
On May 03 2010 05:10 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: Great post, I think it's critical that modders respond in this fashion because good mods will ensure an extended lifetime for sc2. I hope blizzard reads your posts and thinks about the issues you bring up without getting offended xD
I already made a (much more polite, bullet-pointed) post on their forum about the subject of the editor. No response, of course.
On May 03 2010 04:55 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: Because Blizzard didn't cater to a niche group of players, it's a bad game?
LIke, sorry it didn't meet your standards, but you have to realize that your niche is not one that's of particular concern to Blizzard. I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at with this post.
He addressed way more than just the editor. And i think his complaints are completely justified, dont you think a really shitty editor contributes to the "niche of players", your talking about, being so small?
I don't know crap about modding but i always enjoyed playing them. But the few wc3 mods around sucked ass and reading that the sc2 editor is even worse makes me a sad panda :[.
On May 03 2010 05:10 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: Great post, I think it's critical that modders respond in this fashion because good mods will ensure an extended lifetime for sc2. I hope blizzard reads your posts and thinks about the issues you bring up without getting offended xD
I already made a (much more polite, bullet-pointed) post on their forum about the subject of the editor. No response, of course.
i never considered blizzard to be a company that would disregard the wishes of its customers until this sc2 beta...what happened to them that they are making sc2 like a command and conquer game...it LOOKS nice but it has so many glaring flaws that they claim are "fine" such as the high ground "oh it makes sense this way"-browder despite that its clearly broken and also the holy trinity and the entire hard counter system...they also have weakened units such as the archon to make them useless except in a handful of situations...what is blizzard doing i feel at this point as though a sc2 promod may actually be needed for the game to be truly successful and i dont want a split community that would result from that TT
Damn that was a long post. You put depth into people's general concern about sc2, this is something that blizzard needs to read and listen to. If blizzard does not listen, then I think we can safely assume that blizzard does not want to make a great game, but only wants to make money of sc2.
Seriously when I heard the zerg 'voices', I was just like wtf is this? Gah enough ranting someone link this to blizzard.
I have to agree wholeheartedly, the SC2 map editor is garbage. I wasn't even trying anything fancy, all I did was place a bunch of units and then I wanted to add a few simple triggers (something that I am quite familiar with). In the end I gave up, I don't want to waste so much time on learning how to use this thing.
On May 03 2010 05:10 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: Great post, I think it's critical that modders respond in this fashion because good mods will ensure an extended lifetime for sc2. I hope blizzard reads your posts and thinks about the issues you bring up without getting offended xD
I already made a (much more polite, bullet-pointed) post on their forum about the subject of the editor. No response, of course.
i never considered blizzard to be a company that would disregard the wishes of its customers until this sc2 beta...what happened to them that they are making sc2 like a command and conquer game...it LOOKS nice but it has so many glaring flaws that they claim are "fine" such as the high ground "oh it makes sense this way"-browder despite that its clearly broken and also the holy trinity and the entire hard counter system...they also have weakened units such as the archon to make them useless except in a handful of situations...what is blizzard doing i feel at this point as though a sc2 promod may actually be needed for the game to be truly successful and i dont want a split community that would result from that TT
Stop being a sheep that eats alive every pretty long posts with images in TL. All these things (high ground, marauder/immortal/roach, "hard counters") have been discussed to death already. People at TL are constantly looking for things to blame at SC2. The "problem du jour" at first was MBS and Unlimited Selection, after that when people got bored of it, it switched to the "hard counter problem du jour", then the "serious discussion" thread popped up after that with those 3 units. Hard counter came back. Now the lastest trend is "micro is dead".
On May 03 2010 05:10 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: Great post, I think it's critical that modders respond in this fashion because good mods will ensure an extended lifetime for sc2. I hope blizzard reads your posts and thinks about the issues you bring up without getting offended xD
I already made a (much more polite, bullet-pointed) post on their forum about the subject of the editor. No response, of course.
what is blizzard doing i feel at this point as though a sc2 promod may actually be needed for the game to be truly successful and i dont want a split community that would result from that TT
I think what's more likely to happen is a dota-like clone will appear and steal much of the userbase like wc3. But not much telling right now. The expansions could change quite a lot.
This is one of the most substantial and interesting blog postings I've read in the past year overall on TL.
I read every word, when I started reading there were no replies, now there's 22.
The sounds/voices are terrible in general. I find myself annoyed after 3 games with terran over the scvs, I feel like punching somebody in the face every time he says "In the rear with the gear!" for some reason that voice and others annoy me. Sounds in general are not as distinct and epic. the sound of a siege tank sieging in Sc1 was literally insane. It meant death, it meant destruction. When you hear that sound it became sort of a signifying sound of epic destruction. Sounds of tanks sieging in Sc2 isn't unique or epic in that way and doesn't seem to draw that "oh shit" reaction from me. Nothing in sc2 draws that "Oh shit" reaction and I also seriously agree with the Vulture/Reaver argument. Perhaps the most strategically deep units in sc1 replaced with units that are very linear and shallow. Units that require simply attack moving, and units that are unaffected by terrain of the map. Colosi just walking over the map requiring no unique control or creativeness.
On May 03 2010 05:10 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: Great post, I think it's critical that modders respond in this fashion because good mods will ensure an extended lifetime for sc2. I hope blizzard reads your posts and thinks about the issues you bring up without getting offended xD
I already made a (much more polite, bullet-pointed) post on their forum about the subject of the editor. No response, of course.
Can you link us to this?
Maybe if enough people pointed this out blizzard will actually listen.
Wow. That was a good post. StarCraft 2 is worse. Though the people who are going to buy it mostly won't even understand how good BW was and will think SC2 is still pretty awesome.
On May 03 2010 05:10 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: Great post, I think it's critical that modders respond in this fashion because good mods will ensure an extended lifetime for sc2. I hope blizzard reads your posts and thinks about the issues you bring up without getting offended xD
I already made a (much more polite, bullet-pointed) post on their forum about the subject of the editor. No response, of course.
Can you link us to this?
Maybe if enough people pointed this out blizzard will actually listen.
Like, i know absolutely nothing about this subject, but the way you posted forces me to agree with everything you said, regardless of whether i know anything about it or ont
This is a very excellent post that addresses some very real issues. I particularly agree with the sound one. I could not believe it is so much WORSE than BW sound. Sometimes the BW sound effects don't get noticed that much, but I started to better appreciate it when watching progaming games, when the ob view is suddenly changed to a FPVOD perspective and we suddenly hear the sound effects of units. That was AWE-INSPIRING. I was like HOLY SHIT I NEVER KNEW BW HAD SUCH GODLY SOUNDS WTF. If SC2 were just another random video game its sound could pass but I mean this is the successor of SC1. I wouldn't dream of having it surpassing it but at least give us something comparable.
Anyways. I admire your dedication to modding and how much effort and time you've invested into it despite the problems. I played around with "modding" a little with C&C Red Alert but otherwise cannot say much about your comments on the editor, except that your example screenshots comparing datedit and the sc2 editor are pretty striking in illustrating the large difference in interface between the two.
On the subject of mechanics though, I entirely agree. I'm not very excited about SC2 at all, and part of it is because of the things you mentioned - how a player's skill can get a tremendous amount extra mileage out of the same unit (not merely just a little extra utility). As well, the immortal, in particular, nullifies what would have been viable options from other races, and the marauder is such a no-brainer choice in every situation that's powerful and not too fragile...
I really liked the part about the editor I myself did a little bit of playing around with Sc1 custom editors(not much) but I could still pull some things out. The Sc2 editor is just a clusterfuck of mess. Really good post except really the part about reavers/colo/mines doesn't really fit in as everything is really just about how bad the editor is.
On May 03 2010 05:38 triangle wrote: Have you looked at the Civilization modding community? It's very active, and Civ 4 was designed to be fairly easily moddable (or so I've heard).
Honestly I've never played Civilization much less modded it, but I've heard a few times about the modding community. If this doesn't pan out I might check it out to see what else I can do with my time (I'm gonna be waiting for Titan Quest's sequel and maybe try X3: Terran Conflict).
Good read, agree with most of parts... SC2 sounds are really terrible, I didn't know that blizzard is not working on unit sounds anymore. Makes me a sad panda
Critics of SC2 critics will likely pounce on your gameplay and audio criticisms as they've been raised many times. Still, better to address them than not, though they most likely won't be fixed. Your discussion of SC2's modding issues was very educational, and your voice acting samples were pretty impressive as well. The first clip was really reminiscent of good 'ole BW Protoss voices.
Hopefully you find a more robust modding community. Perhaps excellent 3rd-party tools will be developed for SC2.
If I were you I'd finish the novel, though. Theoretically the writer has absolute control over his manuscript, especially if you have no intention to publish (as I seem to recall was the case.)
I clicked on this expecting another one paragraph whine post by some nobody idiot. Instead I was really surprised to see an in depth and well thought out points with several really good points that you brought up. I haven't read through the whole thing yet, but I wanted to comment for now saying how well you expressed yourself.
Some very good points (colossus, vulture, voices) and nice read altogether. Personally I dont think about the modding as something that should be in the spotlight but I can see how it can bring new great things to a game. Also it gives you better, out of the box point of view on the game, which we average players dont have. GL in getting some of your ideas across to blizz.
Edit: Also, I dont think that SC2 is terrible, but I definetly think is not as good as it could be. But hey, we are getting 2 datadiscs in the future...
On May 03 2010 05:57 EchOne wrote: If I were you I'd finish the novel, though. Theoretically the writer has absolute control over his manuscript, especially if you have no intention to publish (as I seem to recall was the case.)
If I could focus on writing I wouldn't be worried about modding.
Browder is a great man at PR but I've yet to see any indication of him being any good at game design. Although he boasts the willingness to add and remove units at a whim, we get answers like this -
Q: With the large discussion on Zerg changes, is there any planned? Or do you believe that they're not being used fully? A: We are looking at changes to the Corruptor. We are looking at the balance on Ultralisk and Infestor. We are not planning to introduce new units at this time, though we shall see as Beta progresses. =)
While this is indeed a beta, as I well know, it seems to me that Blizzard from the start has been unwilling to make change where change is necessary. They have insisted to keep the Mothership in the game from the very beginning - doing absolutely everything in their power to keep this unit in multiplayer where it does not belong. This tells me that Blizzard is, in fact, unwilling to make change."
Pretty much QFT. Browder talks the talk, but never have I ever seen him willing to do as he says. Easiest example is not removing the mothership, and the hard counter system. IT's a command and conquer counter system, not a starcraft 2 counter system
I rarely post on TL but this time I must do so and tell you: thank you!
thank you for a nice post, very well written and presented, and that gives a very interesting insight of a part of a community that isnt very known. But as a modder you bring up points that would have remained hidden to most players (including myself).
I read it all and I hope Blizzard will do the same.
i get so sick and tired of sc2, it has almost NOTHING good compared to sc1. sc1 is just so perfect, making sc2 was a business move rather trying to make the game better. nothing will get better with 3d engine. 2d fighter is still the best, 2d rts will always be the best.
On May 03 2010 06:22 AngryAsian wrote: i get so sick and tired of sc2, it has almost NOTHING good compared to sc1. sc1 is just so perfect, making sc2 was a business move rather trying to make the game better. nothing will get better with 3d engine. 2d fighter is still the best, 2d rts will always be the best.
i was really hyped for SC2 all they way up until I got my beta in the first wave. i was the guy in every thread telling people to stop crying about how SC2 is different.
and now I have not touched my beta in almost 2 months. i don't even know why either..
i'm afraid to admit that i may not be enjoying the game, and now the thought of saving hundreds on not buying this trilogy is very tempting to me.
maybe if i switch races it will be better.
more on topic:
those VA vids were really cool, and i'd have to agree that the SC2 units lack a lot of personality.
On May 03 2010 06:02 Olorin.SVK wrote: Personally I dont think about the modding as something that should be in the spotlight but I can see how it can bring new great things to a game.
Consider this for a moment.
- Counter-strike was a mod by two college students. Now look at it. - Garry's mod was, again, a mod. - Unreal Tournament's engine is outsourced largely to modders and developers. UE3 SDK was made open, for free, to modders. It is easier than ever to make a mod and go commercial with it using this incredibly powerful engine. This is the major selling point of the entire game for Epic. - Neverwinter Nights owes like 90% of its income thanks to the fact you can do so much with the editor even though it isn't exceptionally powerful, but you can have mini-mmo persistent worlds with it. - DotA wasn't even a mod, it's a map. Now you have all of these commercial spinoffs, DotA has its own CAL teams, and Icefrog got hired by Valve.
Mods are big business. If Blizzard wants to set up a Premium map system it's in their best interests to make the editor as clean and user-friendly as possible to encourage community growth. As it is, they are hurting it more than ever by ignoring us and leaving the ui in the state it's in.
Wow, what a great post! I never got into mapmaking except a little in Age of Empires II (do you have any experience with this game?), let alone modding, but your arguments sound very reasonable. I hope Blizzard takes a look at your points and handles them appropriately.
By the way, when you finish that novel, make sure you let us all know. I'd love to read it.
On May 03 2010 07:01 FiBsTeR wrote: Wow, what a great post! I never got into mapmaking except a little in Age of Empires II (do you have any experience with this game?)
I did mapping and made custom AI (yay mass catapults) for the first game but 2's AI scripting was a little too complex for me and late in my modding life so, no. I did play it a fair bit though.
I find myself pushed to like Starcraft 2, Push through game after game and win after loss, Yet under it all it's hard to eschew, How it fails to be to me what Brood War was
The units have the feel of cartoons, Siege tanks splay like childrens toys, Overlords drifting, schoolyard baloons Nothing here for men, just a wargame for boys
I rail against their game breaking decisions, How gain I no bonus from my superior vantage? This beta seems full of glaring omissions, What have they done with my high ground advantage?
This was to be the crux of my strategic life, Instead I've been lent no more than grief and strife
Except for the editor part (the editor doesn't work for me :/) I couln't agree more.
You are complaining about the voices in the game ? You surely don't have listened to french voices. English version is so professional compared to this xD
The zerg voice sounds just like golum from LOTR. You expect « Myprecious minerals » at any moment. Zerg are supposed to be scarrying creature comming from space.
I was horrified by some answers in the dev. « They're enough micro in SC2 » WTF ?? vultures, lurker, reavers, all interesting units to micro has been removed and replaced by some overpowered crap (immo, marauders, . . .).
« No, the actors are final, though we may choose different "takes" they did in the studio or change some of the processing on their audio. »
What ??? What the goal of the beta if nothing is supposed to be changed when it's wrong ?
On May 03 2010 07:12 Sonnet wrote: I find myself pushed to like Starcraft 2, Push through game after game and win after loss, Yet under it all it's hard to eschew, How it fails to be to me what Brood War was
The units have the feel of cartoons, Siege tanks splay like childrens toys, Overlords drifting, schoolyard baloons Nothing here for men, just a wargame for boys
I rail against their game breaking decisions, How gain I no bonus from my superior vantage? This beta seems full of glaring omissions, What have they done with my high ground advantage?
This was to be the crux of my strategic life, Instead I've been lent no more than grief and strife
On May 03 2010 07:12 Sonnet wrote: I find myself pushed to like Starcraft 2, Push through game after game and win after loss, Yet under it all it's hard to eschew, How it fails to be to me what Brood War was
The units have the feel of cartoons, Siege tanks splay like childrens toys, Overlords drifting, schoolyard baloons Nothing here for men, just a wargame for boys
I rail against their game breaking decisions, How gain I no bonus from my superior vantage? This beta seems full of glaring omissions, What have they done with my high ground advantage?
This was to be the crux of my strategic life, Instead I've been lent no more than grief and strife
It is literally impossible for SC2 sounds / music to sound equal in quality to SC1 sounds / music for you right now. Much of the way our brains determine affinity for sounds is based on how many times we have previously heard them.
SC2 editor sucks, but, like the OP says, the SC1 editor did, too. Since Blizzard left it up to fans to make their own editors it'll probably happen this time, too.
Groups make a lot more sense these days than the chat rooms that get built out of thin air. I could never figure out all the complicated functions of SC1 battle.net that were ripped from IRC circa '96.
The maps are pretty standard, but they should be for figuring out balance in beta. If the maps were all Demon's Forest, DMZ, and Plasma, no one would have any idea about balance. I guess if they threw Diablo units in so giant neutral demons could use DBZ moves on Command Centers, it would be a lot more "innovative", but most of us would not like that.
Reaver > Colossus but the Colossus still takes micro since it is fragile and best used in conjunction with Sentry/FF.
None of the unit voices really sound that bad to me, although some of the writing sucks, like the SCV guy freaking out. I like the Thor, prolly partially because there isn't any nostalgic counterpart to compare it too. Nothing stuck out about the zerg to me, which is probably a step down from SC1 but it didn't sound amateur to me.
On May 03 2010 09:37 Pyrrhuloxia wrote: SC2 editor sucks, but, like the OP says, the SC1 editor did, too. Since Blizzard left it up to fans to make their own editors it'll probably happen this time, too. .
The same was said about wc3 but it never happened. I mean, I'll try to convince some of the programmers to make stuff for sc2, but most of them are retired now or working.
Fantastic post, read the whole thing. I've never had the patience to learn to be good at modding games; I tried editing ROMs of the old Fire Emblems, but hex made me want to kill myself, and all the forums I was looking on for help were dead. It's interesting to hear about the game from a perspective so different than the one we usually see on this forum.
I agree with you 100% about the unit sounds. I've started playing with the sound either on lowest or off, since I play zerg and can't deal with hearing "We require more MineralSSSSSSS" 10000000 times in a game
Great post. I've seen your posts before always interesting. I hope it gets spotlighted. I played beta for like 4 days. I'm actually about to play sc1 and then read (on some programming ). I surely hope they do something to create something more "dynamic" both in game and for the editors. Thanks.
Thank you for this blog, IskatuMesk. It was very informative and I certainly hope Blizzard will listen to your feedback regarding the editor.
That said, however, I do not think the Vulture and Reaver would work in SC2. The thing that made these two units compelling and balanced was the flawed AI pathing. It was the bad pathing that allowed units to potentially drag the mines and use them against the Terran player. Likewise, it was the bad pathing that forced Protoss players to manually target with the Reaver and that made each shot a gamble in which the Protoss could do either lots of damage or no damage at all.
With the improved AI pathing, these two units would just be boring and overpowered. Reavers would surely hit with every scarab, not making them any better then a direct fire unit, and deal massive splash damage. Do not even get me started on Vultures, who were just barely balanced in the original SC as it was. They were incredibly cheap, took a lot of shots to take down, could fire while moving and could plant mines that could kill units much more expensive from themselves. If each mine would successfully be able to explode upon first contact upon it's intended target, then there would be preety much no stopping them.
I don't think the Colossus and Hellion are bad replacements, but I think it would be hard to deny that both require work. While the Colossus has the personality and charm the Reaver had (sorry, the obvious "War of the Worlds" reference does not change that, just like the obvious "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" reference doesn't in the Reaver's case) , I feel like it doesn't make the most use of it's ability to scale up and down cliffs. I feel like the unit would feel a lot more compelling if it had an attack method that would warrant it to use that movement ability more.
Also, while I think Hellions have a lot of potential (A Firebat on steroids and wheels? Who wouldn't want that?), too much of their damage currently consists of bonus against light. This means that any sort of Armored unit quickly renders them obsolete. If they did at least decent base damage, I think they would have made a decent mineral sink for Mech-based play.
As for the voices, they are a mixed bag for me. While I love most of the Terran and some of the Protoss voices, I agree that Zerg could be a lot better. Also, I was seriously dissapointed at the Archon's voice....it doesn't sound even remotely as menacing as it's original counterpart.
Overall, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Sadly, it was preety much inevitable that some would not like it. While I like the game, I realise that it still has a lot of issues. I hope Blizzard takes your feedback to heart and I hope that the game will turn better as well as more to your liking in the future.
Very well thought out post. The only thing i really have to comment on is this:
Even just the Terrain editor is weird and haphazard. It seems as though Blizzard ignored previous editors like Earth 2150, Neverwinter Nights 2, even Titan Quest. Starcraft 2's editor boasts -100 to +100 height levels but only three cliff levels, the map size is still restricted to 256x256 - a problem when Sc2's units and buildings are bigger than sc1 and utterly crippling for major mods or campaigns - and the actual tools leave a great deal to be desired.
I expect (or rather, I hope to GOD) that this is a limitation that will only be present in the beta, mostly because Blizzard expects people to be using the current version of the editor pretty much exclusively to design melee maps. That said, it is indeed distressing if they themselves are using this editor to design content in the game, because it is a nightmare to work with.
On May 03 2010 04:55 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: Because Blizzard didn't cater to a niche group of players, it's a bad game?
LIke, sorry it didn't meet your standards, but you have to realize that your niche is not one that's of particular concern to Blizzard. I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at with this post.
The issue is that the WHOLE POINT of having an editor this powerful is to cater to people to like IskatuMesk. It's not like your average player is going to so much as look at the map editor. If the people who actually will use the editor think this poorly of it, there's pretty much no point in including the editor to begin with.
I suppose to the beta isn't out yet either, the devs havn't shown much concern for getting down and dirty re-designing units that are causing problems because they can be massed to hell and back without repercussion.
Clans being held off till the first expansion? wat.
The editor's interface is probobly going to end up staying the way it is no doubt in my mind, maybe someone with alot of time can edit the XML files to redo the layout but I doubt you'll be able to add tabs that way to clearn it up.
TQ's successor is Grim Dawn, most of IronLore turned into Crate Entertainment
With the improved AI pathing, these two units would just be boring and overpowered.
Yeah, I get this, and that's why I was talking about the elements they represent rather than the units themselves. The Reaver represents High Risk High Reward, a unit that is powerful alone but when used in synergy and correctly it can be devastating. On the other hand it is exceptionally expensive and vulnerable and must be taken care of. About the only thing that comes close to that in sc2 right now is probably the Infestor because aids is so incredibly powerful when you get enough of them (see my commentary of Kolll vs TheLittleOne for mass aids drone carnage). The Raven is also somewhat high risk (they are fairly easy to snipe if the Terran is careless, and they often are) but not nearly as much as the slow-as-balls Reaver.
In many cases Colossus can tank-out enemy attacks and are amongst the most mobile units in the game, attack far faster, and are much less risky to lose as well as less costly.
The vulture represents tactical map control and geometric element value. Mines are its instrument of placing value in specific locations and altering the way the mapflow works through the unit's actions for both players. Thus, ridges in Heartbreak Ridge with mines on them present a greater hazard than mines out in an open field because of miss chance. In sc2 both things are gone - mines and miss chance. The ridges would have far less value in sc2 and for the most part would be largely ignored on the strategic level.
I think the Hellion has the potential to be a cool unit but it needs some utility to bring fear back into Terran mech.
I expect (or rather, I hope to GOD) that this is a limitation that will only be present in the beta, mostly because Blizzard expects people to be using the current version of the editor pretty much exclusively to design melee maps.
I fear that this is not specific to the beta. I would only hope that the sc2mapster editor comes to fruition and allows people like me to replace this editor, or that Blizzard starts listening to reason and making appropriate fixes.
This blog definitely should have some sort of awesome post warning in the title, I almost missed it.
No real comments right now because I skimmed most of it, but I wanted to express my appreciation for what I did read. I've never been into modding myself but it's disappointing to hear that SC2 is so hard to work with.
you write very well. I was never interested in modding games, so I've never heard of you before, but it seems like you've done some really impressive work over the years. It's incredible to me that people put so much work into modding this game.
That being said, I'm not sure I really agree with your post. I've barely glanced at the editor myself, so I don't know much about it, but it seems like your main complaint is that it's interface is bad. Don't you think you'll eventually get used to the bad interface, if you use it enough? Or, failing that, someone could program a better interface, like they did with starcraft.
With regards to gameplay- I dunno, it feels different, but I still really like this game. I do think it would be better if a lot of units (like the hellion) had faster acceleration, and weaker stats. It's still really fun, though, and it's hard to talk about what strategies will be used because people are still figuring it out. i don't think anyone has a firm grasp on SC2 strategy, yet.
Editors were made for SC1 because there wasn't really any alternative beyond hex editing if that was even possible, WC3 never had the same tools made for it because the editor could already do it regardless how annoying it may be and it will probobly be the same for SC2.
Removing high risk units and things like height advantage (/beatdeadhorse) etc to me is just minimizing the wiggle room for strategies to form.
Wc3's community really lacked the programmers able to make good tools in the first place. Only a few existed, including the Russian model editor mdlvis and one of the English model viewers. Unfortunately tools were few and far inbetween - the only model importer for warcraft 3 is an ancient plugin that only supports 3ds max 5.1 which doesn't work on vista or windows 7, making importing models impossible.
On May 04 2010 06:17 nTooMuch wrote: everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion, yours is just wrong.
Oh. Thanks for letting me know!
/e
I didn't properly answer Luddite's question so here it is;
I work on big projects. If the interface makes this more time-consuming and difficult than it needs to be then there is no enjoyment to be had. It becomes a tedious chore. I don't make public projects, I don't work for money, I work for my own enjoyment. If I'm getting no enjoyment I don't work. There's no way I'd even attempt a project of any scale in the current editor. Period. It's far too disorganized to have any kind of proper workflow.
To those who understate the importance of interfaces in development:
In the IT world, there are entire businesses built around the creation of what basically amount to "interfaces": IDEs, or integrated development environments. How streamlined and accessible an IDE is holds just as much import as how robust or powerful in terms of features and functionality it is. If human beings are expected to work with an interface for hours and actually accomplish tasks / be productive, having said interface be easier to use can only be better for productivity.
Now the demand for tools in game modding may be relatively miniscule compared to that for commercial development, but that doesn't make concerns over interface any less valid.
Interesting post, never really though about modding beyond ums maps and better pro maps. I agree about the vultures though. It like.. kills the game for me, but i do feel those kind of compromises could make it less exciting than it could be. Still a bit of time,let's see what they can do!
Lol, I thought this was gonna be a kid ranting about how bad sc2 is because he got pwned. But damn this was one long post and whoa, No one can flame this with all the arguments he/she shows
Most of the replies in this thread that are either suggesting or flat out saying that you are angry because Blizzard has not catered to a niche audience simply show that their writers have not read what you said.
Someone on the first page - Carnivoroussheep or something, I don't read TL very often so I don't know this posters with large post counts - said that (doesn't cater to niches blah blah). That's not at all the OP's point. Either you skimmed the post, didn't read it, or misinterpreted it.
To the OP: I am not at all involved in the mapping or modding community. I never did anything in the SC editor beyond putting 50 carriers vs 500 marines and seeing who won. This was a very interesting read and despite it's length flew by. Thanks for the input, I think that what you've brought up is certainly pertinent.
Blizzard fixing their interface and map editor will not change their sales, however, so I wouldn't expect them to care. As a large company bought by another even larger company, the dollar has become the overwhelming driving force. The days when Blizzard would respond to small communities are gone.
That's just the reality of it, it seems to me. As a large company with thousands of employees, they simply don't care about the little guy. While that's a complaint, it's also a realistic fact - why should they? Unless upper management cares on a personal level, then nothing is going to change.
This post:
On May 04 2010 07:29 EchOne wrote: To those who understate the importance of interfaces in development:
In the IT world, there are entire businesses built around the creation of what basically amount to "interfaces": IDEs, or integrated development environments. How streamlined and accessible an IDE is holds just as much import as how robust or powerful in terms of features and functionality it is. If human beings are expected to work with an interface for hours and actually accomplish tasks / be productive, having said interface be easier to use can only be better for productivity.
Now the demand for tools in game modding may be relatively miniscule compared to that for commercial development, but that doesn't make concerns over interface any less valid.
is certainly accurate, but again, since this is regarding the map editor interface, I don't see Blizzard caring that much. There will be a large community of map makers, but it will be nothing compared to those who simply buy the game, play the single player, occasionally hop on to play whatever SC2's equivalent of FPM will be, and don't care.
Even if a map becomes extremely popular, such a DOTA was in WC3, it seems like people will simply work around the limitations or within them. I don't know much about mapping, as I said, so I am not informed when I make statements like that. I'm just going off of what you said about the limitations of War3's editor but the fact that DOTA still became so popular and big.
However, that post you made about CS originating as a mod, DOTA being a map yet being so huge, etc, makes me realize that perhaps my ignorance is causing me to underestimate the importance or size of the modding community. Maybe it is something that is large enough to have an economic impact and thus something that Blizzard will address. Regardless of whether that is the case, I can still say that I hope they do address it.
BalloonFight > Yes, this is the way of the industry. The only time I have ever been able to actually communicate with developers and work towards a goal was when the expansion Vyrium Uprising for Conquest: Frontier Wars was being worked on. Unfortunately it was never completed.
I know nothing about modding and lack insight in SC2, so I can't say anything about if I believe you to be right or wrong, I will say that your article was very well written, interesting and that your mods looked impressive.
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.
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.
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.
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 (ifear) 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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for taking the time to write this post man.
Upon launching sc2 for the first time I didn't know where to even begin pointing out things that I felt were done poorly, especially compared to BW. All those things you're pointing out like poor voice acting, bad unit choices, flashy gimmicky stuff all over etc. and so much more feel like a major step back from BW - a 12 year old game.
Something made me want to start making a list of all things one by one and make a post in a forum somewhere, hoping some guy at blizzard would see it and listen and they would go back and start working on things again.. but much as I've loved BW over all these years, I can not find the strength or the will to make me want to do that. And at the end of the day, wtf do I know right?
Thankfully, you, a guy who can say he knows what he's talking about, take the time and write this wonderful lengthy post that hopefully will be read by blizzard and make some guys blush and hopefully again, they'll go back and rework on some things and try to save whatever can be saved at this point.
Good job writing all this, and I hope you keep finding outlets for your creativity in the future whether it's sc2 or not.
It was a part of the BWAI launcher but their website appears to have expired and Baja has gone missing. I have a version of the BWAI Launcher I was using for my testing. It is not as up to date as theirs but it will contain two of my newest AI's; ZAPOC and Mighty Crusader.
I'll try to locate it and post a response when I have it available.
Click the dropdown menu on the top and set to BWAIWar (AI vs AI). This will set the script selection to use these scripts out of the specific package, which contains my two major updated scripts; one for Protoss, called Mighty Crusader, and ZAPOC, for Zerg, which stands for Zerg Apocalypse.
Selecting these in the menu and pressing "Play!" will launch Starcraft and temporarily "patch" the game during this session. When you exit the game it will revert to normal unless you again use the Launcher. This is the way with all mods in Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft - they require third party programs to globally modify the game. Yes, globally - you can now play any melee, FFA, or TvB game versus the AI and the standard melee AI will be replaced with those you've selected. Do not have Starcraft, Staredit, or anything like that running when launching. If both players are running the mod you can both play on battle.net.
It is to be noted that ZAPOC and Mighty Crusader are Cheating AI Killers. That is to say they were built to kill other cheating AI's. They were NOT created with the BWAPI project - they cannot micro or do anything fancy like that. This is the same scripting method that people used since 2000.
A new notes,
- You cannot play with multiples of these AI's because they will encounter what is called multithread clashing. Starcraft has a global AI multithread limit. Many of these AI's make extensive usage of multithreads, especially Ashara's AI's and my Protoss. Sometimes this can be bad enough that when you load an AI vs AI replay (which is how we tested them; replays don't record AI actions so changes to the AI are reflected in replays! :D) both AI's will encounter considerable slowness and often cease to function at all. - You'll need to play on a map with large main bases. BGH, for example, is far too small. ZAPOC will attempt to build around 40-60 hatcheries in its main base. On a small map, especially with elevations, I cannot predict what kind of hilarity will result or if the AI will just break entirely.
Feel free to ask any questions.
/e
Your current version is highly unlikely to contain either of my new scripts as they specifically have the names Mighty Crusader and Zerg Apocalypse or ZAPOC. That probably contains my old RequiemD AI which isn't nearly as good (but would still give average players an ok challenge as long as it doesn't break, which unfortunately which Starcraft AI happens a lot from hardcoded issues).
lol wow i just played tvz python vs zapoc 2.0 or something and i got raped twice -_- haha first hydralisk wave tehn mutas then hydralurker whne i just managed to secure my natural haha.
ZAPOC reaches critical mass at about 15 min on a big map. At that point, so long as it doesn't break, it never falls below 200/200 because it has so many hatcheries it can rebuild its entire army at once. :D
That was the genius of this script. In AI vs AI you can't depend on micro, the game becomes extremely different. Scouts are viable - I used scouts in Mighty Crusader to hard counter zerg air, for example, as Devourers are necessary for the zerg to deal efficiently with Protoss air.
ZAPOC takes advantage of hatcheries. Lots, and lots, and lots of hatcheries, and insane tech speed and aggression. There is virtually no way I can improve it any further without going into BWAPI C++ modifications, but those are outside my league.
I have just one question - you're obviously talented and very patient, so why don't you make your own RTS engine, with good editor, blackjack and hookers?
The galaxy editor IS extremely powerful, as OP himself stated. I can see why it's not that easy to use - SC2 engine seems to have A LOT more depth than SC1, and the editor allows you to change all of the little parameters (not talking about maps atm, mainly data editor). Trigger editor UI is pretty bad and very time-consuming to use, but I think Blizzard guys mainly used raw galaxy script - that's what I use as it's much faster for anyone with a programming background).
Anyway, for a game still in beta, there are already insane mod POCs. I remain optimistic.
On May 10 2010 21:05 Random() wrote: I have just one question - you're obviously talented and very patient, so why don't you make your own RTS engine, with good editor, blackjack and hookers?
A couple of people have asked this and usually the answer would be obvious but I can see why it isn't so I'll explain.
Making a mod and making an entirely new engine are very different things. The reason you make mods is because you lack the (years) of time needed to exercise extreme programming talent. 99.9% of the time modders who think they can make their own games never get past conceptual stages. I know many who have tried and all have failed.
Yeah, in some cases people can go on to make their own games - like Dwarf Fortress - but I'm not a programmer. I did a little bit of tinkering with JASS in wc3 but that was mostly editing existing stuff and everything starcraft-related is totally not even close to real programming.
The closest thing would be using the UE3 SDK or waiting for Project Offset, but again, I'm not a programmer, I can't do any of those things. I wish I could.
Understand the projects I'd be looking to create in sc2 will already be multi-year investments just because of asset creation. That is why I want the editor to be more fluid and user-friendly so it doesn't make my work a living hell like wc3 did.
I can see why it's not that easy to use -
It'd easy to use with time, make no doubt. It's that it's irritating and time consuming to use because values in the data editor are scattered all over the place with no sense of consistency or direction. The difficulty is derived from the user interface and vagueness of functions, not necessarily the editor itself. An editor need not be difficult to turn people away from it, it needs only a poor ui and sloppy management - something Blizzard's pretty good at. Since I messed with the XML files and talked a lot with my friend while we were playing the AO conceptual mod he made I already understand a lot of how the game works with units. No one has ever told me wc3's editor was hard to use (outside of triggering and JASS ofc, but even I was getting into those, and I have major learning disabilities), but a good quote from a SME member is: "Wc3 hands you everything in a way that makes the game totally uninteresting to mod."
No, a game that's hard to really get into is Supreme Commander or Homeworld 2. The latter's weapon files are text files that basically an arrangement of numbers you have to reference and count using an external web page to figure out what the hell is what. Supreme Commander is all around a colossal mess.
There is a key difference between depth and projection.
While sc2's editor does offer depth it does not offer projection, a way of portraying this depth in a cohesive and fluid manner.
What sc2's editor doesn't have is projection. What it has is laziness and probably a good degree of incompletion. Point in case -
^ Unit description value.
^ Through sophisticated photoshopping I have pointed out the haphazard mess that is the unit armor, health, and shields, all of which are separated each other with random attributes because it's listing in alphabetical order and for some reason all of these stats do not have the stat prefix.
No, the problem here is not depth or complexity. The problem is the layout and exclusively the layout.
I am glad you introduced to us the fresh problem in SC2 that had not been beaten to death already; voice acting and poor modding interface to my memory has not been brought to argument frequently as I would have liked. I also like you took sufficient time to explain the mechanics behind vulture, reaver etc. that made them so fun, instead of falling into pittrap of being butthurt old-timers who simply cry about bringing these units back. Indeed your argument is absolutely valid and I remain optimistic that with few unit modifications the concept will somehow manage to integrate itself with the new units in SC2.
As for modding, although I am simply a mapper whose greatest extent was simply making UMS maps and have no knowledge of the coding, I have to agree on your points. Even if the editor has great functionality, it's effectiveness can be severely punished by poor interface. Inconvenient interface will definitely cause future modders more frustration and time than necessary. Also, I believe having easy to use interface will encourage greater creativity and longitivty by allowing more pool of users into dap their hands into modding. In civilzation games, spite of not knowing much about computers, I have been able to make some mods cartered to my interests exactly because of it's easier to use interface- I know I definitely would have lost my patience to do so if the data editor had been more difficult to use, and I am concerned when SC2 is released that data editor will stay in current situation which will discourage such casual modders like me from using it.
Dunno. It works fine for me, that's what I used to test ZAPOC. It is NOT the most updated BWAILauncher, it doesn't have all of their latest scripts before the site went down, that's just what I had on my drive at the time.
It is always a pleasure to read your writing and hear your thoughts, Mesk. Solid objections from each of the various sub-communities is the first step to convincing Blizzard that it has no excuses left to offer. How they respond then will show the true colors of the company we've admired all this time.
If there is anyone that should cause Blizz to pause and take heed, it be IskatuMesk. This does not bode well for StarCraft2 when such fans are disappointed at this stage.
IskatuMesk spoke:Such is the frailty of mortality condemned by instinctual disdain of change.
wow i am in awe at the depth of your knowledge about this matter. And you certainly have contributed a ton to multiple gaming communities. Props and I sincerely hope blizzard reads this and heeds your words. Modders are vital for the longevity of games, if SC2 is to live up to its benchmark, it cannot afford to alienate such a hardcore, creative, and loyal population.
Huge props for your work!! And although it might be selfish for me to say, I really hope to see your art show up in sc2 regardless of what blizzard does.
Thanks, you hit the nail on the head about how I feel about roaches, hellions,colossi, the sound, the editor, Bnet and how Blizzard refuses to change their game. Honestly, we've waited so long for this and yet it feels like they don't care too much about making it that trademark "as best as it can be". I also found your spiel on modding to be really insightful.
I really can't understand every bit of information, as I have no modding experience whatsoever. What I can say, though, is that if someone this informed is concerned about the mod scene, and modability of SC2, then perhaps Blizzard has messed up somewhere.
I agree with most of what the OP said, and here's some of my thoughts .
1. You think that the Iconic units, which add amazing depth to the game, making the 3 races so distinct and even distinguishing Starcraft itself from any other RTS, is vulture, reaver, lurker etc. while Blizzard thinks they are battlecruisers, carriers and ultralisks.
2. You think it's vastly important that every race should have its own unique characteristic, but Dustin just told you that, in fact, they never considered these things from the very beginning, they just tried to create "cool" units and see how they worked when combined together. Then we at last see some "cool" low tier units like marauders and roaches, which have very large HP pool, very high damage output, need 2 supply and, the most ridiculous,are not protoss.
3. So what do you think makes Starcraft battle epic? I think it's macro which makes large scale battle possible.Therefor, we need larger maps where players can really play macro style games. However, Blizzard believes that it's intensity that grant us epic games , so they try to make maps as small as possible.
4. I am not an experienced modder but at least a novice mapmaker. When using SC2 editor, I just told myself that, OK, it's SC2 editor rather than the Galaxy editor, so everything not organized or convenient is not a big deal, and if you found something like the 2 level restrict of high ground ridiculous, it's only because you are a noob to the editor and can not find a solution to change things like that.
On May 24 2010 16:43 fearus wrote: I don't want to sound rude or anything but you seem to have beat your own chest pretty heavily at the start.
So what MOD have you made/completed that was actually used by anyone?
D2 has Median and D3PK, WC3 has DOTA (Okay this isn't really a MOD) and various other 'maps'.
Armageddon Onslaught In The Admiral's Service
Two of my major Starcraft mods that saw a lot of playtime from members at Staredit.net.
My various AI modifications, such as RequiemD, ZONS, and now ZAPOC, also saw playtime and public events.
"Mod" is not capitalized, by the way. A pet peeve of mine, if you will.
Anyways, I felt it fitting to introduce who I am and what I've done to give people insight on the perspective I come from.
A lot of my projects, and all future projects, will be completely private. I had a lot of people stealing things from my Starcraft projects when I was releasing them before, so I retracted a lot of them from public availability. Only ITAS, which will probably be difficult for you to find, and Armageddon Onslaught, which is available at www.campaigncreations.org , remain available publicly.
I was also a heavy tester in the Dawn of Skirmish AI project for Dawn of War, in which I actively participated for quite some time.
Had Heart of Storms and Dawn of Chaos been released by now, they also possess content that I created specifically for them (namely voice acting, I voiced female characters for HoS and some misc dialogue for DoC).
My first wc3 map I ever made shortly after release, a crappy melee map, got over 20k downloads on warcraft2.org before they purged their database.
I have had small gatherings of people I know play my Age of Wonders 2 mod with me.
That is all I ask for as far as publicity is concerned.
Keep in mind I never, ever release unfinished content these days. Most of what I have produced or attempted to produce has never been available for download. I don't make mods for the public, I make them for myself.
Reading your OP (and I've carefully read it all) made me realize that i should be happy that i didn't involve myself in modding and had such high expectations for this game, because i cant see any game developer meeting them in the foreseeable future. I'm afraid that you will never be truly satisfied by what the products made for the masses will offer to you. Sad really, but true.
I personally am simply happy with what we currently have, starcraft2 is certainly way better than anything else that came out in the gaming industry for a long, long time, so why not enjoy it for what it is? It's not like the community figured it all out already and i'm sure that a lot of cool stuff and strategies will pop out. So gaming wise let the game mature a bit, its still beta and while it has it flaws its the most polished, balanced beta i've personally been in so far. And we still have 2 expansions ahead of us so yea...
I'm no modder, and i have no idea what were your plans for galaxy editor, but think about it this way: galaxy map editor is much better than w3 editor. That's a fact. And what did w3 editor brought us? DotA. Which basically invented a whole new genre (i might be wrong here, maybe were was something else before it but it certainly wasn't as successful and popular), it gave people a whole new experience of gameplay, dota took a life of its own and gave birth to even more good games, not to mention the highly competitive e-sports scene.
And that is quite a feat for a "crappy" editor with a messy UI, and i don't think anything can compare to what it did. Now galaxy editor is going to be even better and have less limitations, so i can't even imagine the awesome stuff IT will bring us.
So yea, calling all this the biggest gaming disappointment in your gaming lifetime is a bit silly... At least from the perspective i just laid out here.
You can call me naive and whatnot for saying all this, but i wouldn't really care because after playing sc2 beta for 1 month i'm still hyped about the game, despite all the big issues its currently having - and that makes my gaming life brighter.
I understand your perspective well and you presented it in an intelligent manner.
As a modder I am accustomed to limitations and bugs and glitches and all sorts of crazy shit. But what bothers me more than these problems are developers who refuse to acknowledge and correct them, and developers who abuse the trust of their fanbase and skirt corners to avoid putting effort into making their product more accessible and more intuitive. Blizzard knows everyone will suck in whatever they release, so they can half-ass it all they please.
There are games out there that will surely sate any modder's appetite - such as Project Offset. Does this mean that Blizzard should be lazy with their editor? No. They should strive to make it the best it can be, period, or there should be no editor at all.
And what did w3 editor brought us? DotA. Which basically invented a whole new genre (i might be wrong here, maybe were was something else before it but it certainly wasn't as successful and popular),
DotA is based on a Starcraft map (Ever heard the term aos? It means Aeon of Strife, the very first map of this type), and is a poor means of displaying wc3's capabilities! Warcraft 3 can have physics systems and much more creative things in it than DotA lets you believe. In all, dota is a very basic map, it simply capitalized on the void left behind by wc3's shallow gameplay.
A man can achieve great things with the most limited of tools. Much of what I did in Armageddon Onslaught was thought impossible by other veteran modders. I pushed the boundaries and exceeded Starcraft's bounds to the stars and beyond. Just as modders have worked magic in ancient titles like Doom and Quake.
But we are few and far inbetween. It is not as though you can push into a challenge like that smiling. It is a long, arduous, horrible process and that is why there are so few modders in these kinds of games.
So yea, calling all this the biggest gaming disappointment in your gaming lifetime is a bit silly...
What can I compare it to?
Earth 2160 had a great engine and really nice graphics, but the gameplay was too based on hard counters and was very shallow. Currently, sc2 is the same way.
Earth 2160 promised a powerful editor but this was rendered inaccessible to all but specific third parties. Sc2's editor is accessible to everyone but only those with balls of steel will endure the editor's ui for making major scale projects which no one has even begun with the game yet.
Neverwinter Nights 2, again, the same thing. The engine had promise but they half-assed it. Animations were garbage, chicks looked like dudes, the story was boring as crap (Watch out Metzen!). The editor promised power far beyond the original game's but the interface was total garbage and the game's formats were difficult to work with. As a result, modders stuck with NWN1.
But sc2 is not made by no-name companies like ZuxxeZ and Obsidian. Sc2 is being made by a company that, until today, has been revered as the strongest and most supportive company in the industry, worshipped as the best of the best.
What I see here is a transformation that had taken place many years ago.
You can call me naive and whatnot for saying all this, but i wouldn't really care because after playing sc2 beta for 1 month i'm still hyped about the game, despite all the big issues its currently having - and that makes my gaming life brighter.
You are not naive. You aren't a modder, you don't even care about what it is that grinds my balls. Go, enjoy your game! I have nothing to say that would effect you. If you enjoy the game, that's great. I'm happy for you.
is the reason why I don't put that much faith in big companies for this kind of stuff. I definitely thought Blizzard was different a long time ago, though.
This reminds me of iGunZ actually. There was this point in the beta where the servers came down, and everyone was suddenly forced into the forums. That's when people started to create stuff for Real. The game's engine was so bugged, it actually gave quite a lot of power and working grounds for the players. There was So much stuff that could be done, and we were putting the pieces together.
Unfortunately, the beta came up short because of a cracker that released a script which would delete most of the accounts. Most people left the game in disappointment... but that's not the issue here.
We were supposed to see creativity, and good info on the game during this time. WTF IS GOING ON HERE. Instead we're getting important people let down by the game; infos on sloppy programming and bad game design (see the topic on repair costs for example), and to top it all, stupid patches that clearly show lack of... time, creativity, issue analysis,... pretty much everything, from Blizzard .
I do believe that there are two major kinds of worlds in life: the bigger and obvious one with bad quality, and the lesser known realm of originality, thinking and Real creativity. Just because being original takes so much work, that you can't afford to be shown broadly in the visible one.
However, Blizzard managed to be a kind of an exeption to this. It most certainly resided in the more common world, but it supported the creativity of all these people who do stuff just because it is worth to do them, like no other.
I'm really not sure how I missed this... what a ridiculously insightful and enjoyable post. I even had little idea SC had been modded to such an extent, and I've been absorbed in the (competitive) scene for years and years now. Thank you for this.
Wow, if anyone else like me read the entire thing pat yourself on the back. Previously before this post I never really cared about UMS maps or even creating them in general. People had just been saying all the good about this new galaxy editor and what it can bring to the table, but I guess you showed me Blizzrad has A LOT more things they need to fix! I don't even care if patch 13 is the last balance patch before retail! Fix our interface please and fix our amazing modder's interface as well
Many things I disagree with (like the "hard counter" bit which isn't really much different from sc1 at all), but the voices part I couldn't agree more with. I mean Terran sounds, they're actually pretty good, but protoss and especially zerg are just atrocious and have none of the appeal of the original.
does anyone else hate sc2's commander sounds? like the "not enough minerals" or "your forces are under attack," for example. protoss used to have such a cool voice in sc1 but sc2's is just really annoying.
edit: it actually affects my gameplay too. in sc1 i didn't mind clicking things a little earlier since the voice was so cool but now i actually wait 'til i have sufficient minerals to build stuff b/c i don't want to hear it
On May 27 2010 13:26 OneOther wrote: does anyone else hate sc2's commander sounds? like the "not enough minerals" or "your forces are under attack," for example. protoss used to have such a cool voice in sc1 but sc2's is just really annoying.
edit: it actually affects my gameplay too. in sc1 i didn't mind clicking things a little earlier since the voice was so cool but now i actually wait 'til i have sufficient minerals to build stuff b/c i don't want to hear it
I can't remember what kind of system they were using in sc1 but apparently it was quite a lot different than sc2, in terms of audio engineering.
In sc2 they seem to be relying largely on random factory presets in Goldwave and Audition, or, god forbid, Audacity of all things. *shudders*
Blizzard's experienced (even semi-experienced) sound engineers seem to have jumped ship some time ago. It isn't just the voice acting that's bad, it's the editing in general. Not a problem restricted to just sc2's team unfortunately.
I think you haven't talked about how they removed all the things that take skills in Starcraft2 (except the reaver and the vulture of course, that you explained perfectly).
I agree with you in every point, don't get me wrong, but I don't know how you could forget how they added:
- The retarded "smart-casting". (You can spam your yamatos, for example, and your BCs will just cast it turn by turn with no skills required) - The infinite units selection. - The ability to wall a ramp perfectly with no flaws with no specific building placement required (I don't mind this too much, they just evolved their game and I think this point is fine, but still, it adds to the skill-less moves you can do in that game). - You can put your rally point for your SCVs directly on the mineral field. - Your workers are also gathering so much money in so little time that the game become so fast, probably just an opinion, but it sucks. - I'll give an example for the terrans here. They've always been the race that was challenging through the first 5-10 minutes of the game. That's something unique that I really liked.
They also added and removed some units that makes all the differences:
- Vulture, Reaver, Colossus, Marauder, Immortal, Roaches, ...(You explained these points, I won't go over it again) - I wanted to add that with the addition of the Marauder and the removal of the vulture, science vessel and goliath, who needs a mech build now, it's basically useless... M&M&M all the way, sadly. - The science vessels were also one of the most skilled unit. Well, they removed it... - I don't want to go through all the units from SC1 and SC2 but you get the point, I think you all know SC1 enough to understand that some units are missing, or just their utility.
Well, I've always been a fan of the games that take skills in player vs player. This is why I find these points very important.
Some things I like, from a modder's perspective, like smart cast and infinite selection. I am not a high level enough player to try to foretell the impacts of these additions to the game from a personal level, whereas I had experience with both the Vulture and Reaver.
I mean, there's a lot of things I could have go on about with the game, but much of it has already been argued to death on these forums.
Personally I loved the way Terran mech played in sc1 where map control and the "push" was such a critical factor of their play, the more defensive and static nature of their units and how this was so different from the Zerg or Protoss. There was a lot of dynamic to the way these played. I've seen players like Artosis try to play Terran this way (early into beta mind you) and it didn't work out at all because mech is so easily crushed by anti-armor and Hellions... well, christ.
I personally like automine as my multitasking is weak, but I don't like how the economy is so fast to the point that the maps mine out as quick as they do. The 4v4 map is mined out ridiculously fast and there's so few bases that the game is effectively on a short timer. Most of the 2v2 maps only have one or two options for a third and it's always extremely hard to hold.
Really, there's a lot of little things that get at me, but I feel that they've already been covered enough that I didn't need to go through them. The aspects of gameplay that the Reaver and Vulture represented, though, are the most critical things that I feel sc2 is totally lacking at this time. I'm the kind of guy that prefers game depth coming out of clever unit, race, tech design and map design more than raw grunt power.
On May 27 2010 13:26 OneOther wrote: does anyone else hate sc2's commander sounds? like the "not enough minerals" or "your forces are under attack," for example. protoss used to have such a cool voice in sc1 but sc2's is just really annoying.
edit: it actually affects my gameplay too. in sc1 i didn't mind clicking things a little earlier since the voice was so cool but now i actually wait 'til i have sufficient minerals to build stuff b/c i don't want to hear it
Wholeheartedly agree. Kerrigans voice is one of the big reasons as to why I only managed to get through 4 games as zerg. For terran..the old voice just sounds so much more sophisticated and fitting for such a race unlike this new one which is just meh. And the terran music feels like a cowboy sorta theme compared to the awesome terran music in BW >:\
I'm going to take a day or two to take in the OP, that was a lot to think about. I totally agree tho, that games should be more moddable, it's the community that improves a game, Starcraft being a riduculuously obvious example (AoW as well).
Starcraft 2, well it feels superficial. Each unit has a assigned (or implyed?) role. Strategies can not break through those roles, they merely can bend them. The immortal? Why, hey this units good against armored units. Can you think of another use? The road to a refined SC2 is a long one, and it doesn't seem like blizzard wants to go anywhere.
On May 27 2010 13:26 OneOther wrote: does anyone else hate sc2's commander sounds? like the "not enough minerals" or "your forces are under attack," for example. protoss used to have such a cool voice in sc1 but sc2's is just really annoying.
edit: it actually affects my gameplay too. in sc1 i didn't mind clicking things a little earlier since the voice was so cool but now i actually wait 'til i have sufficient minerals to build stuff b/c i don't want to hear it
Yes, but not only the commander sounds, pretty much all sounds are terrible. For example the attack sounds of siege tanks, hydras, zealots, e.t.c. do not feel anywhere nearly as powerful as they did in BW. I also hate how the pinging sound followed by "Your forces are under attack" was replaced by individual unit replies which are all "we're a bunch of pansies and that mean SCV hit us"(seriously who was the idiot that thought it was a good idea to make every warning sound seem like your units are getting raped). At least they should've kept the initial sound, because it immediately focuses your attention, instead of having to hear the whole warning, before being able to react, because there are a lot of the different warnings and they are not instantly distinguishable from the unit ready/unit selected/attack order/move order replies(I've lost scouting workers, before being able to react, because of this, sometimes I even see that the attack warning map ping is far away from where the unit died, since it moved the whole distance during the time the warning sound played and I didn't react, while this never ever happens in BW).
After reading the OP, gotta say I found it pretty depressing.
Not just that Blizzard is taking the game in a weird direction, but mostly that they seem unwilling to take any feedback from the community. It is also EXTREMELY disheartening the see them trying to make as much money out of the game as possible.
(seriously who was the idiot that thought it was a good idea to make every warning sound seem like your units are getting raped).
StarCraft 1 gives me an epic feeling when I play it. It is immersive. The unit sounds, death sounds, and the sounds of the battles combined with the epic looking battles is an awesome experience, despite the dated graphics.
Honestly, you have to admit that it feels pretty badass to fly across the screen with 300 apm hearing
"READY TO ROLL OUT" "YES SIR" "Somethin' on your mind?" "Our forces are under attack" "Not enough minerals"
and then the sound of 24 siege tanks sieging up and blasting dragoons. It sounds, and looks, epic.
But SC2 has really halfassed voices, halfassed sounds, and the battles don't look cool at all. It just looks like two fucking blobs chewing each other away.
Oh, and not to mention the announcer sounds. Compare the overmind to the Zerg voice in StarCraft 2...
Because if you do, you'll understand why the SC2 editor is the way it is. They use a very common design pattern. It is very cumbersome and complicated, but there are very good reasons for this system. It comes as a cost of giving mappers extreme flexibility and power in making their maps.
On July 31 2010 05:17 MetalMarine wrote: I'm curious to know who read that whole first post....
I would hope everyone who pressed the "reply" button. It takes about 10 minutes maximum to read the entire thing top to bottom. That shouldn't be too much to ask.