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Recently, toward the end of beta, I was showing off the game to a friend of mine who himself works in game design. Now, like myself (and any gamer now in their mid 20s), he played Starcraft back in the day, but he was by no means a hardcore fanatic like myself. Not everyone ends up keeping up with the professional scene of a game for this long, after all. So as a result he tends to take a much different approach than I would when initially judging a game.
After a while with the game, his first response was 'What is the innovation here?', and this took me largely by surprise. I guess to some extent I saw SC2 as a direct extension of BW, and I was more disappointed by my direct comparison than anything: the deterioration of map quality; huge narrowing of the skill gap; and lack of any of the unique micro situations (see: lurker vs marine) found in BW. But this relatively simple point really made me put the game in a grander perspective.
We talked a little about how even WC3 (a game I played heavily, but one that at a competitive level annoyed me more often than not) had quite a bit of innovation. In game it brought us heroes with levels, neutral creeps, and upkeep. Despite some of these aspects being the very ones that annoyed me in the first place, I had to admit they were innovative in the sense of RTS play. Even the additions to bnet were impressive, with automated matchmaking, much more detailed statistics, and tournament formats.
But SC2's multiplayer aspect has actually gone backwards in this way. We all know the shortcomings of the future of Bnet and LAN play, so I won't bother getting into those. For this discussion I'm more interested in what we've seen from the gameplay, and I can't think of a single aspect that is groundbreaking. The game plays more like a dumbed-down remake of SC with improved graphics/UI than it does a sequel, simply put. Where is the innovation? Innovation is not adding new units and abilities. The best we can come up with are high yield minerals and watch towers - which are hardly new concepts. Other RTS, like Dawn of War, have at least presented an interesting take on the genre in the form of resource collection, despite not being the most amazing games overall. In terms of the game's progression, it's more like a C&C sequel (same concepts, different units and updated graphics) than it is like, say, a Final Fantasy (completely unique gameplay each time, while retaining key features that keep it a part of a 'series').
This is strikingly different from what we've seen from Blizzard in the past. They were well ahead of the RTS world in each of their past games, and you can certainly see that in transitions like from WCII to WC3. There was nothing on the same scope as Diablo at the time, and D2 ended up taking it to a whole new level. When they decided to make an MMO, they practically revolutionized the genre. Every single concept they had up to this point seemed to be at least inspired.
I just don't see anything remotely like this in SC2, and in fact the user-created content so far is already more interesting to me than the game itself (and I'm sure most people have read those users' complaints concerning that aspect as well). I mean, perhaps the campaign will be impressive on it's own, but the same can be said about many other RTS titles that otherwise get no play.
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So my issue after reflecting on all this, is to wonder exactly what people are gushing over in this game. I have my own theories on this, of course, but I'm more interested in hearing firsthand what it is that individual people enjoy about SC2 so far. So, please, indulge me.
 
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People like SC2 because it's not trying to be incredibly innovative. It's Starcraft and thats what the fans want more of. Casual players though definitely don't get it. I have a couple friends that play very casually and don't understand the lack of "innovation".
I do think the single player for SC2 will be innovative though. And that is what most casual players care about more anyway.
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Amazing prequel, good graphics, good coverage, from Blizzard. The game isn't really good in itself.
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On June 10 2010 04:04 Bosu wrote:
People like SC2 because it's not trying to be incredibly innovative. It's Starcraft and thats what the fans want more of. Casual players though definitely don't get it. I have a couple friends that play very casually and don't understand the lack of "innovation".
I do think the single player for SC2 will be innovative though. And that is what most casual players care about more anyway.
I agree I have a friend who said the same thing lol.
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Heroes with levels and skills was no innovation to the RTS genre with the release of WC3
Nevertheless, people like it because it is new and it has StarCraft in its name, and Blizzard has already stated that there will be 2 expansions which guarantees that there will be a player base for at lease two years to come.
Seeing how it will be a huge hit on the market, it is simplified and noobified compared to the original, even more than SC was to WCII, so that more people will join in the fun. Those new people, like your friend, dont know jack shit about progaming and competition in gaming, but unlike him, they dont know shit about games in general, so they find it very amusing that there are shiny things on screen and that you dont have to follow a gazillion thing in order to be good.
Even more, now that there are divisions, everybody can be #1 in his division, thus making noobs thing they can play, like that guy who said TL is the bi-est site evar.
Oh, and I forgot, great marketing campaign.
On June 10 2010 04:05 Zoler wrote:
Amazing prequel, good graphics, good coverage, from Blizzard. The game isn't really good in itself.
prequel =/= sequel ^__^
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The game is a shiny new starcraft that everyone and their mother can play at diamond league in.
Everyone will like it because of these reasons:
1. Nostalgia factor (for the non hardcore player)
2. New game factor
3. Shiny new graphics
4. Easy to play
5. Easy to master
So your 100% correct. there is no innovation. Just a new skin on an old game- with a few new doodads that make it easy for noobs to play.
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United States47024 Posts
On June 10 2010 03:59 QibingZero wrote:
This is strikingly different from what we've seen from Blizzard in the past. They were well ahead of the RTS world in each of their past games, and you can certainly see that in transitions like from WCII to WC3. There was nothing on the same scope as Diablo at the time, and D2 ended up taking it to a whole new level. When they decided to make an MMO, they practically revolutionized the genre. Every single concept they had up to this point seemed to be at least inspired.
I actually disagree entirely on this point. Blizzard has never been a company of revolutionary gameplay, but of advancement and refinement of existing concepts.
Warcraft 3 -- The concent of the RPG/RTS hybrid existed years before Warcraft 3. It's just that far less people know about games like Warlords Battlecry because comparatively, the execution was sloppy. People *believe* that Warcraft 3 was innovative in the regard, but in reality, it was really just the refinement of the concept into something that was competitively playable.
Diablo -- I have no clue what you're saying about scope. You're going to have to elaborate. If you're referring to general size, Diablo is actually small in comparison to much of the PC RPG genre.
WoW -- None of the game concepts in WoW are terribly revolutionary. Arguably, it found success because it came out of a generation of MMOs that strayed *too far* from genre norms (City of Heroes, Planetside, etc.), and ended up with more unrefined game experiences.
Starcraft, of course, runs into a problem because of the near-perfect state of its predecessor. How do you refine something so close to perfection?
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On June 10 2010 04:13 Misrah wrote:
The game is a shiny new starcraft that everyone and their mother can play at diamond league in.
Everyone will like it because of these reasons:
1. Nostalgia factor (for the non hardcore player)
2. New game factor
3. Shiny new graphics
4. Easy to play
5. Easy to master
So your 100% correct. there is no innovation. Just a new skin on an old game- with a few new doodads that make it easy for noobs to play.
this explains it 100%
trying to get into bw now is bloody impossible if you are new due to the fact that the skill level gap is so huge.
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when did the blog section become the "troll sc2" section? All I ever see is people hating on sc2 for stupid reasons and they never have the balls to actually post them in the sc2 section because they know it'll get closed
"omg its not innovative"
fuck innovation, ill take a solid game that executes known good game design extremely well over new untested concepts any day of the damn week. You don't need to be innovative to make a good game and a lot of developers would be wise to realize that.
Disregarding battle.net, SC2 is crisp. That's why its good. Everything it does it does well. It doesn't need to go any special route to impress people with fancy new tricks, because it's actually a well designed game. It doesn't rely on gimmicks to hook people in. The game plays like an old school game because that's the way it was made - to appeal to the fans of Starcraft.
not to mention that for casual players it sounds like the single player is going to blow every other rts out of the water.
next time you make a thread like this why not post an actual reason? no innovation is not a reason. It will never be a reason for why a game is bad.
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You don't have to reinvent the wheel, that's what. Blizzard tried to improve the wheel and arguably they made it a bit worse (we shall see if this statement is true in the following years of SC2's pro-scene development, can't judge it now).
Imo, that's all there is to it.
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I feel what OP feel , I like BW more simply beacuse it has theese micro situations that I love so much :3
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I'm totally fine with the game itself not being so innovative. It's just well-polished and fun.
BNet is a step back =(. It has potential but the designers are set on not using it.
I think the real win to come out of SC2 in terms of innovation is the map editor, which makes the game ridiculously customizable and will add a lot to the longevity of the game for casuals and even semi-hardcore players.
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On June 10 2010 04:26 Naib wrote:
You don't have to reinvent the wheel, that's what. Blizzard tried to improve the wheel and arguably they made it a bit worse (we shall see if this statement is true in the following years of SC2's pro-scene development, can't judge it now).
Imo, that's all there is to it.
This is the issue I have with SC2
If they tried new things it wouldn't be a big deal, but they really haven't and I find SC2 play wise worse in most ways than SCBW.
Well that and BNET 2.0 but that's been put to death.
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I don't give a fuck about graphics or sounds. I don't give a fuck about new games. I don't give a fuck about mastery or easy pickup. All I know is scbw was a fantastic game that was endless fun in owning for years, and now I can play with all these new fish and fucking own.
All I care about is fucking owning.
More importantly, the things I don't enjoy about sc2 is the weak user interface and lack of numerous simple options offered in the originals.
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There's nothing new. Just a lot of stuff that was made easier - like macro, micro, AI, scouting. It doesn't exactly help that those aspects of the game were what made the game interesting and seperated pros from noobs.
Don't get me wrong, you still have to macro/micro/scout as much as in BW, but really .. it's SO much easier it's not even funny. Watchtowers, a dedicated hotkey to select idle production buildings, automine, smartcast .. You can literally macro without going back to base, except when using the new "macro mechanics" - that are really just there so you actually HAVE to go back (once in a while) and angry BW players don't rage more than they already did with MBS (guess why they removed wireframe casting like 1 week after people on TL began posting about how useful it is).
I didn't play BW much - like 10 games max vs actual opponents, a lot more on empty/AI maps to practice build orders and micro - I do follow the pro scene and have a decent understanding of the game though. I didn't play SC2 much - like 40 games vs a friend and some ladder, and tbh - it is boring. Terran boiled down to Marauder spam into 1a gg, Protoss to lolforcefieldonramp gg, Zerg to Roach/Hydra/BL spam with the occasional Fungal Growth. In short - build a lot of shit and roll over your enemy when he just expoed and has less stuff than you. But in contrast to BW, where you have Lurkers, Scourge, huge Psi Storms that actually kill stuff, Muta micro, Stim that requires more than 1t, Defilers, Vessels, Spider Mines, Vulture micro .. there's not much to do.
BW made me feel like I couldn't do anything properly, it made me feel SLOW. SC2 makes me feel .. good. Like, actually REALLY good, it made me feel like I could just go play any of the top foreigners and actually win if I just macro well with a solid build. That's how much easier SC2 is than BW.
If you ask me, SC2 didn't need any innovation to begin with. I'd have bought a direct port with just updated graphics and UI, but I won't buy a SC2 that reduces the skill requirement so drastically that every match below pro-level is decided by either who macros better or who builds the hard counter to the other's units. Then add some ESPORTS drama, ActivisionBli$$ard rage, no LAN etc. on top of it. Well. They will get a lot of good reviews and sold copies from casuals. But as for me ..
I dislike it. 
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On June 10 2010 04:20 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2010 03:59 QibingZero wrote:
This is strikingly different from what we've seen from Blizzard in the past. They were well ahead of the RTS world in each of their past games, and you can certainly see that in transitions like from WCII to WC3. There was nothing on the same scope as Diablo at the time, and D2 ended up taking it to a whole new level. When they decided to make an MMO, they practically revolutionized the genre. Every single concept they had up to this point seemed to be at least inspired.
I actually disagree entirely on this point. Blizzard has never been a company of revolutionary gameplay, but of advancement and refinement of existing concepts. Warcraft 3 -- The concent of the RPG/RTS hybrid existed years before Warcraft 3. It's just that far less people know about games like Warlords Battlecry because comparatively, the execution was sloppy. People *believe* that Warcraft 3 was innovative in the regard, but in reality, it was really just the refinement of the concept into something that was competitively playable. Diablo -- I have no clue what you're saying about scope. You're going to have to elaborate. If you're referring to general size, Diablo is actually small in comparison to much of the PC RPG genre. WoW -- None of the game concepts in WoW are terribly revolutionary. Arguably, it found success because it came out of a generation of MMOs that strayed *too far* from genre norms (City of Heroes, Planetside, etc.), and ended up with more unrefined game experiences. Starcraft, of course, runs into a problem because of the near-perfect state of its predecessor. How do you refine something so close to perfection?
Well, the RPG elements weren't the only things that separated WC3. You still had the upkeep system, an unheard of emphasis on micro, and the idea of neutral factions guarding resources that had to be dispatched. It was the combination of all this added to the interface that made it innovative.
As for Diablo I'm talking about taking the 'Rogue' idea and actually applying it to modern games in a style that not only works but actually progresses the 'genre' itself.
I'm willing to admit WoW was revolutionary despite the fact I was a huge EQ player before it was released, and actually disliked many of the more 'casual' aspects of the game. Sure, it was successful because it was a more 'standard' MMO than some, but it was ahead of every other MMO at it's release by such large margins that I don't think you can argue it didn't revolutionize things.
On June 10 2010 04:22 Tropics wrote:
when did the blog section become the "troll sc2" section? All I ever see is people hating on sc2 for stupid reasons and they never have the balls to actually post them in the sc2 section because they know it'll get closed
"omg its not innovative"
fuck innovation, ill take a solid game that executes known good game design extremely well over new untested concepts any day of the damn week. You don't need to be innovative to make a good game and a lot of developers would be wise to realize that.
Disregarding battle.net, SC2 is crisp. That's why its good. Everything it does it does well. It doesn't need to go any special route to impress people with fancy new tricks, because it's actually a well designed game. It doesn't rely on gimmicks to hook people in. The game plays like an old school game because that's the way it was made - to appeal to the fans of Starcraft.
not to mention that for casual players it sounds like the single player is going to blow every other rts out of the water.
next time you make a thread like this why not post an actual reason? no innovation is not a reason. It will never be a reason for why a game is bad.
If you'd actually have tried to understand the point I was making, you'd realize the 'no innovation' part was not an aspect I had really worried about myself until now. I could go on for quite a few pages on what I actually dislike about SC2, but that's not what I'm after (hence the blog post and not a SC2 forum thread). The point is to try to get a better idea of what others truly like about the game while coming at this from a different angle.
On June 10 2010 04:45 CharlieMurphy wrote:
I don't give a fuck about graphics or sounds. I don't give a fuck about new games. I don't give a fuck about mastery or easy pickup. All I know is scbw was a fantastic game that was endless fun in owning for years, and now I can play with all these new fish and fucking own.
All I care about is fucking owning.
More importantly, the things I don't enjoy about sc2 is the weak user interface and lack of numerous simple options offered in the originals.
I think this is a more reasonable approach. I personally take this stance in a more subdued sense, and when I considered whether I'd buy SC2 or not it was at the front of my mind.
Specifically, I mean the idea that SC2 is new. There will be tons of players and focus on the game (at least for a while), and in that sense it could be enjoyable even if the game itself is less fun than BW.
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Because it's competitive. People just want an popular eSports game in the west, content comes second. People will play whatever they can become e-famous in.
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Meh, for me, it's just a new game and my friends will play it. New things tend to be fun at first anyways; I found RA3 to be pretty damn fun. To me, SC2 is like RA3, just a game I'll play for fun, and SC1 will be the game I'll try to remain decent at.
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to me sc2 doesnt have the competetive fire that sc:bw had
the learning curve made scbw fun. it made me want to play more, to get better
scbw lead me to TL where i met some amazing people.. and spent a fuckton of time
sc2 .. is more akin to cnc for me
took me a WEEK to learn. a week to hit platinum 1900.
then it got boring. i had to go back to scbw :/
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United States47024 Posts
On June 10 2010 05:17 QibingZero wrote:
Well, the RPG elements weren't the only things that separated WC3. You still had the upkeep system, an unheard of emphasis on micro, and the idea of neutral factions guarding resources that had to be dispatched. It was the combination of all this added to the interface that made it innovative.
Well, it's hard to really say the micro emphasis was an intentional part of WC3's design, and not simply a result of the slower macro and smaller scale of the game, and neutral creeps are not exactly new (showing up in both non-standard BW maps, and in concept, the idea of neutral units guarding resources goes back to huntable animals in Age of Empires), but I concede the point on upkeep.
On June 10 2010 05:17 QibingZero wrote:
As for Diablo I'm talking about taking the 'Rogue' idea and actually applying it to modern games in a style that not only works but actually progresses the 'genre' itself.
As a big roguelike player, I will concede that Diablo/Diablo II were revolutionary in transforming the Roguelike concept into something that the modern gamer would pick up on.
On June 10 2010 05:17 QibingZero wrote:
I'm willing to admit WoW was revolutionary despite the fact I was a huge EQ player before it was released, and actually disliked many of the more 'casual' aspects of the game. Sure, it was successful because it was a more 'standard' MMO than some, but it was ahead of every other MMO at it's release by such large margins that I don't think you can argue it didn't revolutionize things.
You still haven't actually mentioned anything about the game itself that was revolutionary...
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