EPT14 years of sc1 and where have we arrived? Well, you know the answer to that question. We got a sequel, Starcraft 2: Wing Of Libery. The single most dissapointing game of the decade ( right after Diablo III, which coincidentaly was also made by Blizzard(tm). Surprise, surprise). 14 years or RTS experiense and they still manage to make a game that is more imbalanced than the vanilla version of SC1. Good Job Blizzard, really fantastic preformance!
Lets go into detail on why exactly Sc2 is the second most dissapointing game of the decade.
Its predecessor, Brood War, was the penicle of RTS gaming, the way every single RTS game should be. In a whirlwind of inferoior RTS games such as Command and Conqure, Brood War rose out as the single best game Blizzard had made, earning its legendary status among Diablo I and II. But then came the horrible, horrible game called Starcraft II.
You'd think it wouldnt be such a difficult thing to improve on a older game, but Blizzard are showing utter imcompetance constantly. Brood War had so many units and intresting streategies you could use, Starcraft 2 is no were near there. And there is no exuse why that should be the case. You might be thinking, well its only been out for 3 years, cut it some slack. Not even Sc1 was balanced when it came out. Well, that's not the point. They've had 14 years to study the RTS genrge, and with that in mind SC2 is a bad game.
The army varities are not existant, the maps are imbalanced and uninspired. The matchups have gaping holes filled with imbalance. Virutally every matchup that involves zerg is zerg favored, but most of all the PvZ matchup. PvT is a complete mess of a matchup were terrans have early game dominance by default, and then if the protoss manages to get to the late game, it all boils down to who has more HT or Ghosts.
There is one single units that ruins the entire game of starcraft 2, and makes it a frustrating game to play: the infestor. A unit that single handedly counters every protoss strategy, removing any and all need to think about a counter. It has a spell, fungal growth, that completly stuns any units within a 2 hex radius, does a ton of dmg, and negates the use of abilites such as blink. This resaults in a boring senario were your entire army in place, making any micro ispossible, thus resaulting in a single A-click senario.
Zerg are able to spawn free units. FREE UNITS, ladies and gentlemen! RTS 101, nothing should ever be free. EVER. Yet we have the broodlord and the infestor that spawn free units in masse. Free units that block unit movement for protoss and terrans, thus making it impossible to High Templar to get in range to storm. I want everyone that reads this to understand that getting free units goes against every RTS-rule. Nothing in BW was free, even the ammunition for certain units cost minerals; the Reaver and Carrier.
Speaking of which. The choice to remove the Reaver and replace it with a the Colossus was perhaps the most idiotic design choice Blizzard could've made. The Reaver was a high skillcap unit that spectators like to watch, and now we get a unit that gains its maximum utility by studder stepping slightly and that dies instantly as the engagement begins due to 9-rage vikings and super tanky corrupters. Now to be fair, blizzard have stated that they will reinclude the Reaver. Good. But wait...They'll wait untill Legancy Of The Void to do this. The last SC2 expansion. This will take atleast 3 more years. By which no one will play SC2 anymore and the Esports scene for it will have died out.
PvZ is two base all in or die. There is no chance of protoss to beat a zerg at a macro game. And this is due to a simple concept i like to call obligatorycosteffectivness; anything that protoss can do, zergs can counter cheaper and easier. Yet they can still spawn free units, while they have the cheapest units! Anyone with half a brain can see that this is illogical. Why should the race that has the cheapest units also gain the ability to spawn free units? And its not getting any better in HotS, with the the swarm host being added into the game.
Speaking of Heart of the Swarm. The units they are adding into the game are uninspired and dull or just a bad choice with abilites that go against RTS rule, such as the Viper's abduct, Swarmhost's spaw locust. Notice how Zerg seems to be the race that keeps breaking the rules?
The Tempest is a bad units no matter how you look at it. No unit with that kind of range can have a high dmg out put, or if it did, it needed to fire slowly, which ment it had to be an a.o.e. Well what we got was a modest range of 13 and a unit that does next to no dmg and blizzard are calling it ”a harrasment unit”. A harrasment unit that costs 300/200 and has no survivability against corrupter or vikings.
I could go on, but i think you've gotten the point. We need to come together as a community and demand that Blizzard does a reform. And we must boyctt HotS, if thats what it takes. Thank you for your time.
