After reading this article I started thinking to myself what I would like to see in Starcraft 3 (if it would ever get made, which is unlikely). And I would also like to know what others are dreaming of?
My whishes would be: - A similar campaign as the one in starcraft 2, still one of the most well crafted campaigns in any RTS. - A sort of meta campaign comparable to Company of Heroes 2 Ardennes Assault or Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade. I think this could work very well in Starcraft, if handled properly. Not just a string of skirmishes, but some semi-random properties that change (eg. ai personality, 'weird' maps eg. floor is lava, king of the hill ...) with some persistent elements between missions (like the upgrades in the regular campaign). - If I'm allowed to go wild: an army painter like in Dawn of War. - Even better matchmaking in 1v1 - Controversial wish: A new race.
Going back in time or into the far future would probably be the best for the series. Think they kind of hit a wall due to all the story already told and having to be considered.
I’m not sure where you go with the story. I’d like to see something a bit more stripped down and less ‘epic’, play splintering campaigns of the factions within the factions etc.
On November 07 2019 23:27 Wombat_NI wrote: I’m not sure where you go with the story. I’d like to see something a bit more stripped down and less ‘epic’, play splintering campaigns of the factions within the factions etc.
The story should shift to a chase towards a rumored technological world. All the races compete to travel across the galaxy in search of it. This would give us a campaign that can shift more easily between playing each race during one long active campaign instead of playing 1 race at a time. That will keep us on edge as to who will be played in the final mission and what dark secrets are discovered on the road to this el dorado. Also, races and heroes can strike unlikely alliances and mercs that aren't just humans can aid in the great search.
More character-driven storytelling. It's not that the story of SC2 was bad as such. It's that characters would shout monologues at each other, but then you'd translate a new alien book and just do whatever it told you. No matter how well the cutscenes are animated, it's hard to get invested in public readings of a lore wiki.
The story in WC3 was a pretty typical zombie apocalypse, and the characters were pretty obvious archetypes. But the story was driven by their actual interactions. No one has to tell the player that Arthas turned his back on his professional and personal responsibilities when he began the culling of Stratholm, because Uther and Jaina showed it to us by their reaction to him.
This is really basic, creative writing 101 kind of stuff. Maybe they should hire a college freshman to proofread their work.
On November 07 2019 23:27 Wombat_NI wrote: I’m not sure where you go with the story. I’d like to see something a bit more stripped down and less ‘epic’, play splintering campaigns of the factions within the factions etc.
The story should shift to a chase towards a rumored technological world. All the races compete to travel across the galaxy in search of it. This would give us a campaign that can shift more easily between playing each race during one long active campaign instead of playing 1 race at a time. That will keep us on edge as to who will be played in the final mission and what dark secrets are discovered on the road to this el dorado. Also, races and heroes can strike unlikely alliances and mercs that aren't just humans can aid in the great search.
It's not that I don't like the general idea but instead of technology I would do it about ressources (Maybe some deeper meaning and links to our society at the moment) Cause let's be honest: What would Zerg want with technology? Seems really out of character. But if the Vespene gas of the known world is all used up and there is no new gas mines to be found anywhere, now that would even drive Zerg
It was a hybrid of normal starcraft and team micro arena the UMS map. It would play something like dota + starcraft put together in the same game.
A hardcore RTS like starcraft probably just isn't kosher to make in current year, however, a game based on a mode like team micro melee I think could make a great splash as it hits both the RTS and MOBA genre at the same time. If I was a big game developer and I wanted to make an RTS it's certainly the direction I would go.
On November 07 2019 23:27 Wombat_NI wrote: I’m not sure where you go with the story. I’d like to see something a bit more stripped down and less ‘epic’, play splintering campaigns of the factions within the factions etc.
The story should shift to a chase towards a rumored technological world. All the races compete to travel across the galaxy in search of it. This would give us a campaign that can shift more easily between playing each race during one long active campaign instead of playing 1 race at a time. That will keep us on edge as to who will be played in the final mission and what dark secrets are discovered on the road to this el dorado. Also, races and heroes can strike unlikely alliances and mercs that aren't just humans can aid in the great search.
It's not that I don't like the general idea but instead of technology I would do it about ressources (Maybe some deeper meaning and links to our society at the moment) Cause let's be honest: What would Zerg want with technology? Seems really out of character. But if the Vespene gas of the known world is all used up and there is no new gas mines to be found anywhere, now that would even drive Zerg
I envisioned that the zerg finds a sample of this technology and using it accelerates their mutations therefore ascending them in to the next tier of their evolution. That would lead to new units, abilities, and interactions.
I actually enjoyed the SC2 campaigns, but I don't even know where to start on a sequel with story & characters. To me in RTSes like Warcraft and Starcraft the singleplayer campaign is equally as important as multiplayer, despite the main appeal of an RTS is obviously in multiplayer.
But with the story of Xel'Naga and Kerrigan/Zeratul being wraped up, you'd have to invent an entirely new cast of loveable characters.. maybe even a 100+ year skip to distance yourself from the established lore...
I dunno where they could go with gameplay... Warcraft 3 style with heroes and smaller more microable armies? Company of Heroes style with more tactical gameplay that revolves around objectives and not so much resource management / base building? Something like Warhammer 40K (the First one) with a little bit of everything involved? Heroes, Resource capturing, base building, unit customisation (heavy bolters vs flamethrowers vs melee)?
I have absolutely no idea personally, where they could go with the RTS genre to revitalize it.
On November 08 2019 03:00 Latham wrote: I actually enjoyed the SC2 campaigns, but I don't even know where to start on a sequel with story & characters. To me in RTSes like Warcraft and Starcraft the singleplayer campaign is equally as important as multiplayer, despite the main appeal of an RTS is obviously in multiplayer.
But with the story of Xel'Naga and Kerrigan/Zeratul being wraped up, you'd have to invent an entirely new cast of loveable characters.. maybe even a 100+ year skip to distance yourself from the established lore...
I dunno where they could go with gameplay... Warcraft 3 style with heroes and smaller more microable armies? Company of Heroes style with more tactical gameplay that revolves around objectives and not so much resource management / base building? Something like Warhammer 40K (the First one) with a little bit of everything involved? Heroes, Resource capturing, base building, unit customisation (heavy bolters vs flamethrowers vs melee)?
I have absolutely no idea personally, where they could go with the RTS genre to revitalize it.
I always envisioned an RTS MMO. Imagine a WoW sized world, but utilizing the co-op gameplay as for what you control. Your main character would be Zagara, but you would actual have hatcheries in home territories and you can make an army to take with you throughout the zone. The food cap would be smaller so Zagara is a good example having only 100(or 50) food supply. Your buildings and tech resets across zone, but you get to keep specific upgrades earned by your hero level or by completing tech missions. So entering a new zone you'd have basically your hero to clear and setup new mining locations. Then you can build up your force to take out with you on missions.
My dream would be to see SC3 somewhere in the next decade. With focus on more modern/less traditional ways of gaming while still maintaining its high competitive value.
On November 07 2019 22:02 InFiNitY[pG] wrote: Get SC1 devs to make it.
Rob Pardo left and was un-personed by ATVI. Pardo hired a bunch of Blizzard designers for his new company. I'd say Pardo and ATVI execs are bitter enemies right now.
On November 08 2019 05:46 Sbrubbles wrote: The SC2 story may have been shit, but the mission design was brilliant. I wouldn't mind a new IP, that way it won't be weighed down by the story and lore of SC1 and 2.
On November 07 2019 22:02 InFiNitY[pG] wrote: Get SC1 devs to make it.
Rob Pardo left and was un-personed by ATVI. Pardo hired a bunch of Blizzard designers for his new company. I'd say Pardo and ATVI execs are bitter enemies right now.
On November 08 2019 05:46 Sbrubbles wrote: The SC2 story may have been shit, but the mission design was brilliant. I wouldn't mind a new IP, that way it won't be weighed down by the story and lore of SC1 and 2.
meh, i liked the SC2 story.
I was kidding kind of. Merely pointing out that I trust none of the devs left at blizzard to create a worthy succesor to sc1.
On November 08 2019 07:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I'm more looking forward to whatever comes out of Pardo's new company than anything from Blizzard.
I just checked their homepage but saw nothing regarding current projects. Do you know more?
As to the RTS is dead. I have somewhat big hopes for "A year of rain" and "Iron Harvest" to put some live into the genre. But you are probably right. Kids born after 2000 seem to be lacking the endurance to grind out 100s of games to finally git gud and prefer mindless games like idle games and mobil games with flashy colors and an achievement every 2 minutes. Sorry for the generalisation. Don't really know how to epxress this better
On November 08 2019 12:32 AlexZhang1012 wrote: You know what would be fun? All the faction features in pvp: Empire, Umojan, UED; Aiur, Shakuras, Purifier; Char, Overmind, Zerus...
And with features you mean skins? Or actual gameplay differences? Because the latter would be impossible to balance
On November 08 2019 07:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I'm more looking forward to whatever comes out of Pardo's new company than anything from Blizzard.
I just checked their homepage but saw nothing regarding current projects. Do you know more?
As to the RTS is dead. I have somewhat big hopes for "A year of rain" and "Iron Harvest" to put some live into the genre. But you are probably right. Kids born after 2000 seem to be lacking the endurance to grind out 100s of games to finally git gud and prefer mindless games like idle games and mobil games with flashy colors and an achievement every 2 minutes. Sorry for the generalisation. Don't really know how to epxress this better
They have the endurance just they grind for skins and achievements over just being good at a game.
I don’t really blame kids for this as designers have actively designed games around the drip feed of such reward systems for quite some time now and don’t really know anything different. I find some of it really insidious especially in the mobile freemium markets.
My kid is fascinated with Starcraft but only because he’s come over and I have GSL on the TV it something, he wouldn’t have heard of it otherwise.
Unfortunately he’s still a bit young to actually play it, plus sucks with a desktop PC. Tablets and other devices fill in so many gaps that used to be the sole preserve of the family computer.
I’m a bit atypically nerdy but I’d estimate I was probably as good at operating a computer at 8/9 than my sister would be now at nearly 15.
I guess market shifts have to happen in some degree to factor all these changes in, but hopefully there’s still a big enough market for some good RTS titles in future.
On November 08 2019 07:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I'm more looking forward to whatever comes out of Pardo's new company than anything from Blizzard.
I just checked their homepage but saw nothing regarding current projects. Do you know more?
As to the RTS is dead. I have somewhat big hopes for "A year of rain" and "Iron Harvest" to put some live into the genre. But you are probably right. Kids born after 2000 seem to be lacking the endurance to grind out 100s of games to finally git gud and prefer mindless games like idle games and mobil games with flashy colors and an achievement every 2 minutes. Sorry for the generalisation. Don't really know how to epxress this better
They have the endurance just they grind for skins and achievements over just being good at a game.
I don’t really blame kids for this as designers have actively designed games around the drip feed of such reward systems for quite some time now and don’t really know anything different. I find some of it really insidious especially in the mobile freemium markets.
My kid is fascinated with Starcraft but only because he’s come over and I have GSL on the TV it something, he wouldn’t have heard of it otherwise.
Unfortunately he’s still a bit young to actually play it, plus sucks with a desktop PC. Tablets and other devices fill in so many gaps that used to be the sole preserve of the family computer.
I’m a bit atypically nerdy but I’d estimate I was probably as good at operating a computer at 8/9 than my sister would be now at nearly 15.
I guess market shifts have to happen in some degree to factor all these changes in, but hopefully there’s still a big enough market for some good RTS titles in future.
Haha I remember my older brother and father tried to limit my time with the family computer by using passwords and other software restrictions but I was hacking and cracking left and right until the only solution for them was to just take the monitor away and lock it in a closet ^_^
To topic:
If I remember correctly the only thing driving me to get better at something (be it sports or esports) were me and my friends challenging each other to ever higher heights. Now I imagine nothing has changed about that. But obviously if all your friends play Fortnite, you play Fortnite, too. So how do we get groups of friends to play RTS games?
On November 08 2019 07:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I'm more looking forward to whatever comes out of Pardo's new company than anything from Blizzard.
I just checked their homepage but saw nothing regarding current projects. Do you know more?
Pardo talks about it here..
The team picked the kind of game they wanted. Investors didn't choose the game. Sounds like the development of the game is along the lines of Hearthstone. A very small team using an existing game engine. A team of 20 to 25 is making the game. The game will have a deep imaginary world. They came up with 7 game ideas and the team picked the 1 they liked the most. Josh mosqueira headed up that process. It is an online multiplayer game. It has both co-operative and competitive elements. They are using the Unity Engine and it is a PC game.
Every employee is also a part owner of the studio.
On November 08 2019 07:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I'm more looking forward to whatever comes out of Pardo's new company than anything from Blizzard.
I just checked their homepage but saw nothing regarding current projects. Do you know more?
As to the RTS is dead. I have somewhat big hopes for "A year of rain" and "Iron Harvest" to put some live into the genre. But you are probably right. Kids born after 2000 seem to be lacking the endurance to grind out 100s of games to finally git gud and prefer mindless games like idle games and mobil games with flashy colors and an achievement every 2 minutes. Sorry for the generalisation. Don't really know how to epxress this better
They have the endurance just they grind for skins and achievements over just being good at a game.
I don’t really blame kids for this as designers have actively designed games around the drip feed of such reward systems for quite some time now and don’t really know anything different. I find some of it really insidious especially in the mobile freemium markets.
My kid is fascinated with Starcraft but only because he’s come over and I have GSL on the TV it something, he wouldn’t have heard of it otherwise.
Unfortunately he’s still a bit young to actually play it, plus sucks with a desktop PC. Tablets and other devices fill in so many gaps that used to be the sole preserve of the family computer.
I’m a bit atypically nerdy but I’d estimate I was probably as good at operating a computer at 8/9 than my sister would be now at nearly 15.
I guess market shifts have to happen in some degree to factor all these changes in, but hopefully there’s still a big enough market for some good RTS titles in future.
Haha I remember my older brother and father tried to limit my time with the family computer by using passwords and other software restrictions but I was hacking and cracking left and right until the only solution for them was to just take the monitor away and lock it in a closet ^_^
To topic:
If I remember correctly the only thing driving me to get better at something (be it sports or esports) were me and my friends challenging each other to ever higher heights. Now I imagine nothing has changed about that. But obviously if all your friends play Fortnite, you play Fortnite, too. So how do we get groups of friends to play RTS games?
Fucked if I know haha.
It’s a bit like music and film too, there’s so much choice that’s great as an individual, but for shared experiences there are fewer central things that everyone is at least aware of, even if they didn’t particularly like them.
My primary school years (4 to 11) years I wasn’t allowed a console, but I did have two LANed Macs and the classic Blizzard canon. Friends who played games had their systems too, so it was cool visiting a friend and getting to play Resident Evil or Final Fantasy 7, or Goldeneye and Super Mario 64. I knew all about these games so it was exciting to play them.
Basically all my friends who visited my house went on to play RTS games especially when Warcraft 3 dropped because they’d played so much Starcraft at my house.
The market has changed from a niche interest hobby into a mainstream hobby that everyone does, and thus the content has too.
Look at lists of top selling PC titles of the 90s and there’s RTS, sims, Myst sold a bazillion copies etc. A mainstream game was still a fundamentally nerdy game on the platform.
Hell I have my old LucasArts games and the X-Wing and Tie-Fighter games were relatively complex flight aims at the core, the idea that something similar would release today as a mainstream title from a big publisher is laughable.
The indie space does a lot of great stuff but I feel they’ve not been able to fill the gaps in trends with FPS and RTS in particular.
There’s plenty of appetite there, I was excited by Epic’s model for the now-canned UT sequel, but alas it’s well, canned.
The team picked the kind of game they wanted. Investors didn't choose the game. Sounds like the development of the game is along the lines of Hearthstone. A very small team using an existing game engine. A team of 20 to 25 is making the game. The game will have a deep imaginary world. They came up with 7 game ideas and the team picked the 1 they liked the most. Josh mosqueira headed up that process. It is an online multiplayer game. It has both co-operative and competitive elements. They are using the Unity Engine and it is a PC game.
Every employee is also a part owner of the studio.
that sounds interesting. what preexisting game engine did they build Hearthstone on? I've no idea how the game was produced and i would never have cared but i'm currently working for a small software developer and it's made me a lot more aware of what goes into software development and the logistics of it, even though i still have no clue on the actual art of coding and stuff.
The story is actually perfectly set up for a mind-blowing sequel. There are a ton of loose ends that could be leveraged, and the storyline has been so focused on Raynor that it leaves a lot of room for re-interpretation of past events. It's actually quite fun to imagine StarCraft 3's storyline. I have a bunch in my head already. My favorite follows Nova as she comes to terms with the ultimate treachery of her best friend from Academy (Kerrigan) and her co-conspirator (James Raynor), and subsequently struggles to do what must be done.
However, I'm a little nervous about how the development of it would actually play out under the Activision regime. In a more rational world, Activision could see that there is X expected revenue from an SC sequel and devote Y amount of resources to it in order to make a completely acceptable Z% return on investment. With that, we could get at least some sort of follow-up. But we are in an era where every project has to be the biggest and hit the highest numbers because every MBA on the executive team wants to be Lee Iacocca and have books written about them, which doesn't happen with modest projects and reasonable returns. So either you don't ever get a StarCraft, because the numbers don't promise to be the best, or you get an overinvested StarCraft with much too high expectations placed on it, leading it to be a franchise that is even further resented among executives going forward.
The truth is, that RTS has always been a niche genre. Gaming companies have figured out how to make games appeal to wider audiences selling games to millions of people who would never be interested in an RTS in the first place, nor would they be playing video games at all in the 90's. StarCraft suffers from being compared to those other games in the board meetings.
Fortunately, the future is not written in stone. One can always hope that as the industry matures, the right combination of decision-makers could be put in the right place at the right time to assemble a team of competent writers and professional RTS designers to produce an awesome StarCraft sequel with the right amount of investment and expectations set at the beginning. If that happens soon, I wouldn't complain.
On November 08 2019 12:32 AlexZhang1012 wrote: You know what would be fun? All the faction features in pvp: Empire, Umojan, UED; Aiur, Shakuras, Purifier; Char, Overmind, Zerus...
And with features you mean skins? Or actual gameplay differences? Because the latter would be impossible to balance
Something like C&C Generals would be reasonable. Mostly the same faction with a few unique units.
It'd be interesting to play out some of protoss history, like a campaign around Adun, though i suppose you wouldn't see much of the other races in that case.
Otherwise something between broodwar and SC2 could be cool. Blizzard really wrapped up things with Raynor/Kerrigan, I don't really see much happening after the sc2 campaign. Zerg freed from their purpose won't really do all that much either. It's pretty much just Artanis being pestered by Alarak by now...
reboot the story. long after raynor and kerrigan. new units, new story. if you repeat all the same units and themes it will still just be people bitching and making comparisons to the previous games, which has always been a problem for SC2. and make it less corny than the SC2 story - SC2 was like a power rangers episode
Hey guys, I would like to post this video and discuss and some leaks in it:
If you can't watch it, here is a TLDW: People that have been working on past Blizzard games, notably the Blizzard RTS games are leaving the company. For whaever reason it may be, this could suggest that all future RTS plans at Blizzard are canned, and they'll focus on games as live services which make them money monthly... These notable people are Chris Sigaty who has been at Blizzard for over 20 years and was Lead Producer for StarCraft 2, Tim Morton and Brian Souza who have also worked on blizzard RTS games along side Chris Sigaty.
If you can't watch it, here is a TLDW: People that have been working on past Blizzard games, notably the Blizzard RTS games are leaving the company. For whaever reason it may be, this could suggest that all future RTS plans at Blizzard are canned, and they'll focus on games as live services which make them money m imo onthly... These notable people are Chris Sigaty who has been at Blizzard for over 20 years and was Lead Producer for StarCraft 2, Tim Morton and Brian Souza who have also worked on blizzard RTS games along side Chris Sigaty.
I’m not sure it means anything, at least pertaining to RTS anyway.
It might be coincidental, might not. A lot of these guys from Blizzard’s heyday are of a certain age now and probably made a decent amount of cash and may want to step sideways into less stressful and high-profile jobs, have more family time or whatever.
It just so happens that they come from a time where Blizzard’s bread and butter was RTS games, so it’s seen as significant of a shift there even though it might not be. 20+ years or whatever it is (I recognise some of the names so I presume they’ve been around a while) in the same company isn’t all that common these days.
On November 08 2019 01:38 Gladness wrote: More character-driven storytelling. It's not that the story of SC2 was bad as such.
No, it was. SC2 story was a trainwreck, saved fortunately by well-crafted, fun to play and diverse missions. I am completly serious when I say SC2 story was "so bad it's good" with the exception its not the type of a story I want in that franchise.
On November 08 2019 01:38 Gladness wrote: It's that characters would shout monologues at each other, but then you'd translate a new alien book and just do whatever it told you. No matter how well the cutscenes are animated, it's hard to get invested in public readings of a lore wiki.
Oh, dont tell me about cutscenes in SC2. I never thoght I will see something that greatly animated and in the same time so cringe worthy because of overdramatic acting, anime inspired duels with short pauses for trash-talking, Zergs that must roar any time they shows before attack, because obviously they cannot just attack without that stupid shit and all of things that pissed me off when I was watching.
On November 08 2019 01:38 Gladness wrote: The story in WC3 was a pretty typical zombie apocalypse, and the characters were pretty obvious archetypes. But the story was driven by their actual interactions. No one has to tell the player that Arthas turned his back on his professional and personal responsibilities when he began the culling of Stratholm, because Uther and Jaina showed it to us by their reaction to him.
Well, guess what, I dont want this game to be WarCraft in space. I prefer the faction-centered campaigns from SC1/BW, and not character centered that was SC2.
On November 08 2019 01:38 Gladness wrote: This is really basic, creative writing 101 kind of stuff. Maybe they should hire a college freshman to proofread their work.
They could hire even 11 year old to write SC3 and there's a big chances it still would be improvement in comparison to SC2, wich was Uwe Boll level of shit.
EPT
