[SC2B] Moving On - Page 4

On March 02 2010 09:38 riptide wrote:
Even the flaws are considered to be a venerable tradition. One big difference between Starcraft I and II is that the sequel is just too smart. Starcraft: Brood War is a game full of stupidity that you have to overcome through quick wits and fast hands. There are no alerts when dark templars one-hit your workers, melee units refuse to acquire targets intelligently, reavers will shoot duds when told to shoot the wrong targets, and a plethora of other annoying things happen on a regular basis. Yet, we enjoy overcoming these inconveniences, call it skill, and say that Starcraft II sucks because it’s not stupid.
(...)
I was excited when I heard Starcraft II was coming out, but I didn’t know why. Now that I’ve tried the beta test, I realize that I was excited because I wanted to play another excellent Blizzard game. I never needed a sequel to Starcraft, because it was perfect all along.

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(...)some of the greatness of competing in Starcraft stems from being able to overcome the faults of the AI. Goons killing mines they can’t spot (and often not doing so because they’re dumb – which is why watching someone do it flawlessly is great), vultures jumping past pylons because their pathing gets screwed up for a second when they lay mines, building pylons outside an opponent’s gateway right before his goons spawn because they follow a predictable spawn-pattern which cannot be decided by the player controlling the gateways. The usefulness of Mutalisks suddenly multiplied when someone accidentally noticed that you could stack them if you had them hotkeyed together with a far-away unit. These are all examples of unintentional manipulation of a flawed AI which enabled players to pull of awesome moves.

(...) As a long-lasting competitive game, Starcraft 2 might have less ”Awe-factor” than Starcraft did. It lacks flashy micromanagement. Walking up and down cliffs with reapers raping peons, it feels awesome. But it’s easy. I could pull it off quite decently the second game I played with Terran. Obviously it improves, but most of the micromanagement has the same feel to it. Blizzard has improved the AI to such an extent that the units actually behave the way you tell them to – but this also means that anyone is able to pull off what they are trying to do. Watching someone shoot a perfect free kick in football would not be impressive if you knew he just had to decide to do this, it is impressive because even though he knows exactly what to do, it is really difficult to execute it. This allegory can be transferred to mostly all sports, especially any involving a ball: if it is easy, it’s not impressive.

I can confidently say that I am already a better Starcraft 2 player than I was a Starcraft 1 player in early 2000

On March 03 2010 01:07 Bonewalker wrote:
Good read. However, I have to disagree on one point. The glitches and bugs do not, for me, add fun/spice to the game. They feel like cheating to me. Compare to chess, as you sort of did in the article. There are no bugs/glitches that can be taken advantage of...it is that polished and elegant a game. There are myriad strategies and tactics to use or be aware of, but that is what makes the game so great, and for my money, ultimately made SCBW so good. There were tons of strategies and options available, but there was no need for a glitch or bug. Another reason you wouldn't really ever want to rely on a glitch/bug is that it is safe to assume Blizzard might someday remove or fix it, so why not work on improving the things you know will be there for the lifetime of the game.