TeamLiquid Heart of the Swarm Preview - Page 58

On June 02 2011 00:01 xarthaz wrote:
What progress? There is none, story wise, compared to the 90s and late 90s WRPG and jRPG games, all that is is stream lining it for feeding it to a larger target audience. Which Blizzard has done successfully.

On June 01 2011 22:44 Spacedude wrote:


You guys seems to fail at realizing that there are other elements in this other than BW's core gameplay. Logic is your friend.

BW is superior to SCII by far in its core gameplay no doubt about it. BW seems to have been designed with some logic as to what makes a good RTS. SCII is designed to be 'cool' and new and dumbed down. It's still more than hard enough for me atm, but I feel like the game is holding my hand for crying out load. It's like riding a bikecycle with safety wheels. I don't want that! We'll evolve to be more stupid in time if we adapt filosofies like this, lol.

On June 02 2011 00:55 Probe1 wrote:
He said progress. Bioware, Rockstar Studios, 2K games are all rehashing their older games for similar plots and uninspired dialogue. Trust me, Mass Effect having a sex scene was not groundbreaking. We accept so much as good simply because we have no alternative and now a large component of the community simply was not there when jRPGs and WRPGs ruled the land. Or perhaps we're all just nostalgia hard morons that refuse to accept anything new.

But I standby Starcraft and Broodwar having a epic story to tell, telling it well and getting out of our way for fun gameplay. WoL told us a part of a big story and to be honest it never felt like we got any stronger or more important until the absolute very end.

I dearly hope Heart of the Swarm will remember Kerrigan is not vulnerable. She is not weak. She is the Queen Bitch of the Universe and has killed over 8 billion humans. While everything looks good so far, the intro missions of reclaiming broods are best left to just that- Intro missions. If i'm not spoiling Dominion planets with the scourge of 10,000 Zerglings I'm not going to be happy. If I'm not showing the Tal'darim how it feels to be hunted after so much annoyance in WoL, I'm not going to be happy.

I want to burn. I want to destroy. I want everything in Kerrigans way to turn to ash and fly away from her stare and the stampede of the swarm.

That would be the Zerg story. If its all cute and cwuddly I will be very upset. And if the missions wander off in a unrelated tangent constantly like in WoL I will be doubly so upset. The sprawling story of WoL was okay, you were after artifacts and had to meet all kinds of people to track them down. But Kerrigan has a clear path. Regain the swarms command and stop delaying her revenge. Lets stick to that.

On June 01 2011 19:09 ThunderGod wrote:

Yes the single-player is laughably bad: ahahahaha.
It's obviously not designed to appeal to the likes of teamliquid members - more like they were thinking of their eight-year-old kids.
SC1 had a lot more depth and maturity to it. SC2 has about as much depth as Justin Bieber's voice.

On June 02 2011 01:01 Treemonkeys wrote:


I don't think the argument that SC2 is too easy has a leg to stand on unless you happen to be completely rofl stomping the pro scene. Yes the game "holds your hand" with macro, but the goal is not to macro, it's to win. Ultimately you are playing against your opponent, not the game. The easier macro can also leave more room for multitasking that is actually interesting to watch (dare I say cool?) which we haven't really seen yet, but I think we will eventually, the game is still so new, and most games are lost to basic mistakes making this unneeded right now. There are way too many geniuses thinking they have already figured SC2 out even though every single GSL has changed and become better and more exciting to watch.

People are evolving in a way where they are becoming more stupid though, and it's not Blizzard's fault, they are just catering to the audience. That is a whole different topic, but just thank of the long term evolutionary implications of all the warning labels and safety nets that our society has.

On June 02 2011 01:01 Treemonkeys wrote:
I don't think the argument that SC2 is too easy has a leg to stand on unless you happen to be completely rofl stomping the pro scene.

On May 31 2011 20:45 Zelniq wrote:

putting aside the funny roach part....

"zergling get some cool shit" ?? i have to disagree, all of those seem kinda boring and actually are mostly not new ideas. In I think the alpha of WoL, there was a hive upgrade to spawn an additional zergling from an egg. Although it does make it feel more swarm-like, it's pretty uninteresting to just get more units from less production infrastructure than you'd normally need. Spawn broodling on death is new for the zergling i think, but not new to zerg.. (queen's spawn broodling in bw, buildings dying in sc2, etc). Raptors that leap at their opponents, those aren't new they're in the campaign already, and in map editor, i think they were called 'hunterlings.' And it sounds much cooler than it is, in fact I think it's annoying to have them leap into battle, it's yet more steering away from micro/control and more into automated sequences/lack of control options, and they tend to just leap into their death quicker, which I think is why they added the +10 hp as I'm sure they noticed this problem. And finally the 0 build time is new I think and sort of cool, except for the "uh oh I need some units NOW to defend this/or do that...ah np i'll just instantly make lings! now I don't have to worry anymore and can just have an army instantly on demand" factor

still though it's certainly all more interesting than the roach stuff

On June 01 2011 23:44 Spacedude wrote:


I'm not saying brood war was perfect. Nothing is. Also, I'm hardly an expert at BW or SCII, but you don't really have to be to be able to analyze this part of the core gameplay.

''Is SC2 hand-holding cause you can rally SCVs onto the mineral line rather then having to select each one individually as it comes out of the CC?''

Yes, it is. The word macro has little meaning to it when you take out some of the core mechanics of it. Yes, it might be a simple thing in itself, but it's really just a gear that is part of a greater machine, sp to say.

On June 02 2011 01:55 Spacedude wrote:
I don't think anyone is actually saying that SCII is easy in the way that there is no skills involved. I'd say more precisely that there are some elements that are designed to make the game easier. You say that this could potentially free up apm that could in turn be used elsewhere. I certainly agree, but the execution is rather poor if this was indeed the essence of this design. But even if it did work well the result would still be that the macro side of the game would be diminished in turn. The result is a less dynamic game, imo.

On June 02 2011 02:00 Hekisui wrote:
This is fallacious and then still is backwards. Saying the game is easier actually says the same as saying it is not possible to 'rofl stomp' the opposition by just having more skill.

Also, one doesn't need to be the no.1 player to realize there can't be a no.1 player because the game is too easy. No playing skill at all is needed to make the observation that a game that has too shallow a skill curve means that no one is much better than most other people.

Luck and randomness already made the win percentages of SC BW progamers a bit on the low side.

At this point I really think it is either stupidity or dishonesty why this is brought up again and against as an argument.
The follow up is people claiming there are no obvious dice rolls in SC2 or SC BW and that therefore there is no luck, only skill. It baffles me how people with so many posts on this site can still be so wrong about the most simple and obvious of things. Even Dustin Browder knows better now.

If a game has no luck, randomness or 'statistical noise' in it a better player would win 100% vs a weaker player. Only in the rare case two players are equally skilled they will draw or win and lose equal amounts. Otherwise, every Bo7 will be 4-0 for the better player. Every Bo100 will be 51-0 for the better player. If a Bo100 ends up in being a 51-1 then obviously the one game that the winner lost he lost because of luck.


And if you think the difficulty of a game is determined by the players and not by the nature of the game, you are deluded. Have fun training the biggest genius on the planet 12/7 in tic-tac-toe. Then let's see with what magic they come up with! Who says that tic-tac-toe is boring because it is so easy there is an obvious forced draw almost everyone will see? Such skilled genius will come up with some trick to win. Mindgames! Nerves of steel! Counters of counter-counters. It will be magic, people.

On June 02 2011 02:00 Hekisui wrote:


This is fallacious and then still is backwards. Saying the game is easier actually says the same as saying it is not possible to 'rofl stomp' the opposition by just having more skill.

Also, one doesn't need to be the no.1 player to realize there can't be a no.1 player because the game is too easy. No playing skill at all is needed to make the observation that a game that has too shallow a skill curve means that no one is much better than most other people.

Luck and randomness already made the win percentages of SC BW progamers a bit on the low side.

At this point I really think it is either stupidity or dishonesty why this is brought up again and against as an argument.
The follow up is people claiming there are no obvious dice rolls in SC2 or SC BW and that therefore there is no luck, only skill. It baffles me how people with so many posts on this site can still be so wrong about the most simple and obvious of things. Even Dustin Browder knows better now.

If a game has no luck, randomness or 'statistical noise' in it a better player would win 100% vs a weaker player. Only in the rare case two players are equally skilled they will draw or win and lose equal amounts. Otherwise, every Bo7 will be 4-0 for the better player. Every Bo100 will be 51-0 for the better player. If a Bo100 ends up in being a 51-1 then obviously the one game that the winner lost he lost because of luck.


And if you think the difficulty of a game is determined by the players and not by the nature of the game, you are deluded. Have fun training the biggest genius on the planet 12/7 in tic-tac-toe. Then let's see with what magic they come up with! Who says that tic-tac-toe is boring because it is so easy there is an obvious forced draw almost everyone will see? Such skilled genius will come up with some trick to win. Mindgames! Nerves of steel! Counters of counter-counters. It will be magic, people.

On June 02 2011 02:29 Paladia wrote:

A game doesn't become better just because you have to do repetitive tasks manually.

Would BW be better if medics didn't auto heal or if units didn't auto-attack? It would for sure make it harder and increase the skill gap as there was more things to do but the game would hardly become more fun because of it.

On June 02 2011 02:44 zawk9 wrote:
Theoretically not having to do these 'repetitive' tasks would open up more room for micro and multi-pronged harassment, but the game to date so far has far less of both of those.