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Starcraft 2 is a fantastic game, worthy of all the praise and obsession it has garnered. However, it will soon be challenged by the inevitable UI comparisons that will take place between it and Dota 2 the moment the game goes live. The amount of amazing features Dota 2 has while still in beta should greatly shame the devs of sc2. For those of you not priveledged with a Dota 2 key, I will point out some of the most glaring comparisons.
accessibility In starcraft 2, once you are in game, youre in game. The main menu goes away and becomes inaccessible without forfeiting. A paltry friends box hovers over your hotkey pad, serving as your sole window to the community during a round of play. Any messages received from outside of the game are placed in the exact same in game chat window as your opponents/allies, and at first glance are indecipherable from each other.
In Dota 2, the UI is an overlay, there to be accessed in full at any moment of the game save one load screen. Online friends are all visually available from this screen with the same access you would have if not in game. Friends chatting from outside of the game message you from a completely separate chat reel, tucked neatly in the top right corner. If one wished to view these messages in full without losing site of they game, Dota 2 operates off of steams translucent community overlay, which can be seen with a simple tab+shift input.
education If one were to attempt to learn SC2 solely on their own merits, they would forever be doomed into wondering why one base 14 worker at 15 minutes isnt winning the game for them. That is because SC2's in game learning format comes from its single player, an experience related to multiplayer starcraft in name only. Yes the game has tech trees and a "challenge mode" that reminds users gently that some units are better in some situations rather than others, but ultimately Starcraft forces users to learn to play through third party communities, youtube, and outside replay webpages.
In Dota 2, the front page not only has access to a dev blog akin to starcraft's, it also tracks live games which you may hop into and view at any time. Should the three games they suggest you view be too little for your eager eyes, Dota 2 saves replays of nearly every game played, and allows you to filter them by player name, hero used, skill level, and tournament type. These replays can be downloaded, saved and viewed again and again all within Dota 2, needing no third party rapidshare-esque webpage to have to go to. Yes, to play at top level still requires reading and studying and community access and public theorycrafting, but the game serves as a resource to this, not a stumbling block.
time/experience Here comes the most dissappointing issue of all in this. Starcraft is a blizzard product, and while they are not the creator's of the RTS genre, they are largely seen as the patriarch. With their prior two RTS releases, starcraft and warcraft 3, Blizzard produced quality UI and community access for their time, even having a generally lauded league system and clan management in WC3. In SC2 we see a step back from this in a lot of ways. League rankings are intentionally vague, clan support is non existant and the mod community has been smothered by a piss poor ranking system. Such things become less excusable when one considers the 10+ years in development the game sat in.
ValvE, while no stranger at all to the multiplayer format, is pioneering a new niche, and has never before needed to worry about in depth analysis, pro scenes, RTS style unit management and so on. Their current beta is a brilliant example of a for gamers by gamers product, and leaves very little to be desired in order for its implementation to be a complete masterwork. The cherry on top? Despite it being a ValvE product, it has been in development for a fraction of the time SC2 had and shows all the polish you would hope and expect from a top tier game.
I love Starcraft, and I love blizzard. But their wake up call is coming. It will soon be common knowledge that SC2's UI does not cut the mustard and will require fundamental changes to stay at the top of the heap where it belongs. Only time will tell if the legendary California devs can rise to the challenge ValvE has set before them.
(Composed on an android phone. Proofread as much as possible, but may contain grammatical errors. The writer apologizes)
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Well Dota 2 is a newer game than SC2. Then again, I think we're all still waiting for the new Battle.net (I think LOL).
Then again all I want are proper SEA servers for Australians.
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It's already common knowledge that SC2's UI is bad. Also, every feature you listed of DotA2, HoN already has, so I wouldn't expect the release of a new game to be this tremendous wakeup call you're making it to be.
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Some competition for sc2 would literally be the greatest thing ever for Starcraft .
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I want Battle.net 2.1 now
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While I can agree some things need to improve, I don't play Starcraft for its UI. Unless you lurk the menus and don't play the game I don't think this is going to be too huge of a deal. As was mentioned in the other recent thread about SC2's UI, HotS is going to be the first realistic chance for anything to be added or refined. Don't expect anything before then. I'm pretty sure the added functionality will be something that is actually a marketing point for HotS as well. As much as some people might hate it and feel that it should be there from the start, the expansion itself will make up for issues in WoL or it will flop. Blizzard has to do it right or severely damage their product. That doesn't seem likely.
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On February 05 2012 07:36 bubO wrote:
I want Battle.net 2.1 now
battle.net 1.1 would be better
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The issue here is mainly that Valve and Blizzard have deviated from each other in how they provide their products. Valve provides a service and has this indie feel about them, and they legitimately care a great deal about the customers. That's why they go out of their way to do awesome things for the community. Blizzard, on the other hand, is really out for profit. Things like limiting regions so you have to buy multiple copies, no LAN mode for tournament support (even though SC2 was touted as the ultimate game for a professional competitive scene), these things all limit what we can do with their product.
@zakmaa, i don't think you have to worry too much about that. Valve got involved in dota because many of their staff were huge fans of the game. icefrog will be leading development with a small team at Valve, so i think we'll be ok.
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The only thing I worry about for DOTA 2 is the lack of involvement from VALVe. I take this from my experience playing CS:S for years, but they never did anything about that game for the longest time, and when they did, the community was (for the most part) outraged at the changes they made.
Of course, CS:S is a lot smaller than DOTA 2 will be, I assume they'll actually be active with the community with this one.
Off topic: it's VALVe not ValvE,
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Dota(1&2) mini-map, staying the same since '03.
No but really, Valve hasn't touched the gameplay itself that much, which is more than sad really.
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I love the dota UI. It has almost everything you need, and the game is still in beta. SC2 can definitely learn something from Dota.
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Everything is so vague in your post. Comparing a moba to a RTS? Not the greatest idea, for obvious reasons.
Anyway, about the "education" paragraph, I don't know what to say man, so here we go:
If one were to attempt to learn SSF4 solely on their own merits, they would forever be doomed into wondering why spamming shoryukens isnt winning the game for them. That is because SSF4's in game learning format comes from its single player, an experience related to multiplayer street fighter in name only. Yes the game has tiers and a "Arcade mode" that reminds users gently that some moves are better in some situations rather than others, but ultimately Street Fighter forces users to learn to play through third party communities, youtube, and outside replay webpages.
That being said, nothing is "forcing" people to "learn to play".
Also are you talking about Sc2's UI or BNET's UI? There's a big difference here. While Bnet's UI has definitely A LOT of room for improvement, Sc2's in-game UI is accessible, smooth and user-friendly. That's like the second thread in a week where people confuse Bnet with the actual game.
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This is all rather pointless in the end. While the UI of both different genres have relevance they're not game-changing in the sense that people will play both and neither really have any real effect on one another. You pit them together as if one trumps the other, the other diminishes or fails which is far from the truth.
Too provocative for my tastes, tone it down.
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who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
User was warned for this post
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On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote:
who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
The comedic value of this post is off any chart known to man.
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On February 05 2012 07:46 DCRed wrote:
Dota(1&2) mini-map, staying the same since '03.
No but really, Valve hasn't touched the gameplay itself that much, which is more than sad really.
I would love SC2 more if it was BW with better graphics. Just saying.
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I guess if you make a terrible game you have to at least make a good ui, fair enough
User was warned for this post
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Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
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On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote:
who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
lol oh the irony...
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I don't like how you treat DotA2 as the second coming of christ, but SC2's UI is pretty terrible.
I wonder what happened to all the things Blizz announced for it, hmmm.
I guess as long as 6.000 people don't throw a fit every day about it, they don't care. Can't blame them.
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EPT
