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On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
Now tell me what happened to the old humbler Blizzard that changed the entire engine of SC1 because of critism? The company that strived to pull way ahead of the contemporary competitions instead of just do a tiny bit better for the bare minimum? As much pain it hurts me saying this but Blizzard is killing their reps big time.
To be fair here we could ask what happened to the gamer community who did not want warcraft in space, but a new different game.
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Reaver would be a cool addition, they would have to be nerfed but lets remember that they were in satcrarft WOL in the alpha
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On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
Woah woah, man calm down for Boson's sake lol
They can also just buff dmg done by Spore Crawlers or Hydralisks if that makes you so sensitive about re-introducing a skillful controlled unit.
The point is that nearly every single SC:BW units was something cool to watch. They took out all the micro aspect of the game and replaced it with sub-par mechanics sans Stalker micro and kept the same for Marines. I'd say remove ALL the boring units OUT of the game and replace them with community-based idea WILL be the best move that Blizz made in the franchise. But unfortunately, we all know that their inflated ego (well I'm pretty sure that the programming teams are cool dudes that worked hard to be where they are today, so its primarily Dustin B.) surely will not permit such changed to occur.
Now tell me what happened to the old humbler Blizzard that changed the entire engine of SC1 because of critism? The company that strived to pull way ahead of the contemporary competitions instead of just do a tiny bit better for the bare minimum? As much pain it hurts me saying this but Blizzard is killing their reps big time.
agreed 100 percent; almost every unit in bw was a grace to witness. They (almost) all had their fun micro aspects.
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On July 06 2012 05:44 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
Now tell me what happened to the old humbler Blizzard that changed the entire engine of SC1 because of critism? The company that strived to pull way ahead of the contemporary competitions instead of just do a tiny bit better for the bare minimum? As much pain it hurts me saying this but Blizzard is killing their reps big time.
To be fair here we could ask what happened to the gamer community who did not want warcraft in space, but a new different game.
They are converted into StarCraft fans after seeing the better things of the game.
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On July 06 2012 05:52 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2012 05:44 corumjhaelen wrote:On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
Now tell me what happened to the old humbler Blizzard that changed the entire engine of SC1 because of critism? The company that strived to pull way ahead of the contemporary competitions instead of just do a tiny bit better for the bare minimum? As much pain it hurts me saying this but Blizzard is killing their reps big time.
To be fair here we could ask what happened to the gamer community who did not want warcraft in space, but a new different game. They are converted into StarCraft fans after seeing the better things of the game.
Not sure what you mean. I will reformulate.
My point was that the community's standard have gown down, which is why Blizzard can get away with making worse decision.
Plus I personnally believe that people who point out that sc2 is too close to its predecessor are right. BW is my favorite game by far, but there's no reason why its formula is the only possible to make a great RTS. For me, either Blizz should have done a slight graphical upgrade of bw, only touching/changing some underused units (Queens, Ghost, DA for instance) and then sell it for 15€, or try to revolutionnize the RTS genre as it had done before.
Instead they went in between, and just made a worse version of brood war and they are stuck between the fact that bw did what they've done better and the understandable fact that they don't want it to be a copy, which in turn means that the kind of fight we're having here are bound to happen.
I personnally think that the community should have made clear that bw already existed and that we wanted something new, but for esport and other close reasons, this was not meant to be.
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On July 06 2012 05:32 wcr.4fun wrote:
zerg managed to deal with reavers just fine in bw. it wouldn't be any different in sc2.
right I forgot about the scourge my bad.lol
Imagine what would happen with reavers in the game with this auto clump pathing.
That is a major difference here.
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On July 06 2012 06:14 Assirra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2012 05:32 wcr.4fun wrote:
zerg managed to deal with reavers just fine in bw. it wouldn't be any different in sc2.
right I forgot about the scourge my bad.lol Imagine what would happen with reavers in the game with this auto clump pathing. That is a major difference here.
As I said, all that needs to be done is nerf the damage like every other AoE compared to bw.
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You can't nerf the damage.
The point of those units is that they 1-2 shot everything. But they might only hit 2-4 units typically.
If in SC2, they hit 4-8 units, and because of that you 1/2 their damage, that "balances" their damage, but would result in the same deathball - because now they aren't reavers, but colossi. If it takes a reaver 4 shots to kill something, that no longer allows it to harass as effectively, etc.
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Well, personally, I think a sequel should be an addition to series. It should have all BW units AND more
Buts thats okay, I dont think they lacked efforts when making SC2, its a well done game
I just wish they were a bit more "wild" with the new units. They look and work so, I dunno, boring
Also bring back the BW sound effects. Like seriously, SC2 sound effects are ass. Just compare the 2 siege tanks sieging, for example.
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On July 06 2012 06:25 architecture wrote:
You can't nerf the damage.
The point of those units is that they 1-2 shot everything. But they might only hit 2-4 units typically.
If in SC2, they hit 4-8 units, and because of that you 1/2 their damage, that "balances" their damage, but would result in the same deathball - because now they aren't reavers, but colossi. If it takes a reaver 4 shots to kill something, that no longer allows it to harass as effectively, etc.
Scarabs do 125 damage, so they one shot worker very easily, you can nerf that and they will still still be effcicient aat harassing. You can also nerf the area of effect in itself, just like storm.
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I feel like people arguing for limited selection, no MBS, no smartcast, BW units, etc. are kinda wasting their time. It's never going to happen.
We should focus all our efforts on demanding moving shot. Because that's something that doesn't go against any of Dbrowder's stated design philosophies, and could truly make the game better without making it "more difficult" for new players.
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On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
Woah woah, man calm down for Boson's sake lol
They can also just buff dmg done by Spore Crawlers or Hydralisks if that makes you so sensitive about re-introducing a skillful controlled unit.
Welcome to being an example of exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.
It's not about "re-introducing a skillful controlled unit" for you; it's about re-introducing the Reaver. That is, you want the Reaver back. You don't want to introduce a "skillful controlled unit", you want to reintroduce one. It's more important to you that it's a SC1 unit than that it's a "skillful controlled unit".
I want well-designed new units, not well-designed old ones.
On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
I'd say remove ALL the boring units OUT of the game and replace them with community-based idea WILL be the best move that Blizz made in the franchise.
And by "community-based idea," you mean "copy-and-paste a bunch of SC1 units into the game." Because I've yet to see any "community-based ideas" that isn't just "remove SC2 unit X and replace it with SC1 unit Y."
I agree that there are some weak units in SC2 that should be replaced with better, more interesting ones. What they should not do is replace them with carbon copies of SC1 units. SC2 needs more of its own identity, not stealing the identity of its predicessor.
On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
Now tell me what happened to the old humbler Blizzard that changed the entire engine of SC1 because of critism? The company that strived to pull way ahead of the contemporary competitions instead of just do a tiny bit better for the bare minimum?
When did that happen? What I saw in SC1 was them prototyping the game on the WC2 engine, then developing the actual game with the real engine.
If you honestly believe that Blizzard upgraded the SC1 engine solely because of E3 criticism, you're deluding yourself.
On July 06 2012 06:10 corumjhaelen wrote:
Plus I personnally believe that people who point out that sc2 is too close to its predecessor are right. BW is my favorite game by far, but there's no reason why its formula is the only possible to make a great RTS. For me, either Blizz should have done a slight graphical upgrade of bw, only touching/changing some underused units (Queens, Ghost, DA for instance) and then sell it for 15€, or try to revolutionnize the RTS genre as it had done before.
Instead they went in between, and just made a worse version of brood war and they are stuck between the fact that bw did what they've done better and the understandable fact that they don't want it to be a copy, which in turn means that the kind of fight we're having here are bound to happen.
I agree with the general idea that they tried too hard to stick with certan SC1 concepts while making SC2. But I don't think they needed to "revolutionize" anything (and they didn't revolutionize RTS's with SC1. At least, not intensionally).
The three races are based off of core ideology. The Protoss have few, hardy, expensive units with game-changing powers. The Zerg have large numbers of weak, simple units, with a few important support spells that let these units do more work. And the Terran units are all ranged and almost every one has special abilities that makes them more flexible.
The fact that the Protoss uses smaller numbers of durable units does not mean that you have to have Zealots. It doesn't mean that their tech tree needs to branch into 3 paths. It doesn't mean that they need to have Pylons that supply power to their buildings. And so forth.
The core race ideology does not require the specific implementation used by SC1. SC2 could have been an effective rewrite to these units. Taking the same racial identities and giving them an entire suite of new units, spells, and tech trees.
But Blizzard only went half-way. They kept "iconic" units. And more constraining, they kept the same basic tech tree for each race. The Terrans are built on a 3-tier structure, with each tier having separate upgrades. Why? They don't have to work that way. They could have used a different tech system. And while they did play around with the Terrans a bit (swappable Tech Labs to hasten the tech tree a bit), it's still the same overall tech tree.
There is a lot of design space that Blizzard simply couldn't use because they were holding on to "iconic" units and ideas. The original Thor was an interesting idea for a siege unit: it just walks up to what it needs to kill and absorbs fire. It uses it's Barrage Mode (different from the modern Strike Cannons) to do AoE damage. But that's too much like Siege Tanks, so it became a crippled Goliath.
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On July 06 2012 14:00 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
Now tell me what happened to the old humbler Blizzard that changed the entire engine of SC1 because of critism? The company that strived to pull way ahead of the contemporary competitions instead of just do a tiny bit better for the bare minimum? When did that happen? What I saw in SC1 was them prototyping the game on the WC2 engine, then developing the actual game with the real engine. If you honestly believe that Blizzard upgraded the SC1 engine solely because of E3 criticism, you're deluding yourself.
Well, he may be "deluding himself" (which is not exactly a nice way to say things), but that's what every website I've looked at on the internet says. More or less, they wanted it to go out as fast as wc2 did (one year so it would have gone out in 1996), and given the very harsh criticism they receeived they delayed it and made a new engine.
http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/blizzard/p3_01.html
for instance, or google starcraft alpha e3 1996.
On July 06 2012 14:00 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2012 06:10 corumjhaelen wrote:
Plus I personnally believe that people who point out that sc2 is too close to its predecessor are right. BW is my favorite game by far, but there's no reason why its formula is the only possible to make a great RTS. For me, either Blizz should have done a slight graphical upgrade of bw, only touching/changing some underused units (Queens, Ghost, DA for instance) and then sell it for 15€, or try to revolutionnize the RTS genre as it had done before.
Instead they went in between, and just made a worse version of brood war and they are stuck between the fact that bw did what they've done better and the understandable fact that they don't want it to be a copy, which in turn means that the kind of fight we're having here are bound to happen. I agree with the general idea that they tried too hard to stick with certan SC1 concepts while making SC2. But I don't think they needed to "revolutionize" anything (and they didn't revolutionize RTS's with SC1. At least, not intensionally). The three races are based off of core ideology. The Protoss have few, hardy, expensive units with game-changing powers. The Zerg have large numbers of weak, simple units, with a few important support spells that let these units do more work. And the Terran units are all ranged and almost every one has special abilities that makes them more flexible. The fact that the Protoss uses smaller numbers of durable units does not mean that you have to have Zealots. It doesn't mean that their tech tree needs to branch into 3 paths. It doesn't mean that they need to have Pylons that supply power to their buildings. And so forth. The core race ideology does not require the specific implementation used by SC1. SC2 could have been an effective rewrite to these units. Taking the same racial identities and giving them an entire suite of new units, spells, and tech trees. But Blizzard only went half-way. They kept "iconic" units. And more constraining, they kept the same basic tech tree for each race. The Terrans are built on a 3-tier structure, with each tier having separate upgrades. Why? They don't have to work that way. They could have used a different tech system. And while they did play around with the Terrans a bit (swappable Tech Labs to hasten the tech tree a bit), it's still the same overall tech tree. There is a lot of design space that Blizzard simply couldn't use because they were holding on to "iconic" units and ideas. The original Thor was an interesting idea for a siege unit: it just walks up to what it needs to kill and absorbs fire. It uses it's Barrage Mode (different from the modern Strike Cannons) to do AoE damage. But that's too much like Siege Tanks, so it became a crippled Goliath.
I agree with a lot of what you say here, but :
1) yes starcraft was, well maybe not revolutionnary if you're harsh on the definition (so not to the extent of Dune 2), but it was original in a few important way and it made an impact on how many rts after were made. I'm thinking mainly of the 3 asymetric races here, but I'll also add that the zerg larva ressource was highly original and could be seen as an ancestor to more modern recruitment systems, and many of the unit were pretty original. I might being missing some things too.
2) I was not only thinking of starcraft, but also warcraft and warcraft 3 (the 2 being an upgraded version of the first opus), the second proving that blizzard can be ready to change a lot of things in the gameplay inside a serie...
3) Yes they could have touched the tech tree, that would have made direct unit comparison harder... And they could also have touched the antique, done a billion time before ressource/building system, in a way or another... (btw one of their rare small initiative in this domain, the terran add-on's new system, is one of the clearest improvement in the game).
I'll finally add that the beta period and before was a period of wasted opportunities and miscommunication. The best example of this is how we came from roaches being an interesting unit with a relatively original concept to the blandest and most boring unit in the game. Or the phoenix moving shot fiasco, which many on this website took as a slap in the face. But the incessent bw comparison probably did no help.
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They upgraded the SC1 engine because it didn't allow them to do all the things that they envisioned, so they gutted the entire project and started anew. However they changed their minds on just making warcraft in space because of the reception at E3.
I don't think straying too far from core concepts would have been ideal. Personally I don't find any of the core traits of each race bothersome to deal with, nor are they too complex. I don't think it's because they are limited by "having to use core units" such as the marine or the zealot either, it's just how each race tends to play out. Could they have designed cooler base units than a siege tank, marine, zealot or zergling? Perhaps, but they would probably just be a re-skin, akin to stalkers just being dragoons with blink. If it isn't broken, why bother trying to change? The core units were interesting enough to be kept in the sequel.
I actually think SC2 does have alot of things going for it. On paper it sounded heaps exciting, all these different little things that slightly added more depth: creep, switchable addons, macro mechanics, watchtowers. All these things managed to add on top of the winning formula instead of having to rewrite base mechanics.
However, many of the units don't feel like an upgrade. Roaches can't hit air and are 2 supply over their tier 1.5 counterparts. Thors feel like needlessly large and chunky goliaths or valkries that have to be limited to walking on land. With banshees and vikings, you feel like they just wasted their time when wraiths could just harass both air and ground and keep air dominance.
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On July 05 2012 16:21 lorkac wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2012 15:33 sGs.Kal_rA wrote:On July 05 2012 12:54 Vaporak wrote:On July 05 2012 12:41 lorkac wrote:On July 05 2012 11:00 iky43210 wrote:
I would argue the skill ceiling is already ridiculously high that it might as well be infinite. There is no reason to impose changes to make the game more chuncky and creating an even higher barrier for entry would be pros
Difficulty is not a good argument. You could even argue that it would be more difficult to split everything manually compare to have an AI do it for you They want it more like BW Slow down the game speed, zoom in the resolution, shrink down the map size. Done. BW maps are bigger than SC2 maps, in addition to BW armies moving around slower. That plus a lack of units designed for space control is actually my biggest complaint about SC2. 22 range tempest coming  Should address your space control complaint nicely + Show Spoiler +Can't believe bliz is attempting replacing the carrier with this gimmic  + Show Spoiler +I can't believe that they're not simply giving the range upgrade to the carrier.... you don't need to be a tempest to have 22 range, a 22 range carrier would be amazingly cool (and fitting to its flavor)
The Tempest is about getting and retaining vision of the target area, this would be slightly too easy with interceptors.
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I'm glad they don't just reintroduce the old BW units. If you want BW units, go play BW. SC2 is a new game and progress isn't always a bad thing. For me, I don't see the point in just playing with the same stuff again since everybody is familiar to it and because it gets boring. We need refreshments. While I agree that the BW units were awesome and also that the new units are kinda alike, I welcome the progress.
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I dont really think introducing units from BW is necesary . Its more about concepts from BW .
For example , in BW you had the PLAQUE : cool high damage spell that would not kill stuff . It would deal tremendous damage but you could pull back infected units and they wouldnt die . That was a COOL concept .
Now you have an Esnare+plaque merge , that both damages , snares and kills stuff . Its totally braindead . Its also not dodgable . There is absoloutely no downside to using it , and its a quaranteed kill on whatever it hits . You can only mitigate the damage by spreading but thats not really a good dynamic is it ?
Or the ever complained about Collosi. Its amove , too clunky to micro well , unresponsive. Good against all on ground boring ass unit . I mean, they couldve kept the unit but given it an interesting feature like, dunno , for example instead of the upgrade buffing its range it could give it an "AOE saturation channeling ability" that has a fairly long range or something interesting .
All in all, its not about units per se, its more about the philosophy of Command and Conquer , which i love btw , in starcraft ... which just dont mix well together
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I still believe that colossus is the worst type of unit and fungal the worst type of spell in the game. The Colossus requires next to no control to use efficiently and is very strong. They don't have to introduce BW units to be fair, but introduce units that are fun, and that have the same level of "effective" range. Good control should be rewarded. When I mean fun units, I totally understand that having colossus is fun for the guy using them. They grant you easily very effective damage, but the design is one-dimensional..
Fungal is also stupid 'cause it totally removes the power of control for the enemy. It also deals a hefty amount of damage. Storm on the other hand is dodgable if you control your units and react quickly. A spell like plague did punish the enemy, but fungal is overkill if you think fungal vs for example Hunter-Seeker Missile. Fungal just negates too much for its cost, and is flawed from a design perspective with the amount of resources that are available on a map, or on basic 3/4 base economy which is become very usual these days.
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On July 06 2012 14:00 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2012 05:41 Xiphos wrote:
I'd say remove ALL the boring units OUT of the game and replace them with community-based idea WILL be the best move that Blizz made in the franchise. And by "community-based idea," you mean "copy-and-paste a bunch of SC1 units into the game." Because I've yet to see any "community-based ideas" that isn't just "remove SC2 unit X and replace it with SC1 unit Y." I agree that there are some weak units in SC2 that should be replaced with better, more interesting ones. What they should not do is replace them with carbon copies of SC1 units. SC2 needs more of its own identity, not stealing the identity of its predicessor.
Well, I could give you some cool ideas, but a lot of them would be stolen from other games and people would just not want them for the sake of them being from C&C or so.
But the good news is, that the Terrordrone (C&C RA2 and RA3; widow mine) is coming. The sad news, that the scorpion tank (C&C Generals; warhound) is coming as well. Well, won't make too much of a difference. After all SC1 already copied Terran heavily from the original C&C. So I guess they just keep it up. And yeah, I know SC1 was supposed to be some Warhammer game. Doesn't mean that the way the units and techpaths work wasn't some copy of C&C.
(though they should really just implement the RA3 microheavy Terrordrone in some form, which can fulfill both roles, the widow mine and the warhound)
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The Widow Mine is almost nothing like a Terrordrone, other than the fact that it doesn't immediately kill a mechanical unit.
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EPT
