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Netherlands19135 Posts
On June 16 2007 16:26 boghat wrote:
Of course gameplay and balance are extremely important but thinking that the appearance of the game doesn't matter is foolish. Why can't we want good gameplay, balance, and have the game aesthetically pleasing at the same time? They've been working on the game for many years afterall.
The game needs to be more realistic, grittier, and less boxy and cartoony in appearance. Complaining about this in the pre-alpha stage is a good thing because if Blizzard hears enough complaints about this they might actually do something to make the appearance more in line with the gritty feel of the StarCraft universe in subsequent stages.
Complaining about the appearance of the game is actually one of the only legitimate criticisms you can make at this time since we know little about the gameplay and nothing about the balance. And saying that the appearance of the game doesn't matter is simply very untrue, especially for a game that is supposed to become a spectator sport.
Now that dear sir is a proper complaint post in my book.
And you know what, I totally agree with you. Especially the second alinea.
I don't mind how it looks atm though and it wont make or break the game as a sport or e-challenge persé imho. But yeah I expected a different looks and like you said, more grittier. But I love the current detail like marine deaths and things.
I don't want realism though, I want a trade mark look. The terrans till now in SC2, especially the buildings took me some time to get used to but I really like the "style" but its a matter of preference. I really like it but yeah Id preferred a more gritty approach.
Style and taste is hard to argue about though, but lets get serious about one thing. BW looks like shit haha. Any upgrade should be a good one, just too cartoonish = bad for the atmosphere of the game but it doesn't look cartoonish to me at all. Just the gras in the trailer really looked that green ;p.
p.s. the spectator sport argument is a really damn good one. Didn't even occur to me.
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The appearance does grow on you over time, which I suspected it would. I'm still not sure if I like the lazers though but I'm not too concerned with that. Perhaps it's just the style of the Protoss to look a bit glossy and polished. Hopefully the Terrans and Zerg will be grittier in appearance. Although I am concerned because I still don't like the Terran marine and buildings that much; the buildings look a bit too "plastic".
I agree that a trademark look would be the better than it looking like a WWII game in space but the look of it right now isn't super appealing to me. I think a lot of it has to do with a boxy and plastic appearance I'm getting, probably because of the 3D engine. The appearance does grow on you with time though so I think with some minor graphic changes it could look pretty good. I just hope the 3D aspect of it doesn't cause a lot of clutter on the screen during battles.
BW does look kind of funny compared to the 3D engine of SCII but it's appearance works for it. As long as the appearance works for a game it doesn't matter, that's why old nintendo 8 bit games can work just as good as a new 3D game. I'm just not sure if SCII's appearance is quite working for it yet.
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Netherlands19135 Posts
On June 16 2007 16:44 boghat wrote:
The appearance does grow on you over time, which I suspected it would. I'm still not sure if I like the lazers though but I'm not too concerned with that. Perhaps it's just the style of the Protoss to look a bit glossy and polished. Hopefully the Terrans and Zerg will be grittier in appearance. Although I am concerned because I still don't like the Terran marine and buildings that much; the buildings look a bit too "plastic".
I agree that a trademark look would be the better than it looking like a WWII game in space but the look of it right now isn't super appealing to me. I think a lot of it has to do with a boxy and plastic appearance I'm getting, probably because of the 3D engine. The appearance does grow on you with time though so I think with some minor graphic changes it could look pretty good. I just hope the 3D aspect of it doesn't cause a lot of clutter on the screen during battles.
BW does look kind of funny compared to the 3D engine of SCII but it's appearance works for it. As long as the appearance works for a game it doesn't matter, that's why old nintendo 8 bit games can work just as good as a new 3D game. I'm just not sure if SCII's appearance is quite working for it yet.
I'll just start with one thing about how I think of this post.
The word "plastic" was exactly how I wanted to describe the terran building look in my last post but I removed it :p.
And yeah it'll have to grow on us I guess, don't think theyll give it the hardcore gritty looks that we want. But what does surprise me is that Blizz has the same gritty concept about the game and universe as us.
Just look at the grim grit and gore in the trailers and cutscenes.
In the end I won't give a toss (pun intended as zerg player) about the looks. Gameplay, balance and gamechallenge will be what it does for me personally.
I'm a real oldschool look fan, 8 bit stuff, halflife 1, baldurs gate games, fallout 2, BW offc and all that kinda stuff. But thats an era gone and bygone and I'll have to live in 3D RTS I guess. Dawn of War really did it for me with looks though, but thats cause thats what I call grim and gritty  . But I was never expecting that in BW, just don't think it would match with what the game is. That even though I would have liked it more then anything looks wise.
Ow but the races really look different to me, Terran has the plastic look  , Toss looks all lighted up like a glow in the dark neo nuked glass candle with all the lights and shiny polished armor and pew pew lasers and plasma, and zerg looks whet, grim and oozing nasty fluids :p.
The muta/zergling/and especially the nydusworm looks really caught my fancy.
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Yeah I really like the look of the Zerg units so far too.
And the trailors and logos and other pictures I really like. They fit exactly into the StarCraft universe. I just wish the actual game looked a little bit closer to how the trailors look but I guess this is probably pretty hard to get right while balancing gameplay at the same time.
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I like what I saw in the first 2 Blizzard videos which was the gameplay and artwork trailer video.
However, this 3rd video I'm kind of skeptical. Though they're probably the same build, It looked like an older build of SC2. In the jungle background, units looks like they were pasted on. The jungle scene was my favorite in the artwork trailer, but in the 3rd video it looks dull.
Soul Hunters
Zealots on surfboards? I thought the tanks looked bad then I saw the Soul Hunters. I'm guessing Blizzard is still working on this unit. When zoomed up, they look pretty cool if they didn't have the surfboard.
Tempest
Not as cool looking as Carriers, but acceptable. Not sure how they anti-ground shield works, but I'm guessing they are weakened version of the Carriers to make them more vurnable to air units while retaining the same damage from the ground. In SC1, it took a lot of skills to defeat an army of only Carriers.
Twilight Archon
Looks very awesome, but their attack just looks soooo weak compared to SC1. Hopefully the look of their attacks change in the final build. It's an easier change than redoing the entire Seige Tank model.
Lasers
I don't care about the look of lasers attack like most of the complainst, but what I worry about is the effect on gameplay with the continuous attack of lasers. What seperated SC1 from other RTS was what you can do during the cooldown on attacks. With continuous attacks, you kind of just sit there and watch. It limits what can be done.
EXAMPLE: dropping vulture mine against long cooldown of tanks or vultures running around & shooting zerglings between cooldown.
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On June 16 2007 16:44 boghat wrote:
The appearance does grow on you over time, which I suspected it would. I'm still not sure if I like the lazers though but I'm not too concerned with that. Perhaps it's just the style of the Protoss to look a bit glossy and polished. Hopefully the Terrans and Zerg will be grittier in appearance. Although I am concerned because I still don't like the Terran marine and buildings that much; the buildings look a bit too "plastic".
I do hope Blizzard retains the "plastic" look that is very noticable in the still images. It gives SC2 a distinct feel from all other RTS. The plastic look makes the units feel more solid somehow like toys.
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You want the units to look like toys? That's one of the things I don't want.
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I'm loving the battle sizes though....I remember worrying when I saw the 3D stuff that the number of units would be reduced. But in this video we see pretty big battles.
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On June 16 2007 17:37 [X]Ken~D wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2007 16:44 boghat wrote:
The appearance does grow on you over time, which I suspected it would. I'm still not sure if I like the lazers though but I'm not too concerned with that. Perhaps it's just the style of the Protoss to look a bit glossy and polished. Hopefully the Terrans and Zerg will be grittier in appearance. Although I am concerned because I still don't like the Terran marine and buildings that much; the buildings look a bit too "plastic".
I do hope Blizzard retains the "plastic" look that is very noticable in the still images. It gives SC2 a distinct feel from all other RTS. The plastic look makes the units feel more solid somehow like toys.
you're kidding right
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look carefully at the soul hunter scene, the reapers there ALSO use flamethrowers! so..its either the dual pistols or the flamethrower that is an upgrade for this unit > basically its a cooler version of the firebat  i think the flamethrower attack is an upgrade, because if you look carefully...there are flames UNDER the soul hunters even after the reapers die. so we can assume that the flames haf an after-effect..kinda like how the flame damage works in wc3 i guess (beta SC1 firebat's could burn doodad trees btw). the phase cannon scene also backs this notion up. you can see the phase cannons have a fiery glow when its being attacked by the reapers and it persists awhile after teh reapers die.
now i realise why soul hunters look familiar to me! remove the hoverboard, and you have a halo grunt with an elite's plasma pistol!
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I'm a little confused on the whole "continious" attack with the lasers. Cause if a laser doesn't have a cooldown how would armor effect it? Will there be no armor?
And for those that don't understand what i'm saying look at it like this.
Where there is spaces means thats the cool down. In regular SC it went like this
-(Minus armor) *Cooldown* *attack*(Minus armor)
But if there is continous attack then...Where would the (Minus armor) fit into the equation??
*attack.............*Forever until unit is dead* So there has to be no armor or some kind of cooldown so there can be a Minus armor setup
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All i'm thinking is that the Cool-Down has to be longer then we think. If you say the cooldown is..lets say four damage every second instead of 20 damage every Five seconds then one plating of armor would reduce the damage to 15 Damage every five seconds.
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Stegosaur
Netherlands1231 Posts
Armor will of course reduce the damage each 'tick' of a laserbeam does, there has to be some form of cooldown between the damage ticks because otherwise it would deal an infinite amount of damage and 1-shot everything
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On June 17 2007 00:14 Ziel wrote:
look carefully at the soul hunter scene, the reapers there ALSO use flamethrowers!
If this video is recent then I hope blizzard just removed these silly pistols and gave man's weapon to the reapers
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hmm seems like reapers are the new zerglings. there's just too many of them and it looks too messy
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Reapers may just be a jetpack upgrade?
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EPT
