There's still very exciting 'reaver-esque' high splash damage attacks, and they appear more frequently than in sc:bw it seems (looking at the reapers explosive charges, hunter seeker missiles, and banelings). This is good for SC2 as an eSport in that these are the type of things spectators want to see (easy to make comparsion between "banelings chasing down marine group will they get back to support?!" and "Reaver scarab chasing running scvs will it dud?!")
The Terran army of marines, marauders and nighthawks was very sk terran-esque, an easy comparsion being made between Nighthawks and Science Vessels, Hunter Seeker missiles and Irradiate. This to me is a good thing, I personally found the battles were the tide was turned by the new missiles very exciting, comparable to how science vessels can turn the tide in the mid game in sc:bw reducing a huge number of lurkers to a more reasonable amount you can destroy with a good marine spread.
The death animations of the zerg units were good and same for most of the Terran units we saw die. I'd like to comment of the reaper death animation that I have no idea why it's so ridiculous, seriously... . And on the SCV death that I think I can see what Blizzard was trying to do (imagine a collosus taking out a whole bunch of your scvs in a second and they all explode like that, pretty exciting and awesome), but I thought it looked kinda stupid when the simple scouting scv died in that over the top manner.
As far as we can comment on balance, nothing seemed stupidly overpowered. Obviously both players are bad so it would be strange to really comment on balance based on what we saw in this game.
That comment tells us the zerg player actually selected random and there is no other way to learn that.
And there are going to be people watching this that only ever played WoW and The Sims. It's part of their market.
It saddens me that more and more they are moving away from the style of RTS that made SC so great and popular. It's going to be a great game in it's own right. Maybe even for competitive play.. But totally unlike SC.
On April 17 2009 02:59 Diomedes wrote: That comment tells us the zerg player actually selected random and there is no other way to learn that.
And there are going to be people watching this that only ever played WoW and The Sims. It's part of their market.
It saddens me that more and more they are moving away from the style of RTS that made SC so great and popular. It's going to be a great game in it's own right. Maybe even for competitive play.. But totally unlike SC.
Can you give an example of what was "unlike SC" about that match?
No big battles. That may be due to SC 2 is a more aggressive game than SC/BW, or more likely that the players in the Battle Report weren't exactly macro gods.
The maps seem to me to not have proper terrain for large battles, too many narrow chokes in the middle. Very bad map design imo. Sure it's cool as a novelty, but I think Blizzard still doesn't know how to make good maps.
Didn't Karune or someone say that they'd look into adding community maps to the ladder map pool?
It didn't really become any big or good battles as the players weren't good enouh or the game design deosn't really allow for it. In SC you don't really have constant battlign till middle-late game because before that you deal with timign attacks. Aka you tech to something and when you get it your army strengh become bigger and you push. I guess banelings will be a key unit but apart form that I didn't see many either. felt like normal troops bashing vs each others wich isn't as interesting.
Btw am I the only one dissapointed in the lack of high tech units? Didin't feel like many few but strong units. no mutas, no tanks, just boring spam in this battle report as well
Nice report. Banelings and hunter-seeker missiles seems to be ridiculously powerful, like slow and cheap infested terrans, and scarabs with parachutes. :O
Can't say I like the looks of the buildings and resources. They've really made the shapes a lot rounder in comparison to BW, making them look much more cartoony than the units. Looks kinda strange since most of the units seem rather sleek.
People say these players are good but I hope that's not the case. The gameplay just looks awful and barely breaking 50 supply in a 20 minute game just isn't appealing to me. Everything looks slow as shit, the air units especially. The units all have a spring to their step that is really uncharacteristic of SC and makes it look a lot more like wc3. All the terran units had a weird running animation that just didn't look like it suited guys wearing huge amounts of armor. And the lings hopping around like bunnies in tandem made me cringe.
This is a tired criticism I am sure but it just still doesn't look like its own game, it looks like wc3 in space
Nice report with over-the-top commentary ("oh my god what a fierce zergling army" while looking at 4 lings). Was expecting more tech, since it was pretty long game. They were using same core units all game long (with exception to nighthawks)...
EDIT: I agree with most people that game seemed a bit slow and lings hopping felt so retarded, donno why
David Kim was a peer of semi-pros. Yet he made a below D+ mistake of getting fooled by a hidden expo drone.
I don't think the low number of units is the fault of the players, though. It's just how the game is designed. T had two bases for quite long. Stuff just builds very slow or something, I donno. He had like 3 stargates buiilding stuff for 1/3rd of the game.
How many of you guys actually have played SC2 yet? Some of you seem like you're really reaching for it. BlizzCon sure felt a hell of a lot better then this looked.
On April 17 2009 03:08 sushiman wrote: Nice report. Banelings and hunter-seeker missiles seems to be ridiculously powerful, like slow and cheap infested terrans, and scarabs with parachutes. :O
Can't say I like the looks of the buildings and resources. They've really made the shapes a lot rounder in comparison to BW, making them look much more cartoony than the units. Looks kinda strange since most of the units seem rather sleek.
Banelings seem a little imba to me, they're fast and rape marines and have a decent amount of health it seems. Anyone else feel like it was just a little bit of a rock paper scissor battle of units. Battle Report one was really like that.
On April 17 2009 03:09 floor exercise wrote: People say these players are good but I hope that's not the case. The gameplay just looks awful and barely breaking 50 supply in a 20 minute game just isn't appealing to me.
Check the mins/gas when they click on the players' units/building. The Terran was ~700 couple of times I looked, the Zerg >1000 minerals. I wouldn't judge the amount of units you will be able to get out from this, consider when strong players get their hands on proper build orders for sc2. I dunno, do you disagree? I don't think there's a way we can tell anything about how professional/competetive sc2 gameplay will look like from this at all.
On April 17 2009 02:36 twincannon wrote: ugh Dustin Browder is just like the living embodiment of the facepalm.
"The terran has spotted an overlord and now he knows his opponent is zerg!" "Oh the zerg is going for what we here at blizzard call a fast expand at what we call the natural expansion!"
I really liked this BR! You can spot units and larva better then before and it was overall fun to watch! But the zergling movement felt a bit odd... at least for me.
Wow, I can actually see whats happening for a change, and the zerg creep is more of a grey colour, so I can now see whats happening in the zerg base. I like how the overlord sort of turns to dust and crumbles as it dies. Hunter seeker missile looks really slow atm.
Just realised it will take more units to block ramps also
The game definitely wasn't on fastest, but it was still fun to watch. At this moment, I'm pretty much desperate to see any kind of SC2 action regardless of the players' skill.
My only complaint was that the team colors were rather difficult to see. Definitely not as noticeable as they were in SC1.
EPT
