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Right this is the kind of post that gets shot down in flame by purists, so it would be nice to get responses from open minded people.
What i'm basically saying, is what if Blizzard decided to make a sequel to starcraft, but did it with some sense. So like the CS making people, they realised the basic game is SO strong and great and fun, that changing that will fuck up the game. In Starcraft's case, it's arguable that even changing the units would fuck up the game.
So they want to make our great game much better, so they can re-release it and try and get the kind of cult going in Europe/UK/USA that CS has. They'd probably mess with the graphics, but we can hope they would only make it prettier/sharper so as not to effect gameplay. Ideally, they'd mess a little with gamebalance, taking a look at the odd silly upgrade cost or ineffective unit (but lets not go into that, as it's been debated in 100000 threads).
What this is about, is the interface. As a fairly average kinda playing games type person, I have to say that SC's interface is a piece of shit. You play a game and have to deal with a truly ridiculous amount of pointless crap to enjoy it.
Some things which should be changed:
1: When you build a worker unit, it should fucking go and mine. Once your gas geyser is done, the optimum amount of workers should mosey on down and get your gas straightaway. You shouldn't have to do it yourself, because it's intensely boring. If you don't want this stuff to happen automatically, then there should be an option for it, but your average gamer DOES NOT want to spend a good portion of every game telling their probes to go and mine.
2: (this is more radical): You should be able to tell a building to 'pump' units/peons/upgrades, and specify which order of priority your cash is allocated (e.g pump zealots and probes, but make sure money goes to zeals instead of probes first). I think this also would mean less time doing boring stuff. If you are a progamer then you can not use this feature, and by building each thing at the exact right time for your personal strategy, probably get some kind of advantage over someone who doesn't, though maybe not if in an epic micro battle.
3: You should be able to do a similar thing to ensure supply generating shit is made at the optimal times. So you mark out a series of spaces for depots and pylons, and they are built in the order you marked them to coincide with them finishing a bit before you hit supply limit.
4: You should be able to select all your units at the same time. The first thing I noticed when playing was that I could only pick 12 units. This is unneccessary in the extreme. Smart players will naturually split their units into groups to let them micro better and flank well etc. But when I build 100 lings, it would be nice to send them in one instant wave without having to give myself rsi to do so.
5: When all your units are selected, you should be able to use all their individual hotkeys. I can't think of a reason not to. Oh and you should be able to customise your hotkeys.
6: The map should be already revealed but in fog of war, so you know where everything is on an unfamilliar map. This just makes sense, and would encourage more varied maps being used.
Those are the basics, but I imagine I could think of more. Oh workers should split automatically.
The overall point is that it makes the game much more fun to play. Non-pro gamers can now play very high level style games, able to concentrate on strategy and micro, without having to do boring crap for 30-70% of the game. Pro gamers, freed of distractions will be able to pull off mindblowing pieces of micro.
New players can get into the game and actually play with their friends without 3 months of getting put off by doing boring and unneccessary multi-tasking while trying to enjoy a great game.
Oh, and while this is slightly off topic, why doesn't the game just start with 6 workers? No build except 4 pool would be affected, and the amount of time saved would be astronomical over time.
Cheers for reading, if you have intelligent well-reasoned stuff to say, would be appreciated.
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most of your suggestions just seem to be making the game easier to play, that makes getting really good less of an achievement and takes away some/alot of the appeal. they really dont have a positive effect on the game other than making you do less stuff at once.
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I could handle using the features that Armies of Exigo uses, but going beyond that, would, in my opinion, be too much.
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On May 20 2005 17:46 HungZerg wrote:
most of your suggestions just seem to be making the game easier to play, that makes getting really good less of an achievement and takes away some/alot of the appeal. they really dont have a positive effect on the game other than making you do less stuff at once.
Yeah I agree.
If Blizzard carries out all of your changes, then the game would be too simple to play. The game is interesting and fun to play because it requires both practice and intelligence. If the game is too simple, then there goes half of the game.
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what the fuck. that would just fuck up this whole game. multitasking is what makes a good player. sc will be overrun by micro only noobs. we will have nothing to do for like 10 minutes, that would just bore us even more. and about the selecting all units and being able to use their individual hotkeys. yea, if u want the panel on the right to span most of the right side. Workers should be split automatically? what the fuck are you smoking. and stop using the word 'optimum'. please. anyway, all that zealot first, probe when money would screw over your timing. once again multitasking is what separates a great player from a good one i would be bored silly the first 5 minutes of the game since all the peons will go to gas/mineral automatically.
Cheersfor reading, if you have intelligent well-reasoned stuff to say, would be appreciated.
cant help u there, sorry.
PS: this better be a joke
edit: plz dont get rid of 4pool. its my only way of winning with zerg t.t oh and if any changes should be made in sc, it should be the storm damage.
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On May 20 2005 17:53 1hp wrote:what the fuck. that would just fuck up this whole game. multitasking is what makes a good player. sc will be overrun by micro only noobs. we will have nothing to do for like 10 minutes, that would just bore us even more. and about the selecting all units and being able to use their individual hotkeys. yea, if u want the panel on the right to span most of the right side. Workers should be split automatically? what the fuck are you smoking. and stop using the word 'optimum'. please. anyway, all that zealot first, probe when money would screw over your timing. once again multitasking is what separates a great player from a good one i would be bored silly the first 5 minutes of the game since all the peons will go to gas/mineral automatically. Show nested quote +Cheersfor reading, if you have intelligent well-reasoned stuff to say, would be appreciated. cant help u there, sorry. PS: this better be a joke
Every single time, we have someone like you jumping in and turning it into a flame-war.
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United States12224 Posts
There is a reason stuff like this gets shot down. That is because War3 used this philosophy and that game frankly sucks. Taking out the "mundane tedious boring" stuff sounds like a great idea because it will give players more time to micro, but it's one of those things that sounds good on paper until you try it out. To the average player, the kind of player that has trouble keeping up with simultaneous micro and macro, it's a good thing. Macro isn't much of a problem, the economy runs itself, and all your time can be spent microing. If you plan to never graduate beyond the newbie level, that's fine. But when you start taking the game more seriously and begin playing on a competitive level, you'll find that most games play out the same way, and each high level player is exactly as micro-skilled as the next. It was perhaps a little extreme in War3's case because units had so much life and did so little damage, but the same would happen for Starcraft.
It has nothing to do with being a purist, really. If anything I'd say that you're just being lazy. Now for your specific points:
1) If there were an option to turn off automatic mining, nobody would ever use it because it is such a huge advantage when your economy is automated. Following this, see my first point.
2) I have no idea how this would work. Where would you specify the priorities? There are also so many different levels of priority it would just be confusing and lame.
3) What if you want to reach a supply limit then attack and drop your supply via unit death as opposed to building more depots? What if you want to save your money for something else? Where would you turn off this option?
4) No this is a horrible idea. The 12-unit selection limit was built into the game for a reason - not only to make it easy to select unit portraits, but for balance reasons too. If you have 100 lings and you are able to send them all somewhere in one large group, that is an enormous balance problem because you have a massive advantage over other races whose armies are smaller, and lings are very cost-effective so the developers took this into account when deciding on a selection limit too.
5) This actually wouldn't be too bad. I wouldn't have a problem with that.
6) I would like this too. I played an 8-player FFA the other day on Expedition and I had no idea where I was going, even after studying the map preview in the game lobby. Part of the problem there is because none of the start locations are labeled, but it would be nice to have the fog of war like War3's. That's one thing that's really good about that game.
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i have never complained on anyone who shared their thoughts about what would like to see changed in SC2 but this time it just goes beyond my borders and NO: i'm not a purist!!
all of your suggestions just want to make the game much more easy to play. well, imo this is not the case. having some level of difficulty IS a thing that makes this game lovable because no matter how long you're playing it there are always always tons of levels to advance. with your suggestions people would only have to keep in mind just a small portion of what there is to consider now, which either you want to accpet it or not : IT' S NOT FUN!
fun is getting better and better and owning more people by the day with the skills you have managed to acquire or your supreme ideas you put into your game. making it x1000 easier as you want is just pointless and would make the game appeal to so many more people... and then dump it forever!!
sc requires dedication and lots of effort to be put in. take them away and you have.... just another rts
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so.... ur basically saying.... "this game is too hard, make it simplier" ????
lol -.- hmmm here's another good idea, y don't u just have the computer play each other and u watch and bet on who wins?! very simple 
btw, what u think as 'boring crap' is not so boring to others...
nice idea of a post, but i have to say that ur just putting out ideas to help "YOU" more than other ppl...
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most of ur ideas are in war crap 3 and that game sucks , i only agree with number 4 because hotkeying 129012812 groups of lings is a bitch when you need to hotkey your hatches and shit too. i can never hotkey that many groups cause they would overlap my hatch hotkeys.
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On May 20 2005 17:40 Tal wrote:
Oh and you should be able to customise your hotkeys.
6: The map should be already revealed but in fog of war, so you know where everything is on an unfamilliar map. This just makes sense, and would encourage more varied maps being used.
These 2 things I sort of agree with (and I think there's already a program out that helps with the hotkey thing). As for everything else, I agree with HungZerg.
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yeah you basically want the game to do everything for you so you can play without touching the keyboard
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if you want only micro game = W3FT
if you want macro/micro/multitasking/strategy = SCBW
but I think they can change the graphics a bit and made a 800x600+ version 
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there are numerous things built in no starcraft which serve to real purpose other than to add an unnecessary difficulty level to fill in the gap for what would have otherwise been the discovery of an empty game. Starcraft has one of the worst configuarations for playability i have ever witnessed in any game on any platform. Half the attention to the design seems to implicate an intentional desire to do this, such as with the ill use of a keybaord to manage this type of game, and non-customizable keys. Now what players say is an attempt to newbify the game, i see as an attempt to focus more time and thought into actual strategy. If you break down even the best replays out there, the ones people proclaim for their brilliant tactical decisions, it really becomes something painfully simple that any one of us could have come up with. Its just that we dont get to because we're too busy battling the games internal design built against us. "oooh, he clones arbiters and does a drop" i mean thats a one two manuever. But you get props doing it when everything has to be micro managed. Using a simplified interface would actually put players at the helm of a true military strategist, a general, and not just a grunt where you have to be told everything to do.
However people seem to have more fun with reflexes and coordination than actual thought process these days, most games being instinct driven, and starcraft is no different. And i will admit there is some fun to be had in mastering a fluttering mouse and wrist strain reaching accross the entire keyboard back and forth. Hell, maybe gamers arent even intelligent enough to come up with truely awe inspiring strats that would make the navy seals proud, so we will settle with marine micro and mutalisk control.
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I have an idea. Bring up all suggestions you honestly think are good, we discuss them and then we send them to Blizzard. Some really creative and innovative suggestions migth make them read the whole thing and think over it, and if were lucky some things will get into the game.
Here is some things I personally would make SCII a *really* good game. Some are minor changes, some are major changes. Discuss!
1) Better graphics. Yeah it's going to have to be in 3rd but with a fixed viewpoint that doesn't matter at all.
1b) Observer mode with completly free camera controll. (Imagine how wicked the battles would be when you can zoom down rigth down to the marine in Ground Controll style.
1c) Free camera mode in replays as well.
2) Better interface.
2b) Find idle worker command (why not?)
2c) Larger possible groups.
2e) Toggle for HP/Shields/Mana for all units when selected, both in portrait and in game. (Would help you find the templar with mana left for a storm that much easier)
2f) Mode to let individiual units selected shine up for easier identification on the battlefield when selected as portrait. (You click injured zeal and get some kind of signal so you instantly know which one is injured)
2g) Que construction for workers, especially protoss. (So yeah, queing a probe to build 5 pylons late game makes the game easier but...
2h) Units autmatically move out of the way when you put down a structure. (Finally being able to plcae sunkens in mineral line. YES!)
3)Gameplay
3a) Unit AI's fixed. (Gols/reavers/goons)
3b) Better pathfinding.
3c) Better maps from start (Just take all the promaps over the ages and implent them, and then make some new ones.
3d) New terrain with tactical uses. (Such as shallow water making units move slower in it, Grass enabling small units to autmatically hide in it when standing still and such things.)
3e) Matchup system a la WCIII so you can allways play people of the same skill.
3f) Built in voice chat system.
3g) Sign system for setting up units in formations. (Basically press down one mouse button or two and then "draw" a pattern and your units will line up like that. They won't keep it but they will initally line up like it. Say you want to contain a ramp. Press both mouse buttons and draw a half circle and your goons will automatically form up as a half circle.)
4) Units/Races
4a) Split races, meaing every race get's split up in 3 different factions with most units being very similar but still having a few wholy individual units and some special abilities for most units.
So you select Terran:Confederation or Protoss:Judicator cast or Zerg:Random etc.
4b) Only one new race. (Much faster to balance, factions make the game have 12 unique races anyway.
5) Editor
5a) Just vastly improved editor. Like WCIII but on crack. So you can produce any time of map including StarioCart or Starcraft: Doom. (Wich would incidently allow people to play units a la Dungeon Keeper in an UMS scenario while their ally microes, or take buildings like in Ghost or...
The possibilities are endless.
Put a LOT of work in the "map" editor.
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The game empire earth is a good example of how an rts can function on a large scale with little micro or on a small scale with lots of micro simulataneously. And it is quite fun to have this massive aerial view of the map and just select units in hords and plan interesting feign's and baited attacks with multiple flank angles and so forth with the simple whisk of a mouse. Then you can fly in and start messin with units one by one if you so desire.
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United States12224 Posts
On May 20 2005 18:01 SchOOl_VicTIm wrote:
all of your suggestions just want to make the game much more easy to play. well, imo this is not the case. having some level of difficulty IS a thing that makes this game lovable because no matter how long you're playing it there are always always tons of levels to advance.
That's actually a very good point, and I have a short personal story related to it. My friends and I used to play SC almost daily (LAN environment) back when we were in high school. In my junior year, shortly after Brood War came out, I started surfing the Battle.net forums in my free time in Keyboarding class. I learned about the balance of the game and applied it when we played. Mostly we just played against the computer in 2v2s or 3v3s. I got a little better. Then I started reading strategies and stories and learning about micro on BattleReports.com, and again I learned more and applied it when we played. Beating the computer became easier and easier as I became faster and more knowledgeable and could compensate for the shortcomings of my teammates. The two friends that I played with both had different opinions about Starcraft: one saw it the way I did, as a deep game with a lot of potential, and he began picking up my learned strategies and we taught each other to become better. The other friend simply saw Starcraft as a casual way to spend time with friends, not really taking the game seriously and struggling to beat the computer. As we continued to play, sometimes against the computer and sometimes against each other, my other friend (the casual gamer) began slipping away from Starcraft and into other games like Age of Kings and Emperor: Battle for Dune. A major contributing factor to his becoming bored with Starcraft was that my friend and I had become too good. As we became better and better, my other friend would join us for Starcraft less and less often, and eventually he came to hate the game.
I guess the moral of the story is to look at it from a different perspective. Yes, things may be tough for you because there is so much multitasking involved with the game, but if you are a casual gamer with no real drive to improve, you will lose interest in this game and find a new game to play. On the same note, the reason Starcraft is still so popular today is because multitasking is required to become good - there are so many facets to the core of the game, from differing micro, macro, strategic, tactical, and recon abilities, that many different skill levels exist. Removing some of these removes some of these skill tiers, it's true, but that also means the players who strive to become the best will find that there is no distinguishing element that makes them the best.
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re CuddlyCuteKitten:
I like the ideas!
ya fixed view but with ability to scroll out or in too?
larger groups? mabey triple click for select all of one unit type. the more units you have selected the worse they obey the command? where 1-12 will obey what you do while more have a increasing deviation in pathfinding perhaps?
also, add that fog of war thing which has been talked about.
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One of the things on my wish list is, when you have a group of zerg units selected and they're burrowed, and the other player attacks them, some of them pop out of the ground. When you try to unburrow the group, the units above ground try to re-burrow into the ground, rather than the whole group unburrowing. So unless you try to ctrl-select your burrowed units to unburrow (difficult when you have more than 1 or 2 groups burrowed in a spot), all your units get slaughtered.
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Now my 2 cents, i think an interesting idea would be some sort of "dodging" or "aiming" or whatever so that when a pro gamer would focus hard on a single unit like a marine he could be able to beat 2 marine controlled by a newbie. Like lets say 1 zealot controlled by Nal_ra would easily beat 1 zealot controlled by a random newbie.
Lets say a "shield" button that you could press at right moment and it blocks. But that could only be applied to a single unit at once. so we could see pros do that would multiple units while us normal people could not do that, making the gap between pros and us even bigger.
I also like the faction idea. Basicelly this could be a little bit based on player preference.
We could have lets say 3 marine types(one for each faction).
One that cost 80 mineral, is made as fast as normal marine, 60 life, 7 damage.
That marine would be a bit weaker than the real marine but it makes it a lot easier for beginners to spend their money and theres less units to control(more cost effective), less barracks to make and so on.
A second marine type that would be for intermediate...the normal 40/6 marine that we all know.
And maybe a third "pro gamer" marine that would be faster walking and 30/6.
So basicelly the begginner trying to use the pro version of the marine will just die to lurkers....
And the pro would clearly do a lot better with the pro version of the marine(imagine the micros).
Another way would be to just make it 3 different faction to have more possible strategies but that would be pretty hard for blizz to balance.
Lets say have a faction with vultures doing less damage but more mines. So today nada feels like massing mines, he picks this faction, other day he wants to probe rush a lot he might pick the damage vulture and so on.
Just to answer tal, even thought i agree game could be fun that way, i think it is a lot more impressive to see pros do what they do with a shitty interface than with a godly interface......there be almost no diff between pros and average korean A- on pgt. At casual play level it could be nice but for serious gamers i think the current interface makes it better.
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