EPTAlso another thing to note is when the spells deal damage like fungal or storm the spellish feeling is less because the spell really just feels like its just "the attack" of that unit. I guess at the end of the day what im getting at is sometimes spell mechanics might feel stupid to the viewer. And you dont wanna reach a point where the RTS feels like WoW PvP where its just a bunch of spells going off.
I feel wings of liberty is very similar to BW in terms of RTS-feel, RTS-gameflow, and competitive-ceiling.
Competitive ceiling means there is a huge gap of ability from bad to good player. This game is a test of certain talents. At the highest level everyone needs superb mechanics to even make it through the door, however once you are through the door the talents that are tested are many qualities of our mind / thinking ability / strategy making ability and im sure many other talents are tested within this competition.
The point of the term of competitive ceiling means a game is so hard to be good at and there is a huge gap of skill-levels between novice and pro. BW obviously has more "skill ceiling" than sc2 in terms of mechanics, but i feel SC2 is still very up there in terms of "competitive ceiling" which is the main thing esports fans want to see in a game and that is the main thing that makes it exciting. How good are you at the game, who is the best, thats what makes it fun to watch.
The qualities of BW and SC2:WOL as a RTS that determine the competitive ceiling are so woven into them that its hard to even truly see what they are. Id say its probably a combination of everything. How the units work, how the maps work, how the gametime works, etc. Its hard to pinpoint exactly the amazing qualities and the concepts im trying to explain with this thread are extremely vague and i cant even really figure out in my own mind what im trying to convey here.... but i will give it a shot so here i go.
First ill talk about "real time feel". I feel SC/BW/SC2 nailed the "real time feel" and made it very exciting for the viewer because of it.
Ive played many RTS's and SC/BW/SC2 and even WC3 have a very "real-time" feel to it. I guess i might also mean a "fast pace" feel. Both terms describe what im getting at i think. I mean theres RTS's out there that are more casual and more slow, starcraft is sort of more "mentally fast". And this mentally fast thing makes it hard to play, but fun to watch because the game isnt too long and so many things are happening every moment in each game. Now of course SC2 is probably not going to stray too far away from these "real time" feeling principles or other RTS principles that BW had, but im just trying to put my finger on a little bit of what i even mean by all of this "shouldnt stray too far from BW" business.
Another thing im noticing is I feel WoL is a little less "spell filled" or "spell-ish feeling" of an RTS than BW and in many ways i think thats a good thing. I feel like if a RTS feels too spell-ish" it can get annoying because you feel like your just watching a bunch of spells and not watching any real combat. I feel alot of excitement comes from how these huge armies are being built that are balanced around their units physical stats and damage/speed/attacktypes and such and how they interact with eachother. However i guess this is also kind of contradictory in a way because wc3 had tons of spells and even more spells than BW but even that game didnt "feel too spellish" to me.
In fact i thought BW felt "more spellish" than Wc3 because its not just the amount of spells, its how the spells interact with the gameplay and interact with the physical properties of the units. And in terms of WoL i feel WoL is the least "spellish feeling" RTS of the three with BW feeling more spellish than wc3 and once again i think thats kind of a good thing however contradictory because Wc3 had more spells than BW. I think a great RTS will have some spellish feeling but not too much, and most of its balanced is based around how the combat units are balanced and the balance is not too determined by the spells.
I guess thats actually a good way i can define what i mean by "spellish". I feel BW matchup balance was in ways more dependent on powerful spells compared to WoL.
Heres what im trying to say i guess in BW TvZ it seemed very spell filled or spellish dependent because alot of the balance of the matchup felt like it was "attached to" the spells terran had irradiate which after a while just aoe'ed all zerg stuff down and zerg had to do plenty of work with swarm/plague, but TvP didnt feel as "spell-ish" as TvZ there was storm and terran emp/lockdown but it didnt seem to make massive dependence in the matchup enough to make TvP "feel spellish". But dont get me wrong, storm was a massive factor in TvP and the matchups balance was even hugely "attached to that", but still that didnt really make TvP feel spellish because storm in a way just felt more like the attack of the templar instead of feeling like an actual spell, so storm felt "less like a spell" in some ways. In BW PvZ it felt slightly more spellish than PvT. in PvZ storm was a big spell and toss had alot of balance attached to it, but zerg also had plague/swarm where alot of balance was attached to that as well.
And im not saying having alot of the balance of the matchup attached to it is a "bad thing", im just saying theres a thin line you are walking between fun/entertaining and just "looking stupid".
I guess that is what im getting down to when i say the term "spellish" and i guess its a opinion. In my opinion it felt like BW matchups had "more of its balanced attached to spells" and thats why it "felt more spellish" than even Wc3 or WoL.... however the point im getting at here is even though BW felt more spellish than WoL, it still didnt feel "too much spellish" and so im not saying its a problem, im mostly trying to say that entertainment wise i feel WoL was actually doing a GOOD THING by moving away from the "spellish feel" of brood war.
I guess it is entirely opinion and in my opinion i felt moving away from the spellish feel and how it was more about individual unit balanced around how they do combat and compositions... without spells having as much of a factor... made it more exciting in my eyes.
And in the expansion it feels like the balance team is making Sc2 "more spellish" and i guess many people feel like its a good thing, and im not saying its a "bad thing" but i however I feel like they are walking a thin line because BW was more spellish and WoL, however BW wasnt "too spellish" and BW was still very fun to watch because it didnt cross the thin line, and honestly i feel a thin line is being walked and you never know when they might actually go over that line and make Sc2 actually feel "too spellish" and "more spellish" than BW and if that happened it might be a problem for the casual viewer. I feel im not the only one that feels this way and theres just something about having a RTS feeling as "real time" as WoL while also feeling "not spellish" that just makes it very exciting.
I guess that point im trying to get at here is BW added plenty of "combat units" (not much spell units) and that made it a great expansion because it wasnt adding too much to the spellish feeling aspect. Most of The new units in BW Valkyrie, medic, lurker, corsair, dark templar, and devourer were all combat units that were not spellish feeling.
The oracle, viper, replicant are all super spellish feeling, heck thats all they are. Terran got shredder, warhound, and battle hellion. all of that is combat feeling units.
zerg got swarm host, which spawns timed units thats pretty combat feeling, and the viper is spellish feeling.
Toss got tempest which is combat feeling, and then 2 spellish feeling units, even though the replicants main use will be to copy siege tanks / cloaked banshees and its basically a combat unit plus a spell unit, still i feel what im trying to get at here is like theres still PLENTY of options when it comes to designing combat units with "unique combat properties" and a "unique combat feel".
I feel the combat units are what make the game so exciting and i really dont think theres too much and i feel theres still tons of room for exploration in the possibilities that are out there in the realm of combat units, maybe 20 combat units per race would be too much but where you are at now with 15 i feel like there is definitely room for improvement in all the races to make each matchup more fun/dynamic
Also another thing to note is when the spells deal damage like fungal or storm the spellish feeling is less because the spell really just feels like its just "the attack" of that unit. I guess at the end of the day what im getting at is sometimes spell mechanics might feel stupid to the viewer. And you dont wanna reach a point where the RTS feels like WoW PvP where its just a bunch of spells going off.
For example of what i mean by "many ideas are possible for fun new combat units and theres many possible ideas for combat units to fill different roles", heres one idea ive been thinking of a unit concept i feel is pretty cool that fills a possible role that maybe the metagame could use or maybe not. either way im just saying Im sure theres thousands of possible ideas for unique cool combat units, and this is one of them, and i feel unique combat units are what make the game fun and i feel going for these kinds of things is more of the right direction RTS expansions should take.
Heres a link to a post where i wrote my idea if u wanna read it (http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3430805780 ) and im not trying to advertise my idea im just using it as a example im just saying i feel all the areas/options of combat units havnt been explored yet and theres still tons of possibilities out there that can use the combat properties of units to feel cool and not spell properties.
However, finally as my title says i guess at the end of the day this is all just IMO, its all just my opinion.
