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Ever since burning crusade, it has felt more and more like blizzard could give a shit less about their customers. And maybe that's what WoW told them. That they could do whatever pleased the lowest common denominator and make a fortune.
With the current news about their butchering of UMS, no lan, no chat, bnet 2.0, retarded zerg changes and so forth, I can't help but have what's left of my faith in blizzard shaken. I love Blizzard's games. I've played and bought diablo 2, wc3, SC, WoW (vanilla) countless times (who didn't lose their cds?). I just feel now that they're done being a company for the player and they're ready to milk every one of their titles for all they're worth (Hello EA/Activision/Sony!)
Have you ever felt like everything you've done in a game of SC2, like your build order, keeping your worker count up, expanding, being aggressive and all that amounts to nothing when one move decides the game? Imagine two colossus showing up a few seconds late only to eradicate your army. Or a well placed storm when you've got nowhere to run. Neural parasite on your last two thors as the fight is dieing down.
My point is that the game, for all the tedious and mind-numbing activities required to do well, has a disproportionate "do or die" system. This makes losses feel worst because of all the little things you did that amounted to nothing, and I would argue that it also cheapens victories when something as silly as a quick banshee seals the deal.
How many streams/games have you played/watched where minutes before the end battle even happens, the winning player thinks "Oh he went DTs? Well I've got a raven so he loses" or something similar. I'm not complaining about hard counters or scouting. I'm saying despite scouting and despite counters, the game is too linear, too harsh in its punishment. It is FORCING you to play a certain way to beat a certain style. Maybe I'm just naive for wishing there was more strategy to my RTS.
Certainly SC2 will do well, and it will be fun to watch and so forth. But I question whether it is actually fun to play, whether we are playing it because it's SC2 and not based on its actual merit. The game is polished and whatnot, but is it fun?
I don't mean to whine and rant and cry but 90% of the game is SC1 in 3d and the last 10% is a few new units. WC3 really shook things up with the hero system and the low army pop. What is SC2 bringing to the table that we haven't seen before? Is SC2 the WoW of RTS?
  
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at casual levels of play sc2 was meant to be the wow of RTS so it can milk the gamers dry
but it still has the same potential skill ceiling (note i said potential) and even in beta its highly competitive at top levels of play
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I know there are going to be a lot of people who are going to disagree with your points with all these facts about SC2's micro and macro and how it's balanced and how you can micro armies and stuff, but, I completely agree. SC2 really isn't that fun at this point and I really hope that something significantly changes to make it more entertaining.
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are you vexo from arenajunkies?
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Honestly, I think Blizzard did a great job in making SC2. It may not be perfectly balanced in every way (it's a beta), but things will be rounded out and I am sure bnet 2.0 will be fixed, the chat will prolly be included, and the UMS is actually not too bad(played a round of evolves and loved it). It's still a beta and don't complain too much til you see the finished product.
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United States47024 Posts
On May 26 2010 12:42 Vexx wrote:
Have you ever felt like everything you've done in a game of SC2, like your build order, keeping your worker count up, expanding, being aggressive and all that amounts to nothing when one move decides the game? Imagine two colossus showing up a few seconds late only to eradicate your army. Or a well placed storm when you've got nowhere to run. Neural parasite on your last two thors as the fight is dieing down.
Uh, what?
Those kinds of do-or-die moments were in SC1 as well. Mine daebak, reaver scarabs, the spells being significantly stronger (Storm, Dark Swarm, Stasis), and so on. The harsh punishment for mistakes is arguably what DEFINED BW as a spectator experience.
As many things as there are to complain about SC2, this one is kind of silly.
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I agreed with you to a certain extent up until the last paragraph.
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I think SC2 is a ton of fun. But I lose a lot of faith in a company making billions of dollars that can't make an online experience as good as the guys at S2 have done with Heroes of Newerth. They have like 12 employees and in my eyes revolutionized how online experiences should be.
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Aren't your complaints about doing many little things well but losing to one misstep equally true of SC1?
I haven't played either game at a high level but I had that feeling frequently playing both games, although it hasn't detracted from my experience.
The only way I feel that part of your point could make sense is that because the mechanics are so much easier in SC2, the advantage you will accrue by being better mechanically than your opponent is much smaller, and thus the balance is more easily tipped by a small mistake. But maybe that is an error in the way we see "small" and "large" mistakes.
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8748 Posts
I always feel like everything I do in every game matters.
I don't feel like strategy is linear at all. I make up my own shit that no one else is doing and I make it work against the best players.
Nobody is being forced to play a certain way. There's still at least as much style in SC2 as there is in BW.
If you are going to have the concern of a competitive/hardcore player, you should have the skills of a competitive/hardcore player. Once you have those skills, you'll understand how everything matters and why nothing is tedious and you'll have a chance at winning with something other than the currently best known strategy against whatever you're playing.
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I have to disagree with you Vexx. SC2 so far leaves some stuff to be desired, but most of this is overreacting to something which is still the beta. BW had issues of it's own during the beta. Blizzard learned through WoW that they can publish not-so-ironed-out games and patch them up on the go without being punished by the community. At least the support will always be there to fix any huge issues about the game. At this point, it's Bnet 2.0 that has more issues then the game itself in my opinion.
It is very natural that it feels like the BW player has more options to choose from for his gamestyle, since it's gameplay is so well developed after more then 10 years of competitive play. Of course, SC2 has developed quite fast thanks to so many of the best BW players (especially foreigners) hopping right into the driver's seat for the beta test - which is a great thing! But you can rest assured that after the game goes live you will see many more strategies from top players or even start developing them yourself if you decide to be competitive about it. I have to admit I am a bit worried about variation of Zerg play at this time (especially missing the lurkers, and various other early tech) which seems more macro oriented and with less impressive lair tech then BW. But I am sure it will evolve eventually.
As far as your complaints about the power of the momentum goes, StarCraft is all about that ! The reason why pro-games are so back and forth so often is because both players are playing very well and reacting very fast to other's actions. The truth is every second of the game is edgy and intense and at any moment anyone could take the game (as long as there are no significant advantages already). You see it happen, people make mistakes and expose weaknesses even at top level. Flash sent his marines 1 second ahead of his 2 reinforcing medics and lost the finals just with that (since he went on a tilt and played poorly/risky in the games afterwards). StarCraft has so much "do or die" in it, and that's one of the reasons why it's the best e-sport up to date. It makes it both harder to master and more fun to watch, thanks to the unpredictability.
I have trouble understanding some of the points you made like the DT vs Raven. Anyway, we are all in bad spirits sometimes! And sometimes it feels like it's the game is faulty. But from an objective game I don't think the game is to blame.
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If you are going to use an example of "being forced to play a certain way," you really shouldn't use one that is exactly the freaking same as the predecessor, which also happens to be the most successful rts ever. Just because you have to get detection when your opponent gets dts doesn't mean you are forced into one option. TvP certainly seemed an interesting matchup in BW, even though you could get dts faster and transition into other tech easier in BW.
I feel like there has been a recent influx of blogs/posts about why SC2 is going to be a horrible game for this reason or that, even though this is probably one of the most successful beta games ever. It is massively fun or me (a noob) to play, and has produced TONS of dynamic, intense games in from the highest level of competition.
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Ya I actually started off very critical of the gameplay but I'm now enjoying it a lot more. However, I wholeheartedly agree with your statements about Blizzard not listening to customers regarding Battlenet 2.0. It's a shame, and I really, really hope it doesn't stay this way. Blizzard has always been great...
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On May 26 2010 13:24 Liquid`NonY wrote:
If you are going to have the concern of a competitive/hardcore player, you should have the skills of a competitive/hardcore player. Once you have those skills, you'll understand how everything matters and why nothing is tedious and you'll have a chance at winning with something other than the currently best known strategy against whatever you're playing.
I just wrote a novel and closed my page by accident. So you're going to get cliff notes this time!
I'm relatively competitive myself. 1800 plat pre patch 13, top 20 USEast WC3 ladder multiple times. I am a very strategic player, I love watching replays, tweaking builds and perfecting stuff. I appreciate the deeper choices and reasoning of a skilled player. That's in fact, why I made this rant.
On the journey to victory, you see everything adding up until you finally got that siege tank that won the game for you. But I look at it as a bunch of shit I was going to do anyway because that's how the game is played. I had to build my 7th, 8th, 9th etc SCV, I had to get a rax, a refinery and supply depots. I had no choice. All these decisions are repetitive. Every game. Build more workers, build more supply, etc.
Skill in SC1 and in SC2 has more to do with being OCD and having the presence of mind to remember to do things over and over. Inject larva... every 25 seconds on every hatchery you have. So few of your actions/decisions are really game changing. Things like when/where to expand, what unit to add to your army, whether to commit to an attack or perform a drop in his base. These are game changing choices and they are the minority of all actions. It's fun to watch the armies clash and appreciate the strategy element of the game like microing your tanks in to position or dropping storms. But no one is lining up to see you build more drones.
I've had countless games that reach X minutes in and I think to myself "I wish the game could have just started now." Here I am against a toss who makes a mistake (clumped units) and gets EMPd and instantly destroyed. Game is over. I feel like the only real decision I made in that game was where/when to place that EMP. Everything else was just a grind. The same grind I perform every single game regardless of who I'm facing.
I'm not saying the game is shallow or there's no room for a great player to shine. I'm saying that so much of being a great player is tedious repetition, game after game. I think many players feel the same because far more people are playing some UMS than ladder in Blizz's strategy games. Nobody expects an RTS to play like a grind. And that's what SC2 feels like.
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EPT
