Protoss For a Day

1up had a man on the ground at the announcement of StarCraft II to a legion of South Korean fans. James Mielke also had the chance to sit down with the developers of the game for a one-on-one hands-on with everything they're willing to share so far. Includes video with some new footage of the title. From the article: "Dustin Browder admitted that the Black Hole attack was something that would have to be nerfed immediately, as both he and Sigaty laughed at the sight of my entire fleet taking a nosedive in one fell swoop. As I stated earlier, there's still a lot of balancing that needs to go into the game, and this play session was one way for the developers to see what things need it the most. After all, Blizzard has been working on this game for two years already, and we were the first fresh eyes to see the game in a long time, so things that the dev team may now take for granted, are still a surprise to new players. Whether the Black Hole will be nerfed to absorb a limited number of ships, or do a specific amount of damage, or powered-down in some other way hasn't been decided, but the tide of battle will undoubtedly require slightly more skillful play than simply producing a Mothership and hitting 'Black Hole' on the enemy."

I love it. I won't buy it.

As much as I love the Starcraft/Command and Conquer games, I won't buy them. At least not for several years. I was sorely disappointed that Command and Conquer 3 wouldn't run on a one year old top of the line computer (and I returned it to the store). PC games are ridiculous, as far as requirements go. I'm looking forward to buying Starcraft 2 from the bargain bin in a few years when I own a PC capable of playing it.

Re:You love it... You should buy it.

As much as I love the Starcraft/Command and Conquer games, I won't buy them. At least not for several years. I was sorely disappointed that Command and Conquer 3 wouldn't run on a one year old top of the line computer (and I returned it to the store). PC games are ridiculous, as far as requirements go. I'm looking forward to buying Starcraft 2 from the bargain bin in a few years when I own a PC capable of playing it.

Fortunately Blizzard typically "low balls" their system requirements to pull in the largest audience possible. Starcraft and Broodwar had very low system requirements, even at release. Warcraft, Diablo, and WoW were the same ...

In a way they are the antithesis of iD Software...

Re:You love it... You should buy it.

Fortunately Blizzard typically "low balls" their system requirements to pull in the largest audience possible. Starcraft and Broodwar had very low system requirements, even at release. Warcraft, Diablo, and WoW were the same ...

In a way they are the antithesis of iD Software...

I think that's true in part but I also think that the kind system requirements are also a factor of how long they take to develop a game. They have the hardware requirements locked down long before the rest of it is finished. I they were a "push it out the door early" company like EA, we'd probably feel that their games were demanding on the hardware.

I'm kind of sick to death of RTS games at this point. I mean, I love the genre but I haven't seen anything innovative since Total Annihilation. My biggest beef is with the AI's. Back in the glory days of Dune 2, the top-down view was simplistic enough that you could micromanage all of your units and not feel arsed about it. As the graphics grew prettier and the maps larger, especially with isometric view in some games, it soon became an exercise in frustration to even play. I was a huge, HUGE fan of Warcraft 2 but it got a bit tedious trying to line up my missile units outside of the range of a tower to take it out, knowing that a unit that gets too close would be engaged by the tower and thus run gleefully into certain death. And how about when you order units to engage? You've got a blob of five units, they advance on the target, and the first one in range stops dead to engage. The units following behind get confused, then try to route around the guy holding up the show, then the second one in range stops, and the third one has to walk around him. By the time the blob of five are engaged, the first unit is beaten to a pulp before the target is destroyed. Smarter AI would have all of the units move into better firing positions for the given target automatically.

If any of you guys have seen the footage for World in Conflict, that's enough to make your jaw hit the floor. It's "holy fucking shit" brilliant, at least when you watch the demo movies. The only problem, yes it's all "in-game" footage, but you are NEVER going to be watching a battle from the soldier's-eye-view, you'll be up in god mode looking down clicking frantically. Dawn of War was exactly the same way, the engine could let you zoom in and enjoy the fight but you'd be slaughtered if you did that.

Now whenever I talk about this sort of thing some people say "you want the game to play itself." That's not what I'm getting at, it's more a matter of setting the pieces in motion and watching the results. In a game like Master of Orion, a planetary invasion consisted of nothing more than icons representing your guys on one side of the screen and icons representing the other guy on the other side. The computer would calculate the strength of both sides and start rolling the dice. Icons on both sides of the screen would start popping and it could actually be quite enthralling seeing whether you would come out with any troops left, probably the same fascination that comes from watching the spinning rollers on a one-armed bandit in a casino. Well, we've got the graphics these days. Why not animate that fight?

Total War seems to do this a bit. I played the Shogun game a bit and watched the demo for Medieval sputter and wheeze on my computer. I like how you are ordering about formations rather than individual units along with the modeling of morale and courage. Of course, Starcraft isn't that kind of game. It looks like Starcraft 2 is shooting to just be a graphical update of the original game. I suppose that's fair. There are more than enough fans who will pay full price for exactly that and say "thank you" to boot. But I won't be surprised if the AI is every bit as dumb as it was ten years ago.

Re:You love it... You should buy it.

Total War seems to do this a bit. I played the Shogun game a bit and watched the demo for Medieval sputter and wheeze on my computer. I like how you are ordering about formations rather than individual units along with the modeling of morale and courage. Of course, Starcraft isn't that kind of game. It looks like Starcraft 2 is shooting to just be a graphical update of the original game. I suppose that's fair. There are more than enough fans who will pay full price for exactly that and say "thank you" to boot. But I won't be surprised if the AI is every bit as dumb as it was ten years ago.

Blizzard purposely provides less "auto-cast" options to encourage micromanagement. It's a keystone of their game style and it's the divide between C&C/TA and Blizzard RTS's. It means there is a huge skill divide that does not exist in the "mass rush" style games like Supcom/TA/C&C/most RTS's. It's pretty much why a lot of skilled players prefer War 3/ SC to the list above. Thats why the total population stillplaying SupCom/TA/C&C all is less then half of the active player sin war 3.

The pathing AI is much better so you have less of the "running around" you had in SC or War 2. but ti's still nto perfect and it atcually become a strategy to make bases confuse th epathing. In SC it allowed you to take on an arbitrary number of melee units of the player didn't tell them to atatck the impeding object. In war 3 after 2 secnds of not beign able to atatck due to pathing they attack the nearest object which is a improvement. I suspect SC 2 will be similiar.

If you dont' like micro I guess SC 2 won't be for you.

Why bitch ahead?

Ahem... wouldn't it be more productive to wait and see what hardware it needs when released, before making that kind of decision and bitching?

And you do that, based on... what? Command and Conquer 3. It's not even the same bloody company. C&C is by Westwood, Starcraft is by Blizzard. It's like saying you'll avoid Ford cars because you had problems with a Toyota.

Blizzard games, for all their other faults they may have had, were always quite forgiving on the hardware front. Diablo 1 and 2 were still 2D games in an age when everyone was going 3D, Warcraft 3 wasn't that horribly hardware intensive either by comparison to similar games, and World Of Warcraft... let's just say I know people who've played it perfectly well on an underpowered laptop with integrated graphics. By comparison to, say, Everquest 2 which needed the graphics severely turned down even on top-end graphics cards available at the time, or City Of Villains which also needed a lot of graphics power even in the newbie villain area, WoW actually ran ok on pretty underpowered machines. As an anecdotal comparison, one of the guys with laptops had no problem in WoW except in the massively over-populated Ironforge auction house area (which at the time was the only alliance auction house, so there were _hundreds_ of players and tens of pets there), while the same laptop just choked on COV.

Mind you, I'm not saying that you should buy Starcraft 2. But it seems a bit ridiculous to dismiss it in advance, based on what _another_ company has done.

Black hole attack sucks!

Really, the black hole attack sucks.
Its about 3 minutes in and it just makes them whirl around and get sucked down the drain.
Where is the spaghettification and dilation effects?

Let me give orders in pause!

I can't play most RTS games singleplayer (don't even talk about multiplayer, it's a joke). Why? Because I can't handle the simultaneous loads. (According to someone with a medical degree, this is probably autism in action.) I have to be able to stop the game, look around, check on things, and so on... Otherwise, I can't keep up, because I can't build up my base while I'm directing armies -- because, while I'm directing the army, my brain completely forgets about the base. I have to pause frequently and queue up orders.

So I do just fine at Rise of Nations or Rise of Empires, or WH40K:DoW, but I am absolutely worthless at Warcraft or Starcraft. And, having learned this, I just don't play them any more, at all.

If they were to make it so that I could pause the game, scroll around the map, and give orders, I would probably really enjoy the game. I love RTS when they can accommodate my quirks.

Some suggestions

If they were to make it so that I could pause the game, scroll around the map, and give orders, I would probably really enjoy the game. I love RTS when they can accommodate my quirks.

If you want true task isolation together with realtime action, try a Total War game. You can either get the latest Medievil II iteration or the now-cheap Rome, Medievil or Shogun varients. The campaign, with building, recruitment and deployment are turnbased while battles are realtime. In these realtime battles, not only can you move the camera and give orders while paused, you can only have one battle and there is no base to worry about when that happens. Furthermore units are grouped into formations of 40-200 soldiers depending on type so you've only got a very finite amount to worry about (up to 20 formations and not always that many). Plus pinning an enemy flank with a couple of phalanxes then breaking them with a charge by heavy cavalry from the side makes you feel like a big man nomatter how many times you do it, but that's beside the point. Also beside the point is that its one of the only games where battle organisation counts for far more than base building, citys have limited productivity and so you've gotta make what you can produce count and the units are grouped and simulated in a way that you CAN do clever things with them such as ambushes, flanking, hit and run, encirclement and use weapons of fear and they work a lot better than a blunt charge with superior numbers.

If you wanna stick strictly in the genre though, try Supreme Commander which allows you to pan, zoom and give orders when it is paused, queue up orders, edit order queues, automate some tasks (like construction, rebuilding and air transportation) or even split your screen and point half of it at your base to give a wakeup call when something explodes in it. Its pseudo precursor Total Annihilation is similar but doesn't need the same computational grunt as SupCom.

Anyway, I hope you try either of those games, I believe they accommodate your quirks well and they are great games to boot. Another thing to consider is that both games also allow you to change the speed of time in single player battles which could help you no end.

Geologists are stunned

I still think this [cad-comic.com] is the funniest portrayal of South Korea's reaction to Starcraft II.

Protoss

> Protoss

I still think that Protoss admiral was an idiot for flying his carrier into the giant brain. I assure you, I had that battle well under control.

20 or so of those big terran mobile missle launchers'll do the trick just fine...

Warcraft/Orcs

To all those that tagged this article as warcraftinspace: the correct tag is orcsinspace. Learn your history.

Re:Blizzard is evil

#1: I have no problem with Blizzard bringing lawsuits again third party servers so long as they are currently maintaining their own. The legal precident set by that case is bad, but "suing third party servers" as a reason to dislike their games doesn't cut it for me, especially when the servers better allow cheats/pirated games. If Blizzard does the same thing if Battle.net is shut down, then I'd be annoyed.

#2: It's a free service, and they aren't oblidged to keep information you're not using. You haven't played your game in 3 months, and they're spending money for those 3 months for your characters to be there. To keep the service free, deleting inactive characters and accounts is something they need to do. All you have to do is play each character/account 1 hour in every 90*24 and you're golden. Alternatively, if you don't play the game that often you can always play single player. Blizzard doesn't delete characters off your computer, and you can mod the game to suit you if you don't like going it alone (or play with friends on Open Battle.net).

#3: I don't agree with this, especially as a reason to avoid Blizzard games. Imagine if in Counter-Strike you could see exactly where every player is all the time. That would completely destroy much of what makes the game strategic, fun, and exciting. If you want to play games without Fog of War, you can make custom maps to do so just as people do for BGH style maps. You won't get ranked for it, but you have the option to "embrace change".

Map Hacking isn't incorporated into ranked play for the very reason that it is a substitute for skill. StarCraft and WarCraft III were designed so that intelligence gathering is an important aspect. Eliminating that can be a fun diversion, but seriously hinders competitive play.