Condensed Document Notes: As per poster request from my previous thread, I have created a condensed version of the review by the same name because the previous version was simply far too long. The new document will have a core that should be less than 20% of the length of the original document and should stand on its own as a review. I could not fit my suggestions for improvement or comments on micromanagement into this length, so I will attempt to incorporate them in expandable "spoiler" style tabs for those who are interested, this additional material is also about 20% of the length of the original document.
Starcraft 2: The Wrath of Disappointment
by Phanixis
Starcraft 2, while certainly not a bad game, is little more than a remake of the original Starcraft. Good, but not deserving of the praise and accolades game reviewers can't seem to stop heaping on it. The game is essentially just a reskinned version of the original, which is rather disappointing considering the amount of time and talent that went into developing it. There has been over a decade of progress in RTS made by developers such as Relic, Cavedog, Westwood, etc. since the release of the original, and that has been outright ignored in the development of Starcraft 2.
Now the original Starcraft was obviously a very good game, so why bother updating 'what isn't broken'? Two reasons:
Problem 1: I can just play the original Starcraft. What is the point in paying $60 retail for a game you essentially already own, or investing 10 years to create what already exist? Even worse, the original Starcraft came before consumers got saddled with the DRM bullshit that currently infests the market like a horde of demonically possessed plague rats that work a second job as Lovecraftian horrors. It treated the owners like adults, enabling them to create LAN and direct connect games as well as install multiplayer spawns so they could play against friends who weren't willing to commit to owning the game. Starcraft 2 treats everybody like they're bloody 12 years old, and requires any multiplayer game to go through Battlenet to make sure no one is using pirated copies.
Problem 2: Starcraft is not, and never was, a perfect game. A good game it was, but never close to perfect, and certainly not the kind of game that can outright ignore 12 years of RTS innovation like Blizzard choose to do.
The original Starcraft was an excellent game in many respects. It was the first to incorporate three separate races with fundamentally distinct and unique play styles, which was revolutionary at the time and was implemented in a way that is still unmatched today. To enhance the way each race was played, every combat unit in the game was creatively designed, well balanced and unique, serving a clear purpose while reflecting its racial strengths and never being overshadowed by a similar unit. This resulting in a game with a strong, tight, tactical unit design that produced some very interesting multiplayer games.
This design does have a major problem however, in that its strength is largely limited to the tactical side of the game. The economic aspects of the game, which are just as important if not more important to ones actual success, are largely devoid of such innovation. Yes, there are differences in the way each race builds structures and the fact that some Terran buildings fly, but in the end each races economy works exactly the same way. All three races collect the same resources, using workers and structures that are essentially identical save for aesthetics. Both the Protoss and Terrans purchase their units at one of several structures by spending said resources, while the Zerg do endeavor to be somewhat different by having everything purchased at the hatchery provided the structure required for the unit in question has been assembled elsewhere.
Overall the economic gameplay is boring and repetitive. Build a worker ever chance you get. Assign the worker to collect resources. Build a barracks. Have it build a marine. Build another barracks, have it build marine. Now go back to the first barracks, and have it build another marine. Now build a war factory, and you get the picture. Absolutely nothing interesting going on, just the underlying byzantine accounting required by every player to obtain units. Its all essentially a direct carry over from the original Warcraft, and hasn't been considerably altered or thought of since. Economic management in Starcraft can be likened to assembly line work, it takes considerable skill, but requires no thought, no creativity and is incredibly boring to carry out.
This wouldn't be so bad if Starcraft didn't constantly force the player away from the rest of the game to do these chores, but the game seems to eschew any feature that would enable to player to delegate such mindless task to the computer. For instance, if you want to have a barracks continually build marines, you should be able to just queue 5, or even more marines. But Starcraft will immediately take the resources for all 5 of those marines, not just the one being produced, from the player, preventing their use elsewhere. This effectively punishes the player for using the queue, rendering it useless.
These problems are compounded by terrible AI. Units require constant supervision. Simply moving a unit unsupervised might get it killed because it will not fight back even if it could win, unless of course you use attack to move, which carries its own problems. In fights, when an idle group of unsupervised units gets attacked it is very common for part of the force to break off and fight or even chase the enemy while the rest stand around doing nothing. Thus you cannot leave them standing around for a second because they cannot fend for themselves, all while the economy is constantly demanding your attention.
Collectively, these flaws turn the game into a micromanagement nightmare. The emphasis on economy, the lack of working queues, the bloated economic design, and terrible unit AI all conspire together to make a game where it is incredibly difficult to merely manage what you have, let alone conduct a war. It's like the game is constantly trying to distract you from actually organizing an army and executing a clear plan of attack on the enemy. In effect, Starcraft seems to do everything in its power to stop you from using strategy, despite being a strategy game!
Then there is the general flow of the game. Perhaps it was acceptable at the time, but looking back is there really any reason the first 5 to 6 minutes of the game was building virtually nothing but workers before you collected enough resources to start building troops so you could start actually playing the game in earnest? Obviously you can scout with the workers and do something clever like an SCV rush, but this strikes me as players making the best of a bad situation, certainly not something that should have survived the 10 years of game development the sequel underwent.
This stage of the game is the followed up with rushing, where players build one or two of the first units available in mass and try to end the game immediately. While a viable tactic, it often puts the game to an end well before the full range of units and tactics are available. Only once the player gets through both these stages will the full range of tactics and units become available, and even then its often better just to focus on the economy and just amass a large group of one or two of the more effective units available.
Ultimately, Starcraft is a game the doesn't focus on its own strengths. The player will be spending an enormous amount of time repeatedly giving the same orders to their workers and production structures rather than what I would assume everyone would want to do: conducting battle with futuristic marines, alien monsters and starships! The game is constantly trying to pull the player away from the battles involving all the unique, well designed units that play off the various race's strengths and weaknesses so he can fill out requisition orders!
Now as far as the original Starcraft was concerned, these flaws were understandable. The RTS genre was new, Starcraft itself was experimental, and it managed to cover a lot of ground in other areas. But for Starcraft 2 to retain all these flaws, after 10 years of development and with virtually no other form of innovation in sight is inexcusable. This is particularly true for the simpler flaws, such as the terrible queuing system and the 5 minutes of down time at the beginning of the game. These flaws would be incredibly simple to fix, and yet after 10 years of development, Blizzard failed to do so.
The Past 10 Years and More
One it comes to innovation, there is an enormous range of material Blizzard could have borrowed from. There is the fluid gameplay, advanced friendly AI and physics engine from the Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander series, not to mention a UI and organizational structure that enabled the intuitive and easy management of a large economy and army which Starcraft is badly in need of. Then you have the control point mechanics that streamlines economic gameplay, the squad system to aid in organizing units and the cover mechanic that increases tactical depth from Relic RTS such as Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. Even the Command and Conquer system provides and intuitive GUI on the side of the screen that enables economic management without the aid of numerical key bindings.
There are of course a virtually endless number of other RTS out there to borrow from, such as World in Conflict, Dungeon Keeper, Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Age of Empires, Rise of Legends and R.U.S.E. that are chalk full of good or at least interesting ideas. Now obviously Blizzard can't adopt every idea from every RTS out there, but there are a lot of good ideas and mechanics from the past 10 years and even prior to the past 10 years, and Blizzard should have at least experimented around with some of them.
Points of Praise:
I do need to give credit where credit is due, there are a few things Starcraft 2 did do well. First, they did a fantastic job with the campaign. Obviously, the game mechanics are the same as Starcraft and the story is rubbish, but the campaign missions themselves are interesting, varied and fast paced. The between mission hub an the RPG elements are a nice touch (which by the way, are an indirect removal of some of the research from within the game itself). Matchmaking also seems solid, and is successful in placing players against others of similar skill levels. A lot of new unit designs were also creative and effective, and I particularly liked the changes to the Protoss air units. Also, the game looks good, sounds nice, and is bug free.
Final Thoughts:
So there you have it, my thoughts on Starcraft 2. Not a bad game, but dated and a disappointment. It was admittedly the safe bet and sound business decision on Blizzard's part, but I was hoping Blizzard would show a bit more ambition. Perhaps make another attempt at revolutionizing the genre, or at least bring it into the next decade. Instead we have a decade old game inhabiting current generation graphics.
Ultimately, though, my problem is that Starcraft 2 wasn't a revolution game. My problem is that, as best as I can tell, Blizzard didn't even try to improve upon the original Starcraft.
Starcraft 2: The Wrath of Disappointment
by Phanixis
Starcraft 2, while certainly not a bad game, is little more than a remake of the original Starcraft. Good, but not deserving of the praise and accolades game reviewers can't seem to stop heaping on it. The game is essentially just a reskinned version of the original, which is rather disappointing considering the amount of time and talent that went into developing it. There has been over a decade of progress in RTS made by developers such as Relic, Cavedog, Westwood, etc. since the release of the original, and that has been outright ignored in the development of Starcraft 2.
Now the original Starcraft was obviously a very good game, so why bother updating 'what isn't broken'? Two reasons:
Problem 1: I can just play the original Starcraft. What is the point in paying $60 retail for a game you essentially already own, or investing 10 years to create what already exist? Even worse, the original Starcraft came before consumers got saddled with the DRM bullshit that currently infests the market like a horde of demonically possessed plague rats that work a second job as Lovecraftian horrors. It treated the owners like adults, enabling them to create LAN and direct connect games as well as install multiplayer spawns so they could play against friends who weren't willing to commit to owning the game. Starcraft 2 treats everybody like they're bloody 12 years old, and requires any multiplayer game to go through Battlenet to make sure no one is using pirated copies.
Problem 2: Starcraft is not, and never was, a perfect game. A good game it was, but never close to perfect, and certainly not the kind of game that can outright ignore 12 years of RTS innovation like Blizzard choose to do.
The original Starcraft was an excellent game in many respects. It was the first to incorporate three separate races with fundamentally distinct and unique play styles, which was revolutionary at the time and was implemented in a way that is still unmatched today. To enhance the way each race was played, every combat unit in the game was creatively designed, well balanced and unique, serving a clear purpose while reflecting its racial strengths and never being overshadowed by a similar unit. This resulting in a game with a strong, tight, tactical unit design that produced some very interesting multiplayer games.
This design does have a major problem however, in that its strength is largely limited to the tactical side of the game. The economic aspects of the game, which are just as important if not more important to ones actual success, are largely devoid of such innovation. Yes, there are differences in the way each race builds structures and the fact that some Terran buildings fly, but in the end each races economy works exactly the same way. All three races collect the same resources, using workers and structures that are essentially identical save for aesthetics. Both the Protoss and Terrans purchase their units at one of several structures by spending said resources, while the Zerg do endeavor to be somewhat different by having everything purchased at the hatchery provided the structure required for the unit in question has been assembled elsewhere.
Overall the economic gameplay is boring and repetitive. Build a worker ever chance you get. Assign the worker to collect resources. Build a barracks. Have it build a marine. Build another barracks, have it build marine. Now go back to the first barracks, and have it build another marine. Now build a war factory, and you get the picture. Absolutely nothing interesting going on, just the underlying byzantine accounting required by every player to obtain units. Its all essentially a direct carry over from the original Warcraft, and hasn't been considerably altered or thought of since. Economic management in Starcraft can be likened to assembly line work, it takes considerable skill, but requires no thought, no creativity and is incredibly boring to carry out.
This wouldn't be so bad if Starcraft didn't constantly force the player away from the rest of the game to do these chores, but the game seems to eschew any feature that would enable to player to delegate such mindless task to the computer. For instance, if you want to have a barracks continually build marines, you should be able to just queue 5, or even more marines. But Starcraft will immediately take the resources for all 5 of those marines, not just the one being produced, from the player, preventing their use elsewhere. This effectively punishes the player for using the queue, rendering it useless.
These problems are compounded by terrible AI. Units require constant supervision. Simply moving a unit unsupervised might get it killed because it will not fight back even if it could win, unless of course you use attack to move, which carries its own problems. In fights, when an idle group of unsupervised units gets attacked it is very common for part of the force to break off and fight or even chase the enemy while the rest stand around doing nothing. Thus you cannot leave them standing around for a second because they cannot fend for themselves, all while the economy is constantly demanding your attention.
Collectively, these flaws turn the game into a micromanagement nightmare. The emphasis on economy, the lack of working queues, the bloated economic design, and terrible unit AI all conspire together to make a game where it is incredibly difficult to merely manage what you have, let alone conduct a war. It's like the game is constantly trying to distract you from actually organizing an army and executing a clear plan of attack on the enemy. In effect, Starcraft seems to do everything in its power to stop you from using strategy, despite being a strategy game!
Then there is the general flow of the game. Perhaps it was acceptable at the time, but looking back is there really any reason the first 5 to 6 minutes of the game was building virtually nothing but workers before you collected enough resources to start building troops so you could start actually playing the game in earnest? Obviously you can scout with the workers and do something clever like an SCV rush, but this strikes me as players making the best of a bad situation, certainly not something that should have survived the 10 years of game development the sequel underwent.
This stage of the game is the followed up with rushing, where players build one or two of the first units available in mass and try to end the game immediately. While a viable tactic, it often puts the game to an end well before the full range of units and tactics are available. Only once the player gets through both these stages will the full range of tactics and units become available, and even then its often better just to focus on the economy and just amass a large group of one or two of the more effective units available.
Ultimately, Starcraft is a game the doesn't focus on its own strengths. The player will be spending an enormous amount of time repeatedly giving the same orders to their workers and production structures rather than what I would assume everyone would want to do: conducting battle with futuristic marines, alien monsters and starships! The game is constantly trying to pull the player away from the battles involving all the unique, well designed units that play off the various race's strengths and weaknesses so he can fill out requisition orders!
Now as far as the original Starcraft was concerned, these flaws were understandable. The RTS genre was new, Starcraft itself was experimental, and it managed to cover a lot of ground in other areas. But for Starcraft 2 to retain all these flaws, after 10 years of development and with virtually no other form of innovation in sight is inexcusable. This is particularly true for the simpler flaws, such as the terrible queuing system and the 5 minutes of down time at the beginning of the game. These flaws would be incredibly simple to fix, and yet after 10 years of development, Blizzard failed to do so.
The Past 10 Years and More
One it comes to innovation, there is an enormous range of material Blizzard could have borrowed from. There is the fluid gameplay, advanced friendly AI and physics engine from the Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander series, not to mention a UI and organizational structure that enabled the intuitive and easy management of a large economy and army which Starcraft is badly in need of. Then you have the control point mechanics that streamlines economic gameplay, the squad system to aid in organizing units and the cover mechanic that increases tactical depth from Relic RTS such as Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. Even the Command and Conquer system provides and intuitive GUI on the side of the screen that enables economic management without the aid of numerical key bindings.
There are of course a virtually endless number of other RTS out there to borrow from, such as World in Conflict, Dungeon Keeper, Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Age of Empires, Rise of Legends and R.U.S.E. that are chalk full of good or at least interesting ideas. Now obviously Blizzard can't adopt every idea from every RTS out there, but there are a lot of good ideas and mechanics from the past 10 years and even prior to the past 10 years, and Blizzard should have at least experimented around with some of them.
Potential Improvements
Many of the successful innovations found in commercial RTS could have been applied to Starcraft 2 easily and effectively, such as:
Replace Resource Gathering with a Control Point System:
This is a simple mechanic that revolutionized the way RTS are played. Instead of using hordes of workers to harvest resources, units must spend a fixed amount of time capturing control points, and once captured, a control point provides a continuous influx of resources. Strategically, this mechanic works the same as using workers for resources harvesting, in that the economy is based on territory control, but it streamlines gameplay by eliminating the associated busywork.
To keep it more in line with the feel of Starcraft, a worker would need to build an expensive structure on said point instead of infantry capturing said point as per the conventional implementation. However, once said structure is complete, it automatically begins harvesting resources at the maximum rate with no need to build workers or refineries. This would enable the player to quickly grab a resource expansion whenever he had the resources available, allowing him to immediately move on to other concerns. As an added bonus, the starting base would already be producing resources at the maximum rate, enabling the player to immediately move on to scouting, military production and expansion with virtually none of the early game downtime.
Add a Squad System:
When determining the suitability of a squad system, the major question is how often are units going to be found in and ordered as large groups versus how often they need to be ordered around as individuals. If they are constantly ordered around as groups and rarely as individuals, they might as well be automatically grouped together, and hence are perfect candidates for being placed in a squad. In the case of Starcraft, it is not uncommon to find battlecruisers being ordered around as a single large group, so I think a strong case can be made for a squad system in this game. And while capital starships probably aren't grouped often enough to justify squading, there are a myriad of units that wouldn't be caught dead alone (and which promptly die if caught alone), and would probably work better if squaded. Units such as marines, marauders, zerglings, hydralisk, mutalisk, zealots, stalkers, valkyries, phoenixes and the like would all make fantastic squads, as they are never alone.
Units such the ghost that have no business being in a squad would still be built as individuals, while other units would serve as great attachable units. Attachable units were found in the original Dawn of War. They were built as individuals, and could freely be attached or detached from a squad, making them either part of that unit and a separate unit respectively. Attaching a unit would make its unique abilities available to the squad, a perfect mechanic for support and spellcaster units. For instance, attach a high templar to a zealot squad, and that squad can now use psionic storm, no need to number key bind the templar or pick him out of a horde of zealots, just select the single squad and then fire psionic storm from either the hot key or the GUI. Furthermore, the squad AI would work to keep the zealots between the enemy and the templar, keeping the templar out of harms way without the player's constant supervision. Very simple and very natural.
Make Gameplay More Fluid:
It's the future, units ought be able to fire on the move! Granted, there are a small handful that do, but most units have to stand in place like statues to attack. Let virtually every unit fire on the move, and even melee on the move, with the possible exception of things like siege tanks and siege mode, and the game would become much more dynamic a fluid. Aircraft in particular should avoid coming to a complete stop, to make them feel more like aircraft and less like flying tanks.
Use a Projectile Physics for Weapon Fire:
Units shouldn't be able to hit units that have traveled out of range or shoot other units through solid objects. Adding a projectile physics would resolve these problems and provide other opportunities. Fast projectiles would have a genuine advantage over slow projectiles (with many Protoss projectiles traveling instantaneously), and certain units such as siege tanks could fire in a parabolic arch to clear intervening terrain. To make things really interesting, units could miss fast moving units such as aircraft on the basis of projectile physics, and guided weapons could be added to remedy such problems.
Use True Line of Sight for Fog of War:
Units can't see through solid objects. Simple enough. Advantageous for aerial scouts, but also makes it easier to see aircraft.
Terrain Elevation Should be Continuously Variable:
There is more to 3D than pretty graphics. Replace the three level terrain system in Starcraft with one that supports continuous changes in elevation. Also, terrain should effect more than fog of war. For instance, the high ground can improve the range of some weapons (a natural compliment to projectile physics), while land units are slowed when going uphill.
Add a Cover System:
The cover system from Company of Heroes is simply awesome, and would radically improve how Starcraft is played. Currently, most fights come down to unit composition and numbers, and in many cases just numbers. A cover system would make terrain a significant part of that equation, and greatly increase the dynamism of combat. With cover, terrain would become more than just a source of chokepoints (often absent in Company of Heroes maps by the way, because the terrain already works into the tactics of the game so well). To keep cover in line with Starcraft's underlying mechanics, it could grant a flat reduction in damage to each attack rather than randomly preventing incoming attacks.
Fix the Queuing System:
Placing units in a production queue should not drain resources until production actually begins. Furthermore, queues should be of unlimited size instead of limited to 5 units max. Finally, if an idle production structure is given an order to build an unit when there are insufficient resources available, it should still place said unit in the queue, and production should begin as soon as resources are available.
In addition, add an overwatch. When a unit is set to overwatch in the build menu, the associated production structure will attempt to build that unit upon becoming idle if sufficient resources are available. This keeps structures constantly producing units without player oversight, which is a godsend in a game like Starcraft where structures need to produce nonstop.
Improve the Friendly AI:
Units should be able to take care of themselves for at least a few seconds while player attention is elsewhere. At least make it so that pathing units can fight back while being order to move, and make it so that they will not chase an enemy to their doom simply after being shot at once. Variable AI settings, such as pursue/hold ground and fire at will/return fire would also be welcome. Beyond that, see Company of Heroes for good friendly AI.
Eliminate Supply:
Supply is a resource derived from minerals, a serves as a micro intensive step in converted minerals to units with minimal strategic value. It should be removed from the game, with merely to supply cap of 200 maintained. Pylons, depots, and overlords would no longer provide supply, but still severe their other functions.
Consolidate Production Structures:
After 10 years of development, Blizzard still found that having four stargates adjacent to each other building four copies of the same unit was good design. To avoid this absurdity, make production structures upgradeable, so they can simultaneously produce multiple units, much like barracks with the bio-reactor add-on. For each upgrade, the structure gets more health, gets and additional queue and can produce and addition unit simultaneous. Taking sufficient damage downgrades to structure. Works exactly like before, but without the unwanted industrial sprawl.
Add an Army and Structure Management GUI:
Add a GUI on the side of one of the screen that enables to player to sort through all of his structures and troops and provide production orders as well as other orders without the need to locate them on the map or through key bindings.
Eliminate the Pointless Downtime at the Beginning of the Game:
I view the 5 minutes or so at the beginning of each Starcraft game building enough workers and supply to get the rest of the economy going a waste of the players time. Skip this tedious phase of the game by providing enough workers and supply structures (if they haven't been eliminated per earlier suggestion), that players can immediately start building troops and expanding.
Many of the successful innovations found in commercial RTS could have been applied to Starcraft 2 easily and effectively, such as:
Replace Resource Gathering with a Control Point System:
This is a simple mechanic that revolutionized the way RTS are played. Instead of using hordes of workers to harvest resources, units must spend a fixed amount of time capturing control points, and once captured, a control point provides a continuous influx of resources. Strategically, this mechanic works the same as using workers for resources harvesting, in that the economy is based on territory control, but it streamlines gameplay by eliminating the associated busywork.
To keep it more in line with the feel of Starcraft, a worker would need to build an expensive structure on said point instead of infantry capturing said point as per the conventional implementation. However, once said structure is complete, it automatically begins harvesting resources at the maximum rate with no need to build workers or refineries. This would enable the player to quickly grab a resource expansion whenever he had the resources available, allowing him to immediately move on to other concerns. As an added bonus, the starting base would already be producing resources at the maximum rate, enabling the player to immediately move on to scouting, military production and expansion with virtually none of the early game downtime.
Add a Squad System:
When determining the suitability of a squad system, the major question is how often are units going to be found in and ordered as large groups versus how often they need to be ordered around as individuals. If they are constantly ordered around as groups and rarely as individuals, they might as well be automatically grouped together, and hence are perfect candidates for being placed in a squad. In the case of Starcraft, it is not uncommon to find battlecruisers being ordered around as a single large group, so I think a strong case can be made for a squad system in this game. And while capital starships probably aren't grouped often enough to justify squading, there are a myriad of units that wouldn't be caught dead alone (and which promptly die if caught alone), and would probably work better if squaded. Units such as marines, marauders, zerglings, hydralisk, mutalisk, zealots, stalkers, valkyries, phoenixes and the like would all make fantastic squads, as they are never alone.
Units such the ghost that have no business being in a squad would still be built as individuals, while other units would serve as great attachable units. Attachable units were found in the original Dawn of War. They were built as individuals, and could freely be attached or detached from a squad, making them either part of that unit and a separate unit respectively. Attaching a unit would make its unique abilities available to the squad, a perfect mechanic for support and spellcaster units. For instance, attach a high templar to a zealot squad, and that squad can now use psionic storm, no need to number key bind the templar or pick him out of a horde of zealots, just select the single squad and then fire psionic storm from either the hot key or the GUI. Furthermore, the squad AI would work to keep the zealots between the enemy and the templar, keeping the templar out of harms way without the player's constant supervision. Very simple and very natural.
Make Gameplay More Fluid:
It's the future, units ought be able to fire on the move! Granted, there are a small handful that do, but most units have to stand in place like statues to attack. Let virtually every unit fire on the move, and even melee on the move, with the possible exception of things like siege tanks and siege mode, and the game would become much more dynamic a fluid. Aircraft in particular should avoid coming to a complete stop, to make them feel more like aircraft and less like flying tanks.
Use a Projectile Physics for Weapon Fire:
Units shouldn't be able to hit units that have traveled out of range or shoot other units through solid objects. Adding a projectile physics would resolve these problems and provide other opportunities. Fast projectiles would have a genuine advantage over slow projectiles (with many Protoss projectiles traveling instantaneously), and certain units such as siege tanks could fire in a parabolic arch to clear intervening terrain. To make things really interesting, units could miss fast moving units such as aircraft on the basis of projectile physics, and guided weapons could be added to remedy such problems.
Use True Line of Sight for Fog of War:
Units can't see through solid objects. Simple enough. Advantageous for aerial scouts, but also makes it easier to see aircraft.
Terrain Elevation Should be Continuously Variable:
There is more to 3D than pretty graphics. Replace the three level terrain system in Starcraft with one that supports continuous changes in elevation. Also, terrain should effect more than fog of war. For instance, the high ground can improve the range of some weapons (a natural compliment to projectile physics), while land units are slowed when going uphill.
Add a Cover System:
The cover system from Company of Heroes is simply awesome, and would radically improve how Starcraft is played. Currently, most fights come down to unit composition and numbers, and in many cases just numbers. A cover system would make terrain a significant part of that equation, and greatly increase the dynamism of combat. With cover, terrain would become more than just a source of chokepoints (often absent in Company of Heroes maps by the way, because the terrain already works into the tactics of the game so well). To keep cover in line with Starcraft's underlying mechanics, it could grant a flat reduction in damage to each attack rather than randomly preventing incoming attacks.
Fix the Queuing System:
Placing units in a production queue should not drain resources until production actually begins. Furthermore, queues should be of unlimited size instead of limited to 5 units max. Finally, if an idle production structure is given an order to build an unit when there are insufficient resources available, it should still place said unit in the queue, and production should begin as soon as resources are available.
In addition, add an overwatch. When a unit is set to overwatch in the build menu, the associated production structure will attempt to build that unit upon becoming idle if sufficient resources are available. This keeps structures constantly producing units without player oversight, which is a godsend in a game like Starcraft where structures need to produce nonstop.
Improve the Friendly AI:
Units should be able to take care of themselves for at least a few seconds while player attention is elsewhere. At least make it so that pathing units can fight back while being order to move, and make it so that they will not chase an enemy to their doom simply after being shot at once. Variable AI settings, such as pursue/hold ground and fire at will/return fire would also be welcome. Beyond that, see Company of Heroes for good friendly AI.
Eliminate Supply:
Supply is a resource derived from minerals, a serves as a micro intensive step in converted minerals to units with minimal strategic value. It should be removed from the game, with merely to supply cap of 200 maintained. Pylons, depots, and overlords would no longer provide supply, but still severe their other functions.
Consolidate Production Structures:
After 10 years of development, Blizzard still found that having four stargates adjacent to each other building four copies of the same unit was good design. To avoid this absurdity, make production structures upgradeable, so they can simultaneously produce multiple units, much like barracks with the bio-reactor add-on. For each upgrade, the structure gets more health, gets and additional queue and can produce and addition unit simultaneous. Taking sufficient damage downgrades to structure. Works exactly like before, but without the unwanted industrial sprawl.
Add an Army and Structure Management GUI:
Add a GUI on the side of one of the screen that enables to player to sort through all of his structures and troops and provide production orders as well as other orders without the need to locate them on the map or through key bindings.
Eliminate the Pointless Downtime at the Beginning of the Game:
I view the 5 minutes or so at the beginning of each Starcraft game building enough workers and supply to get the rest of the economy going a waste of the players time. Skip this tedious phase of the game by providing enough workers and supply structures (if they haven't been eliminated per earlier suggestion), that players can immediately start building troops and expanding.
Points of Praise:
I do need to give credit where credit is due, there are a few things Starcraft 2 did do well. First, they did a fantastic job with the campaign. Obviously, the game mechanics are the same as Starcraft and the story is rubbish, but the campaign missions themselves are interesting, varied and fast paced. The between mission hub an the RPG elements are a nice touch (which by the way, are an indirect removal of some of the research from within the game itself). Matchmaking also seems solid, and is successful in placing players against others of similar skill levels. A lot of new unit designs were also creative and effective, and I particularly liked the changes to the Protoss air units. Also, the game looks good, sounds nice, and is bug free.
On Micromanagement:
The problem with excessive micromanagement is not the that it doesn't require skill, but that it adds nothing to the game. Lets say I added a new mechanic to the game. Every minute during gameplay, you would be locked out of the Starcraft UI until you type ?There is no such thing as too much micromanagement noob!? into the game without any typos, and all the while the game would continue to progress. This would take skill, namely touch typing, a rather useful skill that can also be used to write endless rants about games that disappoint you, but would add nothing to the game. It adds no extra strategy, no extra decision making, and certain no extra enjoyment, and definitely tonnes of extra frustration. Just adding a random element that takes skill does not necessarily enhance the game.
If that example seems over the top, consider the absence of queuing in this game. Because queues don't work correctly in this game, you must repeatedly reselect a production structure each and every time it finishes production. So lets say you want to continuously build marines, and you have set up production efficiently with a numerical key binding, let us just say it is ?1?. The marine build time is 25 seconds. That means as long as you are building marines, every 25 seconds you need to press ?1M?. Its not as bad as the above example, but its wouldn't be necessary at all with a proper queuing system, and obviously the more production structures you have the more of this you are constantly going to need to do. You will need another two key presses per HQ every 17 seconds to build SCVs. Another pair of keystrokes to build siege tanks at a factory, and another to build valkyrie's at a spaceport, etc., none of which is necessary. And for what purpose? What value does having to constantly issue the exact same production orders have over simply instructing your production structures you want something built repeatedly? Your not making any additional decisions, your just doing constant, repetitive busy work to reaffirm a past decision you have already made, mainly that a given structure will produce X nonstop until you have decided otherwise.
And keep in mind this is just one task. You'll be setting up resource expansions, pathing units that are dumb as wood, trying to sort your troops all while being constantly attack and attempting to attack yourself. And your supposed to come with an actual strategy while juggling all this? This is the underlying design principle of the game that ?Lives Up to 10 Years of Hype?. Its time to let go of our nostalgia and realize this level of micromanagement should have been removed from RTS a long time ago. Technically it was, but Blizzard didn't feel like learning from anybody, so we are again stuck with it in Starcraft 2.
The problem with excessive micromanagement is not the that it doesn't require skill, but that it adds nothing to the game. Lets say I added a new mechanic to the game. Every minute during gameplay, you would be locked out of the Starcraft UI until you type ?There is no such thing as too much micromanagement noob!? into the game without any typos, and all the while the game would continue to progress. This would take skill, namely touch typing, a rather useful skill that can also be used to write endless rants about games that disappoint you, but would add nothing to the game. It adds no extra strategy, no extra decision making, and certain no extra enjoyment, and definitely tonnes of extra frustration. Just adding a random element that takes skill does not necessarily enhance the game.
If that example seems over the top, consider the absence of queuing in this game. Because queues don't work correctly in this game, you must repeatedly reselect a production structure each and every time it finishes production. So lets say you want to continuously build marines, and you have set up production efficiently with a numerical key binding, let us just say it is ?1?. The marine build time is 25 seconds. That means as long as you are building marines, every 25 seconds you need to press ?1M?. Its not as bad as the above example, but its wouldn't be necessary at all with a proper queuing system, and obviously the more production structures you have the more of this you are constantly going to need to do. You will need another two key presses per HQ every 17 seconds to build SCVs. Another pair of keystrokes to build siege tanks at a factory, and another to build valkyrie's at a spaceport, etc., none of which is necessary. And for what purpose? What value does having to constantly issue the exact same production orders have over simply instructing your production structures you want something built repeatedly? Your not making any additional decisions, your just doing constant, repetitive busy work to reaffirm a past decision you have already made, mainly that a given structure will produce X nonstop until you have decided otherwise.
And keep in mind this is just one task. You'll be setting up resource expansions, pathing units that are dumb as wood, trying to sort your troops all while being constantly attack and attempting to attack yourself. And your supposed to come with an actual strategy while juggling all this? This is the underlying design principle of the game that ?Lives Up to 10 Years of Hype?. Its time to let go of our nostalgia and realize this level of micromanagement should have been removed from RTS a long time ago. Technically it was, but Blizzard didn't feel like learning from anybody, so we are again stuck with it in Starcraft 2.
Final Thoughts:
So there you have it, my thoughts on Starcraft 2. Not a bad game, but dated and a disappointment. It was admittedly the safe bet and sound business decision on Blizzard's part, but I was hoping Blizzard would show a bit more ambition. Perhaps make another attempt at revolutionizing the genre, or at least bring it into the next decade. Instead we have a decade old game inhabiting current generation graphics.
Ultimately, though, my problem is that Starcraft 2 wasn't a revolution game. My problem is that, as best as I can tell, Blizzard didn't even try to improve upon the original Starcraft.
