Starcraft 2: The Wrath of Disappointment

[Phanixis]

Well, the condensed version of this review is still in the works. But despite the wall of text I have created, this topic has been quite active, so I suppose I should respond to all the criticism leveled at this thread.

You just wanted Starcraft to be another RTS, or an amalgamation of all RTS.

The idea behind the suggestions for improvement I listed was not to imply that Starcraft must borrow from every last RTS out there or become a different RTS entirely (which would have been counterproductive), but to illustrate a large range of effective and enjoyable mechanics that have been proven in commercial RTS and explain how they might be adapted to improve the gameplay for Starcraft. I did not intend to imply that Starcraft must adapt every one of these improvements, I only wanted to show that there was a wealth of improvements that could have been made.

Furthermore, these mechanics need not be copied exactly. For instance, if the randomness of the Company of Heroes cover system is a problem, cover when adapted to Starcraft could grant a flat defensive boost, which would be fully deterministic. Also, clearly undesirable or conflicting mechanics from other RTS don't need to be adopted. If the huge map sizes in Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander slow the game down too much, the efficient system in place to manage units could still be adopted without compromising game speed (and would in all likelihood improve game speed) as long as the scale of the game was also not increased.

You can't harass the opponent's economy in a control point economy or one that uses static buildings for resource collection

Having played multiplayer games incorporating these mechanics, and can personally attest to the fact that economic harassment is both possible and effective. In most control point games, points can be ?uncaptured? much faster than they can be captured, allowing troops that have penetrated enemy territory to quickly crippled the enemies economy. When buildings are used for resource collection, they are typically fragile enough that troops managing to penetrate enemy territory can destroy them if they focus on those buildings. In both cases, harassment can be made arbitrarily easy by reducing the time needed to uncapture a control point and reducing the hit points of resource collection structures.

By the way, macromanagement = economy, micromanagement = troops

This thread isn't the first time I have seen these terms described in this manner, but if you don't mind, I would prefer to stick to the more traditional definitions as implied by the prefixes attached to these terms: micro = small, macro = large. Thus micromanagement is the management of individual troops, workers or buildings, macromanagement refers to the strategy underlying a large group of troops, workers or structures. If you don't like it, blame whoever is responsible for the English language.

Starcraft 2 isn't the same as Starcraft, there are new units, better AI, and you can select more than 12 units at a time!

Regarding the new units, I actually thought Blizzard did a fairly good job with them, but my discussion was more focused towards underlying game mechanics so I did not mention them. In any case, with RTS expansion packs often adding entirely new races/factions to the game in addition to new units, I consider this firmly in the realm of expansion packs.

Regarding the AI. If for a group of units being attacked, half the units break off to retaliate against their aggressor while the other half stand there like statues, then I am going to have to say that the game is lacking in the AI department. And in Starcraft 2 this will happen all the time. The improvements in AI that have been mentioned such as improved pathing are both necessary and nice, but hardly groundbreaking.

As for the being able to select more than 12 units, if I drag a box over 13+ units, the game bloody ought to select every unit in the box. Failure to do so is borderline bug/engine limitations territory, and eliminating said limitations is a justification for a patch, not a sequel!

Also, is this the best you can come up with when trying to illustrate the difference between Starcraft and Starcraft 2? Units go where instructed and mass selection of units works properly now! That distinction was worth 10 years of development?

The early game downtime is necessary to choose a strategy

For starters, regardless of strategy, virtually every build order is still going to look essentially the same at the beginning of the game. Your first several purchases will be builders, and you will assign them to harvest minerals. You will be building supply buildings, because you can build neither workers nor troops without them. Typically, you will build at least 5-6 workers and at least one supply building before doing anything else, so you are looking at a 1.5 to 2 minutes where you make absolutely no choice of any kind. Even then, the tech tree essentially forces you to build a barracks/gateway before doing anything else, so it takes even more time before significant options begin to present themselves.

Beyond that, why not just find a point in the game were a significant fraction of the players start making a meaningful deference in their build order? Why not let the player make a decision between their builds immediately rather than forcing them to fuss around for several minutes?

Blizzard intentionally ignored making improvements as they had no reason to take risk

I actually acknowledge this fact in my review, making a copy of Starcraft rather than something new was a sound business decision. My real beef is with the game reviewers who gave this game incredibly scores and praise despite the utter lack of innovation. Furthermore, Blizzard's motives do nothing about the fact the Starcraft 2 still suffers by being far too similar to Starcraft.

Having Supply Structures Adds Strategy

Precisely how? There is no choice in the matter, you must build supply structures as the number of units you have increases. There is no alternative to building supply structures, its just something extra you must do in addition to collecting resources.

The Pros Don't Queue and Infinite Queues would be too expensive

The pros, and any reasonably competent player for that matter, will not queue units in Starcraft because players are penalized for doing so as the game charges for units upon queuing and not upon assembly. In addition to suggestion infinite queues, I also pointed out that the game ought to not charge for queued units until they begin assembly. If this were the case, queues would be usable and infinite queuing would work fine. I would guarantee a lot of players would use them under these circumstances.

Micromanagement Adds Skill and Strategy to the Game

My problem with micromanagement in Starcraft is a lot of it is absolutely unnecessary as it adds no additional decision making to the game. At its heart, Starcraft is, or is at least supposed to be, a strategy game. You make numerous decision, and the game carries them out. A well designed game should enable you to apply those decisions to the game efficiently as possible. Ideally, this means minimizing the instructions necessary for a given decision.

For an example of this, lets go back to infinite queuing. You make the decision to have Barracks A continually build marines. If you have infinite queuing, you select Barracks A, and set Marines to infinite queuing. The decision has been carried out. But without infinite queuing, you select Barracks A, bind Barracks A to a number(lets say '1'), and then instruct it to build a marine. 25 seconds later, you press 1 and then instruct Barracks A to build a marine. Another 25 seconds after that, you press 1 and then instruct Barracks A to build a marine. You repeat this process for the rest of the game if necessary, just to make 1 decision. The single decision in effect requires indefinite attention to carry out. Its the same decision either way, and both carry the same consequences, so why all the extra busywork?

I can live with the extra micromanagement if it actually serves a purpose, but there are a lot of instances in Starcraft where it simple doesn't. And when it serves no purpose, I consider more of a UI defect than a gameplay element. As far as the increase in skill required, I see no point in arbitrarily increasing the skill required to play the game when it does nothing for the game. If competitive players need something the separate the best from the better, would it be so terrible if that distinction was made by strategy rather than hot key memorization?

 

[Zer_]

**Snip**

You still don't seem to understand. Your suggestions would go against what StarCraft 2 is. It's a barebones RTS. It sticks to the basics.

Adding many of your requested gameplay features and "enhancements" would be like adding Call of Duty's perks and killstreaks to Quake 3 Arena. It wouldn't work, and it'd destroy the competitive community entirely.

When something happens, like your base getting attacked, it's up to YOU to react accordingly, that's why your units won't all set out to defend automatically. What if your units all went to defend automatically, and that's not what you wanted, what if you wanted to sacrifice your base to gain a tactical advantage elsewhere? Having the AI choose for the player is a bad idea.

The AI does what the player tells it to do, no less, no more.


It's not all about decision making. They do play an important part, but a lot of StarCraft 2 is being able to react to situations at once, being able to multi-task and co-ordinate attacks on multiple fronts. You need to be quick with a mouse click, and you need to set your primary buildings to hot-keys. You need to memorize all your buttons and press them at a squirrel's pace. You need to keep an eye out for anything. Look at your supplies, your resources, look at the mini-map. Check on your scout's progress.

Like it or not, learning how to press hotkeys is an integral part of StarCraft 2.

Supply structures actually help pace the game. They also provide extra tactical options such as denying an opponent's supply and preventing him from building his army.

StarCraft 2 is as similar to StarCraft as it needs to be. Those changes that were made were done carefully and with an immense amount of forethought. Many decisions and changes were actually changed or tweaked during the beta phase of StarCraft 2.

StarCraft 2 relies on its professional community. Most of its fans are either part of that community, or seek to be part of it. The rest are those that play StarCraft 2's powerful and fun Use Map Settings maps, or players that were in it for StarCraft 2's Single Player campaign. You're part of a very small minority in this case.

I can save you the trouble of condensing your wall of text.

TLR - The game isn't what you want it to be, and that's that.

 

[RThaiRThai]

I have nice things to say to you, but before I say those I must say: you magnificent ass!

Edit: My post is long too, but it is nowhere as long as yours. I usually try to support long posts because I like to write long posts as well, but yours was huge.

The following paragraph is a rant about how long your post was, so feel free to skip it. That took forever to read! I read for a while and got through the first section before realizing that I wasn't even half way through. I did read it all. It would've definitely been more tolerable if it weren't a forum post where there's an unofficial rule that you're not supposed to write too much. I personally like to write a lot, so I try to avoid being a hippocrit by reading people's long posts, but that was truly massive.

The Nice Things:
I haven't extensively played many RTS games other than Starcraft, so it's great to hear the opinion from a seasoned RTS player. I'm not a huge RTS player, having found them too complicated when I was young, but the hype around Starcraft 2 and the culture at University lead me to become a Starcraft fan.

I have always found the queing in Starcraft strange, and not having played other RTS games, didn't realize people were already doing it differently. Like you say, the only reason queing is bad is because Starcraft makes it bad.

A lot of other changes you suggest like different levels of terrain, cover, physics, line of sight, I consider less important. It adds complexity and realism, but simplicity is a good thing too. Of course, I haven't tried these other games, so maybe they would in fact be excellent additions.

I don't think resource collection automation is important. The ability to rally to a mineral field takes away a lot of the micromanagement, and watching games, the workers as individual units come into play frequently enough. They can be pulled from the minerals to fight, they can be pulled away from danger, SCVs can repaid, probes can create proxy pylons, drones turn into buildings.

The supply units somebody mentioned already as well.

I need to sleep, and I guess I'm more interested in just being present in this discussion and showing that I'm not immediately hostile toward you. You seem to know plenty about RTS games. This isn't saying Blizzard should have acted differently, just educating people and making them aware of all the innovation that's out there.

The down time at the beginning of the game is something I have thought about but never would have really noticed without you pointing it out. There are options like cheese and early expansion which vary, but it seems like taking away some of this variety would be a small price to pay for starting the real game a little earlier.

I like the suggested UI changes the most. The other ideas change the way the game itself works, and I think that things work pretty well. Making things more realistic and complex isn't necessarily good. The UI just makes it easier to execute your decisions, like the ability to rally to a mineral or select more than 12 units.

I personally think best idea is unlimited queues or overwatch. I imagine the minerals might still go down to indicate to the player how much as been queued up, or presenting things in some other format. I also like the idea of having buttons providing constant access to your production buildings.

The squads and AI I feel are somewhere between gameplay and UI. Although in theory it just makes it easier for the player to control the units and a skilled player could do those things without a change in UI, I think the current AI could make a significant difference even for skilled players. It seems like a good change.

I imagine Blizzard was fully aware of many if not all of thse possible changes or improvements (depending on what you believe), and actively chose not to use them either because they found problems with them that we have not imagined or because they know that for the sake of the sport and not alienating the fanbase they could not reasonably make the changes.

I really don't see the problem with properly done queues though. I kind of like the current queues as it's kind of a skill and a sign of skill to be able to manage the production facilities and aquare the APM to do so, but at the same time it does seem like nothing but busywork.

If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be so tired tomorrow. Well, that may not be true. The internet is a distracting place.

 

[RThaiRThai]

I think it's important to actually try harder understand other people and their opinions when you disagree with them. The OP states that he thinks Starcraft is a good game, but I think that still doesn't convent the right idea.

I imagine it would be like if I got a robot one day, and it was the best thing ever. It's amazing and it's a robot and it's filled with roboty goodness, but I also see many potential improvements for it which would make it even better, but that doesn't matter because it's still amazing because it's A DAMN ROBOT!

But then everybody else starts saying it's the perfect robot and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, when I clearly see all these things that would make it even better, and I start getting disappointed. Aren't we all getting too complacent? This robot could also dispense pies whenever I want, but nobody's pointing that out.

But I guess I'm putting words into the OP's mouth. Also, I imagine while the OP likes the robot, he doesn't think it's the best thing ever like I do with my robot, and is mildly dissapointed but can understand why the robot had to be made that way and still thinks it's an amazing robot.

Maybe I'm just making this post because I don't feel like having to iron my clothes. But if I don't iron my clothes I can't go to bed. And before that I have to do other stuff. Ugh. I thought I'd get good sleep tonight.

 

[LostCrusader]

From what I got of your post, you were expecting Blizzard to change to a newer style of RTS. This would have been met with very poorly if they changed how core game play worked for a sequel. Same kind of thing was tried with for Dragon Age 2 and it had a horrible reaction from the community.

 

[Valiance]

Excellent post, by far one of the best I've actually seen on this thread. I would try to formulate a reply that's intelligent and coherent, but in my case, you're pretty much "preaching to the choir," so to speak.

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.

This really sums up everything about the game. SC2 isn't as guilty as this as SC1, but it's still 90% of the game. For example, let's assume I have 5 Command Centers in Starcraft 1, and I want to produce SCVs at these Command Centers. Even if I have each command center hotkeyed (to individual hotkeys, since multiple-building-select didn't exist in SC), I need to do, whatever, "1s2s3s4s5s," and then once they are built, tell them to gather minerals so they mine. In SC2, at least, I can select these command centers on one hotkey, (ie: 1sssss), and they will automatically go mine. This is an improvement, but in Total Annihilation, I say "Build a metal extractor here" and that's it. It will mine for me. This way, I can focus my efforts/attention elsewhere, like managing a battle or something.

When I look at your suggestions, it seems that you're trying to turn Starcraft II into a game that it isn't. A different game, probably a better game, IMO a better game, but the idea is that Starcraft II is designed and played as a game of economics, not a game of strategy or tactics. The strategy is make more shit than the enemy and overpower them. Even if they have an unbreakable defense, after 5-6 volleys of 50 roaches from spawn larva and such, they will EVENTUALLY fall due to economy. I suppose the idea was to prevent long "turtle" standoffs but what can I say? If anything, making the economy easier to manage would promote more offense-based gameplay. As it is now in the current meta-game, most professional players just try to fast expand and gather resources and defend for the first like 6-7 minutes.

Also, I'm kinda saddened that you didn't mention Dark Reign 2 in your Other RTS section. It had a lot of great things going for it. I'm still upset that Starcraft 2 doesn't have tactical zoom.

Edit:

The point that I was trying to make was that it's a FEATURE that Starcraft II has a bad UI for actually getting things done. The community over at teamliquid nearly exploded when they first found out that Blizzard was putting in multiple building select and auto-mining rally points. They thought the game would have too low a skill cap. It's pathetic that people honestly feel that way, because if anything, if all the economy was handled automatically and the player just made the strategical and tactical combat decisions, the game would be much, much more entertaining to watch. The skill cap is high enough because of the strategic possibilities involved, not because they don't have a "scatter" button like red alert 1 did to avoid infantry being crushed by tanks (press X and they do that! It would be great to have vs. Banelings!)

I honestly feel that multiplayer wise, SC2 pushed the boundaries even LESS than Warcraft 3 did, which was "OFMG HEROES" when games like Warlords: Battlecry already had heroes and already had implemented them with more depth and customization.

Also, if you can't tell, I've played a lot of RTS games, from age of empires to earth 2150, and it's frustrating to see great game designs be ignored. I'm not trying to say SC2 isn't a great game or has bad design, I'm just saying a lot of things that people like about it were already done, in a better way, somewhere else, and that the game itself isn't really very groundbreaking. It's playable and fun though, and that's the most important thing. But I think it's more about the multiplayer community and how blizzard has really pushed it and the battle.net 2.0 (which I could write a whole column about...) which has made it popular. Not the game.

 

[Ridonculous_Ninja]

You never made it past D- on iCCup did you?

You cannot fix queues without taking away what makes Starcraft Starcraft. The sheer mechanical skill necessary to be good at this game is part of it, and being able to micro the units you have while ALSO making units at your base is what separates the good players from the bad.

You have also obviously never watched any of those pro Korean games you mentioned, as you discount the corsair and claim that nearly every game ends at the rush stage with only one or two types of units being made, when in fact 90% of games involve the majority of types of units for each race.

And wtf at your suggestions. Every single thing you suggested would take Starcraft from being a game about careful management and skill to a game about who can micro better in one battle. If you wanted to micro go play Warcraft 3. Queues make production take skill as opposed to "I'll just tell it to make 10 zealots and go stare at my probes for the next 10 minutes", having production structures make only one unit at a time makes spending resources a trade off between production and technology and units, having to research upgrades gives you essential timings to attack your opponent or be attacked by your opponent, and automated gas messes up the amount of workers needed to execute a build order and leads to EVEN MORE RUSHES!

Before you start making suggestions, learn what makes Starcraft what it is. Don't say it needs to change just because you have no idea how to play it and it isn't like every other game out there right now.

Starcraft: Brood War has been played competitively for over 10 years in South Korea and is still going strong and evolving at a steady pace.
Starcraft 2 is riding that success and is highly successful outside of Korea.

There is a reason for both of those things.

 

[thedeathscythe]

I didn't get past a couple paragraphs. I wanted to skim it, but as I skimmed down and scrolled down with my mouse wheel, I saw the immensity that is your rant on a really good game that you apparently don't like and felt the urge to pick it apart to pieces. The one argument I did read was weak and I couldn't disagree more with it. I thought it was a really good game, I'm not a hardcore Starcraft player, but I really liked it, and to be honest, I don't care why you didn't like it and I wouldn't read that if you payed me. It's too long, shorten in...make it about a tenth of what it is because it's way too big to read that much nonsense in one sitting.

 

[Therumancer]

I'll be very simple in my response. I do not think that innovation is nessicarly a good thing in of itself. There is a lot of truth to the saying "if it's not broken, don't fix it". When your looking at a perfectly usable game engine and way of doing things, there is no reason to toss them in the rubbish bin. This is especially true of sequels, where the very idea is to have more of the same, if you change literally everything about something then it's not really a sequel, and at best a spin off if it uses the same world setting.

The point of what I am saying is not that innovation should stop, simply that changing things for the sake of changes is as bad as stagnation. What's more, just like chess, perfection is possible. One of the reasons why your typical turn-based RPG format of JRPG fame has never gone away, despite a lot of outcries from people that don't like that kind of game, is because it's perfect for what those kinds of games set out to achieve, millions of people play them (enough to keep them going) not because they don't know any better, but because that's what they like, and want to play, the other games are out there, but people who are into that keep coming back to it.

Starcraft II was not setting out to re-invent the wheel so to speak, but to pretty much do more of the same with some more units, better basic technology, and some tweaks.

I'll also say that you have to remember that Starcraft II was intended for competitive play, much more so than some of the other games mentioned. A lot of the changes you talk about, and mention lifting from other games, would be great if you wanted the game to be strictly single player, or epic in scope. Starcraft is a game where part of the design intent is a degree of simplicity where you can sit down and hash out a game within like 15 to 20 minutes. Sure Starcaft games CAN take a long time, but that's the exception rather than the rule. If one was to introduce tons of management options for squads, resources, and everything else into the game, you wouldn't see a game played fast enough for the kinds of tournaments people want to run with it. It's not that these ideas are BAD things for a game, but aren't in keeping with one of the major design priorities for Starcraft II.

Now, I DO tend to agree with you that the product is lacking, especially when looking at the single player experience. I am one of those who feels that it's not a complete single player experience as it doesn't even tell a full chapter of the story. We're rather obviously only seeing one third of the story, and yet are being made to pay full price for it. We also had claims by Blizzard that "it would take us 14 years to create a game with three factions to this quality level" which while probably a blow off to people complaining about their cash grubbing, is also bloody scary if they were serious, as it means that for this story to finish it's probaby going to make "Half Life 2" seem like a rush job.

Basically, it's fair to knock Blizzard for only giving is 1/3rd of the game, it's fair to be upset that they were insturmental to the $10 price hike we're seeing on PC games which largely started here. It's fair to say that they have a bad attitude. There are plenty of things you can say about the situation which are perfectly fair criticisms despite the fanboy outrage and industry defensivism (hey is that even a word? ) they inspire. Complaining about the game depth, and the lack of a lot of features which would have changed the game utterly, not so much. As far as the product we received goes, it does what it does well, and it is what it was designed to be. Change it too much, and it wouldn't be "Starcraft" anymore.

Strictly speaking it would be interesting to see what would happen if someone wanted to make an RTS game of epic scope, encompassing more of those ideas, even if it caught on multiplayer, it wouldn't be the kind of thing that was intended here.

I think Starcraft is probably the closest thing we have right now to a video became becoming like chess, it's important to understand Starcraft can't be judged like other games given that it's been embraced as a major sport by some nations (well Korea at least), which is something I don't think any other game has achieved. Like it or not, that figured heavily into how the sequel was implemented as well.

 

[Vhite]

Ive never played it but I have seen hundreds of games played.

Payed: 0?
Enjoyment: As only few games could give me.

 

[Project_Xii]

That's got to be the first time I've ever heard someone (who isn't a 12 year old idiot/troll) call Starcraft "no where near a perfect game". From what I've derived from, oh, THE ENTIRE CONTINENT OF KOREA, it's a pretty damn perfect game when it comes to tactics and competition. You don't see "The University of Total Annihilation" now, do you?

Which is probably a good thing, since the USA would probably send a team over to Korea to search for WMD's faster then you can say "free kimchi underwear parade".

Anyway, as everyone else has said, way to long, and after I read that statement I knew Starcraft was not the type of RTS you wanted, so what's the point? Why read a rant where you rant about why Starcraft isn't more like the other RTS's you like? Play those instead, dude, and give our internetz a break from your text walls of doom.

 

[webby]

OK, just for the hell of it I ran that through a word count. I was somewhat disappointed when it came out as 8997 words. Could you not add another sentence so I can make the "It's over 9000!!!!!" joke please??

Seriously though, 11 pages and (basically) 9000 words is too long for anyone to bother reading when it comes to any form of review. I imagine that it's 5 or 6 times longer than pretty much any serious gaming review ever written.

Remember the old adage, a story (or review) is completed not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. You badly needed to edit this.

(For the record... no I did not read it)

 

[Frankster]

Interesting review I thought, and yup, read most of it

I've never been a big fan of sc due to the focus on micromanagement, so agree with most of your points, but ultimately the sc crowd will vehemently fight to the death with you on almost very single one of them.

For starters anything that is down to %, they will hate as they believe they should accurately know the results of anything based on their knowledge of gaming stats, so there goes the cover and physics system (for the record, risk/chance management is both skill and strategy, see poker for irl example of this).

Then the there is a significant amount of sc fans who love the micromanagement and view it as a natural way of distinguishing skill levels. There was such an uproar about your workers automatically splitting into optimum groups for mineral splitting, sc pros were genuinely saying this would RUIN the game.
If a minor change like this was so disputed, they won't tolerate queue streamlining or even squad streamlining.

Ah on that, sc players also tend to look down on squads since it removes individual unit control with which pro sc players can do things such as baiting the enemy while the other player isnt looking (so again, no chance in hell units will ever be smart enough to survive 5 secs without your supervision).

And well, i could go on, but seems enough sc fans are leaping to the fray.

For the record though., whilst I don't agree with proposed changes since I know it would transform sc2 into a game sc2 fans don't want, I do agree with the overall theme of your review that sc2 isn't deserving of the perfect scores it's got.