Am I crazy?

[General Twinkletoes]

Fuck.
Due to a combination of escapist servers fucking up and my internet being awful, my long post was eaten up into the void.
I'll reply with a much shorter post EDIT: OK this was still pretty damn long
And obviously my other post will resurface in 10 minutes making this an incredibly awkward double post.

Yeah, see, no. First off, there are no Eldar or Tyranids in Warhammer. 40k? Yes. Warhammer not so much.

Warcraft may well have started its life as a Warhammer RTS, but by the time Starcraft came along, there was no Games Workshop affiliation left.

Second, you just revealed you don't play Dawn of War, or at least haven't played enough to get the flavor of the factions down.

First off, whenever I refer to warhammer I'm talking about the 40K version, never cared about the other.
Also, DoW is one of my favourite games. I don't know where you got the idea that I never played it from, but it's very, very wrong.

And equipping Flamers to marines is a pretty awful idea, unless you're dealing with IG in close range.

Okay? Honestly? The reason I've been careful to say DoW1 and not 2 is because there are radical changes between the games. Where Dawn of War 1 feels like a bridge between Starcraft and modern gaming, Dawn of War 2 feels like a bridge between RTSs and Action RPGs. And, so far as it goes, feels a lot closer to the 40k fluff, if not the actual tabletop rules.

While I'll grant you, smaller iterative changes are the norm in a franchise, the bog standard RTS of 2012 looks nothing like Starcraft. For the most part the genre has taken what it could learn from that and streamlined it. DoW is an example of that streamlining. Rather than making you sit there and cobble together a base for two minutes while your opponent spams Zerglings, DoW focuses on getting units into combat with each other quickly.

Going to have to disagree with what you think of the streamlining. There's two types of streamlining for me, I'll talk about the other one later. The one you mentioned, the one in DoW, is simplifying it, while also removing elements of skill. No longer can you focus fire properly, or get a good position on your opponent. None of that stuff matters, it has no effect on how the game plays out. You wouldn't call counterstrike streamlined if it had auto aim and you could tell where people are would you?

On that front, no. But on the front that Starcraft basically says "fuck you all, the last ten years never happened, here I am", and Dawn of War doesn't.

Here's the thing, the Risk type map is a really nice innovation in the RTS genre. It gives a nice context to the smaller battles. We've even seen some pretty distinct takes on it, from Empire at War and Sins of a Solar Empire's real time over-world maps, to Battle for Middle Earth 2's and Dawn of War: Dark Crusade's turn based affairs. Of course the elephant in the room remains the Total War series. But the point is, it's a major element of the genre now. An element that can really work. It's also something that is almost completely absent from Starcraft 2.

The Squad based infantry is in a similar vein. A lot of RTSs have gone to that because it streamlines the game for combat, instead of messing around with individual soldiers, you task out by squad. And, for the most part, it's the direction that the genre has gone.

Okay, second kind of streamlining, the one blizz did for SC2.
Removing pointless crap that was there because of limitations of the time, or just design farts. Stuff like no onscreen indicator for your hotkeys, no multiple building selection, no more then 12 units selected at a time. That is just design flaws, they're not game mechanics, and fixing them removes none of the gameplay from starcraft 2.

With this type of streamlining, it still allows you to do what you did before, you can choose to seperately hotkey all your barracks, you can still only select 12 units if you want. If I want to check if someone has an expansion in SC2, I could send a single ling. In DoW (although expansions don't really happen in DoW), I'd have to send a whole squad of possibly 10-12 guys there. Not exactly efficient. Streamlining should let you be more efficient, which the type of streamlining you talked about in DoW doesn't.

And secondly, about the risk map, and the reasons it can't work given starcrafts nature.
First off, besides the faction HQ's, DoW missions are basically multiplayer maps played with AI. This lets you play the same level countless times back and forth while it still feels new every time, while starcrafts follows a much more structured and story based design. I much prefer DoW's campaign, but unless by the time starcraft 3 comes out AI has improved leaps and bounds, we're not going to see it.
The reason is, DoW is much more simple. What do you do? Send a squad of scouts to take strategic points. Get a deathball, and move into their base. Done. This meant that the AI could compete with humans. In starcraft, there are far more things you have to do. You have to macro properly, have map control, creep spread, proxy pylons, nydus worms, deal with those threats from the opposing side, all sorts of extra stuff that AI routines aren't advanced enough to deal with. This means that the only type of mission that would work given SC2's more complex nature is the more boring structured design with specific scenarios.

When you go back to StarCraft 2 it really feels, at least to me, like I'm playing a second expansion to the original game. No acknowledgement that it was 2011, and that over a decade of RTSs changing and advancing, just the original StarCraft all over again. Not a sequel, just a really well polished Expansion Pack with a graphics update.

Again, this is blizzard, and starcraft. Arguably the most competitive game ever made. Big changes to the 12 year old game that people were still, and are still playing would cause huge amounts of rage. There's no reason too. Talked about a bit more later.

Yeah, but here's the thing. We're talking about fucking Starcraft. Without knowing your age, I'm going to go off the random assumption you just aren't old enough to understand what that means.

Starcraft was a very innovative RTS when it first came out. It was the first to really nail asymmetrical power dynamics in the genre. Reviews for it at the time talked about the Terrans being the "normal" RTS faction, with the other two being radically different. Go back to Warcraft 2, the game that preceded it, and you find a game where the only factional differences are a handful of unit special abilities.

They take this legacy, sit on it for a decade, and when the time finally rolls around to turn another Starcraft game loose? It's just a texture upgrade and a few new units.

Yes, this is true.
And?
They changed rts when they released starcraft, and it couldn't have gone better. They are the reason that rts games have different races. They completely revolutionised the genre. They don't need to again. It got to that point where the changes they made allowed for a constantly shifting metagame, that offered a ton of variety and would never run out of strategies. The big problem with it?
Again, the archaic problems. 12 units, no multiple buildings, everything else that is very out of date. So they released starcraft 2. It had been too long to call it an expansion, and fixes a ton of problems that weren't there because the devs wanted it there- it was there because they had to have it there.

Yeah, no, not so much. This is post-Activision Blizzard in a nutshell. Which isn't a valid excuse. WoW in it's day was pretty innovative (I'm told, by people who actually played MMOs back in 2004), Warcraft 3 was a further iteration off of what we'd seen with Starcraft. Asymmetrical power dynamics across four factions instead of three... RPGish mechanics on their hero units, which was new, or newish at the time. Diablo 2 was somewhat innovative in the Action RPG genre, though not as much as the first, but it did give us a lot of industry standard features like socketed upgrades, item sets, and so on.

From what I've heard, WoW nicked most of it's ideas from everquest, and made it work better. Not an MMO player myself, but this seems to be the general opinion.
And how did WC3 iterate from SC? They're very different games. Not as seperated as DoW and SC, but still different enough. I don't see much of a comparison.

Though, I still think, with it's hybrid class system, Titan Quest was the closest I've seen to someone recapturing Diablo 2 and innovating there...

The point is, each game used to bring us something new. Something significant. With Starcraft 2, it really seems like they didn't even notice the world outside their window changed.

Had it changed though? People were still playing starcraft BW up until 2010, perfectly happy. The main complaint was how old it was, which sc2 fixed. People didn't want a huge innovation - they wanted starcraft up to present day standards.

Which ends up in the territory of "damning with faint praise." The problem is, of course, that Blizzard has stopped innovating. Maybe they just don't feel the need, I'm not sure. But for whatever reason, they've stopped. Saying "no, they're just polishing" isn't really a valid excuse either.

Well, I don't really see why it isn't. We've got companies like relic, who will do the innovating. What they do is more casual, more laidback and much more different styles of rts, while blizzard takes "Don't fix what isn't broken" to the extreme. They don't change it, they make it better. Sure if every company did this, gaming would suck. But blizzard is an exception. Not many companies will spend 10 years making a game.

And this is where I go back to my original statement. Dawn of War, for all of it's lack of polish feels more like a sequel to Starcraft, to me. Because it does what Blizzard used to do. It does actually innovate. The Requisition points force players to interact, and discourage turtling, one of the least interesting strategies from Starcraft, field reinforcement, and unit customization on the fly makes units much more versatile at responding to your opponent's tactics after they've left the base, and much more dangerous if a few stragglers get away. More distinct asynchronous power dynamics, than Warcraft 3. Again, it feels more like a successor than Starcraft 2 does, at least in the old Blizzard vein.

So what you're saying is that the design philosophies behind starcraft BW and DoW is what makes you think they're similar, yes? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that does make sense. They were each very different to other games in their genre, but starcraft found the perfect competitive niche. But, if you take away the aesthetic and theme of starcraft and DoW, take away all prior knowledge and look at gameplay alone, they are totally different.

Yeah, balance is a function of polish, and it takes a lot of energy to fully polish an RTS. Relic will never polish a game as thoroughly as Blizzard. They'll never spend ten years polishing the living shit out of a game. And, you know what? That's fine. Because, at it's core, Dawn of War, and Dawn of War 2, are new experiences. Starcraft 2? Not so much. Starcraft 2 is the annual franchise release, a decade late.

Blizzard has already demonstrated they don't understand what they're doing with the competitive game, when they tied the game to battle.net as a DRM.

I think we're in agreement here really :/ BNET 2.0 can die in a fire.
But in your analogy, while it is quite a good on, is wrong in the fact that most annual franchises don't polish. At all.
MW3 is stupidly unpolished. Their survival mode (Forgot what it's called) is so fucking lazy. Instead of, you know, making a new HUD and skin they just gave you a knife and said pretend you're a zombie! The animations are all off, some of the textures are literally ripped out of COD 4, and there are may more examples like the survival mode where they put no effort into it. They don't even change the name of your team to zombies, you're still spetsnaz or whatever foreign country the USA is fighting against. User created mods in starcraft have more polish.

Time to copy this post so that if the escapist eats it I can still repost it >:/

 

[General Twinkletoes]

Both are mediocre. You want a good RTS that's easy to learn, difficult to master? Try the Dawn of War series. Specifically, soulstorm or dark crusade.

There's not much to master in DoW. They're very fun games, but far more causal then most. It's just get a deathball, and whoever has the biggest deathball wins. Really not much strategy.

And if you do try DoW OP, (Which you should), don't get soulstorm. Really, please save yourself. Get everything up to dark crusade.

But don't treat it competitively. The balance is way out the window, it's too slow, and there's no micro in it at all.

 

[The Funslinger]

OK, are we called "The Escapist" because most of us are escapees from North Korea? I only ask because lots of you seem to find the sensation of having a unique opinion to be unfamiliar and frightening. I mean, when I find that I like something that most people don't like, or vise versa, I just go with it. Pretty much all my friends hate Dr. Who(Relax, it's because they can't make it past the first season. Can you really blame them?), but I don't question my sanity for loving the hell out of it.

I mistook your "North Korea doesn't let you have opinions" joke as a "Koreans love Starcraft" joke.

Oh, the double edged humor!

 

[The_Lost_King]

You're crazy, I am crazy, EVERYONE IS CRAAAZYYYYY * maniacal laughter*

I guess everyone has their own opinion. My favorite is still Warcraft 3(nostalgia is a *****)

 

[kasperbbs]

I have never played Halo wars, but calling StarCraft complex is rather silly. Still i don't think that you are crazy, we all have our tastes. Have you tried any of the C & C games? They are pretty simple and i found them a lot more fun than starcraft, just avoid the last one.

 

[Wintermoot]

nobody can force you what to like and what to hate.

 

[TheDutchin]

Honestly, I hated Halo Wars, it wasn't overly simplistic, except if you wanted to win the best strategy was always tank swarm and roll around crushing everything in your path. That kind of stuff was harder to pull off in SC2, but I agree that SC2 was a little overly complex. It wasn't overly complex to play and win in single player, but all of the hundreds of strategy's and stuff to win in multiplayer and needing more than like 10 actions a minute, leaving you no time to think, really soured multiplayer for me

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Since I'm close to getting my probation cleared on these forums, I'll just settle for waiting for an apology than blurting out insults back.

Lemme know how that turns out for you.

 

[Bvenged]

Since I'm close to getting my probation cleared on these forums, I'll just settle for waiting for an apology than blurting out insults back.

Lemme know how that turns out for you.

Don't worry dude; the thought of you not trying to defame my posts again is enough.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

Honestly, SC2 was just a really well polished game from 1999. There wasn't a lot that really changed from the originals. And while, I'm certain to some people that's a perk. I still find the original Dawn of War expansions to kinda be a more true sequel to SC.

A ton has changed. Ask anyone that actively plays the game, especially competitive players that have come over from the first to the sequel. From small things, like the ability to select multiple units and rally to different buildings, to massive things like new unit types and units. That's mainly why the SC1 scene is still a fucking behemoth in Korea--people don't want to convert over. I think there's only one or two world champions that have managed to switch over and not fall down the rankings.

It's the same formula, but the mechanics have changed a lot more than even your above average series.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

Both are mediocre. You want a good RTS that's easy to learn, difficult to master? Try the Dawn of War series. Specifically, soulstorm or dark crusade.

There's not much to master in DoW. They're very fun games, but far more causal then most. It's just get a deathball, and whoever has the biggest deathball wins. Really not much strategy.

And if you do try DoW OP, (Which you should), don't get soulstorm. Really, please save yourself. Get everything up to dark crusade.

But don't treat it competitively. The balance is way out the window, it's too slow, and there's no micro in it at all.

Your average RTS player doesn't know what micro is, lol. To the vast majority of people, the genre is about getting a bigger army and throwing it at the enemy, with a portion of players bothering to go for unit counters. The idea of micromanaging single units for maximum effect is not something most even think of.

 

[MetalMagpie]

I think you are more crazy for asking this question...

People can have opinions ya know xD

Yes, this was my thought as well. People who need assurance that they're sane (without having done anything truly crazy like seen a ghost) are probably teetering on the edge of something...

Joke. You're fine.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

How dare you have a different opinion and a different taste? Where is this world coming to? This is a bad omen. The end is nigh.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

Both are mediocre. You want a good RTS that's easy to learn, difficult to master? Try the Dawn of War series. Specifically, soulstorm or dark crusade.

There's not much to master in DoW. They're very fun games, but far more causal then most. It's just get a deathball, and whoever has the biggest deathball wins. Really not much strategy.

And if you do try DoW OP, (Which you should), don't get soulstorm. Really, please save yourself. Get everything up to dark crusade.

But don't treat it competitively. The balance is way out the window, it's too slow, and there's no micro in it at all.

Your average RTS player doesn't know what micro is, lol. To the vast majority of people, the genre is about getting a bigger army and throwing it at the enemy, with a portion of players bothering to go for unit counters. The idea of micromanaging single units for maximum effect is not something most even think of.

Yep. This is true. But for an rts that has no active resource gathering, the only opportunity for mastering is in micro. DoW doesn't have it. It's very very fun if you just want to relax, but there's not much to master.

 

[k3v1n]

Haven't played SCII, but I really really liked Halo Wars. It's controls were really polished despite being a consol only RTS. In fact, beating that game on Legendary is still on my "to do" list.

And no you're not crazy for prefering one game or another.