Starcraft 2: The Wrath of Disappointment

[Kayhoff]

I'm afraid that most of your points are based on what you want Starcraft 2 to be, as opposed to what it is. Starcraft 1 was the first serious game I ever played, and frankly, I feel as though Starcraft 2 did a fantastic job as a sequel.

Your gripe about it being "an expansion pack" is one of the silliest things I have ever heard, however. Starcraft 2 added new units, a new engine (I would hope so, after 12 years), and about a 10 hour campaign (which I have replayed 3 times now). To call that an expansion is akin to calling Halo 2 (or 3) an expansion, because after all, it only gave us an additional 8 hour campaign, some new weapons and enemies, and a few new features. Hell, the galaxy editor alone is enough to churn out enough awesome game modes to last me several years.

One last note, the plot wasn't horrible for what they had to work with: Alien VS Predator with vague concepts of panspermia and resurrection.

 

[chaos order]

the only problem with sc2 is that its really unbalanced, other than that its fine.

 

[Nikolaz72]

The two hours of cinematic in Starcraft 2 was worth the money.. The rest is a bonus.. Mmm, eye candy.

 

[zehydra]

I'll normally read a post, even if it's two paragraphs or whatever.

But this...

 

[Jellly]

I am mildly appalled at all the "TL;DR"-posts; this is a very relevant post bringing up a ton of improvements that Blizzard should have made but neglected to because some people are afraid of change.

It's so good to actually see a critic that understands gaming.

Agreed. If you didn't read it why bother posting about it?

It was a very good article really, and I must say I agree with you on most points. Well done sir.

 

[Joccaren]

Well, I read that all. There should be a badge for that. But, back to the topic at hand:

You have basically, in your series of paragraphs, repeated over and over one 'argument' to me:
I do not like Starcraft because it uses the style of gameplay that it was meant to use, and not one that I would have wanted it to use.

A few points that I will comment on, since commenting on them all would be unpractical:

1. Micro/Macro Management. Firstly, you have labelled the management of buildings and resources as Micro management. It is actually Macro management. The control of individual units within your force to use their spell casting abilities and to make them retreat is Micro management. Just thought I'd point that out.

2. Build queues. I found that this style of build queue worked for Starcraft. The style you stated would be an improvement might have worked if the rest of the game was changed, but not if the rest stayed the same. A reason for no infinite production queues is that you would very quickly find 'pro' players running out of resources, as I find myself doing even without infinite build queues. The spending of your resources at the start of building rather than during it is to allow players to see how many resources they have left to spend. A tip in a Diamond League helper that I have is not to queue more than two units at a time as you might need those resources later. If it were to spend the resources when it started building the unit, rather than when I placed it in the queue, I would think I had more resources than I actually did, and would end up either halting my build queue, or stopping me from building buildings.

3. Apparent concentration on economy. All I have to say, to quote Yahtzee if more than five minutes go 'without a dude and a murder, your playing it wrong'. I find that if I am not constantly attacking, I will be more likely to lose, and the Diamond League helper confirms this. You attack often, as it provides an opportunity to scout and figure out what units you should be building, and it weakens the enemy. If you wait to build a 'doom army' before you attack, yes, the match will come down to who Macro Managed the best (usually). If you attack often, and micro your units whilst Macroing your buildings (easiest when using hotkeys), the game has a far larger tactical element and the winner can be the best microer, or the best macroer. Also, if you are losing to rushes, you really need to get better at the game (no offence). I'm not even that great a player, yet I can fend off a six pool as the protoss (arguably the hardest rush to defend against [when used against protoss]).

4. Control points. I personally hate the control point mechanism. It takes a lot of the macro and macro skill out of the game, and makes it far harder to harass enemies (considering control points usually take ages to destroy, unless attacked by a large force, whilst workers can easily be taken out by a small force of harassing units in seconds). This is all really personal choice, but the resource gatherers work better for Starcraft IMO.

5. Copy of Starcraft 1. It is not. There are many new units and old units have had a number of changes. There are different strategies that work in SC2, that don't work in SC1 and vice versa. If you mean its gameplay is the exact same, I will disagree with you again. It is not the exact same, it is very, very similar though. Is there anything wrong with that? I tend to hate games that move to far away from the style of play they have already established (Dragon Age 2 *cough* *cough*). The game was mostly a refined version of SC1, which is what it should have been.

6. 'Pointless' first fie minutes. The five minutes are anything but pointless. They add a lot of choice. Giving players a full set of starting structures and telling them 'build an army' removes a lot of choice. Ever heard of a build order? They tend to have very varying first five minutes. Some build a barracks/gate/pool ASAP (aka, build no workers). This is generally the Zerg six pool. Others say don't build a barracks until you've got 10 workers, a balanced build generally used by my friends and I. Others still say wait until 13-15 workers, for a great early economy boost. All are strategies that win and lose games, and add to the game.

7. Eliminate supply structures. Matter of personal choice as to how you think the game should be played. Really, I think that the supply structures work in Starcraft for the reason that they are easy to harass, forcing an enemy to wait to build more units or defend their supply depots. This opens up the game to those who don't like to have to build massive armies, and would rather use small numbers of fast units to do the job.

8. Troop Squads and AI. Troop squads are utterly aesthetic. There is absolutely no change in gameplay from units visually appearing as squads, or as individuals. The AI for units is stupid for a reason: its rather non existent. The game forces you to micro your units, and if you don't, then you'll likely lose them. It fit in with the way Starcraft plays. If my army was completely intelligent, I would have no tactical gameplay, and the game WOULD be entirely economy.

9. Consolidate construction structures. Once again, a purely aesthetic feature. Yes, It might save space in a base, but what use is that space if it is not being filled with structures. Also, if each upgrade acted like the Bio reactor, you would only be able to have one or two upgrades before the HUD became a bit confusing due to the large number of units being built/in a queue.

10. Eliminate Research. This is a lot like saying 'make there only one type of combat unit'. Yes, that is an extreme example, but it is true. The research allows you to almost specialise your army. You can go for a mass of un-upgraded units, slightly fewer units with upgraded attack, slightly fewer units with upgraded defence, or a mildly smaller army with full upgrades. If you mean the ability researches, they are more a delay timer to stop some strategies from being OPd straight at the start (marine stims, zealot charge. Both at early game would be evil) in many cases. They also allow you to specialise your whole army. Do I want zealots that charge or stalkers that blink? Do I want marines with stims or BCs with Yamatos? ect.

I completely agree with you on the campaign however.
I personally loved SC2. The only true downside I found with it was the lack of LAN, but thats DRM (Or along similar lines as DRM) for you...

A lot of this is just opinion. But in all reality, that's what a review should be is it not?

 

[Virgilthepagan]

Great holy TL Batman!
I'm sorry, that's not completely fair but you could trim this, it's mostly well written but long, and at times repetitious.
As far as the argument goes though, I think Blizzard did (and continues to do) a decent job of balancing fan expectations (who wanted essentially the same game) with hopefuls who had wanted a total overhaul.

Starcraft has a niche of gameplay in the RTS genre that is based around a lot of the things you find objectionable, fixing that would mean a new game, not Starcraft as we know it. For example, you highlight the downtime at the beginning of the game (first few minutes building workers etc.), but that timing is usually crucial to higher level players as they scout around their base and get their build order down to a science. It's a part of the experience, and while it's not necessarily fast paced it's definitively Starcraft.

Come to think of it, my only major gripe was with the story. Go on a quest for the four pieces of the magical maguffin that solves plot problems is hardly a great sci fi yarn. I was especially disappointed because the game really was well made. The campaign's well paced, the cutscenes were job droppingly gorgeous, the plot was just...SciFi material. The first game had a twisted tale, this one was generic.

 

[Iron Lightning]

That was an excellent review. After reading your post in its entirety, I pretty much completely agree with each of your points. I rather enjoyed reading your post, while it was long, not a word was wasted. I'm sorry that this thread won't get many hits, though. Apparently Escapists hate reading.

Have you played Dawn of War II? It's a nearly complete reworking and improvement upon the already fairly good Dawn of War I. They added the cover system from Company of Heroes and further improved upon it by making the cover destructible by vehicles running over it. They made the power resource also dependent on capturing points which can support a trio of generators. They also eliminated base building almost entirely (you have one almost indestructible building from which all units spawn, you can also build turrets and other battlefield support structures) making the economy entirely dependent on good use of strategy. Additionally, they invented victory points which allow victory by way of holding at least 2 of the 3 victory points available in each map for a certain total time, thus opening the way for a whole slew of new strategies and opening the way for a losing player to turn a game around. That's just an incomplete description of the competitive multiplayer, I could go on about the completely different and equally brilliant single player (the single player isn't quite as good in Retribution as it was in the main game and its first expansion) and Last Stand modes but I really need to go to sleep before the morning sun rises. So let me just say that Dawn of War II is my favorite RTS and well worth a look.

I suppose you could compare this to Bioware's games, especially Dragon Age. Bioware has a few new ideas and thinks that an overhaul of the system could work out well for the games. Well, you saw how that turned out; the community tried to tear their faces off for daring to change the mechanics. Now, if they had instead released the game as a new IP instead of a sequel, well, who knows how that might have gone?

I enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins but the changes they made to the sequel were just horrible. Don't force me to elaborate on them or we'll be here all morning. Change in itself is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Look at Dawn of War II and how much it changed from the original. Sure there was some fan outcry for changing the game so radically but the changes were all very good and so Dawn of War II is still a popular, beloved title.

In all, you have some good ideas but applying them to SC would have have shot Blizzard in the foot. Who knows what could happen in the future, though?

Well, I don't think the changes that would not fundamentally alter Starcraft that our friend Phanixis suggested would be generally accepted. The point was that releasing what is essentially a re-skin after twelve years of development is simply unacceptably lazy and/or cowardly.

 

[Zer_]

I am mildly appalled at all the "TL;DR"-posts; this is a very relevant post bringing up a ton of improvements that Blizzard should have made but neglected to because some people are afraid of change.

It's so good to actually see a critic that understands gaming.

No, he doesn't understand. Innovation is only good when it comes to the majority of games. But innovating too much, or adding layers of complexity on top of a game only serves to hinder the game's acceptance into a competitive online community like StarCraft's.

StarCraft 2 is also hardly a copy of StarCraft 1. Sure many of the units make a return, but for the most part, each race is changed quite a bit. But that's not the point.

StarCraft 2 is largely a competitive RTS game. The key to any competitive game is to keep it simple and stick to the basics. Polish it to a mirror shine and ensure balance. The multiplayer is all about competition and Use Map Settings. All of which Blizzard provided for in their sequel.

The single player is all about continuing the story from the first game and its expansion. I found that they managed to succeed in the perfect balance that is required to keep the fans interested without alienating them. It's incredibly difficult to do as well. Unit and building upgrades that can be purchased throughout the campaign and mercenaries that can be hired (they are almost necessary on the higher difficulty levels). The story telling is vastly improved over the first game. Looking at your units up close and reading up about them is fantastic. All these great new features serve to complement the foundation that is the original StarCraft.

Making many of the additions suggested by the OP would alienate the core fanbase of the series, and would end up destroying the essence of the StarCraft RTS series. It's about pure, basic, balanced RTS play.

 

[Ixal]

In short, Blizzard did not incorporate any of the advances which have been made in the RTS genre since Starcraft 1 was released (Not even the ones from their own games like Warcraft 3)

But then, why should they? People do not buy Blizzard games because of the content of the games, but because they are made by Blizzard. SO why change anything in your games? At some point in the future this won't work any more, but for now no professional reviewer dares to criticise Blizzard games and hordes of fans buy everything they make because of the brand name.

 

[GodofCider]

Starcraft 2, is not starcraft 1. It's not the best rts game ever, and I highly doubt it was trying to be.

In all honesty, many of the complaints you make, sound as though they are coming from a silver-gold league player.

You go on at length about how sc2 has done such a good job with it's unique triad of unit choices, and not your standard mirror image factions. Then ramble on about how the game would be considerably better if you effectively made them all identical.

Add everything together in the manner that you propose and you'd have an abomination.

A one trick pony, wherein the game breaks down into building the strongest units available, repeatedly; in as fast a manner as possible, and mashing them against the opponent's strongest units available. Whomever breaks first loses.

An automated streamlined economy, no supply, compressed unit production structures, standard maxed upgrades.

...it'd be almost exactly like a custom map a friend showed me not long ago; wherein unit tactics can be tested. All the infrastructure is already set up and you just make units and go to the center arena.

I'm sorry, I award you the effort in putting down your thoughts in an excessively elaborate manner; but this entire document fails very hard in my eyes. 3/10.

 

[Slycne]

8,997 words is really only hurting your point. I'd recommend condensing massive portions of it. We really don't need overly detailed descriptions of Starcraft's strengths and every other major series since. Simply analyze something you feel could have done better and provide examples from other games at that moment when it's relevant. Which is basically what you do, but it means you are simply repeating yourself from earlier.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

I am mildly appalled at all the "TL;DR"-posts; this is a very relevant post bringing up a ton of improvements that Blizzard should have made but neglected to because some people are afraid of change.

It's so good to actually see a critic that understands gaming.

No, he doesn't understand. Innovation is only good when it comes to the majority of games. But innovating too much, or adding layers of complexity on top of a game only serves to hinder the game's acceptance into a competitive online community like StarCraft's.

That is why the points I found the most agreeable are the suggestions of a better queuing system, squads, improved individual unit AI and other such suggestions that decrease unnecessary complexity. The excess of tedious micro- and macromanagement that we're left with without such features only distracts the player from what's supposed to be the heart of the game, strategy.

 

[Zer_]

I am mildly appalled at all the "TL;DR"-posts; this is a very relevant post bringing up a ton of improvements that Blizzard should have made but neglected to because some people are afraid of change.

It's so good to actually see a critic that understands gaming.

No, he doesn't understand. Innovation is only good when it comes to the majority of games. But innovating too much, or adding layers of complexity on top of a game only serves to hinder the game's acceptance into a competitive online community like StarCraft's.

That is why the points I found the most agreeable are the suggestions of a better queuing system, squads, improved individual unit AI and other such suggestions that decrease unnecessary complexity. The excess of tedious micro- and macromanagement that we're left with without such features only distracts the player from what's supposed to be the heart of the game, strategy.

Micromanagement has always been a big part of StarCraft. Even so, Blizzard took the more monotanous tasks out of the game. Gone are the group limits of 12 units for one thing.

The individual unit AI rather improved over the first. Again they improved it only where it would add to the current game, and of course not alienating the current fanbase by having the AI do what the player should be doing anyways.

He basically wants the game to be something it's not, and that's the point we're making here.

 

[Phanixis]

I guess it was a mistake to create a review that long. Too many people don't even want to read it, and a lot of other people getting some very strange ideas about what I was trying to claim. It is good to see that at least some posters enjoyed the review, but it looks like I am going to need to condense it, perhaps down to 20% of its original size. I will probably end up posting it in a new thread when I do, but in the interim feel free to check out the review if you are in for a long read.

 

[Grey_Focks]

Jesus tap dancing christ, mighty fine wall you got there.

I did a bit of skimming though, and from what I got out of that, your main complaints seem to be that starcraft 2 wasn't like all the other RTS to come out since, and has in fact really changed very little, if at all. If this wasn't your point, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

To that, I say....what did you expect? Starcraft is starcraft. It is barebones RTS at it's finest, and honestly, I think most people wouldn't have liked it if I just incorporated a bunch of features from other RTS, and I sincerely doubt it would've been improved.

As for the other complaints I was able to get out of that, well, they kinda did. They got rid of the pointless limit of only selecting 12 units at once, unit AI is improved, but not so much that micro-management, arguably one of the biggest parts of the game, is made irrelevant. They also put a very big emphasis on spectating, replays, and streaming live games, which considering the original's status as being one of the biggest esports ever, I'd say is a pretty smart move.

 

[FightThePower]

I see these arguments against Starcraft 2 a lot, and I mean this with the utmost respect, but it's fairly obvious you don't quite understand the decisions Blizzard made with Starcraft 2. Blizzard wasn't totally oblivious to the last 12 years of RTS/RTT development, they deliberately chose to ignore the developments, which sounds like a bad thing but they had good reasoning behind these decisions.

Why aren't there automated gathering structures?

Simple answer: there's something to harrass. You cannot harrass a building - workers are very fragile in SC2 for a good reason, so players can use fast units to get in, do some economic damage, and then get out. Destroying a building is a lot harder than killing the people working for it. It therefore encourages players to defend their mineral line from attack, as well as opening up more strategies for the opposing player - do they try and out-macro their opponent and win in a straight battle, or do they strike at the economy and weaken them enough so their army can them finish them off?

Why must I construct additional pylons?

This is to raise the skill ceiling - you said it yourself:

At its heart, Starcraft is an economic game first and a tactical strategy game second.

Starcraft is a strategy game, so constructing additional pylons to be able to accomodate all your units is part of the strategy (it also prevents players from amassing huge armies too quickly). Same goes for building additional production facilities to be able to spend all the money you're acquiring. This is why you lose money instantly for queuing up a unit because you need to only queue up one at once, this is why there's no option to automate the unit queues. The AI is bad in this game, but it's bad so you have to keep on top of your units.

But of course, you addressed this:

The problem with excessive micromanagement is not the that it doesn't require skill, but that it adds nothing to the game

[sub]By the way, it's macromanagement, not micromanagement. Micromanagement = controlling units, Macromanagement = managing your base, resources etc. Anyway:[/sub]

It most definitely adds something to the game, and it is not 'random', it is part of the strategy. It's annoying, but it's there for a reason - it makes the game harder to master, as well as making it easier to separate good players from bad ones. Starcraft 2 is designed to be a competitive game, and to make a good competitive scene, it needs to have a high skill ceiling. If someone can play the game for only 300 hours of so and be a master of it, then why bother playing 10,000 hours of the game when you could play 10% of that and just do as well? This is why CounterStike is bigger competitively than Call of Duty, and why people play Street Fighter 4 at tournaments and not Super Smash Bros. Yes, competitive scenes for those game do exist, but they are a lot smaller. Removing all this macromanagement will make the game more fun for a casual player, but it won't encourage people to play your game for as long as the original Starcraft did. And since hardcore players are essentially your most loyal customers, you can hardly be surprised that Blizzard didn't 'dumb down' Starcraft 2.

Why do I have to sit here and build workers for several minutes before anything happens?

The downtime at the beginning of the game is also there for a reason, to give more options to the player which strategy to go - do they cut worker production to go for an early rush (e.g. 6pool, Cannon Rush) or fast expansion? Or do they play standard? This leads to more variety in strategies - more variety = more fun to play competitively, as it prevents the game from getting stale.

Why can that tank hit a unit up a cliff when it's underneath it?

This one's easy - Starcraft's designed to have simplistic combat. It focuses on macromanagement, not micromanagement; yes micro is very imporant and one bad engagement can cost you the game, but macro is way more important. It's dumb, but no one said games had to be realistic (and if they did they are wrong).

Why must there be all this research? Why don't High Templar spawn with Psi Storm enabled? etc.

Balance. Recently the Protoss Warp Gate research time was increased by 20 seconds. Why? Because Protoss v Protoss matchups were becoming dominated by one strategy - the 4Gate, which made the matchup boring to play. By delaying how long it takes before the Protoss can get Warp Gate, it allows other strategies to come into play, since they no longer take longer to deploy. Now Protoss players can continue to go 4Gate, or they might use Stargates, Robotics facilities, fast expand etc. because now they get execute their strategy and have time to prepare a counter for the 4Gate push.

This is why High Templar don't spawn with Psi Storm enabled. Because otherwise players could get out Psi Storms way too quickly, and that would mess with the balance - you could ask why didn't they just increase the build time for the Templar Archives, but then that would have a knock-on effect on balance as well, the player can build a Templar Archives now and warp in High Templar whilst researching Psi Storm, so when the research is complete, he has HTs ready to storm, as they have got enough energy. Otherwise he'd have to wait just as long to get out HTs, but they don't have enough energy and are mostly useless for a while.

Also:

The attack and defense buffs are utterly pointless

No offense intended, but you could not be more wrong. They are very important. Ask any high-level player.

Why didn't Blizzard innovate?

Because they didn't want to. You don't have to innovate to make a great game, and innovation for its own sake instead of innovation for a good reason is silly. No more than that, really.

Final thoughts

I just want to point out that not liking RTS games that focus more on Macromanagement is merely preference so there's no point me arguing against you for that, but equally, it's not bad design like you said. Also, as other people have said, that is a very long post (I did read it, however) so you'll need to trim it down in the future. A lot of things were mentioned twice, first in the 'what is wrong' and then 'what should be improved' section.

[sub]However, looking at my own post, I can hardly talk.[/sub]

 

[Carnagath]

The thing is, the shittier and more antiquated an action/RTS game's UI and mechanics are, the higher its skill cap. Brood War had an amazingly high skill cap, but really for the standard's of today's gamers it was way too antiquated. What Blizzard did was refine and improve the interface and some of the mechanics that were really tiresome and introduce some new ones that do still require macromanagement, but are also less shitty and add some more depth. So they introduced unlimited grouping (a must for casual players, even though pros don't use it), intelligent waypoints, better pathfinding, better mechanics regarding unit battle behavior (tweaks to reduce overkill, better attackmove/surround mechanics, intelligent spellcasting etc). That unavoidably lowered the skill cap, but let's not forget that Starcraft 2's primary goal is to be a long lasting e-sport. So they raised the skill cap again by adding separate macro mechanics for every race (like larva spawning/creeping, orbital and chronoboost) that increase the skill cap and APM requirements to play at the top level but also open up a lot of options regarding strategies and timings.

Most innovations that they avoided (like complete macro automation, unlimited free queues etc) were done mostly to keep the skill cap high. Things like that certainly make for a better game to play for 30 hours and then move on to the next, but hurt its longevity and competitive depth. It's a difficult and fine task to create an action RTS that is deep yet never overwhelms you, and they did the best they could. As for other features that you mention, like cover, the devs considered them but rejected them when they tested and found out that they slowed the game down considerably, and they wanted Starcraft 2 to be fast.

In the end, it's all a matter of development goals. Other developers strive for innovation and experimentation. Blizzard strive for refinement, polish, depth and longevity. You, as a customer, can vote with your wallet and buy the games you prefer.

P.S.: There are many factual errors in your multiplayer analysis of the game, so I suppose you spent very little time with it or didn't research it enough. That's understandable if you didn't like it though, so I'm not gonna start detailing them here. However, it's just better to avoid writing things that you are unsure about.