The Amazing Tea Alligator said:
Where's that picture, the 'this thread again one'?
I guess maybe I do need this picture. There was a Starcraft II innovations thread, I just missed it back on page 25-ish of the listings: a whole week ago. I only checked the first five pages which, on second check, go back to...yesterday. This forum is busier than I expected.
This thread is not so much to hash over whether or not Starcraft is innovative, but to ask: what is it missing? So far, I've seen: squad based combat, guys throwing grenades, taking cover, etc. that seem more sensible in an FPS game rather than a large-scale RTS. Do generals receive reports on grenades tossed or individual acts of diving for cover?
Morale seemed an interesting one: people do collapse under too much stress. Ammunition might be good too: troops can't be stationed away from the base indefinitely without regular supplies, opening up convoy raiding and making sieges a bit more meaningful.
The idea of troops coming from off-the-map is problematic. In real life, successful leaders can be shorn of troops in order to patch a hole elsewhere; where things are going badly, reinforcements are thrown in. Would you want to play a game where your army might be summarily be taken simply because you're winning? The idea that minerals are mined and tanks are manufactured
right on the battlefield is ludicrous, but forces the player to be responsible for what they have.
In fairness to Mr. Shrine, things do get a little different later on. Not too much; the campaign is, I supposed, to prepare one for PvP. But then they include the building of units not in multiplayer, leaving me woefully
unprepared. Most of the missions are either destroy X, protect Y, or collect Z, though many of the Y & Z can be solved via X with various side-missions to gain credits or tech for upgrading your units or hiring mercenaries. The mission editor is light-years ahead of SC1, so I have the feeling that there will be some 3rd party campaigns that will blow Wings of Liberty out of the water.