Starcraft II not innovative? Tell me.

Veylon

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Aug 15, 2008
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I've seen a number of people dinging SC2 for not being 'innovative' enough, for relying too much upon the first game.

A question to the detractors: what, precisely, is the game lacking that it should have? What innovations would make it better? What is it taking from the past that should have been left behind?

This isn't about DRM, LAN, Activision, price, or any of the other random corporate stuff, over which there is a solid consensus, but the game itself.
 

MisterShine

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Mar 9, 2010
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I'll let Tycho do my talkin' for me:

Tycho said:
Again: you can't not like it. I'm not an absolute jerk. They've leveraged the oldest verbs of RTS to give us a highly calculated, almost algorithmically "satisfying" form of amusement. But to the extent that the game is different - outside of the Wing Commander cribbing and the rancid script - those differences are beyond my level of play.

Warcraft III was, by comparison, chockablock with innovations and crazy bullshit - the sort of prayerful long pass that a company with Blizzard's talent and resources can bring to fruition. I don't know who else is supposed to take these chances. Beyond its narrative strengths, which were manifold, its technological and philosophical bones gave rise to Defense of the Ancients, which I've argued constitutes an entirely new genre. It was a game so bold that it contained games within it. Where is that bold heart?

For the consumer, maybe "polish" is - as an ideal - the highest calling of the medium. I'm not satisfied with that. At our best we advocate with our selections, curating it thereby. In that spirit, let us be clear with one another. We may call Starcraft II "old school," the electronic equivalent of comfort food, and these things are not untrue in the particulars. But there is a safety in thought and deed here that borders on cowardice.
In every previous Blizzard game, I've felt there have been some strides towards innovation, and just plain creativity in how the game itself is presented. I'm about 6 or 7 missions through the single-player campaign, and it all feels very "safe". Maybe I haven't given it enough time, but, should it really take this long? Two hours into Warcraft 3 and we had Arthas butcher a whole city.

And after several years of playing the crap out of SC1, both online and off, the engine feels just too same-y for me to enjoy as a new experience. It just feels like the old game with a new coat of paint. A beautiful one at that, don't get me wrong, but at 60 dollars (for a pc game!?), it just doesn't fill me like my usual Blizzard meals.

Just my opinion, if you'd like me to expand on it more or discuss it.. you know what to do.

edit: Also, it took them 12 years to get around to finishing this. This is what took so long to make?
 

Marowit

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Nov 7, 2006
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It's an argument not worth getting into to in my opinion. If Blizzard released a game, that was a bound forward in the genre - lets say by allowing you to set up the strategic outline you want your units to follow, and then allowing you to take control of a single unit (I personally think that would be an innovation in the RTS genre, but I'm not a hardcore RTS fan). Then you'd have people complaining about how the game is not what made StarCraft a legitimate 'sport' in certain countries. Not to mention the constraints that having it be so competitive places on the amount of innovation you can have.

Personally, I just think that RTS games, as a genre, is dated, and there isn't that much left to innovate towards. After all, as someone else put it, it's more or less a really complicated chess game with a narrative. I do think that hybrids between FPSs and RTSs would be really cool, but then you alienate fans of a singular genre (as well as risk the dreaded 'casual' tag by making a game for people int he middle). Have I enjoyed the SCII campaign thus far? Definitely. Will this be the last RTS game I buy? Probably. I just think the genre is reaching it's limits, because games can be so much more than moving units around a map.
 

Veylon

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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.
 

Crimson_Dragoon

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Jul 29, 2009
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It does nothing particularly new or different. It takes the standard RTS elements Blizzard already almost perfected 12 years ago with Starcraft 1 and polishes them to a mirror-shine. That's not necessarily a bad thing. For what it tries to be, the game is absolutely perfect. But some people want something new and different from what we've already seen, especially given that Blizzard has the resources and talent to give us something new and different.