Starcraft 2?

[SethP]

Sooo... Starcraft 2?

On a side note, anyone wanna take bets on how long before South Korea declares Starcraft their national sport?

[Poo Bear]

There's always the problem of "rose tinted glasses" with old games, usually the first of a genre leaves a big impression. For example, I used to think Dune2 (the first rts) was my all time favourite game. Then I got Dune2000 many years later and was totally unimpressed, things had moved on.

After that debacle Starcraft became my all time favourite. Together with the Brood Wars expansion I must have played that game regularly for about 18months straight.

So what worries me is how I'll react when I get hold of the sequel. Currently Starcraft occupies a very special place in my gaming universe. I suspect Blizzard will just tart up the game and add a few new units, but will that be enough? I certainly can't wait to get a proper look at it.

p.s. the same thing happened with Ultima Online and Elite, I used to think they were wonderful, but then coming back to them more recently it was a shock how basic and unfriendly they seemed.

[icarus]

We already have starcraft2 its called "dawn of war: amiriete?

[Dirty Harry Potter]

[Crussh]

Wouldnt it be stupid if they made World of Starcraft?

[SethP]

Yeah, personally I'm glad they decided not to go World of Starcraft (yet, anyway).

I agree with Mark on this one, though. Starcraft is just such a great game it's hard to imagine how they could fix it up besides new graphics and a couple new units (although the ability to select more than 12 units would be REALLY nice).

Of course, that's what they said about the Warcraft franchise, I suppose, and then Blizzard came out with Warcraft 3. Am I alone in hoping that Starcraft 2 stays truer to the original in that the heroes are just the regular units with more hit points and damage?

[Dirty Harry Potter]

[Poo Bear]

[icarus]

[SethP]

Some sexy footage showing all kinds of fun new units and graphical prettiness:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=19827

The HD-ness makes for a helluva big download, but it's pretty cool to watch (all 22 minutes of it).

I think my favorite parts are anything with the mothership and the zerglings (they're just so... creepy and perfect). I was a little disappointed when the mothership finally popped, though. After all the pomp and circumstance for its arrival, its destruction seemed a bit understated. Eh, maybe I'm just too much of a sucker for big explosions.

[zwzsg]

[Dirty Harry Potter]

[Weeble]

I'm fairly optimistic for SC2 at the moment. I'm very pleased that they chose not to add new races. It seems to me that the more races/factions an RTS has, either the more similar they all are, or the more unbalanced they are. I love that almost all the units in Starcraft are genuinely useful and very few of them are similar to each other. The way the gameplay video focuses on the different ways units are strong or weak against each other gives me some confidence that they're really focusing on the right things.

One thing I'm curious about is whether they will retain the armour types and attack types. In Starcraft, every unit is classed as large, medium or small, and it's not always intuitive which one of them a unit will be. Weapons are classed as normal (uniform damage), explosive (full damage against large units, reduced damage against the others) and concussive (full damage against small units, and vastly reduced damage against others). This meant that in order to understand which units were effective against which others, you had to know how they were classed.

Then in Warcraft III they took this system and went bananas. Units could have light, medium, heavy, fortified or hero armour, or be unarmoured. (But unarmoured units still had armour ratings... Try not to get confused!) Damage types were melee, piercing, magic, spell,* siege, chaos and hero. There was a huge table explaining what was good against what, but it'd take ages to learn.

The thing is, it's just not very interesting. Units became counters to other units just because their attacks arbitrarily did extra damage against those units. I really hope they don't have all the complicated classifications of Warcraft III. I'm secretly hoping that they might do away with them altogether, and rely on unit mechanics alone to make counters. As the video demonstrates, warp rays are good against small numbers of big heavy units because they have weapons that do increasing damage the longer they fire for. That's much more interesting (and creates more tactical considerations) than just having them do +50% damage to big units.

* Spell and magic? Yes, spell was the type of damage that actual spells did, whereas magic was the type of damage that spellcasting units did with their normal attack. Some other units had magic damage attacks for balance purposes.

[Dirty Harry Potter]

It seems they have retained some of it.. Well, the warp rays took only slightly less time to kill 1 marine than it took to kill a battlecruiser.

Though, that could also be because of their increasing-damage mechanic. and that they do really.. really lousy damage in the beginning, and then it rises quite quickly at some point to massive amounts of damage.

Hmm.. Can't say for sure, but doing completely away with it, and let it be "simulated" by numbers:Attack speed (or similar mechanics, like the warp ray, which in a sense is also limiting it's attack speed) would be a really good choice imho, in a gameplay sense it amounts to basically the same, but, it's much more intuitive for players.

[Poo Bear]

Plus - if they took that intuitive approach AND allowed the player to control unit availability in multiplayer then I just might win a match online once (ever).

Let me explain - if I can easily work out how to use a small manageable selection of units then I can get proficient enough to play online in a reasonable amount of time! Sort of like "Starcraft lite".

I bet I'd still get whipped every time

Is it just me or does the minimum bar skill level of RTS online gaming get set way too high? With fps like wolfenstein it took a while but eventually I could hold my own and win a few, but i've never got anywhere with any rts online. Before you say i'm just rubbish (and maybe you're right ) I ended up playing huge amounts of LAN rts and seemed quite capable of winning a few. Getting a LAN party together is a bit tricky though so I haven't done it in a while.

Maybe it's a ranking problem?