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StarCraft, Nothing But StarCraft
Now that the news has been out for a few days and game journalists have had a chance to chat with the folks at Blizzard, there are a number of new stories detailing parts of the StarCraft II world. A massive press briefing about the game fills in a few more details on the game; only three factions, no new races, the game is built with competitive play in mind, and will run on both XP and Vista. For more nitty-gritty elements, the company held panel discussions on the art design and gameplay elements of the upcoming game. Video from the event is now widely available as well; check out the official trailer, some example gameplay, or the epic 22-minute long developer walkthrough.
...but what I'm really looking forward to is Diablo III. clickclick clickclickclickclickclick clickclick clickclickclick
will run on both XP and Vista.
Like most recent Blizzard releases, it will also ship simultaneously for the Mac.
Nice completely uninformed jab. Not only does Blizzard ALWAYS release a mac and a pc version at the same time, they also tend to make the final product compatible with WINE. WoW used to play beautifully in WINE, though I haven't tried it out in a while.
Say what you will about them, but they take cross-platform compatibility seriously.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
So it's going to be crap online then? People don't like getting beaten. They partcicularly don't like getting beaten outright by players who, in the grand scheme of things, are only slightly better than themselves. Trying to make that happen more will just make multiplayer starcraft rubbish. Here's hoping they do a map editor to rival War3's, we can then have enjoyable custom maps at least.
Are you new to online play in general? If your significantly behind in the skill curve then you can either play similiarly skilled friends or play and lose a lot to gain more skill. It's true of all games. Blizzard RTS's tend to focus on "skill" over "strategy" but I think the gridation of skill is a lot smoother then you think.
It's apparent you want skill to matter less. A person who masters a few keys skills will win over those without them. Preserving units with low health, the ability to focus fire and good special ability targetting are skills that you need. If your missing this control you will lose to someone with that control 100% of the time. Once you master those skills you would then move from Noob to Newb. A noob is one is is persistantly bad who does not improve with practice because they beligerantly cling to the way they think it should be player. A newb is simply someone who need practice. If you think the system is insurmountable then you are a noob.
The amount of skill needed is fairly low but if you can't grasp the basics nothing can help you. Now once you grasp these basics then it's all strategy. For instance I have a perfect record against my cousin. I'm 73 : 0 against him in war 3. The difference isn't micro. I have decent micro skills but nothing special. He has awe inspiring micro. He clicks and manage so many groups at a time that I cannot win battle with even numbers of troops. If we are even I would lose and frequently lose skrimishes during a game. However I have much better big picture strategey and despite losing a few battle I win the war through better resource management, expansion/expansion denial, ability mix, and recon.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
If Blizzard conforms to recent form, no there won't be a Mac version.
There will be one version that works on both Mac and PC. Buy the game and you're set either way.
As someone who uses both, Blizzard has my undying praise for not making me buy two different copies. I will buy every non-MMS the company makes for this alone. (Not to mention that make awesome RTS games.)
I am inexperienced. I'd love to enjoy the game in all its technical details, but it is such a pain in the ass to play. You do not need to tell me what 'pro' players do. Of course they play at maximum efficiency. The thing is, I don't want to be 'good' at precision clicking on units, I want to be good at the actual game portion of it.
You point out the group limit isn't a hindrance because there is a workaround. Sounds more like a tacit admission that it is artificial. Alt-clicking does not completely solve the problem, you are still issuing multiple commands when one would suffice. In regard to load balancing, it'd be only among the buildings currently selected. You do not want to limit the options available to a player or force them to work in a certain way. Having it automatically work on all buildings of a certain type would be asinine. I am no stranger to hotkeying the buildings, or placing them properly. I just find the UI shortcuts provided by Blizzard to be incapable of handling the sheer number of disparate tasks that need to be done to play Starcraft at any sort of decent level.
I am not sure how this is making it a less competitive game. The more the UI aids the user in doing tedious things, the more fun it is to play. This has nothing to do with dumbing down the game. Like I said earlier, I won't weep at all if the excessive mouse skills are no longer mandatory to play. I already use the mouse too much during the day at my tech job.
I have to agree with the original poster. I played for awhile and was fairly good. Nonetheless these difficulties in unit training, queuing, and unit selecting were mostly not intended. No one at blizzard said, "Hey, lets substitute in some bad UI design that a more seasoned player can overcome to beat his opponents."
These tricks you've learned are crutches. You are apparently good at using crutches. You like them because you are better at using crutches than the average player, but don't think for a minute that these crutches are part of the game or that they enhance game play in the least.
I would like to see resources stay unused until unit starts building. Ability to make command centers rally their scvs on resources instead of sitting there. To select multiple buildings at once and hotkey them and use them to train. To be able to queue future commands on units that are in the process of building something. To research upgrades one after another in order. To allow infinite unit selection (already done). To queue units that aren't yet available while an advanced structure is building or upgrading. An easier way to select similar units that are mixed in a big blob of different units. A defend as well as a follow command. None of these is game breaking, but they allow you to get the base building done and forget about it for a couple minutes to manage combat or expansion.
I do not want scripting capability that some people are stupidly advocating. Anything that could be done in the background besides simple key rearrangement would be detrimental to barrier to entry and professional play. I also don't want it to start anticipating things like building overlords when it thinks you need them.
One thing this article didn't mention: the Blizzard reps were asked whether there would be subscription fees attached to battle.net, and they refused to comment. Not even a peep.
They were willing to give "tight-lipped" responses to plot spoilers, but this issue they wouldn't comment on at all.
I can see why they'd want to keep silent if subscription fees are in the works for battle.net, as it would put a damper on the hype cyclone that's been stirred up in gaming news since its announcement. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't just deny it if the option weren't at least on the table.
Considering this game's market position (a blockbuster RTS hasn't been released in years and obviously there is great interest), Vivendi's/Blizzard's great post-RTS success with WoW, Starcraft's international appeal (especially in the launch country, South Korea, where subscription-based games across all genres make up the majority of the PC game market) and other previously non-subscription genres testing the waters (e.g. Hellgate: London, the "spiritual successor to Diablo" made by ex-Blizzard employees)... Starcraft 2 seems like the perfect property to add a monthly fee to -- even if it did rouse some negative sentiment, it would likely still be successful.
I strongly suspect there's some form of fee in the works. If not, it would be nice if Blizzard would make that clear.