Starcraft 2

[Dja Majista]

No! it's NOT out yet but it's gonna be!
talk about blizzards upcoming masterpiece.
Will it be heir to the throne of the king of real time strategy?

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

You beat me to making this thread. Ultimately I'm sure it will be super cool. I discussed with you some of the things that may be at fault. Especially that rock-paper-scissors thing.

[Dja Majista]

yeah but I figured our incredibly insightful opinions should be made public so without further adieu...
this game is gonna friggin rock.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

damasta said:

yeah but I figured our incredibly insightful opinions should be made public so without further adieu...
this game is gonna friggin rock.

It will be pretty much an upgraded SC. There should have been a new race, especially with the wait we had to endure.

[Dja Majista]

yeah, I agree. I think they just didn't want to tamper with the original system too much though. But I'm satisfied with that motive. It's good to see they're making a clear effort to hold true to the original experience. Anyway, Terran, Zerg, and Protoss pretty much covers the spectrum for race styles.
But on the other hand in warcraft III, they made two extra races, and people didn't really complain that much about balance. And they obviously didn't hold to the wc2 balance system, since those two races were completely identical other than one's green, one's not.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

damasta said:

yeah, I agree. I think they just didn't want to tamper with the original system too much though. But I'm satisfied with that motive. It's good to see they're making a clear effort to hold true to the original experience. Anyway, Terran, Zerg, and Protoss pretty much covers the spectrum for race styles.
But on the other hand in warcraft III, they made two extra races, and people didn't really complain that much about balance. And they obviously didn't hold to the wc2 balance system, since those two races were completely identical other than one's green, one's not.

I guess, but it would be more of an SC 1.5 in some aspects. Or a 1.8

[Dja Majista]

As a warning, this post is pretty long. Don't expect to read it all in one sitting unless you have some time.

I've been browsing the SC2 site recently, mainly looking at the FAQs.
I'm noticing, how a lot of the questions are geared toward finding out how similar SC2 will be to WC3. WC3 was an outstanding RTS, but several of it's new features were either shortcomings, or simply consequent mechanics from it's intended micromanagement-based nature. Which means we should recognize them as two distinctively different RTS's. However, it appears that the starcraft team is well aware of this, as StarCraft II intends to blend both elements of micro and macro as ingeniously as it's predecessor.

And just for the record, here is a quote from blizzard to show you what I'm talking about:
With MBS (Multiple Building Selection) and automine in the game, what macro-specific features are going to be added to make sure that the player always has as much to do on the macro side as he does micro? Will a player still be able to favor macro or micro according to his own style? - FrozenArbiter (www.teamliquid.net)
It is our goal to allow players to micro more vs. macro more. This is something that was great about the original StarCraft and it is something we want to maintain while we add new mechanics as well as interface features. We are still evaluating such features as automine as well as MBS. We don't have an answer for this at the moment, but we are working on it.

Essentially what your seeing here is just an analysis of all the FAQs regarding StarCraft II in the context of WarCraft III.
so without further adieu...

What is the role of heroes in StarCraft II? Will they be the same as in StarCraft?
StarCraft II campaign heroes will fulfill roles similar to what appeared in the original StarCraft single player experience, but they will have even more unique abilities from standard units, and will be more innovatively integrated into the story campaign. Heroes will not be buildable in multiplayer.

Heroes in WC3 were the flag carriers of the word "micromanagement." In fact many of the reasons SC does not follow in warcraft's footsteps is due to the fact that they intend to strike a balance between micro and macro. for at least 75% of the duration of your assault, you will have the hero selected, trying to cast spells to support your units. In multiplayer, it is rare to see an experienced player send his troops to battle without a hero. This concept was never meant to set foot in the starcraft universe. Granted, I have no problem with Starcraft's hero, who, just like in wc2, was not something to be used in a multiplayer environment. But upgradable heroes take too much emphasis off of macro as well as the the focus on the army which the RTS is built off of.

Will there be critters units and can they attack?
There will be critters, but they wont attack. If they did they would be creeps.

Again working off the micro in warcraft, the idea of littering the map with neutral-hostile units had a two-fold effect on the human players. Humans usually use them in a wc3 exclusive strat called "creeping." This is when the player's initial focus is on killing nearby creeps to level up the hero rather than rushing. The other side to this is it requires micromanagement in map movement. The player is essentially punished for taking the wrong route to get from one place to another by getting ambushed by occasional camps of creeps.

Will there be upkeep in StarCraft II?
No, there will not be.

This was WC3's way of saying, "micro, no macro." It was a horrible concept that should never have been used, even in an intentionally micromanagement game. (For those who don't know what upkeep is, it's an implementation placed on the resources gathering mechanics in which after the player reaches a certain size of army, money becomes deducted each time a worker returns with gold. Low upkeep= -3 gold, High upkeep= -6 gold)

Do you have any plan to put the auto-casting ability into StarCraft II units, just like in Warcraft III?
At the moment, Medics are the only units that we have deemed fit to have an auto-cast ability. StarCraft II, compared to Warcraft III, has fewer abilities but are much more potent when executed properly, thus making them manual cast will give players a huge opportunity to demonstrate much skill in the game.

For an intentionally micro game, wc3 had an odd mix of lazy macro type features that really wouldn't even fit with it's macro-based superior, Starcraft. Auto-cast was not a completely bad idea; in fact, it was a necessity for players to effectively utilize the low mp cost spells like searing arrows and the priest's healing. Actually starcraft: brood war was technically the first to introduce the idea as they brought it solely to their well-deserving medic. But for whatever reason, many high mp cost spells have the auto-cast function. Though in most cases this is simply implemented for convenience, it severely hinders the skill requirement in micromanagement of battles.

Will the game feature a mechanic similar to Warcraft 3 where if a selection of units contains more than one unit type then the whole selection will move at the speed of the slowest unit to maintain cohesion? (www.sclegacy.com)
No, units in the same selection will not move at the same speeds. The slower units will need to be micromanaged by the players to keep up with the larger group.

Another macro feature which apparently wasn't too macro for wc3, but IS for sc2 is this. Again I will agree with the starcraft team's judgement call here to leave this out. This is primarily for the personal reason that I am simply used to having to make sure my units stay close when moving through hostile territory. Another reason was that it was so hard to make sure that you didn't accidentally have a catapult (very slow unit) in your group while your trying to retreat or something; otherwise your crew gets slowed down for that bit of crucial time and you're overtaken by the enemy. There are simply a lot of little glitches with this system as a whole, but nevertheless, it was a clever idea.


Now this is not to say that warcraft 3 was a total failure. I think it's a great game. It's simply not the same as SC in terms of style. However in the sense that they are both RTS's, there are a plethora of similarities. This leaves room for wc3's abundant supply of interface enhancements to make an appearance in SC2 as well as the improvements in gameplay options and fluidity of gameplay also initially improved on by wc3.

Will players be able to select multiple buildings simultaneously?
We are directing much attention to polishing and improving the user interface. On that note, players will definitely be able to select and build from multiple buildings at the same time. You cannot drag-select buildings, but you can shift-click on them and add them to a control-group for ease of unit production.

You can't really go wrong here. It's essential for good macro in the new RTS.

Will workers auto-gather resources if the rally point is set to a mineral node or a geyser?
Of course.

They're like "pssh, duh."

Will resource sharing be allowed between allies?
Yes, it is our plan to have this in the game, though there is still much testing and balancing revolving around this ability.

This concept really only helped WC3. However, while I think it would still be a good idea, it may pose some balance problems with the implementation of blue and yellow(higher quality) crystals.

Will you be increasing the max players beyond 8?
We are exploring this possibility, though currently it is defaulted to 8 max players.

Warcraft had a max of 12. This caused some lag for certain computers on bnet. They could probably resolve this issue by only opening the option of 12 players to the higher end computers somehow.

If you have multiple casters selected when you cast a spell, will they all cast it or only one? (ex. will 8 ghosts all use lockdown on a unit or only one?)
Currently, unit abilities are set as smart casting, meaning when you have a group of casters selected, each time you wish to cast a spell, you will either have to click the icon or press the hot key and follow it with a click on the designated place on the map for it to cast. This will obviously prevent locking down a single unit with more than one ghost, though we are also still exploring possibilities to have different methods of casting for casters in which players would want to have multiple casts executed in a single command.

Warcraft 3 did something smart. "Smart casting" as the name suggests is a raw improvement on the system. It simply adds to convenience and doesn't deter from the necessity of skill.

Will holding the Alt button show unit/building hit points overhead as they did in Warcraft 3?
Yes, when holding the Alt button, all health bars of buildings and units on the screen will be displayed. This is an excellent way to quickly assess which units are healthy and which units are damaged.

Something that sucked about sc was the fact that you could see that a few units in your group were at critical health, but you couldn't pick them out without actually selecting them individually. Th alt key thing was a very good idea.

When a player in a team game leaves will the computer AI take over? Or, will the remaining players be given control of that person's team?
Computer AI will not take over if your ally leaves in a team multiplayer game. Although, if you have allied control set, the player will be able to control their allys units after they leave.

Exactly. What happens if the computer "auto-pilot" turns out to be better than the original player? Another good idea from warcraft.

Will you finally be able to mix and match terrain types instead of being stuck on jungle, twilight, etc?
[Dustin Browder] Yes terrain texture is mixable now. Also tilesets are also mixable.
[Brett Wood] Essentially, you can define your own tileset in the editor, something that wasnt really supported even in Warcraft III.

If I'm not mistaken, they allowed for limited custom tilesets in WC3. It looks like they are going all out this time. As a map maker, this is very good news.

Well that's it for my Starcraft2/Warcraft3 assessment.
Other than that I have a few things to add:

Will there be a black player color? (starcraft-source.com)
We have tried using black, but it was too difficult to differentiate units on the mini-map from the fog of war.


Anyway I noticed that there seems to be different death animations depending on what attacks are used to kill a unit, though nothing regarding this was actually mentioned in the FAQ.
To see what I'm talking about, check out these links and look how differently marines die to battlecruisers compared to siege tanks.

starcraft2.com/features/terran/siegetank.xml

starcraft2.com/features/terran/battlecruiser.xml

One of the siege tank screen shots I thought was pretty badass; you'll all know what I'm talking about when you look.

Also, here's one of the deeper topics to think about, from the FAQs section...
An obvious goal (among many) for Starcraft2 is to maintain the profile of being an E-Sport. What facet do you consider more integral to the growth of that ideal: An extremely high skill ceiling that demands years upon years to achieve mastery, or an extraordinarily large base of interested players to provide the attention that such a sport needs in order to succeed and grow? Obviously both are important, but when it comes to design ideals, what has more pull? Accessibility or Longevity? Mora (www.teamliquid.net)
I think for e-sport we need the high skill ceiling. Though really as you say, both are very important. As designers we have spent years focusing on accessibility. Ideas must be accessible to even be put into the game. So we are just not as worried about making the game accessible. That will happen. What we are focused on, what is the more challenging problem is making the game last for years and years and years. So in our development cycle at the moment, longevity definitely has the larger pull. Longevity is the harder problem to solve, so we put way more effort into making the game as challenging as possible to master. Dustin Browder, Lead Designer of StarCraft II

OK that's it. Hope you all found this informative.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Good job on the post, you've covered many things.

[Dja Majista]

behold the power of boredome.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

I imagine.

[Dja Majista]

yeah I still can't get over this one. it's just gorgeous.

[jackred]

I might buy this game after all when it comes out depending on me getting Turok and World of Warcraft next expansion pack.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

I'll get it when I get a new comp.

[Dja Majista]

You guys better buy this thing. Even if you don't want it, you still should SUPPORT BLIZZARD!!!!
*foaming at the mouth*

Seriously though, it might take a few years for it to come out unfortunately. Or at least, bet on it. No point in getting our hopes up.

[Sinistrous]

Um, Blizzard doesn't exactly need too much financial support at this point, especially considering you-know-what...

[Dja Majista]

dammit, you had to remind me... That was the worst hundred odd dollars I ever spent...

[Sinistrous]

WHAT? I thought the game was, like, fifty something. I don't remember you paying for the subscription, you barely even played the game.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

I'm missing out on something here...

[Dja Majista]

It's so cool isn't it?
The skill is technically called innuendo, but in this case it's not used in the popular context.

Anyway Joseph, yeah it was 50. and I may be overestimating on my total payment (could have been as low as $75 total). All I know was that I had a significant financial role in the following payments, whether it be half or a third. And we did have it for quite a while.
*trying to keep the innuendo here*

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

damasta said:

It's so cool isn't it?
The skill is technically called innuendo, but in this case it's not used in the popular context.

Anyway Joseph, yeah it was 50. and I may be overestimating on my total payment (could have been as low as $75 total). All I know was that I had a significant financial role in the following payments, whether it be half or a third. And we did have it for quite a while.
*trying to keep the innuendo here*

My context was more of the actual experience of the game, than the actual topic itself.

[jackred]

It could top the original.

[Dja Majista]

that's what she said.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

You sound like my assistant manager.

[Dja Majista]

lol

[Sinistrous]

damasta said:

Anyway Joseph, yeah it was 50. and I may be overestimating on my total payment (could have been as low as $75 total). All I know was that I had a significant financial role in the following payments, whether it be half or a third. And we did have it for quite a while.
*trying to keep the innuendo here*

I'm not 100 percent, but I'm quite sure that you paid five bucks a month for a little while on top of the price of the game (I was never sure if Dad went in with you on that - you know, birthday present and all). We had a subscription for about a year and I think you cut out before the end of the 04/05 school year, so I don't think you put in more than thirty for the subscription. I'm quite certain you wouldn't have spent much more than eighty.

So yeah, cheer up!

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

nocturneinbm said:

damasta said:

Anyway Joseph, yeah it was 50. and I may be overestimating on my total payment (could have been as low as $75 total). All I know was that I had a significant financial role in the following payments, whether it be half or a third. And we did have it for quite a while.
*trying to keep the innuendo here*

I'm not 100 percent, but I'm quite sure that you paid five bucks a month for a little while on top of the price of the game (I was never sure if Dad went in with you on that - you know, birthday present and all). We had a subscription for about a year and I think you cut out before the end of the 04/05 school year, so I don't think you put in more than thirty for the subscription. I'm quite certain you wouldn't have spent much more than eighty.

So yeah, cheer up!

Indeed.

[Dja Majista]

Zerg video is up.
I just conveniently heard about it coming out within the hour of its release.

Video:
www.tagstory.com/video/video_post.aspx?media_id=V000167874

Screenshots:
www.sc2armory.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1466

If your having trouble with the link it's probably your fault.

[Dja Majista]

And blizzard apparently opened the zerg section of the website this morning.

Mutalisk and hydralisk are up now.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Awesome.