Campaign Creations

Or a firetruck getting launched into the sun.

/edit

After seeing the updated version of their new gas mechanic I have to really wonder what the hell Browder is smoking.

.. Wow, no comments about the televised matches? Well, I may as well kick it off, then.

There were two televised matches, Yellow vs Sonkie (A canadian wc3 player) PvZ. Obviously Yellow won pretty easily, but these games gave a good view of the game in its current state overall. I'll just bring up my comments in points for easy reading.

- The colossus is still a very boring unit. It's not so durable anymore. It's also kind of funny to see this huge walker just go "poof" with a very unsatisfying little blue cloud when it's destroyed and completely vanish. I really hope they redesign or, preferably, remove this unit by beta. And I hope to god they have an option to re-enable the debris.

- Their armor system is very hard countery (Banelings gain +45 damage against buildings!, And hydralisks are really weak against land units :\) and is not very promising.

- The replay/observer system features modernized systems including waypoints, clicks, unit counts, economy counters, ect. for the players which is very cool.

- The new gas system is about twice as retarded as the previously proposed gas revamp. I wish they'd just leave the gas alone. It was fine the way it was upon launch. There's no reason to be fucking with the gas system. If they don't like mbs, remove it, stop trying to break other things to justify a completely retarded argument. MBS isn't going to ruin the game, making the gas retarded will.

- The game pace seems about the same as SC but from what I hear they were playing on Faster and not Fastest. I honestly think the early game is a bit too fast with the worker changes, though. That and the new gas mechanics are just annoying and forced rather than intuitive. The game definitely isn't suffering from the wc3 syndrome though.

- Some people said the game is too flashy and too hard to tell units apart. I think they just need to get the cocks out of their eyes because I can see what's going on in the shitty youtube video just fine let alone the live stream. I don't see how they can say it's too flashy, either, given the majority of flashiness has been removed.

- The zerg seem to be a lot further along than they were before and given the lack of major changes to them recently I think I am going to bet on what I've been hearing that beta is coming in november.

- Of course as everyone knows, SC2 is now a trilogy, and Blizzard is talking about monetizing certain features of battle.net, which they left unspecific but I imagine equates to stuff like custom avatars.

- Stalkers are ridiculously powerful.

- I lol'd at people saying Browder is talking too fast. I can understand what he's saying just fine.

A few notes (haven't read everyones posts, and can't until tomorrow)

- Blizzard is NOT obsessed with green, they are clearly obsessed with red. Big. Bold. RED.
- The Dark Templars now have various weapons to add diversity, and they are tweaking Zerg to possibly have various amount of wings (Zerglings) and sizes.
- The Zergling wings are actually the final artwork for crackling status.
- They are still revising all unit looks, including a complete remake of models if need be.
- Artists themselves do read the SC2 forum on Battle.net.
- The creep.. The Creep is AMAZING.
- The Infester (or was it Corrupter, whichever is the huge sac ground unit) will be remodeled to have a stronger carrapse like its respective building.

All for now, more when I bring up pages.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/918/918895p1.html

We asked about the timeline for the three StarCraft II games, using Valve's original prediction of shipping all three episodes of the Half-Life 2 episodes within a single year, but reality is that it will take more than more like three years. Pardo thought that was a great example and said, "It's a little bit similar to that in that it would be great if we could have them follow one year from one another; I think that's going to be our target, but certainly that's not a promise in any way. But I think that's going to be around the realm that we're going to be hoping for."

So -- what? -- that means we won't be able to play the protoss campaign for at least two fucking years?!

Argh!! Die, Blizzard!

Frankly, I am very  upset about the story being split apart into a "trilogy within a sequel."  I feel this is a copout by Blizzard to capitalize on a fantastic lore line that could have been completed with a small delay of a few months. 

What I find upsetting about these "separate games" is that we, the consumers, will have to pay expansion pack prices for the remaining storyline.  Will the add-on campaigns include new units or features that the Terran SC2 vanilla won't have?  I can't imagine paying $39.99 just for the continuation of the single-player campaign.  Does anyone else find this preposterous?

Half-Life 2.

Hunter_Killers wrote: Half-Life 2.

loltrue

Lav saw it as well. The creep is truly amazing. They captured it in 3D perfectly.

It was a fun experience, definitely again next year.

AA7Dragoon wrote: Frankly, I am very  upset about the story being split apart into a "trilogy within a sequel."  I feel this is a copout by Blizzard to capitalize on a fantastic lore line that could have been completed with a small delay of a few months. 

What I find upsetting about these "separate games" is that we, the consumers, will have to pay expansion pack prices for the remaining storyline.  Will the add-on campaigns include new units or features that the Terran SC2 vanilla won't have?  I can't imagine paying $39.99 just for the continuation of the single-player campaign.  Does anyone else find this preposterous?

Yes, me.  I only heard about this today, and I don't know when it was announced, but I as far as I'm concerned, this is a bad idea. Say, I buy the terran campaign (cos we'll actually be buying seperate campaigns, it's all the same game) and a year later, I get the zerg, and two years the protoss.  With things moving so rapidly in the world of computer games, who could be arsed to get a third part of a game that was released 2 years ago? 

On the other hand, I feel to reluctant to call Blizz's decisions bad before I've actually seen them.  I always thought the WoW monthly pay-to-play wouldn't work, and it didn't for me, but it worked for the rest of world.

But I can't see how this is going to work!

Any new units ect will be patched in from what I hear.

Which is just inviting the campaigns to be pirated to hell and back.

Of course I could have heard wrong and then you're going to get a big split in the playerbase because all I am hearing about this is negative feedback.

Personally I don't really care. I just need something to do.

Mr. Legion wrote: With things moving so rapidly in the world of computer games, who could be arsed to get a third part of a game that was released 2 years ago?

yeah forget about the 20 zillion polygon games of today; in 2 years games will have 40 zillion polygons making today's games obsolete

and look at the first StarCraft, nobody was still playing that 2 years later

Taer wrote:

Mr. Legion wrote: With things moving so rapidly in the world of computer games, who could be arsed to get a third part of a game that was released 2 years ago?

yeah forget about the 20 zillion polygon games of today; in 2 years games will have 40 zillion polygons making today's games obsolete

and look at the first StarCraft, nobody was still playing that 2 years later

There's a possibility many people will lose interest. What made Starcraft so great was that it was a game (1 game) with so many possibilities and a cool storyline. You didn't have to buy so many fucking add-on packs to get the full story and stuff, like Warcraft and now apparently SC2.

I liked the protoss most, but by the looks of it, I won't be seeing them for another 2 or 3 years.

I'm not saying it won't be cool, or that I don't like changes, but I'm starting to think that maybe Starcraft 2 wasn't such a good idea. If it were a spin-off like Ghost or something, it'd be different, but right now (and I'll probably get flamed for this), afaic a sequel like this isn't what the Starcraft franchise needed.

Really I think this could have been avoided if Blizzard wasn't trying to multitask so much and put more staff on the sc2 team. They're still only like 40 people in comparison to WoW's 120+, D3's team, the unannounced project... the only reason sc2 has taken so long is because they aren't using their time wisely. If they really have been working on sc2 ever since TFT's release they've had years and years just to get to alpha.

If I look around all I see an asston of whining about the trilogy ect and as odd as it is I just can't really find anything to complain about. If I buy a game, and I'm actually spending money on it, it's because I expect to play it a hell of a long time. I don't put money on something unless I positively feel that money is going to be put to use. To me, enjoying the last days of my life means more to me than money, but I only put my only valuable commodity into something that I feel will actually give me enjoyment. No doubt they will charge the full price for these campaigns.

The real thing that concerns me about the trilogy is that Blizzard is very poor at adding depth to their worlds and their campaigns to date have been less than stellar. Now they're setting themselves up for the greatest challenge of their entire career by far. I don't mind B&D maps but their level design is utterly atrocious and across 30 missions you're going to be hard pressed to keep it immersive and involving and not just droning like every other company-made campaign out there.

I really do agree with Legion when he says this isn't the kind of sequel the game needed, but I don't have any specific points I really overly pessimistic about. SHOCKER? I know, I'm still scratching my head on that one, too. I'm just not very optimistic Blizzard can make it worth while. But hey, there's more CGI, and no one can deny that Blizzard's CGI is pretty much awesome.

If I ever put money on sc2, it'd be as a modder, and not a player. I lost interest in SC's story back when BW first came out. So that only leaves Diablo for me to be worried about. So the trilogy only would mean I'd get more content to play with over time, which is better then what wc3 ever gave me. I guess that would be worth the money, if the game is worth modding. But as it looks... I really don't think it will be capable of what I'm asking.

Anyways, only time will tell if the decisions pan out to be good ones.

What's the "updated" gas mechanic? I can't find it anywhere

Your gas geysers "run out" of minable gas every 300 gas and become inactive and you have to manually move your workers elsewhere for a while.

Also now I've got Blizzard confirmation that you'll have to buy the new expansions to get their multiplayer additions.

I've thought about this a bit, and decided its a very good thing.  As someone pointed out before, Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode I and II, both 'expansions' were worthy of plucking down more money even though it was the same basic game.  An RTS is drastically different from a first person shooter, and its going to depend largely on Blizzards ability to go beyond simple build and destroy RTS gaming.  I'm not angry or anything by this choice, and am actually glad they are doing this.  If anything, it will extend the life of the game significantly.  In other words, we've already been promised 2 extensions to the games life. 

Do you guys honestly believe that Blizzard of all companies somehow screwed up on this one and is simply being greedy or won't provide a good pricing structure for the relative gaming experience they offer?  Give them a lot more credit then that.  If they want to take the scope of their single player experience to the extent where they believe it will require 3 distinct releases, I say all the better for us.  My goodness, this is the heart of the StarCraft campaign community for crying out loud.  If anyone would have been excited for a load of single player content, I would say it would be here.

I welcome this news, and I'm sure they'll handle it correctly.