StarCraft II

[SupraOfDoom]

I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree.

TA was balanced in a different way - every unit scored based on speed, power, armor, construction time, material required, and so on, therefore, adding a unit - or ten - didn't mess with the balance, as long as the scores matched up. And they did.

I never bothered with the storyline in SC, because after my own units accidentally SHOT EACH OTHER while the enemy ran between them, I was so disgusted that I uninstalled it.

TA is a game founded in excess to force the player to concentrate on strategy instead of micromanagement. The AI takes care of other things for you - for instance, you can take an aircraft factory, make it a group, set a patrol path for it, and all units it produces will be a member of the same group, attack anything that comes in view, return for repairs if damaged and return to the patrol path when repaired.

Starcraft *now* is a finely balanced game. In March of 1998, it was absolutely not. It's had 23 patches and one major expansion pack since then. If they hadn't gotten it right by now, I'd be very surprised. Even now, the fact that they can't change or add units without messing it up totally doesn't mean it's finely balanced, it means it's a huge house of cards - fragile as hell.

I have also played both extensively - as well as every other RTS game to come out since the genre was invented. IMO SC wasn't worth playing until 8 months after it's original release, when they had fixed the balance and patched the bugs and exploits to a reasonable level. Oh, and charged us for another expansion pack to fix the problems that shouldn't have been allowed in a release in the first place.

Grim, in the SC world TA was known as a huge joke... just so you know. I remember a famous comic about someone liking TA but I can't find it....

Anyway, it's pretty apparent you have no idea what you're talking about and gave up on the game with out actually learning a damn thing. Without someone to properly tell you how to play there are things that you would probably still not have a clue about even if you played it from 1998 till this very day.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for your units to attack one another unless the unit was designed to do so, or you had bad control. Literally no units can shoot at each other accidentally unless completely intentional like the Siege Tank. The entire design of the siege tank was planned around huge splash damage, and what made them more difficult to use is they can hurt your own units and buildings IF they are shooting right next to them. If they did not have this feature they would be super imbalanced / too good. In SC2 this feature is of course still in there, to make you think about where and when you siege.

SC storyline was good, so again you missed out.

SC is full of strategy, MACRO and Micro. Not one or the other. Why do you think SC is the biggest e-sport game of all time? It's because to this very day we still have people learning or changing the way the game is played with new ideas.

Starcraft was ALWAYS a pretty damn closely balanced game, especially for the fact it was 3 very different races. I played SC1 since a week after release on Kali and Battle.net and there were never any huge balance issues. You make it apparent that you barely touched the game, and barely learned anything. If that's true, how can you even remotely comprehend its balance or anything about the game. I played SC for years and years of my life and I learned something new every week. People still play the game to this very day 12 years later! You don't see anyone playing TA now do you?

Seriously, if you had these strange issues with SC1 stay far away from SC2.

 

[ret]

Was it just missing the Discs or did you still have CD keys? If you have the keys still, you can go to battle.net, make an account, and activate the key to your account and DL the game. Same with Diablo 2 and the warcrafts. I've done all my blizzard games this way and now don't need the CD's to play them. BONUS

The keys were on the cases to the individual games, correct? If so I'm SOL. I'll have to do some more legit searching when I get off work tonight I guess. I've heard that you can actually buy SC and Brood War from Blizzard for like $10 bucks combined. If that's the case I may just do that and download them. Means I'll have spent like $80 dollars on the two games for how many times I've bought them.

One thing I noticed while I was watching my friend play SC2 though, is that the units have ranks, and would increase in rank with number of kills. Does anyone know if they've adopted the Command & Conquer system of higher ranks deal more damage or shoot faster? When you're looking at the damage properties it doesn't change, but I can't think of any other reason they'd show the ranks of the units when you select them.

 

[SupraOfDoom]

No changes. Just a neat little feature... however it can matter in UMS ( custom maps ).

 

[GrimJack]

Grim, in the SC world TA was known as a huge joke... just so you know. I remember a famous comic about someone liking TA but I can't find it....

Anyway, it's pretty apparent you have no idea what you're talking about and gave up on the game with out actually learning a damn thing. Without someone to properly tell you how to play there are things that you would probably still not have a clue about even if you played it from 1998 till this very day.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for your units to attack one another unless the unit was designed to do so, or you had bad control. Literally no units can shoot at each other accidentally unless completely intentional like the Siege Tank. The entire design of the siege tank was planned around huge splash damage, and what made them more difficult to use is they can hurt your own units and buildings IF they are shooting right next to them. If they did not have this feature they would be super imbalanced / too good. In SC2 this feature is of course still in there, to make you think about where and when you siege.

SC storyline was good, so again you missed out.

SC is full of strategy, MACRO and Micro. Not one or the other. Why do you think SC is the biggest e-sport game of all time? It's because to this very day we still have people learning or changing the way the game is played with new ideas.

Starcraft was ALWAYS a pretty damn closely balanced game, especially for the fact it was 3 very different races. I played SC1 since a week after release on Kali and Battle.net and there were never any huge balance issues. You make it apparent that you barely touched the game, and barely learned anything. If that's true, how can you even remotely comprehend its balance or anything about the game. I played SC for years and years of my life and I learned something new every week. People still play the game to this very day 12 years later! You don't see anyone playing TA now do you?

Seriously, if you had these strange issues with SC1 stay far away from SC2.

The same can be said the other way - in the TA world, SC was a joke. I mean, seriously, who goes to market with an AI *that* dumb?

What makes it apparent that I have no idea what I'm talking about again? FYI, I did go back and play the game - *after* the release of Brood War. I have hundreds of hours into it. Now admittedly, it's been a long time, but as I recall, the units that shot each other were flame throwers, which, naturally, should be area effect weapons. Even so, modern troops are trained not to keep pulling the trigger when your buddies are in front of you, and I can't imagine how this will change in the future.

If you played SC from it's release, and the game balance issues escaped your notice... well, you're the rare minority. A quick search on the 'net finds the following:

gamespy:
"Veteran gamers acknowledge that the game really wasn't balanced perfectly until the Brood War expansion, which tweaked the sides just enough to create a beautiful, beautiful thing. "

starcraft.wikia.com
"Though Blizzard Entertainment released StarCraft as a finalized product, like many other games, it was far from perfect."

Denying any such issues at launch is dangerously close to putting you in the die hard fan boy category, which will effectively end any sensible debate.

The biggest E-Sport game of all time? Come on... be realistic. That's due to ONE factor - South Korea. They also think Hyundai cars are the height of performance, style, and value. For that matter, they think a computer game is a SPORT. Referring to opinions from folks like this isn't helping your side in the least.

PS: There is still a very large community modding and playing TA. A fair number of them have moved over to Supreme Commander, as it's essentially a sequel, even with the fact that it's built by a different company, however, I expect the same thing to happen to SC1 by the time SC2 has been out for a couple years.

 

[Supracentral]

You two seem to have the nerd war well in hand, Dave covered my side of it.

I've got to agree with him, in '98, SC was heavily flawed -- today it's pretty good, but still not perfect. (But then again none of the games are).

At least we're not talking about Age of Empires....

 

[Jeff Lange]

NERDS!

Also, I will probably buy SC2. I liked SC1 and played through the single player, but didn't do much beyond that. Too many Asians kicking my ass soured my multiplayer experience, haha.

Jeff

 

[SupraOfDoom]

If you played SC from it's release, and the game balance issues escaped your notice... well, you're the rare minority. A quick search on the 'net finds the following:

gamespy:
"Veteran gamers acknowledge that the game really wasn't balanced perfectly until the Brood War expansion, which tweaked the sides just enough to create a beautiful, beautiful thing. "

starcraft.wikia.com
"Though Blizzard Entertainment released StarCraft as a finalized product, like many other games, it was far from perfect."

Denying any such issues at launch is dangerously close to putting you in the die hard fan boy category, which will effectively end any sensible debate.

The biggest E-Sport game of all time? Come on... be realistic. That's due to ONE factor - South Korea. They also think Hyundai cars are the height of performance, style, and value. For that matter, they think a computer game is a SPORT. Referring to opinions from folks like this isn't helping your side in the least.

PS: There is still a very large community modding and playing TA. A fair number of them have moved over to Supreme Commander, as it's essentially a sequel, even with the fact that it's built by a different company, however, I expect the same thing to happen to SC1 by the time SC2 has been out for a couple years.

but as I recall, the units that shot each other were flame throwers, which, naturally, should be area effect weapons. Even so, modern troops are trained not to keep pulling the trigger when your buddies are in front of you, and I can't imagine how this will change in the future.

This is why no one should even BOTHER arguing with you. This is, and never was possible. The only units that had "flames" were firebats, and they cannot and never harmed your own units. The AI was fine you apparently are getting this game confused with something else. I should stop right here and walk away because of this ridiculously wrong comment... all your sensible arguments go out the window with this and the korean comments.

If you played SC from it's release, and the game balance issues escaped your notice... well, you're the rare minority. A quick search on the 'net finds the following:

gamespy:
"Veteran gamers acknowledge that the game really wasn't balanced perfectly until the Brood War expansion, which tweaked the sides just enough to create a beautiful, beautiful thing. "

starcraft.wikia.com
"Though Blizzard Entertainment released StarCraft as a finalized product, like many other games, it was far from perfect."

Denying any such issues at launch is dangerously close to putting you in the die hard fan boy category, which will effectively end any sensible debate.

Tell you what, you go on Supraforums and ask any person in there how good at SC I am and then you come back and tell me that I give a crap what wiki thinks. I played on Kali with some of the best players in the world ( agent911 ect ), and I played on battle.net as a regular in x17 even winning some of their small channel tournaments. I'm pretty sure I have a great idea on how balanced the game was. I never said it was perfect, but for a game with 3 races as different as they were the game was close enough to be competitive since launch and I'm not pulling your chain. I've already won some small time SC2 beta tournaments so I have a great understanding of balance. How many games did you play of SC1? I probably played at least 20k games so don't even pretend to know more on the subject. I've been a competitive gamer ever since I can remember. I won a computer playing CS at a big LAN center tournament even... I got a history of picking great competitive games ( IE a great understanding of them ). That and on the release of BW the game was no differently balanced than when SC1 came out. Still equally numbers of changes with each patch, some big, some small. SC2 will be no different.

The biggest E-Sport game of all time? Come on... be realistic. That's due to ONE factor - South Korea. They also think Hyundai cars are the height of performance, style, and value. For that matter, they think a computer game is a SPORT. Referring to opinions from folks like this isn't helping your side in the least.

PS: There is still a very large community modding and playing TA. A fair number of them have moved over to Supreme Commander, as it's essentially a sequel, even with the fact that it's built by a different company, however, I expect the same thing to happen to SC1 by the time SC2 has been out for a couple years.

So apparently the South Koreans are crazy fools for showing that SC is the best competitive RTS. They feel the same way about Tekken for fighting games and let me tell that's another series that is the best in the genre at high level ( I've traveled the US for fighting game tournaments for years ). I think they are 1 step ahead of the game with the idea that video games should be considered very similar to a sport. It's not much of a different concept and it takes a whole lot of skills and thinking.... which deserves respect. I can barely even believe that you are saying such brash things.

That and don't believe everything you hear. When SC1 was fresh people had no idea what was unbalanced or balanced truly because back then a lot of the styles of play weren't even invented yet. Games were not won by one race more than the other...
And reading review sites will never give you a good argument. Reading IGN's review of Tekken 6 and watching them just mash buttons on the arcade cab makes me furious. They can't even remotely comprehend the game enough to review it if you ask me. Casual gamers can review games for casual gamers, but in no way does it mean anything for non-casual gamers.


If anyone is a fanboy here its you. You again have no idea what you are talking about with the AI, and its apparent you were probably all hurt when your beloved TA game got the cold shoulder to the more popular and legendary SC. To me all I see is some guy who probably always sucked at the game ( based on your blatantly wrong comments on AI ) thinking he even remotely had an understanding for it. I feel like you are one of those guys who is picking on the guy on top because hes on top. These are just my opinions based upon what you are saying, they could be wrong but I've dealt with similar people before and you sound just like them.

and if you play Supreme Commander you should check out TheLittleOne's starcraft 2 games as he came from Supreme Commander and was a top player in that. He is really good at SC2 as well.

PS : Competitive gaming > Sports IMO.

Cliffs : Been there since day one. Played with top players. Have a great understanding of the game since the beginning and 99.9% sure I have more of an idea than you.

Double PS : I love the Diablo series literally as much as SC. I will tell you straight up that when Diablo II was released it was junk. I played it for about a month and quit cold turkey. I'm not some crazy biased Blizzard fanboy / series fanboy that will follow crap games. Now, the LOD expan for Diablo II is how the game should have been released from the VERY START. It was great, and made the game actually amazing. I cannot say the same for SC because SC was just amazing since day one. Blizzard hit a home run right then and there. Another great example is my love for Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I'll be the first to admit the games engine was just awful and crashed randomly all the time ( and i beat it on PC and PS3 ). Not only that but it had more bugs and glitches than any other game I've seen in my life. I literally had to go back and re-do 10 hours on PS3 because of missions glitching to the point where they would no longer work. Take a look at the Fallout wiki pages and almost every mission has at least 10 bugs, and possible solutions for those bugs. Even more : I love Tekken with a passion but I can straight up tell you Tekken 4 was one of the worst high level fighting games ever. Full of broken crap and things that needed to be play tested. I can even say the same with Tekken 5.0 as it was crazy badly balanced and complete broken junk. Tekken 5 DR fixed that and made it amazing and balanced. You see how I can admit these things with no problem?

**Disclaimer** These are my opinions so don't take them personally.

 

[GrimJack]

Like I said before... I'm willing to agree to disagree. I'm not, however, willing to continue this debate, as you clearly aren't willing to examine my points with an open mind.

 

[SupraOfDoom]

Like I said before... I'm willing to agree to disagree. I'm not, however, willing to continue this debate, as you clearly aren't willing to examine my points with an open mind.

I'm sorry, but when you talk about things that aren't even true when it come to AI I have no reason to examine your points. I've told you that what you said was incorrect, and you haven't been able to debate that. I have no problem with you preferring TA over SC, but when your main reason was completely incorrect it makes your argument useless. It's like you telling me you don't like Supra's because they are V6's... how serious can I take that?

 

[GrimJack]

You just don't get it, do you?

I'm not willing to debate with someone who assumes - and posts - that I am either ignorant or an outright liar. Or, for that matter, someone who can't continue a debate without questioning the participants motives, integrity, and knowledge, instead of sticking to the subject matter.

 

[Supracentral]

 

[Poodles]

Name ONE game that was perfect at launch... All games get better with patches, at least Blizzard supports their games unlike EA which doesn't seem to care since they got your money already...

 

[SupraOfDoom]

You just don't get it, do you?

I'm not willing to debate with someone who assumes - and posts - that I am either ignorant or an outright liar. Or, for that matter, someone who can't continue a debate without questioning the participants motives, integrity, and knowledge, instead of sticking to the subject matter.

I'm not calling you a liar dude... I'm telling you that wasn't ever in the game ( your own AI shooting your own units accidently UNLESS its programmed to do so ). Firebats, the only unit with fire do splash damage but NOT to your own units. I'm just telling you that's how it is. Do I think that you believe that they attacked your own units? Yes. Doesn't make it right. Go install version 1.X with out updating and find this bad AI for me please. If there is bad AI to you and you cannot find that specific problem, find me other examples. If you claim something back it up. I'm asking you for a legit argument. You don't hear me claiming anything about TA specifically do you?

Name ONE game that was perfect at launch... All games get better with patches, at least Blizzard supports their games unlike EA which doesn't seem to care since they got your money already...

Exactly man. I never said it was perfect... but it was DAMN good, especially for a launch game.









PS and to expand on what I think of you GrimJack : I have mucho respect for you and you have never done anything to prove other wise.... but that doesn't mean people aren't wrong sometimes am I right? If you do find this AI problem, I'll admit I'm wrong... if you want me to look for you I will. Also, you saying I think you're a liar or ignorant is assuming things about me too.

 

[thedave925]

I pee in a straight line

 

[Boosted Supra]

I actually just picked this up this weekend, it's really good. I only got to the second mission on Single player. I'm still trying to get used to it, it's my first Star Craft game. I usually play C&C, but this game is very, very well done. I kind of hoped it was released on "Steam" but of course not. I ended up picking up the physical form at my local GS

 

[SupraOfDoom]

SCII sigs, yes!!

 

[Poodles]

Nerd...

Then again I have a WoW avatar. My copy of SC2 should be here soon, had to order online since it's sold out everywhere around here (plus I wanted the special edition).

 

[SupraOfDoom]

I actually saw to CE's at Target a day or two after release. I have both the CE and the non-CE. I haven't linked the CE CD to any accounts yet because I figure I could maybe sell it since it is linked to the WoW pet.

 

[89Turbo7M]

awsome game cant wait till the next installments.

 

[SupraMario]

awsome game cant wait till the next installments.

This! Finished the Single player...and was like NOOOO The story must continue!