Starcraft 2

[Hoi]

That supcom view thing would make starcraft 2 totally lame. And no, I'm not some starcraft1 elitist. Starcraft is just a little bit different from other RTS-games and that zoom function just doesn't fit.

[SwiftSpear]

Because they were worried they would have to relearn how to play again? Surprise! Its only Starcraft 1.5, nothing really needed to relearn. Guess its fine after all.

In the end, yet another rts game not meeting up to full potential, and yet another cash cow for Blizzard.

This is why FPS is sooo far ahead of RTS. Developers shamelessly rip off good ideas from each other to make them better and better. Commercial RTS is pretty stagnant. That is why, even though Starcraft 2 is a far better game then Supcom 2, I actually respect Supcom 2 more for their efforts into trying to make the game and genre better, even if they mostly failed at it.

Your idea of "better" is pretty skewed in my mind. More often than not rewriting from scratch is not beneficial to improvement. Starcraft 2 built off the base of starcraft 1, and WILDLY improved the game. Most RTS developers dumped what made starcraft 1 great to begin with.

[Regret]

The zoom issue is just like the 12 unit selection issue.

Both obsolete leftovers from the past. At least 12 got fixed.

Increasing skill gap between players by making the user interface more difficult to use is very bad game design. Guess a necessary evil when dealing with a title that relies on the massive old-school competitive community to jump-start the series anew.

Kids don't want to lose their edge from superior screen-scrolling/minimap clicking ability.

[SwiftSpear]

Kids don't want to lose their edge from superior screen-scrolling/minimap clicking ability.

Hotkey the unit you want to look at to a control group, double tap that control number, screen zooms to that location instantly. Minimap clicking is rare in high level play. It's only used to look at something that looks weird, like an incoming enemy dropship you see on the minimap.

[edit] starcraft is more a tactics game than a strategy game. In any given battle you can lose your entire army of "hard counter" units to whatever your opponent was doing just because they microed and you did not. The strategic view is inappropriate to the scope of the game.

[Hobo Joe]

Increasing skill gap between players by making the user interface more difficult to use is very bad game design. Guess a necessary evil when dealing with a title that relies on the massive old-school competitive community to jump-start the series anew.

Kids don't want to lose their edge from superior screen-scrolling/minimap clicking ability.

QFT.

@Swiftspear - that argument doesn't make any sense. With zoom you can still do that, but in addition to watching and microing several groups at once without having to deal with the time and reorientation of view switching. Regret was right, the only reason to not have zoom is to artificially increase the skill gap by making the UI needlessly cumbersome. Not having zoom in 1998 was fine, it wasn't feasible back then. But it's 12 years later, and there is no technological or gameplay reason to not include it.

Simply patting the backs of people who played the original for years and don't want to deal with a new learning curve. If you're gonna come up with an argument against zoom at least do better than that.

[PRO_rANDY]

I feel the anti starcraft series bias is much greater of the anti-fans than the bias of starcraft fans here. I mean some of the points are rediculous. Learning curve of using zoom? What?

In spring (read BA) the only thing I really used zoom for was another way of scrolling round the map or when spectating.

[Regret]

Learning curve of using zoom? What?

It is harder to master a game without the ability to zoom out than a game in which you can see the map from a much higher perspective.

To understand this, try to see player's attention as another resource type. By being forced to see only a tiny fraction of the battlefield at one time, a player will have to spend quite a lot of time just moving his camera to different locations to determine the threat that those pixels on minimap pose.

To see the battlefield efficiently, one would require to be more experienced with the game. Meaning more skill gap between players that know how to do that and those that do not.

[Gota]

Yes i agree with Regret that zoom out is important for perspective and momentary overview of the battlefield as well as moving conviniently from location to location..

I think though that saying SC UI is bad cause it artificially restricts players is megadumb.

If a spring game was played by such a competetive and big community even if it used all the new lua and the zoom and everything would still eventually boil down to some petty stuff...
The skill gap will bottleneck somewhere... and in a fast paced rts which a competetive community mith like will most likely boil down to micro.

From a commercial stand point and stability a game must end its addition of features and things that ease micro even if easing micro and small tweaking is its primary goal.
It has to STOP adding features.

At this point player skill gap will again boil to something which will porbalby be some form of micro yet again that the final features do not cover.

ADDED

If you want pure brain power than play chess,RTS are like soccer or tennis..its about repetition reaction speed and technical use of your hands.

[luckywaldo7]

I feel the anti starcraft series bias is much greater of the anti-fans than the bias of starcraft fans here.

Quite the opposite, its like you guys are unable to except that there are possibly any flaws in the game.

[pintle]

I feel the anti starcraft series bias is much greater of the anti-fans than the bias of starcraft fans here.

Quite the opposite, its like you guys are unable to except that there are possibly any flaws in the game.

I am not greatly arsed about SC2 one way or the other. The bullshit "zoom would spoil the game" is some funny bullshit though.

[PRO_rANDY]

I don't think anyone is saying zoom would ruin the game, its just not necessary in a game like SC(2). Maps are smaller, unit numbers are smaller and bases dont have multiple entrance points compared to TA, SupCom, Spring:BA. In all of which I believe they (would) benefit from zoom.

Also such there are many more actions which involve clicking on single units with quick reactions than the previously mentioned games. Actions such as targetting at and with spellcasters, which would be much harder if a player was zoomed out (its already a bitch to feedback that ghost in a moving m+m ball).

Personally I have do not feel any particular loyalty to SC2 or any reasons to be biased in its favour. I personally was a sceptic before I played SC2 but I reserved most my judgement until I played it a good amount. SC2 isn't without its problems, personally for me I feel balance has become slightly off lately, but that may be because of no patch for a few months (next one arriving beginning of Jan). Also I much prefer the pathing of units in the original to the sequel. However I still feel this is the best RTS out there currently taking all things into consideration from my perspective (competitive gamer).

[scifi]

I don't think anyone is saying zoom would ruin the game, its just not necessary in a game like SC(2). Maps are smaller, unit numbers are smaller and bases dont have multiple entrance points compared to TA, SupCom, Spring:BA. In all of which I believe they (would) benefit from zoom.

Also such there are many more actions which involve clicking on single units with quick reactions than the previously mentioned games. Actions such as targetting at and with spellcasters, which would be much harder if a player was zoomed out (its already a bitch to feedback that ghost in a moving m+m ball).

Personally I have do not feel any particular loyalty to SC2 or any reasons to be biased in its favour. I personally was a sceptic before I played SC2 but I reserved most my judgement until I played it a good amount. SC2 isn't without its problems, personally for me I feel balance has become slightly off lately, but that may be because of no patch for a few months (next one arriving beginning of Jan). Also I much prefer the pathing of units in the original to the sequel. However I still feel this is the best RTS out there currently taking all things into consideration from my perspective (competitive gamer).

I Agree with it all,
Zoom would ruin the fast moving camera, between front and back.

The regular zoom is part of the game, adding zoom would alter a lot of the gameplay.

i also agree that the first was better, but i must say, sc2 maps comed a bit short, they are smaler, more regular, and simetrical compared to the first, i hate the two vespene gass in home spot, prefered to old 1 vespene geyser, but these are small changes, balance wise and gameplay wise it isnt a bad game.

And as i said before there isnt any other competitive RTS out there rather than sc2 that has a huge competitive playerbase, and potencial to improve.

[Forboding Angel]

+1 to randy.

@balance, I agree tbh. Zerg 6pools are extremely hard to stop as a newer player, toss 4gate proxy pylons are the bane of terrans existence, and terran in general pwns toss gateway units making it extremely hard to deal with terran in general in the early game (and PDD is soooo OP ffs).

Technically, it may be all balanced, but it definitely doesn't "feel" balanced in certain areas. But oh that's right, I'm only silver (even though I've been spanking "platinubs" lately), so I don't get an opinion.

[SwiftSpear]

Increasing skill gap between players by making the user interface more difficult to use is very bad game design. Guess a necessary evil when dealing with a title that relies on the massive old-school competitive community to jump-start the series anew.

Kids don't want to lose their edge from superior screen-scrolling/minimap clicking ability.

QFT.

@Swiftspear - that argument doesn't make any sense. With zoom you can still do that, but in addition to watching and microing several groups at once without having to deal with the time and reorientation of view switching. Regret was right, the only reason to not have zoom is to artificially increase the skill gap by making the UI needlessly cumbersome. Not having zoom in 1998 was fine, it wasn't feasible back then. But it's 12 years later, and there is no technological or gameplay reason to not include it.

Simply patting the backs of people who played the original for years and don't want to deal with a new learning curve. If you're gonna come up with an argument against zoom at least do better than that.

You can't micro units in starcraft when you're trying to click on individual pixles on the screen. Starcraft would be all but unplayable with a farther out zoom. You probably couldn't even differentiate the units. New players would use it because it would allow them to "see" their base and the battle at the same time, but it would be a terrible habit for them and it would create poor play in the long run.

Starcraft II is only a newbies game in of that it ranks you based on your skill and only asks you to play players of your own level. In every other way it's a game that encourages you to practice and master it. It is the definition of a hardcore game. If you don't want to take SC2 as a hardcore game, then it doesn't want you to play. SC2 needs to make no apologies for being hard to learn or making decisions that favor high end players over low end players. There's only one thing that matters in starcraft 2. Skill. Period.

The zoom lock in SC2 I love, and as stated before, that was a design decision, not a engine limitation. This is easily observable by looking at how much camera control you have in the modding engine. The thing I don't like in SC2 is the fact they have no formation control structure. Painting or clickdragging lines in spring was so easy and effective. I don't see why blizzard just didn't impliment something like that. It makes micromanagement better because you have more intimate control over your units. With good players, everything in starcraft moves as blobs and limbolines, that's my one big disappointment with starcraft2, and probably the reason why I never got serious about playing it after being spoiled from playing spring RTSes. Still. It's an amazing game to watch, and extremely brilliantly designed. From a competitive standpoint it gives you so much more than other RTS games even try to. It's awesome. It has a few flaws, but nothing compares in raw design.

[luckywaldo7]

If you guys think that zooming out makes stuff harder to see and control, try playing a few of the spring games that have good icons sets for when you are zoomed out, particularly S44 and ZK come to mind for me. I daresay it is actually much easier to play with icons then when being zoomed in.

Seriously, when getting to the end of a huge ffa or similar, I just tab out to full map view and play most of the game with icons from there. It makes a huuuge difference, and I am so spoiled from it that when I play Starcraft, the camera is jammed so close to the terrain I literally feel suffocated. Honestly I don't need full strategic zoom, but I would like to be able to play that game from a height that doesn't feel designed for 800x600.

Anyway, pleeease give it a try, I swear that when you get used to it your mind will be totally blown.

(Not that icons are the only way to do it, there is the way RUSE handles zoom for example, icons are just the simplest to do)

Regardless, if zoom was really just a feature that didn't seem to be required, it would have better been left up to the discretion of the players whether or not to use it.

[scifi]

If you guys think that zooming out makes stuff harder to see and control, try playing a few of the spring games that have good icons sets for when you are zoomed out, particularly S44 and ZK come to mind for me. I daresay it is actually much easier to play with icons then when being zoomed in.

Seriously, when getting to the end of a huge ffa or similar, I just tab out to full map view and play most of the game with icons from there. It makes a huuuge difference, and I am so spoiled from it that when I play Starcraft, the camera is jammed so close to the terrain I literally feel suffocated. Honestly I don't need full strategic zoom, but I would like to be able to play that game from a height that doesn't feel designed for 800x600.

Anyway, pleeease give it a try, I swear that when you get used to it your mind will be totally blown.

(Not that icons are the only way to do it, there is the way RUSE handles zoom for example, icons are just the simplest to do)

Regardless, if zoom was really just a feature that didn't seem to be required, it would have better been left up to the discretion of the players whether or not to use it.

i didnt said that, i said that it would alter gameplay, the game is made so that you are always trying to focus...

[Machete234]

Zoom and formations by drawing lines would have made this a 2010 RTS game, I dont think it would have hurt the game.

Seriously, when getting to the end of a huge ffa or similar, I just tab out to full map view and play most of the game with icons from there.

I even turn down the icon distance so that when the model of the unit becomes smaller than the icon, the icon appears.

[Gota]

except icons are pretty primitive.
They dont show unit direction nor is there a way to see bigger projectiles.

[SwiftSpear]

If you guys think that zooming out makes stuff harder to see and control, try playing a few of the spring games that have good icons sets for when you are zoomed out, particularly S44 and ZK come to mind for me. I daresay it is actually much easier to play with icons then when being zoomed in.

Seriously, when getting to the end of a huge ffa or similar, I just tab out to full map view and play most of the game with icons from there. It makes a huuuge difference, and I am so spoiled from it that when I play Starcraft, the camera is jammed so close to the terrain I literally feel suffocated. Honestly I don't need full strategic zoom, but I would like to be able to play that game from a height that doesn't feel designed for 800x600.

Anyway, pleeease give it a try, I swear that when you get used to it your mind will be totally blown.

(Not that icons are the only way to do it, there is the way RUSE handles zoom for example, icons are just the simplest to do)

Regardless, if zoom was really just a feature that didn't seem to be required, it would have better been left up to the discretion of the players whether or not to use it.

In spring you don't have to target spells on individual units in a big moving blob. Hell, in spring you don't usually even target fire. Both those things are staples of starcraft, it's at best 1/2 a strategy game, it's very very strongly a tactics game.

[BaNa]

I dont know, you could write some lua to do the micro for you and then zooming out would be ok no? :D