StarCraft II

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TWD

Cute and Cuddly
Aug 2, 2000
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Anyway, the Protoss look way overpowered compared to Zerg though. Both players were sitting on 2 bases the whole game, the Zerg was actually mining his second base first, yet the Protoss was apparently getting 2x the resources as the Zerg (?). This doesn't make any sense, especially since the Zerg expanded a second time. The only reason I can see is the Zerg guy couldn't produce enough drones while also producing combat units, which has always been a problem. If the Protoss can truly gain such a commanding economic advantage through conservative no-risk play it seems like a problem.

Also, the Protoss had no trouble building up swarms of units comparable to the Zerg. I don't have so much a problem with that except all of the Protoss units are clearly superior in a one-on-one matchup, so there is no upside for the Zerg there. Those Nullifiers are just disgusting with their apparently quite cheap force field ability they used over and over in the video -- Combine blocking off locations on the map with teleportation abilities of other Protoss and it is just sick.

Realize however that the zerg player did attack quite a bit. There were several times where he was close to doing some real damage, but it never happened. The problem was that he had to keep the pressure on, and that prevented him from building up the economy. He just never had enough drones. Not to mention that his initial build was screwed up for quite some when the protoss player denied the initial expansion.

The special abilities also made a big difference here. They have short cooldown times, and are extremely powerful. The zerg didn't really have anything to counter with when a good micro strat came along with the warping and the crystals. The beta is going to be painful with a lot of balance changes, and whining from fans that this and that got nerfed.
 
Apr 11, 2006
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Realize however that the zerg player did attack quite a bit. There were several times where he was close to doing some real damage, but it never happened. The problem was that he had to keep the pressure on, and that prevented him from building up the economy. He just never had enough drones. Not to mention that his initial build was screwed up for quite some when the protoss player denied the initial expansion.

The special abilities also made a big difference here. They have short cooldown times, and are extremely powerful. The zerg didn't really have anything to counter with when a good micro strat came along with the warping and the crystals. The beta is going to be painful with a lot of balance changes, and whining from fans that this and that got nerfed.


Denying the initial expansion slowed the Zerg down for like 30 seconds, sure. After that the resources just went into the tech tree. I don't think that was in any way a decisive factor in the game (and if it were, that implies Zerg must early-expand to have any hope of staying even). The Protoss didn't expand at all until 2 1/2 minutes after the Zerg had already done so - That should have been a substantial economic advantage for Zerg. Even the later attack by the Protoss that forced the Zerg to burrow was not nearly as much of a disruption as the Zerg's own attack on the Protoss' mining with the banelings.

I agree SC2 balance is going to be in flux for a long time. Looks cool though, so I will stick with it. And I'm sure there will quickly be an oldschool SC1 mod for the purists and other gamers who love rampaging everything with overpowered Terran.
 

Kantham

Fool.
Sep 17, 2004
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The only reason it even went on as long as it did is because all of these videos are intended to show off some back-and-forth with different units and tech.

Yep, you can also tell the game was recorded. (I made a "duh" here. :p)

Anyway, the Protoss look way overpowered compared to Zerg though. Both players were sitting on 2 bases the whole game, the Zerg was actually mining his second base first, yet the Protoss was apparently getting 2x the resources as the Zerg (?). This doesn't make any sense, especially since the Zerg expanded a second time. The only reason I can see is the Zerg guy couldn't produce enough drones while also producing combat units, which has always been a problem. If the Protoss can truly gain such a commanding economic advantage through conservative no-risk play it seems like a problem.

I heard they will have a Multiplayer beta up soon. I'm sure people will find out a lot of things that could use balancing.

But yeah I had the same feeling, that warp unit seems a bit OP from what I've seen it. Take Terrans and their dropship, requires way more effort into account, more than one dropship, in-and out trying to avoid their defences ETC. And the Zerg canal is really tricky. My only concern in the video really was that Protoss warp "gate" unit that allowed unit teleportation inside the enemy base. I can also imagine that for a lot of other things. They definitively need to add a cost and cooldown for each unit you send there or something. Cost defined by teleportation range and unit production cost.
 
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Slainchild

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Apr 3, 2004
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StarCraft II will not have a local area networking (LAN) game mode.

Rob Pardo, senior VP of game design at Blizzard Entertainment confirmed in an interview with IncGamers that the StarCraft II development team "don't have any plans to support LAN," and clarified saying "we will not support it." The only multiplayer available will be on Battle.net.

IncGamers also got a clarification from Blizzard, shortly after the interview, saying the choice of excluding a LAN feature "is because of the planned technology to be incorporated into Battle.net," a topic they will reveal more about at a later date.

The original StarCraft gained popularity largely because of the easy LAN mode, used on massive LANs like Dreamhack or small personal networks between friends, so this is a surprising move by Blizzard.

http://starcraft.incgamers.com/blog/comments/no-lan-in-starcraft-ii-confirmed/

wtf?
 

DarQraven

New Member
Jan 20, 2008
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Whut.

I suppose I'm gonna get it legally anyway, and assuming Battle.net works properly it wouldn't really be a problem, but still... Whut?!

Blizz, learn this from UT3's launch: Removing features of the previous game is a BAD way to get people to buy your product.
 

Shadow

Has Balls Of Steel
Oct 20, 2004
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Same for Diablo 3. It doesnt matter... Why are people making a fuss over LAN? Everyone these days has access to the internet. It's a lot easier to just connect with friends over B.net
 

DarQraven

New Member
Jan 20, 2008
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Perhaps. One thing I can see going wrong is when you're playing big amateur-ish home lans. Like, 8 player minimum (we have them quite often).
A LAN switch can handle the traffic for 8 clients easily, but can your internet connection do that as well? It would be a bit stupid to have packetloss and lag on a local game:/
 

Shadow

Has Balls Of Steel
Oct 20, 2004
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I guess thats true, but how often would you LAN 8 PCs? Or want to.. Aint it a bitch to bring 8 comps in a room just to play a game you could play over the internet? Just seems like to much of a hassle for whats it worth avoiding minor lag.
 

Capt.Toilet

Good news everyone!
Feb 16, 2004
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In my eyes LAN's are going the way of the arcade. Our local lan kcbeatdown was rather huge till a couple years ago. Going from 100+ to an average of 30 peeps isn't very assuring.
 

Darkdrium

20% Cooler
Jun 6, 2008
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Montreal
Hopefully BattleNet is easy to find friends with then.
Otherwise nothing beats Hamachi + click the LAN button and enter VPN IP.
 

Kantham

Fool.
Sep 17, 2004
18,034
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This just sounds even worse.

Basically they want to boycott you with their paid Battlenet. Obviously.
Blizzard never has enough money. :hmm:
 

DarQraven

New Member
Jan 20, 2008
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Yes, because the prime interest of game companies is to not sell their game...

I'm sure there's some sort of feature which justifies this decision, be it a steam 'login, then play locally' option or some sort of feature that's something else.
If not, I give it three weeks before the first LAN hack is out.
 
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Darkdrium

20% Cooler
Jun 6, 2008
3,239
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Montreal
Wait, this game will be subscription based to play online?
F- that, I'm not buying that crap then. Somehow somewhere I'll get to play the SP Campaign but hehe, if they imagine they'll get my money to play an RTS online, haha HAHAHA! :lol:
 

DarQraven

New Member
Jan 20, 2008
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http://hellforge.gameriot.com/blogs/Hellforge/Battlenet-20-Confirmed-To-Be-Free
Confirmed june fifth 2009. And even before then it was only a "possibility" that Bnet 2.0 would be subscription based.(Source)

Another quality post by Kantham-_-
Have you ever considered taking a positive approach to stuff?

Blizz know very well that they'll have to deliver with this game. They're already facing half the population of South Korea that they'll have to convince to switch to SC2. They're also making a followup to THE most popular competitive RTS game ever.
It's not like they really need the added challenge of turning potential customers off.
 
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TWD

Cute and Cuddly
Aug 2, 2000
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I'm not sure this small tidbit of information completely rules out the ability to play over a lan. The important thing is having the latency right? It's more than possible that they might require you to connect over battle.net, but then once the game gets going you are still playing over your lan with the nice latency.

If I'm right the cool thing about doing it this way is that even your lan games would count on the stats. I could also see it being useful for competiton matches. The players would still be playing on lan latency, but everyone else on battle.net would also have the ability to watch.
 

DarQraven

New Member
Jan 20, 2008
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Yeah, could be.

One thing I noticed watching some of the videos again is that, from the videos alone, it seems Protoss is their new baby and they get all the cool stuff and powerful units, while Terran is basically the same as SC1 terrans. All of the battlereports have been Protoss vs. *whatever* and predominantly viewed from the Protoss player's perspective.
Zerg seems to be nerfed into some kind of cheapshot 'mass units and attackmove them into enemy's base for a 10% chance of victory.' faction.

At least, that's what it seems like. From most hands-on reports, it seems Terrans are actually the strongest and Zerg is god early-game (they appear to suck mid-late game though, but Blizz has already acknowledged this and so it seems they'll receive some buffs soon).
 
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