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Starcraft 2?
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Poll Result
  How excited are you?  
 
Wohoo! Graphics update + a few new units! Awesome!
65%
 65%  [ 17 ]
Meh, maybe if they do something new with it...
23%
 23%  [ 6 ]
Bah, where's my world of starcraft?
7%
 7%  [ 2 ]
Sarcraft? Huh?
3%
 3%  [ 1 ]
 
  Total Votes : 26  

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SethP



Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 302
Location: Connecticut, USA



PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2007 12:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've always had the same experience. The only times I've ever been decently matched in an RTS are against my friends who have played (approximately) the same amount as me. Every time I go on Battle.Net I get my *** completely handed to me (garnished and everything). The one exception to this was the time I played someone who decided against building more than 3 units in Warcraft III. I was a little surprised when my hero, 4-5 archers and handful of hunters actually won the day and destroyed his base.

I do like the way they're doing the unit counters. Instead of arbitrary damage boni, the rules all make sense. Immortals have a very powerful shield that almost negates damage, but it only gets triggered by heavy hitters. Reapers (I think that's the unit), have the two pistols so each shot does a teensy amount, but they fire so fast they can take down an Immortal because each weak hit isn't enough to trigger the shield. The same end result could be achieved by saying, "Reaper gets +50 damage against immortal," but the reasoning they made up makes that arbitrary bonus much easier to remember.
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Pod Team


Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4121
Location: Sheffield, UK



PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2007 1:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SethP wrote:
I do like the way they're doing the unit counters. Instead of arbitrary damage boni, the rules all make sense. Immortals have a very powerful shield that almost negates damage, but it only gets triggered by heavy hitters. Reapers (I think that's the unit), have the two pistols so each shot does a teensy amount, but they fire so fast they can take down an Immortal because each weak hit isn't enough to trigger the shield. The same end result could be achieved by saying, "Reaper gets +50 damage against immortal," but the reasoning they made up makes that arbitrary bonus much easier to remember.


I did smirk when I watched that though, it kind of makes no sense Wink

Immortal1: "er, Dave. Shouldn't the shield be coming on?"

Immortal2: "ha ha ha. Those puny soldiers are no match for us. We are IMMORTALS!! They are not worthy of our shields!"

Immortal1: "Yeh, Dave. Granted, but have you noticed how quick our health is falling?"

Immortal2: "Eh? Oh **** . . . "
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Dirty Harry Potter



Joined: 21 Feb 2007
Posts: 16



PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2007 2:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Probably moreso that the shields are not "sensitive" to objects of that size, just like they let air through. and that they can only make the shields so powerful but making them insensitive to relatively small objects Razz

But yeah, I had the same thought XD
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SethP



Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 302
Location: Connecticut, USA



PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2007 2:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Haha, I never saw it that way.

I do like how an ancient, venerable Protoss warrior who fell in battle only to live on in a robotic shell is named Dave, though :p
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Weeble
Starscape Jedi
Starscape Jedi


Joined: 25 Apr 2003
Posts: 1143
Location: Glasgow, Scotland



PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2007 5:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The warp rays were definitely the thing that made me wonder if they could do away with the armor/weapon classes. I like the warp ray because it's pretty simple to describe and understand what it does – the longer it continues to fire its beam at one target, the more damage it does – but from that you get very interesting tactical applications. When I watched the video I immediately thought, "If warp rays work like that he shouldn't be using focus-fire on the cruisers, because that way all of the warp rays need to keep retargetting (and thus losing their damage bonus). If each ray takes on a different cruiser, they'll be a little slower to kill this first cruiser or two, and maybe take a few extra hits, but they'll wipe out all the cruisers far faster."

It's a tough job to get players up to speed with a game like Starcraft. Even I am reluctant to invest the time needed to learn a new RTS. Often games have single-player missions that encourage such a different style of play that players are absolutely crippled when they switch to multiplayer. In Starcraft the single player missions have strong established enemies that do not build aggressively. So you are heavily punished for attacking early and rewarded for slowly building up a huge army then making one huge attack. But this is completely the inverse of how to play multiplayer! You're also often rewarded for using a very small number of units extremely conservatively (i.e. with zero casualties) to outwit a very stupid computer. When you try this against a player you'll find that a) they don't sit there and let you get away with it, and b) it wastes lots of time that could be better spent expanding your economy and training more units.

I think the problem with Battle.Net is that average players are quickly scared away by their first few experiences. Only very good or very bloody-minded (or indeed cheating) players will keep playing again and again. The matchmaking algorithms can only do so much when there are relatively few casual players looking for games. (Although I do feel it's an oversight in the system to start everyone out with the ranking of "worst player in the world" and have them work up from there. The problem is that moderately good players who prefer to win will repeatedly create new accounts, get to beat a bunch of weak players and then discard the account and start over. Since you can't get worse than where you start, weak players never get to "find their level" where they should be winning 50% of their games.)
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Pod Team


Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4121
Location: Sheffield, UK



PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 8:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Weeble wrote:
I think the problem with Battle.Net is that average players are quickly scared away by their first few experiences. Only very good or very bloody-minded (or indeed cheating) players will keep playing again and again. The matchmaking algorithms can only do so much when there are relatively few casual players looking for games. (Although I do feel it's an oversight in the system to start everyone out with the ranking of "worst player in the world" and have them work up from there. The problem is that moderately good players who prefer to win will repeatedly create new accounts, get to beat a bunch of weak players and then discard the account and start over. Since you can't get worse than where you start, weak players never get to "find their level" where they should be winning 50% of their games.)


I can't even remember how BNet worked, but surely you need a unique ID number generated with each sale. Then make sure people playing on free demo accounts (if there are any) cannot get ranked or are at least are ranked seperately.

The master server should then keep track of every account a proper player makes and a historical record / summary of their match history. Current ranking could still be tied only to the active "character", so it should feel the same as always, but you could see at a glance if someone is on their 10th character and appears to reset after every 20th match and has a win ratio of 80%.

A bit like the ebay reputation, but automatically generated. I wonder if other games do anything like that?
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Dirty Harry Potter



Joined: 21 Feb 2007
Posts: 16



PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 9:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't know about Starcraft Battlenet, but in Warcraft 3 battlenet (I assume there's some differences) the CD-key is not tied to a specific account - it is of course checked, but only to authorize it as a valid copy, and to limit the amount of connections to battle.net from the same copy.

Accounts, which store rank data and identification, are seperate and you can have as many as you like. So, a skilled player, could if (s)he wanted to "pwn some noobs" just make a new account, and be regarded as a new player.

Though, to be fair, if a "less skilled player" kept at it, but lost a good couple of games, then his win:lose ratio would be different, and if it's below 1, then said player would probably avoid the above trick, so I'm not sure how big a problem it is.
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Weeble
Starscape Jedi
Starscape Jedi


Joined: 25 Apr 2003
Posts: 1143
Location: Glasgow, Scotland



PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 11:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ah, it's possible that it works quite differently now from when I last played it, though I realise now that it was the Warcraft III matchmaking system I was thinking of. Last time I played Starcraft on Battle.Net it had no matchmaking system, and last time I played Warcraft III it matched you just based on your "level", which started at 1 and went up or down as you played, but could not go below 1.
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Dirty Harry Potter



Joined: 21 Feb 2007
Posts: 16



PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 12:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I never really played it, I just play custom maps, so I wouldn't really know. But now that you mention it, levels is probably how it's still done :S

Well, they've said that they want to vastle improve Battle.net for SC2, but I think that's mostly stuff like leagues and broadcasting matches - to make it a better game for competitions.
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HEL 9000



Joined: 26 Apr 2007
Posts: 36
Location: Behind you...



PostPosted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Blizzard has genius people, their idea for the immortal's shields system is effectivley like the Holtzman generator from Frank Herbert's "Dune"

Holtzman Generator can produce a protective shield, however, a slow speed object may penetrate the shield...

this is similar in the way that "Massive" (a comparative to "Rapid Speed") attacks activate the Immortal's Shields. but "Light" (a comparative to "Slow Speed") attacks dont activate the shield...


"The slow blade may penetrate the Shield"
"The weak attack may override the Shield"


Very Happy

also... this is similar with the kinda "Non-Neutonian fluid"-like substance called Shear-thickening fluid being used, or researched to be used for improving Kevlar bullet-proof vests to allow 14* effectiveness at half the Kevlar layers in a vest. but still due to the mechanics of the substance you cant be invincible, so the slow knife would still cut it, though a rapid knife strike could be BLOCKED (though still get a big bruise on the impact point) by the Shear Thickening fluid...

but all three of these are one and the same in concept,


"The slow blade may penetrate the Shield"
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HEL 9000



Joined: 26 Apr 2007
Posts: 36
Location: Behind you...



PostPosted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 5:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

it seems almost all the time that whenever i post on a forum, that... then noone wants to post after me... =(
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Pod Team


Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4121
Location: Sheffield, UK



PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 8:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Don't let that worry you - it doesn't seem to stop anyone else Smile

p.s. I have a plastic toy Sandworm on my desk right now. Dune is one of my favourite pieces of scifi ever. Have you read the books? It must be one of the most well realised "worlds" ever imagined.
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SethP



Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 302
Location: Connecticut, USA



PostPosted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I loved the book Dune, but after that it just got too... I dunno. It was very realistic, and I just couldn't get involved in the story and the characters the way I could in the first book.

I think it had something to do with Duncan Idaho being my favorite character, who died, and then was brought back to life as a hollow shell. What gives?
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JessIAm



Joined: 09 May 2007
Posts: 4
Location: Beaverton, OR



PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

SethP wrote:
Yeah, personally I'm glad they decided not to go World of Starcraft (yet, anyway).

I agree with Mark on this one, though. Starcraft is just such a great game it's hard to imagine how they could fix it up besides new graphics and a couple new units (although the ability to select more than 12 units would be REALLY nice).

Of course, that's what they said about the Warcraft franchise, I suppose, and then Blizzard came out with Warcraft 3. Am I alone in hoping that Starcraft 2 stays truer to the original in that the heroes are just the regular units with more hit points and damage?


I can think of three improvements I'd like to see in SC2:
1. The units move in formation. I think the promos showed this.
2. Resource gathering units automatically start to gather resources when created. This would be even better if the units gathered resources from the nearest available resource pile.
3. The heroes had some experience based buffs, but the buffs are all passive. I hate the WC3 heroes whose buffs need micromanagement. The heroes that automatically help the units around them are awesome.

I agree SC2 should not have as much RPG elements as WC3. Starcraft was always the epic battles sort of game. The heroes were cool for the story line, but didn't really help much in player vs player.
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01d55



Joined: 12 Mar 2004
Posts: 79



PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 12:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

JessIAm wrote:
I agree SC2 should not have as much RPG elements as WC3. Starcraft was always the epic battles sort of game.


Interviews (iirc at gametrailers) indicate that Blizzard concurs.

Have y'all seen the new Terran video? I like the new animation for Battleship attacks - it always seemed strange to me that capital ships had only one gun. Also: a unit whose special ability is firing on the move. I was always kind of irritated by the fact that you had to stop moving to shoot, but it looks like Blizzard wants to leave the mechanic alone for most units, because it makes such a tactical difference (I've seen videos of SC1 with dragoons being told to take a step between shots. The sheer speed it must take to constantly give those two orders while still doing other things...)

Weeble wrote:
It's a tough job to get players up to speed with a game like Starcraft. Even I am reluctant to invest the time needed to learn a new RTS.


All of your reasons for this are spot-on. I had a bit of fun on the lower levels of WC3 ladder, but mostly, Battle.net is for UMS maps (Kill! That! Zerg! With Archon Trebek!)
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