Heresy! DoW2>SC2

I'll try "What is Google?" for 200$.

 

While there is some focus on base building in StarCraft most of the game is about fighting and battlefield tactics. Watch some vods of pros playing the game, there's tons of battlefield tactics employed by the progamers. Flanking, ambushing and much more is all in StarCraft.

Generals don't win battles with the arrangement of their soldiers' tents, but they do win battles by determining which and how many soldiers are needed where. With StarCraft you do get to be in the General's seat and you do get to determine which soldiers to bring into battle and where to place them, and you get to use whatever battlefield tactic imagineable.

 

I disagree a little with this. I think WC3 is just a 4 race version of WC2 basically. I really hated WC3. Much prefer WC2. Bit I'm not here to pay out WC3.

And about your comments about Diablo and SC I totally agree. The progression D1-> D2 -> D3 is a very good one. Each has the same feel but are totally different games. And I think each one has it's points that are better than the other 2.

And I do think SC2 also is building on SC1 in an amazing way.

And Dow2 is a good game. But it has a million different options to do things. It's like a RTS on crack cocaine. All jumpy and unpredictable. And not so realistic. And most importantly it didn't do enough to grab my attention. But each person to his/her own.

For me I'm hooked on the new SC2 news and the D3 news a heap. And WOW is just to pass the time till they are out.

 

*ehem*

Heroes

That's "innovation" (changing something that is to many people for the worse) if I ever saw it. There's also things like spells (more emphasis) and a lower food count but I think you get the idea

 

I had mixed feelings about WC3's hero system: it was refreshing and well implemented, however, all your ''regular units'' served mostly as meatshields for your heroes. It was often more important to kill the enemy heroes than their armies.

 

Yup! That's called "Blizzard innovation"

 

Oh, and how many others here have actually played DOW2? Anyone else feel that it played out like a squad game based on Diablo with mad physics? Frankly, it was a hack and slash game, not an RTS, and so I feel that comparisons to SC2 are quite spurious. Still, I have to disagree with you on it being forgotten shortly, Tychus: it's an ''RTS'' (I use the term RTS in the loosest of its definitions) that doesn't have many competitors, partly because it IS branching off from traditional RTS gaming. It will possibly be looked back on as an important split with the traditional RTS games, such as Starcraft, by eschewing base building, incorporating typically RPG elements and emphasizing squad-based tactics.

 

1) All CD keys are "stored" on the disc. CD keys are not disc specific. I'm still using my first CD key even though I've bought and used about three different discs since then.

2) WarCraft III had DRM that you had to break in order to make a functioning copy. Like DVD movies have. You just don't notice it much because it's so easy to break. CloneCD breaks it automatically .. which begs the question why the hell they even implemented it since that's the fate of all DRM. It punishes ONLY the legitimate buyers.

@ZealotInATuxedo: I'm talking in comparison to StarCraft II. I HIGHLY doubt that Dawn Of War 2 will be played or looked upon that fondly ten years from now. Of course, a game always has a small community of die-hard fans (Total Annihilation / Phantasy Star) but, again, I'm not talking about a general comparison; I'm talking strictly in comparison to StarCraft 2. Were it not for this you would be correct.

 

I agree with OP's basic proposition.

DoW 2 may never have the level of polish that SC2 is going to have, but Blizzard is indeed acting like the ultimate form of RTS gaming was invented in 1995.

The only reason we believe that is because no one has had the balls nor inspiration to challenge that properly. For all its flaws, DoW2 makes its own mix and its actually quite fun to play.

Blizzard not willing to mess with any of the multiplayer fundamentals shows a lack of vision and a tendency to pander to a secure player base rather than to being innovative.

THAT, my friends, worries be because it can mean that SC2 won't be all it was supposed to be. Doing SC1 2.0 is all good and fine but it wont redefine the genre the way WoW did for mmorpgs, to give you an example. And THAT is less than i expected for blizz.

What they really should do is screw all backwardlooking oldtimers, reinvent the genre in glorious blizzard perfection and usher in a new era. This is a half-measure.

 

Yes and no. The weaker units where definitely meatshields while Frost Wyrms and other powerhouses were definitely priority targets. I liked the Hero mechanism because it was something new in a relatively 'stale' genre.

Back on topic, I LOVED DoW1 because of its emphasis on mad violence and should be picking up the new one at the end of month. DoW2's campaign and the unit upgrading system is cool, and dare I say innovative?

SC2 is going to be using a similar unit upgrading system from what I understand

(source)

Am I the only one who thinks DoW2 and SC2 will feature a similar unit progression system?

edit- fixed fail HTML

 

I do have to agree with Kaloth to a certain point.

Game mechanics wise, SC2 is a bit behind the others and here is a list why:

-lack of unit command such as attack-move or attack-move while ignoring non-attack buildings
-impractical hotkeys (some of them), what does World of Conflict, Red Alert3, Tiberium War3, etc all have in common? Practical and easy key placement, world of conflict uses the asdw key to move the camera and the e/r keys to use abilities. Red alert3/Tiberium use the f1, f2, f3 to select structures and units as well. Depending on what unit is in front of your list, ctrl+a or ctrl+b will activate their abilities.
-range units often form a line when attacking, which can at times prevent your melee units to get through which is annoying (nothing that cant be fixed, but annoying) whereas in C&C melee units will always automatically take a step aside (while attacking) for tanks and close range units to move forward.

Now I don't want people saying "C&C sucks!!!" (which it doesn't) or making comparisions but the fact is that SC2 well, can be a bit behind in terms of game play mechanics.

The problem is that it is aimed too much towards being old fashioned (probably for the progamers) that it is starting to miss out on the new, improved mechanics of today.

However, there are some things I like about it:
-SC2 is simple, RTS games where there are like 40 different units per faction/race (supreme commanders) are overly complexed IMO and I have to give a -1 on Redalert3 for EVERY unit having a special abilitiy, its just annoying and some units really should be plane and simple. Often times when I play supreme commanders its just hard to identify units because they're so tiny and most look alike so I don't really micro much, instead I find myself just massing on a ground to ground unit and a ground to air unit and having the computer crush me with balanced units that it micros so well.
-Not too much fancy colors and eye catching units, any RTS that makes too much of those are just overcompensating

So yea, to put it short: SC2 has nice added features but needs to catch up a bit more on the control mechanics.

PS-I don't like DoW, its annoying for me having to select individual upgrades for units. I'd rather just build a marine and have it done.

 

^ "StarCraft is StarCraft because it's StarCraft"

Adding these things would change what's great about StarCraft to many people. I'd like to elaborate more but I am needed elsewhere on the internet at the moment.

 

At the same time that is also the problem. "starcraft is Starcraft because it's starcraft" means it does keep its originality but also does that mean it won't adopt any positive function from other games?

You say adding changes would cause more problems but primarily to those hardcore players (especially the progamer ones). New key placements for example would throw people off, but so will all the new units, however unlike those hotkeys scattered all over the keyboard, having hotkeys line up next to eachother will have people feeling the charms of it after a week at most depending on how much you play.

In fact I find that quote to be flawed, starcraft(1) did derived some of its ideas from other games like DoW or C&C.

Nice on the 1,000 post btw. How busy can you be if you're a forumer?

 

I'm very busy. But, even if I had more time I wouldn't waste it on something like this.

In short to your post, StarCraft MUST STAY MICRO-ORIENTED.

 

I believe SC was supposed to be more macro based but its just molded into a micro type of game by the players.

 

There is nothing macro about sc. That was the way it was set up. When strarcraft was released, macro wasn't even a common game term. The players have nothing to do with it, developers, who want to make every game easy enough so that even your grandmother and little brother can get a high score, invented macro. It happened in every genre. Just look at the old mario platformers, you had to look out and use your skill, now you just have a lame quicktime even for every action. Blizzard respects player skill by adding lots of micro in sc2, instead of rewarding people who can produce the most tanks the quickest, like in most modern macro oriented rts games. So quit whining.

 

I wasn't whining FYI and I don't need any irrational assumption as well.

Warcraft 1 was a micro game no doubt about that, ever since it's space counter part SC was released SC allowed for up to 200 units and was faster paced than Warcraft so it was leaning more towards a fast paced RTS. SC was probably defined as a macro game at the time because of the unit limit and the various large size maps until you see more macro intensive games at a later date or at least it is a macro game at the late half of the game unless both players just rush nonstop.

"instead of rewarding people who can produce the most tanks the quickest..." is a very elusive statement such as Clinton's "I did not have ... with that women." Most tanks can mean anywhere from enough to start a rush force to enough to completely steamroll a base at it's fastest possible speed. When players skirmish its all about whoever can produce as much SCV as possible to start an early expansion; players who wants a fast but strong army for brute force; players who want to tech fast as possible. It's always a race about who can do this faster than the other. All of this is not possible without a micro and macro is just the "situational fruit" of all your micro labor where all that work done skillfully produces a large army for final confrontation.

Maybe I'm just jumping the conclusion but you seem to look down upon macro based games. I play a lot of macro based games other than SC and macro'ing isn't easy and requires so much focus, but I bet you already know that.

 

Duh, even my niece who only plays nintendogs could have told me that you need to stay focussed. What I meant to say was that in a micro rts game the low tech units are just as important as the late tech units in all stages of the game.

If you look at command and conquer generals for example, players always went for the strongest units like the overlord tank right away. Basic infantry got wiped out by everything else after early game. Or more recently: halo wars. Tech to the spartans and other infantry is merely cannon fodder. Tech to the scarab and your mini scarabs mean nothing to you anymore. Now look at starcraft. Have you ever played an entire game where you decided not to use zerglings, marines or zealots anymore after getting your higher tier units? Probably not.

 

I think a lot of people here are confused.

Good players will always squeeze the last part of the game in order to succeed. Adding extra clicky features that could perfectly be put on "autocast" is only a measure of fast mouse movement.

That is ONE measure of skill. A very meagre one at that too.

I respect godly micro but people who think "fun" equals clicking things that shouldn't need clicking need to shoot themselves.

Micro will always show creativity of players who excel, adding some kind of retarded baseline micro requirement to the game is just epic fail. It shoudn't need to be done.

 

If you add lots of automated stuff to a game, then every rts will become like halo wars. I don't believe I need to further explain this. SC2 might be a bit to micro in some parts, but it never becomes annoying.