Lame "Balloon Deaths" as seen on Battle Report 2

Greetings SC developers and enthusiasts!


This is a critique of the game's visual / graphical design thus far:

Has anyone noticed how some of the units and structures instantly vanish upon death to be replaced with weak looking VFX (special effects)? In my opinion, it looks tacky and unpolished. In some cases, the volume of blood and explosion effects do not match up well with the size of the units and structures themselves. I dunno if this is a limitation of the SC2 engine or intended to streamline game play and keep lag and hardware requirements in check. While this game is still in development, I wish to call attention to this issue.

RTS games of late, such as the Command and Conquer series pay detailed attention to the death and destruction of units. If a tank dies, it breaks apart in real-time and debris is scattered all over and left there for at least three to five seconds. Nothing just instantly disappears. If infantry die, they have a convincing death animation and will lay on the ground for a few seconds as well. They don't just vanish as seen in the recent Battle Report 2, to be replaced with just VFX. I know some of units like the Terran Reapers lose control of their jump packs upon death, briefly flying wildly out of control, but the Reaper himself is instantly removed from the scene (he says goodbye with a 1/4 second of red mist), as if he were just a puff of smoke, a decoy, or an illusion. I know what we are seeing follows after the precedent of the original SC, but now that the game is in 3D, isn't it time to pay attention to the details of unit and structure death?

OK, when the Overlord dies at 12:19, that looks pretty cool. But when the Terran Banshee or NightHawk gets destroyed by some Hydralisks, it has this cheap, small looking explosion with no falling debris or hull pieces (only falling fire). I know it sounds like I am splitting hairs, but it just doesn't feel very rewarding or satisfying to see any unit go down with such wimpy VFX like that. It makes the unit look flimsy and fake. It makes it look like a rubber balloon! It makes the weapons and firepower all units bring to the table seem like excessive overkill. I want to see parts of the ship break into pieces! Maybe even include the pilot falling out.


When the Zerg Queen dies near the end of BR2 (22:09), that just looks pathetic! Is it supposed to be a sputtering geyser or a dud firecracker? I want to see that Queen explode with bloody chunks, guts, tentacles, and giblets!

When a Protoss Colossus dies (as seen in BR1), the same thing--unit disappears, lame blue VFX, unsatisfying and unconvincing. Where are the collapsing legs, the falling hull, and gravity smashing it to pieces like a defeated Half-Life 2 Strider?

One thing I believe Blizzard got right is the death cries of the units. The Marauder's death cry is very fitting and satisfying.



OTHER SUGGESTIONS:

To veteran competitors this probably isn't an issue, but to casual gamers: when the Zerg Baneling explodes, it should have a conspicuous VFX blast radius so players can tell where the damage originates from (like the Hunter-Seeker explosion, but brighter because the explosions so far don't really stand out as they closely match the color of the terrain). And if possible, the Baneling's shape should be thickly highlighted bright yellow (and possibly flashing), briefly before it explodes, so players can identify where the damage is coming from. And since it is a Zerg, the explosion should be more organic, slimy, and foamy, rather than a conventional explosion that is more fitting for a Terran arsenal.

The Hunter-Seeker bomb explosion looks pretty good, but I hope the visual blast radius accurately reflects the damage radius.

When a Terran Battlecruiser dies, there should be massive falling debris, and that damage should damage everything it falls upon. This feature should be exclusive to the Terran Battlecruiser, making other factions think twice about destroying one that is positioned over their own units or structures.


Thanks for reading my feedback. I really hope Starcraft 2 turns out to the best RTS of the decade!

 

Oh don't mind the current death animations. They are one of the last things they'll polish before the beta.
You liked the Overlord death animation? You didn't like the Queen death animation? Well guess what, the Overlords death animation is the one closer to completion, obviously. No reason to make the Queen's death animation look pathetic is there? Give it some time.

 

You sound like a reasonable person yet you think death animations should be finalised in the alpha stage (that is a mere 2 steps before the final product) of development.

 

Hmm. Just a short awnser should be enough for now:

The game is still in its alpha stage. The developers are now mainly focussing on unit mechanics and getting out the bugs. This needs to be done first, since the beta will be useless without those things being fixed. Blizzard employees have already pointed out that all animations are still subject to change.

As for the death animations: I agree. They could be a lot more epic, at least in campaign. In multiplayer you will want to have a clean screen. When you wipe out a group of units, you need to move on. Not stare at the corpses for a moment. However, this could easily be an option every player can choose to turn on or off whenever thew want to.

 

Poor Blizzard can't win on this one.

If they make death animations big and flashy, they obscure the gameplay.

If they make them lame, well, they're lame. (A good example was BR 1; a running SCV looks like a dead one. Confusing.)

IMO deaths should be flashy but quick so it's clear something died but they don't obscure your view. Battlecruisers doing damage as they fall is just out of the question; I think that would be bad even in the campaign.

 

The problem I see with good death animations is that it distracts from gameplay. It also would make it harder for weaker computers to be able to run the game smoothly. If there is really detailed animations, I would like there to be a turn-off features so weaker PCs can run it easier.

 

Personally, I think its nitpicking to say the death animations aren't flashy enough. They are fine in my opinion and they are similar to ones in the original Starcraft where units just quickly explode into a pool of blood and nobody complained about those or is it because its an older engine now?

I can't even think of an RTS that DOES have very detailed and flashy death animations. This is the first time I heard such a complaint and it seems like people are running out of things to dicuss about SC2 and they start nitpicking.

 

They're still improving the animations, and they're not high priority at this stage because they can't even finalize a single campaign level until the balance changes have been finished.

They still are working on the animations though, as you can see some of them were pretty good, and several have changed since the last battle report.

 

Blizzard will probably work on all the extra kinky stuff such as death animations after they have all the gameplay finished since it's probably fairly easy to make small animations. The current death animations are probably just place holders for the new, improved ones. If Blizzard makes the death animations too fancy, people will probably complain that it gets in the way of sight. If they make bad ones then people will complain again...

I would suggest Blizzard make 3 options for players to choose from.

1) Full death animations. The animations are very detailed.
2) Normal death animations. The animations are neither bad nor detailed.
3) No death animations. Death animations won't be shown.

P.S Welcome to the forums CyberMirror

 

The developers have already said that animations and models are a primary concern right now and is what is being worked on and therefore changed the most.

 

i could care less about the graphics its all about the gameplay

 

Honestly guys I don't think its a matter of working on game balance before death animations.

Do you really think the same people that balance the game mathematically are in charge or the art and animations? I'm positive there are separate teams of people responsible for those two tasks, and they work on both concurrently.

With that said the art team(s) is probably overloaded considering among other things, the models for many of the units have changed many times already.

 

Please do not quote the post above your own.

But they're still not going to delay anything on account of waiting for the animations to be done, they have plenty of time left to work on the animations that are incomplete/sloppy.

Animations can depend on the work of other groups too, for example, they've only had a short period to work on the hunter seeker missiles because they didn't even exist yet, and they are probably wary of spending too much time on anything that might still be removed from the game anyways.

 

i agree the hunter missle explosions looks kinda wierd as it goes vertical

 

@ TeRRor
Seperate teams for both animations and balance? Owreally?
But seriously: animations are connected to balance. Just think of the attack rates of an unit. The zealot, for example. If one charges, it shows an animation. When the balance team wants it to do damage just a fraction sooner or later, the animation needs changes. These two teams are probably closer then any other, but does it even matter to us? Meh, probably not.

@ Necromas?
Hehe, Blizzard takes as much time as it wants. Good point, though. Why spend time on stuff that might be removed anyway? -although the tauren marine an terratron suggest otherwise, but Blizzard is just awesome like that-

@ aem1
They are just regular missiles. Explosions from them are just expanding gasses. Have you ever seen an explosion NOT going up, but only to the sides? I must say I feel a bit confused there. :s

 

Didn't they say somewhere that the death animations are better in single player?

 

Q&A Batch 40, first question.
Karune explains it all in there. -about the death animations-

 

I agree with OP in one point, the bar has been raised. Complex death animations, persistent landscape scarring, case-specific death sequences are basicallly expected from any high quality RTS nowadays.

People claiming for SC1 style "poofs" are on a nostalgia trip. That option could be added to graphic settings, sure. Pro gamers *might* want them to get a clearer view. Or not. Hell, the visuals pro players play in some games doesn't even look like the original game, look at Quake 3 for example.


The game is in alpha and cool death animations are essentially a nice perk, so I expect they will be added last. Some people have argued that more persistant bodies clutter up the screen. That seems like a random consensus. DoW1 had very persistant bodies, and nothing conveys defeat like a bloodied field of blewn-up marines. That is indeed information too, and beautifull one at that. Like death animations, how much shows up can be left to the player.

I expect blizzard to surpass the epicness of DoW's "sync-kills", persistant scarring and corpses, but in its own, fast-paced RTS way.

Doing only SC1 type half-assed pyrotechnics like the ones we see now would only prove that success has gone to their head and made them believe they do not need to learn anything from other developers.

 

Rofl. Blizzard learning from other developers.
They pretty much set the standard with their games. Much like Rockstar does with gta -sandbox genre-, or Square-Enix with Final Fantasy -traditional rpg-.
Do you have any idea how many Starcraft and Warcraft clones there are?

As for the serious gamers, -please stop from saying pros, not only top tier gamers take multiplayer seriously- why would we want a cluttered screen?
The Overlord death animation is cool, it just is. But it also clutters the screen. What if there is an Infestor behind that explosion? And I need to wait 1 second extra to target click it? The opponent that box-selects it can still fire of an ability in that moment. I prefer the old poof animations.

 

Yay, let's have guts flying around instead of trying to make the gameplay more smooth.