f13.net

StarCraft 2 Cinematic Trailer (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10049.0)

StarCraft 2 Artwork Trailer (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10050.0)

StarCraft 2 Gameplay Video (1280 x 768) (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10061.0)

There should be a few gameplay trailers going up soon too.  I'd love to get them from here rather than the fuckmyassblizzardtorrent.

They originally promised the gameplay trailer they showed at WWI on the 20th but changed that to "coming soon".

That cinematic took too long to get interesting.

Yeah, the gameplay demonstration was definitely the best part of the whole presentation.

Starcraft 2 gameplay videos on You Tube :

Gameplay Video 1 http://youtube.com/watch?v=cexOPKic15E&mode=related&search= (http://youtube.com/watch?v=cexOPKic15E&mode=related&search=)

Shows off Zealots and their new charge ability, Seigetanks and their firepower, and new Protoss unit similar to Dragoon with a shield ability that gets activated by burst/massive damage - hard counter to siege tanks.

These are then countered by new jetpack infantry pack that flies/jumps over elevation and is a good counter to the Dragoon type as their shields are ineffective against steady incremental damage.

Gameplay Video 2 http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sns34WXKOf0&mode=related&search= (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sns34WXKOf0&mode=related&search=)

Large battle showing the Protoss mothership ending with the use of nukes.

Gameplay Video 3 http://youtube.com/watch?v=wa6ZWbPitwc&mode=related&search= (http://youtube.com/watch?v=wa6ZWbPitwc&mode=related&search=)

Shows new protoss aircraft with laser beams that is a counter for large strong units/buildings - as I read, their lasers do more and more damage as they continue to focus on a single target. They then get destroyed by mass infantry.

More on the Protoss mothership - it shows off a force shield type ability, as well as an Independence Day type laser from its bottom that destroys ground troops.

Gameplay Video 4 http://youtube.com/watch?v=n8HEO7PD2FA&mode=related&search= (http://youtube.com/watch?v=n8HEO7PD2FA&mode=related&search=)

4 seems to be more or less a repeat of 2. Skip if you don't feel my compulsive urge to watch simply because it was labeled part 4 on Youtube.

All in all, was not quite impressed by the 2 Blizzard trailers - but the gameplay vids won me over - the units look so much better in animation than in screenshots... and the gameplay videos look so bloody cool.

StarCraft 2 Gameplay Video (1280 x 768) (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10061.0)

I just noticed there's a female Night Elf hologram dancing in the section where he's introducing the Protoss Immortals. I love those sorts of touches.

I split off the balance discussions to the main SC2 thread.

Ah - neeeecro

It's worth it.

A battle report :

http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/1.xml (http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/1.xml)

That battle report actually had something of a dulling effect on my desire to play starcraft II, since it's indicating a strong focus on the stuff about starcraft and other RTS's which is passe and which we could do without: the scripted start which must be repeated ad nauseum (god, listen to the commentators work up a froth trying to make the initial 'probe finds base' encounter exciting) and the game's pathological reliance on harvesting as a weak front.

I'm not as jaded as Sam over there, I thought the video was  :drill:

I'm actually a big fan of the starting build and probe game. Maybe it is just a ritualistic thing, but I find it is a lovely way to settle into a match. I need that time to calm my nerves.

Nice recovery by the Human player (David Kim).

my opinion is that the first few minutes of most RTS play is an infinitely repeated process which can not be made very interesting. Even in the upper echelons of starcraft play it is always the exact same building tending and initial harvester scouting repeated ad nauseum. The game does not even really begin until the first handful of grunts are out on the field and you can start probing and applying map control and pressure. so, it was fun listening to that guy flip the fuck out trying to describe how awesome it was that the probe was running a marine around. er.

This was at its absolute worst point in Warcraft III, which was a forgettable mplayer experience. The 'dick around with your harvesters and base' period was longer, the dead period prior to the construction of your hero was extremely noticeable, and the early game was a lamefest of creeping and niggling harassment.

The dead period accumulated slowly to the 'midgame,' which was a tiresome period with your heroes and armies slowly wiggling around each other, never engaging without significant advantage. When two experienced players fought each other midgame, or when a 2 on 2 game was being played, this would all cumulate around a point where the game was literally decided in seconds and then the players who knew they had lost (hero gets caught in root, blademasters killed your acolytes while you were creeping, enemy caught you while YOU were creeping, etc) would just quit. The entire dead period for about 30s/2m of actual gameplay before the end result of the match became mostly inevitable.

HURR WOT A FUN GAEM

It looks like they are strenuously trying to minimize these issues as significantly as possible. They got rid of heroes (thank god), getting nutkicked in the harvester line seems to count for less so prolly isn't that appealing anymore, and you already start with more harvesters, but they should probably increase the amount of default resources you start with so that the player can immediately work out their initial building branching order and the game proper can begin with grunts beginning to leak out of the base ASAP.

I'm with sam. I was slightly more than a casual starcraft player, way back when. It's only a 2 or 3 minute buildup, and part of your attention is focused on scouting so it doesn't feel that long. It looks like they made the SCV/probes/drones stronger; they definitely have a longer attack range and don't seem to go down as easily. Those zealots weren't really a match for even a dozen SCVs and they didn't do crippling damage do the economy either. I am surprised at how weak the base defenses were; in the first game base defenses were pretty useful. I guess with the fast shield recharge you don't need the shield transfer station things anymore either. I used to abuse the hell out of those.

There wasn't really a "recovery" by the terran player; the protoss guy had 0 chance as soon as the terran guy completed his command center without it being scouted. Those protoss walkers seem like pretty crappy units for how expensive they were. That sweeping beam is a nice idea, but it seems way too situational and unless you're perfectly lined up you're only going to hit one guy. The kiting thing should be fixed as well, that's a bit cheap. With units with a slow rate of fire, you shouldn't be able to fire and then move during the firing cooldown.

To those that haven't watched it yet, don't even bother with the video on Blizz's site: the you-tube HD version works great.

Also:

DO WANT NOW. :awesome_for_real:

HEY, THANKS FOR THE LINK TO SAID VIDEO!

I wasn't aware of Youtube being that difficult to navigate.

Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LERxOtIMif4)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDFp6ENWNVA)

The Protoss player was behind in developing his first expansion (he started it after the Zealots did their first attack on the SCVs) but he should've had the resource led at that point in time anyways cause of all the SCVs he destroyed plus the time he took away from the Terran player when the SCVs were defending themselves instead of gathering. To me it looked like the Protoss kept building the wrong stuff to counter what the Terran player was doing (or vice versa).

I bet they'll leave the kiting in. It's basically a tradeoff -- you can do some intense microing to give you a tactical advantage in that one battle but that leaves you vulnerable to stuff going on elsewhere.

Really it just looked like an alpha build issue. The protoss walkers were total fail. They're conceptually a counter to massed units but when they pop so easily under pressure they're just a resource liability.

I'm sorta in this camp too. I'll still buy it of course, but it looks to be the same game I played 8 years ago. Yea, I know the reasons for that like everyone else. But honestly, I'm more curious about the timespan between this launch and an announced MMO than this game itself. It doesn't feel like a Warcraft II to III leap. But I'm happy to accept correction.

I just want to access to the builder. I hope it allows for some sort of Hero-type creator even if the game doesn't have it itself.

Urgh. As I think about it, I really wish that heroes coulda been a force for good in mplayer.

They could have if there weren't such a discrepancy between the hero units and regular units.  Make them beefier regular units, basically, with maybe one or two extra skills, and price them accordingly.  Don't make them Queens in a sea of pawns.

I'm fairly sure the have stated that heroes will be in the campaign, and by extension the map editor. Just not the standard multiplayer.

the analogy works in a great way because the queen's major weakness is trade susceptibility, as she can be bullied by all the weaker units that cannot be taken in trade.

I meant Heroes you can level up. StarCraft had Hero units as well.

I'm fine with hero leveling up but the way Warcraft III implemented them was horrible.  Creep and unbalanced items ruined the game.

I wonder how I'll play Starcraft II.  The four months after Starcraft  release were the most hardcore of my gaming "career".  Folowed by a total burn out.  I barely played  Broodwar multilayer. 

A couple of years later, I kept myself in the top 100 of warcraft III ladder for 3 weeks after release until I realized it was designed has a grind fest.


Anyone here was a regular of Zileas.com?  It was a great forum for hardcore RTS.

That's a shame, Brood War is still amazing.  It fixed a lot of vanilla SC's problems.

Slowly, it did. At first it accidentally catapulted Protoss into absurd supremacy with those damn corsairs. Oh, but those days were fun.

I used to lurk on Zileas' forum, still visit the nohunters one as well on occasion, though it's long moved on beyond being sc-related.


As for the vid: the game still needs a lot of polish. Unit movement is clumsy, colour schemes are questionable, etc... Most noticeably though, i think faction identity and uniqueness seems to have taken a big hit. Flamethrower quads? Wow, imaginative.

I had trouble at times figuring out if those stalkers were protoss or terran units. 

As much as I loved the original Starcraft and BW, I'm looking forward to DoW2 in the RTS area more. This probably has to do with one of two things: Blizzard chopping up SC2 into 3 full releases, each probably priced at the standard $50, and me being a huge neckbeard. Anyway...

The death grip of anticipation Diablo 3 has on my nuts is also infinitely larger than the pinch for SC2.

Bleh, I'll probably want to play them for the sp campaigns even after all my bitching.

The second and third SC2 releases will very likely be the first blizzard games that I have ever pirated.

I was thinking the same thing after I read what I'd posted. Then I sighed.

The saddest part for me was the Zealos being barely a match for the big marines.

My enthusiasm is exactly in inverse proportion to the enthusiasm of the Korean PC Bang denizens.  Since this game thus far seems to be heavily catered to them, mine is nil.

When did we ever look towards Blizzard for creativity and imagination? A lot of what they do is very generic.

Starcraft 2 match (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/48119.html?type=flv). Space Marines vs Tyranids, from beginning to end. Sorta interesting, no way in hell am I skilled enough to play rts's like that.

FTFY

I'm not a big RTS guy, never played starcraft or warcraft but that game looked like fun to me.

Wow, that was a good Terran player.  I don't know how people can react so fast so accurately like that.  Can't wait to play this game!  I think I'll go fire up Halo Wars, not a bad game itself.

Do Want.

They are Blizzard employees now but David Kim and Matt Cooper are both former competitive SC and WC III players.

I was an RTS guy, played TA and Battle Realms (and other non-Blizzard, non-Westwood RTSs) but watching that made me realise how far over I am about base building. Give me a squad based RTS any day of the week.

That looks just like any other RTS.  What's the big deal here?  I would be bored with that in 30 minutes.

FIFY

I really enjoyed StarCraft back in the day.  Does anyone know if they're going to support modern high-resolution displays in some sane way?  That's the thing that kills me about older games. 640x480 scaled up to 1920x1200 is uuuugly.

I can't see why they wouldn't.

Well, it's 3D with a fixed camera? I don't see why you wouldn't be let to run it in 3860x2880 if you really wanted to.

Ah!  The video I've seen has been pretty low quality / low resolution, so that wasn't apparent to me (didn't look that different from having very nice sprites).

Starcraft 2 is using the warcraft3 3d engine. Greater resolution won't zoom out like diablo2 did, it will simply make things look sharper.

Note that camera distance is also balance issue; someone who can see more of the playing field than you can has an advantage.

Because they are Blizzard and don't care about fancy graphics?

Saying SC II uses the WC III engine is like saying DOOM III or Quake Wars uses the Quake engine. There may be bits and pieces and algorithms that are the same between the two but they are essentially completely different engines.

http://ati.amd.com/developer/SIGGRAPH08/Chapter05-Filion-StarCraftII.pdf

StarCraft2 - Battle Report : Part3 (http://www.viddler.com/explore/gamechosun/videos/77/)

I missed the resolution discussion but my recollection from Blizzcon last year is that they had it running at a pretty high res on the demo machines. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I only remember two thinks about SC2.

1) I am fucking terrible at it.

2) It was pretty, even while I was busy being terrible at it.

Bigger versions:

http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/starcraft-ii-battle-report-3

Thanks

And damn, that's some mad micromanagement.

unreleased battle report leaked (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_0MYFcwpWg)

Multiplayer is always what kills RTSs for me.  I love them in theory, and sometimes I even love playing it for a bit, but I simply don't have the will to train myself in the inevitable winning strategies.  I tend to choose units based on what I like to use, rather than what is most effective.  Hell, I remember one time I was playing Empire Earth II (a great RTS actually), multiplayer.  It was maybe my first or second ever online game playing EEII.  And the draw of that game is sthis sort of long spanning, economic,  military, diplomatic game.  Well, there I am preparing to tech up through the ages, etc, and I lost to bola thrower rush as I was building my economy, game over in 5 minutes.  I did some research and apparently that was the strategy lots of people used in multiplayer.

Fucking lame.

Anyway,  blizzard RTS games seem to cater to this style of play, whereas I'd much rather play something like Sins of a Solar Empire


ETA: In the same way I seem to be good at most FPS games, I seem to be terrible at most RTS games (both in competitive environments), so this is where my grumpyness stems from.

In a decently balanced RTS, that sort of thing is the equivalent of trying a fool's mate in chess.  It'll work against someone who doesn't know about it, but once you're familiar with it (and the counter) you'll have an advantage against anyone who tries it.  Not sure if that's the case in this particular game, but early game rushes were pretty popular in SC1 as well.  Once you learned how to defend against them, you could pretty reliably and easily crush anyone who tried that technique.

You're probably right.  I think what irks me at least as much as actually losing to something like that is the fact that people only care about winning rather than experiencing all the cool content the game comes with.  Don't get me wrong, I can get plenty of competitive in games,  I just have a hard time with strategy games in that sense.

Malakili, if the game was multiplayer only, I would agree with you. However, there is (at least in SC) a considerable single player campaign for you to experience all of the content in. Additionally, not all races (again, SC1) are balanced for each stage of the game. Zerg were traditionally better in the early game, while Protoss became pretty unstoppable if you let them tech all the way up.

I never understood the appeal of online play for RTS games. I played a lot of Warcraft III and Starcraft with my housemates over a LAN though, which was much more fun. Especially since we were all equally terrible and so most games would go the full distance (i.e. until most of the resources had been used up).


3 single player campaigns in fact, since they're releasing each race campaign as a separate box.

That's why you don't understand the appeal of online play.

The most fun I had playing RTS games online was always the Custom (Use Map Settings) games: Tower Defense, Dota, Mauls, Madness/Frenzies, etc.

In SC1, my friends and I were good enough to beat randoms we played, usually because there were 2-3 of us who knew each other and coordinated strategy vs 2-3 randoms who spent half the game talking shit on each other. When WC3 fixed that with the auto-join game thing, we suddenly got terrible at team games.   :oh_i_see:

I'm sorry, but I think anyone whose watched the battle reports needs to watch this. That was awesome. Especially the Diablo 2 music in the background.

Holy shit that was hilarious.  Excellent dry delivery by the announcer.

When in rome...

The original starcraft was cool because it because it had a fairly competitive skirmish AI that could generally give a good account for itself (though often flagged a bit mid-game). A couple of friends, as many AI enemies as you could handle and fun would be had on a LAN day. I hope this game will offer the same.

Competitive RTS? Neither the ability nor the interest in trying to gain it.

Most of the 'competitive' RTS play comes from a really, really fast build and good controls as well as taking initiatives. I used to admire this sort of play, but after you start working and had so much stress at work, it's harder to handle the pressure that comes from RTS plays anymore, especially dealing with rushes after a hard day at work. So I kinda retired from competitive RTS altogether and don't bother looking for it. Not even DotA.

I can dig FPS since it requires so much less time investment with short bursts of gratification, I died in 10 seconds but I can come back in half a minute, go in a good streak for a good 2-3 mins before dying again. In RTS, I probably die in the first 5 mins and had zero fun out of it or too busy microing the 8th worker to scout for the enemy base to have any fun.

The AI wasn't all that clever.  One time for shits and giggles I played a 1v7 against it.  I wouldn't recommend repeating this experiment, since it took HOURS to finish and got pretty tedious, but I did wipe out every single one of them just to prove it could be done.  At the end of the game there were all these clumps of units stuck in spots where the pathing had broken down, expansions that had never been properly mined, stuff like that.

I did it without any exploiting.  I did a 1 v 7 game playing as terrans vs. all zerg.  I grabbed a very defensive map, and managed to beat them.  It basically amounted to letting them harvest all the god damn resources on the map and melting them on my defenses, then sweaping out to clean them all up, but was still kind of fun.

Having said that, the hard AI in Warcraft 3 (after they patched it.  There was a noticable difference after a patch) devistated me and my friends in LAN games.  Holy god we couldn't beat the god damn thing most of the times.  It was doing shit like launching a decoy attack on one side of the map to draw us all out in that direction, then sweeping into our bases with the main force once our units were engaged.  So I'm fairly confident Starcraft 2 should have engaging AI.

In any event, I'm really looking forward to the mods.  I spent more time playing all the various mods for Warcraft 3 than the actual game.

The comp player in SC is decent at doing an initial rush at you. As long as you are on a map that allows you to easily block/defend your entrance and setup some initial defenses you can "turtle" until you can build enough forces to slowly whittle the comp players down. Long range air is usually the easiest but I liked going ground just cause it's more interesting. This is assuming you are on a "minerals" map (a la BGH) where you don't have to leave your initial starting point to get more minerals/gas. On a Blizzard map this sort of thing is *a lot* harder as you have to rush to grab expansions before the comp players do.

Rumor has it beta starts next week as some gents who went to Blizzard have been put under an NDA until then.

So, we can expect a release around summer 2010 then?

Didn't see this news anywhere on F13 yet, so this thread seems appropriate for it.

No LAN for your SCII (http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/30/starcraft-2-blizzard-responds-to-lack-of-lan-support/)


Trying to fight piracy hurting gamers once again?   :ye_gods: :uhrr:

If you mentioned LAN to anyone 20 and under they wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about.

LAN is dead, even at some sort of computer party you can expect everyone connected through the internet rather than eachothers pc's.

I'm sure they'll have some PC Bang international version that lets you do it without being connected to the net.

What makes you say that?

Clearly they want to protect the purity of their Steam/LIVE-like achievement system that they haven't announced but will obviously have.

3 versions and no LAN? Oh Blizzard, you're fucking slimey.

Oh, you have to host multiplayer through battle.net?  Teh hoorors, teh hoorors.

How you must suffer.

Koreans will.

Well, I think with Starcraft 2 and Diablo III going LANless, battle.net being the mode of multilplayer, WoW accounts being merged with battle.net accounts (or, the encouraging of this), and a new blizzard MMO in the works, we can see all the stars aligning for the Blizzard Station Pass.

I guess, in reality, the lack of LAN support isn't going to negatively effect me very much, in the vast majority of situations where I would want to play LAN, I'll have internet access, but I don't like the direction this is headed.

If I were on college, this would piss me off.

But I'm not in college, so, haha.

I'm glad you have a hard-on for blizzard and battle.net. I loathe the service and have no faith in them to make it any better than what it is. Maybe they removed all the sliding panes so you don't have to wait an extra 20 seconds for stupid animations. There's also the fact that Blizzard/Battle.net and firewalls do not get along. At all. I could go over to all my friends houses and setup port forwarding, which is a waste of my time, or hamachi and a lan game, which is easy to do.

So, fuck you.

So how long until battle.net goes monthly payments? I give it one year, tops.

My cell phone has two different modes of internet connectivity.  It's not 1999 anymore, every college campus in the western world has pretty much unlimited internet connectivity.

Seriously, who, other than Koreans (and you know Blizzard has a solution for that) plays LAN games?

Do you have to play the entire game over the WAN connection, or do you just need the connection to battle.net up front for matchmaking?

I was actually at a small LAN party fairly recently where the only Net connection available was satellite, which has too much latency for online gaming to be remotely feasible.  (It was a bit out in the wilderness, close enough to town for power and phone but not for DSL or cable.)  Having to play SC2 over battle.net would make it a no-go for that scenario.

Mainly I see it as a way to require authentication before allowing you to play.

Someone will hack-in a work around within a few months to both avoid verification and enable LAN-play.

A smart system will detect that the players are connected locally, but there's still anti-cheat and stats information moving to battle.net and back, which might cause lag. And lag is what Blizzard does best.

Yeah, I haven't played a LAN game in over a decade. And I think battle.net is going to be a bit more reliable than Ping0.

Yeah, it seemed a bit odd at first.  But then I realized it has been about a decade since I did anything LAN related (I think the last time was back in mid high school...).  And even then, the LAN setups we used all had access to the internet since we all needed to download the correct patch versions anyways.  This really shouldn't be that big of an issue.

It's pretty obvious that Blizzard is miffed that people have been playing Starcraft for a decade and all they make from it is initial box sales. Breaking Stacraft into three parts is one method of moving towards a recurring revenue model, monetizing Battle.net is another. I wouldn't bet on the base Battle.net functionality costing money (though I wouldn't bet against it) but of course there will be all sorts of value-added things to buy.

South-East Asians. Though not anywhere as much as they used to. MMORPGs are a far more effective life sucker.

I remember someone high up at Blizzard talking about turning subs from B.Net, but they never expanded on it only saying it was all still up in the air. Though I have no doubt in their ability to try and capitalize any way they can.

I know some people on their 3rd Diablo 2 boxes from getting their accounts banned.  It's brilliant!

Considering that local networks are all TCP/IP these days (thank the gods), I call total bullshit on the "too hard to support lan and battlenet" excuse.  Obvious smokescreen for "anti-piracy" measure is obvious.

I never once played starcraft on battlenet.  I logged many, many hours playing on local networks against friends and co-workers.

Thanks, Blizzard, you assholes.

Not an asshole move at all. It's the only way they can protect their investment. I don't begrudge them at all for that decision.

Another Battle Report has been posted (http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/4.xml)

Looks sexy as ever

Want now, giv!

The only game I've ever seen play passably over sat is WoW, and that's only because Blizzard does a good job of letting the client believe it's in control while killing you with the shadow nova that went off forty yards away.