The Official SFN StarCraft 2 Thread

[Xittenn]

I'm sure there are better places to be posting a thread on StarCraft 2 but as a number of us in IRC have begun to play this title I thought maybe others on the forum would like to share their experience; I for one am quite interested. I am pretty noob to the game myself having only played the original on one occasion. I must say the animation and cutscenes are A1 considering they mostly consist of machinama. Tychus is very hawt! \o/

 

Playing through the first mission didn't present much of a challenge on hard which was expected. The lounge areas where plot is thickened is a bit interesting and sort of reminded me of a few games I've historically played(some snowboarding game for wii comes to mind.) Playing through the second mission on hard was pretty difficult for me having little to no experience. I was scrambling to control my units constantly trying to assign SCVs to repair when for the most part the process is automated. Initially I didn't even know what the bunker was as I have a tendency to not pay attention to the tips and tricks dropped by the games built in learning system. On my fifth try of the hard set 20min mission I finally plunked down some 16 bunkers(of which like 6 did actual work??) sent in like 8 SCVs to repair at each entrance and kept building resource depots to shut the droid up. \o/

 

All in all my first experiences with the game have been win. I hope to sporadically play the game between work and bouts of programming! I would post more detailed opinions on the game but as a Game Design grad my opinion is probably the least valid ..... But just from my initial impression the game is all about the mechanics and play and is a puzzle worth trying to master???

Edited August 2, 2010 by buttacup

[Leader Bee]

When it was first announced I was very excited about starcraft II, unfortunately since it's announcement (surely 5 years past now?) there has been a turning point in PC gaming whereby every single PC game i've played has been consolised. Now I remember growing up on the likes of the original Command & Conquer and loving the PC for it's unique RTS genre, i've played the original Starcraft and it was wonderful but I just cant shake the feeling this will be consolised some how too.

 

I'll get it, just not right away while it's at full price or at least until PC gaming turns itself around and starts getting games made for the PC launched on it.

[Rakdos]

Starcraft 2 won't be consoled, RTS games with the complexity of starcraft and warcraft would do extremely bad on a console.

[Leader Bee]

Yet they managed to put supreme commander on one...

Edited August 3, 2010 by Leader Bee

[Xittenn]

Shawns right it's not going to happen ever.... ever ever ..... that said there are dancing girls and mission two is even harder than mission one! I was very surprised when I could not shoot down the flying Zerg with ground troops and was required to instead build a missile turret. I assumed it would just take longer and then I was dead. I must say I've played a number of RTS games over my last 27 years of playing games but this is putting a smile on my face.

[ydoaPs]

Starcraft 2 won't be consoled, RTS games with the complexity of starcraft and warcraft would do extremely bad on a console.

Starcraft was also made for N64. I had it. I don't see why they wouldn't try to consolize it again.

[Fuzzwood]

Marines can shoot down air and ground threats. You can mouse over their weapon stats and you can see what they hit.

[Severian]

I don't really see the attraction of Starcraft II. Can anyone explain to me why it has so much hype?

[vordhosbn]

Blizzard usually put very much effort to the details of their games, have very strict policies on cheating and generally strive for continuously balancing and improving their games with patches, providing new content to gamers with expansion packs (and thus providing themselves with income ).

This sort of attention is, unsurprisingly, appealing to gamers.

 

I like Starcraft 2 a lot, for now I play it pirated, but since purchasing it is the only way to play with other people, I plan to do so in near future.

 

The campaign is not so involving and the plot is a step above shallow, imo, but... <with deep protoss voice> "This is not Warcraft in space!"

 

It's all about multiplayer competitive gameplay.

[Leader Bee]

I got this about 2 weeks ago, I'm on and off playign through the campaign but slightly dissapointed with the fact that Wings of liberty only has one for the terrans (heart of the swarm will be zerg). I'm enjoying it.

 

I've also played online too but considering i've not really played any RTS for quite some time (sup com being the last one I played) i decided to play 3 vs AI to get a decent Zerg build order going...

 

Even playing on medium i'm finding the computer to be very agressive and i'm losing a lot of the time. Either spending too much time getting my economy up to scratch before i start producing lots of units or again pumping out as many units as possible to defend my base from early scouts but then suffering later on because my economy cant quite replace those losses.

[CaptainPanic]

Is any of you playing Starcraft II on a Linux computer (using Wine?)?

I'd like to try it, but I would welcome any feedback on how easy it runs.

 

The other reason I don't have it yet is the price. It's 60 euro for the 1st version, no expansions included. It's been a while since I bought games (I usually play open source games, such as TA Spring - or at times no games at all).

 

Leader Bee - if the new starcraft is anything like the old one (and I assume it is), then you must learn a few keyboard shortkeys, especially for constructions (things that you repeat a lot). You must have one hand on the keyboard, the other on the mouse... it'll save you time, so that you can build/spawn and move stuff faster... which in the end means you build more of everything in the first few minutes of the game. Especially in the first few minutes of a game, slowness can be deadly... and even in the old Starcraft, the computer's first and second attack were usually quite impressive.

[vordhosbn]

This time, the AI got much diversified - the computer enemies have six difficulty settings - Very easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very hard and Insane.

As an experienced, although not particularly good Starcraft player, I quickly got the hand of Medium and manged to beat most of the time the Hard AI script.

However, once I tried the Very Hard difficulty, I was very surprised to find that there is some serious gap between Hard and Very Hard.

In ZvT games, for example, while I had not finished my first 10 Roaches, the Terran comes with half a dozen Maruders, one dozen Marines and several Firebats.

 

And you have to note that all but one difficulty levels are on equal grounds with the player, regarding resource income. The Insane level is the only one that "cheats".

And I am really afraid to try it. It's probably for Koreans only anyways...

 

I think this aggressive AI options are good, because on SC1, you had to put multiple computers just to have a challenge, while now, you can very easily get your ass destroyed by a single enemy.

 

What disappoints me a bit is that the AI's strategy is still somewhat linear and predictable. No sudden surprises and unexpected moves from the computer opponent - it always uses similar (but effective) tactics.

Edited September 8, 2010 by vordhosbn