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Blizzard recently ended development on Starcraft 2. This prompted a lot of hand-wringing. There’s also a few new studios cropped up that have announced intenti

Blizzard recently ended development on Starcraft 2. This prompted a lot of hand-wringing. There’s also a few new studios cropped up that have announced intention to produce new, competitive RTS games in the Blizzard tradition (in contrast to models like Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, SupCom, or C&C). These include: - Sunspear Games, which is making a game called Immortal: Gates or Pyre based in an SC2 mod called Vanguard that was well received by the pro scene. - FrostGiant games, a new studio just set up by a bunch of SC2 team alumni - A new studio by David Kim, head honcho of design and balance on SC2, being bankrolled by TenCent. Over the next 2 to 3 years there’s going to be the biggest wave of new, competitive RTS releases since SC2 first launched.

antifa 5y ago
> competitive RTS games in the Blizzard tradition (in contrast to models like Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, SupCom, or C&C). I don't know how to interpret this other than "it'll be a destroy-your-mouse high APM obsessed click-fest that will ignore all lessons and modern inventions in the RTS genre over the last 20 years." IMO the worst thing that could happen for the industry is 5 more Starcraft remakes.
- naravara 5y ago
  Even in SC2, click-speed is not a significant determinant of winning or losing for anyone below Diamond. It's simply not an issue for the vast majority of the player base (75% of players are Platinum league or below) so I don't know why so many people have fixated on that as the thing to blame problems on. It's like saying "basketball revolves around dunking" even though dunks are basically not an element of the game for anyone playing below the professional level. Insofar as there are barriers to entry to the game at lower leagues, the challenge is more the mental challenge of keeping track of a bunch of different variables and keeping up with the multi-tasking. It's not nearly as execution dependent, at that level, as most fighting games or even a Soulsborne. It's a mental acuity and habit-formation challenge rather than a dexterity one. Better players will have more actions per minute (assuming they're not spamming), but it will be because they're making decisions more quickly, not because they have concert pianist fingers. I got up to Gold league playing mostly with a trackpad. I know someone who got to Diamond on a trackpad as well. There's lots of problems with SC2's design, but they mostly center around a poor onboarding experience, doing a bad job of communicating the ripple effects of early decisions, a surfeit of high-lethality units that settle battles or games in a second, and the availability of multiple "cheese" strategies for each faction that are much much easier to execute than they are to defend against. But those are all addressable within the broader framework of a Blizzard-style RTS with better unit design, UI/UX, and tutorial or single player game modes.

antifa 5y ago

> competitive RTS games in the Blizzard tradition (in contrast to models like Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, SupCom, or C&C). I don't know how to interpret this other than "it'll be a destroy-your-mouse high APM obsessed click-fest that will ignore all lessons and modern inventions in the RTS genre over the last 20 years." IMO the worst thing that could happen for the industry is 5 more Starcraft remakes.

naravara 5y ago
Even in SC2, click-speed is not a significant determinant of winning or losing for anyone below Diamond. It's simply not an issue for the vast majority of the player base (75% of players are Platinum league or below) so I don't know why so many people have fixated on that as the thing to blame problems on. It's like saying "basketball revolves around dunking" even though dunks are basically not an element of the game for anyone playing below the professional level. Insofar as there are barriers to entry to the game at lower leagues, the challenge is more the mental challenge of keeping track of a bunch of different variables and keeping up with the multi-tasking. It's not nearly as execution dependent, at that level, as most fighting games or even a Soulsborne. It's a mental acuity and habit-formation challenge rather than a dexterity one. Better players will have more actions per minute (assuming they're not spamming), but it will be because they're making decisions more quickly, not because they have concert pianist fingers. I got up to Gold league playing mostly with a trackpad. I know someone who got to Diamond on a trackpad as well. There's lots of problems with SC2's design, but they mostly center around a poor onboarding experience, doing a bad job of communicating the ripple effects of early decisions, a surfeit of high-lethality units that settle battles or games in a second, and the availability of multiple "cheese" strategies for each faction that are much much easier to execute than they are to defend against. But those are all addressable within the broader framework of a Blizzard-style RTS with better unit design, UI/UX, and tutorial or single player game modes.