Nice feedback guys

Couple things:
1. Whats Dawn of War?
2. If Valve makes an RTS, they should make it based on Half-Life. Combine vs. Resistance would be cool.
3. I might be willing to try Starcraft 2. However, why doesn't Blizzard make a game with nice graphics? More people would by SC II if it had nice graphics.

Etrius

They make games with "good enough" graphics so that the game will run smoothly on the widest possible range of systems. Their art direction is very stylized. The put more emphasis on creating a balanced and "GOOD" game rather then a "pretty game"

Besides that, the majority of customers Blizzard wants are the ones who will keep playing the game. If people buy the game just because it's pretty, they don't get advertising cash through Battle.Net because the gameplay (see Stardock's argument against multiplayer, though slightly less major because of the size of Blizzard) begins to suffer.
And if the game lags, people don't play MP.

Blizzard's argument is that lower graphical quality actually improves sales. for example, i never intended my PC to really be a gaming PC - i bought it intending it as a HEPC. it has a graphics card, but nothing that could do justice to most of the newest, high-end graphics games (probably wouldn't even run them).

it can handle GC2 fairly well, and i'm sure it'll run SC2. i wouldn't even want a strat game with high-end graphics. as long as i can tell what's what, i prefer smooth gameplay with nice movies thrown in here and there, that i can actually focus on (and some of blizzard's movies in the original SC and Brood War were really enjoyable for me).

if SC2 were to have the highest graphics out there, i probably wouldn't buy it. i wouldn't be able to enjoy it. and i don't have an extra G to spend on a gaming rig.

hardcore gamers will enjoy SC2, i think, as much as SC for its greatest stregth - it was a good, balanced game. the story was well developed as games go. the characters and races were memorable. and it had a great MP community online (heck, it still does). casual gamers who don't invest large amounts in their PCs will also be able to enjoy all of its streghts as easily as hard-core gamers.

while everyone likes better graphics, i think it's a minority who actually "need" better graphics to enjoy a game (mostly people who blow thousands of dollars on the newest system avaiable, and then realize that there aren't a whole lot of good games that can make use of their new toy's full potential). for what it's worth, i wouldn't be surprised if their art department was just as frustrated with the limitations they have to work with as you are--"you want me to make it look good under those kinds of constraints?"

if you really want to see poor graphics, play a game of Risk  

you might not have liked StarCraft, and that's fine. whatever fries your taco. but i don't think you'll find much agreement with the idea that it was over-rated (at least not compared to the many games that actually deserve to be called over-rated).

Yea this is a good point. Even though i hated being forced to loose the human campaign at the end, it was very good while it lasted!

PS i never even bothered playing through the Alien campaigns, never will! That was a dumb idea for a campaign.... Imagine playing the Galciv campaign and half way through you have to play the Drengin race and trample all over the Humans? Dumb.

Now that would be fun. Striders walking around blowing the crap out of buildings while enemies scramble into buildings.

In most RTS games units just line up and get shot at. In real life(today) armies don't fight like that, except in Napoleon's day. Rebels just wouldn't line up and get shot at by the Combine, vice versa for the Combine. It would be really innovative to have the AI fight on their own and think on their own. Urban combat is usually done in small, relatively independent teams. So the AI would determine on its own how and where to position itself at. Actions like running from building to building should be decided by the independant teams of AI that you give a general command to, like secure this area, or capture this city. If a guy gets shot at, he doesn't stand there, he runs for cover. This would be an impossible mountain of micromanagement to do by hand(mouse if you will) for any human, so the AI would have to be smart. Sometimes the AI needs to think like a real person. The AI shouldn't always depend on the player to make decisions. Major decisons, yes. Minor, self-preservation decisions, no.

Buildings getting shelled, rockets flying, shotguns blasting. Yea, that would be fun. Let's not forget about the headcrabs now  ...

...sounds like you only played to the second-to-last mission then, rather than to the actual end.

Yeah, what das88 said... Blizzard makes "good enough" graphics. They'll never make a game with bleeding-edge graphics because it isn't required if the gameplay is brilliant, and it maximizes their customer base. They've made a fortune off the World of Warcraft MMO with that formula.

I remember the first time I saw the WoW world. My first reaction was "Hmmm.... pretty low poly count, looks like a cartoon." My second reaction was "Wow... look how smooth the frame rate is!!" Third reaction was "Wow... look how frikkin' HUGE this game world is!!" That's what you can do, if you don't shoot for bleeding edge, and keep the graphics stylized instead of ultra-realistic.

Those guys know what they're doing, and they now have a ton of cash to fund future projects. I'd be amazed if Starcraft 2 isn't a good product.

Starcraft has an excellent story. Human race was defeated. Yes, and? Why not? This ugly race is not at all better than any other. If I remember my very first GC II game, terrans were my first race, I have ever exterminated.

I believe it was the first campaign that was the human campaign, which is what i played. I had no interest in suddenly being the bad guy while i had just spent all that effort beating them!



There is a big difference between a hard one victory and a 'whitewash', that is what makes the Starcraft story crapful.

Also i found the Earth Mimbari war in Babylon5 crapful for the same reason. The fact that Mimbari ships are invunerable to Terran weapons except when their great leader is on board is most idiotic!! And why couldn't Terrans learn from the Japaneese of WW2 and use suicide nuke runs to destroy Mimbari ships?? again, prooving it is a stupid story.

chapter 2 was the zerg, and chapter 3 was the Protoss, IIRC. the Protoss ended up teaming up with the remnants of the Terrans that stayed allied with Raynor and killing the Overmind.

i do understand your sentiments about the sudden change in the story's perspective. i remember it being a jarring experience for me as well.

i'd say if nothing else, if you still have the disks it'd be worth checking out the Zerg and Protoss chapters just to catch the story, even if you do it by cheating.

That's not so unusual in strategy game scripted campaigns, although Blizzard might have been one of the first to do it. In a game where the different factions aren't just re-skinned versions the same army for everyone, it's useful to learn a faction's advantages and disadvantages from the inside... not just playing them as an opponent. That's why Blizzard (and other game devs) rotate you through the factions. It's also because they want to encourage a diverse multiplayer community, with enough players using all the factions, and not just the first one they start you with in the campaign.

I agree it is sometimes a bit jarring to be thrown into the enemy's role, after identifying with one side for a series of missions. But at least there's a logical reason for it.

Perhaps logical, but at the end of the day, games are for having fun as a priority over doing what is logical. When you play a campaign, the idea is to try to beat the bad guys not spend your time floundering around in a pointless mission as the good guys which cannot be wone just so you can experience the workings of the bad guys afterwards, to me that does not make for fun gameplay at all.

Not all stories have a happy ending, this does not make them bad stories.

Hardcore gamers like micromanagement, but for most people (including me), micromangement is gay. I'd really like to see valve work on a Half Life RTS, with smart units. They simply make awesome games.


One more thing, why does blizzard think that bad graphics make better games, than say, a game with great gameplay and great graphics. It doesn't make sense.

Do any of you play Half-Life?