I think their intentions with the Battle Report was to illustrate how well balanced  and unpredictable a multiplayer game can be between the three races (I mean, I wouldn't believe you if you told me before the match that Kim would win every 3 rounds).
Also I agree concerning the ridiculously high focus on economy, drone-to-probe ratio and who can click his mouse faster but thats RTS progaming...

They are catering to the very hardcore, what with all their stat tracking and counting every worker. This week's bombcast brought it up, SC is not about having big epic battles and looking cool. That said, SCII is meant to appeal to the dedicated fans of the original, not so much to draw in new crowds

" They are catering to the very hardcore, what with all their stat tracking and counting every worker. This week's bombcast brought it up, SC is not about having big epic battles and looking cool. That said, SCII is meant to appeal to the dedicated fans of the original, not so much to draw in new crowds "

"

In a sick, twisted way, the lack of LAN play makes me feel better for only really wanting the singleplayer action out of Starcraft 2.

Every Battle Report sits us down and shows how, with painstaking micromanagement and nearly gimmicky unit composition, you can achieve a victory in Starcraft 2--a sterile, aesthetically bankrupt victory. Where is the hellfire and chaos of war in this game? The most satisfying outcome of any battle involves stunting your opponent's economy. The announcers seem to agree with me, as the drone-to-probe ratio is the only number they really seem to find important in a game about the clash of alien hordes.

I understand that Starcraft is "the game" for the tournament scene of the RTS, but if Dustin Browder will openly espouse that every good Starcraft 2 map is "mirrored on all sides" I have a hard time believing the game will be good for anything but tournament play. The terrain effects seem rather bland, the only new terrain feature catching my eye so far being the smokescreens; the new units they've shown all look useful, not cool or powerful.

If I care at all about strategy gaming, I will probably buy this game: reputable company, solid development time. So if I'm sitting on the fence about whether to throw down cash for a game and its creators' primary marketing strategy is to show me that I am going to get my ass handed to me by numbers and almost exploitive microing tactics (the ability to avoid fire by moving just outside an enemy's "maximum range" is completely unacceptable by today's processing standards), the Battle Reports have seemed like a failure. If Blizzard has no eyecandy to show (and it hasn't really since the first gameplay trailer), it should be dumping these replays onto the web for the tournament scene to peruse and study and comment on. Even as a potential casual player, I'd prefer it that way.

Thoughts?

"

They're trying to convey to me how goddamn useless I am at RTS'es in greater detail. :(

They are trying to convey the balance of the game.

" They are trying to convey the balance of the game.

The players on the BRs are top-level competitors; if SC2 is anything like SC, lower-skilled players' games will be far more chaotic.

"

From my experience with vanilla SC, many lower-skilled players tend to hunker down and sit on large amounts of units and economy, rather than using smaller, strategic strikes. That creates a more unpredictable scenario, because it's very difficult to micro large forces (although this might not be the case any more with the Protoss, who have some nifty movement abilities).

They are trying to convey how unlike good RTS games this is...ya know, like Dawn of War II or Company of Heroes...

My (fanboyish) fate in Blizzy tells me that they will not only make this an awesome competative game but allso a really great single player experience with all the ginormous glorious battles you could think of.

"@xxNBxx said:

There are tons of modern games where you try to stay just out of range of your enimes weapons, all FPS will have a melee attack that you can stay out of range of.  Would you call that "almost exploitive"?

Melee combat is, by its nature, a conflict of distances. That is what makes it an interesting component in games that revolve around ranged fighting. Many RTS's have melee fighting too; in that sphere they fill the role of breaking up ranged combatants who can't best them up close and provide a useful layer of depth where positioning is everything. However, ranged combat ought to be more nuanced than that mathematically. Back in the days of the Warcrafts and Westwood C&C's, a Marine firing a machine gun at a handful of hundred rounds per minute was too much for the systems of the day to effectively model for damage and accuracy. Developers did what they could, but had to enforce artificial boundaries and figures to represent attacks; no matter the range, this gun will exactly X damage, a figure only modified by armor or other explicit protections afforded its target. That was yesterday; today, games like Company of Heroes are starting to show remarkable potential in realm of ranged combat mechanics with soldiers that miss as much as they hit and tank rounds influence the terrain as much as enemies. In light of this (I will admit to a personal adoration of CoH by the way), StarCraft 2 feels like a step backward mechanically.

If this criticism of SC2's ranged combat being a "guns hitting for full or nothing" affair is provably inaccurate, I'll retract the comment, but the footage I have seen of the game so far does not contradict it."

I think the Battle Reports are an example of why I don't like SC, don't give a crap about SC II, and the traditional RTS anymore.  The fact that it's so by the book is a complete turn off.

Give me something with a little more depth and with some tactics.  It's why RTS games like Dawn of War II, CoH, Men of War, and Total War are all I play anymore (even if those two relic games are more by the book with their multiplayer portions as xxNBxx points out).

I think the Russians behind Men of War and their previous games Faces of War and Soldiers: Heroes of World War II are way ahead of their time and one day some Western studio with some money will make a similar RTS building off what they've done but with decent production values and it will be a huge hit and will be called "innovative"