StarCraft II Battle Report 2

wow i was gonna say the zerg seem overpowered, but damn if you hesitate in the slightest the game turns on you

@Renegade

Well, getting powerful units quickly is important, but in Starcraft (and most RTS's) literally EVERYONE knows how to do that. The order of building stuff and researching has been tested and refined through a million games. You can do a google search for starcraft build orders and in 5 minutes get the same basic development plans the pro's are using.

The two important parts to good play in Starcraft is planning and execution. Planning is deciding when to scout, when to expand, when to pressure an enemy, and guessing your enemies plans. This is the 'Strategy' part of the game. The other part is execution, where the insane 300+ APM (Actions per Minute) and crazy unit micro comes into play. Top level starcraft play is actually physically draining in how much you are doing at once. This is the "Real time" part of RTS, where the player is forces to be quick, able to act on reflex and to make important decisions on a moments notice.

@Fire_Marshall_Bill
The zerg advantage is that they generally are able to take much more bases. When a zerg player loses map control they are dangerously close to being fucked. In starcraft 1 Zerg generally want to have at least 1 more mining base then their opponent at all times or they fall way behind, its part of their game style. Terran are pretty much predisposed to a good defence with some turtling, if they manage to break the zerg containment and raid the zerg bases it goes downhill quickly for the zerg. Of course, this is from my experience with Starcraft 1, though it seems to be very similar in Starcraft 2.

Those Banelings do look crazy good, combined with that new brush stuff that disrupts the Line of sight and mid game burrow. Of course, game is still said to be in Alpha. Shows how much Blizzard cares about quality, they have the game perfectly playable yet its still going to go through a lot of playtesting and balancing before release.

Can't wait. Starcraft was my bread and butter growing up.

Looks incredible! I don't play rts games, but I want to play this one.

It  just looks like any other RTS sadly ... its SC1.3 ... only

Does Burrow have a decent cooldown? It has to hvae a disadvantage besides not being able to do anyhing, what with healing and hidden. It seems a bit much. But then, maybe I'm wrng, I don't quite grasp the ability.

But I love watching these things. Fuckin insane, and this game is going to be amazing. For sure my favorite game to watch.

@legendary1

Thanks for the info. I've actually struggled more with Starcraft than most other RTS's I've played, so I appreciate the advice =)

"I like how the loser quits before the winner announced "

Thats cause in StarCraft, there is a point when you realize its over. he had no choice. That was an amazing comeback, for the Terran, but the thing you ave to understand is the the Zergs are a much more agressive race, and they are kind of like an electric car. A HELL f a lot of torque, but peak power is a lot lower. Terran take a while, but they get up there after some time and effecient defense. Its easy for the Zerg player to get over confident when their doing really well early on, because the Terran are more then capable of coming up with a hell of a punch late game.

Seems to me that hunter seeker missile (which is kick ass, I really like it) would be great for covering your retreat, those banelings were really packing a punch, and there were a few retreats that would have worked off better with those missiles going back and hiting the Banelings as they chased down the Terran units.

Does anyone else think this is way behind the RTS game?  I think Starcraft fans are gonna have a great time with this, but RTS fans, who've been enjoying the innovations to the genre for the past 10 years, are gonna pop this in and be disappointed.  It just seems to simple, like it's stuck in the past.  Games like Comapny of Heroes have taken this thing to a whole new level of complexity and innovation.  Playing 50 unit baserape with resource gathering doesn't sound like much fun to me.

@Mordeaniischaos

In starcraft 1 there was no cooldown, it just was a decently expensive ability to research and took quite a bit of time. OTOH, Zerg regeneration was like 10-100x slower in SC1 (took a few seconds just to regenerate a single HP, an entire game to recover from a near death). In SC1 it was actually fairly limited, maybe a single ambush with hydras or something mid game, but mostly used to burrow workers when your mineral line is being raided and to burrow cheap zerglings around the map as scouts.

Blizzard hasn't let anything get in the way of their balance process though, tons of units and abilities have been tried, tweaked, and then modified or thrown out so far.

those announcers were way to into that

Awesome, cool back and forth between the players, exciting stuff!

Wow, I never thought watching a game of Starcraft could be so interesting. Thanks, announcers. So basically... RTS strategy is completely beyond me, and I can't deal with it at all, but..... I would totally watch more commentated Starcraft II matches.

That was surprisingly entertaining and exciting to watch.

I have to admit I was rooting for the humans cuz...  well, I'm human.

Bleh..for the amount of time I spent in 1998 playing Starcraft this game doesn't have me excited in any way now that I'm so used to playing DoW2. The amount of brutal action pales in comparison and base management..ehhhhhh just looks way too boring :|   Not to mention these battle reports seem 100% scripted, from the actions the units do to 'showcase' the terrain highlights and unit functions, to how each commentator seems to be reading off his own script; but it's still SC2 gameplay so it's all good I guess.

This game will be massively overrated.

Great match and professional commentary, but despite improved graphics, a few gameplay tweaks here and there and some additional units there isn't much here that couldn't already be experienced in the original StarCraft (and still is experienced, all over South Korea ;). Let's hope the campaigns have a great plot comparable to the veritable epic that was SC1's single-player mode...

I don't understand why so many people suggest this game will be 'stuck in the past' or 'outdated' when it comes out. The RTS genre is nowhere near as innovative and fun as it used to be. I still play older games, because I appreciate the idea of managing more than just a couple of soldiers on the front lines. The ability to have an actual base and the ability to expand is one of the greatest strengths of the RTS genre as far as I'm concerned, because it means you are doing more than killing enemy soldiers.

So, if Starcraft leans back to the older games as opposed to the newer ones, more power to it. It will be one of the first pure RTS games I've purchased in years.

Rantmode.. Sorry in advance..

I think something that made SC playable when it came out, was that massing units was an acceptable tradeoff for what was occationally utterly abysmal pathing and a sense of momentum that was really heavily tied into army size. To me, a tank being blocked from progress by a single infantry unit is hilarity itself, but this tile based abstraction is what apparently stands at the foundation of SC as a competitive sport, much like hitboxes and area control abstractions are par for Street Fighter 2 tourney play.

Back then, that was okay, but i stopped thinking of the units on the map as CHARACTERS very quickly once i joined a clan and played a lot of online. I just thought the game turned into numbercrunching. I remember a friend with a unit damage/hp/cost spreadsheet on his bedroom wall, and it was freaking me the fuck out. Some people just really get into that kind of game, but to me it removes the personality and turns it into squares bumping into one another on top of a bunch of other squares as numbers tick up and down. It's just so depressing to me as a player.

WC3s big innovation of SC for me was lower unit cap and more "intimate" micro. Micro in SC felt like i needed to work out beforehand. WC3 let me concentrate on less. CoH does this as well, less units, more abilities, and while i think CoH is boring as hell, it really helps the game experience to have to actually care about each unit as a long term investment rather than just fodder. DoW2 takes this to an extreme, and i'm totally in love with that model of intense micro with fewer units. It simply allows for split second tactical plays that don't feel artificial or contrived. SC2 looks like it is aiming to please SC players first and foremost, and i kind of worry about those dudes, because they're hella weird in terms of what they want from the game experience.

I won't buy it. But i'll happily look at it from the distance and admire the game. It just won't be that fun for me to play.

@Legendary1

Just becuase you have more units doesn;t mean less stradegy,and RTS games arent about making the most outr of what u have,well partly ya but Starcraft takes it too far.

Having never played an RTS that i enjoyed, this intrigues me.

People aren't realizing that these people playing aren't your average joe starcraft players.  These people clearly know how to micro extremely well considering that they're the guys developing the game.   I'm sure those guys could beat 99% of the people who buy Starcraft 2.  As someone who played a lot of Warcraft 3 ladder games back in the day however, I know there's a lot of fun to be had playing online.  When I play SC2, I know I'm not going to be able to beat the elite, but I'll be able to do well and have fun.

Besides, even if you are absolutely horrible at RTS, the single player campaign is going to be pure gold.  I'd buy SC2 even if it didn't have multiplayer.

I didn't know there were quite a few new units. Do want.

that's amazing! 

I love these videos, not because theres necesarily something new, ive been following everything so theres nothing new here but some ppl never would have realized how complex staracft is and would have went on with there "its old age" crap

If you have the slightest interest rts's then you owe it to yourself to get this game: Blizz are amazing at making games. No matter what it's a fact you cannot denie