Why Starcraft 2 won't be complete until Legacy of the Void

[Wankey]

After a year now, I have realized why Starcraft 2 falls very short of Starcraft 1. It's pretty plainly obvious in their design methodology.

Starcraft 1 had 3 campaigns, with 3 different races fearing against each other. That means the entire company had to play 3 different races and voice their opinions on strengths and weaknesses of each. Even the people who weren't pros at playing starcraft were forced to play the game with 3 different races just to QA the single player.

Starcraft 2 had 1 campaign, the Terran campaign, that every single person in the company was playing. Nobody played Zerg, and only a few people played the Protoss missions. A vast majority of people at Blizzard most likely only played Terran simply because

a) The campaign dictated you play terran
b) Terran was easiest to learn because Blizzard needs this race to appeal to a wide audience

That's why Terran seems to be so fully featured. Every idea, every voice, every opinion inside the company was listened to and it strongly biased Terran play, because people didn't care about Zerg, their main goal was to obliterate zerg. If ever they felt that Zerg was overpowered, they would voice it, or if every they felt that the game was no longer fun (and it isn't fun for a lot of people who only play single player)

Convenience has been consistently added to the Terrans non stop basically to appease the masses when they went about designing the single player.

I mean look at the things that Terran has been buffed with:
Supply depots -> now can submerge
A cloaked 6 range air-ground unit
Siege tanks that fire much faster and are more capable
Hellions that obliterate firebats
Marines that are far more effect than SC1 marines
Mule for extra minerals
Supply drop for cases where you screw up
Vikings that really eat Valkyries for breakfast
Battlecruiser that doesn't overkill
Ghosts that are actually really effective now (10 range EMP!)
Ravens that have now been buffed with instant irradiate
Tech lab and reactor that can be hot swapped
Dropships get a free medic
Tier 1.5 spell caster than is specialist against armored types
You can quickly see not a lot was removed from SC1, just added

Look at the things that Zerg has been nerfed with:
No anti-air unit until tier 2
Anti-air unit now slow as hell off creep
Mutas no longer mutate into anything (lack of utility)
Air to ground siege unit that require a often times useless unit just to be created
No more dark swarm to buff melee units
Overlords no longer detect
Overlords no longer have sight upgrade
Ultralisk now cost way more and is a lot worse
What has zerg been improved with compared to SC1? I really can't tell at all.
Inject Larva I feel is the only thing that's improved for Zerg since SC1.
Zerg was given a pointless and arbitrary new Armored unit to create a 3 proned Armored design motif which hasn't really worked well at all.


Toss is in the middle ground, with some nerfs and buffs:
Worse gateway units because of force field and warp in(terrible design IMO)
Warp in units at a moment's notice, I find warp in a really bad design idea. There is absolutely no risk to warping in your units compared to building them.
A scout unit that is actually worth building (voidray)
A incredibly good anti-muta air unit that has a one click spell that doesn't require research which enables it to function as a anti-ground harasser as well
Zealots now suck
High templars are now crappy

Every single aspect of the Terran was buffed from Starcraft 1, everything. Name me one aspect that wasn't buffed or created easier to use? Exactly. No part of the Terran race was nerfed when compared to SC1.

It's basically the result of a biased company wide look on Terran. You can't really blame them, when your flagship multimillion dollar product rests on your ability to produce a single player race that is fun and easy to play, Terran has to be made with utmost utility.

The campaign is based on killing the zerg, now with that mindset, you can clearly start to understand why they removed all these things.

Why did they remove Detection from overlords? It's clear, Banshees aren't as fun to play if the cloak you designed for them is absolutely useless. But if we create a Zerg detector unit, players can then differentiate them and it creates an interesting gameplay aspect for terran players.

Why did they remove dark swarm? Because it's simple, if the AI starts casting dark swarm, it simply creates an uninteresting gameplay effect. Dark Swarm isn't easily understandable and a lot of people would be scratching their heads to figure out why they lost the mission. So scrap that. Fungal on the other hand is much easier to understand. You're stuck, you get damaged. Done, keep that.

Why did they put in the Roach unit? Because they are easy cannon fodder for Marauders which is a new and cool unit (latest and greatest in bada boom hardware) that they can put into single player.

So what do we have left and what is the overall message?

With Heart of the Swarm, when the entire company is *forced* to play Zerg, they will quickly realize how poorly designed and lack of roles that the zerg have simply because EVERYONE is now playing Zerg. The race with only 15% of B.net users playing has now got 100% of the entire employee population playing it and man do they have to make it fun.

They'll quickly start complaining about how crappy zerg units are, how annoying it is to macro up a zerg base. How "unfun" it is to see 200/200 army of zerglings and ultralisks melt to just a handful of siege tanks because the pathfinding was so crap. People will have a tough time designing singleplayer campaign missions that are fun because zerg is such a mechanical race with little to no forgiving aspects.

So from this idea, we'll start to see new cool aspects of zerg design start showing up. Zerg will have to be fun, and the current multiplayer version of zerg isn't.

Now apply this logic to Legacy of the Void. We'll have a real Starcraft 2 game come 2013 and it will be magnificent.

[JackhammerIV]

Well all this was pretty obvious quite some time ago. People have been saying we can't really be close to a balanced game until LotV. And really the campaign and multiplayer are separate. Look at their ideas for HotS so far...a huge baneling that splits up into multiple banelings...zerglings that leap....that kind of stuff is not gonna make it to multiplayer.

There should be some changes to all the races in HotS. Zerg is supposed to be a very mechanical race. I think they'd just make the macro in the campaign easier and leave it where it is now in terms of difficulty for the multiplayer.

Dunno what the hell you're thinking but they're gonna make the singleplayer zerg fun and awesome to play with but the multiplayer zerg will still be the unforgiving tightrope it's meant to be. They'll be 2 separate zergs with different units. Added to that Kerrigan as a playable hero completely alters the feel of the Zerg campaign from the multiplayer. It'll be interesting to see how much they're willing to change from WoL to HotS multiplayer wise.

[Duckyyy]

Took you a year too figure out that a TRILOGY wont be complete until the final game, kind of gives it away in the description bro :P

I dont honestly think terran are that overpowered or that zerg are that underpowered, the Pro leagues can express that better than my words can and dont anyone quote Idra...yes hes the best zerg but he gives the rest of us a bad name with him "wow you chose terran...i guess you have no self esteem" kind of brain.

People need to let go of the "doesnt compare too starcraft 1" those days are gone, PC gaming is mainstream now back wehn war2/sc were in the limelight a company could get together spend a couple thousand and have a record selling game, these days thanks to the clone after clone series *Not saying names as the fanboys are watching...Everywhere* if a company doesnt spend millions on advertising and dumbing it down too appeal en masse to the public...and lets be honest the percentage of people whod rather see a marine completely anhialate an alien is mind bendingly higher than the percentage whod prefer the alien to win. In a couple years when HoTS and LoTV have kicked in and the final balancing tweaks have been done id bet my left nut that starcraft 2 becomes one of the best games of all time, but until then it is going to be a third of a pie game.

Also...Zerg.....boring.....WWWWWAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHH HHH!!!!

[GnaReffotsirk]

Wanky, I thought of these too. Regardless of what the devs are really thinking though, I agree that Terran has so much things to throw at you.

It's like they feel over-equipped.

Marines shut down everything, and man +10 health, a flying medic, and super stims?

I think it's just bad design. They should have thought about how their new target acquisition code is making ranged fire much powerful and efficient compared to melee.

[Aldrius]

I don't think this was done because of the campaign. I think this was done because Terran were the second race they finished design-wise.

Zerg were finished last. The new main things we got were things that were unveiled in their first release. Nydus Worms and Banelings.

No anti-air unit until tier 2

The Queen is an anti-air unit. It's not a very mobile anti-air unit, but it's still an anti-air unit.

Anti-air unit now slow as hell off creep

It's not really 'slow as hell'. So much as 'slower than Roaches and Zerglings' it's the same speed as a lot of tier 1 units.

Mutas no longer mutate into anything (lack of utility)

Guardians/Devourers weren't that useful anyway.

Air to ground siege unit that require a often times useless unit just to be created

I see this as more of a problem of the Corruptor not being a great unit than this being a design problem.

No more dark swarm to buff melee units

Except for Psi Storm, every single spell in the game was removed and replaced with something else. Every single one. (Plague and Ensnare were KIND OF merged into Fungal Growth, but I don't really count that.)

Overlords no longer detect

I'll give you that one.

Overlords no longer have sight upgrade

Neither do Observers. They got rid of those kinds of upgrades because they just weren't very useful or impactful.

Ultralisk now cost way more and is a lot worse

I wouldn't say they're 'a lot worse' so much as it needs some fixes to it's lousy pathing. Otherwise it's a better unit. (More HP, AoE attack)

What has zerg been improved with compared to SC1? I really can't tell at all.
Inject Larva I feel is the only thing that's improved for Zerg since SC1.

There's lots of things. The Overseer is vastly superior to the Queen as an aerial spellcaster, even if it could and should have a third spell. The new Queen in general is a great boon. Providing good defense, transfusion, and for that matter creep tumours.

There's creep speed in general too. That's HUGE. Overlords get to spread creep now as well. Infestors are a good replacement for the Defiler too, they're really strong. Brood Lords are way stronger and more useful than

Nydus Worm, Brood Lord, Baneling. All are improvements in one way or another over their SC1 counterparts. And regardless of whether or not you like it, the Roach IS an improvement over SC1 and is something the Zerg didn't have.

Zerg was given a pointless and arbitrary new Armored unit to create a 3 proned Armored design motif which hasn't really worked well at all.

I don't really see how the Roach is 'pointless' and 'arbitrary'. It's a bit of a chimera of a bunch of different things that don't really go together. It's a tank... that encourages cloaking. That just makes no sense at all. (Cloaked units are generally fairly quick and have very low HP for their cost, Roach is the opposite of that.)

But in general I think the Roach is a cool new unit. Not as cool as some other new units. (The Colossi, the previously mentioned Infestor, the Sentry, Immortal, among others) but then I don't think the Marauder is really as cool as those units either.

I sort of agree that from a design perspective a lot of SC2 is quite flawed. In some ways while they said they wanted to separate the races even further, they almost seem to have chickened out and reverted that.

In a lot of ways during the design phase of the game they chickened out and went with something easy rather than trying to make something difficult work. (The Corruptor is a PRIME example)

I think from a balance perspective the races are pretty okay, from a design perspective the Zerg ARE sorely lacking compared to the Protoss and Terran, but I don't think it's quite as bad as you're making it out to be.

Worse gateway units because of force field and warp in(terrible design IMO)

Not... really. Zealots are about the same. Stalkers are stronger than Dragoons in some ways and weaker in others.

Warp in units at a moment's notice, I find warp in a really bad design idea. There is absolutely no risk to warping in your units compared to building them.

...and? That's kind of the idea.

Zealots now suck

Not... really. They're about the same as SC1 really. I think mostly they're just not as useful because they're not the only counter for a lot of things. (Like Siege Tanks, Zerglings, and so forth.)

High templars are now crappy

Again, not really... they're no worse than in SC1.

[TheEconomist]

Wankey, as usual, you make me see things in ways I had never thought possible. Thank you for being the voice of our generation and guiding us towards the future.

[DemolitionSquid]

Well I'm glad we got this all cleared up.

Court dismissed. Bring in the Dancing Lobsters.

[Kknewkles]

Zealots suck?... they're certainly better than in BW(faster attack speed, I believe(ooh, and DAT CHARGE)) while their nemesi remained at the level where they are about the same level of threat to Zealots. Also, shield regeneration makes them easier to keep alive.

[RamiZ]

Agree with Aldrius on everything.

I must say that like 90% of Wankey's post is just... don't think that "wrong" is the right word for it. You are just biased and subjective as hell.

[Arkalis]

I think title should be:

Why Starcraft 2 won't be complete for me until Legacy of the Void