Starcraft 2 isn’t fun to watch...

[deadlock]

yeah i have to agree it's pretty boring, nowhere near as interesting as sc:bw or wc3...although you said you found war3 boring, so maybe it's a question of getting familiar with a game to enjoy it.

[Gt2slurp]

The attack speed and the unit clutter are the real problem here imo.

It's like a big ball of «bang» vs a big ball of «pow». And then a ball survive.

They should downgrade patting engine a little, fighting against your own dragoon is not cool, but having an entire enemy army inside your base in 2 sec in a single click move is kind of annoying...

[Josue]

Someone here has noticed some in-game flaws except macro related ones? t’s quite an achievement lol

Yes, at this point the game is boringly uninteresting compared to SCBW: units’ cluttering, insane gameplay speed, undeveloped meta, mostly boring units and abilities, weak immersion/realism features, practically inexistent ‘natural’ micro, artificial macro and etc. have made this game pretty unpleasant to watch.

What's Wrong With Starcraft 2
well, this



While I must say I don't agree with everything, I must accept that this vids made some points.
why should SC2 be that cartoony looking and have such a wc3ish style?

[Gifted]

3 points:

1. You are not finding SC2 Alpha to be interesting to watch with the commentary being voiced by the people at Blizzard. Likewise, I bet SC1 beta was this boring to watch if they did likewise services for it. This also involves very large imbalances that will be fixed or changed over time.

2. The reason why SC1 is so fun to watch right now is that over the years, there is a history and metagame to look for. The reason why a play is exciting is how well they pull off a strategy you've seen before, or how well they surprise you with a new strategy. You have only the history of SC1 to judge SC2 games off of. This means you're judging a game that has 10+ years of metagame against a game that has no developed metagame whatsoever.

3. Games are more fun to watch when you've been able to play it yourself, and when there is abundance of games to compare it too. Right now, we've got 4 games and a handful of examples to watch. This further improves your knowledge of the experience and therefore allows you to play the game internally THROUGH them. When you can say "Damn it, you should have gone tanks, that is what I WOULD HAVE DONE!" is something that makes the game more enjoyable, even if your thoughts are wrong about it. This is because you've played this game, it's because you know it. It's different than saying "statistically, paper says the counter is this.... you should have done that.. I think" Likewise, football is more enjoyable to those who've thrown pigskin at least 2-3 times in their life.

[Kimera757]

One reason I suppose is due to the ease of information. The screen is just cluttered with information.

Then turn off those observer features. There's seven or so to look at, and you can choose to look at none at all. Since you're watching a Battle Report and not watching it via the game itself (since it's not out) obviously you don't have control over that.

Plus it kinda takes the surprise away when you know how they did it. I don’t think the Korean commentator ever said “oh look, he’s researching shield now.” Kinda gives the trick away if the commentators can simply spit out the build order.

The Battle Reports are designed for people who aren't into esports, and for people trying to learn about a new game with limited fragmentary info that isn't out yet. This isn't the same audience as for StarCraft I reports.

When I watch SC2, I’m flooded with HP bars.

You can toggle those on/off. The StarCraft wiki even tells you how. Although you obviously can't do that with a pre-canned Battle Report.

Another reason is the speed of the gameplay. It’s simply too fast. Guns fire super fast, Marauders launch their grenades 2 times a second. Siege tank seems to have no reload time in normal mode. Everything just happens way too fast for me to really get into it. Even the storm is like BAM and it’s over. It’s not really a storm, more like a lightning strike.

And people were complaining about it being too slow, too. You can probably change the viewing speed; I doubt you have to watch it at the played speed.

The storm's length should be based on game balance. They made it faster; they might make it slower again.

One thing that irritates me is that strategies aren’t that “creative”. The nuke, in BR4, felt boring. Unlike the Nuke in the original… it just felt… over designed. The target designator is a completely stupid idea. Gives no sense of suspense, when is it gonna drop? I dunno? Well, now I know… since the crosshairs haven’t touched yet.

As stated before, Battle Reports aren't for experienced gamers, but for new people, or those trying to learn the game. If you've got lots of StarCraft I experience, you know how long it takes a nuke to drop anyway. (I actually replaced the sound file on my computer with a funny one of the exact same length for my preferred gaming speed.) On the other hand, if you've got little experience, or are trying to learn how long it takes in the game with limited fragmentary info available, you might appreciate knowing how long it takes.

The gameplay seems to only be oh what is the response to one strategy. Terran siege tank dropped… what’s the response… etc etc. It’s like they’ve got these plays down (a la NFL) and it’s textbook play to do what ever DB says you should do.

Even though each BR used different strategies and even units? (For instance, siege tanks have only been used in one of the Battle Reports.) Do you know how these are "filmed"? Browder takes an old game (often months old) and shoutcasts it after the fact. It's not live. That's why he can say "he's going to do [X Strategy]" a few seconds before it happens.

Another thing is the art design. In SC1, the readability of units was ridiculously amazing. Even in large armies, you could instantly count at a glance how many units there were. And even when the fight got on to Zerg creep, it was still incredibly clear. SC2 is quite a few steps backwards. With the advent on Blob pathfinding, you are literally just watching a blob units go from on area to the next. In SC1, the units would go line by line or spread out way further than required. Not only did this slow the gameplay somewhat, it made some pathfinding blocks funny (for instance, in one video the ghost blocked a zergling.. and in that split moment, you could feel the play going “omg omg did he notice that?”)

This is both a valid point and a bad one. Readability is very important, and StarCraft II, being a high unit number game in 3D, doesn't have that yet. Or at least it's not yet good enough. I don't know how Blizzard will fix that.

But it's probably not as bad as you're suggesting. Learning to "count units at a glance" takes some time anyway, and you have to do it over again anytime you're dealing with a new game. As a 3D game, StarCraft II doesn't look much like StarCraft I, so you can't use the StarCraft I unit-recognizing part of your brain yet (which, by the way, is probably a part of your face-recognition system, sort of like how car nuts use that part of their brain to recognize cars). And on another note, counting more than seven anything at a glance takes special training too; again, you might need to wait for the game to come out and play through the campaign first because you can determine if the problem is the game, or just your lack of training in a game that hasn't been out yet, and has only a couple of hours of video available online.

Wanting crappy pathfinding is just ... weird. You can call up the pathfinding programmer and ask them to make it crappy. Guess what response you'll hear?

Companies make products for three reasons - themselves, their customers, and money. If you've got a good company with happy employees (Blizzard employees are really happy) they'll care about all three. I can't believe you'd seriously expect Blizzard to deliberately make an aspect of the game crappy.

[Norfindel]

BRs aren't like the Korean stuff. They aren't up to that level, either the players, nor the commentators.

[SoFool]

Comparing a 1998 game with a 2009 pre beta game is kinda silly.

[FrozenArbiter]

The only thing I strongly agree with is the unit blobs, they don't look that great.

I would agree about the un-inspired gameplay (strategies, unit mixes) but really, the game is in alpha... I'm not too concerned. I also think (hope) we'll see bigger changes in the two expansion packs (ie SC2 part A might be somewhat bland/similar to SC1, but then the two expansions will hopefully make the game come into its own, like BW did for SC or TFT for WC3).

Anyway, most of all I just think it's too early to be nitpicking about these things.

[sandwich_bird]

One reason I suppose is due to the ease of information. The screen is just cluttered with information. I really don’t care what they’re building. I just want to see the game and draw out my on conclusions. Plus it kinda takes the surprise away when you know how they did it.

Good for you but I like it with all the info. You can toggle this stuff off so I really don't see the problem here.

I don’t think the Korean commentator ever said “oh look, he’s researching shield now.” Kinda gives the trick away if the commentators can simply spit out the build order.

They do. If they wouldn't I really don't see the point of commentating a starcraft game. Just to say stuff like "Oh wow this was a nice micro move!"? No, they need to make us know what's going on.

When I watch SC2, I’m flooded with HP bars. I hate it when during a battle, they turn on HP bars to see how fast the HP is draining. I don’t care! I want to see the actual battles!

Once again you can toggle it off so no problem there.

Another reason is the speed of the gameplay. It’s simply too fast. Guns fire super fast, Marauders launch their grenades 2 times a second. Siege tank seems to have no reload time in normal mode. Everything just happens way too fast for me to really get into it. Even the storm is like BAM and it’s over. It’s not really a storm, more like a lightning strike.

The speed is fine to me. It's obviously faster than SC1 but since it's gonna be easier and faster to make army and such, I approve the change.

One thing that irritates me is that strategies aren’t that “creative”.

Well duh, go watch a match from grrrr from SC1 and tell me how creative that was... Exactly, not creative. It takes time for more interesting strategies to be created.

The nuke, in BR4, felt boring. Unlike the Nuke in the original… it just felt… over designed. The target designator is a completely stupid idea. Gives no sense of suspense, when is it gonna drop? I dunno? Well, now I know… since the crosshairs haven’t touched yet.

This is part of the new design that allow everyone to know what is happening. This is the same thing as the baneling rolling to show the speed upgrade. Nothing wrong with this for me. I enjoy having a lot of information out of the visual. Way better than having to guess. In any case, the guy receiving the nuke only see a dot.

The gameplay seems to only be oh what is the response to one strategy. Terran siege tank dropped… what’s the response… etc etc. It’s like they’ve got these plays down (a la NFL) and it’s textbook play to do what ever DB says you should do.

SC1 atm is exactly like this. You probably don't play enough to know. "Oh the Zerg player is going lurker instead of mutalisk, I don't need turrets in my main and I better have my science vessels ready if I want to move out" or "Oh the protoss builded 2 gates instead of one, I assume he's not going for higher tech atm and will try to do an agressive push into my main".

Another thing is the art design. In SC1, the readability of units was ridiculously amazing. Even in large armies, you could instantly count at a glance how many units there were. And even when the fight got on to Zerg creep, it was still incredibly clear. SC2 is quite a few steps backwards. With the advent on Blob pathfinding, you are literally just watching a blob units go from on area to the next. In SC1, the units would go line by line or spread out way further than required. Not only did this slow the gameplay somewhat, it made some pathfinding blocks funny (for instance, in one video the ghost blocked a zergling.. and in that split moment, you could feel the play going “omg omg did he notice that?”)

This is bulshit. What about mutalisk stacking? What about lurkers underground? What about dark swarm? What about carrior's interceptors? What about the workers? Every invisible units in SC1 have also have blending problem (observers are the worst though). Another one is siege tanks in siege mode when they are all in a blob together. It's almost impossible to know how many there are.

I’m sure this is still incredibly premature to call Starcraft II out on anything. And the gameplay of SC2 probably won’t be as amazing as SC1 until the first or second expansion comes out (maybe even a few years after that). But I hope SC2 won’t fall into the same category as War3. Fun to play, but boring to watch.

It's always boring to watch when you're not familiar with a game. I can't watch poker on tv because I only played a few times in my life and so don't really find it interesting. On the other hand, I have a friend who make enough money out of playing poker that he doesn't even need a job and he's watching poker on tv all the time and obviously enjoy it.

[Nicol Bolas]

You can call up the pathfinding programmer and ask them to make it crappy. Guess what response you'll hear?

Actually, the "pathfinding programmer" will likely tell you "take it up with design." They will then tell you to go screw yourself