What happened to the innovation?

[SCpollo]

But, carriers have been a staple for PvT in BW for the longest time!

its people like you who hold the game back, although it may be a game breaking army, if u have enough of that air at thet stage, what does your opponent have

[Nicol Bolas]

Really? You'd need 10 guys and 3 years to make, not an actual game but simply a concept for one? Pretty ironic then that you would speak of intellectual bankruptcy. This basically prove my point though, there's not that many places for innovation in the RTS genre today and you'd have to search hard to find something that would work.

I've never made an RTS before. If you've never actually done something before, then you know nothing about how to make one.

Proper game design comes from understanding what you're making. As I have no experience with making RTS games, I would have to make several RTS games to be able to explore the space. And I would need a number of designers and testers around to make sure that the game is doing what I want it to do, rather than something else entirely.

Artists say that your first 1000 drawings will suck, so you should get them out of the way as fast as possible. The same goes here.

As for why it would take 60,000+ man hours to come up with good ideas, it's because I like to be sure an idea is good before I sign off on it. And the only way to be sure an idea works is by putting it into a game and seeing it work.

Didn't say it's impossible, my point is that it's not worth it.

Yeah, screw you Shigeru Miyamoto! It's not worth it to create new and innovative gameplay. So let's go back and erase Donkey Kong from history!

This post-modern attitude that everything's been done, and the only stuff left is the hard stuff or whatever is absolutely negligent. And I would enjoy firing any game designer who ever expressed such a sentiment.

Blizzard chose not to be innovative. They set out specifically to not be innovative. They made the StarCraft II that they wanted to make.

They didn't make the StarCraft II that they had to make.

[SlickR]

Most of the new ideas are just numbers. Xel'Naga Watchtower lets you see X units further. Its a number. Chrono boost allows you to build stuff faster Number. Some others are boring ideas that aren't that hard to come up with. Anybody could have thought of with cliff climbing, and people have been asking for a burrow/mover for years.

I'm not saying these ideas aren't cool. They're fun to use, but just don't hit the target. Warp-In hits the target. Square in the middle.

I wasn't there when the original hit the shelves (note the junior member-ness), but I've played enough RTS games to know that it was more than just an interesting gem, but was a milestone in the industry, for the thought in balancing that had gone into it, while keeping it a fun game.

SC2 will get a massive reception either way it goes. Even if its predecessor never existed, this game would win the market for the balancing BW never would have brought. But, the game itself won't change the worldwide conception of an RTS. SC1 brought to the table 3 separate ways to play a game, in 3 races equally balanced, and a different challenge for each. SC2 is quite the same, just mixing it up a bit.

I feel like a douche saying this, but Blizzard should have done to SC2 what Nintendo brought for the wii, and I don't mean make it a pussy game for the family, or play politics and promise stuff you'll never do. I mean changing the way one looks at games.

Its easy to sit back at your chair in front of a computer and rant about how uncool something is, just because you lack the creativity to think for it yourself.

Why would Blizzard want to create something new? Isn't what new games are there for?
Old school, classics like SC1 need to be re-imagined, not reinvented and they need to stay true to the original.

Its absurd for Blizzard to copy a game like supreme commander for SC2 for many reasons:
1: Supreme commander(just an example) is far less popular, profitable and its not iconic at all.
2: Supreme commander is not a game of great balance or strategic depth. And I know because I've played it and have also seen, read and heard all the forum cries about low tier units vs high tier units.
3: Starcraft 2 is a unique game, Supreme commander is not, supreme commander races have the same roles for each race in different skin.
4: Starcraft 2 as it is would gain a lot more recognition, community approval, critics approval than if had changed completely.


Anyways I personallu think that SC2 has enough improvements over SC1 and over other RTS games to be the best.

1: What other RTS game has 3 unique and diverse races? I've played tons of RTS games in my life and I can say none. - This is part of the reason why I still love sc 12 years after release and why I'm looking forward to SC2.
All other RTS games have different races yes, but the core roles and mechanics of those units between races are same.
2: What other RTS games make use of passive or active abilities and spells. - I can count on my hand and I'm not ever sure i would manage to fill it. Only recently have RTS games been more open to skills and spells, otherwise it has always been just units and maybe one of two abilities that are in most cases not even part of a unit, like nuclear bomb or chemical bomb.
3: Great polish and detail. Of course this is done in a lot of RTS games, but its still a plus for blizzard anyways.

In the end I'm not saying I'm against innovation or more features, but that I'd rather have a deep, great balanced gameplay that simply works, rather that added "bonus carp" and silly gimmicks that don't make the gameplay better.

If there is a fun, interesting feature that compliments the gameplay well and can be balanced than I'm all for it.

But adding something like the ultralisk, transformer buildings for terran and stuff like that in SC2 just because its innovative and fun does not work.

I'd like to be able to do that in the editor, but its not right for the core game. First it will be almost impossible to balance, without breaking the whole gameplay style of SC2 just to balance those kind of units/features, its not supported by lore, it makes for a silly gameplay, considering SC2 aims at E-sports and competitive play and if people intend (korea and maybe other countries now with SC2) to live from it and get checks of 20.000 euros.

[Nicol Bolas]

Old school, classics like SC1 need to be re-imagined, not reinvented and they need to stay true to the original.

SC2 is not a reimagining of SC1. If it were, they would have reimagined a complete set of different units.

Furthermore, this kind of thinking leads to stagnation. A local minimum on the vector-field of all possible RTS design.

Its absurd for Blizzard to copy a game like supreme commander for SC2 for many reasons:

Um, Horror wasn't talking about Supreme Commander. Who are you arguing with?

4: Starcraft 2 as it is would gain a lot more recognition, community approval, critics approval than if had changed completely.

By this logic, the moment you achieve any real success, stop trying to improve. Just rehash everything ad-nausium until you bleed the community dry and they get bored and move on to something else.

That's Bobby Kotick logic; the logic of a soul-less vampire hoping to get something that works so that he can quickly drain it dry of anything approaching quality and run it into the ground. Not game designer logic. You never know if you can do something better unless you try. If more game designers thought like that, we'd still be playing Pac-Man, and StarCraft 1 would never have come about.

You seem to forget that SC1 was innovative. 3 unique races was a very innovative feature. And it was successful because of its innovation.

Who are you to say, "WC2 was different from WC1, but not innovative enough. SC1 is very successful and innovative. But that's the end of all useful innovation, so let's not bother to try anymore for SC2."

Anyways I personallu think that SC2 has enough improvements over SC1 and over other RTS games to be the best.

Victory "by default" isn't exactly something to stand up and cheer for. If you're the only guy on the track, winning doesn't mean much.

In the end I'm not saying I'm against innovation or more features

And yet, you just said exactly that. "Old school, classics like SC1 need to be re-imagined, not reinvented and they need to stay true to the original."

But adding something like the ultralisk, transformer buildings for terran and stuff like that in SC2 just because its innovative and fun does not work.

Again, who exactly are you arguing with? FYI: Nobody's proposing this!

[SlickR]

SC2 is not a reimagining of SC1. If it were, they would have reimagined a complete set of different units.

Furthermore, this kind of thinking leads to stagnation. A local minimum on the vector-field of all possible RTS design.



Um, Horror wasn't talking about Supreme Commander. Who are you arguing with?



By this logic, the moment you achieve any real success, stop trying to improve. Just rehash everything ad-nausium until you bleed the community dry and they get bored and move on to something else.

That's Bobby Kotick logic; the logic of a soul-less vampire hoping to get something that works so that he can quickly drain it dry of anything approaching quality and run it into the ground. Not game designer logic. You never know if you can do something better unless you try. If more game designers thought like that, we'd still be playing Pac-Man, and StarCraft 1 would never have come about.

You seem to forget that SC1 was innovative. 3 unique races was a very innovative feature. And it was successful because of its innovation.

Who are you to say, "WC2 was different from WC1, but not innovative enough. SC1 is very successful and innovative. But that's the end of all useful innovation, so let's not bother to try anymore for SC2."



Victory "by default" isn't exactly something to stand up and cheer for. If you're the only guy on the track, winning doesn't mean much.



And yet, you just said exactly that. "Old school, classics like SC1 need to be re-imagined, not reinvented and they need to stay true to the original."



Again, who exactly are you arguing with? FYI: Nobody's proposing this!

Bolas I'm not arguing with anyone, I'm giving my own personal views with few random examples.

What does innovation in RTS mean to you? Does it mean for every RTS game to have RPG elements? Does it mean every RTS game to have full map zoom-out feature?
The most innovative RTS game and I must say its not actually very innovative, but rather different and hasn't been done in so many years is RUSE from Ubisoft.
On top of my head i remember few games like it, namely panzers. There were of course few more I can't remember their names right now.

Starcraft 2 needs to stay familiar with Starcraft 1. If all of a sudden, the marine, siege tank, zealots, zerglings, ultralisks were gone, with all of the other new units that are currently in SC2, it just won't be Starcraft anymore.

Protoss for example have so many new units. Stalkers>dragoons, Immortals, phoenix>corsair, Voidray>scout, Colossus>reaver, sentry, mothership>arbiter.

And suficive to say these new units add new strategies, differ the two games apart and have different mechanics.

If all protoss units were new would that be the protoss race? In my view it won't, they would be better off introducing a new race that will replace protoss.

I think that the general new features like yellow minerals, xel'naga towers, destructible objects and general map design make up for new strategies and depth.
Race specific features like the queen, mules, chrono boost, cliff climbing/walking, burrowed movement, different damage output methods (voidray's increasing attack power, mothership 6x way attack, colossus sweep attack), warp-in, warp-gates, worm transportation method, vikings dual mode, etc... are all new and interesting features.

You can't have all units have some sort of special, cool feature, because it undermines the few units that already have it now and the coolness dissipates quickly.

[Gifted]

Tiny Wall of Text incoming!

What I believe is a case of not understanding the term "Innovation". Innovation will be judged by the masses and not by the invidual people who followed it's original gameplay from the beginning. I will elaborate on this further below. One can say that SC2 will be known as innovative as they refined the way Macro and Micro are utilized, unfortunately, that's improvement and not innovation. Let's go forward with some VERY IMPORTANT facts.

1. Innovation can be seen by everyone... not just the people who look into it. This means that as you play the game, you see something new that hasn't been done before. EDIT: no matter what your history is with the game and it's IP

2. A lack of innovation is not a bad thing at all, it's not insulting, it won't steal your mother away. It's merely an identification of the circumstance and qualities regarding a product or service. By the same note, many people might want you to think that innovation is a good thing which is not the truth. Many times people innovate something that shouldn't be innovated and it's found to be a mistake later.

3. Innovation is subjective, not objective. So while the majority of people can view something as "Innovative", it's only considered innovative in the gaming industry if you choose to look at it from the scope of an industry and not an individual. For this reason, if it's "innovative" in the industry, the majority of major players in the industry have to be able to see it, such as critics, companies and consumer base.

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With those out of the way, which I hate to say are less subjective than this discussion, I'd like to point out that there are two types of people in this conversation. Those who share their thoughts on the subject as an individual and those who try to predict how the industry will view it. EDIT: There is nothing better or worse in either view, it's just important to realize that you can get drastically different answers from the same data based on how you view it. While I personally LOVE the game, I view the multiplayer game itself will not be viewed as innovative to the industry. This is not a bad thing at all, because by direct design decision, they have chosen to be "true to the original" in terms of the multiplayer. This decision alone removes much of the opportunity to become innovative on an industry scale.

Imagine this, if Battle.net was in a 1.0 state, the innovation would be only recognized by a portion of people who has followed this game for 10 years.

If a person who didn't play a game of StarCraft since 9 years ago, and didn't know the existance of all of this "balance" or "Professional" or "eSports" stuff.. This is what they would see:

Other games: New units, New abilities, Major explosions, dirt and grime going everywhere, physics showing off like the destruction of buildings and the destruction of battle grounds objects, bodies flying away based on impacts, impact collision, cover, points of interest/capture, domination playstyles, up to 10-20 races, hero mechanics, MMORTS, persistent expirience per account, unlockable game content due to circumstances, UI improvements, capturable vision points, LOS blockage, game engine redesigns, destructable barriers, exclusion/exclusive macro/micro shifts and etc.

StarCraft II Multiplayer: New units, new abilities, capturable vision points, LOS blockage, game engine redesign.

This is NOT insulting SC2, I love it so much I want to make it my mistress and consider bringing a third child into this world if it has half the geneworks of StarCraft II. I love the game. But it doesn't change my view that the game is not innovative on an industry level. My view is that this is by design decision and is not a bad thing. Not innovative =/= not good. Innovative isn't always good and would have been disasterious (in my opinion) for this game's multiplayer aspects if it was made to be innovative.

EDIT: This becomes more obvious as you look at the decisions that made it not innovative. "We don't want things flying everywhere so you can easily identify units in battle". "We don't want to use too many physics, cause it can limit the number of systems that can play the game", "We are trying to limit the amount of battle field clutter cause it could impede the judgement of the person playing", "We don't want to add more than needed cause it can increase latency and decrease gameplay performance", "We don't want to include things like cover mechanics as we have decided to remove random number generations from StarCraft II". These all make sense for StarCraft II, but simultaneously reduce the level of innovation that the industry will view it as. This is a good thing in my eyes as they are design decisions that make sense.

Ultimately, the aspects of the game that are innovative are not the multiplayer gameplay itself. They are the aspect that surrounds it, the league system, the ability for anyone to feel like they can succeed in their own right, the single-player campaign's direction of RTS story telling, the change from a "RTS Map making module" to an "RTS(but not limited to RTS) data editor". These are the innovative things regarding StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. By design decision, "StarCraft II Multiplayer" is not innovative no matter how much you spin it... and on a personal view, not industry view, I will thank Blizzard every day for that decision because sometimes innovation does not equal success.

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BONUS! On a different note about the macro mechanics, let me explain them to you in an industry view:

- One race has an ability to speed up unit/research production
- One race has an ability to make more units at once
- One race has an ability to get resources faster

Let me spin you a different example:

- One race has an ability that after 1 second, quickly damages an area with 75 damage, it can be dodged
- One race has an ability that instantly takes a group and immobilizes them, dealing damage slowly over time, it can not be dodged
- One race has an ability that slowly brings a missile to a group to deal massive damage if it hits, it can be ran from.

If you look at them without all the spin/esports angles, which is how the industry will view them, then that's what they are... abilities. Personally I understand how pivotal these three abilities are to the gameplay and balance... but honestly, that's how it's going to be viewed... 3 new abilities... which is something to expect in a sequel.. new abilities.

Not meaning to insult any opinions regarding this, I will state again, this is my idea of how the industry can view the "Macro mechanics". They're just new abilities to make each race more unique.

I'm not saying I expect people too... but if people agree with this post, please just toss out a "@Gifted QFT" to avoid the spam instead of quoting it. It'll save the pain of scrolling down the page.

[SoFool]

In my point of view, SC2 would have some innovated stuff if it wasn't for SC1's e-sport success.

p/s: @Gifted QFT

[ArcherofAiur]

I think the thing that people are missing is appropriate innovation for appropriate parts of the game. This is going off what weve seen so far but my guess is that Blizzard is going to innovate the $#!& out of the single player experience. I mean they have the huge Terran campaign and then 2 more. They will need to experiment with new things if for nothing else then nessesity.



For the multiplayer though the aim appears to stick with the foundamental principles of the esports experience while innovating through macro. And Gifted I respectfully disagree with you that the macro mechanics arnt innovation because they are "just" abilities. Abilities are game mechanics just like watchtowers, creep speed, resources etc... are mechanics.

[SlickR]

@gifted: I don't even understand what you are talking about!
Industry view? what is that? person view? team view? critics view? individual view?

Whats it matter how you word it?

And yes people who haven't played sc1 and play sc2, won't go - oooo its innovative or its not innovative. They will go - oooo this is fun or oooo this is boring.
They will either like the SP, MP, both or none.

When we/I talk about innovation we/I talk in general understandable speech, not some "industry speech".

Fact of the matter is that SC2 is innovative enough and in specific fields, to be different yet feel similar to the original, to have different strategies, and yet few similar ones. To have enough new units and enough old units. And they've even chosen to change up old units and give them new abilities, upgrades, functions and/or roles.

And we both can agree that too much innovation in SC2 is a bad thing.
If some1 expects to play some who knows what innovative RTS, he better be prepared to wait 10 or so more years.

[Norfindel]

I'm not ignoring it, I'm literally pointing out that Blizzard didn't scrap the Tempest because it was broken, or unfun, or didn't fit its niche, or that there was in fact anything wrong with it gameplay or mechanics-wise. Browder is straight up confirming it was removed because it "didn't FEEL right" and the Carrier was put back in for nostalgia. Its all connected man.

I think you're reading too much there, it didn't feel right AND there was too much of an emotional connection with the original unit. That "and" is used because those are two different reasons.

I think that it wasn't feeling right when playing (by gameplay motives), otherwise wouldn't been scrapped so fast. Just like the soul hunter, that "was fun, but not fun enough".