What happened to the innovation?

[flabortast]

I would laugh so hard if SP had so many innovative units and ideas that should have been in MP from the start. Kinda excited to see what the Purifier does or the Void Star. I always found doctrines in CoH to be pretty interesting. Sort of a controlled unit veterancy.

[newcomplex]

We're having a conversation about gameplay. Lore is irrelevant.

Lore is also very flexible; you can find a lore justification for anything.

One of the stupid things about arguing the SClegacy forums, while the politeness is nice, is how surreal they can be become. I don't get it. Think about it realistically for a second. Terran with melee marines. How do you think the community would have reacted if blizzard announced it was giving marines swords?

No, not possible.

You have absolutely no imagination then. Just in terms of "cheap ranged unit", I can come up with several ideas that are quite distinct from one another:

1: Marine. DoT generalist. Upgrade allows it to sacrifice Hp to do more damage.

2: GtG only. Higher damage, no air attack.

3: Low range generalist. Limits critical mass against melee units, so will deal lots of damage.

All of these serve identical functions early game. Going into lategame, we either have it branch out into irrelevance/support/situational roles, or remaining dominant supported by other units. Sound familiar? Their isn't a 3rd option. Sort of like a zergling/zealot dynamic respectively in SC2, while in SC1, all 3 basic units fell unto the situational role.

I don't even get what you mean by imagination. Are you suggesting that it took a great deal of imagination to come up with a basic GTA ranged unit?

4: GtG only. Upgrade allows it to become stationary and attack air units (but no ground units).

And while were at it, lets give them the ability to defend, reducing ranged damage by 40%, at the cost of speed.

-_-.

All the things you've listed are flavors of a basic unit (and many of them don't even feel like basic units, esp #4, which is just as crucial). They still have basic roles which are predefined by being basic with the gameplay of Starcraft.

And this is just off the top of my head. If I had a design team behind me and the time/ability to test these, I could easily come up with many more. All that are just as simple to use as the Marine, but all have their own differences and unique qualities.

Do any of them enhance the game in any significant way? The ones you stated clearly don't, and the 4th one makes it worse lol.

You're focusing too much on "needs different units" and not enough on "needs more innovation." The reason to scrap all units and start over with a completely new set is that keeping old units inhibits innovation. It makes it more difficult to come up with different ways to make each race assume its characteristics.

Alright, I'll bite that maybe you can think it needs new mechanics, but COMPLETELY new units is just absurd, because the games designed as a sequel. No. If anything, the same units retooled into completely different functions, so at least it LOOKS like starcraft2.

Take the Siege Tank. The mere existence of this unit in SC2 meant that the original form of the Thor wasn't a viable unit. So they had to modify it into its current form. It would have been more interesting to scrap the ST in favor of that form of the Thor.

Huh? What are you talking about...the original form of the thor as in having to be built? No, that was scrapped because it was absurdly imbalanceable and OP.

Previously debunked nonsense.

Dune 2

WoW was Everquest without the stupid parts. EQ stumbled onto some gameplay that happened to work, and Blizzard took that gameplay and refined it into something useful. Innovation is not "taking someone else's unrefined ideas and refining them."

WoW innovated stuff that had never been done in an MMO, including stuff like no death penalty (beyond repairs), and instanced raids (though instances themselves were used before I believe) Later on we get stuff like phasing, and the telling of something resembling a coherent story.

Citing industry awards as evidence is like saying that winning an Oscar means a damn thing about the quality of your work. Here's a hint: it doesn't.

Game awards hold far more weight then oscars because most games don't display the artistic merit that Oscars do not recognize. Hence, it boils solely into a entertainment perspective, which i think industry awards capture very well.

I just want to repeat back what you're saying. You're saying that, if you want to learn about how to make a good game of a genre, you should find the most derivative, unimaginative, low-class, lowest-common-denominator form of that genre that wins lots of awards, and learn form that.

Their are too many people who display interest in the game industry who are lacking for ideas. The reason why rich CEO's are not paying you money for Game Design Documents are a testament to that. It isn't about having some crazy idea, its about understanding games and gamers and design constraints in order to translate that idea into something that resembles playable. Even then, I don't think your ideas would even translate into Design documents, as once you begin to write it down on paper, any sense of coherency unravels.

If you're playing games to understand gameplay, you should look for games with good gameplay. Indeed, if your intent is to create a derivative work yourself, you should be looking for unrefined gameplay. Things you can take that will appear new to someone because they only previously showed up as someone's half-assed version.

Just to make things clear, I hate Uncharted. I think its a completely departure from everything good about a video game, where anything, whether it be gameplay, or emotional engagement, or plot, should be done in a manner of interaction with the game enviroment, rather then passive reception.

That being said, its an excellent example of how to make a game, and make it well. I don't think any word sums it up better except the word "Streamline". Every part fits towards the whole like some kind of puzzle, each experience correlates to the next, in a pseudo-well written (terrible, yet good for video games :/), cinematic way. It is a good "game" unless you play your games to engage in the same kind of mental catharthis one gets from...idk...Mystic River. In which case I recommend you stop playing games and get a good book or movie.

Games are about fun. Perhaps one day they can be for art, but right now, their for fun, and in multiplayers games, competition. Oh yeah, and roleplaying/immersion.

Execution is something you bring to the table. How you execute is what makes your games different from other people's games. You study other people's videogames, not to learn how to execute good gameplay, but to find gameplay ideas you would not have thought of before. If you need to play a game to see what well-executed gameplay is, then you're not a good game designer.

You don't need years in the industry, a team, and possibly even a degree for some, in order to think of good gameplay. I can, you can. Execution and scalability, reiteration, practicality of your vision are what make good game designers. Not vision itself. Any vision made by a creative mind (most of us) can be good. The issue is will it be good.

Really? One of the first 3rd person platforming 3D games with camera controls. It was only beaten to market in that category by Super Mario 64.

Yeah, tomb raider was innovative, I edited it in because I forgot about it, another game you would want to know, and I didn't come out right, messed up the edit without noticing.

Obviously, you've never played Myst. First person, puzzle game. The only difference between Portal and Myst (in terms of genre) is that Portal is an action game.

Thats quite a difference.


Starcraft 2 is a sequel. By definition, it must bear resemblance to the original, graphically, thematically and gameplay wise. However, the gameplay of SC1 was one based on balance rather then emphasis, and thus, tacking on gameplay mechanics simply won't work. Your left with a very confined space, and innovation is a means to an end, a means to improve gameplay. Unless you could think of how, your really shouldn't be doing it.

[DethsquiD]

I just wish they had added a fourth race. I really disagree with everyone saying that a new race would have destroyed the balance or made the other races less unique.

[MattII]

One way you could modify the Marine would be to lower its standard damage, but give it a bonus vs. light (say 5 damage +3 vs. light), or lower its damage period, but give it a higher attack rate.

Another innovation (it may have been done, but I'm not aware of it) is variable armour, like say the Terrans upgrade Ship Armour, the Viking, Medivac, Banshee and Raven get one extra armour per upgrade, but the BC gets two extra. Or what if upgrading a unit's armour fractionally decreased its speed. What about excluding some units from getting armour upgrades (ie, the Marine doesn't benefit from armour upgrades, but instead the Combat Shield adds 4 armour).

[Edfishy]

I'm expecting the expansions to bring in the flavor for SC2. People can always play "vanilla" then to have the core experience, but the expansions would allow Blizzard to innovate and take some risks.

[ArcherofAiur]

Just on the subject of Portal's "innovation"

[Shadow Archon]

THREE marines will kill a void ray

THREE

Just to be explicitly clear

THREE

and void rays come from a seperate tech path then the only way you could possible expand, robo bays.

Three marines could kill a Siege tank while it was in Tank mode in Starcraft, your point?

[SlickR]

Oh, please. Your analogies are completely specious. Do you really not see the difference between (1) the fact that different editions of newspapers take the same medium and (2) the claim that many of the units (hence, many of the strategies) in Starcraft 2 are functionally similar to those in Starcraft 1? Do you not see any difference between substantive and merely formal similarity? Give me a break.

You can quibble about whether unit X is very precisely like unit Y, but in the end I agree that Starcraft 2 does not seem to bring very much new content to the table (aside from better graphics, that is). There are too few new aspects to the gameplay, and too many of the changes feel more like tweaks than genuinely new directions.

Is this sarcasm and/or joke?

Let me add another example: Why buy new monitor when I already have one? It shows picture on the screen, you can set the brightness, color, etc..., it plugs into the computer so it must be same.

Lets get real, going from SC1 to SC2 the marine may not be innovative, but no one says SC2 marine is innovative. Its different, it that it has more HP, its graphically upgraded, its got new upgrades and can serve a bigger role in SC2.
But going from burrow to moving while burrowed is innovation, going from pylon power to warp-in is innovative, going from creep to creep spread is innovative, going from blue minerals to yellow minerals is innovation, going from map critters to map xel'naga towers is innovative, etc.......

[newcomplex]

Three marines could kill a Siege tank while it was in Tank mode in Starcraft, your point?

My point is it would be laughably easy to counter, and would even further cripple your economy.

[Shadow Archon]

My point is it would be laughably easy to counter, and would even further cripple your economy.

He would have to split up his forces to cover both bases due to his fast expand. My economy would be centered on taking out his CC. Either I go with Void rays, or use Warp Prisms and Warp Gates for some Zealot or DT rushing depending upon his build.