Small yet crucial changes SC2 must have.

[newcomplex]

These are pretty minor changes, but honestly, I see little reason why they aren't in the game already. Not having them is a huge detriment to the game, especially considering how little effort would be needed to implenet them.

#1:

Make tabbing unit groups more visible. As in make it so we'll actually know what units were currently selecting out of a large group based on the unit select icons. Think WC3, where your currently selected unit type is enlarged. SC2 needs one of these, I have no idea why it doesn't have one.

#2

Make ability effects show remaining duration when highlighted, and flash when expiring. Would be extremely useful for chrono boosting and stim packing, but almost more importantly, streamline custom games. Abilities play a huge role in such games, and it would be a needless hassle for the coders to have to custom script the UI to display such basic information, and not having it would be a needless detriment to custom games.

#3

Give stimpacks an iconic sound. One aspect crucial to starcraft is it is very watchable, a person with no knowledge could watch a game and understand all the strategies, because they are very visual. WC3's e-sports scene suffered from countless buffs and abilities that had very obscure effects that had huge impact, but non-obvious visualaudio feedback, making it a far less entertaining e-sport.

SC2 has mostly replicated this. Missle explodes, lazerz vaporize, turrets are turrets, and giant blue balls of lightning raep the contents within them. One of the most glaring exceptions to this rule are Stim packs, which in SC1, had a immediate feedback response, followed by a rapid boost in speed. In sc2, speed in general is less noticeable due to a 3d enviroment, while their is no feedback besides a vague lightning mark above your units heads. When observing games, stim packing is almost unnoticeable, which is a bad trend towards similar effects in WC3 that were game changing, yet the spectators could not admire it due to obscure/not obvious/lack of good visualaudio feedback.

#4

Fix spell descriptions so that they operate in fastest difficulty.

Rather self explanatory. Needlessly obscures game mechanics, contradicts blizzards core values of accessibility yet scalability into higher play. Makes exploring custom maps needlessly complex.

[Maul]

#3

Give stimpacks an iconic sound. One aspect crucial to starcraft is it is very watchable, a person with no knowledge could watch a game and understand all the strategies, because they are very visual. WC3's e-sports scene suffered from countless buffs and abilities that had very obscure effects that had huge impact, but non-obvious visualaudio feedback, making it a far less entertaining e-sport.

SC2 has mostly replicated this. Missle explodes, lazerz vaporize, turrets are turrets, and giant blue balls of lightning raep the contents within them. One of the most glaring exceptions to this rule are Stim packs, which in SC1, had a immediate feedback response, followed by a rapid boost in speed. In sc2, speed in general is less noticeable due to a 3d enviroment, while their is no feedback besides a vague lightning mark above your units heads. When observing games, stim packing is almost unnoticeable, which is a bad trend towards similar effects in WC3 that were game changing, yet the spectators could not admire it due to obscure/not obvious/lack of good visualaudio feedback.

Can't say much about the other points not having a copy I can play, but I've never had a problem noticing units got stimmed.

[newcomplex]

Can't say much about the other points not having a copy I can play, but I've never had a problem noticing units got stimmed.

I feel like it makes the game less observer friendly. Think if you didn't know what stims did. OH YEAAAh was a far better indicator that shit was going to go down then green squiggles and a shshshshs.

[Maul]

I feel like it makes the game less observer friendly. Think if you didn't know what stims did. OH YEAAAh was a far better indicator that shit was going to go down then green squiggles and a shshshshs.

Perhaps, but if you're observing a high level game out of your own free will, you'd more than likely know what's going on anyway.

Starcraft, or any RTS, is not something that's fun to watch if you have no idea what's happening other then humans shooting aliens.

I still think there is enough visual indicating with stimming to indicate even to a beginner what is going on if they're at least familiar with the ability.

[Wankey]

Nah, i found Starcraft 1 a lot of fun to watch when I was new to it. I find Starcraft 2 a different experience.

For instance, the "AWW YEAH, THAT'S THE STUFF" really felt like they were taking drugs, you didn't need to tell me they were using Stims, i immediately knew they were upped on heroine or something.

I think SC2 art polish is amazing, the rest, well good thing it's not coming out yet. Which begs another question, WTF have the other teams been doing all this time? 3 years and they couldn't make a good soundscape for SC2? 3 years they couldn't record some good voices? Give me a break, Samwise needs to be pushed to the top so he can shoot the sound people.

[newcomplex]

Perhaps, but if you're observing a high level game out of your own free will, you'd more than likely know what's going on anyway.

Starcraft, or any RTS, is not something that's fun to watch if you have no idea what's happening other then humans shooting aliens.

I still think there is enough visual indicating with stimming to indicate even to a beginner what is going on if they're at least familiar with the ability.

Not really, at least in Korea. Most people observed SC before playing. Think thats a good model to have.

[Nicol Bolas]

Not really, at least in Korea. Most people observed SC before playing.

Unless they could speak English, that would mean that they would have no idea what the Marine was saying. Which means they'd have to figure out what was going on from context. Which they apparently were just fine with being able to do.

[arthas]

I don't know about sound but the way the zerg extractor pops out is like i am watching something like a cartoon for 7 year olds....Really awfull,i mean the old models(the brighter ones) were better for Terran and Zerg and the darker one fited the protoss better.

[pokerface]

i agree with all the little things you said for abit more eye candy, but I don't see any sounds coming any time soon

[Nicol Bolas]

I don't know about sound but the way the zerg extractor pops out is like i am watching something like a cartoon for 7 year olds....

I'm fairly sure the effect for this is still a work in progress. It wasn't that long ago that the effect for an extractor in production was just an off-colored version of the regular building production effect.