Does Spawn Infested Terrans break your suspension of disbelief?

[SaharaDrac]

To be perfectly honest, if I was gonna predict one ability that gets removed during the beta, it would be this. Not for the reasons this thread is about, but because of gameplay reasons.

[Nicol Bolas]

We all know that video games have suspension of disbelief where the player accepts how the gameworks even if it doesnt make sense.

Fail.

Do you "suspend your disbelief" when you play PacMan? No. You accept the gameplay as it is provided to you. You control a thing named "Pac-Man". You move him over dots. Things called "Ghosts" follow you. If you eat a large dot, the "Ghosts" turn blue and can be eaten. If the Ghosts are not blue and they touch you, you lose a life.

There is no attempt at verisimilitude happening there. There is no attempt to get you to suspend your disbelief. What you do is play the game as it is provided to you. Most competitive games operate in this fashion.

Nobody complains that Chess pieces interfere with their suspension of disbelief. That's because when you play Chess, you don't have disbelief to be suspended. You are playing a game, and you know that from the first moment you put the pieces on the board to the moment when someone cries "Checkmate".

The same goes for competitive StarCraft. Mutalisks flapping their wings through space doesn't cause Jaedong to rethink his playing of StarCraft. In competitive play, every element of a game is reduced to exactly that: a gameplay element. Nothing more, nothing less.

To put it another way, when you're playing a competitive game, you have entered the realm of the Hard Core. You have the highest degree of human-to-game-system contact possible. There is no Mutalisk; the word and image is just a name tag and visualization mechanism to tell you that there is something with a specific set of gameplay properties and where it is in the gameplay space. Zergling, Hydralisks, Hatchery, none of these have any meaning for you outside of the gameplay. Even the unit quotes only mean something in terms of what they tell you about the game state.

Competitive games are all about the Hard Core. If you're thinking about the game elements as entities that live in a world, you're not among the Hard Core and are not thinking competitively. You have not Stepped On Up sufficiently.

Suspension of Disbelief is only necessary when you are playing a game where the attitude of the Hard Core is not expected. Where you're trying to do something more than just present a set of rules for the player to deal with. Many RPGs do this, as well as innumerable FPSs and so forth. The core of StarCraft, it's multiplayer, is not doing that.

So no, Suspension of Disbelief is not a requirement for a competitive game.

[PsiWarp]

To be perfectly honest, if I was gonna predict one ability that gets removed during the beta, it would be this. Not for the reasons this thread is about, but because of gameplay reasons.

Along with Plague, the one lacking more flavor than Infested Terran to Browder :P


-Psi

[ArcherofAiur]

I'm going to use it as an argument, as you seem to seek and believe that the base you start off with is all that you have. Like you found it plausible that one hatchery could end up creating all that the Zerg build.

How is it one command center and a couple of SCVs have marines, tank commanders, battle cruiser technicians, science vessel scientists, etc. That breaks the suspension of belief as much as the Infested Marines. You argue that after forming an Infestation Pit, that there cannot be any Marines in there. Yet how does any other Terran building have Terrans inside them?

@ Invisible NPCs; invisible Infested Marines. Voila?

Great you have invisible infested marines that were infested invisibly when some invisible zerg invisibly captured marines that were invisible stationed somewhere.

Is the model so cool that we have to include it in multiplayer even if the model is the only thing about infestation that makes it through the grinder and into gameplay? What weve done is nuetured infestation.

And Nicol, Starcraft is made for both the casual and hard core player.

[Pandonetho]

@ Nicol.

You know, this game is not only designed for competitive playing right?

There is suspension of disbelief where it matters, to the casuals, to the people playing it for the atmosphere, the simulation of it.

Why do you think they made the game a trilogy? Why do you think they're putting so much effort into the singleplayer?

Why do you think there's even UMS? If it was purely competitive, none of these would matter and the game would be in beta already.

[Kacaier]

Great you have invisible infested marines that were infested invisibly when some invisible zerg invisibly captured marines that were invisible stationed somewhere.

That was in reference to Pandonetho's comment. Sorry, I should have properly quoted that, but I felt too lazy.

You still haven't commented on the existence of how there are Terrans inside a building after being constructed by a lone SCV. That means you had suspended your belief for that. I don't see how it's too much of a stretch for the Infested Terrans.

[Wankey]

I don't really care. As long as it helps the gameplay along. I'll be too busy microing my infested marines to bother with lore and belief.

[Aldrius]

I can believe the ability, it makes perfect sense (er... relatively speaking). It's just kinda dull, and I really liked how "Infest" worked.

But eh. It doesn't bother me THAT much.

[XSOLDIER]

Since I brought up the concept before Browder confirmed it, I have to say that it works just fine. Sure it's not as well justified as Reavers / spider mines, but it's not absolutely inconceivable as to break my suspension of disbelief.


X

[ArcherofAiur]

That was in reference to Pandonetho's comment. Sorry, I should have properly quoted that, but I felt too lazy.

You still haven't commented on the existence of how there are Terrans inside a building after being constructed by a lone SCV. That means you had suspended your belief for that. I don't see how it's too much of a stretch for the Infested Terrans.

Oh I agree that there are "invisible" terrans at the base. My first point is that its allot easier to suspend disbelief for invisible terrans than it is for invisible infested marines + invisible infestation of those marine + invisible whatever infests them +invisible uninfested marines to get infested in the first place.

My second point is that its not really worth it to have infested marines if youve taken out everything about infestation except the tentacled marine. I admit the model is cool. You have huge claws and slime erupting from a marines suit. But why not just leave it for singleplayer? Or develop an infestation mechanic that works for multiplayer.

Its like in diablo if i had a necromancer that didnt raise skeletons from graves. He just carried around already rasied skeletons around in a bag and threw them at the enemy.