Assidragon on 4/8/2010 at 13:44
Eldron: The Blizzard's top guy (Mike Morhaime) reports to Activison's Thomas Tippl. They probably have a degree of indepedence, but I find it unlikely Actision doesn't have a say in how they do stuff.
Kuuso on 4/8/2010 at 14:10
Well, I am definitely enjoying the online aspects of the game and the ladders seem quite nice (even though a bit dull and anonymous). Had some great games and there's definitely scope for any sort of player to have fun online. It's more fun, since the micro is a tad easier overall. I do not enjoy how every race has been given an ability that has to be spammed the whole game. Forced micro aint fun, seems like it's only there so pro chinese could be separated from the rest. (queens larva, chrono boost and MULE)
I do miss the units that are not in the mp but are in the sp though, but I guess it's balance reasons (I hope they bring some in it at some point).
Nameless Voice on 4/8/2010 at 14:37
Quote Posted by Koki
So what is everyone's opinion about the game? Other than Battle.net 2 woes it's awfully quiet here.
Oh, sorry, it's human nature to complain about the bad points but to happily be quiet about the good points.
For me, the game itself is excellent.
The singleplayer campaign's storyline may rather cheesy (and some of it doesn't even make
sense), but the story is told with Blizzard's usual quality and style.
Every mission in the singleplayer campaign is unique and different, generally having a unique gimmick or situation to keep it interesting.
The upgrade system between missions lets you customise your forces to improve the units you like using best, and the ability to chose which mission to do next lets you chose missions with rewards that will be of use for the other available missions.
Every mission also has optional objectives that usually offer lasting rewards, such as research point or money to spend on new technology between missions. Each mission also has three achievements that you can try to unlock, though some of them are "complete this mission in less that X minutes", which I had no interest in because I like taking my time.
The singleplayer campaign does have somewhat too many units to choose from at times - there were a few I basically never used at all - but the selection is smaller and tighter in multiplayer and custom games.
The new gameplay mechanics like Warp In are good fun, and every unit single has been given some unique ability, power or characteristic to make it interesting.
I haven't played that much multiplayer so far, but so far it seems fun and polished, and the multiplayer maps seem well-designed.
The new matchmaking system does seem a little slow, I must admit. I tried to play a 2v2 game with a friend, and left it searching for over a minute without it finding a single game, so we eventually gave up on the idea and made a custom game instead. I guess there might not be all that many people playing yet, as most people will want to finish the campaign before playing multiplayer, and may be slower at that than me.
That's all part of why I find the train wreck that is Blizzard's iron fist on the new Battle.net 2.0 so depressing - the game itself is excellent, yet it's being crippled by the extremely limited and unappealing online system.
Kuuso on 4/8/2010 at 16:27
It's annoying to play with Zerg since Terran seem to have a clear advantage :(
Besides, I don't like how banelings are the only real good solution for mass marines, but thanks to their MULE farming they still keep above in resources and you cant counterattack since banelings suicide.
Nameless Voice on 4/8/2010 at 20:08
Wow, apparently that one really popular defence map which was banned due to "inappropriate content" was because, due to the way the units pathed the map, they sometimes appeared on the minimap in a vaguely Swastika-like shape. :weird:
Eldron on 4/8/2010 at 20:49
That happens when you probably have an outsourced QA-like team sitting with a checklist of things to look for in submitted maps.
Nameless Voice on 4/8/2010 at 20:52
It'd be a non-issue if every single map didn't have to go through Blizzard's iron fist, though.
Seriously, the game is great but the whole Battle.net 2.0 fiasco has depressed me about it so much that I barely want to play it anymore.
Battle.net was down earlier today - at least in Europe - and no one could log in, meaning that no one could even play singleplayer since you can't play without logging into your account. (You can play as guest, but have no access to your campaign progress or saves).
Eldron on 4/8/2010 at 20:57
I think the exact problem is that it's NOT going through the sc2 teams iron fist, I'm pretty sure the core guys behind sc2 wouldn't want these great maps to be nuked from the face of the earth.
But management and stuff like that, some other department is handling it, all a part of the bnet 2.0 problem.
but yeah, if map publishing was optional and actually brought something positive to the table that you'd want to be able to use it over regular old wc3 ways of sharing it.
Nameless Voice on 4/8/2010 at 21:08
Yeah, I think that's a fair point, but unfortunately the game designers and developers aren't the people in charge, and they don't seem to have much say in anything any more.
Blame Activision? Maybe, it would be a convenient scapegoat, but I don't know. Blame management in general? Sounds about right.
One small consolation is that I managed to get Blizzard to open a Battle.net feedback thread on the European forums, though it has a rather bad taste to it. I made a well-written and concise feedback thread since there wasn't one, tons of people replied to agree or add new suggestions, and a Blizzard moderator came up, locked the thread and told people to post suggestions in the sticky instead. The sticky that they created right then because there hadn't been one before. Which, of course, resulted in everyone copy-pasting all the stuff from my thread, including my own first post (someone actually beat me to doing this myself by about a minute), which begs the question of why they couldn't have just stickied my thread. But then it wouldn't have been their thread, and can't have threads that aren't theirs be stickies, people might think they actually listened to their fans.
Koki on 5/8/2010 at 05:43
So someone just spoiled the game's ending for me and [spoiler]holy shit that's so lame.[/spoiler]
