Hello.
I've been observing Streams and Youtubes of StarCraft II's closed beta since its distribution on Wednesday. I've watched somewhere between 18-20 hours of gameplay since then and have observed many different players from several different communities, including JessicaJung, Lumi, YellowSnow, and Cecil from 'StarCraft Method', as well as many different players from Team Liquid, 1UP network, and Giant Bomb. I would like to share with you some of my observations for the purpose of sharing information to those who are new, and also to get the feedback of experienced players and knowledgable followers and fans.
Below are some of my observations of the game. Not all of them are entirely based on my opinion, but rather something I overheard during a chat.
StarCraft II 1.0 (Beta) - First Impressions
Pros:
• Terrain looks good
• Unit pathing is really superb
• Units look to be powerful and are upgradeable
• Vastly different strategies in 1vs1 vs 2vs2
• Music is fantastic
• Terrain editor is very powerful, although may be difficult to use
• Matches are quick to find
• The ladder setup looks fantastic
-> although the points system will probably need to be tweaked quite a bit
• B.net is it's own pro
-> B.net interface looks awesome
• It appears that StarCraft will play on very basic systems. people are playing the game with even less than the system requirements and say the game is running fine (albeit on very low settings)
• Many new units replace old ones, or old units were merged and created into one new one.
• People have said how eerily similar this is to the original game. -]They say the sounds, buildings, terrain, pathing, and scouting feel very true to the original. The difference lies in strategy and build
• structure/macro (but I suspect even the macro is largely similar)
• New chat features are extremely useful
• Finding teams, groups among friends is easier than ever
• Many cases of large, epic-scale battles as well as smaller, more micro intensive fights, sometimes during the same match.
• Blizzard's humor is pretty evident throughout the game via unit speech
• The different races maintain their individuality/uniqueness, and perhaps have even become more distinct. One example is that the Terrans sound more hick than ever, and the Protoss have gained a "dark side".
• The new units for the most part seem impressive. Roaches, banelings, Marauders, Vikings, Void Ray, etc.
Iffy:
• Unit Sounds/ Speech extremely redundant and annoying
• Vespense Gas takes on a drastically different role in the game and is required for even basic structures/units. Also, you mine very very little of it at a time, even with 3-4 extractors.
• New units - 'Terrain jumpers" able to traverse terrain that previously only air units could cross. they are able to jump into the back of a players base and do damage, surprise attack. Can traverse cliffs,
• but appears to only be able to cross elevation differences, not distances e.g. can't drop across rivers or short distances like on space platforms (colossus, reapers, and stalkers to some extent)
• The voice chat feature in-game looks very sweet and *seems* to have good quality, superior to WoW's VOIP.
• It's too early for me to say if the game is well-balanced, we'll have to wait and see. Some units/strategies just seem "too powerful", like completely destroying the CC just minutes into the game.
• The new maps look good, but it's difficult to gauge this early on. If Blizzard sponsors an event where fans can create maps to be used in ladders then I think it will be as successful, if not more so, than
• when they did the same thing for Warcraft III.
• Addons to Terran buildings seem to limit gameplay, but it's a bit too early to critique
Cons:
• Building art looks cheap. Zerg structures look shiny and plasticky, while Terran looks like very basic modelling; not much texture. Protoss buildings looks good.
• If you don't stay on your game, you can get steamrolled the your opponent very easily
• Most of the streams I've watched the players rarely advance past tier 2. Most units produced for all races stay in the tier 1-2 range. I think this is a major drawback to decisions the player has to make and limits gameplay.
• In many of the matches I watched the players only chose a few units to fight with. So massive fights ultimately only consisted of 2 maybe 3 different types of units, even among 2v2s.
• Competitive multiplayer is extremely daunting to a beginner, and even to a novice
• Race-specific interfaces look unimpressive.
-> (However, the interface's functionality is very intuitive and "out-of-the-way" of the battles, movement, and economics of the game)
-Bowser
I've been observing Streams and Youtubes of StarCraft II's closed beta since its distribution on Wednesday. I've watched somewhere between 18-20 hours of gameplay since then and have observed many different players from several different communities, including JessicaJung, Lumi, YellowSnow, and Cecil from 'StarCraft Method', as well as many different players from Team Liquid, 1UP network, and Giant Bomb. I would like to share with you some of my observations for the purpose of sharing information to those who are new, and also to get the feedback of experienced players and knowledgable followers and fans.
Below are some of my observations of the game. Not all of them are entirely based on my opinion, but rather something I overheard during a chat.
StarCraft II 1.0 (Beta) - First Impressions
Pros:
• Terrain looks good
• Unit pathing is really superb
• Units look to be powerful and are upgradeable
• Vastly different strategies in 1vs1 vs 2vs2
• Music is fantastic
• Terrain editor is very powerful, although may be difficult to use
• Matches are quick to find
• The ladder setup looks fantastic
-> although the points system will probably need to be tweaked quite a bit
• B.net is it's own pro
-> B.net interface looks awesome
• It appears that StarCraft will play on very basic systems. people are playing the game with even less than the system requirements and say the game is running fine (albeit on very low settings)
• Many new units replace old ones, or old units were merged and created into one new one.
• People have said how eerily similar this is to the original game. -]They say the sounds, buildings, terrain, pathing, and scouting feel very true to the original. The difference lies in strategy and build
• structure/macro (but I suspect even the macro is largely similar)
• New chat features are extremely useful
• Finding teams, groups among friends is easier than ever
• Many cases of large, epic-scale battles as well as smaller, more micro intensive fights, sometimes during the same match.
• Blizzard's humor is pretty evident throughout the game via unit speech
• The different races maintain their individuality/uniqueness, and perhaps have even become more distinct. One example is that the Terrans sound more hick than ever, and the Protoss have gained a "dark side".
• The new units for the most part seem impressive. Roaches, banelings, Marauders, Vikings, Void Ray, etc.
Iffy:
• Unit Sounds/ Speech extremely redundant and annoying
• Vespense Gas takes on a drastically different role in the game and is required for even basic structures/units. Also, you mine very very little of it at a time, even with 3-4 extractors.
• New units - 'Terrain jumpers" able to traverse terrain that previously only air units could cross. they are able to jump into the back of a players base and do damage, surprise attack. Can traverse cliffs,
• but appears to only be able to cross elevation differences, not distances e.g. can't drop across rivers or short distances like on space platforms (colossus, reapers, and stalkers to some extent)
• The voice chat feature in-game looks very sweet and *seems* to have good quality, superior to WoW's VOIP.
• It's too early for me to say if the game is well-balanced, we'll have to wait and see. Some units/strategies just seem "too powerful", like completely destroying the CC just minutes into the game.
• The new maps look good, but it's difficult to gauge this early on. If Blizzard sponsors an event where fans can create maps to be used in ladders then I think it will be as successful, if not more so, than
• when they did the same thing for Warcraft III.
• Addons to Terran buildings seem to limit gameplay, but it's a bit too early to critique
Cons:
• Building art looks cheap. Zerg structures look shiny and plasticky, while Terran looks like very basic modelling; not much texture. Protoss buildings looks good.
• If you don't stay on your game, you can get steamrolled the your opponent very easily
• Most of the streams I've watched the players rarely advance past tier 2. Most units produced for all races stay in the tier 1-2 range. I think this is a major drawback to decisions the player has to make and limits gameplay.
• In many of the matches I watched the players only chose a few units to fight with. So massive fights ultimately only consisted of 2 maybe 3 different types of units, even among 2v2s.
• Competitive multiplayer is extremely daunting to a beginner, and even to a novice
• Race-specific interfaces look unimpressive.
-> (However, the interface's functionality is very intuitive and "out-of-the-way" of the battles, movement, and economics of the game)
-Bowser
Last edited:
