Almost 24 hours since the inception of this thread, I have concluded that:
Blizzard to Malaysians is pretty much how Bungie is to Xbox gamers. They can do no wrong in "our" eyes. I mean, Company of Heroes and C&C 3 BARELY registered on the local scene here.


Ignoring most of the discussions here ("OMG, you can zoom and rotate the camera!!!"), the anti DotA bashing has got to stop as its ruining an otherwise good thread.

DotA is NOT an RTS... RTS players have nothing to fear from what is essentially "Diablo for noobs". Stop b****ing already. Just dismiss them as wannabes and be done with it. Stop flogging the dead horse.

That being said, the whole "I hope there are no heroes in SC 2" talks would stop being sounding so bloody pompous because of the DotA influence. Dawn of War has them, C&C has had them for ages (You think Tanya comes of a conveyor belt?). Don't write off the concept just because one company screwed up the implementation.

The hero system in Warcraft 3 was good... Until you realized it was also used in multiplayer.

Face it, heroes in Starcraft were pretty much useless. All they had were double stats from the basic units and they were essentially useless as losing them= losing the game. So, most of the time they became base babysitters. The only SC2 hero worth using was Kerrigan and a hero Battlecruiser (Coz the laser kicked ass)

The Altar alone from WC3 made heroes worth using but unfortunately, the entire game revolved around them which turned "War"craft into "Diablo"craft.



As for impressions of the game, I haven't seen the videos yet, so nothing much to say aside from the screenshots (Which look like a more mature take on the Warcraft 3 style)... I'll wait until they announce a closed public beta before passing judgment. At that point, the graphics would be nailed down already leaving only the gameplay to be tested.

This post has been edited by H@H@: May 20 2007, 05:07 AM

Yes, I did in fact mean DOW. Its just that, based on WC3's rather horrible implementation of the hero system, they are writing it off completely... Totally ignoring the fact that many, many, MANY RTS' before and after WC3 had heroes in them.

Anyway, DoW does in fact have a rather good implementation of heroes.

WTF? The term "noob" was thrown around since the days of Quake and most notably in Starcraft (FYI, the term "pwned" also came from SC). Another victim of DotA culture it seems.

That'd be Dune 2. Dune was an adventure game.

Nah, this got leaked a few months by some Korean dudes... Valve did a far better job with HL2 IMHO... During E3, it was like "Whoa, didn't see that coming!"... Nobody expected anything. For this, there was like speculation after speculation over the last 2 months over what the hell Blizzard was going to do. For Valve, they had pretty much fallen off the face of the earth UNTIL they showed it off at E3.

Another example of blind Blizzard fanboyism.

That game came out 2 months ago... It was called Supreme Commander.

If you've ever played Supreme Commander, you'll know that's NEVER that case even though the unit cap can go to an astronomical 1000 units. The combination of resource management (Which is a strategy in itself), unit composition and positioning together with precision strikes makes it a true blue strategy game.

Just watched the gameplay video... Illustrates the gameplay for the Protoss pretty well (Though the teleporting of units to Power areas looks a little vague).

I dunno, but the ending "epic" battle felt like a total ripoff of Supreme Commander's E3 video last year. Total lack of tactics on both sides and topped off with a great big nuke. And as awesome as Starcraft is, saying its battles are "epic" just feels so wrong now.

Well the Zerg looked liked they had that subterranean worm thingy that transported zerglings... Seems pretty fair.

Plus, I think they might implement the teleportation system similar to the Orbital Relay from DoW. You send troops to the structure and port it in, or you could build troops in it. Or it could be an upgrade for the Gateway (Which would make sense considering the name of the building ). Either way, its probably going to incur a high cost as it appears to be instant.

Well, to be fair, I first saw this teleportation thing in Dark Reign. There's this structure that could teleport 3 units to any where with LOS. The opposing side used a subterranean transport to the same effect instead.

This post has been edited by H@H@: May 23 2007, 04:00 PM

Well, maybe the guy showing it off was actually korean and he selected a Gateway loaded with units using hotkeys so fast, you couldn't tell

Well considering how the Protoss can teleport to anywhere with a power zone, the Phase Prism does sort of act as a pseudo "transport" since it can create power zones. Why even risk losing troops by storing them in the Prism when you can just teleport them in?

I don't think they're even trying to beat those games in terms of graphics. Blizzard likes focusing on the graphics in terms of style rather than making it the game with the biggest bling on the planet. Plus, they also cater to lower end systems.

As for the physics effect, DoW doesn't actually use a proper physics engine. When units are flung, its quite often predictable (Technically, ALL games have some form of physics calculation, but its usually very limited). Only a few games actually incorporate a fully realistic physics engine into the game. Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander had full implementation (All projectiles are affected by real world physics and not some cockamamie percentage style) and Age of Empires 3 sorta tried to (Cannonballs would bludgeon anything in their path and its trajectory was affected by terrain)

I don't expect Starcraft 2 to do this since anything uncertain about something would obviously cause the numbers-obsessed Koreans to go stark raving mad. Come to think of it, maybe that's why they don't really like Warcraft 3 (Since this one used number ranges for damage handling instead of the fixed numbers in Starcraft)

The only part of AoE 3 that had utilized physics for gameplay was the cannonballs which rolled around and did damage.

The only reason for physics that would affect gameplay is that it provides uncertainty in battle, something the Koreans probably won't like.

Other RTS games that have used physics:
Total Annihilation - Shells fly using real life physics and are affected by gravity. Same goes for debris and other projectiles
C&C 2 - Crashing planes could damage buildings (Lame I know, but it was kinda random)
Battlezone - There was this weapon called the Thumper that could bounce units around and inflict damage upon them. There was also this trebuchet cannon that fired supplies... Pretty inaccurate. Ok, so this isn't a true blue RTS title.

And how does that affect gameplay exactly? Age of Empires 3 and Rise of Legends had the exact same thing (Large units and buildings would have debris fall around) but it was just eye candy as it didn't affect anything in the game.

Now, if the falling debris of units in Starcraft 2 could crush or damage smaller units, or maybe become obstacles, then maybe it will be useful (Kamikaze Battlecruisers!), but as far as I could tell from the videos, can't really tell.

Erm, AFAIK, Karma only works on ragdolls... Well, that was the case in UT2004 and UT2003 (Ragdolls files were known as the karma files)

Anyway, what about Ageia's PhysX? Aside from the fact that it requires a super expensive card to produce mostly trivial physics effects (Save for CellFactor), it actually uses its own physics engine.

Anyway, not everyone uses Havoc. IINM, Doom 3 used their own physics engine.

Well, technically that was how heroes in Warcraft 3 were as well. Its just that, the unit caps in Warcraft 3 was so small, you didn't need much backup to support your heroes, unlike in DoW.

For the love off...

STOP FANNING THE FREAKING FLAMES.

This goes to the rest of you haters out there.

I will repeat the warning I made a month back:
Any pro-DotA/Anti-Dota post in this thread will result in a 3 day suspension. No buts.

Ok guys, you scared off the troll. Can we stop the needless bashing of DotA now?

Anyway, just to add for those blur DotA fans:
Everything (Yes, EVERYTHING) in DotA is based off available assets used in Warcraft 3. Everything from the map objects, heroes, logos and icons are all there in standard Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne. This is the reason why the map is ridiculously small for something that supposedly contains a lot of "content".

The team that made DotA merely changed the stats, abilities and appearances for each and so the game is rather unique in itself despite not having a single original art asset.

Can we just stick to talking about how Protoss talk to each other without mouths and whether hydralisks shot acids or needles? Pewpew FTW!

Do you have any idea how much extra work is required to make games scalable for lower end computers? Its not as easy as just flipping a switch for a particular graphic setting.

Every time you go down a detail level, you MUST have an extra set of art assets to go with it. So, if a game has 7 texture detail settings, you need 7 textures for ALL your assets. Ditto for all the extra special effects and models.

All this extra content requires more work, money, etc. Try making a game and see if you can so easily scale your game with top notch graphics AND make it work on low end computers before you continue spouting drivel like this.