Starcraft 2 - worth buying?

[PizzaSHARK!]

Good points about Raynor. It has been so long (10 years?) since I played through SC and SC:BW that I'd forgotten. I also loved Tosh and Tychus.

Tosh was a pretty nifty idea. I'll probably side with him again on my second playthrough, even if it means missing the Nova achievements. What do I care about some Dominion tart, anyway?

The gameplay was fun and engaging, but the story and writing were trash.

Welcome to videogames.

No. You can make a game that features both excellent, varied gameplay and stellar storytelling and writing. See: Half-Life series (especially HL2 Episodes One and Two); later Halo games (I mock console gamers constantly but they've really made the Halo series compelling when you ignore how it all got started); Baldur's Gate series; Planescape: Torment.

Blizzard is getting consistently lazier and lazier, at least from my admittedly jaded viewpoint. They seem to lack the dynamism and drive that they had when WoW was first launched, when working on the Diablo games, and when working on the Warcraft strategy games. Maybe it's just a symptom of them getting bigger and bigger, but it sure as hell seems like they're cutting corners and letting things get shipped with a lot of dings and rust lately. Their latest releases lack that Blizzard polish that made their earlier titles so distinctive.

I refuse to allow them to continue being lazy. Even if it brings world-changing balance fixes, I won't be buying Heart of the Swarm until it hits its first price drop. I'll probably hold off on picking up WoW's Cataclysm expansion for a month or two, just like I did with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion - and I might not have even played the WotLK expansion if a friend didn't give me an extra copy of his for free. There was absolutely no excuse for the sheer laziness that resulted in the arena season 5 balance debacle.

- Balance is a farce at high levels of play.

At high levels, that's true; MLG Raleigh made that pretty clear. None of us are playing at that level, though, so it's no reason to advise people not to buy the game. Buy game; play zerg; rotate between 6 pool, baneling bust, and 5 roach rush; win; a lot. We aren't playing vs. Flash, here.

It's noticeable at upper Diamond, which is the level I play at. There's worlds of difference between us and the professionals, but the balance issues that become absurdly obvious in professional games (seriously, just watch MorroW make IdrA his personal rhymes-with-witch in the IEM finals) are apparent at our level as well. It's particularly obvious just how much of a disadvantage Zerg is against both Terran and Protoss. They have tiny windows of opportunity to make it work, while Protoss and especially Terran can lolligag about and win almost by default.

I think it's still too early to declare imbalance when it comes to zerg. At least on a technical level. The imbalance that is present in the game at the moment is less unit issues etc. and more an issue of learning curve and the required micro to play any race other than Terran.

Compared to the other races Terran is ridiculously easy to learn, especially the core of their playstyle MMM. Part of the way they balanced Zerg's versatility is by adding in an extra level of required micro with the Queen mechanics. Utilizing them properly is absolutely required for Zerg to be competitive and it's not a very easy mechanic to get down. Especially for players that aren't absolutely top tier and that can't multitask between multiple bases and ongoing battles. This creates two issues at this point in the game. First that the number of players that can really manage the micro needed for Zerg is relatively small. Second that the amount of people that actually try to learn Zerg is also relatively small. Unfortunately it's an issue of mechanics that is pretty much required as Zerg is also the only race that can macro up massive armies of counters off of single buildings at the drop of a hat.

It's more than that. I play Random, and greatly prefer Zerg. I play all three races (Terran is most definitely my worst), so I understand the game from all three viewpoints. I lean towards being biased for Zerg, but since I have to play as and win as all three races, I like to think it gives me perspective "pickers" don't have.

Zerg has the absolute worst cost-efficiency of any army in the game. All of their units are absolutely, completely inferior to Terran and Protoss units, and yet don't often cost much less. A Roach is 75/25/2 versus a Marauder's 100/25/2, often absorbs less damage than the Marauder, and quite certainly does a great deal less damage; a Hydralisk is 100/50/2 to a Stalker's 125/50/2, and while it does much more damage, it has pitiful mobility and literally half of the Stalker's combined HP. You see similar parallels in the Mutalisk as compared to the Viking and especially the Phoenix (cheaper than Phoenixes, and it's much easier to hit ground with, but has much less durability and a great deal less damage potential than either.) Zerg has the ability to produce large amounts of units almost at will, which helps justify how weak their units are, but when their units cost almost as much as Terran and Protoss equivalents, it results in Zerg being at an almost constant economic disadvantage right from the get-go.

It's what spawns the "Zerg has to expand or die" mentality that you see in virtually every American and European Zerg player and a very large percentage of Korean Zerg players. Zerg has to expand constantly just to keep up with Terran and Protoss. It's not a simple equation of who has more income (a Terran will always have superior income to Zerg if number of controlled bases are the same), but who has better efficiency with that income. You can wave your hands and come up with 24 Zerglings (for 600 minerals), but those 24 Zerglings will do nowhere near as much damage as 12 Marines (600 minerals) or 6 Zealots (600 minerals) in nearly every situation.

This touches on another issue plaguing Zerg, and it's the fact that nearly every league map (I think Xel'naga Caverns is one of the very few maps that doesn't run around blinding everyone with Zerg-hate) is a constant series of chokes and ramps, which greatly limits Zerg's ability to use their mobility to their advantage. Fighting in a chokepoint, Zerg is trash. Fighting in the open, even the humble Zergling can become devastating - but really, just how many maps even have that kind of open space for Zerg to utilize? I can name the number of maps like that on one hand (Metalopolis, Xel'naga Caverns, maybe Blistering Sands.) There's an ICCUP remake of Metalopolis that changes nothing about the layout of the map, save all bases are now on open ground: no ramps, no chokes. The results? Zerg's chances of winning are dramatically increased, and Protoss and Terran's chances of winning are still pretty close to being equal - it just means they have to use intelligent building placement instead of just plugging up the ramp.

The idea that Zerg can produce a varied army at the drop of a hat is a farce. Zerg's tech trees are more convoluted than Terran's, and are at least as bad as Protoss's (who, honestly, get completely jobbed on hitting tier 2.) More, while we can produce a large number of units at will, this is completely limited by available larva. You can only realistically expect to have 6 larva per Hatchery, assuming your Spawn Larva timing is absolutely perfect - and no one, not even IdrA, plays a game without missing a Spawn Larva. Even assuming you have 5 Hatcheries (which is a stretch, especially if you're following the Zerg imperative of expand-expand-expand) and 5 Queens, that's only 30 larva to be split among fighting units, overlords, and workers. In a late game situation, Terran can easily be pumping 20 Marines per cycle out of Reactor'd Barracks. Protoss can snap their fingers and produce a sizable force of Gateway units anywhere on the map (in the late game, that Protoss player will be crapping pylons everywhere.) Terran can similarly mass-produce Hellions, Medivacs, and Vikings through the use of Reactors. Protoss gets a bit jobbed with their "Factory" and "Starport" units, but given how strong those units are, I think it's a fair exchange (besides, you have to use that Chrono Boost energy on something.) When you couple this with the absolute fact that a 200/200 Zerg army is miles apart from a 200/200 Protoss or especially 200/200 Terran army, Zerg's vaunted "mass production" ability is overstated to say the least.