Starcraft 2 - worth buying?

[Archon_Wing]

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.

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.

That is indeed a severe issue. It's very disappointing that with so much access to the pro scene, that Blizzard's maps are absolutely atrocious from a balance standpoint, and even a amateur could easily tell you they're bad.

Impossible to guard natural expansions (Terrible for zerg to hold) and the obsession with cliffs (Once again, overuse of cliffs turns it into Terran heaven) do not help. Not to mention the asymmetry problems in some cases which might sound novel but are terrible in a competitive situation.

We can only hope that the custom map makers will come up with something better (and they will)