No LAN in my StarCraft 2

[Lumpy]

Ideally, campaigns should be interlocked, like in Giants.
It would also have the advantage of you gaining control of new units around the time you have to fight them.

 

[made]

Or how about a more coherent storyline where the perspective doesn't have to shift every couple missions, just because they must use all races in a single game?

The campaigns in WC3 and TFT were perfect in terms of storytelling and pacing. Pretty much all RTS I've played since felt lacking in comparison because they tend to focus on one faction at a time. I'm certainly looking forward to what Blizzard can pull off with that approach but I'm reluctant to pay tripple price for a SP campaign. I'm not Asian so I couldn't care less about MP.

 

[Kraszu]

@Kraszu:
It's all good, but I'd rather preferred all campaigns in one game, and what if I don't like playing terrans much? So basically for other races it's going down to the same skirmish to learn everything new about them. Until the new episode arrives that is.
Story in original SC wasn't groundbraking, but I liked that flow where before you even get fed up with one race, you get to view a story from another perspective.

I think that it will be much better, if missions will significantly differ in gameplay then it should not get boring. There will be few missions with Prottos also. As for learning bout other races well that is fair point if you want to play SP first where you discover new units as it progress but in SP there will be more units then in MP.

Personally I don't understand what was wrong with releasing 3 campaigns for 3 races even though there were 30 missions and then releasing another 30 missions (if you absolutely need that expansion), again for 3 races. Basically the amount is the same, but the idea is better and it worked.

Terran campaign will be little diferent the others, you are mercenary, they did make a ship where you can buy new technology/helping units, where you decide what mission to take, and where you can talk with the crew if you want more story (allot of art works will go into that for every race, that in big part is irrelevant to the number of missions). Other races will have something diferent so it would be harder to make 1/3 missions x3 races. Other races will likely not buy units/technology had said that they don't even know yet what will zerg campaign be like, and they are not sure about Protoss.

 

[kingcomrade]

Well, enjoy your shitty 5 hour action games then.

Enjoy your three shitty 5 hour action games for 3x the price. I posted earlier how silly your reasoning is, but you didn't respond :wondering:

 

[Hamster]

I think it is a valid concern though from Skyway this time. That with campaign with just one race players are not introduced to the others and may be fed up by the only one they get to play. I doubt that counts for me, but it is still a concern.

Yes, when presented like this and not in the "go fuck yourselves Blizzard" way it is a valid concern. I am also a bit worried about this, but so far information released by Blizzard is very promising with all that stuff about special game mechanics in missions, etc.

 

[pkt-zer0]

As for learning bout other races well that is fair point if you want to play SP first where you discover new units as it progress but in SP there will be more units then in MP.

Isn't there a separate tutorial mode now, anyway?

 

[kingcomrade]

Tutorials are always worthless. They never go
"This tactic is called the 9pool12hatch and so on"

Tutorials always have to be "official" and generic, for some reason. Same for actual games, as well. Most of the really cool multiplayer games out there are mods, but they would never be made on their own because they don't sound 'official' enough (i mean to developers themselves, though obviously also to financers). I don't know what word I need here but I hope you guys get what I mean.

 

[Annonchinil]

Tutorials are always worthless. They never go
"This tactic is called the 9pool12hatch and so on"

Tutorials always have to be "official" and generic, for some reason. Same for actual games, as well. Most of the really cool multiplayer games out there are mods, but they would never be made on their own because they don't sound 'official' enough (i mean to developers themselves, though obviously also to financers). I don't know what word I need here but I hope you guys get what I mean.

I heard that the SC2 will have an MP focused tutorial that will introduce players to things such as builds etc.

But yeah sometimes it is annoying to do a tutorial a have it explain to you that clicking a unit selects it.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Most probable scenario is that they'll require someone/everyone from the LAN to authenticate through Battle.net first before going into LAN mode or they'll have a Steam-like system that'll require you to log in online once before allowing you to LAN.

If that were true, why would they say LAN is not an option? If you can LAN, then they haven't really taken it out, have they?

As for saying people don't play over LAN these days... Hello Valhalla and local school networks packed at lunch time.

Dustin Browder: I hope so. It's going to be pretty huge. It's really different than anything you've seen before in our titles. This is sort of a level of choice and options for the player--RTS is typically, you're on the rail man. And if you get a mission you can't beat, I guess you'd better take it back. Well, you can't take it back anymore. [laughs] I'm [thinking] of when you could take games back at [Electronics Boutique].

These days it's called trading-in but I guess they want to shut that down too.

So each of these missions is like a little minigame.

Mini-games. lulz.

It's convenient to know Blizzard no longer is (or perhaps never was) one of those companies, because it will save me from having to buy their shit anymore.

No longer is. They were bought by Activision only last year and in a round-about way are now owned by Vivendi.

As for LAN mod, it is not likely to surface anytime soon, and when it does, it will be some buggy shit. Because the hax0rz will have to reverse-engineer the new Battle.net protocol, and then write a wrapper for it. It's a monstrous job.

Moar lulz. You've obviously never heard of Bnetd. Blizzard sued them to shut them down. Kind of like what the RIAA does.

Blizzard also sued the FreeCraft project, which was a Unix Warcraft clone:

• In June 2003, a cease and desist letter was received from Blizzard Entertainment, who thought the name Freecraft could cause confusion with the names StarCraft and Warcraft, and that some of the ideas within the engine were too similar to Warcraft II.

So when are the WH40k guys going to sue Blizzard for "confusion and similarities"? And I thought Microsoft beat that whole "similarity" bullshit back when they first copied Apple Macs GUI?

 

[Kraszu]

So each of these missions is like a little minigame.

Mini-games. lulz.

By mini games he meant that some specific mechanic will be added for specific mission, and he did gave an examples of that.

 

[MetalCraze]

As for LAN mod, it is not likely to surface anytime soon, and when it does, it will be some buggy shit. Because the hax0rz will have to reverse-engineer the new Battle.net protocol, and then write a wrapper for it. It's a monstrous job.

Moar lulz. You've obviously never heard of Bnetd. Blizzard sued them to shut them down. Kind of like what the RIAA does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PvPGN
I've actually played Diablo and Red Alert 2 with this thing which is a sequel to bnetd. Works fine, never encountered any bugs.

Blizzard also sued the FreeCraft project, which was a Unix Warcraft clone:

• In June 2003, a cease and desist letter was received from Blizzard Entertainment, who thought the name Freecraft could cause confusion with the names StarCraft and Warcraft, and that some of the ideas within the engine were too similar to Warcraft II.

So when are the WH40k guys going to sue Blizzard for "confusion and similarities"? And I thought Microsoft beat that whole "similarity" bullshit back when they first copied Apple Macs GUI?

Blizzard just act like assholes since WC3. There is a FreeCiv game which is a direct copy of Civilization 1 (and later 2) which exists for 13 years and I haven't noticed Firaxis running around screaming that the world ended.

 

[SlyDrak]

--

 

[MetalCraze]

That's because retarded next-gen dev logic is at work, much like with those activations - paying customers are pirates and they must suffer. Apparently 1+ bln of jewgolds is not enough, more plz.

 

[flabbyjack]

Battlenet has been FAILING for the past couple of weeks. Due to issues with WoW, Battlenet load has been unbearable and disconnecting users at random and right after they conncet. Starcraft battlenet has sucked since 2 patches ago, with many players unable to join games, and others unable to host games.

Blizzard support is no help with these issues, cheating is more rampant than ever with a new slew if disconnect hacks, and I still can't join my friends' games. Now they're trying to push some stupid pay-to-play Bnet bullshit on us.

 

[Trithne]

Where are people still getting the pay-to-play notion from? They pretty much said you won't have to pay to play Bnet2, it'll just have microtransactions on shit like making custom leagues et al.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Where are people still getting the pay-to-play notion from? They pretty much said you won't have to pay to play Bnet2, it'll just have microtransactions on shit like making custom leagues et al.

I bet most people won't care, since they'll just play iCcup.

 

[shihonage]

As for LAN mod, it is not likely to surface anytime soon, and when it does, it will be some buggy shit. Because the hax0rz will have to reverse-engineer the new Battle.net protocol, and then write a wrapper for it. It's a monstrous job.

Moar lulz. You've obviously never heard of Bnetd. Blizzard sued them to shut them down. Kind of like what the RIAA does.

BNETD worked because the games it worked with contained multiplayer server code inside them - either for Open BNET or for LAN support. It didn't need to be reverse-engineered, only the carrier protocol did.

In case of Starcraft 2, it will be the first instance where such code is missing. The new B.Net protocol will not be the same as the old one, it will be fused with server-fed and server-authorized gameplay stream - similar to Diablo2 Closed BNet but with more authoritarian control to curb cheating, and, unlike Diablo2, without similar code being already embedded in the game's executable.

 

[MetalCraze]

That never stopped tons of WoW (and many other MMORPGs) freeshards from coming into life. And the only things WoW has client-side are basically models and textures. I imagine WoW's server code is much more complex than the one of a simple auth-server, considering that SC2 will have some kind of LAN code now.
In fact I believe Cattle.net emulators will appear only a few months after the game's release - so the only ones who will lose are sheeple again.

 

[Trithne]

I bet most people won't care, since they'll just play iCcup.

iCcup works through LAN modes, yes? That's why everyone was so raged up over the lack of LAN, because that means KeSPA and the like can't use their own services for gaming and it all has to go through Bnet.

 

[Destroid]

So I guess this is going to make matchmaking really shitful just like DoW2 and GFWL.

 

[Azrael the cat]

That never stopped tons of WoW (and many other MMORPGs) freeshards from coming into life. And the only things WoW has client-side are basically models and textures. I imagine WoW's server code is much more complex than the one of a simple auth-server, considering that SC2 will have some kind of LAN code now.
In fact I believe Cattle.net emulators will appear only a few months after the game's release - so the only ones who will lose are sheeple again.

Skyway, that's shite and you know it. Blizz's RTS products have been competitive RTS league and e-sport staples. Whilst most gamers aren't interested in tournaments, a huge proportion of regular RTS-gamers play ranked league as their main gaming. That way you end up playing competitive and fast matches against good opponents (or, if you're stuck at the lower rankings, at least someone of approx the same skill), as opposed to the legion of shite (with more than the occasional cheater) that infests the custom map and non-ranked matchups. If nothing else, once you've got a decent ranking then the Btard 10-year-old-kiddie inane noob comments and insults (when you're kicking their ass) mostly disappears. It isn't about epeen stats, it's that if you're going to play chess against strangers, it's more fun playing against people who are moderately competitive and are there to play a match, rather than people who are still asking how each of the pieces move and whine when you're playing to win rather than moving stuff around the board randomly.

Now you can go and list a bunch of rts's that might be better than Blizz's products (though if you're saying SC1 is shite then most people will rightly ignore you as trolling) - and hey,there's every possibility that SC2 might be crap compared to other RTS games coming out in the next couple of years. But the problem is that none of those games will have the same dedicated userbase to build and maintain a competitive gaming community for the next decade. Whether or not SC and WC3 were shite compared to DoW or Supreme Commander, the comparison is moot because if you want to game competitively, it's far easier to get good-quality matchups with the Blizz products than their competitors - even taking into account that you have to smash about 10 btards to get your ranking up high enough that you don't get matched with the morons (or at least they'll be focussing on the game too much to have time to troll during the game).

Frankly, that's my main motivation for being interested in SC2. I get put off most new RTS's because it just doesn't seem worth it to get my skills up and learn the tactics of a new RTS only for the community to disappear a couple of years later. And for people in that situation a shite official multiplayer matchup service is fucking awful, because the non-official ones aren't going to provide the same level of competition and anti-cheat measures (though they probably have less sum total idiots).

If I'm wrong, and the non-official servers provide good anti-cheat measures and a decent ranking system with a competitive community, then that's great. I'm just a bit skeptical about their ability to deliver on that - which means getting stuck with whatever Blizz wants to exploit us with, or passing up on the game (I find single-player RTS a bit naff - the AI is never as good as a decent human opponent, and it's a really poor medium for story-telling, always feeling like a gimped rpg). The latter option is looking rather inviting.