StarCraft: Remastered

[Severian Silk]

Homeworld Remastered is dead too.

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

Funny because HWRM is the exact same kind of remake that people 10 pages ago were trying to shill SC:R into being.
HWRM is mostly only dead because it failed to deliver to the franchise's only two real demographics. Those being:
A) People who played the first game's campaign a lot, which was ruined for them by replacing the gameplay with that of the sequel (HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM)
B) People who made/played mods for the second game, which was plagued from the beginning by poor documentation for tools and it being impossible to do kitbash models (no access to art assets or something, this is what I've been told by some modders that I know) meaning every new mod for the remaster basically requires a professional art team.

DoK looked to be dead on arrival at first, because it didn't deliver for either group really and it had a lot of shitty reviews from people who expected both and got neither. Lately though, it's found some interesting traction as a competitive RTS (something HW never was) and it's got the "Artifact Cup" series running pretty regularly. Although I hear the guy who runs those feels like slowing down.
To be fair, HW2 could be reasonably competitive too but it's let down in that regard pretty damn convincingly by no observer slots and replays. Gearbox didn't seem to want to add those features with the remaster either. Having watched the WWHW3 tournament ages ago it seemed like a nightmare to cast.

 

[Dayyālu]

Interesting, DoK is probably one of the most mediocre RTS that I played lately (Grey Goo blows it out of the water, and even Grey Goo is mediocre by itself). Interesting to notice that someone managed to keep it somewhat alive.

Point is, paid HD remakes are (bar in the SCHD case, because SC is SC) a poor idea as no one is gonna buy a 20-years old game at full price. If BZ1998 taught me something, the only way to keep a viable MP community alive is going the OpenRA way: free downloads, slow but steady updates with little fear to change estabilished (and stale) strategies and good "mod-ability".

OpenRA hits all three, and it keeps trucking on: similarly, BZ998 1.5 hit all of them and survived for almost 18 years. Before the HD remake killed it, of course.

Furthermore, being "competitive" is useless in this day and age: only competitive RTS that survives is Starcraft and everything else is going to die quickly if not approached with free downloads, updates and mods. Prob is, no one is going to make money out of it

8bit-armies was an interesting idea: sure, before I realized OpenRA plays better, has more variety, and a community 500% as big.

 

[ArchAngel]

Interesting, DoK is probably one of the most mediocre RTS that I played lately (Grey Goo blows it out of the water, and even Grey Goo is mediocre by itself). Interesting to notice that someone managed to keep it somewhat alive.

Point is, paid HD remakes are (bar in the SCHD case, because SC is SC) a poor idea as no one is gonna buy a 20-years old game at full price. If BZ1998 taught me something, the only way to keep a viable MP community alive is going the OpenRA way: free downloads, slow but steady updates with little fear to change estabilished (and stale) strategies and good "mod-ability".

OpenRA hits all three, and it keeps trucking on: similarly, BZ998 1.5 hit all of them and survived for almost 18 years. Before the HD remake killed it, of course.

Furthermore, being "competitive" is useless in this day and age: only competitive RTS that survives is Starcraft and everything else is going to die quickly if not approached with free downloads, updates and mods. Prob is, no one is going to make money out of it

8bit-armies was an interesting idea: sure, before I realized OpenRA plays better, has more variety, and a community 500% as big.

Nah, Grey Goo is by far the worst RTS released in many years. When it released it was an unbalanced and slow shit. Except for the Goo faction the game was bland as well. Then they "fixed it" but not really. They fixed some of the most broken unbalanced shit but never made it faster or fixed the terrible upgrade system or inability to do economic damage (except vs Goo).

DoK at least was fast. I watched people play MP in DoK for few weeks, the game was very fast and asked for decent micro to do well. It had no base building but it had worker/economy harass that is often overlooked by many RTS as a valid gameplay option.

EDIT: OK Ashes of Singularity would probably be the worst, but I didn't even bother trying to play that one. It was obvious just from watching gameplay that it was total and complete shit. And made by Stardock, I knew it would be shit when they first announced it.

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

Interesting, DoK is probably one of the most mediocre RTS that I played lately (Grey Goo blows it out of the water, and even Grey Goo is mediocre by itself). Interesting to notice that someone managed to keep it somewhat alive.

I've barely played DoK outside of 3 missions in its campaign. Never really grabbed me that much. Watching some of the pro games though on HeirOfCarthage's youtube channel and some others it looks like a game which has four reasonably unique factions and a wide variety of viable strategies and play-styles, something which I didn't expect if I'm being honest. Also looks like it has a lot of mechanics for a Homeworld game. Not as many as HW1, but it's got them.

I think you have to stop thinking "esports" when you hear "competitive."

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

DoK at least was fast. I watched people play MP in DoK for few weeks, the game was very fast and asked for decent micro to do well. It had no base building but it had worker/economy harass that is often overlooked by many RTS as a valid gameplay option.

Also DoK does have basebuilding, and so does HW2. It's just your entire base is vehicles that can move and it so it's more nomadic. The good thing about HW2 over DoK by the looks of things is that you could actually scout the enemy's tech paths and strats by counting what modules he had.

 

[ArchAngel]

DoK at least was fast. I watched people play MP in DoK for few weeks, the game was very fast and asked for decent micro to do well. It had no base building but it had worker/economy harass that is often overlooked by many RTS as a valid gameplay option.

Also DoK does have basebuilding, and so does HW2. It's just your entire base is vehicles that can move and it so it's more nomadic. The good thing about HW2 over DoK by the looks of things is that you could actually scout the enemy's tech paths and strats by counting what modules he had.

Well that does not count as base building because you cannot attack that mothership and snipe tech or army making buildings. You can snipe resource node vehicles, those can be kind of counted as mobile buildings :D

 

[Severian Silk]

Funny because HWRM is the exact same kind of remake that people 10 pages ago were trying to shill SC:R into being.
HWRM is mostly only dead because it failed to deliver to the franchise's only two real demographics. Those being:
A) People who played the first game's campaign a lot, which was ruined for them by replacing the gameplay with that of the sequel (HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM)
B) People who made/played mods for the second game, which was plagued from the beginning by poor documentation for tools and it being impossible to do kitbash models (no access to art assets or something, this is what I've been told by some modders that I know) meaning every new mod for the remaster basically requires a professional art team.

DoK looked to be dead on arrival at first, because it didn't deliver for either group really and it had a lot of shitty reviews from people who expected both and got neither. Lately though, it's found some interesting traction as a competitive RTS (something HW never was) and it's got the "Artifact Cup" series running pretty regularly. Although I hear the guy who runs those feels like slowing down.
To be fair, HW2 could be reasonably competitive too but it's let down in that regard pretty damn convincingly by no observer slots and replays. Gearbox didn't seem to want to add those features with the remaster either. Having watched the WWHW3 tournament ages ago it seemed like a nightmare to cast.

I tried HWRM multiplayer about a half dozen times and was unable to complete a single match due to desyncs, crashes, missing players, etc.

HWRM also has bug #666 that makes some strike craft basically useless. https://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/squashing-bug-666-ideas-are-welcome/1548153/2

OTOH, I was able to port all my HW2 mods to the new engine.

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

I was one of the few people that was actually able to play a bunch of games with HWRM pre-Formations Patch without getting killed by connection problems and I actually found it to be a game that had a lot of hidden depth if only because it was in a wild west era of having 2 new races to screw up the HW2 meta of "mass lance fighters/pulsar gunships"
Unfortunately the HW1 races weren't really that competitive. Even with a good player behind the wheel, against a HW2 player you still kinda had to do some kind of weird-ass all-in focused on nuking their economy if you wanted to win the game because long-term they'd beat you in 100% of cases just because they get upgrades and you don't and also their fighters were a lot more intelligent b/c formations were "working as intended" for HW2 but broken for HW1, and also Taiidan multigun corvettes thought they were a completely different ship with full-360 turret arcs and never put themselves in a position to actually shoot in combat. I don't know if the balance has changed at all, I haven't played very much since the Big Update™. I hear Gearbox basically has a single intern working on the balance update for the game, but since he's a paid intern he's content with taking his sweet time.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Old

New

 

[Black_Willow]

The new one is better.

 

[ArchAngel]

That is one angry Zealot in the 2nd picture. He must have heard Trump won.

 

[Destroid]

That is one angry Zealot in the 2nd picture. He must have heard Trump won.

 

[Havoc]

That is one angry Zealot in the 2nd picture. He must have heard Trump won.

MAGA! MAKE AIUR GREAT AGAIN!

 

[Havoc]

WE WILL BUILD THE ION CANNON AND ZERGS WILL PAY FOR IT!

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

WE WILL BUILD CARRIERS AND THE ZERG WILL KILL THEM WITH SCOURGE

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Can't wait for this.

Come at me, 'dex.

 

[Black_Willow]

Joined: Oct 22, 2006

 

[VladimirK]

TA was fun to play less seriously, something you cannot really do in Starcraft.

Oh but you can.



(Well, perhaps this is *casting* non-seriously.)

 

[MilesBeyond]

So just in case anyone's wondering, the recent S3 tournament was incredible. It blows my mind that nearly 20 years after release, we're still getting some truly amazing BW games

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

I dunno, watching Flash 3-0 another B-tier player and take his gold medal was pretty boring. If this keeps happening I have no doubt Flash can make good on his promise to win 3 ASLs in a row. Apart from the finals though it was awesome.

 

[Archibald]

So how B-tier player ended up getting to the finals?

 

[janior]

yesterday scan talked on his stream about how rigged asl is and how bisu/flash always get non-pro players in their groups just to get to play games together, not sure if he was so butthurt about not going out of his group or actually right... Cause well it makes sense for asl to do that --> flash/bisu/effort get to play --> more viewers --> more $$$...

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

So how B-tier player ended up getting to the finals?

Because his gimmick is doing cheese and trying to throw off unimaginative players by going outside of the meta. As soon as you run into a player like Flash or Jaedong that can't be shaken by that kind of thing, you get 3-0'd. His obstacle in reaching the finals (Bisu) was also a player that is definitely far better than him and was looking in pretty damn good form, but has historically always choked against Shine (and only Shine) for whatever reason. He got way further than anybody thought he had any right to.

 

[shihonage]

Is this shit out yet?