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Forums - PC Discussion - Starcraft II campaign split into 3 separate SKU's!

naznatips said:
Oh my god! Such bullshit! How dare people plan a game to be sold episodically. Why aren't people outraged?!

Oh wait... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2

i think story and playable races aside, the real difference here between hl2 and SC2 will be the pricing

http://www.amazon.com/Orange-Box-Pc/dp/B000PS2XES

$32 (and $50 at launch in USA, if i recall correctly)



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You can play all the races in each game. The campaign is hardly necessary to learn them. Some good RTS games anymore don't even have campaigns (Sins of a Solar Empire, Demigod).

Half-Life 2 was not remotely a complete game. The ending was not the ending of Half-Life 2. No, they expected you to buy 3 more games to get to the ending, and we still haven't gotten the last game (4 years down the road). We'll get the other 2 pieces of the Starcraft campaign much faster than that.

You all overreacted to a situation before you took the time to think it through. As a PC gamer I'm embarrassed to see such reactions from my fellow gamers.



naznatips said:
You can play all the races in each game. The campaign is hardly necessary to learn them. Some good RTS games anymore don't even have campaigns (Sins of a Solar Empire, Demigod).

Half-Life 2 was not remotely a complete game. The ending was not the ending of Half-Life 2. No, they expected you to buy 3 more games to get to the ending, and we still haven't gotten the last game (4 years down the road). We'll get the other 2 pieces of the Starcraft campaign much faster than that.

You all overreacted to a situation before you took the time to think it through. As a PC gamer I'm embarrassed to see such reactions from my fellow gamers.

All except Gotchaye, that is.  His post was so full of win I'm going to post it again: 

Gotchaye said:

Twestern, I think you're overstating your case.

I agree with DKII that playing 30 missions with one race is, all else being equal, less worthwhile than 10 missions with each of three races, but it's hardly the end of the world. With what we know now, it's very possible that, when all is said and done, we'll have a main game and two expansion packs' worth of single- and multiplayer content for the price of one main game and two expansion packs. It's entirely possible that what we're getting is the same amount of value that we always get from Blizzard RTSs, just distributed differently across SKUs. While I prefer WC3 the way it is, if the original game had included all of the Human and Undead single player content found in both releases while the expansion pack included all of the Orc and Night Elf single player content found in both releases, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

While this is a curious and, on face, suboptimal design decision, there are a few possible reasons for them to do this. The most obvious is that they've learned a lesson from Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne. If you'll recall, the Orc Frozen Throne 'campaign' was largely tacked on. The Orcs couldn't easily be incorporated into the larger story and so they got a glorified custom map. Perhaps, in working out the plot of SC2, Blizzard encountered a similar problem - perhaps the Terrans are bit players in the arc planned for the second or third expansion. What if the Orc campaign in WC3 had been twice as long at the expense of another race's campaign (which then had a double-length campaign in Frozen Throne)? That presents problems with the WC3 story as it was presented, but, if that had been the design goal from the beginning, perhaps the Orc Frozen Throne dilemma could have been avoided.

Also, you really reach in places. Are you seriously concerned that Terran players will be at a significant advantage because they've played through a campaign while Zerg players haven't? I can't be alone in thinking that the campaigns in typical RTSs (and Blizzard's games are no exception) are relatively poor preparation for multiplayer battles. Skirmishes against the computer aren't even great practice, but they're much, much better than playing the story mode (and they'll be available from the get-go). On the first page, you denounce them for saying that each expansion will make changes to the multiplayer. But isn't that what expansions are for? Beyond the Dark Portal, Brood War, and The Frozen Throne all added new units and abilities to each race. You seem to be attacking the very idea of expansion packs here.

It occurs to me that the rage from various people could just be the weird hatred of 'incompleteness' that you see in the gaming world.  Is that what's going on here?  Expansion packs are only okay as long as the developer pretends like it's not planning them until after the main game releases?  People are way too inclined to think of games as art and game makers as artists, and to feel betrayed when the developer has an idea for making a game better (at a nonnegligible cost in development time) while not implementing it straight away.  Gamers need to realize that, given a game and its eventual expansion, it's often impossible to determine which of the expansion's modifications were conceived before the release of the main game - the actual content that you're getting is identical.

Welcome to VGChartz, Gotchaye.  Or should I say welcome back



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naznatips said:

You can play all the races in each game. The campaign is hardly necessary to learn them. Some good RTS games anymore don't even have campaigns (Sins of a Solar Empire, Demigod).

Half-Life 2 was not remotely a complete game. The ending was not the ending of Half-Life 2. No, they expected you to buy 3 more games to get to the ending, and we still haven't gotten the last game (4 years down the road). We'll get the other 2 pieces of the Starcraft campaign much faster than that.

You all overreacted to a situation before you took the time to think it through. As a PC gamer I'm embarrassed to see such reactions from my fellow gamers.

 

The whole argument is over pricing and their structure of the campaigns, or at least that's my problem with it. We have't heard anything about pricing other than "we'll determine how much it should sell for when done" and "we want to get them as close to full games as possible," which in my head adds up to a possibile $50 charge per release. It doesn't matter how they try to spin it the 2nd releases will not be full games and that's that. But that's assuming too much.

 

The other problem is the stucture. Yes I can play all 3 from the getgo, they stated that a whole bunch of times to calm some people down, but my problem is with playing 30 missions at a time with a race and then waiting another year for the next race's 30 and then another year. They claim this will allow them to have campaigns which are not linear and epic in size, which is true, but they can achieve the same thing if they had 10 missions per race per release as well. I'll still be playing Protoss from the start ( I don't need a campaign to learn), but I don't want to be waiting 2 years to get to their campaign. Also as I stated above, since they are doing the main game + 2 expansions thing, Protoss fans are forced to buy the previous releases (or maybe just the main game without the Zerg release?) to play even a single campaign mission.

 

Those are my problems with what they are doing and I have thought them through fully and spent hours online trying to scrounge up as much info about this issue as possibile.



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naznatips said:

You can play all the races in each game. The campaign is hardly necessary to learn them. Some good RTS games anymore don't even have campaigns (Sins of a Solar Empire, Demigod).

Half-Life 2 was not remotely a complete game. The ending was not the ending of Half-Life 2. No, they expected you to buy 3 more games to get to the ending, and we still haven't gotten the last game (4 years down the road). We'll get the other 2 pieces of the Starcraft campaign much faster than that.

You all overreacted to a situation before you took the time to think it through. As a PC gamer I'm embarrassed to see such reactions from my fellow gamers.

 

Campaigns are how I like to learn the three seperate races (and I know I'm not alone in that one).  At least in Starcraft they're setup so certain strategies work really well and that's just how I learn those strategies.  I don't get that just playing random multiplayer maps against the computer or random people.

And with Half-Life 2, I knew there was more planned but after I completed the game I wasn't left feeling like a piece of the game was missing.  The game felt complete and just seemed like it was left open for a sequel (or in this case more episodes). It would be like if you got to Ravenholm and then the game told you you're going to have to wait a year for the next 1/3 of the game, lol spend more money.

Who knows, they could make Starcraft 2 feel completel by just playing the Terran but I'm going to assume they don't until proven otherwise since Starcraft is all about the three races. 

I know I can still play the other two races in multiplayer but a big part of the game for me is the campaign.



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vlad321 said:
The whole argument is over pricing and their structure of the campaigns, or at least that's my problem with it. We have't heard anything about pricing other than "we'll determine how much it should sell for when done" and "we want to get them as close to full games as possible," which in my head adds up to a possibile $50 charge per release. It doesn't matter how they try to spin it the 2nd releases will not be full games and that's that. But that's assuming too much.

The other problem is the stucture. Yes I can play all 3 from the getgo, they stated that a whole bunch of times to calm some people down, but my problem is with playing 30 missions at a time with a race and then waiting another year for the next race's 30 and then another year. They claim this will allow them to have campaigns which are not linear and epic in size, which is true, but they can achieve the same thing if they had 10 missions per race per release as well. I'll still be playing Protoss from the start ( I don't need a campaign to learn), but I don't want to be waiting 2 years to get to their campaign. Also as I stated above, since they are doing the main game + 2 expansions thing, Protoss fans are forced to buy the previous releases (or maybe just the main game without the Zerg release?) to play even a single campaign mission.

Those are my problems with what they are doing and I have thought them through fully and spent hours online trying to scrounge up as much info about this issue as possibile.

I believe your second paragraph is at odds with Gotchaye's second paragraph, which describes a theory I have also told you about.  Please rebut it. 

 



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Gotchaye said:

Twestern, I think you're overstating your case.

I agree with DKII that playing 30 missions with one race is, all else being equal, less worthwhile than 10 missions with each of three races, but it's hardly the end of the world. With what we know now, it's very possible that, when all is said and done, we'll have a main game and two expansion packs' worth of single- and multiplayer content for the price of one main game and two expansion packs. It's entirely possible that what we're getting is the same amount of value that we always get from Blizzard RTSs, just distributed differently across SKUs. While I prefer WC3 the way it is, if the original game had included all of the Human and Undead single player content found in both releases while the expansion pack included all of the Orc and Night Elf single player content found in both releases, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

While this is a curious and, on face, suboptimal design decision, there are a few possible reasons for them to do this. The most obvious is that they've learned a lesson from Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne. If you'll recall, the Orc Frozen Throne 'campaign' was largely tacked on. The Orcs couldn't easily be incorporated into the larger story and so they got a glorified custom map. Perhaps, in working out the plot of SC2, Blizzard encountered a similar problem - perhaps the Terrans are bit players in the arc planned for the second or third expansion. What if the Orc campaign in WC3 had been twice as long at the expense of another race's campaign (which then had a double-length campaign in Frozen Throne)? That presents problems with the WC3 story as it was presented, but, if that had been the design goal from the beginning, perhaps the Orc Frozen Throne dilemma could have been avoided.

Also, you really reach in places. Are you seriously concerned that Terran players will be at a significant advantage because they've played through a campaign while Zerg players haven't? I can't be alone in thinking that the campaigns in typical RTSs (and Blizzard's games are no exception) are relatively poor preparation for multiplayer battles. Skirmishes against the computer aren't even great practice, but they're much, much better than playing the story mode (and they'll be available from the get-go). On the first page, you denounce them for saying that each expansion will make changes to the multiplayer. But isn't that what expansions are for? Beyond the Dark Portal, Brood War, and The Frozen Throne all added new units and abilities to each race. You seem to be attacking the very idea of expansion packs here.

It occurs to me that the rage from various people could just be the weird hatred of 'incompleteness' that you see in the gaming world. Is that what's going on here? Expansion packs are only okay as long as the developer pretends like it's not planning them until after the main game releases? People are way too inclined to think of games as art and game makers as artists, and to feel betrayed when the developer has an idea for making a game better (at a nonnegligible cost in development time) while not implementing it straight away. Gamers need to realize that, given a game and its eventual expansion, it's often impossible to determine which of the expansion's modifications were conceived before the release of the main game - the actual content that you're getting is identical.

 

You know, like vlad321 said: people want to have 10+10+10 mission packs most likely. Not everyone is a "hardcore" Bnet player there, you know. Those people asked in that poll are most likely those people who play on Bnet everyday.



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F1 vs FOTA, when too much power is in couple peoples hands.

---------------------------------------------------------------

heruamon said:
I hope the Protoss are next...but it's going to be zerg...I'm almost certian. After reading up on it a bit...I don't have a real problem with blizzard strategy...as long as you can multi-play with any version...what's the problem? I'll probably get this first Human one, because I'm dying to try SC after so many year, but I'm probably skipping hte zerg and going after the Protoss as my "darling" of SC games.

Like said earlier, not everyone does play on Bnet that actively.

Are you sure your Protoss-pack will work without of Zerg-pack ?

 



Nothing's cheaper than something free.

F1 vs FOTA, when too much power is in couple peoples hands.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Btw, vlad321 and twesterm (sorry if there were other's), it seems that it's almost pointless trying to tell these folks who only care about multiplayer/Bnet side of Sc2, about the story side. It's like when adventure games died and fps reigns.



Nothing's cheaper than something free.

F1 vs FOTA, when too much power is in couple peoples hands.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Punisher said:
Btw, vlad321 and twesterm (sorry if there were other's), it seems that it's almost pointless trying to tell these folks who only care about multiplayer/Bnet side of Sc2, about the story side. It's like when adventure games died and fps reigns.

Did you not read Gotchaye's post or did you simply not understand it?



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