StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm "99% Done"

"We are 99 percent done," StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder told Kotaku when asked about progress on the upcoming Heart of the Swarm expansion for their science fiction RTS sequel. However, he makes it sound like one of those progress bars that will sit at 99% for a while, adding: "but that last one percent's a bitch." He goes on to explain that all the units are in place, but this next phase is open-ended: "It's the tuning and polish that really takes us a long time, and that's where we get into the unknowns."
View : : :
51.
 
Re: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm
Jun 17, 2012, 23:08
51.
Re: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Jun 17, 2012, 23:08
Jun 17, 2012, 23:08
 
Flatline wrote on Jun 17, 2012, 19:21:
MattyC wrote on Jun 17, 2012, 11:17:
I can't see most of your images. It just errors out with forbidden. However SC2 looks way better than WarCraft 3. I have both on my PC atm and can fire them up. SC2 just looks much better. Your StarCraft 2 screenshots (not sure why you picked low res ones, but it doesn't matter) clearly look better than anything I saw in WarCraft 3.

I am not sure why you threw in the strawman Call of Duty bit. I don't like Call of Duty and unlike the FPS market, the RTS market is fairly barren. Particularly for 'pure' or old style RTS games.

E.g. Company of Heroes, I know a lot of people liked that game, but for me it was a bore. It had no mechanics, no real macro. Maybe I am stuck in the past, but I like that in my RTS. I have had a bit of fun with that style of game like Warhammer DoW and World in Conflict, but it isn't really new (Microsoft's Close Combat).

On release dates? I guess if you cherry pick or are fairly young. StarCraft was in development for quite a while. They even did a full engine rebuild (it originally was more or less WarCraft 2 in space). They also totally canned their adventure game after quite a while in development. And your mentioned Diablo 2? Was in development quite some time. I was hoping to find my original StarCraft jewel case which, IIRC, had some overly ambitious release date for Diablo 2 on it; but I cannot locate it.


Either way I would prefer quality of over quantity. To follow your own comment I don't need my annual Generic War Shooter 20<xx> Men of Wary Brotherly Valor Honor.

My criteria on the screen caps were to find the best looking screenshots, resolution not withstanding, on the first page of Google Image Search. I wasn't about to go through and host all the photos.

And my point wasn't that SC2 looks the same as WC3, my point was that 8 years had past and you saw only iterative improvement over WC3.

The Call of Duty reference is appropriate and amusing, since you find generic war shooters to be shit, but generic RTS games that are 95% copies of previous RTS games to be just fine.

And... wait... You're saying Starcraft was a macro game? BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. SC is *purely* about micromanagement. Anyway, I wasn't talking about Company of Heroes gameplay, I was talking about it's graphics engine, which is 4 years older than SC2, and pumps out far better visuals than SC2. Maybe I should have used pictures of Red Alert 3, which came out 2 years before SC2, uses the same isometric view, and manages to look better than SC2.

Way to try to change the topic and move the goalposts.

And yeah, I'm really cherry picking release dates. I just covered fucking Blizzard's release catalog for 15 YEARS. And my point is still valid, because my original complaint was that 2+ years for a SC2 expansion is bullshit. For proof, I turn to Blizzard's past history, where expansions for just about anything shy of WoW took a year or less to publish. But seriously, 2-3 years to push out a bunch of single player missions and a half dozen new units? That's psychotic, especially when we all know that within the first month all that "polishing" is going right out the window when they rebalance things to reflect reality.

Your credibility is pretty much nil on this argument dude. You say you prefer quality, but let's face it, SC2 is 95% the clone of SC1 with a new graphics engine that would look dated in 2008. SC1 could have released a high rez texture pack/engine patch and a new expansion pack and been 99% of what SC2 was.

10 years for that isn't quality, it's lazy bullshit, and if it was *anyone* other than blizzard, you'd be calling foul on it and you know it. And I reiterate. In the time it took to "create" Starcraft 2, Blizzard also put out the entirity of content for World of Warcraft, from inception to cataclysm. And they still had to patch the living bejeebus out of it to balance things.

Blizzard has never ever catered to the super high system req oh other games. I noted that. I think Sc2 looks good. If you disagree that is fine.

RTS games are far rarer than FPS games, you ignored that point.


Yes SC2 requires macro. I like that. It makes watching and playing the game more fun. Again if you don't like that, fine. I like it and see it as an added skill required element. I changed no 'goalposts'. I was just saying why I liked SC2.

Blizzard, like Valve have their own 'time'. If you haven't noticed this... sorry. It is well acknowledged.

I never asked for credibility, and no SC2 is not that much like SC1 unless you never played it.. :/

Furthermore I have no idea when Blizzard started on Sc2. You can't go off the last release date and say 'yeah bru they were totally working on it since then'. Even if you could, I have no reason to hate on SC2 because of release date. I like the game. You may no, and that is fine. I, however, do and that is just what it is. I am not the Lord of Gaming. I may have fun with some titles you do not and you may have fun with some things I did not. It is just opinion.


That said, calling Sc2 lazy bs is a laugh. Sorry, but that is what it is. SC2 is a solid game.

@shinchan0s I agree that they need a new IP REALLY badly. While I like the remakes, they cannot go on forever.
”Not many people know I owned the first radio in Springfield. Weren’t much on the air then. Just Edison reciting the alphabet over and over. “A,” he’d say. Then “B.” “C” would usually follow."
Avatar 39012
Date
Subject
Author
2.
Jun 15, 2012Jun 15 2012
3.
Jun 15, 2012Jun 15 2012
10.
Jun 15, 2012Jun 15 2012
5.
Jun 15, 2012Jun 15 2012
8.
Jun 15, 2012Jun 15 2012
11.
Jun 15, 2012Jun 15 2012
21.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
9.
Jun 15, 2012Jun 15 2012
12.
Jun 15, 2012Jun 15 2012
13.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
15.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
16.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
35.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
18.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
19.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
20.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
41.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
42.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
43.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
44.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
46.
Jun 17, 2012Jun 17 2012
22.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
29.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
23.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
24.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
25.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
30.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
27.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
28.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
31.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
32.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
37.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
38.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
39.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
40.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
14.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
33.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
34.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
36.
Jun 16, 2012Jun 16 2012
49.
Jun 17, 2012Jun 17 2012
50.
Jun 17, 2012Jun 17 2012
 51.
Jun 17, 2012Jun 17 2012
  Re: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm