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I think the big fault that I don't see a way to write around is that Mengsk is not a threat to Kerrigan. He wasn't for the entirety of Brood War, and we've been shown throughout Starcraft 2 that his police state is losing its grip and that Valerian, who is scheming to usurp him, already openly commands half his fleet. Kerrigan is just there to keep him from bloodying his own hands, and I guess because he doesn't want her as an enemy. Not that Duran or Amon would have made a more interesting final boss, but they're the ones who could have realistically posed a threat to Kerrigan. HotS has to have her walk blindly into his trap twice to generate any tension, and then it has her be saved by some dude who happened to be around rather than any competence on her part because that's the easiest way to have a sudden twist.
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May 5, 2024 10:28
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MagusofStars posted:This scene absolutely nails one thing: Kerrigan soloing Mengsk's palace with the rest of the Swarm nowhere in sight is pretty solid gameplay/cutscene fidelity. ah, but remember, that was the Queen of Blades so you can't blame Kerrigan for all those atrocities. Now, all the ones that happened in this game...
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May 5, 2024 10:55
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I think the big fault that I don't see a way to write around is that Mengsk is not a threat to Kerrigan. He wasn't for the entirety of Brood War, and we've been shown throughout Starcraft 2 that his police state is losing its grip and that Valerian, who is scheming to usurp him, already openly commands half his fleet. Kerrigan is just there to keep him from bloodying his own hands, and I guess because he doesn't want her as an enemy. I agree with this. The things that made Mengsk dangerous and memorable were that he was smart, ruthless, and charismatic enough to get otherwise good people to go along with him most of the time. And at some point between Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2, Blizzard just... lost the ability to write smart and charismatic characters. Exceptionally talented voice actors could still sometimes make otherwise dull characters memorable, but that's kind of it. Mengsk went from 'Manipulative mastermind' to 'Generic space emperor' because Blizzard couldn't remember how to write a good manipulative mastermind. See Narud/Duran going from a creepy enigma to an anime villain.
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May 5, 2024 12:47
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BisbyWorl posted:Then Jimmy yeets him so hard it breaks the artifact button, rendering the Kerrigan zapper harmless. I always assumed it got broken when Jim grabbed the hand holding it. What with, y'know, him being in power armour at the time. This being Blizzard, though, you're probably right. And how did Jim get in position entirely silently? Those suits are loud! Pretty much every cutscene with one has it thumping around, servos whining.
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May 5, 2024 13:13
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It's not particularly insightful, but seeing this cinematic I'm just struck by how... Unnecessary it is. Okay sure, she tears through the palace to get her vengeance. But what story beat is served by her becoming incapacitated and needing rescue? Is it the reward for rescuing her true love? But there's never any self-sacrifice to earn it (though I guess they have been trying to sell her zergifying again being that, albeit clumsily. It's not like she doesn't revel in being Queen of the Zerg again). That is putting aside how idiotic it is for the entire Swarm to forget about the artefact after what happened. Guess that a level 12 psychic isn't enough to suss that out as she personally marches up to Mensk, huh.
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May 5, 2024 13:13
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I know that there’s no way they could have shown it on-screen without risking an M rating, but in retrospect, it seems like such a missed opportunity for Kerrigan to have her wings piercing his shoulders and then not proceed to vertically bifurcate him. Just turning him into a human PSY grenade feels too… “clean” for what’s supposed to be the moment of visceral revenge that the whole game was supposedly building towards this entire campaign.
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May 5, 2024 14:22
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I liked mengsk more than kerrigan
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May 5, 2024 14:29
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aniviron posted:Thanks Bisby, really glad you played this game so I won't ever have to. I paid full retail price for physical editions of all three parts of SC2. By Heart I was hesitant. By Void I knew full well this was a bad idea and waste of money, and I did it anyway for completion's sake. Loving the catharsis of this thread. I stopped remembering the story about now, I think, because I have no memory of The Reckoning or this cutscene. Definitely gave up on multiplayer by now, because there's a big list of units I don't recognize(Ravager?) Void is a void, the only thing I remember is one character and one awesome super-unit that reminded me a lot of the impractical but game-ending experimentals in Supreme Commander, a much better game. Think I'll spend the weekend replaying Supreme Commander. Wish it had a Starcraft mod.
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May 5, 2024 14:36
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The Chad Jihad posted:I liked mengsk more than kerrigan Same. He's a Space Fascist and all that but gently caress me it was nice having a character that actually seemed to exist in a simulacrum of the "real world" while it lasted. We're all aboard the stupid PROPHECY OF DOOOOOOM poo poo until the end now.
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May 5, 2024 15:17
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Cythereal posted:I agree with this. The things that made Mengsk dangerous and memorable were that he was smart, ruthless, and charismatic enough to get otherwise good people to go along with him most of the time. the key here is that limitations made the writing work better. Writing a smart and charismatic character requires that You the Audience don't see anything that makes you say 'wait, that's stupid." due to disc space and budget limitations, even Kerrigan, who gets by far the most lines of anyone in the game, speaks for what, ten minutes total over the course of Starcraft+Brood War? Details are glossed over, bare first impressions are all you get, and so your imagination fills in the gaps of Arcturus Mengsk, Malevolent Genius. give Blizzard free rein to write out every detail of the supposed master plans, however, and suddenly writing smart+charismatic gets very, very difficult. to praise a good bit of an otherwise really disappointing game's plot, remember Fallout 3? and President John Henry Eden of the Enclave? You get like two canned speeches from him on the radio as your lead up to him, and you get them the whole game. but they're charming, and folksy, and vaguely sinister, and so when you run into him and learn he's a computerized Ultimate President program you say 'oh, so THATS where they were going with this.' if they'd given Eden a dozen more speeches, on various topics, and with some kind of reactivity, somebody would have cracked and put in some cutesy computer references that ruined the twist such as it was. Less is more! it's a lesson nerds are typically bad at learning!
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May 5, 2024 15:19
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Remember how in brood wars, Mengsk got out-outmaneuvered by Kerrigan, and when he (and two other factions!) tried to just butt head with her she overpowered them? I don't think this game does. But anyhow, congrats BisbyWorl, another one down!
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May 5, 2024 16:04
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bladededge posted:I paid full retail price for physical editions of all three parts of SC2. By Heart I was hesitant. By Void I knew full well this was a bad idea and waste of money, and I did it anyway for completion's sake. Loving the catharsis of this thread. It could have been worse, you could have also bought the two strategy guides like I did, back when they were in vogue, and these were large hardcovers too (by BradyGames). For some reason they didn't make one for Legacy. Anyway, props to Bisby for slugging through this bad expansion so some of us don't have to. SteveSteveSteve fucked around with this message at 17:36 on May 5, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 16:46
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Aren't strategy guides written before the game is even finished? By people who don't fully know or understand the game? And they are obsolete with the day 1 patch?
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May 5, 2024 16:51
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I will be honest, I quite liked a lot of the tuff in the Protoss campaign in LotV.
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May 5, 2024 16:52
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Poil posted:Aren't strategy guides written before the game is even finished? By people who don't fully know or understand the game? And they are obsolete with the day 1 patch? Yup. One infamous Blizzard example being that the official strategy guide for Warcraft 3 talked about Jaina dying halfway through the human campaign, because she did in an earlier version of the game's story but the release version of the game didn't kill her off.
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May 5, 2024 16:52
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I remember KOTOR 2’s guide having stuff like a boss fight with Atris, complete with an outfit change that never made it even into the modded restoration
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May 5, 2024 17:08
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My WC3 guide mentioned an Orb of Lightning during the Human campaign that wasn't there and I was very mad about it. Also I forgot to say: congrats to Bisby on clearing HOTS!
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May 5, 2024 17:28
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Congratulations and condolences of finishing hots and heading towards lotv. We who will suffer along with you, but not quite as much since we're fortunate enough not to be the ones playing, salute you.
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May 5, 2024 17:32
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Poil posted:Aren't strategy guides written before the game is even finished? By people who don't fully know or understand the game? And they are obsolete with the day 1 patch? As for Day 1 patches, obviously that makes everything worse, but the issues with strategy guides existed before consoles even had Internet connections, never mind downloading a massive patch on release day.
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May 5, 2024 17:37
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I think Legacy is the best campaign of SC2 for several reasons, and not just because I like the Protoss. Yes, the ending is truly dreadful, the acting is terrible (with one enormous exception), and too many of the missions are of the "the enemy has three special buildings which you must destroy" type. But the special abilities and army customization is the best of the three games and I think the story has some legitimately interesting and compelling elements. At the very least, there are high stakes for why you are doing everything, which was kind of lacking in Wings and Heart. I'm excited for the next stage of the LP.
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May 5, 2024 17:45
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gohuskies posted:I think Legacy is the best campaign of SC2 for several reasons, and not just because I like the Protoss. Yes, the ending is truly dreadful, the acting is terrible (with one enormous exception), and too many of the missions are of the "the enemy has three special buildings which you must destroy" type. But the special abilities and army customization is the best of the three games and I think the story has some legitimately interesting and compelling elements. At the very least, there are high stakes for why you are doing everything, which was kind of lacking in Wings and Heart. I'm excited for the next stage of the LP. "The objective of this mission is super-unique. There are <number> objectives... each guarded by a progressively stonger force of enemies."
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May 5, 2024 17:53
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Poil posted:Aren't strategy guides written before the game is even finished? By people who don't fully know or understand the game? And they are obsolete with the day 1 patch? Yeah, and another example is the Nintendo Power guide written for Final Fantasy 1. There are multiple instances where the contents of a chest don't match what the guide lists and it's usually a case of the contents of two chests being swapped. So, you can find yourself going out of your way to a chest with what should be a weapon or armor upgrade according to the guide but instead find 10 gold pieces or nothing at all inside the chest.
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May 5, 2024 18:00
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As terrible as Jim and Kerrigan's romance was handled post-Brood War, I at least appreciate that it ends with them mutually recognizing that they can't be together and accepting that. In a vacuum I'd almost call that a good moment.
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May 5, 2024 18:47
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One other detail I don't think anyone's pointed out yet - Jim's actually off-model in this cutscene. He looks so much younger! Specifically, all the grey in his hair and facial hair is missing.
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May 5, 2024 18:49
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BlazetheInferno posted:One other detail I don't think anyone's pointed out yet - Jim's actually off-model in this cutscene. He looks so much younger! Clearly Kerrigan left Abathur some standing orders on this matter.
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May 5, 2024 19:01
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Despite everything hots is my favourite of the 3 sc2 games, it's the most fun to play and has the story that people want to talk about the most even all these years later. I barely remember anything from lotv and not a lot actually happens in woL
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May 5, 2024 19:35
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Grammarchist posted:As terrible as Jim and Kerrigan's romance was handled post-Brood War, I at least appreciate that it ends with them mutually recognizing that they can't be together and accepting that. In a vacuum I'd almost call that a good moment. ha hahaha hahahahahaha ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa
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May 5, 2024 20:21
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I don't mind Kerrigan committing atrocities and just being generally evil, and getting away with it, so long as we can play it straight. If we have to play as a bad guy, let us play a bad guy. Don't shoehorn her into being a "misunderstood good guy".
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May 5, 2024 20:35
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As someone who was a huge fan of Samir Duran in Brood War, his appearance as Narud in SC2 was so disappointing to me. He always struck me as a cunning behind-the-scenes manipulator, someone who always had an exit plan in place and was ready to quietly slip away and move on to his next scheme. I always thought a final confrontation with him would involve having to ambush him and cut off his escape routes to finally pin him down. Instead, he jumps straight into one-on-one combat with Kerrigan and gets his rear end kicked. Backwards name aside, Narud hardly even feels like the same character as Duran.
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May 5, 2024 21:17
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Grammarchist posted:As terrible as Jim and Kerrigan's romance was handled post-Brood War, I at least appreciate that it ends with them mutually recognizing that they can't be together and accepting that. In a vacuum I'd almost call that a good moment. You sweet summer child.
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May 5, 2024 21:46
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BlazetheInferno posted:"The objective of this mission is super-unique. There are <number> objectives... each guarded by a progressively stonger force of enemies." Ugh, between that and the strict timers most of the missions had, LotV is so so repetitive.
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May 5, 2024 23:19
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BlazetheInferno posted:One other detail I don't think anyone's pointed out yet - Jim's actually off-model in this cutscene. He looks so much younger! Mengsk looks substantially grayer than his previous headshots as well
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May 5, 2024 23:22
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BlazetheInferno posted:"The objective of this mission is super-unique. There are <number> objectives... each guarded by a progressively stonger force of enemies." JackSplater posted:Ugh, between that and the strict timers most of the missions had, LotV is so so repetitive. While it is repetitive, it's used a lot because it is a good way to do single player RTS missions. The timer forces you to be active and aggressive instead of just turtling up forever into a deathball, and the multiple objectives give you some room to make your own choices in how you approach the missions, and the escalating enemy spawns at the objectives provide reasonable degree of challenge throughout the mission. Compared to to "Beat up this big enemy base which sends the same attack wave every few minutes" the LOTV standard mission template has a lot of advantages. Which is not to say that they shouldn't have thrown in more non-standard missions.
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May 5, 2024 23:38
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Personally, I dislike timed missions. Even if the time limit is generous, seeing the timer counting down makes me tense, which causes me to rush, which causes me to make mistakes, which makes the time pressure worse, which causes me to panic and make more mistakes and just generally sends me into a doom spiral. I greatly prefer being able to play at my own pace.
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May 6, 2024 00:57
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This is where I stopped. I was so just utterly disgusted with HotS on almost every level that I didn't buy Lotv because I didn't give a poo poo about what happened any more. This is after WoL made me just completely buy into Starcraft despite never having engaged with it before. From a gameplay perspective it's awful, every map is a trivial faceroll where you can win with Kerrigan or you can win with roach/hydra and god loving forbid you use both. And from a story perspective, loving christ. The entire plot is set off by Kerrigan never considering Mengsk is lying. Deciding that the first thing to do after all her friends sacrificed to De-zerg her is to re-zerg herself and the goddamn form she gets doesn't even have the decency to be any different from the original. And then yeah, she just spends her time genociding planets and then getting completely redeemed at the end because gently caress me, consequences for actions do not exist here.
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May 6, 2024 01:16
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mr_stibbons posted:While it is repetitive, it's used a lot because it is a good way to do single player RTS missions. The timer forces you to be active and aggressive instead of just turtling up forever into a deathball, and the multiple objectives give you some room to make your own choices in how you approach the missions, and the escalating enemy spawns at the objectives provide reasonable degree of challenge throughout the mission. Compared to to "Beat up this big enemy base which sends the same attack wave every few minutes" the LOTV standard mission template has a lot of advantages. Something I have learned doing level design is that it's often bad to force players into doing things they don't want. You want to provide incentives for them do to the thing that is the most fun, but you shouldn't force them. It's a mistake that I generally attribute to very amateurish level & mission designers, because most good games don't do it, but it's something I see from every single rookie designer I have ever observed. This idea that when you are making something, you're worried that the player is going to play it wrong, that you have to stop them from doing it the way they want to do it. The timer is a great example of this; why is it bad for the player to turtle up and play slowly if they want to? No matter what limitations you set, some amount of your player base is going to have fun playing that way, and all the incentives you give them and all the hard time limits you push on them aren't going to make them have fun by being aggressive and fast. Maybe it's because they don't have the reflexes to do it. Maybe they like to play stoned. Maybe it's because they're in it to relax. Maybe they're the kind of methodical psycho who likes pulling wings off insects. Doesn't matter. Even if playing a slow turtled game with a deathball is objectively less fun with the gameplay you designed, the right way to go about getting players to do this is by demonstrating to them with positive feedback that they are going to have more fun if they get off their rear end and go aggressive. Good games do this in a way that's basically invisible to the player, you make them think it's their idea, or they don't even think about it at all, it's just how they play. And by guiding the player to play in a way that's fun, you make a good game. But the point is that there are also going to be players who play ~wrong~ in some way all of the time, and when you set hard limits to restrict the way people want to do things, they never like it. The right lesson to learn from this as a mature level & mission designer is to be okay with people being wrong, as long as you can guide the people who actually want to engage the way you want them to engage in the proper manner. When you set hard limits, that's when people drop games, because it loving sucks to have the game flat out tell you no, the way you enjoy this is bad.
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May 6, 2024 01:31
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aniviron posted:You want to provide incentives for them do to the thing that is the most fun, but you shouldn't force them. Xcom: Enemy Within had one of the best ways of dealing with this: Meld. Players were taking forever crossing maps in slow overwatch crawls, and the devs didn't like that, so how to fix it? They add in a resource with a hard time limit of how many turns before you can't gather it. The game is entirely playable without it, but if you want the cool-rear end cyborgs or the gene mods you need to speed up. It gives the player the choice of if the extra risk is worth the reward, and they're free to choose either way. JackSplater fucked around with this message at 01:54 on May 6, 2024 |
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May 6, 2024 01:52
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Nah it's good when games encourage you to get better at them and play them the way they're intended and improve. Not all games have to be for everyone, and the way in which SC2 puts a lot more pressure on the player to actually go out and do things on the map is a lot more helpful in creating an engaging play experience. Some people are going to dislike games pushing them like that and that's ok. It doesn't mean designing games to push players to engage with them is a mistake. Hell, see XCOM 2 and how people lost their minds over the map timers when they shook a lot of people out of their comfort zone. It was a good thing.
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May 6, 2024 03:09
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I do appreciate when the timer is something that makes sense within the context of the game, like the "collect the terrazine before the Tal'darim cap the vents" level in Wings and the "feed the ancient zerg before the primal can destroy the food" in Heart. They press you to move with urgency but it doesn't feel as explicit and as contrived as "we need to do whatever before the planet explodes in 15 minutes, here's a countdown clock in the corner of the screen".
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May 6, 2024 03:24
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I think the X-Com example is good but it’s subtly different - what was going on there wasn’t that people thought being cautious was more fun. I mean I’m sure some people did but that wasn’t the root of the issue, the root of the issue was that with the way their system worked and particularly the lethality of individual enemies, creeping across the map in overwatch was less fun but was optimal play. I tend to be on the cautious and methodical side, though not as much as some folks, and I still really appreciated the way Enemy Within and XCom2 tried to make it so that the incredibly slow strategy wasn’t just the best one - it just wasn’t all that interesting. You see similar challenges in a lot of tabletop dungeon crawlers, where the optimal strategy is often to use your best abilities as often as you can and then rest to get them back, and you see a lot of ways to control it, like Gloomhaven’s constant card drain that creates a de facto time limit (outside of a few broken edge cases). And I think this is relevant to the SC2 thing, too. Enemy Within and XCom2 had two different approaches to the problem - Enemy Within gave you reasons to go faster in the form of meld, whereas XCom2 just had a lot of missions where you couldn’t take too long or you’d lose. IIRC there were also some where the enemy got reinforcements every so often as a soft timer - you could go slower but in exchange you’d need to fight more total enemies. Personally I do think I prefer the design where you try to enable players to have more options for how to approach a situation, rather than just outright imposing a cap that removes a slower approach because you’re worried it’s optimal but also less fun for a lot of players. But I think one big difference here in skill lies in identifying whether something is a you-the-developer problem or an objective problem. Like if someone plays your game in a way you personally don’t like, that imo isn’t a problem if they’re having fun. If you have a map where it’s possible to turtle forever and then create overwhelming forces, then that’s imo perfectly fine if it’s one option of many and not a lot more reliably successful than the others. A lot of players I think default to that strategy out of a lack of confidence and there’s some value to nudging them out of their comfort zone because they might discover they like a more aggressive strategy - but there are a lot of ways to do that without requiring it. Side objectives, for example, or initial enemy attacks that run away, tempting the player into following them to try to finish the job, or a mission that clearly communicates that the enemy is reinforcing as well. And of course an occasional mission with a hard time limit or whatever can be fun and a cool way to mix things up. But my personal opinion is that if a majority of missions have a strict time limit, that’s much more on the side of the designer deciding there’s a right way to play, rather than simply suggesting options to a player that they might otherwise not be confident to explore themselves, unless you’ve got a situation where the core parameters of the game make turtling an otherwise broken strategy, like XCom Enemy Unknown. And in that case I feel like you’d be well served coming up with a way to tweak the core parameters. (Eg in XCom, having some kind of alternating initiative system so enemy adds weren’t so immediately punishing would be a big help.)
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