Starcraft 2: Hopin' and wishin'

It's coming. Eventually Starcraft 2 will be out, and it's going to be big. How do I know? Because people are going to buy it no matter what. But wait, how do I know that? Because the same 'tards that bought the last two Bethesda games still haven't managed to wipe themselves out of the gene pool.


Now from my perspective, this could be both good and bad. Warcraft III- probably my favorite game of all time -was also very successful. Unfortunately, this was before Blizzard started putting games out like Wrath of the Bonelord Part 5: Increase MY CRITIKAL. One of my fears (and I've seen some similar sentiments on a few forums I frequent) is that Starcraft 2 is going to be a cash-in-casual butt-rape of the SC name. However, so far Blizzard has seemed pretty intent on pushing the competitive aspect of Starcraft, which is definitely a step in the right direction. They can't POSSIBLY have forgotten what made the last Starcraft such a success... right?


I've made this assumption before, though, and look where it got me. HAL crapped all over the Smash Bros. legacy with Brawl (Do you REALLY see yourself playing that game in 5 years?),I'm definitely getting scared of the next Street Fighter game, and of course Halo, which started off as a great competitive game has devolved into the retarded shit storm that is Halo 3 (did they ever fix that bug with the melee?). Add in that Blizzard recently teamed up with Activision, and suddenly I'm starting to get worried. In all fairness, however, The recent exhibition matches from Blizzcon show that even in it's alpha stage Starcraft 2 is looking relatively solid.


Then why worry? Well there's a pretty decent reason, and that is that even when Blizzard gets it RIGHT, there's a ton of room for problems. Warcraft III has been plagued by imbalanced heroes for YEARS, and no amount of patches has been able to calm the storm. Say what you want, but once you get to about level 25 on the ladder, you won't be facing anything from there on but cookie cutter strategies. I don't think this is purely the player's faults, although they certainly help to propagate the problem (for more on this check out the latest from the expensive planetarium, you'll find the link to your right.). The simple fact of the matter is that once you get to a certain point, you have to pick certain heroes (and at times even certain unit combinations) or put yourself at a disadvantage right off the bat.


Most competitive games have this type of ailment, it is by no means exclusive to WC3. In fact, one of the main draws of Starcraft is that this wasn't really the case. Now I know there are similar things in SC, but if you've checked out some of the competitive WC3 scene you'll see the VAST difference. Every game has it's own "top-tier" thing. Street Fighter 3 has Chun-Yun-Ken. Counterstrike has the AWP. Smash 64 has Kirby and Falcon (although pretty much everything is cheap in SB64). Smash Bros. Melee has Falco, Marth, Fox. Halo2 had the battle rifle. But none of these other games have been quite so dominated by the top-tier stuff as Warcraft 3, and I find it very sad that Blizzard couldn't find it in their power to do SOMETHING to at least temper that effect.



A possible explanation for this failure is that the hero system is inherently broken at some level, but I really think that would be a cop-out to accept. What if they just couldn't do it? What if Blizzard just doesn't have it in them anymore to create a game as "perfect" as Starcraft? I hope I'm wrong.

What's wrong with the Brawl community?

These fellows have some serious problems, from what I've seen so far. After all, who would've thought trying to make a game competitive that seems to have been play-tested for about 35 minutes would be hard? The issues with Brawl are worth many posts here so I wont go into them all right away, but lets focus on one little morsel of complete bullshit imbalance, this Asshole:


Now before I go on I want to make something clear: The point of this post is not to illustrate how insanely, horribly, ridiculously stupid this ability Dedede has is. The point of this post is to show you the difference between the right and wrong way to fix a problem in a game that could be competitive.

We're gonna talk about chain-grabbing today, something that should give any game designer a deep, dark shudder of disgust. Let me explain. So your character has a grab attack, which removes control from the victim for a short period. Great. Now what happens when you make the cool-down on this move smaller than the amount of time the victim is not in control of their actions? Oh and also, you fail to make the grab move the victim far enough away that they are no longer in range of standard attacks? Well what happens is:
His name is Herbert H. Samuels-Dick, and he is what happens.

King Dedede is capable of chain throwing much (if not most) of the cast of brawl INDEFINITELY. There is only one limitation to this chain-throw, which also happens to be its strength (lucky!). With most of the characters it works on (there are a handful of exceptions), Dedede (and the victim) must continue to move forward with each subsequent throw.

Great! Once I get to the edge of the stage, I'm free! Well, that's assuming you have the luxury of an edge. On many stages in Brawl, there are places where the ground leads right off into the "kill zone", meaning once you get a SINGLE grab (not hard to do), Dedede can kill you for free. The only other possibility is: if there's a wall he can chain grab you against, he can just build up your damage forever until he decides to let you go.

Woops! We forgot to test it! Sometimes these small companies like HAL can't afford to really playtest their games, so problems like this are bound to come up. It's okay, they can patch it, Right? Oh right they didn't bother to make it patchable, sweet!

Now, I'm going to look at this problem as if I'm a tournament director. Here we have a character who is otherwise about on par with the rest of the cast. He has one ability that, if abused, severely breaks the game on many stages. I have a few options here:

1. Ban the character

• This solves your problem, but removes one of the more interesting characters from the game. What if someone comes to your tournament who has only ever played as Dedede? Most players at a tourney are totally clueless and probably can't even pull off the chain grab. They'll probably end up going home with a sour taste in their mouth.
  

2. Ban the chain-grab

• Say you can only do 2-3 repetitions of the grab and throw combo. Requires a bit of oversight from tourney admins, but nothing players couldn't work out themselves. You can have a "one warning" policy. Sometimes someone will try to pull some shit, but at least the high profile players will stick to it in the finals.
  

3. Ban all the stages with walls or platforms that lead off the stage

• Solves part of the problem, but still, a lot of people are going to be annoyed when they lose control of their character for upwards of 15 seconds. Not to mention, these are some of the most interesting stages in the game. What if my character is great on the banned stages and poor on the ones left over? We've created new imbalance.

4. Do nothing

• Let the players deal with it. "If it's so bad, dont get grabbed in the first place." Every tournament ends with Dedede vs. Dedede (exaggeration, of course). Seems like what hardcore people would do, until the finals of your tournaments are decided by 1-2 second who-grabs-who-first fiesta relays.

So which do they pick? Number 3. WHY!?!?! Did they not think about this? For even 10 seconds? If you don't agree with me off the bat that option 2 straight up blows option 3 out of the water, let me highlight one very important point. The ONLY downside to option 2 can be completely nullified by good management. Option 3 on the other hand? Sorry, those stages are gone, and who knows what character is going to start dominating on whatever is left over. I've thought about this a while and my only conclusion is this: Smash players are terribly frightened of all the cool things about the game they play.

The best example is how they ban items, completely out of hand. Before the game even came OUT it was assumed that items would be banned. Try going for a long chain grab when items are on, and you'll see that it barely ever works. Smash is the only fighting game with items, and you turn them off without even trying it out. Cowards.

But even this hypothesis doesn't really cover the blatantly illogical idea of totally banning MANY great stages, just so that King Dedede is allowed to do his infinite chain grab. Do you tournament directors get that? Read that again. THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE DOING. Ban the chain-grab, and leave my stages alone, please.