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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22271 Posts
SC:R was recently featured in the pages of NRC Handelsblad, a major Dutch newspaper. For context, it's one of the most respected newspapers in the Netherlands. According to our translator, VoganRL, "If there is important investigative journalism done in the Netherlands it's often them publishing it. Consider them the NY Times of The Netherlands."
Nazgul was particularly happy to see StarCraft in his evening paper. In his very own words, "That's nuts!!"
A loving lick of paint for StarCraft
The twenty year old StarCraft remains popular to this day. StarCraft: Remastered is developer Blizzard’s attempt to please primarily its oldest fans.
Many games have an expiration date: fans lose interest, technology becomes outdated. Yet the popularity of the almost twenty year old strategy game StarCraft seems to actually increase since 2016: the brand-new StarCraft competition ASL reached a peak of 100,000 viewers for the first time in December, twice as much as recent tournaments of the younger StarCraft 2.
Developer Blizzard considered the time ripe for a modernisation of the original: StarCraft Remastered.
In the late nineties, StarCraft in South Korea stood on the cradle of e-sports, competitive games. Korean fans birthed a professional sports world, full of paid superstars and television channels, which would act as blueprint for later e-sports. The weaker western StarCraft teams ended up dominating other games later, such as the Dutch Team Liquid, which on Wednesday bagged 10.5 million Euro by placing first at a big international tournament.
In 2010 a match fixing scandal (Korean top players turned out to have received bribes from gambling sites in return for a loss) and the arrival of StarCraft 2, which was a vastly different game than part 1, meant the end of StarCraft’s role on the main stage in the world of e-sports.
In addition, StarCraft suffers from outdated technology. Troops that fail to work to their destination in an efficient manner, soldiers that cannot be selected in larger numbers than twelve, it seems unthinkable nowadays.
When Blizzard first started work on Remastered, the StarCraft fans were unrelenting. The ‘bugs’ are a part of StarCraft. To not only see gamers fight against their opponent, but also against the game, that’s beautiful. The game’s appeal remains. For every soldier exists a perfect opponent. Every strategy, every game start, has a valid counter strategy. StarCraft is the chess of the gaming world: difficult, slightly elitist, timeless.
Blizzard must have thought: why change?
Remastered is meant for the loyal fans, not to win new ones. Blizzard added cinematics to the story, improved the old graphics and improved the audio. Every now and then this makes the game lose its ghastly atmosphere. Aside from that the game also adds a number of improvement, such as a new zoom function and a way to automatically match up against human opponents, instead of players having to find someone to play against themselves. Yet it remains nothing but a lovingly added lick of paint over an age old classic, which can even be removed with a single press of a button. The concept stays the same: the variable Terrans, the stately Protoss and the monstrous Zerg are still fighting against old constraints.
Translated by: VoganRL
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TLADT24917 Posts
Pretty cool article to read. Author seems to at least know something about the game which is nice to see
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nerd chills whilst reading part of this haha. super cool stuff.
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Stuff like this warms my heart thank you for sharing, made my day.
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Fun fact: the author, Len Maessen, is a woman
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Meanwhile in EU server, peak time concurrent player count is around 1,200
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TLADT24917 Posts
On September 13 2017 14:25 tub74557 wrote:Meanwhile in EU server, peak time concurrent player count is around 1,200 that's a pretty decent count for a 19 year old game ^^
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On September 13 2017 12:08 BigFan wrote:Pretty cool article to read. Author seems to at least know something about the game which is nice to see My sister wrote it actually and yeah, we went to WCG05, 06 and 07 together. Both of us used to write/organize for GosuGamers.
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i always enjoy reading this excuse for a language. makes me giggle.
good article though.
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Nice indeed, although not 100% accurate. Furthermore only 3/5, that's a pretty low score imo... But I guess that's what's to be expected in a time where any AAA title with a huge budget gets 4/5 (or higher) by default and other games are often held to a higher standard.
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On September 14 2017 09:18 Kaolla wrote: Nice indeed, although not 100% accurate. Furthermore only 3/5, that's a pretty low score imo... But I guess that's what's to be expected in a time where any AAA title with a huge budget gets 4/5 (or higher) by default and other games are often held to a higher standard.
Would you give it 5/5 RIGHT NOW? Map pool is a joke (Nostalgia???), ladder sometimes gives 2x points for a win or loss, you often queue against players with a lot of lag.
I mean, the whole reason to buy Remastered is to get ladder. If the ladder experience isn't great...
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On September 14 2017 12:08 iopq wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2017 09:18 Kaolla wrote: Nice indeed, although not 100% accurate. Furthermore only 3/5, that's a pretty low score imo... But I guess that's what's to be expected in a time where any AAA title with a huge budget gets 4/5 (or higher) by default and other games are often held to a higher standard. Would you give it 5/5 RIGHT NOW? Map pool is a joke (Nostalgia???), ladder sometimes gives 2x points for a win or loss, you often queue against players with a lot of lag. I mean, the whole reason to buy Remastered is to get ladder. If the ladder experience isn't great...
I'd give it at least a 4/5, because the base game is just that good.
I personally feel the map pool is not the biggest issue with the game (and something that can easily be fixed), but there's still quite a few pesky bugs that need to be fixed. It's not like other games are bug free at launch though and I think pretty much all games have a fair amount of them when reviewed.
Furthermore, as far as I understand, you will only get paired with Koreans when you actually reach a high lvl (and there's too few ppl nearby available), so that should not really be a problem for most people playing the game. It's a shame, but with the p2p netcode of sc1 this is not something that can easily be solved.
And the whole reason to get remastered for people familiar with the game might be the ladder, but I think to the average/casual player that is not familiar with the game, it should just be judged as a complete game incl. single player campaign perhaps with the footnote that a free version with worse gfx/lack of ladder is also available.
And as a complete game starcraft:r is still better than the average game out there imo and thus it deserves a bit more than 3/5.
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On September 14 2017 12:08 iopq wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2017 09:18 Kaolla wrote: Nice indeed, although not 100% accurate. Furthermore only 3/5, that's a pretty low score imo... But I guess that's what's to be expected in a time where any AAA title with a huge budget gets 4/5 (or higher) by default and other games are often held to a higher standard. Would you give it 5/5 RIGHT NOW? Map pool is a joke (Nostalgia???), ladder sometimes gives 2x points for a win or loss, you often queue against players with a lot of lag. I mean, the whole reason to buy Remastered is to get ladder. If the ladder experience isn't great...
My hunch is that the majority of Remastered purchases were for the campaign, but in any case none of that was mentioned in the review. It seems to have been given 3/5 for the same reason that the gaming press as a whole was politely dismissive of Remastered: they see its "outdatedness" as being solely about keeping high level competitive play difficult, so not for people like them, and not that this style of unit pathing and granular control might have merits that can be appreciated even in singleplayer and casual play.
I think if I had one big disappointment with Remastered it's that I haven't seen any reviewers have the experience that, wait, this kind of tactile RTS is actually unique and interesting and fun in a way that's just as valid in 2017 as the more "modern" RTS games. I have seen a few non-reviewers who had never played BW have that revelation, though.
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On September 14 2017 12:45 Kaolla wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2017 12:08 iopq wrote:On September 14 2017 09:18 Kaolla wrote: Nice indeed, although not 100% accurate. Furthermore only 3/5, that's a pretty low score imo... But I guess that's what's to be expected in a time where any AAA title with a huge budget gets 4/5 (or higher) by default and other games are often held to a higher standard. Would you give it 5/5 RIGHT NOW? Map pool is a joke (Nostalgia???), ladder sometimes gives 2x points for a win or loss, you often queue against players with a lot of lag. I mean, the whole reason to buy Remastered is to get ladder. If the ladder experience isn't great... I'd give it at least a 4/5, because the base game is just that good. I personally feel the map pool is not the biggest issue with the game (and something that can easily be fixed), but there's still quite a few pesky bugs that need to be fixed. It's not like other games are bug free at launch though and I think pretty much all games have a fair amount of them when reviewed. Furthermore, as far as I understand, you will only get paired with Koreans when you actually reach a high lvl (and there's too few ppl nearby available), so that should not really be a problem for most people playing the game. It's a shame, but with the p2p netcode of sc1 this is not something that can easily be solved. And the whole reason to get remastered for people familiar with the game might be the ladder, but I think to the average/casual player that is not familiar with the game, it should just be judged as a complete game incl. single player campaign perhaps with the footnote that a free version with worse gfx/lack of ladder is also available. And as a complete game starcraft:r is still better than the average game out there imo and thus it deserves a bit more than 3/5.
Yes, issues can be fixed. But you don't give a game a high rating until AFTER those issues are fixed.
I'm comparing remastered as a purchase vs. the original game that is free. The original game is 5/5. You don't really NEED remastered unless you plan on spamming ladder games or want updated graphics.
The updated graphics are good enough for me. It's the ladder part that is not fixed yet. I didn't say it can't be 5/5 in the future, I'm just saying it's not 5/5 yet.
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Thank you for relaying.
There is something funny about this. How is the existence of an scbw re article in a serious paper weird? On one hand the "community" professes to want people to take esports and certain gaming practices as worthy of recognition by those antiquated platforms of "information". Because it would show how big it is, because it would make it a "serious" avenue, something important. But on the other hand, you sound surprise that it does.
Gaming is not only for kids, it is big business, it makes for a huge change in the human race raising their kids (or more to the point not raising these kids), it is here to stay. Everyone knows that when you are a part of something, you see it skewed, from a biased point of view, but that is never the end of it.
This article is fun, but you cannot rate as more than a puff piece. i read it as a well deserved dish at the whole thing. But a very poor one at that.
lick of paint No mention of sc2. No word of the many failures that led the game developers to this (not just blizzard mind you, but all the rts multiplayer gaming "scene" is concerned). No word about why rts is "elitist" and what that entails.. Just sugar poured on top of a rather tasteless soup
StarCraft is the chess of the gaming world: difficult, slightly elitist, timeless. All this wooden tongue is nonsense, if i may, please try this:
StarCraft Brood War accidentally ended up as the chess of the gaming world: life time consuming, hugely funny, somewhat elitist, the only one that sold enough units really!
Scbw or sc2 are fun, but very very poorly designed if you are looking for a pure strategy game that happens to be played in real time ; it was entropically designed long before it was trendy to "let things happen organically" when you make a video game (which is another way of saying "lets do things and let the chips fall down where they may").. If you want to argue it is close to chess. or that it was intended to be so, you are delusional. It stems from there and it might have wanted to reclaim it, but it never was. Sc is merely the only real time strategy game that survived, nothing more.
i play an rts with some tenacity and it resembles a much purer rts than scbw or sc2 ever will be. Calling either scbw or sc2 "close" to chess is ridiculous. There is an element of "hazard" in any video game that involves multiplayer and real time. Past that the more elements you incorporate, the less the game will remain of higher quality and interest to the players who would in turn MAKE the game by unfolding every avenue there is to follow in it (past the developers predictions among other things) and play all of its depth (providing said game had that depth from the start). In rts, since the idea is that you have to choose and you have several ways to win. The more fun things equals the more avenues for imbalances or unbalances in the gameplay that would make it of poorer quality. Any element that makes you go away from that purity of essence (Dr Strangelove movie quote) that gives the game itself meaning, makes it more random and while possibly funnier, it lowers the bar.
i"m not saying scbw is a bad current representation of what rts is in 2017, i love it but it is so random and "unpure" that i would never be content with saying it is all well and good as a flag bearer, it is not.
Hopefully, before the 2020ies, developers will yield wifi real time strategy games that will boom on phones, we will have our "mario" or our "quake". Hopefully a dozen new games will appear that will be much purer wishes to get to that "chess" level of commitment (commitment by both the developers and the players).
Again, i mean no one no ill, i could make the same assessment in the analogy itself.
StarCraft is the chess of the gaming world i love chess but i prefer go, if one wants to proclaim what the purest strategy game is.. chess is really much less interesting than go and furthermore go is indeed much closer to video game realities than what checkers or chess are like, even with the clock.
So, again, no harm no foul but there was something funny to be said: this is a puff piece and you guys are licking it clean .. if you are looking for the people who are "hindering" progress of rts games in the zeitgeist.. look no further, you are it.
ps: i should have spoilered my "rant" to not sound so aggressive (as i do sound aggressive .. sorry, anywhere everywhere i go i seem to be misconstrued as being such while i'm barely passionate about the subject at hand) but i am "warned" to never use them again.. so i abide ... i compromise .. i do. gl hf
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