The solution is pretty obvious. Shorten the attack animations and make units dance again. If Starcraft IIs game engine really is as awesome as Dustin Browder has said it is on multiple occasions. If it really can do anything. Then why is it that not a single unit in the game ended up with a shorter firing animation than the time it takes them to decelerate? Was it really all because of balance, Blizzard?
What good is a terribly awesome engine that can do [almost] anything, if it cant achieve a moving shot?
I personally suspect that Starcraft 2 was coded in a way that has prevented Blizzard from implementing moving shot. Perhaps the engine is too awesome to allow it. Perhaps it emulates Newtonian Physics too well for moving shot to exist. While I was trying it out, the main difference I noticed was that in SC1 you had to direct your units towards the enemy you were attacking. After the attack animation was done you could control your units in any direction you wanted. In SC2, your air unit will simply glide in whatever direction it was gliding before you issued the attack command and turn around its axis to aim towards the enemy. Its not realistic at all if you think about real life air to air combat. But in Blizzards awesome engine, a body in motion will stay in motion unless
it exceeds its deceleration timer?
I dont want to be too harsh on Dustin Browder and Blizzard. Because I think Starcraft II is a decent game after all. But somewhere along the way it feels like they missed the entire point of what makes up for a great RTS game. They forgot that the most crucial ingredients to a game is not how cool and awesome its units are, but how it feels when you play it. That inexplicable feeling that the game grants you total control of your actions. Playing Brood War it felt like given enough time and practice you could achieve anything!
Putting someone like Dustin Browder in charge of development for SC2 though, is almost like letting one of the many overly-enthuasiastic-and-overly-optimistic TL forum resident D- noobs have the last say about what is good and bad for a multi million dollar game. Sure those crazy (slightly delusional) threads about the viability of some obscure unit or strategy can be fun to read from time to time. But in the end it's always reassuring to have that old veteran come in, one of those fountains of cynicism, to tell you what will work and what won't. What's realistic and what's not. Where your focus should rather lie instead of wasting your time with things might be awesome but don't work in reality. I feel that Blizzard desperately needed but lacked one of those voices in the development of SC2. The passion is there no doubt, but there needs to be a voice of reason behind it all.
I am a bit worried that everyone suddenly stopped questioning Dustin Browder and Blizzard after the Starcraft II Beta was released. How come we all settled for less, when what we should have been doing if anything was asking for at least as much as we had before? No chat rooms, no ability to switch in between servers, no LAN support, no whisper functionality, no DND, unlimited unit selection, rally point to minerals, MBS, no moving shot; the list goes on and on. One compromise after the other.
Im not saying every change was unwarranted, or that every change was for the worse. Most of us can by now agree on the fact that MBS and unlimited unit selection turned out to be pretty good changes. But the fact of the matter is: were constantly settling for less and less without even putting up a real fight.
It disgusts me that every time I see someone on these forums bash down on a flaw in the game, all hes ever met with is the same generic response: Yes but Starcraft II is a different game, other types of micro/whatever might show up in the future as it develops and evolves.
Who knows, those arguments might hold true, although I personally doubt they will. Were entirely missing the point arguing in such a way though. Why in the first place should we be accepting that Starcraft II is regressing in to a more primitive form than its predecessor? Isnt this, after all, the sequel, as opposed to the prequel?
How does Dustin Browder explain the fact that air units in SC2, the sequel, suddenly regressed and lost their ability to maneuver while firing? Is there perhaps a disturbance in the Khala?
Start demanding more out of Blizzard! I implore you all not to settle for less than you deserve. Lets at least demand that Blizzard put the micro back in a game that was already robbed of its macro!
