[Zaxx]

Anyone here playing StarCraft Remastered? Honestly the official forums for the game are just pure craziness so I'd love to hear what the general "western" audience thinks of the game (that is if people like that are to be found here but who knows).

As a long time SC fan who only got into the multiplayer after SC2 came out half of me is very satisfied with the game and the other half of me is disappointed. The satisfaction comes from the presentation: it's just amazing how well Blizzard managed to remaster the graphics. They stayed very true to the original art design so the game still has a vibe that very much represents classic StarCraft, the new artwork is beautiful and the realtime lighting feature adds a lot of depth to the visuals. It's also really cool to have the ability to customize hotkeys, it makes getting used to the controls again quite easy. The game also runs incredibly well which should be a given since it's an old title with a visual makeover but Blizzard was never great at optimizing for high frame rates so it's good to see.

The disappointment comes from the game's - in my opinion - kinda misplaced focus. I consider the SC and BW campaigns the absolute height of classic RTS design so it's a bit sad to see how little Blizzard cared about them. They did not include the demo campaign (Loomings) and basically the only additions the original game received are animated interludes instead of the original green text. It would have been cool to have an extra campaign, there is a lot of unfinished content for the game that Blizzard could have easily included. A difficulty selection option would have also been nice, the standard difficulty is just way too easy for any veteran of the genre.

It's also quite disappointing how little they cared about the needs of the general audience because let's be frank here: the pathfinding, the enemy AI and the general controls are very archaic at this point, especially when compared to SC2. Units need a lot of micromanagement because otherwise they just get lost, the computer AI is stupid and you can't select more than 12 units at a time, you can't put multiple buildings to one hotkey, you can't set worker units to automine etc. I know that keeping the gameplay 100% identical to the original is very important to the Korean pro scene but that's only the fraction of the full audience so giving quality of life options to single player and custom multiplayer games would have helped a lot of people in having a smooth experience with the game. The lack of these features will be a huge nail on the coffin honestly, launch day player numbers were underwhelming to say the least and you really get the vibe that current RTS fans did not care simply because Blizzard failed to listen to them when it comes to improving the gameplay.

And well, the thing is quite buggy on launch and that's very weird to see from a Blizzard title.

[Soap DX]

I didn't realize it was already out.
It's to be expected the mechanics and AI aren't great, their very old. It's like playing an old game, just with really nice graphics.

Id probably enjoy this, but I still have my '98 copy. So not really interested in getting it, maybe at a later time, with a price drop.
It's more of a niche product, I don't think they were planning to make tones money or draw a whole lot of players.

I think they were just being really nice to South Korea and maybe hope making a few extra bucks with nostalgia. ( I could be completely wrong, I didn't really follow this, but it would be my train of thought )

I actually played Star Craft with a friend this year a few times, I don't feel the need or desire to revisit it, I played the crap out of it back in 98, 99, 00.

[Micky C]

You can still only select 12 units??? That limitation is one of the primary things holding me back from playing the original. I don't see the point of the game if it's predominantly a graphics remaster since a lot of people wouldn't care about the graphics compared to the gameplay, and those people might as well just play the original.

[Forge]

i haven't played SC / BW in ages. I still have the disks and the official strategy guide sitting on a book shelf, collecting dust.

So you can't make your 250+ unit deathball? boo-hoo.
probably why i never bothered with sc2.

Hotkey 12 units to each number and live with having to micro-manage a 120 unit mini-deathball.
(also thought there was a way to assign unlimited units to a single unit that was on patrol - which worked until that one unit was killed)

[Zaxx]

 Forge, on 15 August 2017 - 09:42 PM, said:

So you can't make your 250+ unit deathball? boo-hoo.

Let me tell ya' there are a lot of numbers to choose from between 12 and 200! 12 is frankly just shit and the only people who use the deathball argument against SC2 are the ones who've never played it. I'd be fine with selection not being unlimited but seriously if 24 or 36 would hurt the balance then that's shit balance.

[Fantinaikos]

One of the goals of Starcraft 2 was bring new Starcraft fans in this decade, it is hard to say how successful it is. As foreseeable the most probable buyers of the Starcraft 1 Remaster will be the nostalgic pro old guard from the original version, but that it can encourage a new generation of skilled, or even just interested players, given the various techniques that requires a certain patience and strategic thinking (things not very common nowadays, and those who are deluded to have it are people that plays shitty MMORPG/MOBA), it's dubious.

You directly know someone that actually touched the Crash Bandicoot games for the first time through the remaster?

[Zaxx]

 Fantinaikos, on 16 August 2017 - 01:08 AM, said:

One of the goals of Starcraft 2 was bring new Starcraft fans in this decade, it is hard to say how successful it is.

SC2 has a questionable reputation because while from the outset it's very familiar to the first game it actually plays very differently. What worries me is that SC2 had 8 times more players than SC Remastered on launch day... and for SC2 that was not some special day or anything, it was just Monday.

The thing is that SC2 was a failure in Korea in the sense that it failed to replace SC1 but where things get complicated is when you try to find the reason for that. On the one hand some Koreans enjoy the more old school gameplay mechanics of SC1 because they view overcoming the archaic pathfinding and control mechanics a challenge as part of learning the game. Basically SC1 is good because even the most skilled Korean pro players make mechanical mistakes while SC2 is closer to a true strategy game in the sense that a very dedicated player can totally master the mechanics so everything comes down to strategy on a pro level. That's fine and dandy but on the other hand you can feel the regression of the RTS genre there too. SC1 still brings a somewhat healthy viewership but only a very few people play the game for fun and even the pro scene is a lot smaller than it used to be. People switched to MOBAs or to the Korean clone of CS, those are the games that bring the real money now.

When it comes to the western audience however SC2 was embraced exactly because it is a lot more accessible to new players in the classic Blizzard tradition of "easy to learn, hard to master" so to put it simply: SCR was not made with the western audience in mind, it's a backwards looking RTS at this point. I think there still would be a market for SC1 even on the west with the right mechanical adjustments because it would never feel like you're playing SC2, the game is more unique than that. Honestly Age of Empires Definitive Edition looks a lot better in this regard (it also features better graphics but I don't care about that).

I don't know about Crash but I've played plenty of old games through remastered versions for the first time. If you missed things before it's a great way to get into an older game and I think a lot of younger players think like this too. You're just curious about the classics people talk about.

[Forge]

 Zaxx, on 16 August 2017 - 12:29 AM, said:

Let me tell ya' there are a lot of numbers to choose from between 12 and 200! 12 is frankly just shit and the only people who use the deathball argument against SC2 are the ones who've never played it. I'd be fine with selection not being unlimited but seriously if 24 or 36 would hurt the balance then that's shit balance.

then you could hotkey 36 units to each key and have yourself a 360 unit deathball.

"Rule number one for running an empire, son: When the Zerg are a topic of conversation, the niceties go out the airlock."

- Arcturus Mengsk

[Zaxx]

 Forge, on 16 August 2017 - 06:44 AM, said:

then you could hotkey 36 units to each key and have yourself a 360 unit deathball.

"Rule number one for running an empire, son: When the Zerg are a topic of conversation, the niceties go out the airlock."

- Arcturus Mengsk

You do know that the population limit is 200, right?

Anyway I really suggest you start playing SC2 and see how far a strategy centered around deathballs will take you...

[Forge]

Sure.
But we're talking about introducing mindless set-and-release deathballs into the sc1 game.


(and no, I didn't remember/know there was a population limit, that's not the way I play)

[Forge]

Anyway....

Back to the op -

so this remastered version did nothing to improve the AI or give the workers the ability to go to work right away without micro-management?

So this is basically a re-issue with pretty much zero content or improvement, a graphics update?

[Zaxx]

 Forge, on 16 August 2017 - 07:35 AM, said:

Anyway....

Back to the op -

so this remastered version did nothing to improve the AI or give the workers the ability to go to work right away without micro-management?

So this is basically a re-issue with pretty much zero content or improvement, a graphics update?

Exactly.

[Forge]

 Zaxx, on 16 August 2017 - 07:51 AM, said:

Exactly.

I can see why the numbers are low then.
At least they could have made some improvements (besides eye candy), and included additional content / missions.

-and they could have made the unit selection number for single player higher - how someone plays it in the privacy of their own local system is their business.
as long as it didn't kill the game balance, such as it is.


I suppose the target audience would have to be those, 'must have' collectors, and anyone who never owned the original game.

Personally, I'd only consider acquiring it if they came out with DLC mods or missions.


Since nothing really changed except visuals, is this remastered version backwards compatible, as far as online play goes?
Can someone with the original version & latest patch play verses someone with the remastered version?

[Zaxx]

 Forge, on 16 August 2017 - 07:58 AM, said:

-and they could have made the unit selection number for single player higher - how someone plays it in the privacy of their own local system is their business.
as long as it didn't kill the game balance, such as it is.

When it comes to single player it sure as hell would not affect the balance in any shape or form but there is one issue I think Blizzard thought of: making the controls better would really put emphasis on just how bad the campaign AI is. Even with the original clunky controls I'm just steamrolling through the campaigns. My theory is that Blizzard saw that in order for improved controls to really work they'd need to increase the difficulty of the campaigns by adding a difficulty selection feature and well since SCR is a low-budget effort they did not want to spend money on things like that. If you develop a graphical makeover for a 19 year old game you need to spend money on artists and developers who upgrade your original tech, what you don't need is actual game designers.

Quote

I suppose the target audience would have to be those, 'must have' collectors, and anyone who never owned the original game.

Your mileage may vary of course but to me the graphical upgrade is significant enough to warrant a new playthrough and the 15 bucks they asked for it was not that much. The problem is that with better controls I would have gave the multiplayer a spin too but I won't even bother now.

Quote

Since nothing really changed except visuals, is this remastered version backwards compatible, as far as online play goes?
Can someone with the original version & latest patch play verses someone with the remastered version?

Yeah, the game is totally backwards compatible and multiplayer works between the two versions. Thy updated the original game too to play better on modern systems so basically the remaster is not that different from SC1 on the technical side, it's just a "graphical and sound quality update DLC" for the original game.

[Forge]

 Zaxx, on 16 August 2017 - 08:22 AM, said:

When it comes to single player it sure as hell would not affect the balance in any shape or form but there is one issue I think Blizzard thought of: making the controls better would really put emphasis on just how bad the campaign AI is. Even with the original clunky controls I'm just steamrolling through the campaigns. My theory is that Blizzard saw that in order for improved controls to really work they'd need to increase the difficulty of the campaigns by adding a difficulty selection feature and well since SCR is a low-budget effort they did not want to spend money on things like that. If you develop a graphical makeover for a 19 year old game you need to spend money on artists and developers who upgrade your original tech, what you don't need is actual game designers.

agree that they should have implemented difficulty levels & improved the controls and AI.
partially disagree about balance- some maps, deathballs are absolutely useless, other maps would be even easier than they are now if you could increase the attacking force size - especially if the AI was improved & half your forces didn't stop to look at flowers, or wander off to the far side of the map.

 Zaxx, on 16 August 2017 - 08:22 AM, said:

Your mileage may vary of course but to me the graphical upgrade is significant enough to warrant a new playthrough and the 15 bucks they asked for it was not that much. The problem is that with better controls I would have gave the multiplayer a spin too but I won't even bother now.

Yeah, the game is totally backwards compatible and multiplayer works between the two versions. Thy updated the original game too to play better on modern systems so basically the remaster is not that different from SC1 on the technical side, it's just a "graphical and sound quality update DLC" for the original game.

Meh.
Seems like the patched older version is suitable enough. (for me.)

[Striker]

Been playing it, the graphical facelift is nice, but I wish they would have raised the unit selection cap to 14 like the N64 version, and made the pathfinding not so fucking boneheaded.

[Tea Monster]

Waiting for the remastered WarCraft, which may or may not arrive :'(

[Forge]

 Tea Monster, on 16 August 2017 - 10:22 AM, said:

Waiting for the remastered WarCraft, which may or may not arrive :'(

I have wc1 & 2 (and BDP) sitting on the bookshelf collecting dust as well.
WC1 could really use an update/upgrade. Especially the PC version.

iirc, the barracks & town halls could only be assigned to build 1 unit at a time

[Zaxx]

 Tea Monster, on 16 August 2017 - 10:22 AM, said:

Waiting for the remastered WarCraft, which may or may not arrive :'(

If you mean WarCraft 1 then that's not happening: a while ago Blizzard said that they tried playing the game and it was just not fun anymore (which is bollocks because it could be fun again if they'd expand and smooth out the gameplay but in Blizz's book that's a no-no). WarCraft 3 however is still receiving updates so there is a chance it will get the remaster treatment.

[HellFire]

Zaxx, these aspects you didnt liked were kept untouched on purpose, they dont want to change the gameplay. This remaster was made with this in mind, its just purism. Without the Korean scene, i doubt this remaster would even exist. Increasing how much units you can select, the algorithm for path finding and stuff like that would effect the way the game is played on the highest levels way too much for the PRO's taste. For some time, some ppl was raging on the forums because of the new abillity to cusotmize Hotkeys, which IMO are a little absurd, but i guess it's up to the PROs to have the last say on this kind of stuff.

Imagine if gearbox wanted to remaster Duke3D, but then made duke walk with normal human speed, removed the warp glitches, and stuff like that, which made Duke3d multiplayer awesome? I can tell you that i would not mind playing that remaster at all.

Something that i do want to see changing though is the balance of certain units stats. Its already a known topic among the pros that Terran is a little stronger than Protoss and Zerg. Most players think that the balance is perfect, but without very smart map making, Terran tends to win. Search "Tesagi", which is the korean term for that, and you'll easily find that a significant part of Korean pros are actually worried about this, and i wonder if Blizzard will do anything about that or not...

[MrFlibble]

 Zaxx, on 15 August 2017 - 01:36 PM, said:

They did not include the demo campaign (Loomings)

True, but you can still play the shareware campaign as a custom campaign by obtaining it here. But yes, I also hoped they would include it into the new edition.

 Zaxx, on 15 August 2017 - 01:36 PM, said:

It would have been cool to have an extra campaign, there is a lot of unfinished content for the game that Blizzard could have easily included. A difficulty selection option would have also been nice, the standard difficulty is just way too easy for any veteran of the genre.

Indeed, I also hoped for some extra stuff apart from the graphics/sound updates (& new translations to other languages). At least, they could've updated the two official Enslavers campaigns with actual voice-overs (and also fix some minor issues with Enslavers 1 maps).

I also hoped that the vanilla campaign would use the unpatched stats for units etc. I remember how starting with patch 1.06 or something, Warcraft III isolated the single-player campaign from any balance changes done to the skirmish/multiplayer part of the game. StarCraft has undergone some very drastic changes since v1.00, e.g. Zealot HP changed from 80 to 100 and SP lowered to 60 from 80, and Sunken Colony went down from 400 HP to 300 HP etc. It would make sense to keep original stats in the single-player campaign as the missions were designed before many of these changes were even conceived of.

 Zaxx, on 15 August 2017 - 01:36 PM, said:

It's also quite disappointing how little they cared about the needs of the general audience because let's be frank here: the pathfinding, the enemy AI and the general controls are very archaic at this point, especially when compared to SC2. Units need a lot of micromanagement because otherwise they just get lost, the computer AI is stupid and you can't select more than 12 units at a time, you can't put multiple buildings to one hotkey, you can't set worker units to automine etc. I know that keeping the gameplay 100% identical to the original is very important to the Korean pro scene but that's only the fraction of the full audience so giving quality of life options to single player and custom multiplayer games would have helped a lot of people in having a smooth experience with the game. The lack of these features will be a huge nail on the coffin honestly, launch day player numbers were underwhelming to say the least and you really get the vibe that current RTS fans did not care simply because Blizzard failed to listen to them when it comes to improving the gameplay.

I'm not sure what the problem with the allegedly dated controls is. It's not like the 12 unit limit makes the game unplayable, pathfinding is also notorious but it hasn't ever broken the game either. Sure, many advanced control features you have mentioned are missing but they shouldn't be taken for granted when we're talking about a game that's almost 20 years old.