Anyone who replies to someone expressing their opinion in the way you did is a self centered 'little douche cock'. 

Thus, your a foolish, scrubby, little douche cock.

If you don't already own SupCom Forged Alliance then get that and skip the sequel.

That's a too much of a stretch, unsupported by his statements, as my previous posts argue.

Again, fallacious argument Strawman, as that's not "simply" why he disliked the sequel -- that reason being it not meeting his standards for a 'sequel'.

My 'proof' is this -- had the game met his approval for a 'sequel' but had a different name, would he like it?  Seems pretty clear he would.  That demonstrates it's not about the name but the failure to achieve 'sequelness'.  Your focusing on the name thing obfuscates his point while attempting the pretense that you're responding to his criticism of the game.

Fallacious arguments prevent reasoned debate so pointing them out is important if reasoned debate is one's goal.

This comment brings to mind the old joke "A man comes into a doctor's office, wiggles his arm, and says 'Dr. it hurts when I do this.'  The doctor replies 'so don't do that."

Did I ever say I wanted Starcraft II to be "exactly" the same as SCI? No, I didn't. I said similar. But generally, decent sequels improve on the original, better graphics, fix bugs, more units. You don't go backwards. Again, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

If you want a really good example of this, look at Pokemon (think what you will, but hear me out). It has been around for almost 15 years now. Each new generation improves the graphics, maybe tweaks some game mechanics, adds some new stuff, etc, and it is the second most successful video game franchise in history, after Mario. And most importantly, the games are still fun, despite the fact that the core remains fundamentally the same.

You really think that having sequels be just that would lead to no progress? Again, thats what new IP's or spin-offs are for. Dammit, do more of what made the original great, not less, that should be obvious.

Was I talking about SupCom1 (which, btw, the support on flat out sucked, like every other GPG game)? I bet you that given the opprotunity, Stardock would have published SC2, as well as plenty of other companies. And no amount of excuses about tight schedules/budgets can excuse the fact that they left out very basic features, like saves in skirmish.

 

Im pretty sure it was more a dissapointment because it was a full price game rather than anything else. That is originally. If youve never played Supcom or TA before this game is good, but still not worth full price. Now that its not however, the game is worth your money, and yes even the multiplayer. 

Dont discount my opinion based on my dissapointment in where the series is headed as i never even owned or played the predecessors more than once. My dissapointment is that it didnt live up to my expectations of a full priced Real Time Strategy game when i was still playing SoaSE alot of the time. Some might feel differently however its still objectively a good, not great, game. 

I'd just ignore OMG Spooky, some people aren't worth the effort

They're not strawmen, since that's exactly what he said - if the game had been called something else, he "would have had no issues with it and probably would of purchased [it]". To me that suggests that had the name been something else he wouldn't have disliked it. Issues with false expectations/marketing wouldn't affect the quality of the game, so Spooky's argument is valid - it seems illogical on the face of it to not buy a game that you would normally buy simply because of it's name.

No, it makes sense.  A sequel should be just that, a sequel in the same vein and spirit of the original.  Supreme Commander 2 may be a good game, but it is not a good sequel to the first Supreme Commander, which means negative points for it.

Yeah, you didn't say that, but StarCraft II is just "exactly" the same, in many aspects. A sequel that only improves better graphics and fixes bugs and just pushes more unit into it is not a sequel... that's content for an expansion. Best seen in Forged Alliance, which did all those things.

 

Pokemon and Mario games are a good example of how a game should evolve, you are right. Both those games always stay true to their core mechanic, but still try to do things differently. SupCom2 also stayed true to its core mechanics, i.e. the battle simulation, strategic zoom, waypoint managment, infinite queuing etc..

But their goal was to do things differently in SupCom2 and tackle on the core problems of the first games. These are problems that you and I don't see as problems, but GPG/SE still wanted to change these things, in order to be profitable.

SupCom2 is already the 4th instalment of these kinds of games and changes are bound to happen. Don't get me wrong, I wrote numerous, long rants on the GPG forum about how the new economy is not a good idea, why the research tree could be a problem, why I don't like all the new micromanagement stuff etc. But in the end it's still an enjoyable game, that uses the core mechanics of SupCom and simply does a lot of other things different.

 

No... I was just describing the whole situation for the SupCom IP.

 

Yeah, I mentioned that too in my post . As already said, THQ's support was awful, especially after Forged Alliance (the pinnacle of awfuleness was the retention of a new patch that is ready since a year ago or so now :().

 

I don't know if Stardock would have published SupCom2. We only know that SupCom2 was also on the verge of not getting made at all.

 

It's not an "excuse", but it was the sole reason why skirmish saves didn't make it into the release version. SE put a tight budget and schedule one the game, knowing that a lot of things might not make it in. But fortunately, post release support from SE has been excellent so far and they even decided to let GPG implement Skirmish saves, which originally was way down the list of things that GPG would like to do for SupCom2 (was included in patch 1.15).

But they didn't stay true to their core mechanics. You mention infinite queuing. That is most defiently not the same as it was before. Sure you can still click the "infinite build" button, but I can't queu up 70 units in 4 differnet factories unless I have a lot of extra resources. Speaking of resources, the flow economy was a core mechanic of the original, and that was removed. What about experimentals? They used to take anywhere from 10 minutes to over and hour to build, and one spiderbot could mow down hundreds of units. Now the longest ones take 5-7 minutes to build, and die to less than 30 regular units. The whole "epic scale" is gone.

Remember how the original was refered to as the "spiritual successor" to Total Anihilation? Can't use that phrase anymore, because SC2 is more of a "spiritual clone" of C&C/Starcraft. All of the core mechanics that set the original apart are gone, which is not what a sequel to a successful game should do.

Oh good, it only took them ~4 months to include a feature that every RTS for the last 15+ years has had. That's great support. They had saved skirmishes in both the original and Demigod, you're telling me they didn't have enough time or money to put it in? That is complete and total bullshit.

As I already said:

"My 'proof' is this -- had the game met his approval for a 'sequel' but had a different name, would he like it?  Seems pretty clear he would.  That demonstrates it's not about the name but the failure to achieve 'sequelness'.  Your focusing on the name thing obfuscates his point while attempting the pretense that you're responding to his criticism of the game."

He didn't buy not because of the name but the broken promise.

They made the classic mistake of appealing to the broad audience thinking it was 90% of the buyers so who cares about the 10% hardcore folks. Problem is the mainstream buyers make their purchasing decision usually off the hype generated by the hardcore crowd.

http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=75055

That the regular price of SupCom 2 is 20 bucks after 2 months says all we need to know. 

I meant infinite queuing in general, or the "infiniteness" of SupCom in general. There aren't many other RTS where you can queue up infinte waypoints, or infinite units in a build queue or infinte attack orders etc. Hell in StarCraft you can't even select infinite units .

But yes, in SupCom2 the build queue is limited by the resources, which I find stupid too. I am fine with the "pay up front" model, but they could have at least implemented it so that the resources get deducted once the unit is getting built and not when it is queued up. The advantage of the current system is, that every unit you queue up will definitely get built, but I think I still would like it the other way around.

 

Yes, it was quite a big part of the core mechanics of TA and SupCom. It's just one of the big changes for SupCom2. Some people were simply put off by flow based economy in TA/SupCom/FA. But for me the battle simulation was always more important, or the aforementioned "infiniteness". I can live with the pay up front model, but what really hurt me was how they implemented queuing.

 

Not all of the core mechanics are gone. Some are gone and those mechanics that remain still sets SupCom2 apart from standard RTS like *Craft or C&C. For you it's probably different, but I will never like StarCraft as much as TA/SupCom/FA/SupCom2 simply because it has a pre-determined battle simulation instead of simulated projectiles.

 

Why is that bullshit? It's not like software development is a piece of cake . The problem with skirmish saves was, that the new AI wasn't "save safe". You could enable skirmish saves with a debug command just fine, but it was useless, since only a skirmish where you play against yourself would be save able.

Really? I often found that the huge battle was the bit right at the end, the climax of the war, like the end of a film. I had an AI match just recently on FA (I find that if you want to play a huge map, you're best with AI, as it's rare that many people will all have hours on their hands at the same time. This map was four big islands, a central one with tons of hostile neutrals, and some small islands inbetween the big four, but I've forgotten the name...) with the Fourth Dimension mod (just some new units and better explosions). I took one of the four commanders (there should have been eight, two per big island, but I cut it down to four so everybody had loads of resources) with some T2 Anti-Heavy gunships, (they're from 4th dimension. They're slow, but pack a punch. Get owned by AA and Fighters etc.) because the AI hadn't built much in terms of AA (because AI will always do stupid stuff...), and another AI got beaten by the remaining AI. So, we both built up our defences, and started building the big stuff. He kept sending gunships, but I had interceptors and T2 fighters, so it was all good. My game-ending force consisted of two Tempests, two Omens, two Torrents and quite a few other T2 and T1 ships. I also had two GCs and two Overlords (4th Dimension. About half the health strength and size of GC, but has more varied weapons and is cheaper) who would walk onto land and kill the ACU. Oh, and 25 Anti-heavy gunships. So I moved them in, it all kicked off when I got in range of his many Summits. There were about eight of them, but I just sent in my gunships and used the navy to distract them as my experimentals went ashore. The guy had spammed Titans, because AIs will always do something stupid like that, (it was a sea map... jesus...) but they can't kill GCs easily. So he ACU went boom and I won. Looked pretty epic though, even if I had massive overkill with two GCs.

Now, how many times do you get something like that in SupCom 2?

What kills me the most is:

The battles are big, yeah. But if you look at the screen caps (I LOVED almost ANY screen cap from SupCom), its just a mass of like 2 or 3 different units each side. How bland is that?

That's just visuals, but that means a lot to me when its supposed to be SupCom 2...which it isn't.

Watch Angel Supreme if you wanna see how sick the battles were in SupCom1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q8zi_NHpYo

Yes, Total Annihilation defined for me how a "classic" real time strategy game should be.

 

And in my opinion such battles of epic proportions are only possible with the concepts of TA/SupCom/FA/SupCom2. In games like StarCraft, it always feels like there are small skirmishes going on, not even real battles, and in a very abstract way, since projectiles aren't simulated.

 

Obviously you don't get exactly that in SupCom2 . I love SupCom/FA, I was always hunting for epic battles (which were still pretty rare there, since a lot of times the battle was decided very early or simply by multiple small events in a competitive environment). The battles in SupCom2 are still way more epic than in StarCraft or other games. In SupCom2 they simply happen earlier, for the most part.

One game I always like to remember was a 3v3 on Boreal Naval Test Range. It's a map with 6 circular starting positions, with a sea in the middle. Our middle teammate went for full research in order to build lots of artillery, while we fought our opponents on the flanks. I tried to push early (but failed, oh well), while my other flank partner had basically an arms race with his direct opponent going on. They built up a massive land force and in the end my teammate was able to overrun the opponent. And all that while our middle teammate was hammering the enemy across the map with artillery, which was pretty epic.

 

@Teseer: yeah, the Angel and Flail Supreme videos are really awesome. And with the exception of Part 5 of the Flail Supreme videos, all those are directly taken from real replays.

My only issue with SupCom:FA was it was VERY unforgiving when it came to skill levels. You had to be VERY close to each other for an even game.

But fuck, those even games were unbelievable. 

That video shows everything that made SupCom1 amazing, and just how sh!tty SupCom2 is. Remember when 3 Galatic Collosi could do something to your base? Or when an experimental could actually make it to your opponent's base before being cut down by 5 gunships?

How isn't it bullshit? Again, it's a feature that's been standard for well over a decade. GPG has experience with creating games with a save option, it's not like it was a new concept to them or anything. If the AI is actually so amazing that it took them 5+ months to make it "save safe;" 1. It should be taking over the world by now, and 2. They should have delayed the release. They even had the stupid 2.5 GB "patch" on Day 0, and they couldn't get it in by then? Sins of a Solar Empire has more stuff for the AI to manage, bigger maps, more units, had a smaller budget, and less people working on it, but it had saved skirmishes from release.

Sins is also about as deep as a puddle. What’s your point?

And you're an idiot if you think that. What's your point?

Hey, maybe you just have low standards or lack of experience. Sins lacks either the depth of warcraft or master of orion and the balance is awfully simplistic rock-paper-scissors. A great achievement as a genre combination for sure, but hardly god’s gift to complexity or depth.

Well, you’re comparing supcom 2 to a completely different title and development team, so I also wanted to make my own non sequitur. I mean christ, sins doesn’t even need proper pathfinding and here you are criticising a game where the AI &/or pathing caused a delay in the development of skirmish saves.

If you think that, you obviously have no idea what you're talking about and have a lack of experience with Sins.

oh really? please tell me all about the terrain that units have to navigate, as well as explain the complexity of moving units when they can shoot weapons at any angle they choose, rather than relying on proper turrets.

Supcom and Sins are compleately different.  Each shot in Supcom can miss, only strike craft miss in Sins.  There are far more ways of winning and losing in SupCom.  The economy is the only thing i would consider more complicated in Sins.

 

Terrain navigation alone makes things much more complicated...

But then you compare Sins to something like MW2, and you realise that it is still far more complicated than most console games. And most console gamers still think that COD is the height of ingenuity! I pity the fools, accepting the lies that a 2006 processer and graphics card is somehow superior to modern PCs...