StarCraft II will have casual appeal

Nothing will budge my mum off Solitaire.

^^ mine too, although she prefers Spider Solitaire (two suits).

So, instead of the console excuse to dumb it down Blizzard uses the Mom excuse?
I dont care either way, stop dumbing down games, k thx bye.

My mum plays sonic the hedgehog on PS2, got her one of those sega collections with all the sonics on :D

Wow, here's hoping they dont massacre Diablo 3 >.>

Diablo 3 "Your little sister can play too!" ¬_¬

What else is new???? Every other game these days is for "casual" players. Devs are starting to doom their games before they even hit the market.

Diablo was always easy to play hell my 6 year old sister plays it (she loves the butcher) but the theory was always easy to play difficult to master which is true of all good games

I like games that I can't beat in a day or a weekend.

Epic FAIL!

I fear this is just another cash cow now *sigh*.

The original Starcraft wasn't all that hardcore either, you could pick it up as your first time game and play it just fine (not online of course). As long as you can still play at whatever level you want, I'm good with that

Originally Posted by DarkLord7854
The original Starcraft wasn't all that hardcore either, you could pick it up as your first time game and play it just fine (not online of course). As long as you can still play at whatever level you want, I'm good with that

yup.

the first one is actually quite "casual"; yet it allows you to micro manage and extensive macro manage as well.

in other words, it's easy to learn, hard to master. its a good thing.


having easier learning curve does not equal "butchering" the difficulty level.


relax, folks, sheesh.

There is no way my mom is going to put this on her laptop and start perfecting her Zerg rush. It just isn't happening. There's a big difference between making the game easy enough to get into to appeal to people who aren't "hardcore" and making it actually appealing as a concept to those people. My mom just doesn't have any interest in amassing an army to subjugate aliens; she doesn't give a damn whether the gameplay is accessible.

I am happy they are simplifying it, though. I might actually be competitive online this way.

Casual Gamer??? who are these ppl? They don't matter. Games should be advancing, just like the hardware that is being made to play these games, dumbing down should not be allowed for a sequel under ANY circumstances

I just thought about their release phases (1-3) and I doubt a casual gamer would follow SC2 through all three phases.

@Exorcit: Gameplay these days are in 2nd or 3rd place. It's about graphics and casual gamer appeal.

Something my mom will play??? My mother don't even like using the computer, so she thinks me play on the computer is a waste of time. If they had mothers like mine, they will be broke.:(

I also agree, the market is focusing too much on the casual market. If they focused on the hard core market, they will get more coverage which leads to more people buying the game which leads to more money (and more pirating if they use DRM)

Now that I remember. My mum used to be a Hard Core Super Mario Land gamer on gameboy. Waking me up in the middle of the night asking where batteries are. But now she just plays all the Solitaire games and Mahjonggs on linux.

Still, even Pokemon has a hardcore following.

Originally Posted by Blademrk
^^ mine too, although she prefers Spider Solitaire (two suits).

I'll raise you Transport Tycoon! Although, that was my dad. He was glued to it for years.

Originally Posted by UrbanMarine
@Exorcit: Gameplay these days are in 2nd or 3rd place. It's about graphics and casual gamer appeal.

But not generally both at the same time, if the Wii is taken as the prime example of casual gaming.

I can't imagine anyone's mum wanting to play this, though. It's dark, violent and requires a lot of co-ordination and quick reactions, which are the sorts of things that put off casual gamers. It has less to do with layers of inaccessible menus than it does with the overall tone and direction of a game.

My fiancé will hardly ever play a game with me, but she's open to games that have interesting characters, good stories, original and thought-provoking concepts (Bioshock) and simple or even non-existent combat. If developers started making RPGs that focus on the first three elements and even ditch combat entirely, or make avoiding combat a viable option for some players, then potential gamers like my fiancé would probably be more willing to get involved. And that's not something that should be sneered at by "hardcore" game-Nazis! ;)

Coming soon: StarCraft Wii

All you need is a Wii a tv and your imagination and you can have epic battles and obtain victory though happy thoughts. Out patented Wii-mote attachments will pick up on your happy thoughts and use them to create zerg rushes. If you start to lose just wave the magical Wii-mote around in frustration and your units will gain more splash damage. In kid mode even toddlers can play and be safe as enemies bleed candy, just like pinatas! Every copy comes with a starter card collector deck yes that is right, collect all the StarCraft units and beat your opponents in the amazing StarCraft card game!

-Ask your parents for additional booster packs. Warning, cards may contain sharp edges keep away from anyone suffering from hemophilia. Bright lights flash in the game and cause seizures in old geezers and noobs. Disk can be broken into small parts not suitable for children who like to eat sharp objects. Disk may spin at high speeds do not place near hands. Wii-mote is not to be used to beat some one over the head. Brain/"happiness" attachment causes cancer to people in California. Also using this product will cause your head to explode, in rare cases....


:)

The Tycoon type games (and they are fun) are definitely more micro-managing than your typical RTS games. However, most Tycoon games don't Zerg rush your arse into oblivion in the first 10 mins of play. I'm just not sure a good RTS could ever become what I would consider casual. Most of the Tycoon games you can pause and build your structures and such during that time period. Even playing single player on an RTS and you pause it, it's not like you can do much in that time frame other than decide what to build next. You typically can't start building while paused.

No real general deploying his troops into battle would consider this to be a casual task. A casualty inducing task maybe. Interesting how similar those words are... never thought about that before. Yet again I diverge.

I hope Blizzard losses their a$$e$ on Diablo 3 and SC2... I don't like the way the whole catering to the inept, er, casual gamer is going.

blizzard has always been masters at making games very easy to learn, but nigh impossible to master.

everyone who's complaining doesn't know the difference between challenge and playability. SC2 will be challenging, i have no doubt about that. blizzard wants to make it more playable by removing unnecessarily complicated actions to do simple tasks. if even a "casual gamer" can figure out he has to, say, march all his units together to attack at once instead of going in single file, why shouldn't the game do stuff like that for him? stuff like that makes the game more playable without doing anything to the level of challenge.

all the complaints seem to stem from people whose ideal RTS game requires separate button clicks to march each marines' legs. left, right, left, right, left, right... and if you accidentally click 'right right' the marine trips! that'll keep the game professional and challenging, yeah.

My favourite aspect of Starcraft.

Campaign Editor.

Honestly I do think it's a good move. Since they haven't done much wrong, I doubt they will this time around.