SC2 Beta Thus Far
Apr. 25th, 2010 06:08 pmLike the true UI Design nerd I am, I've taken most of my time in the SC2 Beta to...look at the UI. Pathetic, I know. But it's much too easy for me to look at various items and say "oh that text is 10px too far to the left" or "oh that tooltip doesn't match the style of the rest of the help text items". At the same time many of the things I said to myself like this during the last patch ("the Protoss tech tree is not aligned correctly on the grid") were fixed (or totally changed) in this latest patch. Perhaps I should get over it and play the game.
About that, playing the game right now feels so...daunting. It's SC but at the same time it's totally not. This is both awesome and horrible at the same time. I'm not quite sure where to *begin* in learning everything, so I've mostly been playing with UI elements ("Hey there's a bubble on the screen that tells me how many workers aren't mining now, sweet!").
I think all of this is fairly useful, it just means I'm not even beginning to get into tech trees or build orders or any of that stuff. I'm certainly not playing a ton of matches. And really I think a lot of this is because of how I play WoW. I started WoW being a keyboard turner and a spell icon clicker. Still am. I've done very well with this actually. I also know that this isn't the most optimum way to play WoW. But it's at least feasible as an option to play at a decently high level. In SC it's just not. Up until now I've used the arrow keys to move around the screen instead of the mouse. This becomes a real crutch when you have to hotkey units or cast spells, etc.
SC2 makes the key-to-move, click-to-cast metaphor work much better however. They've added lots of nice things for mouse clickers to help get them up to speed so they don't have to rely on the keyboard as much. This is great, but again, in the end it's slow. If I'm using the mouse to make Zerglings and I'm moving units around the map, I have to go to the lower right, hit 1 for my Hatchery (hot keyed) and then press the Larva button, then the Zergling button 3 times. That's pretty quick, but it takes me away from my units and what they're doing. I can't micromanage them around the screen if I'm clicking the lower right, and my focus is elsewhere on the screen.
With the keyboard, I can just hit 1QEEE as fast as I can type then I have 3 Zerglings hatching. I don't take at all away from selecting and moving around my units. My issue is I've never been a keyboard player. It's totally new to me. I mistype keys, I have to look. This all takes practice. I'm much better with the mouse currently, but I know if I get used to it, I'll never give myself the chance to go back. So it's like learning the game all over.
All this said, I did play a practice match against someone last night and won. I played quite aggressively again and it worked to my advantage this time. I think the key was not sitting around and watching my units fight as much. Once they were relatively engaged, I went back to my base and started cranking out more units so I could have another wave come in. Once I get the keyboard stuff down (as well as proper rally points) I should be able to fight and build at the same time with relative ease. It'll just take time.
About that, playing the game right now feels so...daunting. It's SC but at the same time it's totally not. This is both awesome and horrible at the same time. I'm not quite sure where to *begin* in learning everything, so I've mostly been playing with UI elements ("Hey there's a bubble on the screen that tells me how many workers aren't mining now, sweet!").
I think all of this is fairly useful, it just means I'm not even beginning to get into tech trees or build orders or any of that stuff. I'm certainly not playing a ton of matches. And really I think a lot of this is because of how I play WoW. I started WoW being a keyboard turner and a spell icon clicker. Still am. I've done very well with this actually. I also know that this isn't the most optimum way to play WoW. But it's at least feasible as an option to play at a decently high level. In SC it's just not. Up until now I've used the arrow keys to move around the screen instead of the mouse. This becomes a real crutch when you have to hotkey units or cast spells, etc.
SC2 makes the key-to-move, click-to-cast metaphor work much better however. They've added lots of nice things for mouse clickers to help get them up to speed so they don't have to rely on the keyboard as much. This is great, but again, in the end it's slow. If I'm using the mouse to make Zerglings and I'm moving units around the map, I have to go to the lower right, hit 1 for my Hatchery (hot keyed) and then press the Larva button, then the Zergling button 3 times. That's pretty quick, but it takes me away from my units and what they're doing. I can't micromanage them around the screen if I'm clicking the lower right, and my focus is elsewhere on the screen.
With the keyboard, I can just hit 1QEEE as fast as I can type then I have 3 Zerglings hatching. I don't take at all away from selecting and moving around my units. My issue is I've never been a keyboard player. It's totally new to me. I mistype keys, I have to look. This all takes practice. I'm much better with the mouse currently, but I know if I get used to it, I'll never give myself the chance to go back. So it's like learning the game all over.
All this said, I did play a practice match against someone last night and won. I played quite aggressively again and it worked to my advantage this time. I think the key was not sitting around and watching my units fight as much. Once they were relatively engaged, I went back to my base and started cranking out more units so I could have another wave come in. Once I get the keyboard stuff down (as well as proper rally points) I should be able to fight and build at the same time with relative ease. It'll just take time.