You can rotate the camera 45 to -45 degrees, IIRC. Although, I don't know why you would ever do that. The maps are set up so that the default view is the best, and if you have time to dick around with rotation, as he said, you are doing it wrong.
If I want a simplistic game focusing purely on gameplay and strategy and less on what makes a modern video game what it is, I could go completely barebones and just play chess no? Dont get me wrong, I really dont think games should be about graphics, I still play plenty of old games! Gameplay is off course a lot more important. However they should make the camera rotate becuase they can, not because they have to. IMHO, what separates great games from good games is the extra effort devs put in. It's when little extra details are not necessary at all, but they put that in anyway. It feels like you are getting a free bonus with your game, and that feels good. It is like I already said in the original post, Blizzard apparently thinks they are so flawless that there is really no reason to try any harder. You probably didnt read that part of my post.
Do you think base building of StarCraft and WarCraft is too much?! Seriously you should have played Age of Empires series. I started my RTS with that franchise, and that game was all about economy. First 10~15 mins you do nothing but farming and mining, and you had to control individual farmers/gathers. Oh and it wasn't simply minerals/gas or gold/wood. You had to gather berries, hunt deer, run farms, mine gold, mine silver, chop lumber, etc. The best part was that the resource gather points were not revealed. You started with complete darkness and you had to "scout" to find food, wood, and other resources to build your town.
When I moved on to WarCraft series I was very pissed how little focus was given to economy, and how quickly actions start occuring. Though eventually I got used to it. I still think WarCraft and StarCraft's resource gathering is a little too simple in that all you have to do is set a rally point.
Ahhhh, but you are very wrong. I did play the original Age of Empires, and I loved it. I started playing RTS games even earlier when the originmal Dune and Command and Conquer came out. Good times.... But you clearly missed my original post where I specifically stated that such resource gathering systems were perfectly fine back then, but in this day and age it's time to move on. Yes, it is in fact a personal opinion, and clearly many people diagree, but it's sort of like clinging to Windows XP when you can use Windows 7. One can argue, that WinXP works just fine, so there is no need to upgrade to a newer version. It's really the very fact alone, that Blizzard doesnt feel like "trying" anymore that angers me, more than anything else. For a while, Lexus was producing superior cars to Mecedes becuase Lexus was striving to be better, and Mercedes was jusr reaping the benefits of an age old name... Well, in Mercedese's case, at least they realized the error in their ways and upped their game.
I'm not a Bliz fanboy whatsoever (more of a hater really), but I've been enjoying enough SC2 to take issue with the OP.
Micro/clickfest. I played DoW2 for the first month that it was out and I was good at it. It required more click click click micro than SC2 does to be good. I'm averaging 45apm in SC2 and that's good enough for diamond league in all modes. In DoW2 there is no real strategy, you both make a few units and then you dance them around to get the counters working in your favor. One psi storm going off in SC2 is bad to you? How about scout grenades, jet pack stomps and just about every other ability deciding the engagement in DoW2.
I used to think that Relic's simplified economy was the evolution, the next thing in RTS, but in reality it just takes away potential strategies. In SC2 you can decide to gamble for getting less army but some harassment units to try to raid economy with. It's an interesting decision to make that requires both good econ management, build execution and importantly harassment execution.
DoW2 is like a care bear of RTS games. You set up your units, then you realize you just got outmaneuvered and about to get stomped. Press the magic retreat button and all your squads hurry back to the HQ where you can cheaply refill the squads. So what that you lost a control point or two? By far most of your resources come from the unraidable HQ.
And I'm not even getting into the horrible balance swings and game breaking bugs of DoW games. Like game changing abilities not going off while resetting the cooldown, units suddenly taking moronic paths, particular races/unit combos dominating the game for months at a time...
The thing I don't like about SC2 though, is all the cheese. Really stupid all-in plays three minutes into the game that either win or lose outright. I still get caught by these sometimes, and when I beat them there is no sense of accomplishment. In lower leagues this must be even worse, so I can see how an average player might be frustrated by this enough to stop playing.
EDIT: Your 250lb benchpress analogy is true. I don't see how it's any less true for Relic games though. You gotta know the in and out of all units and common build orders (yes these exist in Relic games every bit as much as in Blizzard games) or you'll get shit on without even realizing what's going on.
Difficult for me to argue with you from your standpoint becuase I never play RTS competitively, at elast not on the same level you do. If I play against other people online, I do it for some short term fun and I never take it too seriously.
Waht I was trying to say originally is that DoW2 is just much more pleasant and easier to get into when it comes to competitive play becuase here, I can at least "control" my units and army. In SC2 everythign happens so fast that I cannot even understand what's going on before it already happens.
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