SC2 BETA STARTED OMG

[shotcoder]

So excited, first wave has been opened and opt-in players are slowly getting emails. Those who attended Blizzcon haven't gotten their emails yet, but here's to hoping. OMFG I WANT TO PLAY NOW!!!!!!

[CaptLeonof153rdElysains]

I'd be excited, if not for the fact Blizzard has made some design decisions I strongly disagree with, and the game boils down to rock, paper, scissors and spamming all too quickly.

Mind you that complaint does expand to include C&C4 in part. Maybe I'm too picky about my games.

[shotcoder]

I'd be excited, if not for the fact Blizzard has made some design decisions I strongly disagree with, and the game boils down to rock, paper, scissors and spamming all too quickly.

Mind you that complaint does expand to include C&C4 in part. Maybe I'm too picky about my games.

O_o Rock, Paper, Scissors? Starcraft 1 is quite possibly the most balanced RTS game ever created where every single units has atleast one counter and a function in almost every Match-up. Go into any D rank game and you'll see it requires a little bit more than a little luck to win, it requires reading your opponent, seeing timings of when he gets certain things, how he expands, and how efficient you Build is and how strong your mechanics are to pull it off. A unit of 9-11 mutalisks could kill infinite Marines if microed correctly, but also microed correctly those marines could deal with those mutas with no problem. There's quite a bit more skill there than you give credit for, especially if there's a country which supports it as the back bone of their e-sports league.

[CaptLeonof153rdElysains]

Perhaps the problem is that it's too balanced in some aspects. If you look at factional design in other games, far superior in my mind to Blizzard's attempt to have something other than Warcraft as their RTS line, you see differences in methodology and style. While they exist in SC1 every single faction(if in use rather than function ie suicide) has an equivalent unit. Not a good thing, C&C 4 has run into that issue, and unit balance is all over the place, and with the last few revisions NOD has been somewhat OP.

Your example is just timing on when to use the most obvious counters. That's it. Call me a whatever you will, but something like WiC or.... Joint Task Force are better games for having uneven balance, it challenges you to use what you have far more effectively, and while there are counters, the number of things that can counter your counters are very high.

Also look at Ground Control 1, three factions, forty five missions between the original release and expansion. Better yet a well told story with well written characters on top of an engine that was amazing for it's time in my mind. SC1 engine was not that impressive, and I think the Tib Sun engine was superior to it. There's only a few years between the two games, if I remember the dates correctly.

However many people playing one game doesn't make it a good game, only means that it's popular. Also I do not consider micro-ing and base expansion a test of skill. It's something you do, means to an end. That's it, the better games I've played over the years have removed it, focusing solely on the units fighting. Defeating a person in one on one is a test of skill, not an early rush on their resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-ti...-time_strategy

Those games are tests of skill far more than any RTS. I'd like to read the articles the Wiki refers to. They would be interesting reads, but lunch calls and I'm starved.

[shotcoder]

I don't understand how making the races balanced is a bad thing at all for a competitive game. Each Race has special units that each have a purpose in the over arching function of the army. Please watch some progamers play. It's not all about microing and expanding. You need to have good army composition, good unit positioning, good aggression to set-up your expansions and the speed to effectively use your entire army while build more units at one.

Also, just because there's a counter to a specific thing your opponent does, lets say your protoss opponent double expands off of 2 gate ways. You throw down 3 factories for a 4 factory timing push and possibly bring it back to 2 base vs 2 base. But if the protoss player effectively delays the push as you try and make it across the map instead of using the push the terran player can use the push as a chance to effectively take a free expansion.

The game is a lot more difficult for what you give it credit for and there's a reason it's the most popular e-Sport right now and why it's going to take the sequel game to knock it out of e-Sports for good.

Flash, Jaedong, Stork, Leta, and Bisu are probably the best players that show this skill set (Although Bisu is overrated in most respects I still include him because of his KeSPA ranking)

And everything is not just standard play there's different ways to play each match-up and different difficulties with each style of play. Here Same player different Styles

Flash using bio vs Jaedong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt0TRIWy ... re=related

Flash using Mech vs EffOrt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpl4tQrRahg

and another style
BaBy using two port wraith vs EffOrt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N5DrVdNT9M

The games not about getting into your opponents mineral line and winning....rushing your opponent also has serious risks. like sure a Zergs could 4/5pool and possibly win the game. But the other player could know exactly how to counter it and win because they have a much greater economy.

This is just personal preference but I think the Tiberium Sun engin was clunky. Good game, but took forever to do anything. Starcraft has that ability for speed so games can be 2 minutes long, or an hour long.

[Zawicki]

The one thing I didn't like about Starcraft was the learning. It is standard rts mechanics, but the level of micro you have to do is just too much for me. Another thing was the ability to spam one unit. As the terrans you could max out on marines and win a game. As protoss you just have to build photon cannons to protect your base and then spam carriers. As zerg you can spam zerglings or mutalisks and win. I know there are counters to these. But many of those involve good micro or some other strategy that is much more in depth than just click to attack.

That is why one of my favorite rts' is sins of a solar empire. There really isn't much micro, but there is lots of strategy to it.

Like CaptLeon said, Starcraft is more of tactics than strategy.

[shotcoder]

The one thing I didn't like about Starcraft was the learning. It is standard rts mechanics, but the level of micro you have to do is just too much for me. Another thing was the ability to spam one unit. As the terrans you could max out on marines and win a game. As protoss you just have to build photon cannons to protect your base and then spam carriers. As zerg you can spam zerglings or mutalisks and win. I know there are counters to these. But many of those involve good micro or some other strategy that is much more in depth than just click to attack.

That is why one of my favorite rts' is sins of a solar empire. There really isn't much micro, but there is lots of strategy to it.

Like CaptLeon said, Starcraft is more of tactics than strategy.

Again I'm going to refer to the pro scene for the counter arguement here. I rarely see any person spam one unit and win unless it's an early game zergling all-in. Zerg can't just make all hyrdras or all Mutalisk they are easily countered. That's why unit composition is such a great benefit.you need a balance of Hydras and Mutalisks in the mid game to counter the High Templars that will use Psyonic on your hydra army.

The greatest match-up of technical and strategic skill is Terran vs Terran where positioning is so important that it nearly replicates that of chess

Again I refer to a Flash game
Flash vs Firebathero
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-0oGVFCC9s

[Zawicki]

But my point is, if you are not pro at it, it is very easy to win with. And it takes A LOT of skill to become good at the game. Starcraft is not the kind of game you can become good at in a short amount of time. As you said, it can become like chess. This is why I do not like it as much as dawn of war or other rts'.

[shotcoder]

http://www.iccup.com/

if its so easy to win please get to A- by the end of the week on this website. It's not easy to win at any level of the game unless you are horribly horribly bad. Every game mimics that of a progamers game to some extent just without the high level of mechanics and the execution of the attacks and such.

IdrA vs NonY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joIBzM6zDH4

Idra is a korean progamer from the united states, and NonY is an amateur

White-Ra vs JF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n__RkG9mNN0
Both amateurs.


The fact is you're simplifying the game way too much and not giving credit to the fact it requires a shit ton of skill.

[Zawicki]

Ok, maybe I worded my statement wrong. The reason I don't like starcraft is because of the skill it requires.

[CaptLeonof153rdElysains]

Ok, maybe I worded my statement wrong. The reason I don't like starcraft is because of the skill it requires.

Focus on a very narrow area of skill. I've seen games boil down to who gets the most the fastest, a flaw on the entire genre. I can only go on what I've seen, amateur vs amateur, and SC1(of which I used to be a total fanboy) just does not have the depth in it I want. It's all about the timing of your counters, which is effectively what shotcoder has been saying. Someone expands in a particular way, you counter with the better of the counters you have at the time or choose to use.

All games boil down to that at some point. Homeworld did, Joint Task Force does it, Ground Control 1 did it. The thing that sets those games apart is that the counters are vast in number and very flexible. You are not forced to one single set of tactics to counter. SC1 does it, Tib Sun does it, C&C 3 does it, any basic RTS game does it.

If the vids for Joint Task Force on YouTube didn't suck I'd post some. That is about much more than unit counters, considering some of the areas you have to fight in, it's a seriously vicious game. You think these guys would do well in Joint Task Force, shotcoder?

[shotcoder]

I have never played Joint Task Force or C&C 3 so I really can't comment on them. I haven't played very many new age games that aren't on the Xbox 360 to be honest. They normally throw balance and strategy out the window for awesome effects and graphics instead of fixing the clunky game play that results from it.

[CaptLeonof153rdElysains]

I have never played Joint Task Force or C&C 3 so I really can't comment on them. I haven't played very many new age games that aren't on the Xbox 360 to be honest. They normally throw balance and strategy out the window for awesome effects and graphics instead of fixing the clunky game play that results from it.

A massive over generalisation, and to some possibly a highly offensive remark. JTF(Joint Task Force since I may refer to it multiple times) is hardly new. It's going back at least to 2006 which was the year I bought it. Not to mention the other titles go back to the mid 2000's, if not slightly earlier.

C&C 3 was not a balanced game in any accurate meaning, but it was a better game for it. NOD players had a style, Scrin players had a style, GDI players had a style, and while it was certainly more difficult for some factions to turle, or to rush, or to whatever, it was still possible for them to do it, to a reasonable degree of success. No matter how you build a force in SC1 it degenerates down to who can click the most times per second, and who micros better far more than any title I can think of, from my limited experience I've had with it in a LAN and BattleNet form.

Let's for a moment look at a game like Blitzkreig 2. You want balance? Not this game. Definitely not this game, not when you have to deal with the Tiger/King Tiger/Jagdpanzer, or let alone the early Soviet levels. It's a better game for it as you're challenged to not think in terms of attrition, but in terms of methods to defeat that heavy armour. As an Allied player I might go for the Firefly Sherman(if it's in the game, it has been a while), or Tank Destroyers, standing orders to elinimate tracks to stop them getting into range, or 17pndr AT guns. Or even good old landmines. Hardly fair when you have to worry about other elements, but then I do tend to use the American model for artillery use.

Also the game does not encourage attrition, which is what at least one of the games you presented as evidence for the game as a test of skill did. The player made a choice to try and take the last effective resource point, failed due to a few reasons, and lost the game because of it. That's it. Really, that is it. There is nothing more to it. I was seriously offended by the reference by the comentators that SC1 is like WW2. If you know any part of the history, especially the suffering of so many people, serving or not, then to have such a simplistic game likened to the worst conflict of the last history.... sorry, rant mode was almost engaged, I hope my point is made.

Furthermore if we go back to JTF if you look at some of the levels, which are nasty on a whole different level and one that SC1 could never achieve. You have to take out a long range SAM battery. You want to know where for this level? Try at the top of a plateau, with emplaced artillery, both of the AA and long range of shelling death variety. On top of that they're dug in, and proper counter battery fire is not that effective at best due to the terrain. You might have to spend half an hour shelling the area before it's ready for an infantry push. Or you take a risk and load as many guns in as you can for that mission.

Homeworld 2, the latest title in that series, had a wonderful game design, and balance as well. Not only was it uneven, Vaygr forces being specialised while Hiigarian were generalised, it was an easy game to think in. You didn't need to learn a complex set of numbers of manufactoring time, or damage values when upgraded. Either it was effective, like say, Pulsar corvettes or upgraded Bombers to hit engines, or it wasn't effective and cost you ships, Torpedo frigate vs lone Destroyer. I still think to this day Vaygr forces have an edge in firepower, but I completed that game well on many an occasion. Hell, I did a play through and I kept over 130 million people alive on Hiigara.

Earth 2150 and 2160, similar enough despite the different style to each, presented a system where you had a bit to worry about, I've not played them as much as I would like to say anything definitive on them, but the structure of those games was again, superior, each force as a whole balanced against the other, with definite imbalances between the units. Especially comparing Plasma technology(UCS I think) of one faction vs the cannon(ED, again, I think) of the another.

Ground Control 2 is a better game for having you fight a technologically superior force. Yes, I mean that. I've completed that game a number of times, if only to hear Alice McNeal at the end of it. You had to deal with units that had superior range or firepower in that game. It was as much about the terrain you fought on as the units you used. SC1 can't match that. You have a high position that could be useful, but that it is. There's no depth to the unit management bar keeping them moving and preventing your enemy from knowing what you have. Simple doesn't mean bad, but when as I've said it boils down to attrition, and who can click the fastest, or knows the numbers better, you have a bad game.

In fact this is a general statement I think applies to all games. You shouldn't need to know the numbers, at all. When you get a patch it says they've tweaked values for items, or added in a slot in a sandbag shelter, like what C&C3 did to the GDI Infantry ability. That's it, you should not get the numerical values they've used to change things. Perhaps in SC1's case, the drop from 8 to 6 of some high level units should be said in the patch release notes, but apart from that, none. The numbers take away from the gameplay, and if you have to think about the numbers for even a second then, quite simply the game designers need to have a look at what they're doing and probably should be taken off that project.

There is a slight contradiction in my post, in that you do need to think about numbers in Blitzkreig 2, in armour penetration of guns vs armour protection of tanks. Largely that is not an issue, as either the round will penetrate, depending on the range involved, or it won't. End of story. If you have a chance to scout and are lucky enough to be able to think after seeing the numbers 'my guns aren't powerful enough' then you have to rethink you tactic, but you can still work around it, and at least for me, work around it faster than I ever could for SC1.

[spediesteban422]

Woooo SC2!

How about them casual players?

That's me.....

Totally excited for the create-an-anything engine. I'm not too keen on the super-resources or the watchtowers, though, although I may grow to love them.

If only my computer could run it.....

[Sexyrice]

I'm fucking stoked. Hovering over my email/battle.net account (both of them) in hopes that I get an invitation.

[']['Ritha][]

AAHAHAHAHAHAHHA I've been ignoring this thread, but I pop in here and see Leon being totally uninformed and blatantly under educated in RTS games. Didn't even read the whole thread, after two of his posts it was just to painfully ignorant to keep going. Hes clearly one of those 'WHEN I PLAYED STARCRAFT EVERYONE JUST GOT BATTEL CRUISERS AND THATS HOW THE GAME ENDED THATAS HOWE PROS DO IT YOU KNOQW I PLAY MONEY MAPSS BECAUSE THHATS HOW IT WORKS' guys.

On another, related topic, WHY DIDN'T I GET IN?! I'm stupidly stoked about this, and I check my bnet account every hour or in case I get in.

[Coldfire]

['Ritha][]AAHAHAHAHAHAHHA I've been ignoring this thread, but I pop in here and see Leon being totally uninformed and blatantly under educated in RTS games. Didn't even read the whole thread, after two of his posts it was just to painfully ignorant to keep going. Hes clearly one of those 'WHEN I PLAYED STARCRAFT EVERYONE JUST GOT BATTEL CRUISERS AND THATS HOW THE GAME ENDED THATAS HOWE PROS DO IT YOU KNOQW I PLAY MONEY MAPSS BECAUSE THHATS HOW IT WORKS' guys.

On another, related topic, WHY DIDN'T I GET IN?! I'm stupidly stoked about this, and I check my bnet account every hour or in case I get in.

Wow. That was..... uncharacteristicly confrontational Ritha.

Anywho, while I've never been a huge fan of Starcraft, it's not for the same reasons. I had the game, played through it, dabbled online a bit, and moved on. Overall, the game felt far too...... hrm..... bland. I hesitate to use that word, because it has such negative connotations, but I can't think of a better one. On a certain level, I feel it has to do with what CaptLeon has been saying. I like there to be extremely powerfull units out there. Not something that can steamroll all opposition, but a sort of end goal. Something for you to work towards, and when you get it, feel the satisfaction of it's power. Starcraft didn't really have that. Every unit could be trumped by something from the other armies. While that is great balance, it kind of killed the progression for me.

It doesn't even have to be a single, all powerfull unit. It could be more of an almagation of all your technology and research that finally pays off in some grand way. Take Sins of a Solar Empire for instance. In that game, nothing can match the sheer satisfaction I get from finally building up a grand fleet of capital ships, cruisers, and support craft; a solid defense network of mines, hangers, and space stations; a thriving economy of upgraded planets and trade stations; and a giant cannon in the back of my empire that can obliterate a planets across the galaxy. You can feel the progression as you slowly amass power. Yes, you can still be beaten if the enemies strategy is sound and yours is not. But it takes more, because you have more.

Starcraft, as good a game as it was, didn't really have that. Your all powerfull unit can be wiped by some cheap bastard from the other army. So you have to get whatever unit in your army trumps that one. Then he counters with another unit. And so on and so forth.

Having said that, it's not a flaw. Meerly a different style of RTS, much like the differences between western and Japanese RPG's. Games like Starcraft lend themselves much better to the hardcore, mainstream pro tournaments. The kind of stuff I could never in a million years get into. In that regard, my understanding is that the pure balance and, for lack of a better term, rock-paper-scissors aspect of game like Starcraft and Warcraft are far better. You rarely have to deal with cries of "Blah blah blah Unit X can to this so much better than Unit Y blah blah blah". The straighforward balance of the game is almost essential to the tournament mentality.


Plus, I was never really a big fan of the lore. That said, I'll probobly still end up getting this at some point. Despite my objections, theres no doubt in my mind that it's a fun game (or at least the first one was), and much of what I've seen in this new one is promising.

[CaptLeonof153rdElysains]

['Ritha][]AAHAHAHAHAHAHHA I've been ignoring this thread, but I pop in here and see Leon being totally uninformed and blatantly under educated in RTS games. Didn't even read the whole thread, after two of his posts it was just to painfully ignorant to keep going. Hes clearly one of those 'WHEN I PLAYED STARCRAFT EVERYONE JUST GOT BATTEL CRUISERS AND THATS HOW THE GAME ENDED THATAS HOWE PROS DO IT YOU KNOQW I PLAY MONEY MAPSS BECAUSE THHATS HOW IT WORKS' guys.

On another, related topic, WHY DIDN'T I GET IN?! I'm stupidly stoked about this, and I check my bnet account every hour or in case I get in.

Quite confrontional there, but my point re: the battle cruisers was that he made a choice, one that sent him towards the defeat much faster for teching up to get that particular unit, not only did he not use the unit efficiently, but due to the massive loss of resources was not able to hold a position on the map and lost the game.

Also my general point to all games applies here as well. It's not about the numbers, only the designers should know the numbers. It should never be about the numbers, he made a punt and lost, that happens in every game, especially in C&C 4 Beta which I'm in at the moment. The primary cause of the speed of his loss, going by that one game, was attrition, and what I've seen from other games that do follow a similar pattern. Who produces the most, then can kill the most, wins. Such a formula promotes a very narrow area of skill, and those who do well tend to share traits regardless of faction played.

Hell, once upon a time when I LANed SC1 with a few mates we didn't even get up to Factories etc keeping it to infantry because that's how the game went. Came second or maybe third, I can't remember exactly, the Terran player was a bastard, quietly teched up, got Nukes and hit my base defences with a near suicide dropship. Good game to the man for beating me, I thought I had that entrance properly covered.

Also I'm hardly uneducated on the RTS/RTT genre. I could sit on a stack of games and type this post. I'm not joking, I've got that many games that have been called RTS/RTT. I have a preference for the RTT now due to the fact it's not going to end up so quickly as a war of attrition which I think is a flaw of most of the RTS genre. SC1 has this flaw, as well as being bland as Coldfire said. It is too balanced. Every faction is equal in the end game. Yes, even the Terrans with the Nuke. That to me doesn't feel like good design. Each faction should not be that equal, there has to be something to set them apart. You can say that Protoss means you have to harvest more because they last so long or something of that nature. Depending on the skill of the player the Protoss can very damaging, like the Zerg or Terran, but there is no stand out unit in each faction. You hit things like BC, Carriers or Ultralisks, and that's the end of it. They're not the 'oh shit' units.

Perhaps the best 'oh shit' unit I've seen is the Core Defender from Firestorm for Tiberian Sun.

If you look at one level in a concept I have for a fleet based game, in one side mission you have the chance to steal a missile battleship. Yes, a full battleship, and this is before mission ten. That is the 'oh shit' unit of that phase of the game. In terms to explain what I've done with the design, the missile battleship is launching missiles larger than the fighters it can also carry a few of, and it's CIWS systsems means that you need to use big guns, or an entire carrier wing to try and take it down. On the other hand, if you want to take it in a mission, you might not be able to due to the crew requirement of it, or if you could, it wouyld be your only ship. You want to take it down, okay, think about the weakness of the weapons, you don't need to do anything but keep shooting them down before they hit your units and you can pummel the ship at range. Simple counter right? Simple in this case is good, you know exactly what you need to do, but that doesn't mean doing it into practise in the game is going to be easy.

Also. back to Coldfire(us agreeeing mate? When's this apocolyspe coming?) there is a feeling of achievement at the end of teching up in Sins. You have what he mentioned, and it felt good. You had everything your force could use, and better yet, it made it harder for the enemy to come and get you. Not impossible, but harder. In SC the end game units are just bigger, slower(faster in one case) and cost more, with more drawbacks than some of the earlier units. It makes getting them almost pointless if not for the overwhelming direct combat power that they have. Again, that feels like bad design to me. Also each takes some rather costly, both in time and resources, upgrades to be at full effect, not including armour and weapon upgrades. Another element I feel is bad design.

To simply my above position, they've taken units which at a basic level should have something in the range of minimum 3:1, if not 5:1, cost effectiveness ratio, down to not even 1.5:1. For the equivalent cost, lower tech units are capable of doing more damage in a good few cases. Too many for my mind.

SC1 was an average to bad game that while it is balanced, I feel it is too balanced. Until I get it cheap or I'm a working pscyh without a social life, then I'll probably never play the game. There are superior games out there, in terms of lore(Homeworld series), gameplay(Ground Control series, WiC) and mechanics/balance(Joint Task Force, Haegemonia Legions of Iron).

Edit, another good example of oh shit units, at least from what I've been replaying, Keepers from Homeworld 2. If you know the game what did it take to kill one? While on that series, Quad Beam Ion frigates from the first. They were nasty.

[spediesteban422]

Maybe you didn't get a beta-invite because the real pro's use battlecruiser rush :p

[shotcoder]

Quite confrontional there, but my point re: the battle cruisers was that he made a choice, one that sent him towards the defeat much faster for teching up to get that particular unit, not only did he not use the unit efficiently, but due to the massive loss of resources was not able to hold a position on the map and lost the game.
He made an incorrect decision or didn't execute his decision well enough. Isn't that how a game is won or lost? I don't understand how that's a flaw in the game at all.


Also my general point to all games applies here as well. It's not about the numbers, only the designers should know the numbers. It should never be about the numbers, he made a punt and lost, that happens in every game, especially in C&C 4 Beta which I'm in at the moment. The primary cause of the speed of his loss, going by that one game, was attrition, and what I've seen from other games that do follow a similar pattern. Who produces the most, then can kill the most, wins. Such a formula promotes a very narrow area of skill, and those who do well tend to share traits regardless of faction played.
He didn't lose due to attrition he lost because of poor positioning of his units. Like is stated in an early post "Terran vs Terran is like a game of chess" positions matter the most. he lost because he was out played just like one would get out played in chess.

Hell, once upon a time when I LANed SC1 with a few mates we didn't even get up to Factories etc keeping it to infantry because that's how the game went. Came second or maybe third, I can't remember exactly, the Terran player was a bastard, quietly teched up, got Nukes and hit my base defences with a near suicide dropship. Good game to the man for beating me, I thought I had that entrance properly covered.
That was never the standard meta game for Terran vs Terran at all. It's always been factory units. Take 5 vultures and 12 marines(375 minerals vs 600 minerals) and tell me which one wins.

Again this has never been standard meta game, just a bunch of SC players LANing and having no idea how the game evolved. Not a fault of the game.

Also I'm hardly uneducated on the RTS/RTT genre. I could sit on a stack of games and type this post. I'm not joking, I've got that many games that have been called RTS/RTT. I have a preference for the RTT now due to the fact it's not going to end up so quickly as a war of attrition which I think is a flaw of most of the RTS genre. SC1 has this flaw, as well as being bland as Coldfire said. It is too balanced. Every faction is equal in the end game. Yes, even the Terrans with the Nuke. That to me doesn't feel like good design. Each faction should not be that equal, there has to be something to set them apart. You can say that Protoss means you have to harvest more because they last so long or something of that nature. Depending on the skill of the player the Protoss can very damaging, like the Zerg or Terran, but there is no stand out unit in each faction. You hit things like BC, Carriers or Ultralisks, and that's the end of it. They're not the 'oh shit' units.
I'm just gunna note right here that you said SC1 was too balanced.

There are oh shit units, play a standard game of Terran vs Protoss and see how fast the Terran player GG's when 8 carriers come out of no where or how fast a Protoss player pulls his units back once they get in range of the massive Terran tank line. Or how fast the Terran player GGs when his MnM army is hit by ultra ling. There are oh shit units but these oh shit units also don't fuck up the metagame or the strategy of the game. You want to rush Carriers? Fine the other player will kill you before you can. Sounds like the only reason you want an oh shit units is so you can win the game easier....which requires no strategy because then everyone would rush that unit. And how is having the races balanced bad at all in a competitive game? If one was imbalanced there would be no players for the other two races.

Perhaps the best 'oh shit' unit I've seen is the Core Defender from Firestorm for Tiberian Sun.

If you look at one level in a concept I have for a fleet based game, in one side mission you have the chance to steal a missile battleship. Yes, a full battleship, and this is before mission ten. That is the 'oh shit' unit of that phase of the game. In terms to explain what I've done with the design, the missile battleship is launching missiles larger than the fighters it can also carry a few of, and it's CIWS systsems means that you need to use big guns, or an entire carrier wing to try and take it down. On the other hand, if you want to take it in a mission, you might not be able to due to the crew requirement of it, or if you could, it wouyld be your only ship. You want to take it down, okay, think about the weakness of the weapons, you don't need to do anything but keep shooting them down before they hit your units and you can pummel the ship at range. Simple counter right? Simple in this case is good, you know exactly what you need to do, but that doesn't mean doing it into practise in the game is going to be easy.

Also. back to Coldfire(us agreeeing mate? When's this apocolyspe coming?) there is a feeling of achievement at the end of teching up in Sins. You have what he mentioned, and it felt good. You had everything your force could use, and better yet, it made it harder for the enemy to come and get you. Not impossible, but harder. In SC the end game units are just bigger, slower(faster in one case) and cost more, with more drawbacks than some of the earlier units. It makes getting them almost pointless if not for the overwhelming direct combat power that they have. Again, that feels like bad design to me. Also each takes some rather costly, both in time and resources, upgrades to be at full effect, not including armour and weapon upgrades. Another element I feel is bad design.
LOL getting end game units is not pointless. They are pointless if you get them and you opponent knows, or you get them and don't have the right combination of units. that's like saying we might as well play chess with all pawns. that comment was stupid I will flat out say it.

To simply my above position, they've taken units which at a basic level should have something in the range of minimum 3:1, if not 5:1, cost effectiveness ratio, down to not even 1.5:1. For the equivalent cost, lower tech units are capable of doing more damage in a good few cases. Too many for my mind.

SC1 was an average to bad game that while it is balanced, I feel it is too balanced. Until I get it cheap or I'm a working pscyh without a social life, then I'll probably never play the game. There are superior games out there, in terms of lore(Homeworld series), gameplay(Ground Control series, WiC) and mechanics/balance(Joint Task Force, Haegemonia Legions of Iron).
SC has had the highest ratings of any RTS game ever made and possible still ranks in the same region with it's inferior graphics. Also I love how you say SC1 was too balanced up above, but JTF is better balanced than a extremely balanced game. Makes no sense.

Edit, another good example of oh shit units, at least from what I've been replaying, Keepers from Homeworld 2. If you know the game what did it take to kill one? While on that series, Quad Beam Ion frigates from the first. They were nasty.
Your not playing strategy games, you're playing the OMFG GET THIS UNIT AND WIN games. there's a difference.