To start off I am a fan of TotalBiscuit and subscribe to his twitch channel so keep that in mind when reading this. I also suck at StarCraft which you are welcome to forget. Having to remember which units do what and what building they are in requires reflex memory skills I don't have. I also forget to upgrade units so I just send in large amounts of paper units to the slaughter. TotalBiscuit, with a team of developers, designed a game mod called Axiom for StarCraft 2 that changes the interface and several mechanics of the game to make it easier to start playing StrarCraft.
The Experience:
For any of you who somehow do not know StarCraft, it is a real-time strategy (RTS) game where you build units to farm resources and attack your enemy. You start out with a command center and units that you use to farm resources. Your combat comes from buildings that you will have to construct. Some buildings rely on others to exist so build order do matter.
The main issue with RTS games now is they take quite a bit of time to play and on top of that there is a lot that goes to them. There are several different types of units that play a paper scissor rock type game that you have to make sure you are ahead of. There is a large learning curve and it scares the crap out of new players.
This is where Axiom comes in. They took the UI of the regular game and completely changed it. Units, building, and upgrades now have their own pages you can scroll through with a mouse wheel and each option is mapped on the keyboards. Basic mining units are free and they are auto built for you. You still have to remember to mine the vespean gas though.
Since the mod just came out it has not built a player base quite yet. I played a few bot rounds to get acquainted with the system then played two rounds where I got my ass severely handed to me. It's a good idea to what PvP ranking you would think you would fall into. (aka bronze, silver, gold, platinum) This will give a player an idea who they are going into it with and hopefully you won't be getting pub stomped all the time.
While I was wrecked pretty badly by humans I started to turn it around on the AI. This system they have made is pretty easy to learn. They have built visuals for your cooldowns so you have an idea if you are not building the right units or how far along construction or research is. This way you don't have to rely on audio cues. The way they handle the resources also helps you from starving yourself by making sure you have the resources before letting you build. There are also three hotkey groups made for your ground, vehicle, and flying units so you don't have to key bind them yourself. You can always override this but the three groups make a lot of sense.
There were some glitches. A few units you still had to click the buildings to build and the units wouldn't always fall into their auto groups. This was said to have been mostly addressed as the release was pushed up a day early they have said they corrected some bugs since then. I also had some pathing issues with some units but I think that is just a StarCraft thing and really doesn't have to do with this mod. I am just really not a forward thinker when it comes to building bases.
All of this in mind the game is still a bit rough to get into or back into. This is a helping hand but the game is pretty complex on how units work and will take some practice to figure out what is going on. I do like how they boil the game down but it will definitely take a bit of commitment to get back to a decent level on the game. I am interested to see if this mod catches on and people who were originally intimidated by the game jump in. It helps you can play the StarCraft arcade mode for free through the Blizzard app, so even if you never bought the game you can play this.
TL;DR:
I still suck at StarCraft but it's an interesting mod. It is an easy to use UI if you are not used to the game by now. There are a lot of pre-set buttons that are user friendly. Even with this, you will still have to learn the complicated balance of what units counter the others.
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