Folks, did you know the internet with a negative place? I bet you did, since you interact with it all the time. The peanut gallery was a term used to describe the audience at vaudeville performances, who would eat the cheapest snack available at the time, peanuts. They would heckle the performers, regardless of the quality of the show. The internet, in all it’s electron driven glory, is the modern peanut gallery. People sitting in their plush office chairs heckle performers across the world, throwing virtual peanuts with a slap of the enter key.
With this in mind, I do not envy David Kim and Dusty when the rolled out Heart of the Swarm last weekend. The world of TL and its arm-chair game designers is a rough, but honest audience that does not forgive failure or pandering. With all of that riding on new build, I was surprised when I saw how much HotS had changed since we saw it a year ago. Gone was the focus on mutas, stopping early aggression against Protoss and the DPS wall that is the shredder. Instead, we got a set of units and ideas that seemed like it could push the game toward what the community has been asking for.
I liked a lot of what was shown and said with the preview. I don’t want to run down everything, but here are some brief thoughts:
Terran: Terran an exciting add on with the Widow Mine. This little beast seems like the best thing that could happen to Terran. With their dependence on scans for scouting, a unit that can burrow, deny expansion and trade efficiently with a sloppy player seemed like everything the modern Terran would need. I can see this unit being used to spot/deny drops, deny map control and protect early expansions if the opponent skips detection. The long timer makes it easy to deal with on its own, but difficult to deal with if used in conjunction with an attack or drop.
The other units seem functional and more robust than before. The Battle Hellion is easy to understand, but will give mech the meat it has been lacking on the front line. The Warhound is an unit I need to use to understand. With it’s separate attack ability, I need to see if it can attack two different units at once. But currently, it has huge alpha strike potential, with the first shot doing over 50 damage to mechanical units. I will never blink stalkers toward these things.
Zerg: The Viper scares the crap out of me. That thing seems like a beast, but the high gas cost gives me hope. The abduct ability will be the most difficult part of that unit to balance, but I think it can be done. Personally, I would focus on the distance it pulls, rather than the range itself. It keeps the unit safe and useful.
The swarm host is a unit that everyone is going to need time to figure out and will take a while to work into builds. Free units are a great concept and I think zerg will have the ability to control space, like they have always wanted. Also, with this addition, it may give Blizzard room to do something about BroodLord/infestor. With more late game options, zerg may not need that super army to make someone happen against a turtling opponent.
Protoss: I love the changes to protoss, because I hate the current mothership. Even as a protoss player, I hate vortex and what it does to both PvP and PvZ. By moving some of the more useful and interesting mothership abilities to the core, it keeps the parts that were unexplored while removing the worst part of the unit. Recall, the better, underused ability of the mothership, is far more awesome in the core, to be used throughout the entire match. Balance aside, it makes the match ups more interesting and things can be adjusted later.
The tempest is exciting, mostly because it will be able to deal with colossi. PvP becomes beyond stupid when it gets over three colossi per side a unit that can kill them from 22 range is welcome in my book. Balancing the unit is possible and I hope it stays.
But as a player who wants more out of SC2, I think HotS is going to add what we want. Blizzard is clearly listening in many ways and taking it all with a grain of salt. In some ways, the community does not know what it wants. We have vague ideas of what is good, like “units that are not A-move units”, though we cannot really make up our mind as to what that is. I think Blizzard is trying very hard to dig deep and find the marrow of what we want, which goes beyond what we say. They are calling back to BroodWar and asking “what made this part great and can we do that in SC2”. It is hard than we think, but I am excited to cut my teeth on the new units that may get us there.
I think hots will be fun. all the units seem absurdly good but everyone is getting absurdly good units. As a zerg player I'm just really happy about the hydra speed and ultra charge(cause it looks so damn cool).
i give you a 5/5 just for the first two paragraphs alone. personally i'd love to see them add the tempest attack to the carrier, but that's a whole 'nother issue.
I didn't really get that crushing disappointment but then again I did play a fair bit of WoW before the Lich King ordeal came out and I already had a strong idea of what to expect from Blizzard.
They aren't the company that made the classics. They're the company that will do the best they can to give us something we will like. In 10 years we will be able to look back and say whether it was worth it.
The new HotS is such a massive improvement over what we saw at Blizzcon. After Blizzcon, the only units I were excited about were the swarm host and the oracle; everything else I was either indifferent to, or I actively didn't want it to make it in the game (replicant? ugh, bad idea).
What we saw at anaheim was way better. Even units I was indifferent towards like the battle hellion and warhound looked better, and the changes to protoss are amazing. The mothership core is probably the single best idea they've had for the expansion, and the oracle looks better than ever. Even the tempest is starting to look decent (I'm still not sure on it, though), where before it was basically a flying thor.
I'm optimistic about HotS now, and the beta hasn't even started.
But as a player who wants more out of SC2, I think HotS is going to add what we want. Blizzard is clearly listening in many ways and taking it all with a grain of salt. In some ways, the community does not know what it wants. We have vague ideas of what is good, like “units that are not A-move units”, though we cannot really make up our mind as to what that is. I think Blizzard is trying very hard to dig deep and find the marrow of what we want, which goes beyond what we say. They are calling back to BroodWar and asking “what made this part great and can we do that in SC2”. It is hard than we think, but I am excited to cut my teeth on the new units that may get us there.
this paragraph is so full of it. you strawman those with "less that favourable" criticisms as cynics. and now you know exactly what the players of sc2 really want!! you know what people wanted in WoL? a lurker type (positional) unit for the zerg. why did we have to wait until the expansion to get this unit, which only ended up being a walking and burrowing brood lord? the people wanted the carrier over the OG tempest, and we got it, except so lazily designed, implemented, and balanced that people never got a chance to truly use it; blizzard's solution, rather than trying to fix it, is to remove it and introduce a flying 22 range 1a siege unit. and match-up specific units like the warhound, whose entire purpose to enable lazy players to 1a their way through tough situations.
things that returned from brood war? dark swarm, consume are both bw abilities. hydra speed returns. oracle is like a half-arbiter, with cloaking, but no battle abilities. and these are things im glad are back but frustrated to wonder why they were never there in the first place.
you know what people really want? ways to play the game that favour player skill over just unit combination. dont you think having a carriers you can micro to avoid enemy fire is a more elegant solution than yet-another-protoss-unit you just sit back and 1a behind your army?
In case you were wondering what people are actually referring to "carrier micro"
But as a player who wants more out of SC2, I think HotS is going to add what we want. Blizzard is clearly listening in many ways and taking it all with a grain of salt. In some ways, the community does not know what it wants. We have vague ideas of what is good, like “units that are not A-move units”, though we cannot really make up our mind as to what that is. I think Blizzard is trying very hard to dig deep and find the marrow of what we want, which goes beyond what we say. They are calling back to BroodWar and asking “what made this part great and can we do that in SC2”. It is hard than we think, but I am excited to cut my teeth on the new units that may get us there.
this paragraph is so full of it. you strawman those with "less that favourable" criticisms as cynics. and now you know exactly what the players of sc2 really want!! you know what people wanted in WoL? a lurker type (positional) unit for the zerg. why did we have to wait until the expansion to get this unit, which only ended up being a walking and burrowing brood lord? the people wanted the carrier over the OG tempest, and we got it, except so lazily designed, implemented, and balanced that people never got a chance to truly use it; blizzard's solution, rather than trying to fix it, is to remove it and introduce a flying 22 range 1a siege unit. and match-up specific units like the warhound, whose entire purpose to enable lazy players to 1a their way through tough situations.
things that returned from brood war? dark swarm, consume are both bw abilities. hydra speed returns. oracle is like a half-arbiter, with cloaking, but no battle abilities. and these are things im glad are back but frustrated to wonder why they were never there in the first place.
you know what people really want? ways to play the game that favour player skill over just unit combination. dont you think having a carriers you can micro to avoid enemy fire is a more elegant solution than yet-another-protoss-unit you just sit back and 1a behind your army?
I personally don't agree with much of what you have said, mostly because we lack any hands on time with the new units. The majority of what you have stated is simply regurgitated impressions from other members of TL, all who have never played HotS. The warhound, which can be used in 2 of the 3 match ups, is totally unknown to us. We know nothing about how it functions, how quickly it turns or its abilities and how they function. People are drawing information from a bunch of preview videos and staged battle reports. None of these tell us how the units work, fit into a match up or mesh with other units.
Hindsight is 20/20 and the criticism people levy against SC2 have been grown and prefected over the 2 years since release. The arguments are always the same and simply point to BW, saying "make it like that, only modern". The ultimate fallacy of these argument is that they compair a new RTS to a game that was played professional for over 10 years. It was also a game where you could only control 12 units at once, which is a limiting factor few people talk about. You can't have a death ball with 12 units that have boarderline retarted AI. It is like compairing a basket ball team in the 80s to a basket ball team today. You can make the argument that one was better than the other, but it is unlikely it would be taken seriously by anyone. The Celtics in the 80s are not really compairable to the current Celtics. The game is totally different than the SC2 from launch and can only get better as more players put in their time. But the people who wanted SC2 rise from launch a fully developed as BW were, to be frank, deluding themselves. The only thing that will make SC2 as good as BW is time, time, time and more effort.
On June 15 2012 03:15 Probe1 wrote: I didn't really get that crushing disappointment but then again I did play a fair bit of WoW before the Lich King ordeal came out and I already had a strong idea of what to expect from Blizzard.
They aren't the company that made the classics. They're the company that will do the best they can to give us something we will like. In 10 years we will be able to look back and say whether it was worth it.
I hope HotS is good for you Plansix.
He obviously meant "wings of liberty" aka Starcraft 2 and not wrath of the lichking. Thus he is just your average SC2 hater.
They are calling back to BroodWar and asking “what made this part great and can we do that in SC2”. It is hard than we think, but I am excited to cut my teeth on the new units that may get us there.
More like they are butchering up BW units design and implementing it on SC2. Should just tweak a little bit them instead of completely fucking them up.
We can't really say anything for sure until the final release, but from what has been seen so far we can state the following:
1. The widow mine is just bad designed spider mine. 2. The swarm host is just a bad designed lurker. 3. The viper is an interesting flying defiler, but with way worse spells (the grab one doesn't belong to SC style). 4. The oracle's entomb spell is the most one-dimentional extremely retarded fucking shitty idea. It is just as bad as that shitty idea they had with the dark pylon. Jesus christ I can't emphasize enough how BAAAAAD, how ONE-DIMENTIONAL that spell is. It's just... stupid omg... 5. Even though all the above is horribly bad, it is still an improvement over SC:WoL.
On June 15 2012 03:15 Probe1 wrote: I didn't really get that crushing disappointment but then again I did play a fair bit of WoW before the Lich King ordeal came out and I already had a strong idea of what to expect from Blizzard.
They aren't the company that made the classics. They're the company that will do the best they can to give us something we will like. In 10 years we will be able to look back and say whether it was worth it.
I hope HotS is good for you Plansix.
He obviously meant "wings of liberty" aka Starcraft 2 and not wrath of the lichking. Thus he is just your average SC2 hater.
Mentioning WotLK was my personal anecdote to relate to the OP. I am aware he did not mention it. I did. Not too clearly obviously.
I played WoW when it came out way back when. It was brag worthy to just hit the level cap. Then I played BC when things were continuously being downgraded towards the kiddy pool. I quit after a time when I realized the same tough game that gave me so much enjoyment was being replaced with something easier for the wide audience.
Doesn't that sound a little like the common argument of BW vs SC2? You can accept SC2s faults and still like it, as I do. It will never be Brood War and for many, the lack of refinement that SC2 rectified also removed layers of depth that made it so strategic.
On June 15 2012 05:31 fabiano wrote: 1. The widow mine is just bad designed spider mine. 2. The swarm host is just a bad designed lurker. 3. The viper is an interesting flying defiler, but with way worse spells (the grab one doesn't belong to SC style). 4. The oracle's entomb spell is the most one-dimentional extremely retarded fucking shitty idea. It is just as bad as that shitty idea they had with the dark pylon. Jesus christ I can't emphasize enough how BAAAAAD, how ONE-DIMENTIONAL that spell is. It's just... stupid omg... 5. Even though all the above is horribly bad, it is still an improvement over SC:WoL.
Imagine defilers casting plague, not on 15 marines but 51. How about a lurker against a ball of units that bunch up perfectly for its attack. Shit, just imagine BW psy storms. Vulture mines.
If you added BW units to the long awaited and now declaimed pathfinding fixes it would irrevocably break the damn game and we'd never have it properly balanced unless all the classic bw units were paper tigers that did minimal damage.
But as a player who wants more out of SC2, I think HotS is going to add what we want. Blizzard is clearly listening in many ways and taking it all with a grain of salt. In some ways, the community does not know what it wants. We have vague ideas of what is good, like “units that are not A-move units”, though we cannot really make up our mind as to what that is. I think Blizzard is trying very hard to dig deep and find the marrow of what we want, which goes beyond what we say. They are calling back to BroodWar and asking “what made this part great and can we do that in SC2”. It is hard than we think, but I am excited to cut my teeth on the new units that may get us there.
this paragraph is so full of it. you strawman those with "less that favourable" criticisms as cynics. and now you know exactly what the players of sc2 really want!! you know what people wanted in WoL? a lurker type (positional) unit for the zerg. why did we have to wait until the expansion to get this unit, which only ended up being a walking and burrowing brood lord? the people wanted the carrier over the OG tempest, and we got it, except so lazily designed, implemented, and balanced that people never got a chance to truly use it; blizzard's solution, rather than trying to fix it, is to remove it and introduce a flying 22 range 1a siege unit. and match-up specific units like the warhound, whose entire purpose to enable lazy players to 1a their way through tough situations.
things that returned from brood war? dark swarm, consume are both bw abilities. hydra speed returns. oracle is like a half-arbiter, with cloaking, but no battle abilities. and these are things im glad are back but frustrated to wonder why they were never there in the first place.
you know what people really want? ways to play the game that favour player skill over just unit combination. dont you think having a carriers you can micro to avoid enemy fire is a more elegant solution than yet-another-protoss-unit you just sit back and 1a behind your army?
I personally don't agree with much of what you have said, mostly because we lack any hands on time with the new units. The majority of what you have stated is simply regurgitated impressions from other members of TL, all who have never played HotS. The warhound, which can be used in 2 of the 3 match ups, is totally unknown to us. We know nothing about how it functions, how quickly it turns or its abilities and how they function. People are drawing information from a bunch of preview videos and staged battle reports. None of these tell us how the units work, fit into a match up or mesh with other units.
Hindsight is 20/20 and the criticism people levy against SC2 have been grown and prefected over the 2 years since release. The arguments are always the same and simply point to BW, saying "make it like that, only modern". The ultimate fallacy of these argument is that they compair a new RTS to a game that was played professional for over 10 years. It was also a game where you could only control 12 units at once, which is a limiting factor few people talk about. You can't have a death ball with 12 units that have boarderline retarted AI. It is like compairing a basket ball team in the 80s to a basket ball team today. You can make the argument that one was better than the other, but it is unlikely it would be taken seriously by anyone. The Celtics in the 80s are not really compairable to the current Celtics. The game is totally different than the SC2 from launch and can only get better as more players put in their time. But the people who wanted SC2 rise from launch a fully developed as BW were, to be frank, deluding themselves. The only thing that will make SC2 as good as BW is time, time, time and more effort.
Uh you can control 12 units per control group...yes they do have borderline retarded AI, but that doesnt mean you cant have a deathball if you actually micro. Have you ever played PvT in BW? When the terran pushes out at 2-1 200/200 and melts all of the protoss army in 3 seconds while barely losing any units themselves, that is the definition of a deathball. Plus he was referring to micro, not how good/fun both games are. If you think that in 10 years, players will micro their units more intensely in sc2, comparable to that of BW, then you're sadly mistaken.
They are calling back to BroodWar and asking “what made this part great and can we do that in SC2”. It is hard than we think, but I am excited to cut my teeth on the new units that may get us there.
More like they are butchering up BW units design and implementing it on SC2. Should just tweak a little bit them instead of completely fucking them up.
We can't really say anything for sure until the final release, but from what has been seen so far we can state the following:
1. The widow mine is just bad designed spider mine. 2. The swarm host is just a bad designed lurker. 3. The viper is an interesting flying defiler, but with way worse spells (the grab one doesn't belong to SC style). 4. The oracle's entomb spell is the most one-dimentional extremely retarded fucking shitty idea. It is just as bad as that shitty idea they had with the dark pylon. Jesus christ I can't emphasize enough how BAAAAAD, how ONE-DIMENTIONAL that spell is. It's just... stupid omg... 5. Even though all the above is horribly bad, it is still an improvement over SC:WoL.
Well, I'm glad you gave evidence for your statements.... Come on, you can't have a reasonable discussion and post rubbish like that without any backup, explanation, or anything...
EPT
