LotV Balance Update Preview - May 11

Hey everyone! We’ve got more updates on the way for the Legacy of the Void Multiplayer beta. However, before we get to the specific changes and what else we’re working on internally, we’d like to talk about a couple things.

First, we’d like to inquire once more on the in-game clock changing to real time. This change is looking positive so far, so we’d like to start thinking about committing to making this change for Legacy of the Void. On our end, we see the advantages and disadvantages of going either way, and we’d really love to rely on you all to make a call in this area that you feel is best. The only thing we must avoid is having an option to go back and forth between the HotS clock and a real-time clock. We are sure that this will be confusing, especially when viewing various events that use different clocks.

The second thing we want to address also relates to time. As you likely know, the StarCraft II development team is currently working on an automated tournament feature. Just as it was in Warcraft 3 automated tournaments, we can’t have two people that play for hours drag out a result for everyone else in the same automated tournament. The solution that we are currently testing for this dilemma is to end every automated tournament game at the 30 min mark (~42 min or so in HoTS time), at which point the winner is determined by whichever player earned more XP in that game. This number itself isn’t final, and we’ll be looking at how the actual tournament games turn out. We can easily tune this as needed when we start testing automated tournaments.

When exploring this specific concept for automated tournaments, we also wondered if every melee game in SC2 should also have a rule like this to prevent long, boring, dragged out games in the future. We believe with the Swarm Host fix, as well as how so many changes in LoTV cater heavily towards aggressive play, the chances of 2-3+ hour games happening in the future is quite low. However, we also know that some dragged out games have happened due to players trolling, or other player behaviors that can’t be controlled. To avoid this, we are considering putting a time limit on standard melee games around the 1.5 hour mark or so since this seems to be beyond the longest a legitimate game could go. We are only beginning to consider this idea, and we wanted to hear your thoughts on this subject in order to make a better decision.

Now, let move on and discuss the specific changes we’re thinking about for the next balance update.